by Nancy Moser
Occy looked at me blankly.
“One day of hard work is worth two of idleness.”
He made a face. “Oh.”
“Cheer up, little brother. When you find your true calling, hard work will be a joy. You are so lucky to be a man.”
“Because I have to work, because I am expected to work?”
“Because you can work. I used to tease Bro because I longed to do scholarly work and was not allowed, and he, who could have embraced it, had no interest.” I shrugged. Such inequities were timeless and would never change.
“But you have attained much, Ba. Your books, your writing . . . you are having the same chances as a man.”
“I am having chances, yes. But I do not put my name on any of my work—Papa forbids it. Not that I yearn for fame, but . . . it saddens me that it reaches the world anonymously.”
“Perhaps as a woman that is best?”
“Perhaps.” I hated that my pride longed to see my name upon a cover. Perhaps this was God’s way of keeping me humble? There was some compensation that I was known in literary circles, if not to the public. “At least our parents never believed the common misconception that girls’ minds were inferior to boys’. I learned Greek with Bro when Mother taught us at home and did better at it than he did. But then . . .” The memory of Bro waving from a carriage as he left me behind to attend school brought old hurts to the surface.
“But then?”
“But then he was sent to school and I was left behind. I, who loved learning, was left behind.”
“And he, who cared little for learning, was given the chance.”
I took a new breath in order to answer. “Yes.”
“But you still learned plenty, Ba.” He pointed to the book by Aeschylus and the shelves of books beyond.
“But I could have learned more. If I’d been a man, and if I’d been well.”
Occy leaned back on the sofa, his arm behind his head. “Do you think they loved each other?”
“Mother and Papa?”
He nodded.
What did I know of love? An invalid spinster who had never been kissed and who would never be kissed. Had my parents loved each other? My mother had been an excellent wife: dutiful, subservient, intensely loyal to my father. And Papa . . . had he been a good husband?
When I thought about the father of my youth, I pictured him smiling, watching our various plays and productions, reading my feeble attempts at writing, crowning me the Poet Laureate of Hope End, even though I was only nine or ten. He supported us in so many ways. Supported Mother?
I also remembered finding him hunched over his desk, his face serious, his brow pulled in concern. Having holdings in Jamaica, half a world away, holdings that had been dependent upon slavery, yet hating the institution and not knowing how else to run our plantations. . . . When slavery had been abolished nine years ago, our setbacks forced the sale of Hope End. But through it all, Papa provided for us to the best of his abilities. After all this, and after Mother’s death, he had drawn us all close, keeping our family tightly knit amid the upheaval and uncertainty.
Too tightly knit?
Knowing the foibles and weaknesses of my siblings and me, I could not consider the gift of more freedom as being a good thing, or wise. Together, we Barretts became strong, each providing some needed aspect of a rightful whole.
“I lost you,” Occy said, waving his hand at me.
Indeed, he had. And I still had to answer his initial question, in spite of the incompleteness of my knowledge. I tried to think of appropriate words to define our parents’ love: respect, appreciation . . . neither of those were quite right. “I believe they did love each other, in the way that the two of them created a family and were united in that purpose.”
“But were they in love with each other?”
I smiled. Although I sat upon the outer border of the possibilities of love, Occy was perched at its beginning. “I . . . I don’t think so. I never witnessed any passion, any yearning, one for the other.” I shook the thought away. “But what do I know of such things? Love is an equation I have not ciphered. Perhaps such a love only exists in novels.”
“I hope it exists,” Occy said.
“Do you have someone in mind?” I teased.
To his credit, he reddened. “No. Not yet. But I will.”
“You will? You know such a thing?”
“I want to know such a thing.”
Such innocence and hope. Had I ever experienced those feelings?
If so, the memory was too dim to relight.
Crow stood at the window and fanned herself against the stifling summer heat. Then she put down her fan and tried—for the umpteenth time—to open my window farther than its frame would allow. Perspiration made stray hairs cling to her face. “A person could expire from lack of air,” she said.
