About the bridegroom Wilson was not so sure though when mother anxiously sought her opinion she found no difficulty stressing his finer points. It was true he was handsome in a countrified way and that he did not look a day over thirty for all the weather-beaten skin. It was also true he was not afraid to meet a direct look and that there was not a hint of hypocrisy about him. He was not, Wilson calculated, a mean man nor a cruel one. She watched him cradle his younger child, a frail little boy of two, and saw his tenderness and was greatly heartened to see the respect with which he treated her mother. Yet as she watched Ellen pledge herself to honour and obey William Henry Wilson until death did them part there was something in the set of those broad shoulders in front of her which she did not altogether like. The last wedding she had witnessed had been the Brownings’ and then she had felt no such misgivings. What was the difference? She sang the hymn Ellen had chosen and wondered. It was, she decided, Ellen’s ignorance. Ellen did not know this man, could not claim to know him after half a dozen brief meetings over a month. She was attracted to him, that she had made too plain for her sister’s liking, but she did not know him as Elizabeth Barrett had known Robert Browning and even, Wilson saw, as May already knew Dr Burnham.
The married couple went off in a horse and cart with Ellen not in the least tearful. Wilson marvelled at the ease with which her sister went off to an unknown destination with a man who would that night become as intimate with her as ever a man could be. William had been told, of course, about Ellen’s dead baby and the circumstances of the birth. There had been no need to tell him, and Ellen herself had wished at least to wait until after she was married, but mother had insisted, saying it was no way to start a new life, she wanted no deceit practised. Ellen was dreadfully afraid William would no longer want her but he had merely thanked mother for her honesty and said everyone made mistakes. More important to him had been Ellen’s meeting with his children and this had gone well. The children were with them now, the boy asleep in Ellen’s arms and the girl sitting beside her, happy to have a new mother. Ellen said she would write as soon as she was able.
Before Wilson returned to London, there was indeed one short note from Ellen, saying only that they had arrived safely and there was a lot to be done in Mr Wilson’s house in Carol Gate. All of them read easily behind those lines. ‘A wife ill two years, dead these six months, I should think there would be a lot to do in any house,’ mother said and then, ‘I ought to go to her, she will need me with two children to care for, one of them sickly, and a house to scour from top to bottom.’ But even before Wilson could say anything, May stepped in and said mother was too tired to think about going anywhere and would do well to take care of herself rather than Ellen. ‘When I am married, mother,’ May said, ‘you will stop working, as it has been agreed. You will become a fine lady of leisure and take tea with Arthur’s better patients.’ Mother laughed but looked pleased and Wilson felt a pang of envy at May’s ability to do what she had failed to do – give mother a home and care for her. But it was a foolish envy and she scolded herself for it. The security of May’s imminent future made it possible to leave mother with a lighter heart than she had ever been able to do. ‘When I next see you,’ she whispered as she gave mother a last embrace, ‘I expect to see you dangling a grandchild or two on your knee.’
Mother’s happy laughter was the nicest of sounds to bring back from Yorkshire and kept a smile on her own face all the weary way back to the Welbeck Street lodgings. But once there, it vanished at once. Her mistress looked and sounded worse than she had ever done since Wimpole Street days and Wilson could not help saying so. ‘That cough, ma’am! Where has it come from? And your eyes! Buried again, as they used to be. It is shocking, you ought not to be up and dressed at all and would not have been if I had been here.’
‘But you were not, dear Wilson,’ Mrs Browning murmured in a wheezy voice, ‘and now you see the consequence, you see how I need you, and always will.’ She sank back on the sofa luxuriating in Wilson’s return, sighing with relief as the room was put to rights and Pen, half-mad with joy, forcibly removed by his darling Lily. Within a day, Wilson had restored order, though driven distracted by her charge’s insistence that she should sing with him every one of the many nursery rhymes he had learned with his mother during her absence. It was too much, she was sure, for his three-year-old brain and she said as much, only to be laughed at. There was no point in her protesting and she knew it. What Pen needed was a simple, regular routine in familiar surroundings and until they were back in the Casa Guidi that was impossible.
