The Flight of Sarah Battle (16 page)

4

Robert Wilson, Bookseller and Publisher, Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, is thriving. A year after arriving in the city, Tom contributes a substantial sum from the sale of Cranch's in Berwick Street for a share in the business, and while he's not yet a partner, his say in major decisions becomes increasingly important. He takes specific responsibility for the pamphlet war which, together with certain newspapers in the city, keeps up opposition to the Federalists, with an eye to winning the presidency at the end of the century.

For the Democratic Republicans lost the election of 1796 and now have to endure four years of Federalist president ‘His Rotundity' John Adams.

‘Before we know it, there'll be a hereditary aristocracy, just you watch, eh?' says Robert. ‘And they'll restore the monarchy to boot!'

As usual Tom is keen to hand out his pamphlets himself. That way he can read bits out to people and help bring reason to those who cannot read themselves. He walks the muddy, unpaved streets all day, encountering carters and market traders, fishermen and medical students, carpenters, masons, plasterers. Shaking hands, breathing the air of the unrepresented. Returns greatly excited, cannot stop talking throughout supper, relating stories of singular lives.

‘You've no need to do this,' Robert says. ‘Peddlers will take your pamphlets out of the city along with the chapbooks and almanacs, catechisms and primers.'

‘Yes, but
in
the city, Robert, people must hear, must know.'

‘Och, you're such an innocent, Tom. Do you think they really listen, all those grimy men with their adzes and hammers, eh?'

‘Of course they do!'

‘Don't get too close, will you? We don't want the yellow disease in Zane Street.'

Sarah has persuaded Robert to reduce the subject of her book and rename it merely
Guide to Coffee Houses of London
. It has come out sooner and sold fewer copies, but, the work complete, she is able to spend time in the shop. She shelves new books, gathers together the publications Robert will swap with other publishers. Occasionally stands still in quiet dampness to recall the loud smells and smoke of Battle's, enjoy astonished relief that she really has left all that behind.

Her education was adequate but barely matched the ambition that hatched in her as a girl. It began with Ben Newton tutoring her in her letters, then telling her about the world outside Battle's, outside England. James Wintrige, for all the blankness of her marriage to him, spilled dried twigs that, against his intentions, caught fire. Only Tom Cranch recognised the seriousness hidden by pink cheeks and womanly charms, the only attributes Wintrige and the coffee house customers ever noticed. He saw the look in her eyes as she observed, doubted, commented to herself. Saw intelligent scepticism, born of amusement and grief.

The shop is well stocked with books, pamphlets, newspapers and magazines. Robert keeps all the newest writing, however extreme by his standards, for there are buyers he doesn't want to lose. Tom shows Sarah works that would never have come her way trapped in Battle's: the new volume of Blake whose ‘Echoing Green' he copied out for her in London. His favourite Milton. Sarah pays one dollar for the latest reprinting of Mary Wollstonecraft's
Vindication of the Rights of Woman
and takes it back to Zane Street, a piece of unexpected treasure.

Education is the key to better women's lives, she reads. Remembers that it was her mother who'd wanted her to go to school, while Sam saw no point in it. For him it was enough that she could count. Now she has time to read and read. Not that her life has ever resembled those women Wollstonecraft decries, pursuing beauty and the flattering worship of men, shopping, reading frivolous novels. But nor does she ever want to be without Tom.

‘Mary Wollstonecraft says that Milton's Adam worships God, but Eve worships Adam,' she says to Tom.

‘Oh, she's right. Milton conforms to his time in that. But his Adam and Eve have a wonderful love for one another. I recognise it and cherish it in him. My fairest!

‘Look at these two essays I've found in the
Massachusetts Magazine
,' he says. ‘A writer called Constantia. She wrote them seven years ago, before Mary Wollstonecraft. I asked Robert who she was and he told me not to waste my time with women's words.'

‘Robert likes women to be quietly occupied. Sometimes he stares with those ice-blue eyes as if he'd silence me for good.'

‘I think he's about to ask you to write a book on a domestic matter. You'd better be prepared, my love.'

‘Why does he never speak of his wife?'

‘I suppose because she's dead he can't bear to. If you were to die I'm not sure how I'd live.'

‘Ah, Tom. But Robert is not a sad man.'

‘True. Or he's decided not to reveal his sadness to others.'

‘Mmm.'

‘I admire how firmly he holds his views, yet at times it's stiffness, pig-headedness. I'd like to shake him out of it. But I'm not tall enough! He might whack me with his paddle hands, stamp me into a pancake!

‘You'll like Constantia, Sarah. She thinks Adam more to blame than Eve; says that Eve, after all, sought knowledge in good faith, sought to improve her mind. It's a nice point.'

*

‘Sarah, what do you think to speaking at the Indian Queen?' Tom asks her. ‘They need to hear the voice of an intelligent woman.'

‘It's hard being the sole woman there. I'm sure they only tolerate me because of Robert and you.'

‘No doubt. But it will do them good. Presumably they do talk to their wives, though only about the qualities of the new preacher and whom to invite to dinner.'

‘To complete our meeting,' says Daniel Eckfeldt, ‘Mrs Thomas Cranch will address us.'

By now, late in the evening, the men are somnolent with tobacco and rum punch, but they rouse themselves in the room's choke-thick air to listen to the fair Englishwoman with the pleasantly polite demeanour. Not a bluestocking. Surely not fiery.

‘Mr Eckfeldt and Gentlemen, I speak as a woman, perhaps the first to address you in the Indian Queen.'

‘Well said!' someone calls out and is immediately hushed.

