by A. S. Byatt
And yet, to live in a time which has created a climate of such questioning … surely, after all, Herbert Baulk has cause for anxiety. He tells me I should not trouble my intellect with questions which my intuition (which he qualifies as womanly, virtuous, pure and so on and so on) can distinguish to be vain. He tells me I know that my Redeemer liveth, and looks eagerly for my assent to his proposition as though my assent provides him with strength also. Well, I assent. I do assent. I do know that my Redeemer liveth. But I should be grateful on earth if Herbert Baulk could respectably resolve his intellectual doubts so that our prayers could be full of honest praise and robust faith in a watchful Providence, rather than darkly riddling, as at present.
It is late for me to be writing this. I should not work so late if I was not alone—apart from the servants—in the house. I shall shut this book and betake myself to my pillow to fortify myself for the curtain-battle and the questioning of Bertha.
JUNE 6TH
This day brings a letter from Patience, who begs to stay here overnight with her brood, on the way to her seaside summer in Etretat. I must make her welcome—and indeed I shall be more than glad to exchange views and news of many dear ones unfortunately distant. But it is not a good time to receive any visit, with half the furnishings dismantled and a thorough inventory and washing of the china embarked on and not carried through, and some of the chairs under covers, and others being stitched by the useful Mr Beale. He discovered between the arm and the deep cushion of Randolph’s study chair (the green leather tub chair) two guineas, the lost bill for candles which caused such a dispute, and the penwiper presented by the Ladies of St Swithin’s church (and how they could have thought that anyone could have brought himself to sully all that fine work with ink blotches is beyond my comprehension). The chandelier is down and all its crystals are being carefully cleaned and polished. And into this more or less regulated disorder are to rush Enid, George, Arthur and Dora, who are as dangerous to crystal teardrops in their exaggerated carefulness as in any wanton playfulness. And yet they must come, of course. I have written to say so. Shall I retrieve or send away the chandelier? I dine in my study on broth and a slice of bread.
JUNE 7TH
A letter from Randolph. He is well and pursuing his studies profitably. We shall have much to discuss on his return. I have had a sore throat and violent attacks of sneezing—maybe from all the dust aroused by the cleaning efforts—and retired to my couch for the afternoon, behind closed curtains, where I dozed only fitfully, not well. Tomorrow I must rouse myself to receive Patience. Bertha has made up beds for the children in the old Nursery. I have still not asked her if anything ails her—but she is if anything more sullen and more lethargic than she was a week ago.
JUNE 9TH
How fortunate that the Master of this house is absent, for it has in the last twenty-four hours been converted into a veritable Pandemonium. George and Arthur are sturdy little creatures, for which we must always be grateful, and the dear girls—in repose—have an air of great sweetness with their soft pale skins and large unclouded eyes. Patience refers to them as my angels—and so they are, they are, but the city of Pandemonium was peopled by fallen angels, and all four of my exquisite nephews and nieces have a great propensity to fall just where it is most inopportune, dragging down cloths, scattering posies, and in Georgie’s case cannoning, just as I feared, into the china bowl containing the crystal drops from the chandelier which rattled like pebbles underwater. Patience’s nursemaid is not a great disciplinarian though she is excellent and perpetual at kissing and cuddling. Patience smiles benignly and says she declares Grace loves the dear infants truly, which I am sure is the case.
I told Patience she looked blooming, which is not exactly so, but I hope God will forgive me a small white lie. I was a little shocked at the changes in her—a fading of lustre from the hair, a lining of her dear tired face, a loss of that trimness of figure in which she used so to delight. She declares frequently that she is well and happy, but complains also of shortness of breath, lumbar pains, incessant toothaches and headaches, and other insidious ailments which have persisted—strengthened their attack, she says—since her last lying-in. She says Barnabas is the most considerate husband a woman could have, in this situation. He is much occupied with his theological writings—he is not of Herbert Baulk’s persuasion at all—and has hopes, Patience tells me, of a Deanery before too long.
JUNE 10TH
Patience and I have had time for much private conversation, both over dinner and because the bevy of cherubs flew out to Regent’s Park for some air. We had a sharp-sweet reminiscing talk about the old days in the Close, and how we ran in the orchard and dreamed of being women. We talked quite girlishly of old fans and stockings and the pain of oppressive bonnets during long sermons and of the trials dear Mamma must have borne, giving birth to fifteen infants, of whom we four girl children only survived.
