The Ladies

by Doris Grumbach

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘And was she really a man wearing the clothing of a woman, do you suppose?’

  ‘Why should we suppose that? She was extraordinary because she combined womanliness with masculine accomplishments. Does that make her a man—or more a woman?’

  Sarah was unable to reply to Eleanor’s question. She was in tears.

  ‘Oh my dear. What is it?’ Eleanor did not wait for an answer, indeed expected none. Sarah’s crying spells had mysterious origins, rising out of the ground or from the shadows like the fair folk Twlwyth Teg. They lasted only a short time, and then dissipated into apology and regret. Never was she sure, yet Eleanor postulated the causes from her experience of them: sexual matters, especially those that contained confusion of sexes, reduced Sarah to tears. Animal suffering, dead birds and chipmunks and field mice. Eleanor’s pain. Religious discussions. Unpleasantness of any sort in the household. The appearance of a hole at the bottom of a boot or walking shoe. Thoughts of death. Eleanor kept a silent, annotated catalogue of such subjects so that she might recognize a new cause when it appeared or be prepared for the inevitable results of the old causes.

  To turn her away from her undefined sorrow, Eleanor asked Sarah: ‘Shall we think of our cow as named for Margaret uch Evan instead of for my sister? Surely she is more stalwart than that whey-faced fool?’

  Sarah wiped her eyes and smiled.

  ‘I agree our dear Margaret is a fitting namesake for Thomas Pennant’s heroine. Do you suppose Margaret uch Evan is still alive?’

  ‘I am sure she is. Like Cassandra or Medea or Deidre, she belongs to mythology, not history. She will always be alive.’

  ‘I regret she is said to have killed so many foxes.’

  ‘Oh yes, the foxes. Is that what made you sad?’

  ‘No. It was for us. I cried for us.’

  ‘For us, my love?’

  ‘For our … our … Oh, I don’t know quite. For all the confusion. Hers. Her lady-husband’s. Ours. All of it.’

  ‘I see.’ But Eleanor did not. What was clear to her was Sarah’s deep and clouded confusion. In Eleanor’s passion for Sarah the sun shone always, in great clarity. To Sarah’s mind, grey mist and fog covered the landscape and obscured her inner vision.

  Margaret Cavanaugh writes to her sister: ‘Our mother is very weak. Her doctors despair of her life. Yesterday when I came she said she wd have written to you in these last years but you had never sent an address to her. Can this be true? She believes you left with Miss Ponsonby last week when of course we know it is years since your precipitous departure. Still she grieves for the scandal over the whole countryside that dismayd us all so greatly. I askd if she wishd to see you, if you shd come to Kilkenny. She gave no answer. It is for you to decide if you wish to come to receive her Last Blessing.’

  Eleanor writes: ‘No. I do not wish to come.’

  It is September 1793: Three weeks after the first letter, Margaret Cavanaugh writes again to her sister: ‘She did not ask for you before her death which was slow but peaceful and occurrd at noon yesterday. We were at her bedside and the servants, attending her for nine days and many of the nights. The will is to be opend to us when her agents come to Borris week next. For we must be off to home after the funeral to see to Our Walter’s departure for St. Anselm’s. Our Mother will be buried beside Our Father tomorrow eleven, after a Requiem High Mass.

  ‘Ellen is worried about employment in a good place and asks if there is a place with you for her. To you privately I say I think her too old to be of much service to anyone. Milligan will come to us as cellarman. Butlering is now too heavy for him but he is a good worker.’

  Eleanor and Sarah wait anxiously for word that Lady Adelaide’s will has been read. When it comes, it is that Eleanor is not mentioned in the will. It is a blow, but they have been buffeted by fiscal disappointments before. There is still no word from official lists of their pensions. This too they accept stoically.

  Eleanor enters in her day book: ‘Lady Adelaide died September the twelfth. I cannot care.’

  To Sarah she says: ‘I never loved her. I should have expected nothing from her.’ And then after a moment she adds: ‘And I believe she never loved me.’

  Mary-Caryll was busy all the summer. In her spare time each day, she dug potatoes and sold them at the weekly village fair for £1, 10s. With the Ladies’ permission she put the sum away with her savings.

