Ahab's Wife

by Sena Jeter Naslund

  I did not stop to think that the judge had not offered to serve as my secretary, but I was new to such neighbors, and it would take me a while to learn their customary limits and habits. I did know that I was glad to have Judge Lord for a neighbor, and I left his portal with some definite intentions, namely, first to visit a seamstress, and also to purchase some fabric, which I myself would sew up. To make something new, instead of mend! My head quite sang with it. Would I buy a new needle? No, my needle was too good a friend, but perhaps a silver thimble. One with an ornate A nestled inside, in the cup of it—for Ahab!

  As I paused to look across the street at my house, a very darksuited Quaker gentleman with a most stern countenance knocked at my door. Captain Bildad, or Captain Peleg. Whoever, he was much too somber for me this morning. I quite gave him the sly slip simply by staying on the judge’s side of the street and walking toward the shops. After all, he didn’t know me. I giggled with glee. Then I decided I would go give Mrs. Macy the news. And to think—I need not mourn Isaac, who, after all, was not dead.

  CHAPTER 85: The Purpose of Art

  COME TO PICK UP your mending? Not married yet?” Again her laundry tub steamed before the fire, but this time it was already full of sheets, and a scum of soap floated on top.

  “No, Mrs. Macy.” I tried to answer her first question.

  “But your young man is up and about. Oh, I can see you’re happy!”

  “No.” (He was not my young man.)

  “What! Not happy?”

  “No—” I struggled to correct the misassumptions of her question.

  “No, again!”

  “No, I mean yes. Yes, I am happy. And married.”

  “And a lovely golden fleece of a man.”

  “No—”

  “No?” She laughed. “You don’t think him lovely after one night.”

  “I only saw him this morning.”

  “And you had no joy last night?”

  “No. I mean yes. But not with Isaac Starbuck. With Captain Ahab!”

  “Captain Ahab! Well, blow me down.” And she sank into the chair by the tub. “And you don’t love the brave young man?”

  “I’m delighted he survived.” I thought how last night I had repined that I had loved him too little as a valued human being.

  “And so ye regret?”

  “My only regret is for Captain Ahab—”

  “That’s my meaning—”

  “That Captain Ahab has already gone back to sea!” And here I let out a little shriek followed unexpectedly by a flotilla of boo-hoos. “I’m so happy,” I sobbed, “with Captain Ahab.”

  “But you ain’t with ’im.” She rose from her chair and gestured for me to sit down. “That’s just the problem. Now I’ve got it. You’ve come to the right place.”

  And with that she reached into her cabinet, pulled out a lumpy, clanky bag, loosed the drawstring, and poured the contents into my lap. What an array of porcelain devices! Some artfully decorated with flowers painted on the china shaft, others with ships, and male torsos…the variety of sizes and shapes! Colors, too.

  I was stunned.

  “All under the covers, was it? Then close your eyes and just feel among them.”

  I was speechless.

  “Which most resembles your captain?”

  Now I erupted in laughing, and she laughed with me, and I told her, politely, that I should not be wanting such. She looked at me as though she knew much more than I, but on the point of an essential difference between flesh-and-blood and detached china, I had complete confidence. I turned the conversation to tell her that Ahab had been very generous in his leaving: I had a new house to live in, and, unless it was too short notice, I would not be doing any more mending.

  “And you’re such a fine seamstress. ’Tis a pity.”

  “Oh, I’ll sew dresses for myself, and one for you, too, if you like.”

  “Ah my dear,” she said, grasping my forearm, quite serious, “I’ve not had a dress made by any but myself since I was a girl.”

  “Would you like one?”

  “A dress made for me by a captain’s wife!”

  “By Una, whom you employed and who can never adequately repay you for that.”

  “You are a dear,” she said, kissing me on the cheek.

  I proposed that she come with me and select whatever fabric she wished, but she said she must tend to the washing to keep on schedule, and that we would do it later. “Besides, I must sit down and recuperate,” she said. “To think I really did bathe you for your bridal! And such a fortunate marriage.”

