Pugg's Portmanteau

by DM Bryan

  Such a long engagement they had, she and George—and even the wedding service at St. Michael’s seemed endless—but at the end lay the prize: a home for herself and for Lady Barbara. The house sat in Leicester Square, near to the Prince of Wales, upon whom George’s welfare depended. The furniture and its appointments were all chosen by Sarah, and her choices, she knew, disappointed George. He frowned over her economical cream walls and block-printed cotton curtaining windows and beds. He discussed the excellence of fine deep green with the painter, closeting himself with the paper-hanger’s man to find a fabric to exactly match, but in the end, he left to her the final choice in everything.

  The day after the wedding, George presented her with a book: a volume filled with prints by the ingenious Mr. Hogarth, who, he showed her out the window, lived at the other end of the square in the house under the Golden Head. Sarah could not make out the door, nor the signpost above, but she promised herself a walk past. The pictures were, her husband hastened to assure her, of a very moral nature and intended entirely for the improvement of those who looked at them. Sarah would take George at his word, and so she flipped past scenes that might make a more innocent woman blush, finding her faith rewarded: each page contained something to her satisfaction.

  “Look here,” she showed her new husband as they sat together on a settee in the front parlour, “I know this work, A Harlot’s Progress, for it is very famous and improving in all its details. You see how in every print Mr. Hogarth gives his Harlot the same attendant, so that even in her saddest days she might be accompanied by a faithful friend.” She was thinking even then of Barbara.

  “You approve the book?”

  “I do.”

  From where she sits, peach silk covering her lap, Sarah can still see the book, sitting in the handsome mahogany bookcase that is the biggest of the furniture pieces she and Lady Barbara take with them from habitation to habitation. She can distinguish the book’s tan binding from the identical others by a slight fraying at the spine, the product of repeated inspection. The familiarity of each object hums in her head: the bookcase with its glass doors the girl must clean every week; the chairs featuring her own embroidery on the covers; the round table also made of mahogany; the work-stands and boxes; Lady Barbara’s green curtains on the bed; the decorative swags covered with shells and nuts; and on the mantelpiece, the two Meissen figures belonging to Barbara, with the three English copies that are gifts from Sarah.

  Apart from the book of Mr. Hogarth’s prints, none of the objects that filled the Leicester Square house really belonged to Sarah, for all her careful choosing. When she left that house for good, she took almost nothing with her, and she’d bettered Orpheus, taking no backwards glance. Eyes forward, she walked through the hall without pausing. She passed her brother, Morris Robinson, on his way upstairs to dictate the conditions of the separation from George. She passed another brother, the younger Mathew Robinson, who was detailing to the girl those few items that she and Barbara could not leave without. She passed her father, who ushered her through the door of the coach, then clambered in behind, his expression perplexed and angry. In the seat opposite, she found Barbara, waiting patiently.

  As husband and wife, she and George had never, like some couples, gone to sit in each other’s dressing rooms of an evening, reading or working on separate projects. On the night that ended her marriage, Sarah made only the smallest alteration in their accustomed practice in seeking him out. She wished to show him the shell-work vase she’d made as a gift—the natural expression of a wife’s affection for her husband. Carefully, she carried the vase up the stairs, but even with all her caution a little tawny shell detached itself. Nucella lapillus, a common Dog Whelk seashell. She heard it fall upon the wooden tread behind her. From that point, she took tiny, careful steps to the dressing room door, which sat ajar.

  As soon as she entered, she recognized her mistake. George was together with a handsome stranger on his sofa, which was a Chippendale, and which she herself had ordered covered in figured green velvet. The two drew apart as she stood there, but she’d seen enough. Later, she imagined herself dropping the fragile vase, stunned by the impropriety before her, but it was not an impropriety—no, it was something more. Instead, she gripped the shell-work urn firmly, apologized for the intrusion, and returned to the room where Lady Barbara sat.

  “My husband is indisposed,” she said to Barbara, but Barbara came to her and laid her hands upon Sarah’s, looking into Sarah’s face. When the truth came, her friend’s council was quiet, firm, and utterly correct. Together, they wrote her father, so that he would come in the morning with Matthew and Morris. Then they began their vigil.

