Strange Music (10 page)

I saw Cousin Richard last five years ago. Still a man of violence, and some malice. A man too of ill repute – the house of which he was Speaker was known as the House of Forty Thieves. A man of talent, I have to say, who at one time did all he could to trample down poor Papa. His speech in the House of Commons was not well received, in particular his views on flogging women. It was around that time, or possibly a little before, that Bro read to me of a large West Indian proprietor examined by a committee of the House of Lords who could not name any overseer, driver, or other man in authority who did not keep an African mistress.

Did my own father's cousin commit murder? Was the victim a child or
with
child? Might the child have been his? God forgive us and help us. The moon's silver mantle shines boldly. And although Bro sleeps nearby on the sofa I cannot, gripped at night by such thoughts.

. . . Did you look into
Blackwood
this month – & (apropos to fish) perceive how Christopher's ‘Oystereater' congenially with Tait's Opium Eater, apostrophizes the ‘charming & adorable Mary Russell Mitford'? – You see, no sort of diet will expel the admirations due to you – & the imaginative with their opium, & the literal with their oysters come to the same point at last. Nay – the oysters are infected, if it be true that ‘the WORLD'S mine oyster'.

. . . I have a confusion of poems running about in my head – a chaos of beginnings & endings & little pieces of middles, which are not likely to end in an
Iliad
& so help Atheism to an argument. I shd. be glad to be allowed to get them (not in the character of an
Iliad
) into some little nutshell of my own, but Dr. Barry insists upon my not writing, and as you taught me passive obedience a long time ago, I have been practising it like St Aylmer – not that I mean to do this all summer, if it pleases God to spare me through it. I ought to say with a deep-felt thanksgiving, how much better I am . . . The weakness was excessive – & indeed, I have not even
tried
to stand up since January – but everything is in ‘good time' Dr. Barry says, & it is planned for me to go upon the sea before the present week closes, which would be a ‘vision of delight' for me if it were not for the fatigue . . .

I do so hope Hugh Stuart Boyd can read my handwriting – as I look back over my pen-strokes I see they are rather irregular and cramped from my writing this horizontally in bed. Why has he left my last three letters unanswered? Has he not managed to read them? Why, when we spent so much time together at Hope End, precious happy literary hours over cups of strong black West Indian coffee, can he not reply?

This continuing aching sense of weakness I suffer is intolerable. I have told Dr. Barry that Dr. Chambers tried every other kind of narcotic in vain. Opium does me no harm. Despite taking twenty-five drops daily, I have mastered seven languages – French, Italian, Latin and German, Spanish, Hebrew and Byzantine Greek.

Yet today Crow forgot an afternoon dose.

I now experience restlessness till it makes me quite mad, like an imprisoned bird, impotently beating and fluttering at all the doors and windows to escape. My elixir should be served throughout the day, first as a breakfast when wafting up to my room is a disturbing odour of kippers, the crunch of toast, the clatter of knives and forks and cups against saucers and plates.

Imprisoned on the sofa close to the window, close to a cold and violent sea, I lie listening to the dry wind as it leans eastwards, whipping up surf. My face, reflected in the glass of the bookcase opposite, is yellowed with jaundice. I am glad setons are not used as a method of curing my ailments, for I cannot bear the sensation caused when tape is passed by means of a needle through folds of one's skin – I have no folds of skin to pass through.

Old books are stacked at my bedside, each holds the fragrance of the past, like the scent of lavender – remote, fragmented – pressed into sheets. The woman drifts through my thoughts and into the room. Standing at my bedside, she is in girlhood and seems to be suffering a general feeling of malaise, aches and pains and convulsive twitches of the muscles. Her skin is blotched red as if affected by measles. Natural ill health impedes her movements with paroxysms, until she enters a hell of writhing agitation, into which most would feel loath to look. Vainly does she struggle. She's been buried for thousands of years in a coffin of the thickest wood, the conflicts and horrors and evil nightmares are over-powering. Already the gates to her freedom are locked, draped with black garments and funeral cloths, the key thrown away.

Everywhere are memories. Everywhere I am unfolding. Pains stretch right round my back; my spine feels swollen; and, from straining a muscle whilst saddling Moses, I suffer recurring agony. Dear Papa, and finally Mama, visit intermittently. I am treated for disease of the spine. This entails the horror of regular cuppings, which I only just survive; and being strung up four feet from the ground in a spine crib, and – with the fear of being driven, quite literally, batty, by boredom and inactivity – told to lie and
wait
. Never have I been without that dusky-brown drug since. Many women now take it from babyhood. Were I to completely cease the consumption of it, I would die.

The woman stares across the room. Whey-faced, she rises, a sombre figure in a black satin dress; stumbles, falls. She tries to scoop herself up and then from exhaustion, collapses again, wilting into the smog of despair. For once our eyes truly meet, that she might reach me; a mysterious brown look with a mischievous glint. Closing my eyes I tell myself I will not look at her any more, that I have been dreaming. When I open my eyes she is staring at me. Have I been hypnotized? Can such a thing be achieved in the murky depths of sleep?

Dimly I see the woman now as a whisper not of the past or present but of the future. Vast clouds of the agony of disappointment loom over her body. As long as she takes opium, that path journeying to hell remains open to me.

I shall demand Bro stay on the sofa in my room after the sun has set. Is this selfish of me? This afternoon Henrietta and I had another scrape.

All about me is red. Red as poppies' yearning open succulent mouths. Mist breathes across the bloodshot sky, over cerise sheets of deep water. Mist circles the masts of the
Hopeful Adventure
as she slips sedately from the bay, sliding into that wondrous sea – forgetfulness.

