74 pages • 2 hours read
Sarah PennerThe Lost Apothecary
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Nella—February 3, 1791”
In London on February 3, 1791, Nella Clavinger sits in her apothecary shop, which doubles as her home, on 3 Back Alley (her shop is very near Bear Alley, which causes many characters in the novel to associate the two locations; they both, essentially, reference her store). She reviews a letter from a client who will come at daybreak to purchase poison on the behalf of her mistress. The letter also notes that the poison will be served to the husband at breakfast. This woman is the latest customer who will purchase such a tonic from Nella’s shop, a store that, in her late mother’s possession, was only an “apothecary shop for women’s maladies” (12) and dispensed no poison. Nella records the names of all her clients in her calfskin register, and she has disguised her shop behind a false wall to avoid detection. Though Nella still offers benign remedies to women for their ailments, she began offering fatal toxins after the death of a man named Frederick, the one victim whose name is missing from the register and defaces “only [her] sullen heart, [her] scarred womb” (13). By her own assessment, Nella believes her shop is too disguised to be found by constables or any civilian men. As she awaits this latest client, she observes that though her eyes were once a “bright green, like [her] mother’s” (13), they now hold little life within them. Nella also confesses that she has a significant discomfort in her joints that has been “crawling through her body for years” (14), and that every poison she metes out brings a new layer of this pain upon her. She takes some laudanum to deaden her aches and rest before her newest client arrives in a few hours.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Caroline—Present day, Monday”
On a Monday in present-day London, Caroline Parcewell heads to the nearest pub. She is a US tourist on what was supposed to be a celebratory trip for her 10th wedding anniversary. Her husband James is back home while she is in the city alone, “grieving and furious and jet-lagged, with a life-changing decision to make” (15). On her way to the Old Fleet Tavern, she is stopped by a middle-aged man who invites her to go mudlarking with him and his companions. Caroline declines the invitation. The man mentions that mudlarking is related to the Victorian era, causing Caroline to reflect on her past love of Victorian literature and British history. Internally, she remarks that she has always been drawn to “the minutiae of life long ago, the untold secrets of ordinary people” (17). The man explains that mudlarking is a process by which people “[scrounge] about in the river for something old, something valuable” (17). Caroline refuses again and proceeds to the tavern.
At the pub, Caroline reflects on the fact that even though the man mentioned that Victorian authors wrote a lot about mudlarking, she has never even heard the word before. Though she earned an undergraduate degree in history, she shelved her plan to apply for a master’s at Cambridge University when James proposed to her 10 years ago. She remained in Cincinnati, Ohio, and took up an administrative job at her family’s farm while James advanced his corporate career. Caroline has also put off her desire for a child at the behest of James and his advancing career, but they began to try for one before Caroline’s trip. In the wake of her crumbling marriage, her latest missed period alarms her; Caroline’s solo trip was precipitated by her discovery of James’s infidelity. Though she once “valued [her] husband’s pragmatism and calculated nature” (22), in his absence, she is beginning to view this trip as a chance to do whatever she wants, regardless of what James would think. Caroline decides to take the middle-aged man up on his mudlarking offer and heads to the River Thames. She decides that on this trip, she must discover what she truly wants out of life.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Nella—February 4, 1791”
On the morning of February 4, 1791, Nella prepares to meet her new client. Her internal musing reveals that her apothecary shop is split into two rooms, an alteration from her mother’s day, when the store was a single room. The first room, empty save for “a bin of half-rotted pearl barley” (25), constitutes the shop’s first disguise; the wall of shelves before her actual shop function as the second. The pearl barley bin is where the women drop off their requests, and it is where Nella found this latest woman’s message. When Nella hears the door of this first room open, she peers through the column of shelves that separates the rooms. She is shocked at the appearance of the letter writer, noting that this person is a young girl, perhaps 12 or 13. Nella considers sending the girl, Eliza Fanning, away due to her age, but she worries at the potential repercussions she might suffer at the hands of the girl’s mistress if she does so. Nella is also driven to meet the girl by the sight of her proud posture.
