Girl Reading (17 page)

Indeed, what
would
you want? Your opinions and ideas have become a mystery to me, you who had so many. I look through your notes again and they seem so delicate, dropped leaves. I like the unfinished poems best because it feels as though you have been interrupted momentarily, called away to make a decision about the horses or the baking, will be back shortly to shine them up. I did not appreciate your calling enough. I am sorry for all the times I was flippant about it, or worse, tried to make you publish against your will. I am no poet, but I can at least keep them safe for you.

I have such black days. Whole hours are blotted out—what did I do? where did I go? was I alone? My nerves are in shreds.

I fear that before long I shall lose the ability to recall your voice
and your smell and your advice. You have left a Frances-shaped hole. Everything familiar is falling through it.

Angelica wants to know how Coward came to be named, and if he was always mine or originally yours. I tell her I gave him to you as an anniversary present, that you called him Howard, that he constantly trembled, et cetera.

I like her. She is imaginative, thoughtful, like Muriel, like you (are these the qualities I value in women because I do not have them myself?). I like the way she asks about you, probing without being vulgar. But I cannot wait for her to leave.

The housekeeper fumes. She wants someone to read to her, My Lady, while she paints. You said we were to give her whatever she wanted . . . ?

Maria does not see the issue but is certain Mrs. Plett will spell it out; she does enjoy a good gripe.

Miss Kauffman works in the orangery for hours at a time, I do not have time to sit and read to her.

Of course not. You are far too busy.

Mrs. Plett is mollified: What ought to be done?

Make one of the others do it. Or are they unable?

William has no more time to spare than I do. And to have Rachel reading out loud would be cruelty to all concerned.

You will think of something. Is there not one task that could wait? For not even a single day?

Suppose Miss Kauffman requires to be read to tomorrow and the day after? Suppose she wants to be sung to next?

I have heard your singing voice in church; it is adorable. Maybe I will ask you to sing for me while I do my needlework? (Maria is glared at for that.) Did Angelica ask specifically to be read to?

Yes, My Lady.

Then I realize our situation is not ideal, but we must give Angelica whatever she requires. It is a small request, considering what she is doing for me. I am sure you will manage beautifully.

Mrs. Plett presses her mouth into a tight line.

What does she want to hear?

Poetry, My Lady—

Mrs. Plett anticipates the effect of this detail on Maria. She pats her on the wrist . . . and when Maria’s eyes remain unfocused, she lifts Maria’s chin, encouraging her to stand the way a countess does. Maria will take the matter seriously now.

Yes, yes. I will look into it. Thank you, Mrs. Plett.

So Maria must go to the library. She balances on the step, stretches to her full height to reach the shelves, turns books over, sorts them into piles, and replaces them. New books and old books, books she has never seen before. Flicks and fans through pages. What would Angelica want to hear? What is Maria prepared to read?

Frances’s favorite piece of furniture was a raspberry-red fainting couch. Maria had it moved into the library so Frances could be comfortable there. And she loved the door that looked like a bookcase, found it humorous and decadent. All the poetry books Frances either bought herself or claimed as her own by virtue of her love for them.

You did not care for shoes and hairstyles and fashion. You said that your mind required decoration.

The memory tugs at Maria’s heart. She selects some volumes haphazardly (this and that, and this Maria recognizes and takes, and that she does not and rejects), feels as though she is invading her lover’s privacy, carries them in her arms like babies.

Angelica does not stop painting or even look up when Maria enters the orangery but says, I think I annoyed Mrs. Plett earlier, and she was exactly as fierce as I feared.

Not at all. She likes you, and I have brought you the poets.

Angelica sighs with satisfaction: Whom did you bring?

Alexander Pope,
The Rape of the Lock.
Milton,
Paradise Lost. Paradise Regained.
Shakespeare’s sonnets.
The Iliad
and
The Odyssey.

Do you have anything modern? Anything by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock?

Yes, but my German is so poor you might wish it was something else. I have a poetess called Phillis Wheatley:
Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.
She is fairly new.

