Emily Hudson

by Melissa Jones

  I am working very hard at the school on a study of a mother and child; a difficult task with a clothed model and a painted doll for an infant. All the girls giggle. But I progress.

  Do you realize we have now been separated for more than a year?

  I do not want to end this letter—it is so unsatisfying. I feel I am striving and floundering with enemies old and new, and you are further away than ever. I am losing sight of your ambitions, feelings, plans—and of my own, sometimes, I fear. I cannot even picture this Mr. Harper who has taken his place among the saints of your life. And where would you settle in your wedded bliss?!—if I dare make so bold.

  Forgive me for sounding so angry.

  With deep affection—

  Emily

  William was waiting for her outside the Art School and Emily experienced that momentary jolt that occurs when a familiar face appears in an unexpected setting. He had a copy of a periodical under his arm that Emily guessed contained his most recent story.

  “Tell me I have not made a mistake? This is not our day to dine?”

  “At this hour?” he replied. “Indeed not. I thought I might take you to tea.”

  He took her to an establishment on Piccadilly, close to the Burlington Arcade. It was exactly the kind of place he would choose: luxurious, dark as a lair.

  “Shall we sit at the back? I must rest my eyes—it is far too bright today.”

  “But it has been very pleasant, William, has it not?”

  “You are very quick with the correct phrase, these days, my dear.” He looked into her face, uncharacteristically direct. “How is it with you, Cousin?”

  Emily found she could not answer right away. “It goes well. My work absorbs me. Miss Norton is a hard taskmaster.”

  He looked at her sharply. “Not too hard, I hope. I fear I have been ignoring your studies. I have not so much as glanced at your portfolio.”

  “I have been working on the human form. The tenderness between mothers and their children—it all stems from minute observation, not merely of feeling, but of form. I am drawing from life but there is an objectionable amount of clothing to contend with at our sittings.”

  He rubbed his eyes. “That must indeed be hard. And your lodgings? They are comfortable?”

  “Of course.”

  “And does Mrs. Denham make herself agreeable?”

  “I have only seen her rarely, but she has not scolded me yet.”

  “An acquaintance of mine saw you at the theater with the Trelawneys. He said you were beautiful, if quaintly dressed.”

  Emily laughed. “My allowance does not stretch to the latest fashion, Cousin.”

  “Do you require more?”

  “That is not what I said—or meant to say. It is kind of you to ask.”

  “I was surprised you accepted the invitation when I heard that this fellow, Firle, was in the box. I imagine you did not know he would be of the party.” He had come to the object of their encounter at last.

  Emily felt a rare impulse to touch her cousin’s hand, lying upon the tabletop like a thing discarded. Looking directly into his cloudy eyes she said, “I knew he would be. It was he who invited me.”

  William’s lips tightened and an expression of disdain—and something keener, harder for Emily to understand—came into his eyes. “My dear, I do not know what it is you have been allowing yourself to believe, but I expected greater things from you.”

  Her heart beat with a feeling of sickness. But she could not be angry, hesitating uncharacteristically before she could speak. She did not dare tell him about the supper. “You always scold me, William,” she said at last. “But the truth is, so did I.”

  MISS AUGUSTA DEAN

  HOTEL D’ANGLETERRE, ROME

  MAYFAIR, SW

  June 15th, 1862

  My dearest Friend,

  Thank you for your sweet letter. It is true that I was very troubled when I last wrote to you. I remain troubled by the question I put to you, and I must admit to feeling that your claim to know nothing of the sensual life because you are unmarried is a little—how can I put it?—fantastical, or at the least, difficult to understand. I hope you do not take that amiss, for I know you have always been wholly forthcoming with me.

  So perhaps it is simply that we are very different: you are content at present to be admired, and that is enough. If that is the case, I envy you. I own to conducting a battle with myself and I hope you will not laugh or think ill of me when I say I cannot tell you more about it at this moment. Perhaps I should be content with my ignorance, call it innocence and have done with it. But your soothing words were a great comfort and I promise not to forget them.

  With love,

  Emily

  MISS CAROLINE TRELAWNEY

  GROSVENOR SQUARE, SW

  ———, MAYFAIR

  June 15th, 1862

  Dear Miss Trelawney,

  I wonder if you might do me the honor of acting in a delicate personal matter on my behalf. I enclose a letter sent to me by a mutual acquaintance. I opened it ignorant of its sender.

  If you could be so kind as to beg of Mr. Trelawney the favor of returning the letter to its rightful owner, I would be more than grateful.

  I trust that if Mr. Trelawney were to explain that I am naturally unwilling and unable to enter into an improper correspondence with any gentleman that might compromise me in any respect, the matter could be concluded with all speed.