  She cannot recall which gown she had on that night. She trusts it was not the peach-coloured silk, which in those days she wore with ivory ruffles at her elbows, and with lace at her neck and upon her head.

  Before she met George, Sarah intended never to wed. She had her reasons: the stain of her brother John’s madness; the loss of her sister Elizabeth to Edward Montagu; her own devotion to acts of Christian charity. “I intend to live a very full life,” she’d told George, smiling, “and a husband would only get in my way.” She hoped he would not think her coy, but in truth, she had a disinclination to marry she could not fully explain, even to herself. George only made her a small bow, as though something had been decided between them. What had they said in silence that day? In his refusal to act the ardent lover, she heard him propose a union of the spirit only, without the need for children or other awkward affections. He was not one to underestimate the claims of friendship. Hadn’t he agreed that Lady Barbara should live with them, telling Sarah it was not in his nature to separate those intimates whose highest happiness depended on each other. And in the ten months their household lasted, George Scott proved as good as his word. He showed himself all respectful reserve and attentive disinterest. He never importuned Sarah on any matter—not once. In his way, he’d been exactly the husband she required, delivering on his silent promise. The fault—and the thought distressed Sarah still—lay in her refusal—nay, her inability—to consider that he must have a share in their agreement.

  The night she left Leicester Square, George made but one effort to speak with her. He came down the stairs to the room where she and Lady Barbara waited. “I thought we understood one another,” he said, looking hard at her. Then he asked to speak with her alone, but Lady Barbara would not leave them, and Sarah—hurt, angry, embarrassed—would not second George’s request. Instead, she told him she had sent for her father, that he would come at first light.

  “I thought you knew,” said George. “I thought—”

  “Did you find my shell upon the stair?”

  “A shell?”

  “From a whelk, of a yellow hue.” Sarah pointed to the vase where it sat on a table by the window. “It belongs to the middle section, from a band formed of the same kind.”

  “No,” said George. “I did not see your shell.”

  Sarah sat. She looked at her fingers, at the pale nail beds flushed with pink. George continued to stand before her, his feet spread, his arms behind his back. He wanted her to say something more, but what? So, Sarah said, “Before our wedding Elizabeth wrote me a letter. My sister warned me not to marry you, but I thought her merely jealous.”

  Lady Barbara turned now to Sarah, saying, “Hush. No one speaks of these things.”

  “Sarah,” said George. “Please. Nothing of substance has altered between us—not really.”

  “I said, no one speaks of these things,” said Lady Barbara, her eyes now on George Scott.

  At her words George sat on a hard-backed chair across from Sarah and said nothing more. For a long time, he regarded them, his mouth twisting, dry as an inkless pen. Lady Barbara knelt by Sarah, leading her in prayer whenever she thought it most needful, and Sarah followed as best she could through the buzzing in her head. The fire burned down to s
moking ashes, and no one came to tend it. The servants were all in hiding, and when the room grew chill, Barbara herself rose and poked at the hearth, sending up grey flakes and twists of woollen smoke.

  What could George have done, Sarah wondered? What might he have said instead of “I thought you knew?” Should he have begged forgiveness, quoting St. Paul, “I loveth my wife, but I hate my own flesh?” Should he have torn at his waistcoat, at the fine cloth at his neck, rent his garments, gone to the hearth, smeared cinders on his brow? Certainly, he should never have married. He should never have come home with her brother, engaged her in conversation at table, met her eyes with his, taken her to church and made vows before God. He should not have brought her to this house, made a home for herself and Lady Barbara.

  He should have found her shell, returned it to her, pressing it into her palm. Nucella lapillus. Dog Whelk.

  When Matthew Robinson’s servant at last rapped hard on the front door, George rose and left the room. Through the gap in the curtains, morning light yellowed the shell vase. It was an ugly and unbalanced object, sideways and misshapen. The settlement returned half of Sarah’s portion and provided her with £100 a year, which was as much as George could manage. They would separate but not divorce. Sarah kept her paraphernalia and her clothing, including the peach-coloured silk.

