Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution (37 page)

One Englishman, however, has just immigrated here because of the tyranny of the British government. I would have liked, my darling, for you to have met last night the writer Tom Paine. I thought,
Annette would like this fellow; she could see that I am not the only
Francophile in England. But Brissot said to me that it may not be
safe for Monsieur Paine to stay here, either. He is a hero today, he
said, but—and he shrugged.

In any case, I am almost penniless and cannot afford to stay any
longer. It wrenches my heart to leave at this, of all times! I gave you
my word, and now I must be leaving on the morrow. Forgive me. I
will keep to our original plan: somehow to procure support from my
uncle—a fierce endeavor sprung from Necessity but calling upon Sacrifice to carry it out—, publish a book of poems—I am almost
finished with the long one which I have shared with you throughout
my sojourn—and, thereby, as soon as is humanly possible, gain the
means by which I may either return to thee or a situation which will
allow me to send for thee.

The longings of absence are intolerable, but they are mitigated
when I think toward the bliss of our reunion. By then I will have
so many things to say to you, from each hour of each day, that the
burden of those thousands of words in my memory will quite over-whelm my mind and I will have nothing at all to say, only embraces
to give you. And so you see, sweet love, how dearly I should wish
to be alone with you again, and that, forsooth, you may have the
pleasure of being right after all: revolutions, it turns out, no longer
hold the position of my highest esteem in life because they do not
partake of the higher and more lasting values: they come and go;
but love remains. Revolutions can call us to Duty, but never to love,
and that, Darling, will always be their failure. I leave in sorrow, but
dream of seeing my Beloved again in joy, when the light from the
eyes of our child will exceed and extinguish any darkness we will
have known from our separation. Then, let us not be parted again!

Adieu most tenderly thy dearest Friend, William.

So that look I had of him in Vendôme, beside the carriage, standing alone in the middle of the square, would be the last look I would have for a long time.

My labor started late that afternoon. The letter was on the bedside table, and Claudette read it to me from time to time when I was in a fit state to listen. There were certain passages that I liked hearing again and again. The baby was born the next morning, on the fifteenth of December, 1792. With the Dubourgs present as godparents, she was baptized Anne Caroline Wordsworth, though the curate couldn’t understand the strange foreign name and wrote it
Woodswodsth
. I didn’t catch this mistake until I read the birth certificate later, and then I couldn’t do anything about it.

My Dearest Friend,

Are you well, and is our child in your arms?

My arrival in my native land was not a cause for rejoicing. I stood on the boat and gazed back to France. Everything I loved I was
leaving. The coastline would not show itself for the driving mist.

I am on to London now, to speak with my stern uncle, who will not, I know, approve of you or of me, but I must move him to compassion. I have made it through the dangers of the Committee of Surveillance—my uncle cannot be as formidable.

I pray that I leave thee and our child in health.

I remain yours in exile, William.

I wanted to write to him immediately but had no address. William had posted the note as soon as he had landed in England.

All the news in the papers at that time was of the King’s trial.

People read, or had read to them, every detail reported of a trial the likes Europe had never seen. William’s friends, the Girondins, at the end had voted against the verdict of death, but the rest of the Assembly had disagreed with them. The King’s lawyer, the great Malesherbes, went without sleep preparing a brilliant last defense, portraying the King as a victim of calumny and circumstance. The King himself had wept when they asserted that he had shed French blood at the Tuileries. I know Papa had thought Louis rather a ninny, but one couldn’t help but feel sorry for a man trying so desperately to keep a vestige of his dignity when he was treated so callously by those around him, sneering accusations at him, calling him Capet instead of Louis, the mob eating ices in the balcony as he stood on trial for his life. His lawyer was not allowed to sit down for fourteen hours and cried when he heard the verdict. I did not read the papers then and only heard from the Dubourgs about Louis’s speech that cold January day on the scaffold, when he, in his new role as martyr, forgave everyone, and they didn’t care because they were so drunk with glee at the prospect of a king’s death right in front of them. His dangling head would solve everything. His head paraded on a pike would make the world a better place.

