Between Ourselves

by Donald Smith

  Keep a good heart, Sylvander, the eternity of your lone sufferings will be ended soon. By what means though, madam, by whose gentle ministrations? Compose yourself to rest. Sweet sleep attend us both, lest we toss and turn on the unhavened, unshriven sea.

  Disturbed night. Trust this is not an early sign of old troubles. I read Clarinda’s Life with sympathy and admiration. She is no plaything but a woman of spirit and resource – a true friend for the poet and perhaps an unequalled lover. As she herself describes it, one who combines the companion, the friend and the mistress.

  I never met with a woman like this before, with one honoured exception. Her name is indelibly written in my heart’s core, and not for a second would I allow selfish gratification to stain or tarnish her image. Clarinda has been puzzling her brain about who that one might be. Peggy Chalmers is worthy of a place in the same bosom, the same embrace, as my Clarinda. That is the highest compliment I can pay to each.

  Had a strange dream last night in the twilight betwixt sleep and waking. A great golden eagle wheeled and swooped in the sunlit sky. Nestling in a bush was a white breasted turtle dove. I looked on transfixed as the talons descended, then at the last reached out my hand. The warm-hearted bosom throbbed in my cupped palm and I awoke.

  Taking another batch of songs up to Johnson. The Muse was moved by my gleaning of Highland airs. Might tender emotion still revive the poet?

  Musing on the roaring ocean

  Which divides my love and me,

  Wearying heaven in warm devotion

  For her weal where’er she be

  Hope and Fear’s alternate billow

  Yielding late to nature’s law

  Whispering spirits round my pillow

  Talk of her that’s far awa.

  Will Johnson notice this new inspiration? Will Clarinda?

  Watched out for my fair one promenading in the Square, the boys at her side. But Clarinda does not look to the right storey for a poet’s lodging – ‘where speculation roosted near the sky’.

  Met up with Bob and Willie. Bit by bit all the old Crochallan fellowship came ben till there was a full rattlin roarin night. Toasts and songs intertwined so I gave out some of my new verses, turning bardic on the instant.

  Landlady count the lawin

  The day is near the dawin

  Ye’re aa blind drunk bots

  And I’m jolly fou.

  I’ll set it with a couple more verses to ‘Hey Tutti Tati’, with a chorus it will please the general. But not the poor poet wha is nae fou but hertsair. What has Edinburgh left for me? German Geordie’s Excise, and her fair head on a distant pillow.

  Gentle night do thou befriend me

  Downy sleep the curtain draw

  Spirits kind again attend me.

  Unable to rise this morning. Blood pounding, fiery bands of pain tight around head and chest. I tried to lie still and calm but a cold sweat of fear gathered on my brow. Thank God for Betty and her soothing cloot. She brought up some foul concoction that immediately eased the rack.

  I lay drained of strength as if my night had been spent in combat rather than slumber. But my mind raced ahead down well-worn paths. What if I could not recover my dues from Creech? What if Miller could wait no longer for an answer about his farm? If Mossgiel fails? If my Excise Commission is spurned like my Dundas poem? My mother, Gilbert, and the surviving bairns turned onto the road or in a debtors’ jail? What would happen to Jean and her unborn babe? I might die here and join Fergusson in the unforgiving clay.

  There at least I would know peace.

  Terror threatened to drive me up and out into the open air, but my limbs were dead to feeling. Gradually my devils subsided. I may have dozed. By lunchtime I was able to take some gruel; the crisis had passed. Even in this kind house, some will ascribe my perturbation to the effects of wine. But yesterday, despite convivial company, I drank barely a bottle across the full extent. Something else undermines my constitution, and always has since I followed the plough.

  Three letters arrived before supper.

  The Excise acknowledging my application, courteous yet non-committal. Miller, genial but urging a final visit to decide on Ellisland. And Clarinda.

  What did I say or do to draw this frank rebuttal? What I said in my last letter only the gods of fuddling sociability can answer. My good star was partly on the horizon, but then this evil planet which has shed its baleful rays on my head most of my life came to its zenith. And I blabbed something in spite of myself. How I could curse circumstances and the coarse ties of human law which bar the happiness that love and honour otherwise warrant. God spare me any more hairbreadth escapes.

