Ulverton (11 page)

I would have you lie between me on the instant, but I must long more. Your expressions of affection were received as mine were – O ill-defined joys, that groan as they are cherished, and strew boughs of blossom as they sting our feet with longing!

I am,

ever yours –

A.C.

I plant this finger upon thy lips, and write my love upon them.

June 20th, ’43.

Dearest William, –

I am joyous our plot passed off without mishap, and our love spun itself happily over the distance, so strewn with traps and spies. I hope you are burning the letters. Leeward conducted himself with propriety – he is told to speak nothing of this task – lest he feel the deck beneath him that returns him to sugar-cane. Hambling told me he flinched at that, as at a whipping – he has welts upon his back, she says, from the smart of a cart-whip (not Aunt Eliza’s, I think). If only all our servants were so, and in no need of wages, that make them so hard on us, and intrusive.

The danger is in the passing of the letter from Mabberley to the boy, but he walks the Pekes, and Mabberley clips a great laurel that utterly conceals him from the house, that is on the way. If you had come before, we had no need of this.

Your poem I have read a hundred times, by night, and by the window at dawn, as I feel the perfumed air of morning upon my cheek. I have been in here near three months – I have wept to be released – my husband is officious on my health, speaks highly of Dr Mackernes, and has not fiddled my buttons. I do feel weak, and nauseous, but ’tis the heat. Nurse Fieldhouse has been severe on the rocker for standing at my door (we are opposite to the nursery) when she oped it. Perhaps my thin, pale countenance persuades them I am to be shut from ills. I flush so easily. I am wan only from your absence. They anger me. I would like to beat them all with my cane – they gave me a cane to walk from bed to canapé – I have only one use for it, if it were to come to that.

The fourth stanza pleased me best. But how does it sound with ‘vernal’ and ‘umbrageous’, favouring ‘sylvan’ & ‘silvery’ – and the chime ‘lawns’ & ‘fawns’ in the stead of ‘hay’ and ‘tea’?

So rears the golden face of this great house

Through th’unnumbered leaves, that trembling start

At your fair hand, when like a vernal breeze

You brush aside their hues, to fleet o’er lawns

Towards umbrageous glades, small cots, and fawns.

‘Tea’ was too thin for the swelling passion in your lines. Forgive my meddling. Do not be upset. It is a woman’s way to stitch up and mend.

We have forty deer now, if you think ‘fawns’ a conceit. Twenty are bucks, that will be stags in three years. At Blenheim, where they have more than a hundred, their antlers were loud and like posts being struck with the echoes, when they fought. It woke me very early, but I saw nothing for the mist. This was last summer, when you were a figure only glimpsed from my carriage, but nearer my thoughts.

I sat on the terrace on my return then, and let my coffee cool – I was so distracted by your scarce-seen face on the way.

Here is more money. I cannot give further without my husband knowing. Our mortgage has been raised to pay for the new improvements – there are to be curves introduced to the lake – ’tis tedious the number of times my Lord has rustled his plans before me – Mr Kent has measured and tutted over the straight lines – ’tis all to be wild – some cottages to be razed where he has marked ‘Wilderness’ very flowery upon the plan, tho’ it shall be naught but birch and bindweed – & brings to mind that tedious Bunyan my childish locks brushed slumberously too many times, at dear Stagley – yet all the better for us to sport within! – and cool glades to spring up, and an hermitage built from stone and turf – we might use it for other than study, quoth I. My husband games too much away – he says money is like powder sugar, it soaks away so quick, but not if the purse is lined with scruples. To pay the improvements and the new damask hangings I have ordered for the house (’tis all to be lined in crimson & green, and new stucco of ivy and wild clymatis and lilies etc., and chimney-pieces in Drawing Room and Library wholly replaced with Italian marble –
inlay
of pink & white roses, tho’ these alone are £400) he is to use the cash that was formerly to pay back the mortgage, and so forth. He tells me he has bonds from his nephew that his nephew’s widow wishes to settle – she requires cash, having a meagre jointure, and wishes to lay out £3,000 in land for her son. Our tenants are in arrears with low prices but all their stock, that we have seized from them, is not sufficient to discharge more than half the rent. We are to purchase an adjoining estate – ’tis a farm by the name of Plumm, we are to pluck it out from the pie, and then have the next valley to our own – ’tis a farm well handled but poor – there is a woman husbands it, a little proud – there is some scandal attached to her birth, but I forget what now. Then our estate will be reckoned more, but still not sufficient, for my husband’s family sank much into the South Sea with the Bubble, and our hold is still perilous, tho’ he don’t tell me that when I was hitched into my bridal apparel by my dear Papa.