I preferred to look at my daughter in the light that fell through the gray day onto her face. I had never known anyone as beautiful as she.

I was glad William was safe in England. The world had turned upside down. Who would rule France now? Citizen Robespierre? One of William’s friends? General Dumouriez, who had won that victory in Valmy? No one seemed to care at this moment, for Louis’s lonely head was the prize of the century. I felt for his family, locked in that cold tower now and unable to see even each other. I sang my happier version of the Annachie Gordon song to Caroline, who knew nothing of kings or the fall of kings, and I didn’t let the fire in my grate go out that winter night.

Then I heard from William in London.

My dearest Friend,

We have heard here about the King, an outcome I knew was inevitable. I myself have been on trial, so to speak, before my uncle, and
have not fared much better than your erstwhile king. In short, my guardian is not kindly disposed. It is so humiliating to be judged by
him and to be in his miserly mercy. He does not see fit to give me or
us a penny. My dear sister, who in spite of her disapproval of my
actions, of her own gentle lecture to me, and of her scruples on the
matter, is going to take up my cause and intercede for us. She can
be very persuasive, arguing, as she always does, from a firm moral
stance. This is a very courageous position for her to take, and I am
deeply in her debt. Her name is Dorothy, and I am sure you will
grow to respect and love her also.

Meanwhile, I have also been unsuccessful in publishing my book of poems and am actively engaged upon rewriting their many
imperfections. I have consulted newspapers and feel I may be able
to procure some means of livelihood there, so I may send for thee.

But I would have done far better as a gentleman’s tour guide, with
headquarters at a certain charming town on the Loire, had not the
world and its troubles interfered.

I write this in haste so it can go out with the morning post and you
can receive my London address. I long to hear from you. You and our child, who is perhaps slumbering by your side as you read this, are
never out of my thoughts. Dear Annette, I love thee with a passion
that, were it known, would stun this meager world.

Yours in exile, William.

In spite of William’s vision of us, every time I laid Caroline down, she awoke. I was dying to write to him. I sang her the Annachie Gordon song a hundred times, it seemed. Then I laid her down and hummed softly as I wrote:

Monsieur William Wordsworth

Staple Inn No. 11

London, Angleterre

My dearest Friend,

The cap I started working on when I last saw you is almost finished now. You can place it on your daughter’s head yourself, when
you return. I tell her that her father has put it to his own lips! It will
keep her very warm. When I look at her I see your eyes; when I read
your letters I hear your voice; you are in the room...Good-bye, my
friend...always love your little daughter and your Annette, who
kisses you a thousand times on the mouth, on the eyes...

Good-bye,
I love you for life.

There was more that I wrote, both in this letter and in others, but the word
Angleterre
in the address, it turns out, alerted the Committee of Surveillance, who impounded the letters on the spot. Once one did get through, for William exclaimed how ecstatic he was to hear from me and that the baby and I were well. But mostly I heard of how distraught he was that I wasn’t writing, or that something ill had befallen the baby or me.

I continued to write to William, whether he received my letters or not, and even though, after a few weeks when war was declared between our nations, I received none at all myself. I told him of the pink cap, how Caroline now wore it. I wrote of many other things, but it is sad for me to think of them, even now, as an old woman, for none of those words ever reached him.

I remember sitting with Caroline many, many hours, late, early, a small fire in the grate, her crib set next to my bed, so often I was not sitting, but lying with her by my side, nursing her while I myself was half asleep, hearing dimly the rain outside, then feeling her going back to sleep, her tiny back rising and falling with her breath, and the bedcovers over us both, and when Claudette would come in with the tisane in the morning, she ’d find us both asleep, side by side.

I was fascinated by Caroline’s small but complete body—the miniature ears with whorls like seashells, the palms deeply lined like an ancient soul. I made up songs—what did she care about lyrics? I fancied that she knew my voice from the day she was born and that her eyes turned in my direction when I spoke.