  My ‘ravings’ and ‘ambiguous remarks’ Clarinda repudiates with a direct warning: take care lest virtue demands even friendship as a sacrifice. Why accuse human law when she can gain nothing from its breach? At present her children are provided for; in the other case she becomes dependent on the bounty of a friend.

  This is an open hint of Cousin Craig’s support, kind in substantials but without feelings of romance. Is that really how she sees his solicitudes? Yet who would protect her in the face of worldly condemnation and derision? Would a Sylvander – son of whim and fancy – have the courage? And would not ruin be the consequence? Would a former lover speak for Mrs McLehose? But how could she accept one who was not dearer to her than all the world? So run Clarinda’s own hectic fears.

  And her conclusion? Clarinda must commit all into the hands of God since she has no power to dispose of herself. So the wheel turns irrevocably back to divinity. Let us discourse, Sylvander, on the religion of the bosom. To hell with that, lay hands instead on the bare-breasted idols of the goddess.

  But see, she anticipated my every thought. She knows and feels. She figures me in a state of celibacy, while wishing me happily married since I cannot thrive without a tender attachment. She screws me to the maddening pinpoint of desire, and then denies that very attachment. Farewell, Sylvander, be wise, be prudent, be happy? I appeal before the throne of love, is this benevolence or witchery?

  Tomorrow I will have this out with her or break off for good. Now I am fit for nothing but Betty’s warm milk and sops.

  Today I believe the game became deadly serious. Nancy McLehose has entered my soul and I must record events with special care since the clues or hopes of my future happiness have been sown in these hours. It feels as if I have lived three days since I rose, recovered and resolute.

  First I dashed off a strong reply to Clarinda’s letter. Thoughts on religion are to be welcomed but let us at all costs avoid controversial divinity. Where we fondly love we should not reproach. As Bolingbroke said to Swift, ‘Adieu, my dear Swift, with all thy faults I love thee entirely: make an effort to love me with all mine’. A glorious sentiment without which there can be no true friendship.

  This went off by messenger before eleven, with the promise that by the middle of the coming week I would be able to walk to Potterrow. Before the hour, a tearstained epistle flew back, the messenger held till she could compose her reply. She could not bear the grief of offending me. Everything she wrote had been bathed in affection and esteem, but for whatever thought or word had inflicted hurt she begged forgiveness. Had her freedom of expression, meant in sincere friendship, been unpardonable? Then, heaven help her, she would accept my sentence of dismissal.

  This was overwrought, yet opened up the springs of feeling. Keeping the messenger again, I responded immediately. Offend me, my dearest angel, you cannot offend; you never offended me. If you had ever given me the least shadow of offence, so pardon me, my God, as I forgive without reservation or constraint.

  I was expecting Nicol for tea, or else I would have taken a chair then and there. Instead I sent my letter as foretaste and pledge of my arrival at eight o’clock. As it was I became unsettled and impatient. Nicol did his best to damp my fires with scathing asides but I was deaf to his mordant observations. Finally my leg was bent into the sedan and I was on my way to General’
s Entry, jogged along by the sure footfall of the cadies.

  My welcome was warm and tearful, her face newly cleansed. Emotion bubbled near the surface. The boys were settled in the backroom, Clarinda drew me to the fireside. The discourse of our letters passed into conversation without any artificial barrier. Such was the benevolent effect of the day’s contrary passages.

  As we smoothed out the tangles and filled in the gaps of understanding, I took her hand across the hearthside. We seemed made to share our innermost thoughts. I moved my seat closer to hers. Then the floodgates burst. The loneliness and cruelty of her situation welled up beyond restraint. To have such capacity for love and be denied outlet. Every natural tie hemmed in or broken by death and narrow obligation. Dependence on the charity of those who could snuff out her fragile independence at will. Subjugation to convention and the mores of drawing rooms to which her own access was severely limited.

  These were denials and humiliations written on my own soul from birth, and my heart overflowed in sympathy. Her head lay gently on my shoulder. I put my arm around her till the sobs and tears subsided into soulful peace.