. . . what makes me write to you so very soon as this morning, is to beg you not to take the slightest trouble about the baskets which are worth none, & also to beg for Mr. Naylor's book . . . Don't send it
in the basket,
because that would be the overthrowing of the return-basket principle. I mentioned the returning of the baskets only because I had fancied you would have no more trouble in accomplishing it than was involved in writing my name on the other side of the direction card (by the way – the
first
came back safely), but I do assure you that the race of basket-makers is not extinct here, barbarous as we are, & that Dr. Mitford may &
shall
have his fish without any
return
-basket to put it in. In the meantime
,
try to forgive
me
. I am sure it must need an effort – for if it had not been for this fussy & most unpoetical thrift of mine, you might not have known a word of the neighbourhood of the omnibus – not for another year at least! . . .

. . . No plan fixed about my removal to London! I LONG to be at home – but am none the nearer for
that
 . . .

I must train my thoughts away from the trivia of fish baskets. But does my dear friend Miss Mitford know
what it is to be shut up in a room by oneself, to multiply one's thoughts by one's thoughts – how hard it is to know what ‘one's thought is like' – how it grows and grows, and spreads and spreads, and ends in taking some supernatural colour – just like mustard and cress on a (wet) flannel in a dark closet?

Seeing Mr. Weale gave to me tremendous pleasure. He entered my bedroom. My heart leapt up. Could he not have stood nearer? Or, better still, sat upon the bed itself instead of the armchair opposite? There are two sides to my bed: the company side and the private side. This I will not explain to Mr. Weale should he return to Torquay, but instead beg that he take the private side, for it never shall be tainted with the memory of anyone else's presence. Mr. Weale is a noble and handsome naval doctor from Plymouth. His strong Irish accent is potent music to my ears. His sepia paintings fill me with fire. My desire to touch him was overwhelming, to reach out and . . . If our lips should meet I would not faint but would draw him closer by warm tides of hope.

Mr. Weale's visit also brought certain discomforts – I longed so much for him
not
to leave my bedside.

When Bro said, ‘Mr. Weale is half mad,' I could have thrown my arms around Bro. I adore the wild spontaneity in Mr. Weale's nature. I did implore him to examine me. And this he did twice for an hour and a half at a time. I felt then, as I do now, that
I was purring
. It was
extraordinary. ‘The cough is spinal
,' he finally said. When we were next alone Mr. Weale said it was a ‘
nervous cough
'. He then made me talk of poetry, and gave me Coleridge's works – though I was nervous, I did not cough. I remember one sentence he said when last examining me word for word: ‘
There may be disease upon the lungs, but it is
not
beyond the reach of remedies, or you could scarcely have that countenance which buoys me up with hope every time I look at you
.' He asked, ‘
Has the stethoscope been used?
' I replied, ‘Yes,' thinking he would examine me with his. He did not. Yet I know he took a great fancy to me, and I to him. More of his exact words come to me; not words he said to me but to others
of me
: ‘
As long as Miss Barrett is in the drawing-room I certainly will not think of going out of the house. She is a sensitive person, and whilst I was conversing with Miss Barrett, it was only by the strongest effort that I could keep myself from bursting into tears
.' How I would have wept too! Wept to share such deep emotion with him as he with me. Bro says Mr. Weale has confided to him his tendencies to fall in love, and his predilection to wanting to commit suicide, which still constantly recurs. He confided to Bro that, like me, he sometimes hates to be alive.

And yet all joy turns to sadness – there is his wife, Mrs. Weale, to consider. I despise creatures such as she for their
unwomanliness
. Is despise too strong a word? I think not. I had to force my hand to shake hers. Simply touching her skin caused my insides to shiver. But she is of little – no – no importance to me. Mrs. Weale shed many tears and Bro tells me she said she was ‘
very sure she was insane
'. I could hardly keep from going downstairs to Mr. Weale and would have stayed there until dawn had Bro not carried me, bodily, protesting and gesticulating otherwise, from the drawing-room.

I blame my frailness on this weather, and on gathering dust in bed for so long.
I Believe I Am Better
. Everyone was on the beach today but Bro laid me down and shut the door. He threatened to lock me into my room. I have persuaded Dr. Barry to let me go out. But ‘in the chair'! Staying ‘in the chair' he insists upon. I shall show him I can do more. Papa has allowed Bro to purchase for me a small yacht,
Bella Donna
. I wish my yacht to be brought to the front door because the chairs are liable to irregular outbreaks of tremors and convulsions and give me palpitations.

Dr. Barry has lent me
Wanderings in Search of Health
by Dr. Cummings, another of his patients. My discovery from having studied this is that my sudden improvement results from a healing of the soul and spirit effected by Mr. Weale, to whom, if he would but allow me, I would give all mine own inheritance in order for him to work no longer as a doctor but to give his days to artistry. He is to commence a series of graphic illustrations of English poetry and I am to let him have some references to passages susceptible of such illustration. Already I know what I will send – extracts from Prior, Chaucer, Browne and Fletcher. For me, Mr. Weale will do some illustrations to my poems in
The Seraphim
.

. . . There now! You are more than obeyed. I have told you everything. Oh! but I shdnt. forget a parting party on Friday night. Dr. & Mrs. Barry stopped once or twice to beg Mr. Weale to moderate his ardour a little, as really nobody cd. hear
them
for
him!
Certainly he does ‘roar like a nightingale'. But I kept my gravity admirably upstairs – having got over the first shock. Really, that first night there did seem no prospect for me but to laugh on till dawn! And Crow's imperative, ‘Now indeed, ma'am, you MUST read your Psalms', didn't do much good – as you may suppose! . . .