The Ladies

by Doris Grumbach

  ‘To stay the night, do you think?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘All right. To stay the night.’ It was the grand concession.

  At three in the morning the three women were still in the landing sitting room, talking. For once Eleanor had not activated her aeolian harp, whose keening usually made visitors fearful that nocturnal spirits were howling for entry at the windows. A beneficent quiet in the house, the servants and animals long since bedded down, the dogs asleep at Sarah’s feet, Anna Seward told the Ladies of her life.

  She was born in the house in which she still resided, in Lichfield Close, a Tudor home of generous spaces and age-old gardens, a gift to her parents by the bishop at that time, her father’s distant cousin. Until this year she had occupied the same nursery quarters that were hers, and her sister’s, and foster sister’s, as children. Upon her father’s death (her mother had gone to her ‘eternal rest’ five years earlier) she had moved into her parents’ wing of the house, thus taking on ‘the feeling,’ as she expressed it, with a smile, ‘of being my own mother and father.’ In those elegant rooms she wrote her poetry and fiction, and read widely in books such as John Hawkesworth’s Almoran and Hamet (‘What a beautiful story, how sublime its moral!’ she told the Ladies). Many of her poems, she said, trying to suppress her evident pride, had been published in English newspapers and periodicals. At Lichfield Close she was thought to be a genius and was called ‘The Swan of Lichfield.’

  ‘And what of your sisters?’ asked Eleanor.

  ‘My sister, also named Sarah, was my beloved. We shared everything and planned to spend our lives together, much as you have been fortunate enough to do.’

  Eleanor interrupted the narrative to say: ‘We have made our fortune.’

  ‘But my heart was broken when my father announced she would marry a Mr Porter, a nondescript, pallid fellow who is the late Samuel Johnson’s stepson. And poor Sarah agreed.’

  ‘No doubt you forgave her afterwards,’ said Sarah, for whom reconciliation was always the main ingredient of love.

  ‘She did not require it of me. On the eve of her wedding, as we lay close together in bed talking of the changes marriage would bring to our affection, she was feverish and complained of a severe pain through her temples. As I was accustomed to doing, I offered her a massage. I waited for a reply, but her eyes reddened, as though the sockets had filled with blood. Blood came from her nose, her mouth. I called her name but she did not seem to hear me. She died in my arms in a few minutes. Dr Erasmus Darwin, who was called, said it was virulent typhus.

  ‘For some months afterwards, Mr. Porter called at Lichfield, hoping, I believe, to persuade me to take Sarah’s place in his marital plans. Naturally I rejected him.’

  The Ladies sat quietly, looking on compassionately as Anna Seward wiped her eyes.

  ‘How long is it since she passed on?’ Eleanor asked with unaccustomed softness.

  Anna Seward’s voice broke: ‘Almost twenty-five years last month,’ she said, and then she added: ‘I have never been able to read anything by Samuel Johnson since that time without loathing. My memories of that terrible man are so strong that I have taken to regular correspondence with Mr. James Boswell.’

  ‘Who is James Boswell?’ asked Sarah.

  ‘A sycophantic friend of his, an odious man who has written a biography of his friend. I cannot think it will come to anything, not with Johnson as subject.’

  The Ladies made no comment. Eleanor silently decided to send for the works of Samuel Johnson, with which, she thought to herself, I am woefully unacquainted.

  After a silence during which she seemed to recover from her sad memories, Anna Seward went on: ‘I had, too, a beloved foster-sister, Honora. But her life was tragically ruined.’

  ‘She too died young?’ inquired Sarah, preparing to assume the appropriate sorrowful attitude.

  ‘In a sense. She married. One Richard Edgeworth, whose first wife had died in childbirth. After Sarah left me, Honora and I lived together harmoniously for many years. She married late, and her husband is elderly with a grown daughter, Maria, who remains at home and dabbles in literature.’

  ‘I think I may once have read something by Maria Edgeworth,’ said Sarah softly, afraid to add she had rather enjoyed it.

  ‘Terrible, terrible drivel. Without ideals, without sensibility, without any sympathy for the great human virtues.’

  ‘Did you still see your foster-sister?’