  Now, Sarah finds a side seam, using the scissors from her workbox to divide the panels. The thread she removes is also silk, as strong as wire. She cuts and gently splits the fabric, and then she repeats her actions. In this way, she begins to take apart the skirts of the gown, but the fabric is old and behaves in ways she cannot anticipate. Where she cuts away the thread she also sometimes tears the peach-coloured silk, and the more she tries to be careful the more damage she seems to do. At last she drops the silk gown in her lap and lets her hands fall idly at her sides. The fire is too warm on such an evening, and her glasses slide down the slick sides of her nose. She lets them sit there.

  She has not seen George Scott in years. She does not know why tonight of all nights her mind runs so continually to thoughts of him, unless it is the peach-coloured silk. Or perhaps this evening’s remembrance is of a piece with the other impressions that plague her, that threaten to fill her pages: her smallpox, her sister, her misadventure in the Gardens. Memories flip open then snap closed, with the sharp retort of a book clapped-to. Or the bark of pain in a head.

  “I need a different task,” she says to Barbara. “These alterations hurt my eyes.”

  Meg enters, crossing the room to tend the fire. As she passes, Sarah catches her eye, wipes her brow.

  The window? glances Meg.

  “Yes. Please.”

  Barbara says, “Tell her she must open it only a little, Sarah.” Lady Barbara does not need to look up, her attention directed at her own sewing.

  Sarah holds her hands apart: Only this much.

  Meg opens the window a very little and looks at Sarah for confirmation.

  Yes, says Sarah, feeling the snip of evening air unseam the room. Sarah too begins to come apart. Anger seizes its chance and rolls her eyes. Meg laughs conspiratorially, and Barbara looks up at the sound.

  Sarah speaks only to Meg, saying, I can never tell if she’s fighting with me. If only I had a coin in each palm, I could be certain then.

  But that’s too much eye-talk for Meg to follow. “Mis’ress?” says Meg, out loud, in her rounded voice. Her speech is all river rocks.

  “Nothing,” says Sarah, clicking and clacking like a pair of scissors. “You may go now.” And in a moment, she says to Meg’s back, “Thank you.”

  “She can’t—” says Lady Barbara.

  “I know,” says Sarah. “Don’t tell me.”

  Then they sit, pretending to work, until the clock releases Sarah, and both may go to bed.

  e

  In the morning, Barbara feels her forehead and declares Sarah unwell. She sends her to lie down and rest. Instead, Sarah goes outside to work in the kitchen garden. There, under the heat of the sun, Sarah Scott’s mind becomes a cabbage, green folds and laborious veins. Her thoughts arch and bend, as she searches with her fingers through the spinach and carrots, finding those places where leaves thin and grow translucent.

  Beyond the kitchen garden is a broad flowerbed: rose trees and sweet-briars, pinks, jonquils, hyacinths, primroses, violets, lilies of the valley, polyanthuses, woodbines, and jessamine. The flowers form a girdle, a belt between the house and its accidental visitors. A battleground of pink and yellow, purple and white, where Sarah serves as commander, standing in the dirt with her trowel at her waist. Now she leaves the kitchen garden to review her troops. She can see how the sweet-briar forms a defensive hedge, protection for more delicate pinks, jonquils, and hyacinths. Heliophobic lilies-of-the-valley make their own low shade, throwing a green cover over milky bells. Sun-shy primroses and violets cower alongside. But out in the field, brave woodbines serve out their time, standing alongside a militia of roses, pricks cocked and ready. Sarah imagines the advance, the troops holding the lawn, securing the pasture. When the sun goes down, the flowers will bivouac. Each morning, new buds open, leaves unfurl, and pink sister shelters pink sister.

  Overhead, the sun boils. Sarah squints at the river and thinks she sees a woman scrambling up the steep hill. Then, from around the tent, comes William Hogarth’s Harlot, wearing a rose pinned to her shawl. Her rose says pluck me.

  George told Sarah the harlot’s dishabille was very moral in nature and intended entirely for the improvement of those who gazed upon those plump shoulders, the rounded mounds below. Sarah gazed, but she was not improved.

