by Alix Nathan
‘If, as I imply, education must be provided for the better use of all women’s minds, it is reasonable to ask how then they would employ their improved mental faculties. It is nonsense to claim, as some do, that they will become mannish.’
She herself proves her point, they see, having not yet lost her charms.
‘Instead, they will make better mothers, wives who are companions, not idols, and in the world they will make better teachers and why not chemists and natural philosophers?’
Throat-clearing. They look out of the corners of their eyes.
‘I finish with this question for you, you who believe in democracy. If you do concede that God made all people equal in their ability to use reason, imagination and judgment, though he also made differences in the strength of these, surely you will grant liberty and rights to all people, to women as well as men, whether they be married, unmarried or widowed?’
The audience applauds politely. Puffs and coughs. There’s loud clapping from Tom and one or two others.
‘You are giving us much about which to think, Mrs Cranch,’ Daniel Eckfeldt says kindly. ‘Of course, often we are talking about equality and liberty. Not often are we talking about women. The meeting is ended, gentlemen.’
‘Your rational, equal women, Sarah, what will they do with their freedom, apart from becoming chemists? Will they go to war?’ Robert asks her when the three of them eat supper later. ‘And who will stew our meat? You’ll not want to eat food cooked by Tom and me, eh?’
Sarah is flushed. She’d been terribly nervous, had almost abandoned the project. She’d written out what to say over and over, but Tom would not look at it.
‘Speak from the heart, my dearest. You have no need of my comments.’
That she’d conveyed her thoughts without stumbling, thoughts that engross her now as they never had before, seems an immense achievement.
Martha is not present again, is visiting her sisters, something she does frequently and often with a sense of inexplicable urgency.
‘Barbed questions,’ says Tom, protective.
‘I doubt women would go to war. As I said, they will work. Make better wives and mothers. Of course some will cook.’
‘Desert their marriages if they so wish?’ Robert persists.
‘Men should not be freer to desert their marriages than women, Robert.’ Has he discovered, at last, that she deserted hers? She lives with that dread like a deep, embedded splinter. ‘If there were a law of divorce, based on equality, no one would desert a marriage.’
‘Hmm. And children? Your free women will have children here, there and everywhere?’
She reddens. Robert can’t know that her great wish is to bear Tom’s child, that twice already since their arrival she has miscarried at an early stage. Only she and Tom know, for there’d been no obvious outer sign of pregnancy.
‘Few women would want that. They would be even less likely to want it if they were treated equally in marriage.’
Robert grunts. ‘Och, you’ve not been married long enough yet. You two still have the dazed look of a much younger couple.’
Sarah smiles wanly at Tom. The subject of marriage worries them whenever it occurs, however rarely.
‘From my Quaker upbringing,’ Tom says. ‘I believe in the equality of husband and wife.’
‘But now you’re an atheist, eh?’
‘Atheism doesn’t prevent me from believing in a marriage of equals.’
‘Let’s bring about equality for men first, I say. Can’t have women straying from their proper place, their natural sphere. Which reminds me. And now you’ll think I’m contradicting myself. On the contrary, my project should please us all, eh? Sarah, I should like you to write another book.’
‘I’m honoured that you ask me, Robert. What have you in mind?’
‘Have you heard of Amelia Simmons?’
‘No. Is she a poet?’
‘Hah! No. Women poets! No. Last year she published American Cookery and made a great success with it. Specially written for American women. There’s an appetite for such books! Let us publish one, which we’ll call The New American Cookery. Ours will be better because you have some education, Sarah. This Amelia Simmons describes herself as an orphan and the first edition was full of mistakes.’
‘What does it matter that she’s an orphan? The recipes may be good, all the same. Why should I compete with her? Besides I know nothing of cooking in America.’
‘Och! No need to be fiery! I have a copy for you. Please look it over: you’ll soon see how to improve on it. And talk to Martha. Between the two of you you’ll cook up an excellent book. And make us all a lot of money, eh?’
*
Tom says: ‘I watched your face, dearest Sarah. I’m learning to fathom. You hid your thoughts well, but I read them all the same. You really don’t want to write this book, do you?