  So I left Mrs. Macy and commenced my shopping myself. Nantucket had so much beautiful fabric; I began to quiver as I touched it. I could have whatever I wanted. What was to keep me from buying miles of cloth?

  My own good sense. I knew full well how long it took to stitch a dress. From much experience, I knew what yardage corresponded to practical ambition. So I chose fabric for two dresses and for underthings and breathlessly watched the clerk flop off yardage from the bolts, pull a thread across, straighten the diagonal, and flash his scissors through the fabric. My parcel was heavy enough that I decided to carry it home before visiting the baker’s and the meat shop, for I knew I could not always eat with the judge. Yet when I reached home, there was in fact a note under my door inviting me to lunch across the street. Blithely I went.

  This time the judge had me into his dining room, where places were set on a mahogany table, and he served apple jelly and crackers and thin beef soup until the main meal was ready.

  “You had a caller,” he said. “Captain Bildad.”

  “I think I noted him knocking,” I said. “A rather dark captain?” I let my eye twinkle, for I felt that I had not just a neighbor but a friend in the judge.

  “Indeed,” he answered, with a corresponding twinkle. “He asked about your furnishings, Ahab having told him the house was bare in most rooms. Did you see some furnishings you liked in town?”

  I replied I had not, though I had pursued other objects. “Where can I buy a door knocker fashioned like yours, like the pineapple?”

  “Ah, that’s from Boston.”

  “Boston?”

  “Now, Captain Bildad tells me that he and his spinster sister will return and that they will personally help you buy; he is confident that all your needs can be met, with his guidance, by Main Street. He saw a black chair that he fancied for Captain Ahab.”

  “May I ask about your sofa? Was it purchased on Main Street?” The sofa was not a frank red, but more a cherry color—a delicious, subtle color.

  The judge was chewing, but he shook his head and simply said, “Boston.”

  “And your lace curtains?”

  “New York.”

  I laughed, and so did he. “Would you rather have his guidance or mine?” He was all atwinkle, and we were not only friends, but conspirators.

  “I think we’d better slip off to Boston this afternoon,” I said. “On the ferry.”

  “You need a proper chaperone. None more proper than myself.” Mrs. Macy was forgotten. Besides, I knew she was busy.

  AND SO it was that Judge Austin Lord and I took the ferry around Provincetown and on to Boston. We chatted the whole way, till we were hoarse. He was full of gossip about all of Nantucket and filled me in on the Coffins and the Crosbys, the Hadwens and the Barneys, the Starbucks, Swifts, and Swains, all intermarried to each other and dominating Main Street. The triplet houses, three bricks recently completed by Joseph Starbuck for his three sons, had cost a scandalous amount, the three together requiring an outlay of over $40,000. I asked if Mr. Starbuck of the Pequod was of that family, and the judge said certainly he was, but very distantly, the Main Street Starbucks being whaling merchants, but not actually whalers, as was the first mate, who lived more humbly out at Siasconset or ’Sconset, as the natives called it. Isaac Starbuck, the gaoler, was yet another strain of Starbucks.

  We were gone perhaps three weeks. The sight of Quincy Market reminded me of h
ow happy I had been seeing it for the first time with Aunt Agatha, Uncle Torchy, and Frannie. And how I had yet to face the terrible suspense of Frannie’s illness. Then, when I admired the monuments, I hadn’t known the Petrel existed.

  In terms of Boston shopping, Judge Lord was as indulgent as ever my husband had instructed him to be. But I soon learned from a slight frown or lift of an eyebrow what my chaperon considered a good buy or a tasteful, well-made item. An expensive rug he actually urged me to buy, saying it was from India, while most people in Nantucket had rugs from China; and, further, that the pattern was rare—a kind of tree of life filled with birds and fruit. Yes, I wanted that. A tree of life.

