The birds are wild with delight outside my window and my cousin will return shortly to take me to dine. Oh, my dear girl!—I am landed and in a passion of new hope and so much closer to you, my darling.
I am resolved to put all my energies into the present and thus forget the past.
I embrace you in your Italy, cara mia.
Emily xxx
MISS AUGUSTA DEAN
HOTEL D’ANGLETERRE, ROME
MAYFAIR
April———, 1862
My dearest Friend,
My first letter—and from you! A thousand thanks. I look at it here beside me as I write.
You are perfectly right, nothing prepares one for the shock, or the distance of the crossing, and everything appears very small and very bright, like a miniature. What surprises me is how much building is going on in the city—such tremendous noise and upheaval—and the size of it; I can feel it like a living thing. And I have never seen so many houses in my life! I had thought because it was the Old World it would be like a living museum: Pompeii with crinolines in it, not this seething jumble on such an enormous scale. I am obviously far more ignorant and foolish than even I realized.
It is also so extraordinary the way the people seem to take it for granted that they live here and do not stand and gawp as I do. But in truth, I find I can do anything on the streets of this city and it feels as if no one would notice: there is so much speed of life and I am joyously inconspicuous.
William and I have taken the first of what are intended to be our weekly dinners together. I was wild to visit the Café Royal or Simpsons, but it is not considered respectable for a lady to sit in a public room, so I could only observe as much as I could of the dining room he took me to, quickly, before being led into a separate chamber at the back of the establishment. We talked all about the city: he took great pains to advise me to see Old London—the Tower and the Inns of Court, and especially St. Paul’s Cathedral—and to oblige him, and please myself, I did. I have to admit that its majesty is quite beyond anything I could have imagined, the curve of space so different from the narrow arches of the city’s churches and even the grandeur of the Abbey. It bred in me the absolute conviction of my insignificance, which, I am sure, is exactly its intention.
It cannot approach your St. Paul’s at Rome, I don’t doubt, but I was moved, and begin to understand that these English are explorers, setting forth and stealing what they can over the centuries to adorn their little island and make it prosperous. I have a great liking and admiration for that spirit—our own grows from it—the endeavor, or greed, call it what you will. Of course, I see the marble monument to it all and not the bloodshed. But that is culture, is it not—built on blood?
Today is my birthday. Like you, I am all of twenty. I spent the morning wandering along the corridors and through the rooms of the National Gallery, attracting not a little notice for being quite alone. I am becoming quite practiced in pretending I am unaware of this. This visit has become quite a habit of mine every morning for the last week, partly for the pleasure of it but also to impose order on my empty days. I feel I can safely confide in you that I had had no idea William would leave me quite so free. But I suppose it is what I wanted. It is not that I am lonesome; it is merely that I am alone, without anybody to fight against. He has made it clear that while we inhabit the same city we do not travel together. There is so much he seeks to accomplish here, and when he is not pursuing his business he is at his work.
It is Easter and the schools are closed, so my resolution to do nothing but absorb myself in work from the moment of my arrival has been disappointed. I could walk into the Ritz and take a glass of champagne in the middle of the day, if I chose, eat a soufflé and look at the Green Park. You know I am being nonsensical, and I understand full well it would be scandalous, but who need care should I provoke a scandal? I am unknown here. I suppose it would not do for William to be associated with so wild a young lady, but then he knows full well what I am. I do not seek to marry and neither, I think, does he. And in any case he has left me very much to my own devices, which I suppose I should be accustomed to. He was much the same in Boston. And I think his determination that we should not share an establishment in London means that he closely guards his habits and the careful arrangement of his day. He certainly does not intend to allow me to spoil them!
For my part, I merely wish to pursue my studies and feel this city. I do not pursue happiness. I have quite given it up. It is a specific yet vague end, and I am sometimes frightened. I haunt bookshops and coffee houses and walk long distances with the park to one side and the streets on the other. In my short time here I have neither been robbed nor accosted, but I have already seen sights my uncle would be appalled to have me know about: women with painted faces and gaudy clothes and too many children in rags.
But to return to the scene in the Gallery. All these pictures crowded my head, so I decided to make it my business to make a study of just one, as a present to myself. Also, because I have noticed crowds of young ladies making fair copies of masterpieces—albeit under watchful female eyes—I felt I might be less conspicuous while happily absorbed as they were. It is the perfect way to learn what I can—indeed, what I must. The light is not good and I think many of the pictures need cleaning. But they do overwhelm me so, Augusta, you can only imagine.
It felt irreverent to sit before such greatness, so I was standing, copying a Giorgione Madonna and Child. The tenderness—but you must have seen many similar, my dear, I keep forgetting.