Patience with her customary acuteness observed immediately that something ailed Bertha, and made a shrewd guess as to what it might be. I said I should speak to Bertha, and had indeed been waiting for an opportune moment to do so. Patience said it could only harm Bertha and the household if it waited too long. Patience has a strong sense that it is contaminating to continue in the presence of sin. I said I felt we were enjoined to love the sinner, and Patience retorted that this did not entail cohabiting with the visible proof of the sin, unchastised. We remembered Mamma’s fortitude in such situations, and how she felt it to be her duty to inflict chastisement herself on erring young women. I remember one in particular, poor Thyrza Collitt, running screaming from room to room and Mamma whirling after her with upraised arm. I shall never forget that screaming. I shall never beat any servant of mine, and nor, whatever she says, will Patience, though she claims Barnabas believes it to be, in certain judiciously selected circumstances, a salutary proceeding. I do not believe my dearest Randolph would ever consider applying his hand—or anything else—to any young person in our employment. I must ask Bertha to go, before he returns; it is my duty.
JUNE 12TH
My dear husband writes at length; he is well and his researches flourish. I have packed all my descriptions of my busy days into his long letter, which is posted, and have no time nor inclination to note here more than those things which it is not fitting he should be troubled with. There are flaws in two of the crystal teardrops—one large one from the central crown, and a less significant one from the peripheral circle. What shall I do? I am convinced—no, that is unjust—I have a propensity to suspect—that the accidental kicking of the crystal-bath by Arthur and Georgie has shattered these two. I have said nothing to dearest R about these beaverings; I mean to surprise him with a home newly gleaming and radiant. I could attempt to replace the flawed droplets—but am convinced that could never be done in the time and would moreover be costly. I do not like to think of the thing hanging there with these cracks and chasms apparent in its surface.
I have spoken to Bertha. It is as I thought and Patience said. She cannot be brought to say who is the responsible man—but denied strenuously, in a great burst of weeping, that he could possibly be required to take care of her, either by marrying, or in any other way. She expressed no penitence, but also no defiance, asking me only over and over “What can I do?” to which I have no sufficient answer. “It all continues on whatever I will,” she strangely said. I said I should write to her mother, and she pleaded with me not to do so—“It would break her heart and set her obdurately against me forever,” she said. Where will she go? What home can she have? What should I, in Christian charity, do for her? I do not want to trouble Randolph’s work with these matters, and yet am not empowered to do much for Bertha without his assent. There is also the dreadful problem of the replacement to be thought of, with all the fears of drunkenness, theft, breakages and moral corruption which go with such choices. Some ladies I know seek servants far afield and in country places—Cockney knowingness is a thing I find difficult to confront or
command as I should.
Patience says the servant classes are naturally ungrateful, lacking education. At times like this—when they must be encountered and judged and enquired into—I am led to wonder why they do not rather feel hatred? That hatred is what some do feel I am convinced. And I do not see how a true Christian can find a world of master and man to be “natural”—He came even to the least, and perhaps more urgently to the least—to the mean, to the poor—in goods or spirit.
If Randolph were here I could discuss this with him. Perhaps it is as well he is not—it belongs to my sphere of influence and responsibility.
JUNE
Patience and her brood departed this morning for Dover, all smiles and fluttering handkerchiefs. I hope they had a smooth crossing. I hope they enjoy to the full their seaside pleasures. Another letter is come from Randolph, just as they had set off, full (the letter that is) of sea air and breezes and other delightful free forces. London is brassy hot and heavy—I think we may have a storm. It is unnaturally quiet and sultry. I have resolved to consult Herbert Baulk about Bertha. I felt a headache coming on, and a sense of being flustered by the sudden silence and emptiness of my house again. I retired to my room and slept for two hours, waking somewhat refreshed, though with a vestigial headache.
JUNE
Herbert Baulk came and stayed to take tea and talk. I proposed a game of chess—because I thought it might distract him from a too vehement expression of his doubts and certainties, and because I enjoy these miniature campaigns. He was pleased to tell me that I played very well for a lady—I was content to accept this, since I won handsomely.
I asked him about Bertha. He told me of an institution that makes very handsome provision for women in her position to be brought to bed and if at all possible re-established in a useful trade. He said he would inquire if she might be accepted—I was bold enough to engage myself—that is, my dearest Randolph—to contribute to her keep until her lying-in, if that might aid in securing a bed for her. He is told the dormitories are kept spotlessly clean by the exertions of the inmates themselves, and that the food is plain but nourishing, and cooked by the women themselves in the same way.
JUNE
I slept badly and as a result had a strange fragmented dream in which I was playing chess with Herbert Baulk, who had decreed that my Queen could move only one square, as his King did. I knew there was injustice here but could not in my dreaming folly realise that this was to do with the existence of my King who sat rather large and red on the back line and seemed to be incapacitated. I could see the moves She should have made, like errors in a complicated pattern of knitting or lace—but she must only lumpishly shuffle back and forth, one square at a time. Mr Baulk (always in my dream) said calmly, “You see I told you you could not win,” and I saw it was so, but was unreasonably agitated and desirous above all of moving my Queen freely across the diagonals. It is odd, when I think of it, that in chess the female may make the large runs and cross freely in all ways—in life it is much otherwise.