  With grateful appreciation of your discretion in this matter,

  Yours truly,

  Emily Hudson

  [Enclosed: Lord Firle’s letter to Miss Emily]

  MISS EMILY HUDSON

  MAYFAIR, SW

  CARLTON CLUB, SW

  June 17th, 1862

  My dear Cousin,

  I have opened an account for you at the dressmakers———in Albemarle Street. I believe she will attend to matters of dress and appearance satisfactorily and that you will proceed without extravagance, but with an eye to the proper presentation of yourself to the world.

  Until next we meet, I remain,

  Yours etc.,

  William Cornford

  “Your dress is very pretty.” William spoke with a lively return of interest and affection, and Emily was relieved.

  They were walking side by side in the Green Park observing the sheep; he with his stick, she with her portfolio. The day was warm and full of the future.

  “It is for the summer season. Caroline helped me to pick out the correct style,” she said, with some pride.

  “And embellishment. I could grow fond of that bonnet.”

  “Oh really, William.” Emily laughed. “I should have thought you far too serious to become fond of a bonnet.”

  “Then I am glad I can still surprise you,” he said, his face agreeable, if a little embarrassed. “When does your term come to an end?”

  “I forget. July at some time.”

  “I am to take a house by the sea for the summer—I have decided. We shall go there: you and I, the Trelawneys, perhaps one or two other sympathetic souls. Some sort of chaperone. I will write and you will sketch. We shall walk the beach. It will be like that pure Newport time.”

  She turned and smiled in the dancing sunlight. “When all I desired was escape.”

  “Not only that, Cousin—you gloried in each moment, as I recall. And allow yourself to reflect. You desired travel, you have achieved it; you desired the time to explore your talent, you have been given it; you desired not to be forced to marry and that ambition too you have attained.”

  “It is strange how in this English light the wishes and the answers do not appear the same.”

  “They never do, Cousin,” he said. “More and more they never do, I find.” They walked on in silence for a while. Emily noticed that there were lovers ahead of them in the grass. “Look at me and tell me I still occupy that place in your heart where your Newport dreams began.”

  For once he did not avoid her searching glance. “What a str
ange question. You have surprised me again.”

  “You have not answered me.”

  “You will always be in my heart. As my first true teacher and someone in whom I have absolute trust.”

  He smiled at her and made as if to touch her cheek, but when she inclined her head toward him, he allowed his hand to drop.

  MISS AUGUSTA DEAN

  HOTEL D’ANGLETERRE, ROME

  MAYFAIR, SW

  June 30th, 1862

  Darling Augusta,

  Allow me to offer you my very deepest and most sincere congratulations! Mr. Harper has secured his prize, and my sweet friend the promise of her wedded bliss. You say the ceremony may be as early as autumn—I am so happy on your behalf!

  Darling girl, visions of you in white with orange blossom—or perhaps mistletoe—are singing through my soul. If you were to come into France and the wedding was to take place in Paris, perhaps William might accompany me to the ceremony. I would have to wait for the right opportunity to ask, but I can think of nothing I would like more.

  My dearest friend, I hope your beloved endeavors every day to deserve you. And I am so delighted that his love of Europe equals yours, and you will not be forced to return to New England until you are so inclined. After so long away one tends to forget that there would be little joy in setting up housekeeping with the country at war with itself and tearing up the soil.

  You will have so much freedom now, Augusta—you could come to me in London if you so desired, travel and live where you will, see whom you please, read as you like and when—provided he is as indulgent as you say he is.

  But here I am, becoming so caught up in the golden ideal of your union that I am in danger of running away with myself. Do not feel, my sweet friend, that you are in any way obliged to write to me only of happiness. If you have doubts or thoughts—I will not go so far as to call them misgivings—you may find it easier to share them with your old friend—and I promise to cheer you on—encourage you always as far as I am able.

  Love to you always and my respectful good wishes to Mr. Harper.

  Emily xxx

  MISS EMILY HUDSON

  MAYFAIR, SW

  LOWNDES PLACE, SW

  1st July, 1862

  Dear Miss Emily,

  I have received an indication in no uncertain terms from Thomas Trelawney that you would prefer not to correspond with me.

  I must take this opportunity to explain that your making my letter available to the Trelawneys places me in an awkward position for which, as a foreigner and untutored girl, I try not to reproach you.

  Despite this embarrassment—despite myself—I long for us to meet again.

  Firle

  [Letter destroyed unread]

  LORD FIRLE

  LOWNDES PLACE, SW

  MAYFAIR, SW

  July 5th, 1862

  Dear Lord Firle,

  I shall shortly be quitting London for an extended stay at the South Coast, and when I return there will be no resumption of the season and so I do not expect to find you in town.