I have not heard of her.

She is an African.

Do you mean she is a slave?

Yes. In America.

Angelica pauses, brush in midair: A woman and an African and a slave and a poet? And you have her book right there in your hand?

Yes. There is a picture of her on the frontispiece.

Let me see it.

And Maria shows Angelica the etching titled
Phillis Wheatley, Negro Servant to Mr. John Wheatley, of Boston.

How did you come by such a book?

Frances acquired it. Poetry was a particular interest of hers.

Angelica lowers her voice: Did Frances ever write any poems herself?

Maria answers with a sting in hers: Occasionally.

The painter suppresses the urge to ask more, senses she must choose the proper moment. Instead, she says, And is Miss Wheatley very good?

I have not read her before.

Well, we must find out, mustn’t we?

Angelica, would you not prefer to have a respite from your work?

Hearing Miss Wheatley’s poems will be respite enough.

And Angelica says nothing else, resumes painting, lets the silence run on until Maria settles on the chaise longue and begins.

She starts with a poem about virtue . . . then one to the king. Poems about recollection, imagination, humanity, and a composition, “To a Lady on her remarkable Preservation in an Hurricane in North-Carolina.” Several are written following the deaths of children or loved ones, and after the awkward experience of reading one out she eschews these. But the poet has reinterpreted Niobe, from Ovid’s
Metamorphoses.
And it says here, “from a view of the painting of Mr. Richard Wilson,” which sparks Angelica’s interest.

Familiar now with the poet’s lyric style and meter, Maria comments: It seems Miss Wheatley is partial to artists; this one is “To S.M., a young African Painter, on seeing his Works” . . .

Here are two short poems like siblings, “An Hymn to the Morning,” and “An Hymn to the Evening” . . .

When Maria has read these, she realizes Angelica is no longer painting but sitting at rest at her easel, listening.

Maria, reread me the last part of “Evening”? From “placid slumbers.”

Let placid slumbers sooth each weary mind,

At morn to wake more heav’nly, more refin’d,

So shall the labours of the day begin

More pure, more guarded from the snares of sin.

Night’s leaden sceptre seals my drowsy eyes,

Then cease, my song, till fair Aurora rise.

The artist sighs: Then you could read “Morning,” “Evening,” “Morning,” “Evening,” an infinite number of times in a cycle, inhaling and exhaling. Do you like her, Maria?

She is edifying. Do you?

I was just thinking of my glib assertion that one cannot be both an artistic and a political being.

You have fought some battles, no doubt. It is late, we should have some dinner.

Maria tidies the books, leaves them in the orangery for when Angelica wants them next.

Angelica slots her brushes into a pot, straightens her materials, stretches, and then goes to her friend.

I meant to say it sooner, my condolences for your terrible loss.

Maria’s grief grips her anew, sore and penetrating, yet she finds she is able to reply, Thank you; that is very kind.

You were half right about my debts, Angelica. When my husband intervenes in my affairs, he does so using money that was mine in the first place. He took it. My money, to pay off my debts—and yet I am supposed to be obliged to him? In a way . . . in a way I am, actually. He could set conditions or make demands, make me beg for his help. He does not. If he gets angry, he does not show it. When I see what other people have for husbands, I conclude he is not a bad sort entirely. Oh, he has plenty of faults, and I can happily enumerate them: he is a dullard and a glutton and sanctimonious, and he looks like a pig walking on its hind legs. But he is not cruel, and I have plenty of faults of my own. We have reached an understanding. He has his mistress, I am sure you know, but perhaps you did not know that he has had the same mistress since before we were married, installed with their children at Carsington. Her name is Dorothy, and she must be fifteen or twenty years older than I am and is apparently very fat. Then again, so is my husband. She lives in my place, sleeps in my bed, squanders my money on her chubby children. Copulating must be difficult, though at their age perhaps it is no longer an issue. My husband is going to die one day,
and I know how she dreads that because my eldest son will inherit and the cuckoo will be out of the nest. I have two sons, Georgie and Augustus, the heir and the spare, and I thank God for them every day not only because I love them but also because, after three years of a dire marriage, they bought me my freedom. At least, a degree of freedom. My husband gave me this house, the least valued of the family’s estates, and an allowance. Said they were mine to do with as I wished. Plenty of women would exchange their lot for mine, I know it. I used to be enraptured with the ton—the parties, the operas, the intrigue, the gambling. Cards can undo a person; faro was the ruin of me. But even when we are in decline, we deal another hand and dress like parrots and drink like fishes because we know no better, because society is disparaging of the alternatives, because it is reinforced that if you do not do this or have this or behave in this way, you are deemed inferior.