  After the storm blows out its passions, profound calm. How long we sat there. I inhaled her yielding softness through every pore. I rested in her ample warmth, the rise and fall of neck, shoulder, breast. But I dared not move lest I dispelled the charm which had beguiled us with this moment. Eventually, as if by unspoken mutual consent, we drew apart to let the silence settle between us. What more to say? We had shared all by intuition. The hours had flown. The chair was called, our evening ended. The curtain closes on reconciliation of the lovers, harmony of the spheres. For now at least.

  I came straight home reluctant to mar the spell, yet eager to recall the day in all its fullness. For once I am content to surrender all into the hands of a loving God. Is this what stern believers call regeneration, to be born again? If so, then Saul has been changed to Paul. I have been called from the old Adam to a new creation.

  Slept deeply. Woke still buoyed by the yesterday evening’s transport of souls.

  Limped round to Miers and arranged to have Clarinda’s profile done. Once the silhouette is obtained from the life, he can make a card, locket or a breastpin. From the studio I sent round one of mine with a card, asking her to sit for Miers so that we could make a true exchange.

  Called in at Johnson’s to find work proceeding merrily for Volume Two. Nothing further is needed from me except to proof the sheets when they are ready.

  Returned home to find a want of communication from Potterrow. Dozed placidly in the content of my newfound highmindedness.

  Nicol called in – why so suddenly assiduous? – but I refused his company in the name of an aching leg. The pain was true but the place is my heart and not my limb.

  Supper came and went still with no letter. Then a messenger was announced and my spirits danced. It was some cursed versifier offering me his first effusions: prose run mad without a syllable of poetry.

  Eventually I sat down and wrote another missive to Clarinda, asking to meet again before I had to leave Edinburgh – Saturday or sooner if at all possible. Seasoned it with some apt quotations.

  I like to have quotations suitable to every occasion; they give one’s ideas so pat and save the bother of finding a correct expression for all one’s feelings. One of the few compensations of poetic gifts is this ability to render sorrows, joys and loves in a ready compact form. A small kindness that the Muse can bestow.

  Thou source of all my bliss and all my woe

  Who found me poor at first, and keeps me so

  What in all damnation is the matter with Clarinda?

  Morning brings neither news nor respite. Very lackadaisical but pulled myself up to face the day.

  Wrote first to Miller assuring him of an early visit to settle the farm business. No sooner penned, than I was driven out to enquire from Nimmo about the Commission. He has heard nothing yet from his superiors but expects they will write directly to the applicant, by which he means poor benighted me – an applicant!

  Paid a few social calls leaving copies of my Elegy wherever I felt it proper. Who knows which of these Edinburgh worthies knows someone on the Excise Board.

  Returned to a late bowl of soup and stretched out my leg on a cushion. Clarinda continued dumb – was she in some distress? An unbearable contemplation. I took up her life story and perused it once more.

  How unjust it is that this exceptional woman should be shackled to the very man who has failed her so miserably. Is this not a form of slavery? How desperately she craves another mainstay, beyond the crabbed and grudging prop offered by society. I would be the one but as it is I cannot. Even Romeo and Juliet were less blighted in their amours than Sylvander and Clarinda. Perhaps McLehose will die in the Indies – he deserves little better – and my lovely woman will hold freedom in her hands again.

  Desultory afternoon, so flicked through the pages of Amelia, borrowed on Clarinda’s recommendation. They would get on well, Bob and Nancy. Both aspire to be free spirits but have respectability bred in their bones. For all his philandering, Booth is preferred by Clarinda over a brutal yet constant husband, so acutely alive is her sensibility to kindness and unkindness. This is McLehose’s education. Brooding as I was on Clarinda’s situation, a messenger finally appeared from Potterrow to match my musings.

  There are things in this letter I shall treasure to my dying breath: Few such evenings, Sylvander, fall to the lot of humankind, and few are formed to relish the exquisite pleasure. You saw Clarinda behind the scenes, and I have met few of your sex who understand delicacy in these circumstances. Oh my friend, I wish ardently to maintain your esteem. Our last interview has raised you high in mine.