They were not there for another six weeks after she returned to London. First there was the christening of the poet Tennyson’s son to delay for and then, once in Paris, which they had planned only to pass through, a matter of a lost travelling desk which had to be sent on from London before they could proceed. Once they were on their way again, leaving Paris on October 23rd, the final part of the journey back to Florence proved a nightmare. Never had Wilson known arrangements go so wrong and she could not but blame the Brownings themselves, both of them. How could they have chosen, at that time of the year, a route which led over Mont Cenis? It was bitterly cold and the inns had not all been properly booked and once they were obliged to travel on throughout the night in search of accommodation. She slept with Pen, as she always did when they travelled, and could not decide which was the greater ordeal – his chattering or her mistress’s prolonged bouts of coughing which literally, on several nights, shook the thin walls between their rooms. Wilson was convinced her mistress was more seriously ill than she had ever been in Wimpole Street and Mr Browning was convinced she was dying.
Hearing the coughing reach bed-shaking proportions one night, the last night before they estimated they would arrive in Italy, Wilson got up and crept out of the small room she shared with Pen. She stood in the passageway listening, a shawl over her nightdress. On and on it went, first the raw whooping sound then the rasp of the breath at last caught. Every time the rasping stage was reached, she held her own breath. She knew the poor sufferer’s face would be contorted with pain. How Mr Browning stood it she did not know. She could hear him saying, ‘Ba, try to take a sip of water, do, only a sip.’ She leaned against the wall, tired herself, but unable to rest while this dreadful attack continued. Her own heart beat steadily, her lungs functioned perfectly and she found herself thinking she would not change places with any soul afflicted with such health whatever they had and whoever they were. It was more of a comfort than she had ever found such thinking before.
The door opened gently. Mr Browning gave a start when he saw her and she put a finger to her lips. ‘Pen is asleep, sir,’ she whispered. ‘I would that his poor mother was,’ Mr Browning whispered back. ‘What can be done for her, Wilson? I cannot bear this agony. She has no strength left and the coughs tear her apart and she brings up – she discharges – I cannot help but see that she …’
‘I know sir, I know. But the doctor once said if the blood – begging your pardon sir – the blood if it is only threads, and bright, is not from the lung and nothing to be feared.’
‘She has said so herself, but I fear, I fear.’ Wilson saw tears in his eyes and put out a hand to touch his arm. ‘Now, sir,’ she said, very softly, ‘do not despair. I promise you she has been like this before. Listen, we must make all speed to Genoa and then rest up. The warmth will restore her. We could start now, sir. She does not sleep and neither do we and Pen sleeps so soundly he can be carried to the carriage. Come, sir, let us leave this place and get to Italy.’
They did so. At four in the morning, they set off on the last lap and arrived in Turin by midday. Wilson urged no further delay, pointing out how cold it was in the city. So they travelled on, in a rush, to Genoa, as being the warmest place they could quickly reach, and they were just in time. On the very outskirts of the city the coughing took over entirely and the invalid almost choked. Mr Browning was terrified, Pen screamed and Wilson herself, though outwardly calm, w
as very much afraid her mistress had burst a blood vessel and injured herself fatally. But Genoa was safely reached, bathed in sunshine though it was November, and it was perfectly true that, as Wilson wrote to Minnie that evening:
— it was like magic, Minnie, when that sun flooded through the windows of our carriage and fell on our poor sufferer’s closed eyes. She felt the heat of it and struggled to open her eyelids and was almost blinded by it and said where are we and when her husband said in Genoa, Ba, and nearly home she smiled. We found rooms in a clean inn and Minnie some inns we have been reduced to have been far from clean and there we put my mistress’s bed before the window and she lies there in the sun and it has done her the power of good already. We will stay here until the coughing or the worst of it has subsided entirely and then continue to Florence which we will all be relieved to see for never has there been a more ill-starred journey.