  I write to say goodbye. In truth I do not know why I write as I have forbidden myself all further correspondence with you, or even a glimpse of your last letter.

  But this afternoon, as I was arriving at Christie’s with my cousin, I was convinced that for a fleeting moment I saw you ahead of me at the top of the first flight of stairs. Your back was turned entirely to me, and by the time I had gained the main landing, with its painful branching choice of direction, you were gone. I could hardly have begun pursuing you—if it was indeed you whom I saw—through the rooms like a mad thing, but the truth is, I wanted to—very much.

  I was beguiled to discover on leaving that there is another street door on that first floor that you could have taken; or you could even have been present all the while within the rooms, concealed from my sight.

  If that is the case I do not think you saw me.

  Emily

  [Letter unsent]

  “Caroline?”

  “Yes, my dear.”

  They were picnicking on the lawn leading to the banks of the Thames at the Trelawneys’ house at Richmond. Emily had never known a picnic quite like it, with china and a silver teapot on its stand. It was a light summer day, a little undecided, with flashes of color that turned the grass emerald when the sun pierced the clouds.

  “I thought it always rained in summer.”

  Caroline smiled. “I am beginning to know you, Emily, and that is not what you were intending to say.”

  “Oh, do look at William peering at us from his window! I am certain he is only pretending to write up there. No one could stay inside and work on a day such as this.” From the house behind them, a shadowy form was visible at a high window.

  “It is pretty, but not as altogether warm as I would like,” said Caroline, untroubled by the prospect of William, shading her eyes in an attempt to see Emily better.

  “The perfect summer day,” said Emily. “Each of us longs for it, but I fear in a lifetime there are very few.”

  “You are very philosophical today.”

  “I am not entirely thoughtless, you know,” she replied lightly, glancing at her friend.

  “That is not what I meant,” said Caroline, patiently. “What were you about to ask me?”

  “I was going to ask your permission to paddle.”

  “What? In that filthy river? Amongst the ducks! I absolutely forbid you to. You will die of the cholera.”

  Emily laughed. “Oh really, Caroline!”

  “I am quite serious. We must take every precaution until they find out the proper cause of the disease.”

  “Indeed. I forget. They discover new things about diseases every day, it seems.” She looked away, toward the water. “But I do not care to pursue the subject.”

  “I could take you to the stream in the little wood. You could paddle there. But it would be very cold.”

  Emily remembered the freezing woodland streams of her schooldays.

  “No, thank you. I am far too contented with my strawberries and my contemplation of the river. I shall paddle when we go to the sea.”

  “I think we should go into the house. I don’t at all like the look of the sky.”

  It was true, the cloud was increasing and it was noticeably cooler. They rose to go into the house, Emily following Caroline reluctantly. As Caroline went to the kitchen to order more tea, Emily started up the stairs to fetch her shawl. Her eyes were not accustomed to the light; she did not immediately make out William standing still on the landing. The door to his study beyond was ajar.

  “You made a delightful picture on the lawn,” he said. “Quite perfect.”

  “Will you come down and join us now?” She felt awkward, the staircase above her shadowy and high.

  “I will be down presently. To renew my study of you.”

  Emily colored, embarrassed. “I hate it when you discuss me as if I were a character.”

  “But you are one of my characters, dear heart. You are my experiment in life—essential for the experiments on the page to progress as they should. But forgive me, I am keeping you from some errand.”

  Emily paused. “I hope you are teasing me, Cousin,” she said at last, irritated and confused, unwilling to pass him. Seeming to sense this he retreated, going back to his study and closing the door, without a reply.

  THIRTEEN

  MISS AUGUSTA DEAN

  HOTEL D’ANGLETERRE, ROME

  MARSH HOUSE

  July, 1862

  My dear Augusta,

  It seems I am on the brink of another adventure—and this one so beautiful I hardly know how to describe it. Marsh House is a long, low-ish structure, red brick in the tradition of a farm or cottage, but built recently enough to encompass the long windows so beloved of the Georgians, and so it is all lit up inside. And the country! I did not know England could contain anything like it—but then I have been so starved of natural landscape in my time in the city that I had begun to forget t
here was any countryside whatever, and how essential it is to the soul.

  We are at Old Romney—which is where two marshes converge—and there is a vast soft flatness around us with the distant downs behind and the sea ahead, just out of sight. Everywhere there are sheep and birdsong and no other sound but the occasional rattle of wheels, no other interruption of the sky but a church spire—in this ancient country it seems they are very devout! I shall indulge my passion for walking as far as I please across the fields—and William promises he shall accompany me because the land is so flat he has no excuse for straining his back.