  This praise unmans me and disowns the lover’s part. That our mutual enjoyment did not lead beyond virtue’s limits gives Clarinda satisfaction, while still regretting the pain our intimacy might give a friend to whom she is bound by ties of gratitude – so, no more. As if Cousin Craig would be peeping in at a first floor window! In the end it comes down, or up, to Heaven’s approval, or at least to misgivings that Heaven does not approve. Even I, it seems, may not approve of what I saw behind the scenes, my glimpses of an uncontrolled sensibility.

  Can she not see it is that overflowing generosity, that natural abundance which delights the poet, and that I desire nothing more than its unreserved expression? Why does she wound my feelings by suggesting that our commingling of tender emotion would lessen my opinion of her? My dear, beloved Clarinda, behind the scenes I saw a bosom glowing with benevolence and honour; a mind ennobled and informed by education, exalted by natural religion; a heart formed for all the glorious meltings of which our universe is capable: friendship, love and pity. These are the perceptions I must pour out before her feet till I convince her ’tis an immortal soul that I desire and not the relish of carnal intercourse.

  Unfortunately, she clogs up her letter with some affront she suffered between sermons at Lady Someone’s dull luncheon attended by fourteen dolts. These are the rubs we daily encounter in society; soul-commerce is above such mundane stuff. God desires for each of us the inviolate principles of love and amity, the fruits of true religion, not the oafish and mercenary strictures of convention. How can she believe otherwise of a divine creator? Why be dragged down to the idiot level?

  When can we meet again, and how soon must we part, Clarinda? I have lost so much by not knowing you sooner, and fear, fear that our acquaintance is too short to make the lasting impression on your heart that I would wish.

  Sleep was now impossible, so I wrestled to engraft my sentiments into a letter which would sear Clarinda’s soul, and raise her to complete consciousness of my love.

  A brisk, sharp sky after the haar and rains. Prepared further copies of the Dundas screed for circulation to Edinburgh notables – a good day to stretch the gammy leg by calling round in person. I devised a standard cover:

  I enclose you some verses I made on the loss, I am afraid i
rreparable loss, our Country sustains on the death of the late Lord President. Little new can be said at the time of day in Elegy but the Tribute of the Muse…

  Self-deprecating and tastefully obsequious, as only the poet can be.

  Ambled up to the Luckenbooths to call on Creech and attend his levee. Conceive my surprise when I am hailed as a long-lost brother, and assured my affairs are near to settlement. ‘The Edition is selling comfortably, Mr Burns, very comfortably. We must conclude accounts, sir, conclude accounts.’ All as if I were the impediment to early conclusion!

  Is this the harbinger or another false dawn? I remained phlegmatic. God knows, I must press home my advantage.

  Returned home to an acquiescent letter from Clarinda. My last to her was like a key on her pillow; what might this key unlock? An apology at least for being too satiric, too tart an observer. More importantly, a definite assignation for Friday evening, when she will be at home without maid or children. I am to come to tea if I please; but eight will be an hour less liable to intrusions. Also, come by foot. Sedan chairs attract attention. At some later hour a chair home will escape notice.

  As for lasting impressions she issues another warning: watch out lest in the tender department she proves half as much a fool as I. This gives me as much as I could possibly hope, and the promise of more. I feel that my open declaration, raising up the spiritual connection, has undermined the stern walls between us. Such are the fruits of honest passion.

  Hastened up to Dowie’s to celebrate the day’s double tidings. A genial company gathered round me and time flew by with songs and clatter till at some point, I did not mark the hour, a fellow slipped into the gathering and whispered in my ear, ‘The Deacon would like to see you.’ ‘Tonight?’ ‘Aye, the nicht.’ Amenably but without haste I finished my wine, and wishing everyone God speed, slipped out into the dark and followed the summoner down to the Cowgate and the subterranean depths of Hastie’s Close.

  Your blank page stares at me like an accusation. I am strangely reluctant to set down a narrative of last night’s encounter. What if a stranger were to scan these pages without my knowledge? Or is it shame? God damn your leering emptiness.