Strange Music (4 page)

Leaving my bedside for an armchair, Bro looks horribly grave.

Sam has not docked yet – for
that
I am grateful. Dear, merciful God, mend my heart for feeling this way, forgive me my unkind thoughts but more tales of Sam's escapades now will not do.

There is a rapping on my forehead, as though someone is trying to get in. Or a fearful storm is brewing. The sea changes under the early-evening light from green to blue. Can anyone do more than
exist
in an unbearable world devoid of happenings?

A lump rises from my chest, hurting my throat when I swallow. Bro has just insulted me. Accusing me of being quixotic. Until now I have always accepted his opinions in the end. But are we in the same league?

Bro stops reading
The Times
, looks down on me.

Cautiously he stands, moves as though the floorboards might bite his feet; his face is lapped by a pristine blue reflected off the ceiling – the transient quality the winter sun gives the water, quivering, trembling. Because of Bro's harsh words I am so sad I do not think it will be possible for me ever to look at him again. He has always been somewhat vacant, as though he would prefer to stand on the edge of life. I once thought him more solid and profound in his opinions than I. But I was not mistaken about his greatest flaw: satisfaction with mediocrity.

‘Where are you going this evening?' I ask.

Strolling from the landing to my doorway, ‘Nowhere,' Bro replies curtly. ‘There's an article here concerning the Poor Law Amendment Act and declaring poverty in England is a crime.' Bro settles in the armchair opposite my bed.

After he has finished reading I say, ‘The Reform Bill opened many opportunities for change.'

‘It constituted a major historical event.'

‘What is history? Events I am told occurred, but that was, perhaps, only one person's view. There is still much room for improvement. Workhouse orphanages are appalling. Do you remember that cartoon of a woman, manacled, giving birth, in the forefront naked children being beaten? Do you not then conjure up in your mind visions of chimney-sweeps and rag-pickers forced to start work before dawn and finish well after dusk, children who never see the sun but on the Sabbath? Picture an infant of four, dying, wedged in the bends of a chimney. Imagine
that
!'

‘That isn't true.'

I say to Bro, ‘In my imagination it is – which is the same, you know, as its actually being so.' My pilgrimage from this high mountain is to reach the oppressed through thought, to create those images within my mind and then live with them. ‘Can we not imagine ourselves into another's skin? Can we not dream ourselves into another world, as did the prophet Isaiah? Give breath and life to histories that otherwise might not live?'

Bro's footsteps are abrupt and hard descending the carpeted stairs.

Night encroaches. The thudding in my head is more like some creature trying to escape, not get in. One is permitted to let feelings out by weeping, though to weep pains my chest and will cause my fever to rise. I fear for my health only because of the pain my loss would bring to my family. Death itself is a bridge. I fear it not.

If I do live, as I have explained to my dear friend Miss Mitford, I hope and believe I shall write better. I shall focus on that.

December is upon us already. Mama's sister, Aunt Bell, whom we call Bummy, has arrived from Frocester to pass the winter here with Henrietta, dear Bro and myself. I trust Bummy's kind-heartedness in offering to come, and her presence, whilst she stays, will give a sunnier aspect to this new house. It did not always at Hope End, I seem to recall.

Perhaps I am becoming tediously sorry for myself. The Hedleys were very kind having us to stay until we moved to warmer, more comfortable accommodation, and now there is room enough for Papa, Arabel, Georgie, Sette, Occy, in fact, all twelve of us, to stay in Torquay.

. . . the difference between the Braddons & Beacon Terrace is all the difference between the coldest situation in Torquay & the warmest – & my
body
was so ungrateful as to require another sun besides that of looks & kind words.

Here, we are immediately
upon
the lovely bay – a few paces dividing our door from its waves – & nothing but the ‘sweet south' & congenial west wind can reach us – &
they
must first soften their footsteps
upon
the waters. Behind us – so close as to darken the back windows – rises an abrupt rock crowned with the slant woods of Beacon Hill! And thus though the north & east winds blow their fiercest, we are in an awful silence & only guess at their doings.