  ‘Not at all. I disliked Mr Edgeworth too much. And she, a beautiful and most amiable woman, grew coarse and thickened at the bosom and the waist. An unbelievable transformation of person and spirit. And I had loved her so. Then she died quite young in Ireland, of a wasting disease.’ Again Anna Seward’s voice broke.

  It was very late. Sarah had grown visibly tired. Eleanor was still intent on hearing the full story of this interesting woman whose life seemed to have some elements of their own.

  ‘Are you now alone?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. After my father went, I was able to live in Lichfield Close on the generous competence he provided for me: four hundred pounds a year,’ she added smugly. The open announcement of the amount surprised the Ladies, as later in bed they confessed to each other, rehearsing the dramatic narrative of Anna Seward’s lonely existence, even with a ‘generous competence.’ But in Anna Seward they recognised an ally, another woman like themselves, someone else who had turned against society’s tight prescriptions. ‘Now,’ they said to one another and smiled at their discovery, ‘there are three.’

  Anna Seward wrote, when she completed her tour, from Lichfield: ‘I am inspired by you and yr elegant Place to write some verse. It is titled “Fairy Place in the Vale.”’ She enclosed a many-stanza’d poem. Eleanor recorded the best quatrain in her day book:

  ‘Happy is he who such shades retires

  Whom nature charms and whom the muse inspires;

  Whom humbler joys of heartfelt quiet please

  Successive study, exercise and ease.’

  Harriet Bowdler languished for invitations to Plas Newydd. She took to writing bulky, very long letters. She badly wanted Sarah’s attention: Her letters were full of girlish, foolish expressions of affection. While the letters were addressed to both Ladies, Harriet’s intention was clear: to engage Sarah’s devotion. Sarah was careful to omit the first person pronoun from her responses, hoping by her example to teach Harriet the appropriate approach to their household. Slowly Harriet came to understand that it would not be wise to alienate Eleanor. She decided to write to each Lady separately. To Eleanor she affected what she regarded as a jocular tone, addressing the Lady with extravagant endearments as though she were a male suitor, calling Eleanor ‘The Viellard.’ The pretense that ‘he’ was in love with the elderly Eleanor and hoped to persuade her to marry ‘him’ sickened Eleanor. Through Sarah, she let it be known that she did not find Harriet Bowdler’s fantasy amusing. Later, she regretted this move when she found that the avid Harriet, hungry, indeed starved for affection, directed all her need for love into a single vessel, Sarah.

  ‘To luncheon: the Russian Ambassador,

  Count Woronsov’

  ‘To Dinner: Peter La Touche & wife.

  Bishop of St. Asaph’s daughter,

  Miss Shipley.’

  ‘To Call in evening: William Owen, informed

  Egyptologist.

  Friend of Anna Seward, Mr Lester who

  gave me names of bks on Pompeii.’

  ‘Visited, Thrsdy-Frdy: Lady Bedingfield.’

  Many called during the day but few remained the night to sleep in the State Bedroom. In summer and in good weather the Ladies were inundated with callers. They had ‘only our small peace,’ as Sarah wrote to Julia Tighe. She herself often welcomed the flow of people. Eleanor, however, wondered if the very reason for the existence of Plas Newydd was not being threatened, if their ‘sweet seclusion’ was not in itself a temptation to others to invade it. Their ‘retirement’ was interrupted, the ‘blessed pea
ce’ too often broken.

  Visitors came to inspect ‘the wonderous plantings,’ they said. But their true motives were more often to see for themselves the amazing Ladies of the Vale in their now-famous snowy white hair styles, notorious hats and habits, heavy, solid, growing old, with their canes and boots, walking in tandem about their fields, or, if the callers were among the fortunate ones, seated across from each other at their double desk in postures so similar they could be taken, at a distance, for symmetrical plantings or identically trimmed bushes.

  Eleanor’s migraines continued to plague her. So constant were they, so often was she forced to retire her eyes from use, that at first she did not notice the decline in her vision. Less and less was she able to read aloud to Sarah; Sarah took over that responsibility. When they walked, Sarah fell into the habit of leading rather than leaning upon her beloved friend. It was Sarah who noticed, on a cold November day, that a family had come to occupy their neighbour, the weaver’s house, he having died at the age of ninety-two only a month before. Eleanor had not seen them arrive. She was unable to make out the five children playing in the overgrown garden, the brutish-looking woman hanging clothes on a cord between two trees (‘within sight of our Shrubberies!’), the man with one eye gone and a long scar from the vacant socket to his chin.