I was finding it hard to concentrate in so public a place because my efforts felt so poor and sometimes it is impossible to leave myself aside as I would wish, when I noticed a tall person regarding me from some distance away. He was dressed as a gentleman, in a distinguished manner—so exquisitely, in fact, that it was evident he took pride in his appearance. He must be of the fashionable world. He looked at me quite pointedly, and while I noticed this I turned my head away and did not meet his eye, continuing my study of the Giorgione. He must have known as well as I that I could no longer draw, and found myself blushing. Such pointed attention in a public place is extremely impolite. Then I heard footsteps and felt he had left the room, and then it was only myself and two elderly whispering ladies remaining. After an anxious glance about me I felt more equipped to work. Gentlemen should not stare so at ladies. (I fear I sound very prudish!)
As I was quitting the room, passing through another gallery crammed with the work of the Renaissance masters, I saw him standing in front of the glorious Titian Bacchus and Ariadne. If that blue sky is the color of the air in the Mediterranean I must see it for myself before I die—and the leopards: such vitality and grace, yet I wanted to stroke them the way I used to make a fuss of the cat at school. I paused, because of the picture, and he turned quite deliberately to meet me and said slowly and distinctly, “How do you do?,” as if we had just been introduced. I was so startled that I replied, “How do you do?” His eyes were a kind of golden-brown, a russet, most unusual color, but his hair and mustache were dark. I blushed horribly and said, “Are you in the habit of addressing strange young women in public places?,” wondering why I had not merely nodded and passed on or ignored him altogether. “Only when they are as unusual and beautiful as you are,” he said. Can you believe that is what he said, Augusta? To me?! And I smiled, I could not help it—it all seemed like the most enormous joke. “You are very frivolous,” I replied. “Not in the least,” he said. “I am utterly sincere. Might I introduce myself?” But he did not come any closer. “No, you had better not,” I said, and moved away, very heart-beating, very breathless.
It was all of little consequence, but I remember his face quite clearly: good cheekbones, fine brows, an intelligent, amused face—very English—a portrait face. Am I so starved of company that a few ill-judged words with a stranger appear significant? I fear the answer is yes. It was just it being today of all days—that stranger talking to me on my birthday, looking at me—I was cha
rmed, while still feeling not a little afraid.
My dear friend, I ache to see you and come to know your little salon and circle and I have taken your invitation to heart and in the spirit that it is meant. But I cannot conceive of another journey at present, and especially not alone. I must content myself with imagining your sweet face, this Mr. Harper you so fondly describe to me and your now-doting papa, and be glad for you. Please write to me as soon as he proposes! I do not think it will be long now. If he delays, he does not deserve you!
Love always,
Emily
Their third weekly dinner and precisely the third time Emily had seen her cousin. The formality of the occasion had already been established and was entirely English: the same private room, the same elaborate service, William’s restrained air of patient interest. At the end of the evening he was already in the habit of handing her weekly allowance to her silently, as if in payment for her company.
Conversation faltered; she had something on her mind to say, and was distracted. It was difficult to approach, her subject: this sense of lack between them—habitual, but broken a sufficient number of times in the past; a gleam of light in the clouds, to make her hope for a more permanent change in the weather.
They had finished their first course and the plates had been cleared away. “William, I had hoped … to have enjoyed a little more of your company here in London. In the spirit of our joint adventure.” She tried to make the remark sound light, based on an intellectual idea, the thing most beloved to him, and not a feeling, never the shame of a lonely feeling. And she smiled.
If it betrayed anything his face showed only mild surprise. “You are my kite—I have to let you fly into the sky so that I can observe you.”
And tug me back to you on a whim, she wanted to say, but did not.
He put his head slightly to one side. It made him look like a maiden aunt. “Don’t tell me the winds are proving too unpredictable for you?”
Again words bubbled up that she had to swallow. She wanted to say that the joy of flying a kite was both precise and chaotic, a partnership only partly dependent on the touch of the hand on the string.
“I see no need to prolong the analogy, William,” she said, more sharply than she had intended, for she was hurt. “I have understood you perfectly.”
He smiled without a hint of malice, then added in a lower, more disarming tone, “The social climate of this country is not all that conducive, even for your … faithful cousin.” (He appeared almost to fumble for a word to describe himself and she was relieved he did not pronounce himself humble. Humble was the last thing he would ever be.) “Besides, the wheels here turn slowly, and I have my own way to make. I have always worked alone.” He looked directly into her eyes but she did not feel an exchange of feeling, rather the sense of exclusion increased.
“Please. Let us forget this,” she said hurriedly, embarrassed. “I merely expressed surprise not to have seen you more often or made any acquaintance.”
But he would not leave it. He insisted himself upon her weakness. “Only very lately have I begun to gain entry into proper society. Americans begin here always by being purely an oddity—the first time I came to this country I was passed from hand to hand like a performing animal—and only more recently has my reputation grown, my discretion found to be reliable, and people are beginning to suspect I might indeed be a man of—gravity.”
“And such a man does not arrive on the doorstep of the aristocracy with a young, ignorant, tactless girl—” she burst out, because her heart had begun to ache despite the pressure she put upon herself to disguise it.
He said nothing.
“But what about other artists? The Bohemians? Do you not share their society?” She knew she was pushing too hard, wanting too much, even if it were only understanding.