  George said: I thought you knew. Now comes the Harlot, pleading.

  e

  Indoors, Sarah goes looking for paper. Here, her head is cooler, clearer. Shifting a stack of finely ribbed writing paper, she discovers a scribbled note and recognizes her own handwriting. She reads it and recalls that she wrote this scrap in Chilston, while staying with her cousin Callie Best. A draft of a letter to Elizabeth, it says, “My Dear Sister, I have painted an anemony which I brood over with the affection of a Parent, an ugly rose with nothing but maternal love can make me indure to sight of & I am in labour of a tulip which I cannot be deliver’d of till Monday.”

  In labour of a tulip. An ugly rose. What should she make of her expression of a maternal sentiment in which she must love what she hates, nurture what she longs to destroy? Sarah crumples the note and tosses it on the fire. A quick increase of flame crisps a jonquil into smoke and sends out snapping dandelions that spark and fade.

  On the same table, Sarah Robinson Scott finds her own manuscript pages, abandoned where she’d been working on them. She picks up the top page and reads her own sloping script. Sarah clicks her tongue with involuntary disgust. Her headache pinches like an older sister. Yesterday, how delighted she’d been with her work, but today it gives her no pleasure. In the book that Mr. Newbery now sets into print, she peopled her Millenium Hall with as many females as her sister has dresses. To write it, she wrapped herself in Miss Mancel or clapped on Mrs. Morgan. Sometimes she wore Lady Mary Jones or laced up Mrs. Trentham. She is glad to slip them all off now, to return them to her trunk. The book is with Mr. Newbery, and she is tired of invention. Of disguise. She longs to be herself in the world.

  e

  In the evening, Sarah puts on her eyeglasses and announces to Lady Barbara that she has found a new project: a grand design for a residence for women, where sister will shelter sister. “I teach our girls to sit and quietly sew,” she tells Barbara, “but I would also take us into battle.” Sarah ignores the expression she sees cross Lady Barbara’s face and announces that she will begin by designing a house for Mr. Hogarth’s Harlot.

  “I have every reason,” says she, “to wish to comfort that lady.”

  Drawing with homemade ink upon rag paper, Sarah works by daylight, rush light, and fireli
ght. Her back in a snail’s hunch, she leaves a shining trail behind her that grows thicker with excitement and thinner with time. When a line dwindles completely, she lifts her pen and dips again. In a Delft dish on the table rests a bundle of cut quills, no longer fletched but trimmed down to the tempered shaft. As each pen cracks or clogs and will no longer make inky divisions, Sarah exchanges it for one of its sisters in the dish. Then she bends back to her work, marking and labeling rooms.

  As designed by Sarah, the Harlot’s tiny cottage has a minute entryway with a sitting room to the left and a staircase to the right. Behind the main room is a slope-ceilinged kitchen, with a hearth and a pump in the yard behind. Up the stairs are two cells for sleeping, one whose window gazes forward and one that looks down into the garden. This pleases Sarah, and she lifts her pen a while to dream of the cloud of blue jasmine that explodes over the portico, visible through rippled glass. Dipping her pen again, she adds a vegetable garden with rows of cabbages and carrots, cucumbers in a frame. Then she returns to the cottage, drawing squares and circles. She sets two round chairs before the oblong hearth, one seat for the Harlot and the other for her servant, the frowzy madam of Mr. Hogarth’s print. She intends that the women might sit together of an evening, sharing a pipe, or discussing contrition, reformation, and the wonderful workings of providence. How fine that sounds, thinks Sarah. Providence Hall. Penitence House. Magdalene Cottage.

  Sarah’s pen clogs, and then the tiny dam of ink breaks. A blot forms at nib-tip. A black flower blooms, glossy and irregular. Sarah sniffs, smells gammon reheating in a three-footed pan over a fire. A potage of leeks and potatoes from the garden. Whigs dripping with butter and tasting of cardamom. The ink wicks into her lawn sleeve, stains her wrist. Sarah, pockmarked Sarah, feels elegant.