“Papa should be pleased,” I said. “He so enjoys the heat.”
“Not this heat,” Crow said. “Although he pretends it has no effect on him, this afternoon I heard him tell your sister his tea was too hot.”
I laughed. “Not a sigh against the sun, only against the tea? It is great criticism indeed.”
“You take after him,” she said. “Still a throw upon your feet? If propriety permitted, I would rid myself of my petticoats, chemise, and—” She stopped her list before it became more risqué. “I would make myself comfortable, that’s all.”
I was proud to say I took after Papa in this tolerance of heat. It was the cold that plagued us the most. My one concession to Crow’s complaint was to keep my door open, allowing air to move freely from one level of our home to another. In actuality all windows were open, with only the front door closed against the busyness and publicity of the street.
Hearing voices below, she moved to the hall. “Mr. Kenyon and Miss Mitford are here.”
A double blessing. “Go greet them and ask them up. And get tea and biscuits for us, and cream cheese for Flush. I’ve promised it to him all afternoon.”
She shook her head. “You spoil that boy.”
So be it. Whom else did I have to spoil?
Within minutes my room was alive with visitors. Cousin John kissed one cheek and Mary, the other. “Welcome,” I said. “Sit, sit.”
They were just settled in when Crow returned with the cream cheese in a bowl and a shaker of salt. “The tea is coming,” she said, handing me a spoon.
I sprinkled the bowl with salt and began to stir it into the cream cheese that was Flush’s favourite.
“What are you doing?” John asked.
“I am the only one who knows how much salt is just enough.”
“I am not inquiring about the salt, but the cream cheese. For a dog?”
Crow interrupted. “That dog gets whatever he wants. Cream cheese, sugared milk in a purple bowl, macaroons . . .”
“The last, only on holidays,” I said.
Mary rolled her eyes. “I do not get macaroons on holidays.”
I knew I deserved their censure. I spoiled Flush greatly, and knew it stemmed from guilt for taking him away from the green fields he would have had at Mary’s home at Three Mile Cross, and virtually locking him away with me in my dark city room. And so I indulged him shamelessly. Or with a modicum of shame. I had made Flush into quite a dainty fellow. Papa scolded me and often said, “No dog in the world could be of his own accord and instinct so like a woman.”
“He looks like you,” Cousin said.
“I beg your pardon?”
John made a downward motion along either side of his face. “The dog’s long ears framing his face, and your long curls framing yours.”
“And you both have sad, soulful eyes,” Mary said.
Before I could take true offence, or acquiesce to the truth in their statements, Flush anticipated his cream cheese by hurling his front paws onto the bedside table from whence I worked. The pages I had been writing upon, along with a perfume bottle, crashed to the floor. The perfume seeped over the pages, causing th
e ink to run.
“Bad dog!” Crow yelled, scrambling for a towel.
Flush retreated under the sofa and looked so absolutely mournful that I nearly didn’t mind the damage to my work, caring only for the damage to his sensitive nature.
John carefully handed me the pages, along with a handkerchief. “You dab them. I don’t want to be responsible for making them worse and destroying the work of the ages.”
A heady floral fragrance wafted over me and I looked upon the words elongated by the liquid. They looked as if they were crying. . . .
“Perhaps Flush is a good editor,” I said, letting the pages dry by the air. “Perhaps this work is best lost, best never read.”
Crow mopped the last of the floor. “You should not let him off so easily. This is not the first item damaged, the first glass broken. He is not a puppy anymore. He should know better.”
I did not argue but placed the plate of cream cheese under the sofa and shielded his sup from prying eyes by sitting above him and spreading my skirts. I would lure him into my company after he had been properly fed and calmed.
Cousin John and Mary returned to their seats in front of the dormant fireplace. John crossed his legs. “Now. To the question which has brought me here this afternoon. What’s this about Charles Dilke wanting you to write for him?”