  Until the time when they agreed to admit visitors to their Place, into their shrubbery, to their dining table and library, their entire attention was focussed on the beautification of Plas Newydd, on themselves and the ‘improvement’ of their minds, and on their dear animals. For Eleanor the livestock and domestic pets were adjuncts to her feudal view of the Place, but to Sarah they were children, to be petted and cossetted. Their first true visitor was an animal. For, before the barrier for persons was lowered, in the late fall and after two years of ‘retirement,’ the Ladies heard from Mary-Caryll that a trained bear was being exhibited in the village. Sarah’s excitement was very great. After their breakfast saucer of tea she carried their plates to Mary-Caryll in the kitchen.

  ‘Will you stop at The Hand today and ask Mr Lewis to accompany you here?’

  ‘For sure. He likes to be asked.’

  Mr Lewis was Mrs Edmunds’s handwright and general factotum. He was a genial, hardworking widower who enjoyed watching over his employer’s infant son almost as much as horse grooming, bartending, or making repairs to the rooms and public areas of The Hand. ‘Mrs Edmunds is very hard on rest and free time from labour,’ he reported to the Ladies, so he was always pleased to be sent for to drive them in the chaise about the countryside or to do small repairs to their house.

  ‘We have heard of the bear,’ Eleanor told Mr Lewis when he came with Mary-Caryll.

  ‘Yes, m’lady. It is a sight to see.’

  ‘Could you ask its owner to bring it here to us this evening?’

  ‘Indeed I could.’

  Eleanor paid him and gave him extra money to pay the bear’s owner. The Ladies waited impatiently until late afternoon, when Mary-Caryll alerted them to the approach. They went to the gate to witness the slow progress towards them of a giant of a man wearing a bright red cap, a green shirt, and plaid trousers. By a chain he led a huge brown bear. As it marched stolidly along, the bear’s coat swayed from side to side in the evening wind. It was ponderous and weary-looking.

  The man introduced himself to the Ladies as Master Dan.

  ‘And this is Nancy.’

  At the sound of her name, the bear rose on her rear legs, snorted, and lifted her flat brown snout into the air. Her underbelly exposed shrivelled tits and short white hair. Then she lowered her paws to the Ladies’ feet. Sarah was enthralled.

  ‘May we feed Nancy?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Yes mum. She eats everlastingly. Meats, nuts, porridge, ever thin.’

  Sarah almost ran to the house and returned quickly with a plate piled with slices of mutton and bread.

  ‘Bread too she likes,’ said Master Dan after he saw the plate. ‘But never potatoes.’

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘Tastes, mum. Nancy has tastes like ever one.’

  ‘What does she drink?’

  Master Dan smiled. ‘Beer.’

  ‘Beer?’

  ‘Beer, yes mum. Taste, like ever one else.’

  Eleanor shook her head but went off to the brewing kitchen, a new addition to the Place since the summer.

  Sarah watched Nancy closely. She was huge and tame, at once affectionate and forbidding. Her size alone was fearsome, but the soft appearance of her fur invited human touch. Sarah was unable to resist. When Eleanor returned with a large pewter bowl filled with their own brewed small beer she found Nancy standing almost erect and Sarah in the bear’s embrace, the upper half of Sarah’s body hidden in Nancy’s thick hairy arms. Eleanor put the bowl down hastily.

  ‘Sarah, come away.’

  Nancy, who had sniffed the
beer, disengaged herself and came down almost on top of Sarah in her eagerness to drink. Eleanor moved Sarah clear of the great paws. Master Dan looked relieved.

  ‘She is tame, mum. But I donna she’d take to hugs en kisses en such.’

  Sarah blushed and moved back. From a little distance she watched Nancy drinking in enormous gulps. In seconds the beer was gone. Nancy lifted her head and swung it around to look at Sarah.

  ‘She knows me,’ said Sarah. ‘She wants more beer.’

  ‘No, mum. No more. She has enough now to dance. I’ll show you.’

  Master Dan led the bear to the middle of the field before the house and took the chain from her neck. He gave her a command. The bear proceeded slowly through a series of tricks: walking on two feet while erect, in one direction and then the other, rolling like a great tun on her back while waving her paws in the air, running in a wide, lumbering circle around her master, and then, as a finale, allowing him to ride astride her back, holding on to her coat as she ran without pattern around the field trying playfully to shake her rider, but enduring him nonetheless.