But you find such talk tedious, I know. Do not send me books. Tho’ the Watts was small, ’tis trying for Mabberley and the boy to conceal beneath their coats. Have you a date for your return? I cannot bear this talk of ‘soon’. You don’t mention Italy. I hope it is forgotten. ’Tis feverish hot there.

Each blotch is a kiss.

Do not spend on Claret and Sherry, or maids by the belly.

I am,

yr ever loving & longing,

A.C.

July 4th. In confine still.

My only William, –

You say you shall unlock me. Why do you not? I cannot fear but that your being out at elbows – and staying thus in London – means you have lost your position – or you would fleet back on the instant to your Grammar, and your Lady. They say the boy is playing hoops in the garden of the Manor House. There is a murmur that he is to go to Eton this year – that is how Bint reported it to Wall, who let it drop with me last evening. I pine until I am husked of my soul. O this cavernous life, full of deep
woes
in which our unshining flesh lights nothing – a million candles would not shed this gloom from me – this bedroom does stretch a million miles – I am not yet finished with the ploughman – if I were in the land of the Indians I might feel less weary of needles and quills and clocks.

I shuffle my chair from a ruck of the carpet – I know its Persian lions in every claw – I have mapped out its maze until my feet do a jig & kick the wall – my shoe has undone its buckle – I am too fatigued to strap it – I let it fall – I study its silken corpse, till the clock strikes me out my dull transport – I straighten, sag – let my head fall upon my arms – emit a sigh that might tatter the ensign of any other lover – sit up once more – scratch my nose – fiddle the ribband at my neck – pick up my pen – let it hang on air until it fall insensible – a lifeless bird, that doth rest its plumage against the far more living wing of an ivory heron – then a knock at my door – a weary ‘come’ – the maid enters with her smell of the scullery following in a cloud – she does curtsey obligingly – I ignore – she removes my stool under its white cloth – she closes the door soft for she must think me close to slumber – which I am – the clock strikes a quarter, clears its throat, strikes again lest I be in doubt, grates a little – pit-a-pats on – or is that my heart – for I have thought of you! – the long winding road to London betwixt us – the motion of the carriage-wheels – your face at the fore-window – the dust upon your forehead – the passing cots and the stone that says, you are but a handful of miles from your love – but no – he don’t alight at the turning – the horses don’t stop, he don’t signal – he looks backward – a smile in the lips – our glade afar off – this room likewise – ’tis cast, a red ribband from the carriage – that flies up in the dust – tumbles to the verge – it does not scruple – it lies on the common highway – to be trampled upon – mangled by hooves & common boots – or ties a pedlar’s coat – or be obliterated forever – as the clock strikes again, & his carriage takes the slope – scarce touches the ground – post-haste – away – away – to a nothing – a nought – a silence! – she lifts her head – scratches her nose – doth sigh – doth wait for tea – doth pick up her pen – doth dip it – doth write – so –

ARE YOU FALSE?

I shall strike nothing out today, you perceive.

My aunts wonder I have writ them so much.

I have a spy-glass. It is my brother’s, from his school chest left
me
when he went to sea. A boy’s plaything, in brass. I spy through the window. The wood leaps up to me – it is the trick of the glass: I see the garlands woven about the wood – the lark come close – the buttons about the shepherd’s garters – I might gaze into the sun till it strike me blind. Last night ’twas full moon – with you also – I oped the window and the spy-glass caught it – my eye was filled – the light was like a maddened horse rearing over me – too white & wild to gaze upon! So all is brought nearer, but what excellent illusions we must live under, that our intelligence and reason does not expire from lack of fancy, and of hope!

Answer me quick.

A.C.

Here is the amount for the carriage. Berate my fancy.

July 20th, ’43.

Dear William, –

No post from you. Have you gone? Is this forwarded, or must it linger to be read by a scullion? My cousin Edmund has fallen in the Dutch war. A musket-ball shattered his heart. Fortunate young creature.