Although Papa has consented to Bro staying with me in Torquay it is still clearly against his own wish. Dearest Brozie.
His presence is not
necessary
in the strict sense of the word. Perhaps no happiness IS
. Nothing equals the pain of knowing Papa does not wish him to remain with me.

And now that Crow has dispensed my evening opium I am more than weary, and good only for staring straight into the marble moon's silver wake spooling across the spreading sea.

Dr. Barry's insistence that I rise before two o'clock every afternoon was outrageous. Nay, preposterous! He visits daily. That he should spend so much of his precious time on me pains me greatly; but he insists, and in his last letter dear Papa insisted too. Nothing could be further from my mind than to upset Papa more by trying to alter this regime. However, I rather fear all Papa's preventative measures are in vain. Daily Dr. Barry asks, ‘Have you taken all your medicines?' or, ‘How often have you had your opium dose?' Conversely, opium pitches me up and down like a wave.

I am glad the cold has come and that I can return to my late London habit – very useful in enabling an invalid to get through a good deal of writing without fatigue – of lying in bed until early afternoon instead of being made to rise and then, after the exertion of dressing, to take as much air as possible. Upon my arrival this physician even insisted I was sent out in the chair most afternoons. As a result I have been prevented from corresponding with friends and tempted on from hour to hour and day to day in procrastination. Utter nonsense is all I have managed to write for weeks. Lines destined more for the fire than for publication. But to please Papa I have at least appeared to follow this doctor's advice.

Yesterday Bro said he heard from Papa news of a frightful controversy concerning Sam, which Papa would not fully disclose. I fear dear Papa made a tragic mistake in sending our brother to Jamaica to be . . . ‘readjusted' was Papa's exact word. Bro has previously mentioned tales from a Presbyterian minister who, with his wife, was driven by Sam from Cinnamon Hill estate on the island's north coast. In all probability, Henrietta said last night, the latest controversy concerns the freed slaves' pay at Cinnamon Hill, which differs from Papa's other estates. Sam has written Papa that after emancipation the Negroes wouldn't work so he
had
to pay less.

Again I am terribly anxious for Sam. I anticipate news of his arrival any day. I remember at Hope End – though the exact year escapes me – when Sam and Bro came home from a cricket match in an irrational and unChristian state. Henrietta told me in a much frightened voice that she had heard Sam carried upstairs. Neither Sam nor Bro appeared at breakfast. Bro, I recall, went out to shoot and Sam went to Mathon; Henrietta said that the farther Sam went the better. She was extremely angry and threatened not to speak to him for a fortnight, which was, in my past opinion, both wrong, abstractly speaking, and impolitic. For although I suffer a habit of moral dignity, nobody is immaculate; and young men are more inclined to a fault of this kind than to many others; and our sullenness would have done no more good in such a case, than Xere's whipping in punishing the sea.

Looking from the window into a stormy amber cloud darkening into the vast sky, I am chilled by wintry draughts and the fast-fading light. The hills – an amphitheatre around and over-looking the bay – should offer better shelter from offshore winds.

No letters for days. Disappointment, by adding to my concerns, serves to maintain this deplorable situation. Nothing has happened for weeks, I fear, to cause stimulation, but fevers and faintings and horrible imaginings, and worse.

Do let me hear from you when you can write –
whenever
you can. I have so few pleasures! – and a few words from you bring many! A true one to me was, that Dr. Mitford liked the cream. He shall have some more. How is he? How are you?
Do
go on caring for me . . .