When Caroline was about two months old, I had a letter from my mother that she was sending a nurse to help me out. Now, Claudette and I were quite capable of doing everything, but still, one more pair of hands could not hurt, and I was pleased with the gesture from Maman—it was a long trip on winter roads to Orléans, and she herself had still not come to visit her granddaughter, even though I had written her several times of Caroline’s health and beauty.

When the nurse arrived, I was not impressed. She was tall and thin as a stick, had a stern demeanor, and said I should let Caroline cry instead of picking her up and soothing her. “How else will she learn that in this world you cannot always get whatever you want?”

she said. I told her that was a heartless and impractical notion—the baby was telling me something in the only way she knew how, and it was my job to listen to her. I let the nurse help then only by cleaning and watching Caroline while she slept, so I would be free to leave the room and occasionally even walk, whether about the house or even on the street. It was still cold, but I longed sometimes to be out in the fresh air and to see the liveliness of the world outside our walls.

One clear morning in late February Claudette and I walked down the busy rue de Bourgogne all the way to the quai, and, even with the fewer boats and barges of the winter, after months of being inside it was like a tonic to hear the coarse shouting of the bargemen and the noise of the carts on the cobbles, the smell of the river and the cold sunlight glinting on it, and the men carrying loads on their shoulders for whom we stepped aside to make way. I knew when Caroline’s nap would be most likely over, and we returned to chez Dubourg about that time. I was exhausted but happy—I hadn’t walked that far in a long time.

I went to the room that Caroline and I shared, but she wasn’t there.

I asked one of Madame Dubourg’s servants, and she said the nurse herself had taken Caroline, all bundled up, out for some fresh air.

This seemed incongruous with the nurse’s character; I myself had only taken Caroline out once, in an afternoon of sudden sunlight, and had come back in ten minutes.

But we waited. Ten minutes turned into an hour, and by then I was near panic. I went out with Claudette again, up and down rue de Bourgogne, asking anyone if they had seen a tall woman carrying a baby. No one had seen a thing. I thought when we returned to chez Dubourg, Caroline and the wayward nurse, whom I would now discharge, would be there. But they were not. A maid thought she had seen a carriage briefly pull up to the front of the house about the time the nurse had left with the baby, but she had taken no notice, as she had chores to do.

It was Angelique, with a sad and shocked expression, who approached me down the stairs with a letter dangling from her hand.

“I was in your room, looking for any indication of where Nurse had gone, when I saw this, sticking out from under the pillow in Caroline’s crib. Nurse must have left it there. Oh, Annette, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say.”

With my heart racing and my stomach tight, I stood at the foot of the stairs and read the letter.

Dear Annette,

Do not distress yourself about the safety of your child. Her little
life is secure and well provided for. I knew I would never be able to
convince you by logical argument, so Bernard and I took matters
into our own hands. Forgive us. We are doing what is best for you
and for the family.

You don’t want your reputation forever tarnished in Blois, to which you will want to return, for it is your home, and you will want
to marry well here, eventually, whether you admit it to yourself now
or not. I myself, you see, do not have the confidence you have in your
elusive Englishman—I have seen too much of men in my time and can guess the tenor of itinerant foreigners, especially these days.

Furthermore, a client of Bernard’s, who was recently in Orléans
and has an associate who does business with Monsieur Dubourg, heard from this associate’s valet that an unmarried Vallon girl,
living with the Dubourgs, had a newborn child. This client, just on
that hearsay, has stopped his business with your stepfather, for, as
the client said, it is not good to be seen to have dealings now with the
old upper bourgeoisie if they have not conformed to the moral ways
of the new order. The client, an ardent revolutionary, said Citizen Robespierre himself, who is called the Incorruptible, has even given
speeches in the National Assembly that, revolution or no, if we can’t improve the moral rectitude of our people we will not improve the
nation. Lack of moral rectitude is a serious charge to lay against a
man or his family.