‘It’s true, Robert is a milk-sop republican. No revolutionary. He’s not even a fully ripe democrat. Disappointing, isn’t it? But without him we would have had a hard beginning and we’re still dependent upon him.’
‘He wants to silence me with his New American Cookery.’
‘You may be right.’
‘What he says about women, the way he speaks of marriage tells me he was not happy in his own, you know.’
‘Eventually we’ll find out. But let’s have our own plan: let’s write a pamphlet together about the education of women.’
‘I should love to do that! And written by a man as well as a woman, readers will take it more seriously.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid that’s so. And it’ll make us little money. Isn’t it time for another demand from that damned man? We’ve paid three lots, but it’s been a while since the last.’
They decide Sarah will placate Robert by reading his book and talking to Martha and then they’ll suggest something else. A book of essays. Rights and Virtues in the New World by Thomas and Sarah Cranch, perhaps.
‘Martha,’ Sarah calls, running down to the basement where Robert has his primitive kitchen, with its earth floor, washtub, small open range, hanging pots and kettles. In the middle is a large table and surprisingly, along the wall near the range, a sofa, somewhat stained.
‘Robert wants us to write a book, you and me! About cooking.’ Martha stares at her for a moment, then bursts into loud laughter. Sarah joins in.
‘Mr Wilson, he full o’ funny idea!’ Martha says eventually.
‘To tell the truth, I’m not keen to write this book, though I’d like to know your recipes.’
‘Mrs Cranch, Sarah, it cannot be. I don’t know to write.’
‘Oh, that wouldn’t matter. I’d do the writing, you and I together would decide what to put in it and you’d provide all the recipes. I’m sure that’s his idea.’
‘Do he think I have all day? To write a book? When I cook his dinner?’
‘Quite right. We both have other things to do. Still, I said I’d talk to you. And I told him I’d look at a book he wants us to use as a model. Would you have a look at it, too?’ She held out American Cookery, put it on the table.
‘I don’t know to read, Sarah, Mrs Cranch!’
‘Oh.’
‘My sister, she know. Her master learned her. She like to read. She always tellin’ me how she like to read.’
‘Martha, would you take the book to your sister? Ask her to read some of it to you. Then I can tell Robert honestly that we’ve both looked at it and we’ve both decided we don’t want to write his cookery book. Your sister can keep the book if she likes. And I’ll teach you to read. Isn’t that a good idea?’
‘Oh, listen to that! It strike two!’ Martha pulls on a straw bonnet and light shawl. ‘I go to my sister now. Come back later, make supper tonight.’
She rushes off and shortly after, Sarah sees she’s not taken the book and runs out after her. Catches sight of her at the end of the street, begins to run, but it’s too hot. Then suddenly she wants to see where Martha’s family live. She’ll fol
low, not try to catch up, hand over American Cookery when Martha arrives.
She’s never known such heat. Unlike any London summer, it’s a powerful heat that doesn’t vary for months once it’s begun. Masts sprout beyond the brow of Market Street, yet there’s no sensation of sea breeze. The market is small compared to Covent Garden, and as Martha is tall Sarah can keep her in view, though she has to concentrate hard when Martha takes a winding path between stalls, wanting to look, trying not to stop. Buckets of cabbages, tomatoes, onions, squashes like gargoyles, meat dangling, dripping, baskets of bread, a man sawing a sheep’s carcase on a bench. Insects skirr incessantly. Dogs run everywhere, pigs forage noisily among the rotting fruit and abandoned boxes that surge out of gutters.
Martha turns down a side street, another, weaving away from brick buildings. Pavements narrow, stop. Streets lose their cobbles, houses shrink. Bushes clump on scrubland. Sarah spots brown birds she now knows to be American sparrows, flitting among the vegetation, pumping their tails, singing their sweet, trilling song.
Martha opens a gate into a yard of hens scratching drily before a low wooden house. Out of which burst children, barefoot, clad in little for the heat. A boy about ten flings his arms round her waist and she hugs him to her.