Mr Baulk came again in the afternoon and spoke eloquently and at length about the wickedness of imputing fraudulent motives to the New Testament miracles, most especially that of the resurrection of Lazarus. He said inquiries were going on promisingly as to the institution for Bertha. I have not told her of it, lest her hopes be raised only to be dashed. She goes slowly and dully enough about her work, with a puffed face.
JUNE
A surprise! A small package came, containing a gift from my beloved Randolph, with a poem, all for me. He has been to Whitby, a fishing-town, where, he writes, the local people have a highly-developed art of polishing and carving jet which is cast up on their beaches and made by them into useful buttons and also decorative objects and jewellery. He sends me a most exquisite brooch, carved with a wreath of Roses of Yorkshire—all with their thorny twigs entwined and leafage—it is both artistic and wonderfully truthful. It is blacker than soot, and yet every way you turn its facets, it sparkles with light and a kind of angry energy of its own—one of the qualities of jet is that if rubbed it will attract light bodies, as in animal magnetism. It is a form of lignite, R. writes, obviously delighted with the substance, an organic stone, like coal, of course. I have some jet beads, and have seen many of course, but never any to match this for depth of darkness or brilliance of sheen.
I transcribe his poem here, for it is worth more to me than the lovely gift itself. Despite all We have been so happy in our life together, even our separations contribute to the trust and deep affection that is between us.
I love a paradox and so I send
White Yorkshire roses carved in sombre jet
Their summer frailty fixed here without end
A life in death but not funereal yet
As ancient forests in their black deaths warm
Our modern hearths with primal vanished light
So may our love, safe in your heart from harm
Shine on, when we are grey, and make us bright.
JUNE
Not a good day. I told Bertha she must go, and that Herbert Baulk would arrange for her to be received at the Magdalen Home if she consented to it. She answered me not a word but stared and stared, breathing very heavily, and a dark plum-red in colour, as though she was unable to take in what I was saying. I repeated that Mr Baulk had been very kind, and that she was very fortunate, and all I heard was this fierce sighing or panting breath, somehow filling my little sitting-room. I dismissed her, saying I expected an answer when she had thought over the offer; I should have added that I expected her to be away by the end of next week, but could not. What will become of her?
The mail brought a whole heap of letters of the kind we are increasingly in receipt of—inclosing poems or parts of poems, pressed flowers for his Bible or Shakespeare, requests for autographs, recommendations (impertinent) for his reading, and humble or sometimes peremptory requests for him to read Epic Poems or treatises or even novels, which their authors believe may interest him, or may be helped by his recommendation. I answer those gently enough, wishing them well, and saying how very busy He is—which is quite true. How do they expect him to continue to “astonish and delight” them with “his recondite ideas,” as one put it, if they do not leave him free time to pursue his reading and intricate thought? Among these letters was one requesting an interview with me personally in a matter of great importance, the writer said, to me myself. This too is not unusual—many, especially young women—appeal to me in order to come into close quarters with my dear one. I replied civilly that I did not grant personal interviews to strangers, as too many were requested, but that if the writer had anything very particular to communicate I would beg her in the first instance to write to me with some indication of the matter in question. We shall see if this produces anything or nothing, pertinence, or, as I suspect, something vague and crazed.
JUNE
A worse day. The headache seized me and I lay all day in a darkened bedroom, betwixt asleep and wake. There are many bodily sensations that are indescribable yet immediately recognisable, as is the smell of baking bread or that of metal polish, which could never be conveyed to one who had no previous experience of them. Such is the way in which the preliminary dizziness or vanishing incapacitates the body and intimates the headache to come. It is curiously impossible—once entered into this state—to imagine ever issuing out of it—so that the Patience required to endure it seems to be a total eternal patience. Towards evening it lifted a little.
Another letter from the mysterious and urgent lady. A matter of life and death, she writes. She is well-educated, and if hysterical, not frantically so. I put the letter by, feeling too low in spirits to decide about it. The headache introduces one to a curious twilight deathly world in which life and death seem no great matter.
JUNE
Worse still. Dr Pimlott came and prescribed laudanum, which I found some relief in. During the afternoon there was a hammering at the door, and a distracted Bertha let in a strange
lady who demanded to see me. I was at that time up, and sipping broth. I told her she might come back when I was recovered and she accepted this postponement briskly and nervously. I took more laudanum and went back into my dark room. No writer has written well enough of the Bliss of sleep. Coleridge wrote of the pains of sleep, and Macbeth speaks of a sleep foregone—but not of the bliss of relaxing one’s grip of the world and warmly and motionlessly moving into another. Folded in by curtains, closed in by the warmth of blankets, without weight, it seems—
JUNE