“What about school?” I blurted, my mouth always a furlong ahead of my mind. But I held my breath for the answer.
Mama didn’t look at me. She walked to where Ned was standing and considered a wayward curl on his forehead, gently moving it to one side. “The grammar school for Ned, of course, for ‘gentlemen of the best quality.’”
“But for us girls?” I shifted my stance. My fear was that we’d be consigned to the charity school, whose students wore white straw bonnets, brown wool frocks, and blue cloth cloaks with orange trim. How dreary they looked, like prune-faced old women.
“The local day school will suit you girls fine.”
I had to quell my excitement. No more sneaking to town to attend John Arden’s public lectures, trying to pass myself off as a Beverley girl. Now it would be truly mine: the handsome town with its chipper clatter of hooves on broad, clean streets, neat gardens, the assembly rooms in North Bar Within, rumors of better ones being built at Norwood, a playhouse in Lairgate, even talk of a circulating library! But best of all, I would be at school with Jane.
Eliza, reading my face, squinched her eyes and smiled. Everina clapped silently. Henry, subject to contagion of all kinds, followed suit. Imperial Ned looked to be calculating already the social ladder he would climb. But Mama looked worried when Father mentioned Whitsuntide come next May, not because it was known to be the acme of the social season, but because it revolved around horse racing—my father’s preferred occupation above all others. Beverley’s racetrack boasted a brand-new grandstand at Hurn, and had added a Gold Cup race, already the talk of the town.
“They have concerts, too, Mama, plays and fine dances every night during racing week. My friend Jane told me so.”
Father downed his second shot and took Mama’s waist, twirling her around. “Fine dances every night, do you hear, Elizabeth?” He was in a grandiose mood.
Mama pulled away from him and ran a finger along one brow. “I don’t have a proper dress, not that fits me.”
“But there are shops with everything one might wish for. Brocaded silks, ribbons, and hats, corsets, and shoes!” I said.
“I still have my French silk shoes somewhere. I’m sure I have.”
“Imagine, Mama, the finest dress to go with them, made just for you.” Me, always trying to ingratiate myself with her.
“For me too?” asked Eliza.
“Dresses for everyone!” Father toasted with a third shot.
“That will do, then,” Mama said. But I saw her look out the window, out past everything, where her own girlhood must have lived. “How many years it is since I’ve been to a ball.”
Mama had become isolated in our small cottage, and while she’d once imagined herself part of polite, cultivated society, it seemed she didn’t know her place in it anymore—what one did, exactly, to belong. I fancied that I could be indispensable to her—show her a Beverley that might bring her out again—and, for a moment, guessed she might even be grateful for it. It would be a coming-out for both of us. But for now I was glad to be the unintentional beneficiary of our father’s latest reinvention of himself.
Why shouldn’t I feel lightsome?
I had an inner certainty that things would change, my life expand. Even our two-story brick house in Wednesday Market was the opposite of the cottage in every way, with handsome doors, sash windows, and classical moldings. The ceilings were high, the paint new and bright. Mother allowed that we girls should have two new gowns for school, and Eliza and I, one each for the assembly-room dances.
School at last! Assembly-room dances! I thought Heaven could not be far behind.
When the day came for Ned to move away for school, I was surprised to see that Henry was also to go, standing with his small bag, hair parted in the middle and slicked down with beef suet.
“I don’t think he can manage, Mama. Latin? Algebra? Rhetoric?”
“They do some account of animals, I think. He likes animals. And they study the globes, that might be a good thing. They’ll look after him, know what to do.”
“It’s above Henry. Even I’m better prepared than he—”
“You would be wise to yammer less and embroider more. Be glad we’re sending you to school at all.”
I determined not to let her ruin my high feeling. When we girls left for day school in our new muslin dresses, my eagerness spiked at the sight of Jane Arden presiding over a circle of girls, all chattering at each other, except when Jane spoke, and everyone stopped to listen. I caught her eye and waved. She beckoned me over, and introduced me. Imitating her as best I could, I introduced my sisters, who only smiled demurely. The other girls peppered me with questions, but I kept my answers clipped, for now. It seemed they were all bred of Beverley society, knew its customs and requirements, their place in it. Their fathers wouldn’t be like mine. There’d be no Walkington in them, no holes in their stockings. It was best to tell them little, and let the mystery of the Wollstonecrafts disguise us. Then I’d win them over one by one.
We were shooed into a room like clucking chickens, and took our desks. I tried to mimic the way the girls gathered their skirts into their seats, hands folded on their laps. Eliza and Everina copied my every move, which was a poor copy already, all three of us pretending not to be the awkward rustics we were. We then had a small lecture “for the benefit of the new girls” on the merits of needlework—learning precision and patience—and the domestic value of simple addition.
“Which languages will we study?” I asked, causing a rustle among the skirts. I thought I heard one girl gasp. Even Eliza blushed at my brazenness.
“A smattering of French,” said the teacher, “is all that is required in the sphere of Beverley women.”