Sarah’s position along the street is exposed. She cannot slink away, nor will she, for the embrace has moved her. She has to know.
‘Martha!’
‘Mrs Cranch, Sarah, what you doin’ here?’
‘You left this behind.’ Sarah waves the book.
‘You come all the way, Sarah, Mrs Cranch,’ her arm still hugging the boy to her side. ‘This is Willie. My boy. Shoo children!’ she says to the others. ‘They my brother’s.’
Sarah holds out her hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Willie.’ The boy shakes it, watches her solemnly. ‘Here’s the book, Martha. Now I must go back.’
‘Willie, take it to Mary. My sister in the house,’ she explains to Sarah. ‘Tell her I comin’ directly.’ She walks through the gate with Sarah out into the street.
‘A beautiful boy, Martha.’
Martha beams. ‘He bring me joy. But Sarah, Mrs Cranch, you not tell Mr Wilson you see him. Not tell him you come here. Please. Swear by Almighty God!’
‘Oh Martha I swear. Of course I won’t say anything. You can trust me.’
‘Nobody know about Willie ‘cept Mr Wilson. No white people. He pay me, you see. Nobody know. He very angry if he think you know.’
‘Martha, I promise. Goodbye now.’
He is indeed a beautiful child. Half-caste, his smile like Martha’s, his eyes a piercing blue.
*
It’s July 4th. Robert, Tom and Sarah buy tickets for the celebration at Gray’s Tavern over the Schuylkill.
‘After the processions, there’ll be nothing here but bonfires on street corners, rum-swilling and disorder. I want you to see something better, eh? We have pleasure gardens, too. They’re not all confined to London,’ Robert says.
‘What a patriot you are, Robert!’
‘It won’t be long before you are, Tom. The both of you. Och, I can see it coming.’
They walk over the floating ferry bridge draped with flowers and flags of the thirteen states, towards banks on which great trees rise up and dip down into the river. Watch a scow take across a horse and its rider. Skimming swallows. Stroll through the grounds newly landscaped in the Romantic style. Hear a woodpecker’s rapid drill and melancholy hooting at the edge of the woods.
‘Mourning doves,’ Robert tells them.
From the top of a steep hill they look into a deep shaded valley through which an unseen force pours between rocks. In the distance, partly concealed by trees stands a series of three high-arched Chinese bridges painted with quaint figures. They come across a ‘federal temple’ and a bathing house disguised as an antique hermitage, grottoes, bowers, arbours, a Chinese summer house.
‘Beats Vauxhall,’ Tom says. ‘Perhaps not for originality, but the grounds even without the artifice are infinitely more lovely than any land along the Thames in the city.’
They take lunch. One half of the tavern is a large greenhouse grand with trees and plants, their flowers unlit lamps. Visitors gaze down from a gallery.
Robert says: ‘I shall go and make the arrangements for our Tammany feast. Tom, it’s the first time a foreigner has addressed the Sons of St Tammany, you know.’
‘Must I wear Indian dress?’
‘Och no, though most of the Order will. White Indians. It’s a strange sight. Maybe you should consider a few feathers.’
‘And my neckerchief?’
‘Tom, the members gather for the purpose of patriotic friendship. They won’t give a damn about your neckerchief. In fact there’s a move to supplant Tammany with Columbus, though don’t say I said so!’
‘I’d love to live among hills and trees,’ Sarah says when Robert has gone. They are sitting at a table in a corner. The tavern is arranged for small and private meetings as well as large and public ones.
‘You might find it hard, dearest Sarah. You can’t ever have encountered silence in Change Alley.’
‘That’s true. And I know this is not real country either. It’s like walking into a painting.’
‘Exactly. The Gray brothers paid an English gardener to design it.’
‘Not the river, though, and those huge trees we saw growing along the banks.’
‘No, you’re right. Tom Paine says that the ordered beauty of the natural world confirms the existence of God.’
‘Mmm. But what about earthquakes? Natural disorder? I thought you were an atheist, Tom?’