  ‘Strange that Mr Edwards would allow such people so close to us.’ Eleanor sent Mary-Caryll to find what she could about them. Mary-Caryll, grown stiff and rheumatic after she had taken a bad fall over a cat, went on the errand, and returned with a report.

  ‘Blanche Moses is the woman’s name. The man is Lem.’

  ‘Lem Moses?’

  ‘I canna say. She said Lem, only that. The children are dirty and roughing about all the time. The oldest boy has no teeth in front. Two of the girls have spotted faces.’

  That settled it. Next morning Mary-Caryll was dispatched to the landlord. His son John, a younger replica of his father in appearance and manner, came at once.

  ‘My father ails, is not expected to live to Christmas, I fear. I came in his stead.’

  Eleanor stared at him with her cloudy eyes. ‘He is spry enough to provide us with disreputable neighbours,’ she said. ‘I want them put out.’

  John Edwards hesitated. Then he said, in a low, apologetic voice: ‘They are homeless ones. He lost an eye in the mines and canna find other work. He is to look for it here. We rented the house to them until … Well, my lady, the house is small for all of them. They won’t be wanting it long.’

  Eleanor rapped her crop against the back of the oak chair she stood beside. ‘I want them gone, Mr. Edwards, before week’s end.’

  John Edwards looked pleadingly at Sarah. Sarah put a hand on Eleanor’s arm and started to speak.

  ‘Out,’ Eleanor said loudly and turned away. Sarah helped her to a chair near the New bay window. Eleanor sat down, staring ahead at what she took to be their chickens roosting on the roof of the coop.

  John Edwards saw there could be no argument about the matter with the Lady. Without bidding the Ladies goodbye, he went back to the kitchen to speak to Mary-Caryll on his way out the kitchen door, the door to which everyone but royalty and distinguished persons came. He told her the Moses’s story. Quickly he learned that Mary-Caryll had no sympathies independent of her mistresses. The stalwart Bruiser of old had grown crotchety under her physical infirmities and the years of heavy work. Now all she required was peace, to be left alone to rule her kitchen, the maids, and the kitchen gardener, and to work for Sarah Ponsonby when she could. In her own eyes Miss Mary had become one with the Ladies. Not for the world would she intervene in any matter about which they felt strongly.

  Eleanor sat in the gazebo dressed in her heaviest jacket. Over it she wore her cloak. It was mid-March and still very cold. The gazebo had been recently constructed, on high ground behind the house, so the Ladies might be aware of the comings and departures of travellers and the approach of friends and strangers. Impatiently, she awaited Sarah’s return from her evening survey of the vegetable gardens. Sometimes they did not make the Home Circuit together at the end of the day, for now Eleanor’s strength was sufficient for only one walk a day.

  When Sarah returned she was full of her discovery. ‘Think of it, my love, this soon in spring. I have found a full-grown artichoke! Two months earlier than I can ever before recall.’ She put the vegetable into Eleanor’s hands, kissed her upon the lips, and sat down on the bench facing her.

  ‘Lovely. We will share it for our lunch tomorrow. With fresh browned butter.’

  Sarah said: ‘It will be fine with a bit of lemon. The butter makes us heavy.’

  Eleanor never took kindly to suggestions of change in their menus because of her weight. She had grown close to fifteen stone and breathed heavily when she walked. The stairs to their upper storey had become particularly onerous. For her, eating well and fully was a pleasure she would not agree to abandon. Sarah’s concern for her health over the gratification of her palate made her angry. Her mouth set hard into its determined lines.

  ‘Shall we walk a bit to the dairy to bid dear Margaret goodnight? I have the lantern here.’ Sarah’s question was a statement of intent, for the walk to the dairy was ritual. They had taken the short trip every night since Margaret had taken up residence in the dairy thirty-two years ago.