They have just now took my spy-glass from me. I could not explicate its presence but as a remembrance of my brother. My husband says it must find its use in the box at theatre. He thinks my brother is a pirate, for being salted on the high seas. Each morning this room stinks of my stool: the heat allows of no air. I forget to beautify myself at my table. I have few visitors. My husband is like the armadillo in my book of animals from Dürer: his hair curls into horns – he rubs too much fat in, then too thick powder. I have told him. He is Armadillo to the line. I have scribbled a cocked hat upon its head. It is my husband.

My fancy runs faster than my reason. I have night terrors. I asked the maid to entertain me – she told me of the legend here, of a shepherd who made love with a witch, and she bore a boy-lamb, that he reared as his own son, till it went among the flock by mishap – and the shepherd, he being old and deaf, don’t hear its cries and slew his own son, like Isaac might have done! And the old shepherd haunts the crest still, as apparition, calling out –
where,
where, where? I fancy I hear him at night, tho’ in the morning I think it the owls.

Write me. I cannot be easy till you do.

A.C.

Mabberley came across the lawn when I was spying. He winked at me. I saw him thro’ the spy-glass. I waved at him. One kind soul in a cavern of cruelties.

A heron flapped along the reach of the river, this early morning, spied thro’ my glass. When I returned to my desk, there was not one less – but it had seemed so.

August 16th, 1743.

William, –

I enclose the ribband.

I interpret your silence before your going as all frailty must – with a heavy and vain heart, that my thoughts were ever bent towards you, or that my hopes should dash themselves so repeatedly against such forbidding rock.

Your snuff-box that I gave you, enamelled with a scene of classical love, do not rub it brilliant against the sleeve of the coat that cost you no guineas, I fear, but mine – but cast it into the sea at Naples (I have been studying maps) or let it remain to curse you with my abject spleen.

They harvest beyond my window – I spy them: each row of reapers makes a road into my heart, they flash with grateful weapons, they slice me into ribbands. Our son’s eyes render me nothing but hurt.

I got your address off the Squire, who had it off your cook. I throw caution to the wind. Some melancholy cypress might be fitting burial for our kisses.

Do not communicate with me further. My Armadillo sniffs close – I am in confinement still, till the apples fall and the air is less feverish, they do tell me. I beat against the door in anger last week – I left trails of my nails, the wood of the door was gashed – I would have beat this warm head upon it, save that I gave myself
greater
hurt, & my poor dear Phoebe was dashed in the stead, that her face lies in tiny pieces still upon my mantelshelf, lest I forget my pain. They put it down to distraction from excess moisture – purged me – placed my spirits on the right course – rendered me unfit to leave before the autumn. I suspect – tho’ my maid reports no ill occurrence between Mabberley & the black – that Armadillo suspects in turn, & must have me hid like in the old fable. I can stand it little longer, without recourse to opiates.

There – I have spilt my coffee upon the paper. Let it spread. Discourse is poison. I shall find a herd of goat, dress in muslin, pipe my hymns to innocence on a thymy slope far from care – & your part of Italy.

I have a blister, where I held my finger above the candle-flame, to see what greater pain is cruel love.

The pain of my son’s bringing out – a large-boned baby – was as nothing to his father’s cunning.

I write this at dawn upon the window-seat – I have been here most the night, moonlight upon me – owls – then dawn came with song, from the far woods – alas, too far! – the room full now of fragrant harvest – & seeds borne upon the breeze, out the hedgerows – that steal in my little gap – settle on my hair, that is loose about the shoulders – poor silvery things – tiny angels, free to go whither they will, now they have found but useless soil here – one caresses my hand, yet I scarce feel it – blows & rolls to the paper – ’tis the seed of wild clymatis, that is named bedwine here, it must grow & tangle these words ere long, or I puff it out again – out the window – there! – it gleams – in the dawn light – high upon the breeze – and higher – & further – whither I don’t know, yet it be where I long to follow – ’till it be no more, tho’ I fancy I glimpse it still – against the glade, the sky – afar off – a gleam – hark! – a lark trills – then nothing – but the scratching of my pen – and the sea – no – ’tis the scythes – ’tis the scythe that mows down kings, exempts no meaner mortal things – you know the verse – we read it together – all flesh is grass – and the aged man that is Time mows these fields – we loved verses –