Jane caught my eye and shook her head subtly to indicate that the asking of questions was frowned upon. The rest of the day I sat at my desk and fumed. I knew how to read, how to write. I had taught myself addition, taught my sisters, even Henry. There would be no learning in this place to add to my own. Every day, if like this one, would be agony.
“Father lets me come so that I might be in the company of girls,” said Jane, when she took my arm gently after school as we walked. “But my education happens elsewhere.”
“What sort of education?”
“The world of knowledge according to John Arden, I suppose. Philosophy, history, belles lettres, every sort of science—”
“French?”
“And German he thinks important.”
“The globes?”
“The celestial world entire.”
“Then how can you tolerate this—this nothing of an education at all?”
“For the sake of friendship, Mary. Frankly, the tedium is a welcome relief. To be the singular focus of my father’s intellectual fervor is, at times, exhausting.” She stopped just then and put a firm hand on my forearm. “Why don’t you come one day?” Jane said, more polite command than question. “Father would welcome a hungry mind.”
I kissed her cheek, impetuous. And so began my education by other means.
The Arden household welcomed me wholeheartedly, down to the servant who greeted me with a brisk bonjour and took my coat. The parlor was better than I’d imagined, without affectation, only sincerity and taste: portraits of people who looked worth knowing, or being related to; one above the hearth that I took to be Jane’s mother, the same regal neck as her daughter. There were Turkish carpets mellowed by years of afternoon sun; cut blooms of all colors spilled from a cloisonné vase. And the wood-paneled library, where our lessons would be held, sported tiers, like towers of endless books with rich leather spines the colors of autumn, softened by human hands, and smelling, the whole room, of wood smoke. I had a yearning to belong there as I’d never felt for any place, save Nature.
John Arden’s tutorials, twice a week after school, were a lesson in everything, but enthusiasm most of all. Jane seemed relieved to share her father’s attention, and he seemed glad to have a second pupil. He treated us as he would y
oung men, without limits on what we were capable of understanding. And while Jane was first with answers, eager to be released to her “social swirl,” I was first with questions. He stacked my arms with books, gave me a swan feather quill, “for its excellent toughness,” and showed me how to sharpen it myself. He told me to write—write anything—because it was capturing from the ether ideas and thoughts and putting them to paper that willed them into the world. This above all.
I don’t know why Father let me go, except that it seemed he wanted the town’s acceptance as much as I did. He washed and dressed every day, took his London papers, joined the conversations at coffeehouses, drank at the more respectable inns. A strange peace descended on our house. Father had long ago stopped raising his hand to me, and without Henry to pummel, found Eliza and Everina too docile to bother with. He showed affection, at times, to young James and Charles, was solicitous of our one new housemaid, Lucy, who was a pleasant presence, and even stopped his nightly punishments on Mama. (I believed it was a credit to me: that he knew he would have to step over me to get to her.)
But the lessons became the centerpiece of my life. That, and Jane’s friendship. We took walks, arm in arm, on my darling Westwood Common, our lungs breathing the same bracing air. It was hard to keep my shoes and stockings on, but I might lose her if I didn’t. I slowed my gait instead, content to share with her my ease among the woods and windmills, the names of trees that tumbled off my tongue—grey alder, beech, wild privet, yew. I pointed out the shapes in clouds, hoping she saw the world as I did.
Jane lifted her skirts and stepped over things I wouldn’t consider puddles, wanted to talk about anything aside from the day’s lesson, but mostly her circle of friends. I asked about them each: Which was the one with the sweet upturned nose? The striped bonnet? That one with hair the color of pennies? She had command of their details, their fine points and foibles, the sort of man each imagined for her future, as if Jane were a registry of all the young Beverley women who mattered, and all the men who might marry them. She asked in turn about my family, my father and mother. I spun a tale about the silk weavers of Spitalfields, mostly true, how we had come from money, what my father aspired to. I heard myself repeating his lies, amplifying his prospects. I didn’t mention Henry. But Jane seemed satisfied to know a girl so different from herself—as if I were the exotic creature—and that was enough.
She demanded to know when she could expect us at the assembly rooms, now that it was October and the season was upon us, with a dress ball on Monday nights, a Wednesday concert, a fancy ball on Thursday, and a card assembly on Friday. I hadn’t the nerve to tell her she might wait for some time, as neither I nor my sisters knew well enough how to dance, and so made excuses. But she’d abide no excuse when it came to Whitsuntide in spring, because the Norwood Rooms would be done by then, and there was talk of the officers of the East Riding militia planning a dance.
How desperate I was to please Jane, to win her to my cause, which was simply the cause of me. I wrote to her again and again, keeping up the semblance of my pretend-gentility. At night I’d labor over my letters to make them seem I hadn’t, spewing quotations wherever I could, copying out whole poems or passages, exhausting myself. I begged her pardon for the freedom of my style, such as it was, equal parts mimicry and faux-philosophy, weak in grammar and spelling, at which Jane excelled. I felt singularly toward her, and wanted her to feel the same. I knew the other girls talked mostly of hunting husbands; all I wanted to will into the world was a perfect friend.