  Slowly they went, Eleanor straining to see into the dark, Sarah holding her arm to steady her, to reassure her after the bit about butter, of her love. As they had grown older, the strong current of passion that had for so long sealed them together had settled into the connective tissue of companionate affection. They did not trust separation: never were they far from each other, either in the garden or in their house. Always they occupied the same rooms for recreation, ate meals in each other’s company, entertained their visitors from their places on the same love-seat. In more than thirty years they had never slept a night out of each other’s arms. The Oswestry compact had held.

  As the evening deepened they came to the dairy and called out to dear Margaret, now fat, inert, and useless but, they believed, still quite able to recognize their approach. She had grown too old and too heavy to be able to stand. Her two calves, now almost elderly themselves, provided almost no milk. They lay together in the straw behind Margaret. The new heifer Julia, named for Mrs. Tighe, who had raised Sarah’s allowance in the past year, groaned softly as she heard the Ladies enter the dairy.

  But they had come to see old, dear Margaret, a marvellous creature to the whole neighbourhood. At thirty-five, she was older than any cow the villagers could remember, an almost mythic figure kept alive, the Ladies thought, by the intense force of their affection for her. Sarah left Eleanor standing at the entrance, talking to the cow:

  ‘Dearest Margaret, sleep well this night,’ she said. Sarah returned with two handsful of barley, which Margaret loved. They listened to her munch with her hard, brown, toothless gums, like a very old person. Sarah massaged her ears, the white top of her head, and then reached down to scratch between her forelegs. They both repeated their goodnights in soft, endearing words. Sarah swung the lantern a little ahead of their footsteps to aid Eleanor’s progress to the house.

  The next afternoon they were seated under the trees. It was unexpectedly warm for March, so, at three, Mary-Caryll set the table out of doors and served their dinner, reminding Sarah, nostalgically, of dinners at Woodstock under the great elms. They had finished their dessert, strawberries and thick cream. Eleanor’s starched shirt, clean in the morning, was now dotted with butter from the artichoke and sugar from the strawberries. Sarah was placing dishes on the tray for Mary-Caryll to bear away when she saw the Moses ‘tribe’ (as Eleanor called them) leaving the weaver’s cot, led by the man who wielded a switch from one side to the other as he walked. The woman behind him bore baskets on each shoulder, the children came behind her, each carrying bulky bundles. Sarah described the procession to Eleanor, who smiled and made no comment. Trailing the group was the oldest boy who, like
the man, carried nothing. He wore a low, saucer-shaped hat, the brim almost covering his eyes. Sarah could make out that part of the time he walked backwards. He seemed to be staring at them, or at their house, at least in their direction. When he turned towards them Sarah could see the round open black hole of his mouth. Then he turned away and followed the others.

  At one in the morning an unidentifiable cacophony awakened them. Eleanor thought she had forgotten to take down the harp. But then they realized it was the cows. They heard the heavy sounds of Mary-Caryll walking about downstairs and then her excited voice, full of the old Irish accents:

  ‘Something is on fire!’

  Sarah helped Eleanor out of bed and covered her night dress with her cloak. In their bare feet they went downstairs.

  ‘Where is it? What is it?’ cried Eleanor, angered by her inability to see out into the black night.

  The sounds of high, bellowing grief reached them. They knew then what it was, where it was: the dairy was on fire. Sarah, the spryest of the three, put on her boots and started to run. Mary-Caryll helped Eleanor with hers and then took her elbow to guide her over the gravel path. Now the sky to the west was lit with yellow flame and the cold night air filled with the smell of sour, mortal smoke and the sounds of high terrified moans.

  ‘Margaret. Dear Margaret. Let us hurry, Mary.’

  Sarah, running ahead, was almost knocked from the path by the new cow, Julia, rushing, blackened and crying, her head raised with terror. ‘Wait. Wait,’ Sarah called to her, but Julia raced on, out into the field before the house.

  The three women stood as close to the dairy as they could, held back by the heat and the smoke. The crying had stopped; the air was thick with the heavy odor of burnt hide. Sarah sobbed as she looked into the remains of the doorway. Eleanor’s clouded eyes filled with tears. Mary-Caryll had fallen on her knees, crossed herself, and was saying the rosary to herself. But Sarah did not join her in prayer: Eleanor’s scorn of such weakness had eaten away at her faith. As the fire died away the Ladies still stood, staring into the black remains of the three cows.