I am
not
missing London! I can sleep and wake here very much as I could there. Although it was a point gained to be settled somewhere after the torturous Hope End days that grew into weeks and then into months before Papa revealed our fate. Sidmouth; Gloucester Terrace, London; then, finally, gloomy Wimpole Street, whose walls look so much like Newgate's turned inside out; the filthy-yellow smog of London's cluttered streets; the steady stream of guests ‘just dropping in' to see how one is – all were an anomaly I could have well done without. I much prefer to inhabit castles of the air located in a state of conscious ignorance. Gossip and small talk give me no pleasure, such trivia is abhorrent, as is visiting for visiting's sake. During my girlhood I cringed then started to freeze when obliged to polka or sing in a group. What is called GOING OUT is the greatest bore in this world, I share the horror of it with Papa. Pretty Henrietta is far more domesticated. She can meal-plan, play the piano, and sew and paint. I hate piano practice. I sit down discontented and rise disgusted. Sewing, embroidery, especially beading slippers, are equally abhorrent. I loathe the world of society, those people amongst whom Bummy says I should have mixed. Ladies with hourglass figures and rustling petticoats. Gentlemen with a pious pompous satisfaction engraved into faces that talk of matters dreary or frivolous. Seagulls have replaced my cooing doves. And I miss
them
, because no two doves are quite the same. I also miss the garden at Hope End. More than
them
I miss
that
.

Above all I miss contentment and a sense of peace.

The stethoscope was not tried this afternoon yet I was greatly fatigued by Dr. Barry's visit. He said he could tell, when feeling my chest, that the rattle of respiration is no clearer on the affected side. Although I am spitting less blood, my exhaustion from moving from Wimpole Street to the Hedleys', then to Beacon Terrace, has not left.

Due to the view and continually crashing waves, I think of this new residence as being
in
the sea. Except for the undulating hills on the opposite side of the bay I cannot see a yard of vulgar earth when lifted from my bed to the sofa, where I am forced to remain the best part of the day. I have been unable to stand since I was removed from our previous accommodation. Yet my malady of discontent hardly compares with others' suffering; three months ago a wheel went over poor Dr. Mitford's leg.

. . . I am better than I have been – for I have not been very well – & only emerged from an imprisonment of ten days in my bedroom, this day! But
all
the imprisonment was not
necessary
– only precautionary on account of the west wind! I hear from Wimpole Street that Mr. Kenyon is confined to the house with rheumatism! . . .

Dr. Barry visited at noon and he maintains that the family must not think of seeing me in London this Christmas. Physically I am too weak to do anything but write. Should I so much as move a terrible pain in my left side returns and once more I am spitting blood. Please, heavenly Father, don't let anyone give this news to Miss Mitford or yet to dear Papa.

We are stuck in the month of January. Bro said yesterday that when this frost thaws I must be better, or when Sam visits Torquay – which ever happens first. Sam's smile can melt the severest freeze, as will the warm glow Bro says he will surely bring from Jamaica. Sam claims, Bro remarked, that since the apprenticeship system ended he has had to work like a slave.

I agreed with Papa, even before emancipation, that the West Indies would be irreparably ruined if the Emancipation Bill was passed . . .
Papa said that nobody in their senses would even think of attempting the culture of sugar, and that they had better hang weights to the sides of the island of Jamaica and sink it all at once. I think certain heads might be found heavy enough for the purpose.

The power of Papa's anger at the Emancipation Bill seems equal to that of his love for us. I know Papa does love us all, and that he too suffers greatly in these turbulent times. We Barretts are cursed. I long to depart from all this – to climb from the window Papa sees me through, to live with another view that is not his and suits me better.

I expect Bro wishes to see Sam as much as any of us here in Torquay. Dear Bro was up after midnight writing to Sam.
I
have a great mind to write on the question of slavery, amongst other injustices. Although as poets we have a solemn responsibility to do so, this subject is, I fear, perhaps beyond my sympathies, and even beyond the sphere of human poetry in its ‘absolute unapproachable-ness'. Some concerns are more expressible by a woman than a man; or by a man than a woman. Is this so with black and white; slave and master? Confined to this bed, my stage has become my soul, but a page filled with poetry can be a stage for life as much as a play, a novel, a tapestry. Despite all dear Papa says, I instinctively believe a woman does have a business with questions like the question of slavery. She should not write if she believes otherwise. She should slide back into the antiquated days of the past, live as a kept creature, far removed from intelligent thought and speech. For of what use is the pen to a woman shackled and enslaved if she refuses to pick it up and to slash the bands that tie her? Slavery still finds favour in many an American quarter, disgraceful though it is. I pray to God I will never think as an American thinks, or behave as they do. The moral ground they inhabit crumbles when liberty is at stake.