So, if the East Riding ball was Jane Arden’s magnificent obsession, it would be mine as well. If Eliza and I could get through it, show that we were worth knowing, worth dancing with, worth anything at all—the trajectory of our lives would be forever altered. At school we had dancing lessons, paired off girl with girl. I managed to be with Jane some of the time, volunteered to play the man, and occasionally held the soft curve of her waist, felt her palm in mine. But she was the best dancer, graceful and sure of herself. Everyone wanted her.
We sisters danced in our room till late at night, practicing our steps. Eliza counted down the days in her diary, with a list of dances we must know, and by when. No, I said, we don’t have time to learn them all, but must concentrate on one or two, and dance them well enough that people assume we know the rest. Everina was too young to go to the ball, but I let her try on my gown and walk about in my shoes. She read the rule book aloud to us, committed parts of it to memory: “Young ladies are cautioned not to cluster together.… No improper company should be permitted.… Brides and strangers are permitted to call the first country dance of the evening.… If there are more Ladies than Gentlemen, two ladies may dance,” and so on.
Eliza pressed me at least once a week, “Please secure a promise from Mama to be our chaperone.”
I was an unlikely emissary to our mother. She missed her darling Ned, often taking to the settee like a scorned lover; if not napping, reading sentimental novels with preposterous plots full of flushed cheeks wet with tears and an excess of exclamation marks. I wanted her to revel, as I did, in our new life, and felt sure, given time, that I could replace Ned in her affections, have some piece of her for myself. The ball might be the very thing to unite us. Our luck turned when spring showed its first tender buds. She had a letter from Ned saying he meant to be home for Whit week, which lifted her spirits considerably.
“Did he write anything of Henry?” I asked.
“Why should you worry about Henry? I’m his mother.”
And so I let my younger brother slip from my mind. It seemed enough that dresses had been made and fitted just right. Mama had her one good necklace repaired, let Everina practice curling her hair, even giggled when her old silk shoes, recruited from a trunk, still fit her.
But there was no escaping Whitsuntide and the truth of our life.
Two weeks before, Henry appeared on our doorstep with his sorry bag of clothes and a letter from the schoolmaster explaining that he’d been deemed “unteachable.” Mama refused to look at him, except to ask after Ned, who’d stopped writing home altogether. I took Henry under my wing, buttered his toast on both sides, the way he liked it, and tried to shield him from Father, who took his ejection from school as an affront to our family’s “good name.” He turned back to hard drinking, a tonic for his own self-loathing, and came home in the wee hours so drunk he couldn’t even climb the stairs. During the day he raged at whoever was in his path, Henry most of all.
Often sick to my stomach, I excused myself from John Arden’s lectures to rush home and steal Henry away to the haven of my favorite oak on the Common, where we were both soothed by my reading to him, even if he hummed while I did. One day I shut the book hard and glared at him while he let a woolly caterpillar inch toward his wrist. He was trying to feed it a leaf.
“Why aren’t you listening, Henry? You never listen.”
“Polygonia c-album, that’s its real name. Just a baby, this one, and he likes the undersides of leaves, but when he grows up, he’ll like the top side.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, my irritation waning.
“I learned it. At school. And their favorite food is hops, but they like stinging nettles too. And some day it will be a butterfly, and fly away.”
Despite my impatience, I was struck by his gentleness, his awe of the natural world.
“I’m sorry, Henry, that Father hurts you.”
“Don’t be sorry, Mary. He’s just sad. Sad-sad-sad.” He was humming again, even misery a song.
Henry was carted off the next day to the charity school, since neither parent could bear the sight of him. I confess I was relieved. He was out of harm’s way for now; maybe he’d learn something, maybe thrive, fly away. The whole household felt the respite from Father’s ire. Even Mama turned back toward planning for the ball: what Ned would wear, which sort of carriage would be called to take us, what time, fashionably, to arrive. It seemed a promising moment to share some intimacy to unite us. I
found her on her favorite settee, gazing dreamily out the window.
“Would you teach me to dance, Mama?” I saw she gripped a letter in her hand. “Then I could teach Eliza too.”
“I am hardly the one to teach you girls to dance.”
“But I saw you, with Ned. Showing him. You knew just what to do.”
“You spied on us?”
“No! Not spying,” I said. “Admiring. How gracefully you moved.”
“Darling Ned,” she sighed. “How I miss him.”
“Yet here am I, Mama,” I said. “Asking you to dance.”
She spun around. Her eyes, I now saw, were red ringed.
“Your brother’s not coming for Whitsuntide.” She tugged on a loose thread where the piping was pulling away from the settee’s edge. “So there will be no ball for the Wollstonecraft women.” She looked right at me. “Not for me, not for you.”
I sat beside her, gingerly taking her hand. “I’m sorry for you, Mama, about Ned. But we can still make our own joy from it.”
I felt her hand go limp.
“If only I could learn to step and twirl half as well as you,” I said. “All the girls at school know how—”
“Then let them teach you.” She shook my hand away from hers, as if my touch were a sullying thing. “Or maybe your friend Jane.”
The way she said it, Jane’s name dripping off her tongue in disgust, made my chest cave. She put her fist under her chin and looked outside again.
“Do you know that I met your father at a ball?”
Love and Fury Page 5