By the end of November, that journey was only a shudder in all their memories. Mrs Browning’s recovery was so complete that only Wilson and her husband knew how near to total collapse she had been. It was like watching someone come back from the brink of the grave, Wilson reflected and would have liked to have said so if it had not sounded so false. Not only did the coughing stop, except for the merest eruption from time to time which could not be mentioned in the same breath as what had gone before, but her mistress gained weight rapidly and her eyes were no longer entirely sunken. With her returning health came a desire to write and to Wilson’s unfeigned delight a new and rigid regime began in the Casa Guidi.
She never thought it would last, confessing to her mother in her first letter from Florence that:
— I have seen this before, mother, and it has not lasted above a week before the old order has been restored and we are back to being in bed until noon and playing with Pen when we are up. Mr Browning has always been less inclined to work than she has and indeed I have heard her often take him to task and berate him for wasting his talent. It is not for me to say, but I have often thought it odd when listening to those who visit this house and speak so kindly of him and praise him so very highly to know that Mr Browning seems to set little store by any writing at all. But at any rate he is applying himself diligently now though I know not to what effect. All morning they write, both of them, and I remove Pen which is a great shock to him but will do him no harm. And what has aided this happy state of affairs is the efficiency of our new man servant, Vincenzo. I told you of how Alessandro was conveniently paid off when we left for England to my satisfaction you may be sure and now we have this new fellow. I confess I was taken aback when first I saw him for he is the very opposite of presentable, mother, and my mistress complained to me that her husband cannot have had his eyeglass on when he engaged him or that it must at least have been in a poor light. Not to put too fine a point on it mother and I would not say this except to you, but the man looks as if he might smell and there is indeed a whiff of the stable about him. I feared the worst but he is well able to do his job with the minimum of fuss unlike Alessandro to whom the simplest task was a production and we get on well enough. He is respectful and very quiet and causes me no bother for which I am grateful. So we are well settled in again mother and Pen sleeps better and is altogether easier now that his day is regular. We have been out in the gardens a good deal and I cannot tell you how warm it is though we are nearly in December. Florence is full of visitors here for the winter and I daresay I shall make some new acquaintances before long.
Strangely, she did not, but this did not depress her as once it had. Sitting once more in the Boboli Gardens watching Pen play, Wilson wondered what kind of change had come over her. Instead of the sense of frustration and restlessness which had plagued her before the trip to England she felt a curious relief in simply being back in Florence. Her prospects on every front were no better and in some ways worse, for she had tried and failed to obtain an increase in salary, but there was a contentment that came from her daily round that had not been there before. She felt sure, now, that she would be with the Brownings all her life and this did not fill her with the dismay it had once done. Pen was hers as well as his parents’, her child, and she never doubted his loyalty. And Italy, increasingly, seemed more attractive than England though she could not, as her mistress could, quite throw off her patriotism. But to compare Florence with Sheffield was an absurdity and even to compare it with London was to find her home country’s capital wanting. She had become addicted to the warmth, to the light, to the expansiveness of Italian life and to think of ever being reduced to mother’s circumstances in Sheffield made her shudder. Thinking of her married and about to be married sisters she felt not a twinge of envy. She would rather be single and have her life.
But in spite of the gratification which came from such reflection, Wilson was still aware of that deeper hunger which had begun to rise in her that summer before last in Bagni Caldi. What her mistress had been heard to refer to as her ‘female nature’ troubled her though on the surface she appeared perfectly calm. She saw no man who attracted her that winter, but knew that men in the abstract did. She dreamed of being crushed in a man’s arms, of being kissed by a man’s lips, of being pressed to a man’s body. The man had no identity. He was just A Man, who sometimes fleetingly would have the characteristics of someone she knew and sometimes not. They were not dreams she could relate to anyone and she was pleased to find that when she woke up they had not left her anxious or unhappy. On the contrary, there was a comfort in the dreams. She wondered how mother would interpret this, guessing she would judge any dream that gave happiness was sure to signify luck. Where the luck would come from Wilson had no idea or even if it ever would come, but she was not disposed to destroy her own harmless fantasies. There was nothing wicked in them. She was not, at thirty-three, an old woman to whom such visions might smack of indecency, but still young and healthy enough to have expectations. She knew she was prettier and more attractive than she had ever been and if time was going to run out then it had not yet begun. Ellen, at thirty, looked years older than she, and May, for all her youth, had the ways of a middle-aged woman. So Wilson took care of her looks and as her mistress worked in one room and her master in the other she sat in the sun and smiled to herself and bided her time.
