Sophy allowed herself a few days to get straight in the farmhouse before she and Kane visited the theatre in Holmeside again. Along with the house, they had bought the doctor’s horse and carriage, knowing they were going to have a great deal of to-ing and fro-ing to do in the future. It was going to be one of Ralph’s jobs to tend to the horse, which had a fine stable in part of the square cobbled yard at the back of the farmhouse where the cottages were situated. He would also be driving Sophy and Kane about. The upkeep of the gardens was his domain too, and he, Harriet and Sadie had already decided they wanted a greenhouse in one part of the grounds, with a mushroom house and a large vegetable garden alongside. Sadie was to continue as cook, and Harriet would see to everything else. Sophy was a little worried this might prove too much for Harriet, who had her own home to attend to as well as caring for Josephine, but Harriet wouldn’t hear of anyone else being brought in to help her.
Kane had been instructing Sophy on the intricacies of the business side of running a theatre since she had first discussed the possibility of owning one with him. At first he had been frankly apprehensive about a venture where women, and solely women, ran the company – something, he admitted, that was to his shame. It wasn’t that he didn’t think women could accomplish such an undertaking, he’d stressed to Sophy in the early days. More that the male owners of the theatres and the actor-managers they employed wouldn’t let them. To his credit, when Sophy had argued back that the status quo would forever remain as it was unless more and more women took the proverbial bull by the horns, he had agreed without further reservation. They were buying the theatre together, but Kane was fully prepared to be more of a sleeping partner who could be called upon in an advisory capacity if required. If Sophy hadn’t loved him to distraction already, this would have tipped the balance.
From the inception of her idea to run her own theatre, Sophy had known it wouldn’t be easy. Quite how hard the reality would be gradually dawned on her over the next weeks. In the main part of the theatre the stage was still intact but the wood had to be stripped back and varnished. The walls, the fancy plasterwork, the decorative woodwork, everything – needed to be cleaned and renewed, and the high ceiling and chandeliers proved a nightmare. Several rows of seats were completely destroyed, and the others had to be stripped of their upholstery, cleaned and restored. Curtains and carpeting the same. And although the back of the building where the dressing rooms were situated wasn’t damaged, the smoke smell had permeated every nook and cranny, necessitating as vigorous cleaning as the auditorium itself.
Determined to start as she meant to carry on, Sophy had advertised for women workers. However, after a while she had to compromise on the carpentry work as she couldn’t find a woman carpenter in the whole of the north-east. She was amazed at the initial response to the cards she paid to have in shop windows around the town. Most of the women who applied were curious and had no real idea of what was required, and a good number of them were drawn from the wretched filth and poverty of the East End. The old river-mouth settlement of Sunderland had once been a thriving and bustling area where much of the wealth of the town was generated, but when the rich merchant families moved away from their big townhouses in the commercial part of the area to live in the more fashionable and genteel Bishopwearmouth in the first half of the nineteenth century, the East End became a dire place of tenement slums. But for every drunkard and slattern of a mother and wife in the ghettos, there were ten women battling against the odds to bring their children up properly – often in only one or two rooms – and keep them from the worst of the vices rampant in the East End. These women worked their fingers to the bone from noon to night, some with husbands who worked in the docks when shifts were available, others with husbands who had never done an honest day’s work in their lives. And there were others, as Harriet would have been, struggling to raise their children alone.
Sophy saw each woman who applied personally. Several took one look at what was required and walked out, one or two were shifty and, Sophy felt, couldn’t be trusted, but over a period of a week or so she had brought together a little team who were prepared to work hard for the generous wages she was offering. Sophy had already decided that those who proved themselves, she would keep on once the inaugural work was done, in some capacity or other. She was going to need cleaners, stagehands, people to serve refreshments and so on, and it didn’t take her long to realise that for some of these women, the money she was paying was a lifeline. Especially for one or two who had no husband at home.
She also provided a facility which, had she known it, won her employees’ loyalty to a woman. She had set aside a small room at the back of the theatre and furnished it with a comfy sofa and a few toys, and here, if they so wished, any of her employees could bring their children while they worked. A rota system was set up so a different woman each day cared for the little ones, and any breast-feeding mothers could pop into the room when the babies were hungry.