‘Sometimes I think I agree with the deists, that God is a first cause, nothing more. We admire his works, but he cares for us as little as a captain cares for the mice on his ship.’
‘That’s wise.’
Listening, talking to Tom like this. It’s what she’s always wanted all her life, she realises in sudden delight.
Tom says: ‘Tell Robert you’re a deist next time he reprimands you for not attending church!’
‘I’d rather say nothing to him.’
‘No. I can understand that. You know, I remember a girl I met who ran away from her poor, wretched life in Norfolk. She made it clear that rural life is hard, not beautiful.’
‘How did you meet her? When was it?’
‘Oh it was years ago. I found her in the street.’
‘Found her! Was she pretty? Did you want to marry her?’
‘She was remarkably pretty. But certainly not! You are the only woman I’ve ever wanted to marry.’
‘She told you all about herself?’
‘I wanted to know why she was begging so I questioned her. She was barely articulate. Came from a huge family that scratched the land. The father beat them, all of them: mother, boys, girls. I took her back to my rooms, gave her food, introduced her to someone who needed a scullery maid. Of course she offered herself to me, but I couldn’t. How could I?’
‘What happened to her? Did you find out?’
‘She worked for the man I knew and later died in childbirth. Her story is common. Her picture of life in the country, halting, fragmentary though it was, showed me it’s not to be wished for.’
‘I know little about your life, Tom. We’ve talked so much that I think I know you. Yet perhaps I don’t at all.’ She feels a sudden terror. Intimation of aloneness.
‘No, no! You know everything about me! What is there to say about my past? Nothing. Of course there were a few women to whom I took a passing fancy. Or they to me. I picked flowers which withered. Nothing more.’
‘How can you have been so heartless?’
‘It wasn’t heartless at all, for there was no love, no heart involved. I paid when it was a transaction. I fathered no children, never made false promises.’
‘If only I’d known you back then!’
‘Yes! But I was skulking in Soho, grimy with printing ink and you were getting ever redder in Change Alley.’
/>
He lays both his hands on hers. ‘This is the place for us, Sarah. Remember how you once said you couldn’t breathe in Battle’s? Here, in America, the air is good: we have the freedom to love, to grow. Our life is here, in this new land. Now and in the future. And listen, my dearest. There’s a painter in Philadelphia called Birch. In fact he’s English, arrived not long before we did, but he’s already making a name for himself. A portrait painter and miniaturist. I want him to paint a miniature of you to keep in my pocket always.’
Robert rejoins them and they move with the crowd to the federal temple, on the steps of which thirteen girls and youths dressed as shepherdesses and shepherds sing an ode to Liberty. A band strikes up from within and as dusk falls, fireworks explode, illuminating the waterfall and river. Then comes supper: the three take plates of poached salmon and egg sauce to a stone bench and table within sight of the Schuylkill. All about, people toast the day of deliverance.
*
In September Sarah is expecting again. She and Tom, in their increasing closeness, begin to write the pamphlet on women’s education, but Sarah feels tired, her concentration thins and while Tom works on other pamphlets (there are only two more years to go till the election, till the new century indeed), she looks through American Cookery, searching for clues about Amelia Simmons, a woman with neither education nor position who nevertheless published a book. A woman who finds it necessary in the second edition, which followed fast upon the first, to apologise for ‘egregious blunders’ and ‘very erroneous’ recipes in the first, to blame her ‘transcriber’, to remind her readers of the disadvantages of being an orphan. In London, she thinks, the book would never have been published. Here, a woman can dare and succeed.
When Martha returns the book to her, Sarah begins teaching her to read, but it’s hard to find a regular time. This is understandable. When not working for Robert’s household, Martha wants to be with Willie. Besides, there’s rivalry with her sister and Martha refuses even to try to be like her. Mary can read but Mary has no children and is very religious, spends a lot of time at the Rev. Allen’s Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. That’s how it is. Sarah is disappointed. Friendship with Martha is a new experience. Here is affection quite different from the love of a man, a fondness she’s not known with her own mother, let alone any other woman.