Chapter Twenty One
VINCENZO WAS AN odd little man. Nobody could have been more different from Alessandro both in appearance and temperament and Wilson was grateful for it. And he was honest, which Wilson had always known Alessandro was not, as well as efficient. Before very long, she had discovered he was also a great worrier and what he worried about most was his health. He was slight and had a stoop to his thin shoulders which increased his aged look (though, at thirty-eight, he was barely older than Wilson). First thing in the morning he looked hardly capable of lasting the day and last thing at night ready to collapse. Wilson felt sorry for him and a little irritated. He seemed to her to have no pleasure at all in life except possibly the bottle (though he never overstepped the bounds of propriety except on a Saturday night when she could hear him singing in his loft). When her mistress sighed over Vincenzo and wondered how her husband could have been so misguided as to employ such a pathetic, unsavoury individual, Wilson was surprised to find herself defending him. ‘He is tidy, ma’am,’ she said, ‘and does his job without fuss and keeps himself to himself. He is better than some.’ By which, of course, she meant Alessandro.
Certainly, Vincenzo enabled Wilson to feel very much in control in the household. Things were once more done her way and she enjoyed the power. Vincenzo was particularly co-operative over preparing plain, wholesome food for Pen and allowed her to (was even eager to let her) prepare the menus. Scotch broth once more steamed in the tiny kitchen during the wet days of January and February and there was no Alessandro to sneer and hold his horrible bulbous nose and do his best to spoil it if she left the pan unattended. By March, Wilson was fairly certain Vincenzo was a little afraid of her which she could not reconcile with her own perception o
f herself. He almost cringed when she came upon him, as though according her the same respect as the Brownings, and he was beside himself with apologies if he accidentally got in her way. It was a strange feeling, to arouse such alarm in others, but one not altogether distasteful. She remembered vividly, spying Vincenzo about to go down a corridor then hold back because he saw her coming, how she had been wont to do that very thing when a young housemaid. The memory of the agony of it all made her reflect how far she had come. Not, perhaps, as far as Jeannie, who had verged on the altogether too familiar, but far enough to make her status as servant infinitely more complicated than she had ever thought it. She would never cringe again before anyone. Wait, delay, be respectful: but always with dignity and in expectation that she had some standing too. Nobody any longer had the power to intimidate her. She knew herself to be perfectly au fait with the customs of the drawing room as well as the kitchen and could, and did, carry off her duties before any of the Brownings’ guests with aplomb.
The night Vincenzo was taken ill there had been quite a gathering of such guests in the Casa Guidi. It was early summer by then, with the sky as blue as her own best dress, and the Brownings had entertained their three favourite visitors until almost ten o’clock, an event unusual enough to cause comment. When told Mr Tennyson, Mr Powers, and Mr Lytton would partake of a light supper, Wilson had expressed surprise, since the more common invitation was to have those three gentlemen to tea. ‘It is a special day,’ her mistress told her, ‘an anniversary, Wilson, surely you remember?’ But Wilson did not. Birthdays and weddings she had no doubt of but the significance of May 20th had passed her by and she had to be reminded it was the date Mr Browning had first called some eight years since. Vincenzo prepared an excellent supper but was in such a torment of nerves that long before it was served he was groaning in anguish for the state of his pollo coi funghi secchi, a special favourite of his employers. Afterwards, when the guests had gone, Wilson saw him press a handkerchief to his forehead in a gesture of such theatrical despair she almost laughed. But instead she scolded herself and enquired kindly if she could get the poor man a drink to soothe his nerves. The drink was declined. Vincenzo staggered off to bed, his face blotchy and red, and Wilson took to her own.
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