  It was a wonderful trip. Sometimes I regretted that neither Charlotte nor Mrs. Macy was there with me to share the excitement. I had written them both notes before I left home. Never again would I leave dear ones wondering what had befallen me. I knew too much now about how anxiety could wring the heart. In this mood, when I was alone in my hotel room at night, I dispatched additional letters to the Lighthouse and to my mother, telling them of my new, happy state, reminding them of what we had shared, and assuring them that I would soon come to visit.

  Not only did we buy furnishings, china, and silver, but also books by the boxload. I told the judge to choose what he thought a well stocked library should have, and I myself chose many books—often they were by authors whom I had read perhaps in a single volume, but now I swept my hands over the Complete Works of such writers.

  IT WAS WHILE I was at a bookstall that I fell into conversation with the remarkable woman writer Margaret Fuller. As we stood on the sunny street, she showed me engravings of great art works—of Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks and La Gioconda—and invited me to attend one of her Conversations for Women. Surprised by her spontaneous and intense invitation, I regarded her more closely.

  Quick in her movements and speech, she had large and dreamy eyes. Her hair, parted in the middle, was the most smooth and glossy I had ever seen. Her claret dress fit beautifully, and I thought her the picture of elegance. I was glad that at least I had been in Boston for a fortnight and was not totally unused to sophisticated fashion. Because I felt timid, nonetheless, about accepting her invitation, I equivocated till I thought I might ask Judge Lord for an opinion.

  He did not encourage me. But when I thought again on my own of Miss Fuller, her intensity and intelligence, I informed him that same afternoon that in fact I did intend to go. He but lifted an eyebrow. In some way, he seemed pleased that I had not taken his advice.

  HOW WISE I was! At Margaret Fuller’s salon, women talked of magnificent ideas, of poetry and art, of science and travel. Never had I heard such discourse among women. Not one word of family or home or food or even sewing. I interjected the question did they not think that quilting could be an art form and perhaps the only art available to frontier women, and several, including Miss Fuller, quite agreed with me, though not all. “Quilts don’t last,” one said. “Ars longa, vita breva.” Though I did not know Latin, I surmised what she was saying. “Nor would a painting last,” I said, “if you covered yourself in bed with it. You might choose not to use a quilt, but simply admire it. Then I think it would last. My stitches would, I know.” I was sorry I was wearing a dress, tailor-made, purchased in Boston, and so could not display my own fine stitches.

  “What then is the purpose or purposes of art?” Margaret Fuller asked the group. And we went on to discuss the question of utility and beauty. She was very versed in German views, and often she quoted Goethe, whom she herself had translated. Very considerately, though Miss Fuller quoted fluently in German, she always followed with a translation for those of us who did not understand the language. But at one point, I could not help myself from saying simply how beautiful the German was.

  “Shall I quote you one of my favorite lines? It’s from a song.”

  We all waited, aglow. I felt so honored.

  “ ‘Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten, dass ich so traurig bin.’ ‘I don’t know why I am so sad.’ It’s the first line from ‘Die Lorelei.’ But the rhythm is so much better in German, isn’t it?”

  We all agreed that it was. I wondered if there was some particular circumstance making Margaret Fuller herself sad, but the question seemed too intimate to ask in a chiefly intellectual discussion. Suddenly she told me I might call her Margaret, as the others did.

  We returned to the subject of beauty, and our leader mentioned that some of the oldest art was associated, perhaps, with religious expression. She mentioned cave drawings, and the idea that those people had worshiped animals.

  My mind began to buzz with ideas, and I remembered my question in the Unitarian gathering about their intelligence and souls—those of animals, that is, not Unitarians—and as though she read my mind, Margaret went on to speak of Mr. Emerson, who was dissatisfied with the Unitarians and wanted a less conventional, more philosophical worldview, which was being called Transcendentalism. And again my brain buzzed with the idea that no matter how liberal, how radical an idea might seem, and certainly Unitarianism had seemed more free than Universalism to me, one’s thought could always be more free, and freer and newer still. I was so excited I could not speak, and many of us were speaking at once, so ignited were we by the breadth and flexibility of Margaret’s mind.