“Emily, so-called Bohemians do not interest me. Why should I trouble to record the lives of the second- rate and self-aggrandizing? Nor should you concern yourself with them. I will not have you sink to any form of squalor.”
Emily laughed. And how can you talk of self-aggrandizement, she wanted to say, quickly, in temper, but did not have the stomach for it. He would quarrel with her for it, it was a certainty.
“I’m sorry, William, I—” Why did she always end up apologizing, feeling in the wrong?
“Besides,” he continued in a reasonable, compassionate voice, “you will do well. You will work hard. I understand term has commenced. I shall take you to register at the school by and by. You are not afraid of a little loneliness, I imagine? Life cannot always be parties and necklaces and soldiers longing to marry you.”
“That was unkind of you, William.”
“Beware vanity, my dear. That is all I meant.”
The waiter brought her main course, but she was no longer hungry. She craved the quiet of her rooms.
MISS EMILY HUDSON
C/O MRS. C. DENHAM
———SQUARE, SW
CARLTON CLUB, SW
April 27th, 1862
My dear Emily,
Please be so good as to pack a reticule for a two nights’ stay at the house of some friends of mine outside the city.
I shall call for you at two o’clock on Friday.
Let us hope that the company proves satisfactory to you.
Yours truly,
William
ELEVEN
Iam going to give you the benefit of your first taste of fresh air, Cousin,” said William as they bowled along beneath the blossoming trees. “This city has the most unspeakable stench to it.”
Emily laughed. “I am beginning to become accustomed to it. I see now why a lady must carry a handkerchief and smelling salts wherever she goes.”
“Are you not curious as to our destination?”
“Always. But I know you will tell me when you see fit.”
“We shall stay with some acquaintances who keep a country house on the river at Richmond, convenient for Saturdays to Mondays. It is not true, deep countryside, with gamekeepers and foxes and all things to delight the Anglophile, but it is pretty and picturesque. Very pleasant river walks are to be had.”
“I am suddenly rather nervous.”
“My dear, I know them only slightly, but they are good people and their manners are perfect.”
Emily exclaimed with delight at the house: like a dolls’ house of mellow brick with a double staircase to the front in the Italianate style— formal, gentle, weathered, welcoming; in detail and proportion so unlike the imitations built back home which she now understood to be considerably coarser.
They were shown into the corner drawing room that had long windows in two walls giving on to the gardens at the side and back of the house. She had an impression of faded colors, velvets, tapestries, colors brown and gold and rose. It was a deliciously high room; she could not help tilting her head to examine the painted ceiling.
“Miss Trelawney—Caroline—this is my cousin, Miss Emily Hudson,” said William, surprising her with his pride.
“I am delighted to make your acquaintance.” Miss Trelawney was a tall young woman with upright posture and easy manners. “I have been beginning to drown in intellectual gentlemen.” Her cool, ironic tone was nonetheless cordial, a particularly English characteristic, Emily thought. “Allow me to introduce you to my brother, Mr. Thomas Trelawney.”
He too came toward her, a brown- haired young gentleman, pleasant, distracted, kind. “I have the misfortune also to call myself a man of letters,” he said, “but I am merely a dabbler, not a great man in the making, as I am certain your cousin is.”
“You flatter me, Trelawney,” said William, looking gratified, and a look almost of affection passed between them.
“And allow me to present my editor, Mr. Fowler,” said William, and an older, rather ferret-faced gentleman approached, smiling and bowing.
“Only one of your editors,” he replied. “You spread yourself alarmingly thin.”
“That shall not always be the case
. I must concentrate on more than stories or I shall not be satisfied,” said William.
“Indeed, you must, my dear fellow, or neither shall your readers,” said Trelawney. “We positively require a novel.”
“Thank you for having me in your home.” Emily spoke to Miss Trelawney, smiling and extending her hand.
Mr. Fowler said, “Why do Americans always do that? Thank one before they have taken so much as a glass of water?”
“Do not be so impolite, George,” said Caroline Trelawney in a manner that pleased Emily for being forthright and in charge. “There are two of our American guests with us now.” A look of sympathy passed between the women.
“We were about to take tea, Miss Hudson,” she continued, and as the trolley came in, Emily glanced across the room and saw a tall figure standing at the far window who had not turned around at their arrival. “That appallingly ill-mannered fellow over there,” Miss Trelawney said, “is our dear friend Lord Firle—like all aristocrats, born without manners.” This last remark was directed pointedly at the gentleman and was easy and teasing, as if born of long friendship.
Emily did not need to see his face before recognizing him immediately as the gentleman from the Gallery. She felt a stain of acute embarrassment suffuse her face and neck.
Turning, he smiled and came toward her at a leisurely pace. “I believe I have had the pleasure before,” he said, looking only at Emily, who could say nothing.
William glanced at his cousin sharply as she nodded slightly in acknowledgment, observing the look with awakened concentration. “Indeed?” he said.
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