  Master Dan reattached the chain and led Nancy to the Ladies.

  Sarah looked troubled. ‘Is she always kept chained when she is not performing?’

  ‘Oh yes, mum. It’s village ordnance.’

  ‘I see. But even so tame an animal?’

  ‘Yes, mum. None trusts bears. They don’t know um. But Nan has got angry, and does swipe out.’

  Eleanor, seeing the signs of approaching sorrow in Sarah, quickly picked up the bowl. ‘We thank you for coming. We enjoyed the exhibition.’

  ‘She’ll be on the green to week’s end should you want to see her once more,’ said Master Dan, tipping his cap and tugging on Nancy’s chain to urge her along with him.

  Nancy stood still, her round brown eyes fixed on Sarah. There was a long, heavy moment, like a tableau, while Eleanor looked at Sarah with concern, Master Dan at Nancy, and Nancy stared yearningly, it appeared, at Sarah.

  ‘She likes me, I believe,’ said Sarah to the air. No one replied. Nancy took two heavy steps forward, but Master Dan pulled her back.

  ‘Come on, gal. We’re to home.’

  ‘Once more, thank you,’ Eleanor said. She put her arm around Sarah, knowing before she looked at her face that it would be wet with tears.

  For days afterwards they talked of the bear. Sarah wanted to walk into the village to see her again but Eleanor would not agree. Of course Sarah did not go without her. When next they took their excursion to Llangollen, Nancy and her Master Dan were gone.

  Eleanor noted the bear’s visit in her day book: ‘Our first visitor to the front gate.’ For her the matter ended there. Sarah continued to think of Nancy, to dream of her. Once she woke in fright, having seen a coffin containing a dead child with a bear arm and claw to which Sarah found herself attaching a string and bell. Nancy became a character in her fantasies. She remembered her long, loving look, as she believed it to have been. She wondered if it was possible that the bear, despite her heavy brown coat and formidable paws, was—like them.

  THE VISITORS

  It may have been the bear that broke the barrier. No longer were all visitors kept from their Place. It may be, too, that the Ladies had grown tired of each other’s exclusive company. Or even, that the long honeymoon was finally ended and the ordinary days, like those in a marriage, stretched out before them, at times in need of some filling.

  After the years of isolation, their first human guest was Harriet Bowdler.

  The mail brought in post bags from Oswestry contained a letter from Miss Bowdler. She had now devised a new stratagem. She wrote, as always, to Sarah:

  ‘I am to Dublin next month. May I come to yr door to see yr dear face once more?’

  ‘What shall I reply?’

  ‘If you wish, tell her to come.’

  ‘And you, my love?’

  ‘She expresses no desire to see my dear face, so her presence will hardly involve me.’

  ‘Oh love, think of the pleasure and the sweet butter her gift has given us.’

  ‘Very true. I will be civil on dear Margaret’s account. Instruct Miss Bowdler to stop at The Hand, and we will walk to her and return here for dinner. Inform her we always dine at three.’

  ‘Shall we offer her the State Bedchamber for the night? The coach for Holyhead I believe is very early in the morning.’

  There was a long silence. ‘Let us see how dinner progresses this time. The night visit can wait for another.’

  Harriet was the perfect encomiast. She expressed herself as enthralled with everything she saw. With the Ladies in attendance to point to their particular, favourite places, she made the Home Circuit. She paid her respects to Margaret, reminding her of her origins, and, from afar, to the sheep. She applauded the romantic aura of the plantings, the stone fonts and fountains and benches, the excellence of the library. She was especially admiring of the State Bedchamber, lingering there to notice the colours, the fine plump palliasse on the bed, the carved-oak wall decorations. Eleanor was downstairs pouring their before-dinner sherry. Sarah, faithful to instructions, did not extend their hospitality for the night’s stay in the much-praised bedroom.