What are the alternatives, Maria?

Finding harmony in one’s domestic life. Investigating the inner world. Sharing it with someone who makes a restrained existence feel like a mountain range of possibilities. Frances was never seduced by the perfume and the lace. Oh, she could blend in, could even make herself the center of attention—she had the wit and the manners for it. But she found it unsatisfactory, and dare I say a hardship. No matter how grand the occasion and how fashionable the company, she said, given the choice, she would prefer an evening at home with me. She would go only because I wanted to. Oh, we had such sport for a few years! We were invited simply everywhere. Our entrance was always anticipated. People were curious to see if we would arrive dressed identically, if one or both of us would be in the garb of a gentleman, whether we would bring a monkey with us and pretend it was our child, or a goat and pretend it was our lawyer. We spent hours devising and preparing our novelties. She was my comic heroine, my Viola, my Portia, my Rosalind. For
a while we had them eating out of our hands. But a beast, if it is wild, if it is savage, will regress to its nature however tame it seems. You know what happened.

I have heard reports, but I was not there. And you do not have to repeat it for my sake.

Then I will tell you for mine. It was February, the coldest and blackest of nights, no moon, and the London fog thicker than I have known it. These were contributory, as if the scoundrel had arranged them. The cold meant that my coachman did not wait the whole night with the carriage; the dark meant that the deed went undiscovered until lights had been brought out and there was a crowd to behold his handiwork. We were in town for one of Lady Thetford’s card parties, a genial and modest gathering by her standards. A number of us kept playing until the marquis entreated us to leave—we teased him for being an old man with no stamina. We assembled in the vestibule to wait for the carriages. Mine pulled up, the servants shone their lamps upon it—and Frances saw the offense before I did and bade me avert my eyes. I pushed her aside, I had to see for myself what was provoking such horrified gasps among our group, and attracting more eager witnesses from within the house to stare in fascination and amusement and disgust. I was merry, quite inebriated, until I laid eyes on the message left for us.

I am afraid to hear it.

Along the side in white paint was the word
TRIBADES
.

Angelica catches her breath, then mutters, An enemy?

I suspected one of my creditors. In a single stroke we became pariahs. We were shunned.

You and Frances were the victims of a crime!

You do not know these people as I do. It gave them a reason to turn on us. It gave legitimacy to the disgusting and salacious thoughts they had kept hidden. We were lepers, we were the most obscene kind of joke. They relished in our downfall.
My
downfall.
Apparently, in England’s brothels it became a fashion for a while to make two women perform
The Countess and Her Companion.
Even my husband, aware some scandal had occurred, was obliged to visit me. He said,
Maria, can you please explain why I am receiving notes from anonymous well-wishers telling me Sappho is in my bedchamber?
(Maria manages to laugh.) Remarkably, he did not get angry. I gave him my theory, that I believed it was to do with money, and he said,
With you, my wife, it is always to do with money.
He was thoroughly decent about it, settled my accounts, and advised for the sake of appearances and for my well-being to give up Frances or to avoid society—one or the other. Interestingly, he refrained from explicitly forbidding me anything. And then he went away again. That was that. My porky, useless husband. Frances offered to leave if it would set me free . . . or to stay and live in disgrace. Whatever would bring me happiness, she was prepared to give.