‘As you know, I come from the old country where both men and women endure gross repression. Here I am, proud to be in a land freed from its yoke. In the city of brotherly and sisterly love, where all is promise. A city in which recently it has become possible for a girl to attend a Young Ladies Academy and learn mathematics, geography, chemistry and natural philosophy.' She can't remember what comes next. Looks down at her notes.

‘I shall allude to ideas already afloat; I have originated nothing. I don't mean to lecture you; I mean to ask more questions than make assertions.'

The assembly shifts slightly. She is going to bore them after all.

‘Let us hear your questions, Mrs Cranch,' says Eckfeldt.

‘That men have physical superiority to women is obviously true.'

Breasts swell; she almost gives up.

‘Does it follow that because their bodies are stronger than those of women, so are their minds? A lion is stronger than a man. Is his mind superior to that of a man?

‘Of course there are differences between people. Within the sexes, one man may be more quick-witted than another, one woman more quick-witted than her sister. But why should all men be more quick-witted than all women?'

Someone rises to his feet and waves but Eckfeldt holds up his hand.

‘We shall hear Mrs Cranch. We shall not interrupt.'

‘For the moment then, I should like you to concede that God made differences in mental strength between individuals, not between one sex and the other. That being so, we must ask: if women have reason, imagination and judgment as men do, how will they employ these mental faculties?'

‘It is an intriguing question,' Eckfeldt says in his heavy way, breaking his own injunction. Sarah pauses, uncertain whether he will continue. She wants to complete what she's dared begin.

‘Can it be sufficient for a woman to exercise these faculties on the needle and the making of pies?' She hears her inner voice ask her who then will sew and cook? She hastens on. ‘Can it be sufficient that women occupy their days in efforts to retain and enhance their physical attributes for the pleasure of men?'

Chairs scrape. Men puff on their cigars. Chaw. Yawn. One man, wide awake, stares at her intently. She sees, suddenly, William Leopard.

‘If, as I imply, education must be provided for the better use of all women's minds, it is reasonable to ask how then they would employ their improved mental faculties. It is nonsense to claim, as some do, that they will become mannish.'

She herself proves her point, they see, having not yet lost her charms.

‘Instead, they will make better mothers, wives who are companions, not idols, and in the world they will make better teachers and why not chemists and natural philosophers?'

Throat-clearing. They look out of the corners of their eyes.

‘I finish with this question for you, you who believe in democracy. If you do concede that God made all people equal in their ability to use reason, imagination and judgment, though he also made differences in the strength of these, surely you will grant liberty and rights to all people, to women as well as men, whether they be married, unmarried or widowed?'

The audience applauds politely. Puffs and coughs. There's loud clapping from Tom and one or two others.

‘You are giving us much about which to think, Mrs Cranch,' Daniel Eckfeldt says kindly. ‘Of course, often we are talking about equality and liberty. Not often are we talking about women. The meeting is ended, gentlemen.'

‘Your rational, equal women, Sarah, what will they do with their freedom, apart from becoming chemists? Will they go to war?' Robert asks her when the three of them eat supper later. ‘And who will stew our meat? You'll not want to eat food cooked by Tom and me, eh?'

Sarah is flushed. She'd been terribly nervous, had almost abandoned the project. She'd written out what to say over and over, but Tom would not look at it.

‘Speak from the heart, my dearest. You have no need of my comments.'

That she'd conveyed her thoughts without stumbling, thoughts that engross her now as they never had before, seems an immense achievement.

Martha is not present again, is visiting her sisters, something she does frequently and often with a sense of inexplicable urgency.

‘Barbed questions,' says Tom, protective.

‘I doubt women would go to war. As I said, they will work. Make better wives and mothers. Of course some will cook.'

‘Desert their marriages if they so wish?' Robert persists.

‘Men should not be freer to desert their marriages than women, Robert.' Has he discovered, at last, that she deserted hers? She lives with that dread like a deep, embedded splinter. ‘If there were a law of divorce, based on equality, no one would desert a marriage.'

‘Hmm. And children? Your free women will have children here, there and everywhere?'

She reddens. Robert can't know that her great wish is to bear Tom's child, that twice already since their arrival she has miscarried at an early stage. Only she and Tom know, for there'd been no obvious outer sign of pregnancy.

‘Few women would want that. They would be even less likely to want it if they were treated equally in marriage.'

Robert grunts. ‘Och, you've not been married long enough yet. You two still have the dazed look of a much younger couple.'

Sarah smiles wanly at Tom. The subject of marriage worries them whenever it occurs, however rarely.

‘From my Quaker upbringing,' Tom says. ‘I believe in the equality of husband and wife.'

‘But now you're an atheist, eh?'

‘Atheism doesn't prevent me from believing in a marriage of equals.'

‘Let's bring about equality for men first, I say. Can't have women straying from their proper place, their natural sphere. Which reminds me. And now you'll think I'm contradicting myself. On the contrary, my project should please us all, eh? Sarah, I should like you to write another book.'

‘I'm honoured that you ask me, Robert. What have you in mind?'

‘Have you heard of Amelia Simmons?'

‘No. Is she a poet?'

‘Hah! No. Women poets! No. Last year she published
American Cookery
and made a great success with it. Specially written for American women. There's an appetite for such books! Let
us
publish one, which we'll call
The New American Cookery
. Ours will be better because you have some education, Sarah. This Amelia Simmons describes herself as an orphan and the first edition was full of mistakes.'

‘What does it matter that she's an orphan? The recipes may be good, all the same. Why should I compete with her? Besides I know nothing of cooking in America.'