So they had heard. News traveled fast in London. “He wishes for me to be a reviewer for The Athenaeum.”
“Review other people’s work?”
Oh dear. I knew it sounded presumptuous. Me, who was fairly new to the literary world, comment on other writers’ work?
Mary answered for me, for she knew of the arrangement. “Our Ba suggested a series of sketches on the Greek poets of the early Christian centuries.”
I added the next to solidify my qualifications. “I have read them all, you know. And am reading them again to bring them fresh to mind.”
“I do not doubt your scholarship, Ba.”
I was not so certain. “I doubt it. I am half afraid it’s conceited of me to let myself be lifted up to this . . . this bad eminence of criticism. After all, who am I?”
“I did not mean to make you doubt yourself,” Cousin said. “As far as your credentials, you are as well-read as any and more analytical than most. If this is what the editor wants, why not you?”
I knew he was being kind, but also sensed a sincerity that helped me accept his compliment.
“So . . . ?” he asked. “You have accepted?”
“I have already turned in one offering. I will say going from being languid and without purpose to writing to the clock and being busy upon busy is quite a change.”
Mary’s toes skimmed the carpet. She was as petite as I and no more ample in girth. Cousin John often teased that we were two tiny dolls, Mary the middle-aged mother and me the daughter. That my curls were dark and Mary’s light brown did not dissuade him from his teasing. To him we were a pair. And perhaps we were, for we were both spinsters. Both highly devoted to our fathers. Both writers.
Mary spoke to John. “I have commended Ba for her project, and yet I worry she is wasting her talent. She is so meticulous of each point and quotation that I fear I do not read her in the reviews, but an interchangeable scholar who offers each fact with scrupulous care.”
Cousin raised an eyebrow. “Overscrupulous perhaps?”
“Perhaps,” Mary said.
I lifted a hand to stop their dialogue. “Pardon me, but I am present—in the room. You should not discuss my flaws so fearlessly.”
“Would you prefer we speak of them behind your back?”
“I prefer you not speak of them at all—or even acknowledge their existence. An ‘interchangeable scholar’? I have no wish to own that title in any aspect of my life.”
John clapped. “Bravo, Ba! There is the feisty girl I love.”
He still thought of me as a child. “Woman, cousin.”
“Authoress,” Mary added. “What new creative piece are you working on, Ba?”
I was glad the discussion had moved away from my shortcomings. It was true that I did not wish to be known as a reviewer but as a poet, the creator of my own work. “Since my last book of poems came out four years ago, I have been compiling work for another compilation. Yet I would like there to be a significant, longer piece as the foundation—perhaps six or seven hundred lines.”
“Since you have the classics freshly planted in your mind, perhaps a classical theme?” John suggested.
“Father wishes for a religious theme.”
“And you?” Mary asked.
“I was thinking of something Napoleonic.”
“Something short and repressive?” John said with a smile.
“Something long and powerful.”
He nodded his approval. “Why do you not begin, then?”
“I have already told Mr. Dilke I would start a survey of English poets next.”
“Ah me,” Mary said.
“I have promised him as much.”
“You should have promised him less,” she said. “Your own work must take precedence.”
“The reviews are my own work now.”
“They are a rehashing of other writers’ work.”
I was hesitant to tell them this next but felt compelled to do so. “In truth, I am currently without a publisher. Moxon—who as you know is the publisher of Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Wordsworth, Browning, and me—has recently deemed me noncommercial. Although he respects my work, he has told my brother, told George, that he can’t afford to publish me.”
“Perhaps he can be persuaded?” Mary said.
I shook my head. When Bro used to act as my intermediary, he hedged his words to me, softening the harshness of rejection. But George—being good and true, honest and kind, but a little over—grave and reasonable—told me exactly what was said. Although I appreciated knowing the truth and the whole truth, sometimes I missed Bro’s protection. “I will put off trying again for a year or so and spend my time improving the quality of my offerings.”