  When it was time to go, I asked Margaret when the next Conversation would occur, and I felt much disappointed to learn it would not be for another week, at which time I would have returned to Nantucket. She was interested that I lived in Nantucket and asked if I knew Lucretia Mott, but I did not. She saw I was disappointed at not being able to come again, and she kept me standing, chatting, at the door, after the others had floated like bright bubbles, though they wore winter coats, down the street. That I was from the wilderness of Kentucky also intrigued her.

  I cannot begin to say how much I admired her. Though I guessed her to be only eight or ten years older than I, I associated her with my mother and my aunt, and her erudition was far more dazzling.

  At the hotel, I tried to convey to Judge Lord some of the breadth of Margaret Fuller’s allusions, but he was not nearly so interested as I had expected another book lover to be. “I should rather have you, my dear,” he said, “describe to me exactly what you are seeing and thinking at this moment than listen to Margaret Fuller’s dusty learning.” A bit of me was flattered, but in the main, I was disappointed and frustrated that I could not rouse the judge with my enthusiasm. I was sure that he was wrong not to value Margaret.

  The next day being our last for shopping, we arose early, but as we were going out the door, the desk clerk called that there was a note for me. It turned out to be an invitation from Margaret Fuller to spend the day with her in private conversation.

  “Surely you’ll not miss our last day of shopping?” the judge interjected.

  “Dear Judge Lord,” I replied, “please, you must shop. Buy whatever seems best. Don’t spend too much, though. I would swap the whole boatload—except for the books—for this opportunity.”

  And what a breathless day! I think that it changed me forever, as some days do. As did the day when the Petrel came to the Lighthouse. “What was it like to live on the frontier?” Margaret asked, and how did those conditions affect thought? Might one be more bold and innovative there, and not only in meeting practical needs—but did practical needs enslave one? What was the role of fear? Did nature seem a moral guide? She said she was so interested that she was resolved to go herself to the West. “I would choose Illinois and Wisconsin,” she said. “They are free of the scourge of slavery.” The scourge! Yes, I thought, that was what it was. But she quickly passed on to speaking of the condition of women and spoke about the way we were bound in invisible chains.

  When we had lunch, the conversation turned to art, and I mentioned that, much as I loved the engravings she had shown us, since they had no color, it seemed to me they falsified the art they represented. Here Margaret defended the gray engravings as y
et allowing the form of those distant masterpieces to be available to us, even if their splendor was not. “Perhaps form is the more essential element,” she suggested.

  I thought, though, of the colors in the sky, and how they moved me, whether or not they assumed form, and I advanced the notion that art had both emotional and intellectual force. “Emotion may be embodied more readily in colors,” I said, “while ideas might reside in the relationships of the forms to each other.”

  Margaret smiled; she called me “dearest Una”; she said I was a joy to talk with.

  I was almost in a swoon, almost as much in love with her as I was with my husband. Yet I knew there was something magic and ephemeral about the day. After lunch we went for a walk on the Common, and she spoke again of the artificial restrictions that society had placed on women. I thought to tell her of my own life as a sailor, but I wanted to leave that life behind me. Margaret and I walked arm in arm, and she commented on historic spots and on architecture.

  When we returned to her apartment, both of us a bit weary, we had tea, and I asked her if she would read some more German aloud to me. She saw this as a chance for a game: “I shall read only passages that in some way deal with a topic we have discussed during the day. And then, without translation, you must guess at their meanings.” Had I not grown to feel that I could trust Margaret with all my uncertainties and questions, I would never have made myself vulnerable to committing such colossal errors. But Margaret said one might learn a language partly by guessing and intuition.

  “I will give you a clue for our first passage,” she said. “The word Schicksal means fate.” Now I was ready, for we had much discussed whether women had a natural fate or only a conventional one in the present day, and I did remarkably well, many times, in guessing at the meanings of the German sentences. Much of the time Margaret’s facial expression, and my growing knowledge of what ideas appalled or pleased her, came to my aid.