Nella lets her into the shop, where Eliza expresses a manifest curiosity in the elements of her craft by asking Nella what leaves she uses to brew the tea she offers Eliza. Eliza notes that, according to her mistress, “only girls” (30) come here, which Nella confirms. Nella “only aids women” (30), furthering her mother’s commitment that this place, once a space where women could reveal their ailments “without the lascivious appraisal of a man” (30), would always be a refuge for ladies. When Eliza mentions the strange way that Nella has been holding her hand for the duration of their meeting, Nella quickly changes the subject to the topic of the girl’s age: 12. Upon Nella’s dry remark that she “wouldn’t expect [the girl] to have killed many people in [her] short life” (32), Eliza reveals that though her it was mistress who decided to kill her husband, Eliza suggested doing so at the breakfast table. Eliza does not flinch when she verifies that she and her mistress are fully committed to killing the mistress’s husband.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Caroline—Present day, Monday”
Caroline arrives at the River Thames and finds the middle-aged gentleman, along with his companions. He introduces himself as Bachelor Alf. As he tells Caroline of a centuries-old tradition where young women would “throw [would-be engagement rings] off the bridge” (34) if proposed to by someone they did not like, Caroline thinks back to how “tradition [hasn’t] done much good” (34) in her modern-day life. She had been in the process of packing her anniversary gift to James, a tin business cardholder, when she discovered a text from his mistress on his phone. She is as disturbed at the notion of James having “[harbored] this secret for months” (36) as she is at the unfaithfulness itself. She is brought out of her memory and back into her present position in the river, where the first artifact she finds is an 18th-century clay pipe that stokes in her a thrill at “holding in [her] hands an object last touched centuries ago” (38). While Bachelor Alf’s suggestion that all the mudlarkers present search for “an inconsistency of things” (39) rather than the “thing” itself to maximize their finds, Caroline grows frustrated at the adventure and how little it has cheered her up. Nevertheless, she decides to spend 12 more minutes in the river, leaving only if she has not found anything of note in that time.
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
Across the time-split Penner has established, these opening chapters begin to demonstrate how Nella, Eliza, and Caroline’s experiences of womanhood shape their individual relationships to secrecy. Late 18th-century apothecary Nella, whose primary experience of womanhood has been a strong fealty to other women, both deepens and guards these women’s secrets. She deepens her clients’ secrets by actualizing their killing intent, by providing them a means (poison) by which to kill their husbands. With Nella’s involvement, these women must conceal from the public not only their husbands’ betrayal and their own hunger for retribution, but also the truth of their deaths. Nella makes their deceptions multipronged.
Even with a life mired in secrecy, Nella’s commitment to documenting the names of women who purchase fatal toxins beside the names of those who purchase benign cures accomplishes her goal of helping these women leave an indelible mark on history and also exhibits these 18th-century women as ethically multifaceted. They are presented as complex individuals with varied needs and emotions, able to assess moral principles for themselves and to decide whether the frustrations in their lives require poison or medicine.
Nella’s life soon intersects with that of 12-year-old Eliza Fanning. Eliza, a young maid in the house of the wealthy Amwells, is on the cusp of womanhood (applying the novel’s use of menstruation as a marker of an entry to womanhood). Though Eliza’s prepubescence initially urges Nella to turn the girl away, it is her status as a transporter of secrets, Mrs. Amwell’s letter-writer and confidant, that convinces Nella to allow her into the shop. Nella wonders: “what might become of my legacy if [Eliza’s] mistress was well-known about town, and word got out that I sent a child away?” (27). Very early on, Eliza serves as a medium for secrecy, a bearer of her lady’s intent by virtue of both writing the letter to request poison and retrieving the toxin from Nella. But the text grants Eliza her agency fairly quickly. She tells Nella that though Mrs. Amwell developed the general idea of poisoning Mr. Amwell, Eliza is the one who suggested the poisoning be done at breakfast. This is a point where Eliza’s relationship to secrecy becomes a bit more tangled—she is now directly implicated in this incident and, considering she prepares and serves the poisoned eggs to Mr. Amwell in an upcoming chapter, will continue to be. Nella’s constant references to the girl’s apparent precociousness, the nods to Eliza’s “quick understanding” (29), and her unflinching commitment to Mr. Amwell’s murder all link Eliza’s maturity with her direct involvement in the preservation and creation of secrets. Since Eliza’s story is partially a coming-of-age tale, her relationship to secrecy and the world around her transforms notably throughout the novel.
Over 200 years later in present-day London, Caroline Parcewell contemplates her womanhood in terms of her marriage and mulls over the secrecy that has cleaved her union. In Caroline’s case, her husband James’s infidelity constitutes a secrecy from which she has fled. The secrecy that fractures Caroline’s marriage contrasts starkly with the “secrecy” she encounters on her mudlarking venture. Both experiences have elements of unknowability, as Caroline was ignorant of James’s affair for months before her London trip, and the small blue vial she finds in the Thames is a complete enigma to her at this point of the novel. But while James’s deception was willful, there is something unintended and guileless about the way the blue vial keeps its secrets. The vial’s secrets, unlike James’s liaison, do not actively resist unearthing. By connecting Caroline to Nella and Eliza by way of space, if not time, these first chapters track how secrecy drives all three characters toward one essential converging point: the apothecary shop at 3 Back Alley.