  Dinner conversation was stiff and awkward, as though the Ladies in their seclusion had forgotten how to apply the unguents of small talk and gossip to an occasion involving a guest. For her part, Harriet was bewildered by the names of the authors they had read and of whom she had not heard. For their part, the Ladies appeared to be uninterested in Oswestry goings-on. Eleanor, who commanded the dinner table in a manner reminiscent of Lord Walter, made one concession to conviviality. She observed that the butter they were applying to their bread was freshly made yesterday from Harriet’s gift, their dear Margaret. This pleased Harriet, who then proceeded to narrate the long saga of the breeding, feeding, choosing, purchase, and transportation of Margaret.

  Eleanor’s mood darkened as the visit lengthened. Breaking in upon Harriet’s bovine tale, she observed that the morning coach was at seven and would not stop at the head of their road so that Harriet had better make a start for the village.

  ‘It has been wonderful,’ Harriet said to Sarah at the door, pressing her hand. Eleanor had remained seated at the table after bidding Harriet a cool goodbye.

  ‘I am so glad.’

  ‘I cannot wait to see you again. And you must remember to call upon me at Oswestry.’

  ‘We do not go abroad at all,’ said Sarah, looking back at Eleanor. Her glance seemed to suggest the particular aversion that Eleanor had to returning visits. Sarah walked with Harriet to their gate to bid her goodbye again. Impulsively, Harriet leaned to kiss Sarah on the cheek, and then again pressed her hand.

  ‘Thank you. Thank you, my dear,’ said Harriet before she went up the road, thinking, as she walked, of the Sarah she had just left, dressed in her strange outfit, her starched neckcloth, her cropped hair heavily powdered, her dear face.

  They could not have foreseen that Harriet’s enthusiasm for their ‘sweet repose,’ as she described it to her friends, would occupy all her conversation for weeks to come. Despite the hardships of communication, bad roads, infrequent post, word about the Ladies, their beautiful garden and shrubberies and most of all, the curiosities they themselves appeared to be, was transmitted from her in all directions. Stories about ‘the fair recluses’ spread throughout the countryside, were conveyed by travellers on the stage coach to London, survived the stormy waters and shaky packet to Dublin to travel south to Kilkenny, to Woodstock, indeed the length of the country to Waterford, following the full round of the Ladies’ own fateful journey years before. Everyone heard of their odd ménage, and speculated about it. Many spoke of them as a deserving oddity, worthy of a stop on a journey to London, like Mt. Snowden and Valle Crucis. Aristocratic hunters who came in their own chaises from England to North Wales for the fine grouse moors, the pheasant, and the rough shooting for snipe and partridge, as well as fishermen who sought sa
lmon in the Dee, walked the Ladies’ road as far as the gate, but came no closer to the two curiosities they had hoped to see. Sarah was horrified at the sight of hunters. She closed the shutters when she saw them approaching, their ‘shoots’ (as she called them) on their shoulders. She had devised many thickets in the low, rough spots of their Place to protect game birds against poachers and hunters.

  Eleanor wrote: ‘Some times I believe my Beloved sympathizes so with hunted beasts and fowls because she considers them related to us in situation and spirit. Plas Newydd is a thicket, affording cover for us, two Lady birds.’

  Visits started slowly, with polite notes penned to the Ladies for permission to view what the writer had heard were ‘sublime Shrubberies.’ To all such requests Eleanor wrote a cold refusal. The new vow they had taken together, framed by Eleanor, and seconded meekly by Sarah, was ‘no creature without names and certainly not without manners’ would be permitted entry to their grounds or the house.

  To the discomfort of the English aristocracy, who were known to enjoy the spectacle of peculiarity, Eleanor became almost savage, selecting among them only those she considered to be visites distinguées. If the name was not of highest title, or the letters were in the least demanding, or assuming and lordly, she denied the writer admission. Her temper was turned upon those who applied without acceptable crest and seal. It became even fiercer when the Civil List was published, containing the Ladies’ names and the amounts of their grants: twelve pounds the quarter, each of them. Their expectations had been far higher.

  Eleanor attributed the paltry amounts to revenge by the Secretary, Lord Steele, who was related to her family. Sarah suggested in a low voice: ‘It may be due to our unusual way of life which is counter to others on the Pensions List.’ This suggestion sent Eleanor into fresh fury. She went upstairs to a small room off the master bedroom where she often hung her aeolian harp before the open window. Under the influence of its toneless twangings, she brooded about injustice and their poverty.