“None of us are beyond improvement,” John said.
“I do have good news, though,” I said. I would wait for them to ask.
“Oh, do tell,” Mary said.
“Cornelius Mathew, an editor in New York City, is interested in my work. He has deigned himself to be my trustee for the further extension of my reputation in America.”
“Bravo!” John said.
Mary shook her head. “Just like Jesus. His hometown spurned Him, and He only gained followers elsewhere.”
I did not feel comfortable with the comparison. “Many people are better known beyond the boundaries of their home ground.” I nodded once for emphasis. “I like Americans. From what I’ve heard, they are kind and courteous.”
Out of the blue, Mary changed the tone of the conversation. “Caroline Norton was just ranked first in a list of the top ten British poetesses.”
My breath stopped. “Who created this list?” I hoped for some obscure publication.
“The Quarterly Review. I believe Hartley Coleridge assembled it.”
John pursed his lips and nodded. “Admirable.”
I waved my hands. “Admirable? She is a machine, churning out four volumes of poetry in this year alone.”
“Poetry that is selling well,” John said. “Or so I’ve heard.”
“She is so young,” Mary said. Then she looked at me. “Two years younger than you, isn’t that right?”
“Are you trying to make me feel bad?” I asked.
Mary extended a quieting hand. “I am trying to make you focus on your own creations.”
I knew she meant well, and I too enjoyed the creative process more than the reviews I was doing for Mr. Dilke. And yet it was still frustrating to hear of the success of Mrs. Norton. She was not a good person.
As if reading my thoughts, John said, “She has had a hard life, Ba. A marriage that was . . .” He leaned close and lowered his voice. “It is said her husband beat her so that she
was forced to leave him. He refuses to allow her a divorce. That is why she writes so prolifically, to earn her own money.”
I had not heard that. All I knew was that a few years previous she had partaken of an adulterous affair with Lord Melbourne, who had been prime minister at the time.
Mary pointed at my face. “I know what you are thinking. But Mrs. Norton was just friends with Lord Melbourne. You must remember the facts correctly, Ba. Her husband tried to blackmail him, demanding fourteen hundred pounds, but Melbourne would not bite. There was no proof though the accusation nearly brought down the government. Her cad of a husband continues to keep her from seeing their three sons.”
My envy faded to compassion. “That is unconscionable. A mother needs to see her children.”
Mary shrugged. “So you see, her commercial success is necessary for her very survival.”
Guilt assaulted me, for though I would have enjoyed monetary success, it was not a necessity for my subsistence. “God does provide. Mrs. Norton obviously needs success far more than I do. I apologize for the sin of envy. And pettiness.”
“You are hereby forgiven,” John said. “Really, Ba, you are allowed such feelings, especially among friends.”
I was glad he had exonerated me. And yet, especially among friends . . . should I not show my best self?
“Do you wish to know who causes me to envy?” John asked.
“Who?” Mary asked.
“Charles Dickens. In only six years he has produced six novels and is now in New York City, giving lectures and attending a ball in which three thousand of the highest society turned out to see him. Three thousand,” he repeated. “At London readings we are lucky to gather a handful.”
“I enjoy his stories,” I said. “Though I find his women characters to be rather passive. I far prefer Frederika Bremer—even more than Jane Austen.”
“Whyever would you say that?” Mary said.
I had never been forced to defend Bremer and so was not sure . . . I felt Flush nudge at my skirt, and pulled the fabric aside to allow him exit from his retreat. He took a seat at my feet, signaling all was forgiven. “I think I like Bremer because Serena, the character in The Neighbours, is so completely self-sacrificing. Her refusal to marry because it would mean leaving the grandparents who had raised her . . . the serenity, the sweetness, the undertone of Christian music in her choice . . . it’s a poignant example of Christian sacrifice.”
