The Volcano Lover

by Susan Sontag

  I suppose he might be described as selfish. It is not easy for me to say this. As soon as I begin to find fault with him, I recall how a man of his background is reared to view his pleasures and obligations, and how a man of his temperament would seek to lose himself in them, in all the variety of their claims on his attention, and my old fondness rises up to obscure my sense of grievance. I know he was capable of unease, for he often held forth on the subject of felicity. When I heard him sigh, I could bear anything.

  I suppose I must allow that he was cynical. He would have scorned as women’s foolishness the notion that in this brazen, prearranged world one could comport oneself otherwise. Perhaps I must even allow that he could be cruel, for I suppose it might be said he was not a man of tender feelings. You may reply, he was a man, and tender feelings are the domain of the weaker sex, which is spared the battle with adversity. But I do not believe this to be true. Our undefended sex, the greatest number among us, meet adversity in as unprotected a form as does any man. And there are many men of tender hearts, I am sure, although I have met only one, my own dear father.

  A woman is first a daughter, then half of a couple. I am described, I describe myself, first of all, as one who was married to him. He would not be described, first, as married to me, though he is most often remembered—unusual destiny for a man—as the one who was married to his second wife.

  He disliked my leaving him. The grief that I felt, during my last illness, is unutterable. And I knew he would miss me more than he anticipated. I hoped he would remarry. I imagined he would marry a respectable widow a little younger than himself, not necessarily with fortune, who loved music. And he would think fondly of me. We women cannot imagine how different from us men are. There is something imperative men feel, which makes even the finest of them prone to lewd and indecent conduct. He loved me, as much as he was capable of loving anyone, and then he truly loved a woman who was as unlike me as one could be. But it often happens that the good wife, marooned with the desiccating virtues she has cultivated in order to be beyond reproach, is abandoned for a woman who is livelier, younger, more distracting. At least I was spared that common indignity, the indignity suffered by the wife of the man who captured the love of my husband’s second wife. I had all that my husband could give to someone like me.

  I regret that I could not help desiring more from him. If he left me alone too much, and was more entertained by himself than by me when we were together, who behaves otherwise to a wife? Did I expect the fervor he might show a mistress? It seems unchristian of me to reproach him for not being what he could not be.

  I should be able to imagine a life without him, but I cannot. If I even imagine that he might have died before I did, my mind darkens. We never lived separately. I had the pleasure of seeing him near and far in many brilliant rooms, in which he was ever the most radiant presence of all, and I had his picture to gaze at when he was called away, a small painting of no great distinction to which I was greatly attached. It was this picture which I bore on my body into the tomb.

  2

  I’m her mother. You know who I mean: her mother. Many has always taken me for her ladyship’s maid. I know how to hang back. But I am her mother.

  In a church I was married to old Lyon the blacksmith, her father, who perished of fever two months after my darling was born. As he was Mary’s only husband, she was Mary’s only child, so you can imagine how fond this Mary was. Furthermore I was still young and fair-looking and had ideas above my station, so folk in the village was always telling me. It must be she inherited some of her boldness from me, we’re very resembling, almost like sisters. I was only happy when I was with her. We always were.

  I did go first up to London, following my heart, it was Joe Hart the brewer, as soon as she went into service as a nursemaid to Mrs. Thomas in the village. I didn’t think it wrong to leave her, she had already turned thirteen, while being a mother was not yet all for me. Just for that time I left her, and lived without her with Hart, London was like another country, what revels we had, I was still young myself. But she came up before long, being about fourteen and much grown, for my clever darling had got herself engaged as underhousemaid by a doctor who had a whole house in a fine square near Blackfriars Bridge, where when the riots came later that year the soldiers threw all the bodies in the Thames. It was a drunken mob, looting and burning the houses and shops of their betters for a week, but they were cut down before they reached the doctor’s house, with everyone inside, she said, nearly deaf from the musket fire. It’s terrible to be poor. But still worse is to have no other idea of bettering yourself than VIOLENCE.

  She held back from meeting me with her mistress and she never would visit the alehouse where I stayed with my Joe. We used to meet in secret like lovers, to share the odd glass or walk arm in arm in Vauxhall, listening to the birds. I suppose she told Doctor Budd a story about where she come from, less common, with no place for Mrs. Hart as I called myself then, and he was teaching her to read. But then one day she told me the son had took her. A mother is always sad to hear such news when it is the first, but I told her what could she expect being so beautiful. I begged her not to leave Doctor Budd, as she could have a good situation there, but she said she never did plan to be a proper housemaid, she was going to be an actress, a famous actress, she and her best friend, also underhousemaid at Doctor Budd’s. And that anyway she had heard of another doctor who was taking on young women, but not to be maids, it was more being an actress, but why does a doctor need actresses, I asked. It was in a cure for people of quality, she said. And then she went into service with Doctor Graham until she met Sir Harry by Drury Lane Theatre, and he said he would help her become a real actress, for he went to the theatre all the time. My poor innocent darling, but who would know more at fifteen. And he, a real baronet with a tasseled cane hanging from his wrist, invited her to his estate in Sussex for the summer. What a change of fortune, and only the first! She knew enough to nick that there would be a rackety crew, Sir Harry’s friends, and she bid me come with her. Like a lady already she was, who would have her companion. Only for the summer, she said. And after, I asked. God will provide, she said gaily. I can’t resist her smile. Indeed we lasted to the end of the year. So I had to quit my Joe, just for a time, but it was for good, Cadogan came later, and since then no one did part us. She was more than a daughter to me. She looked after me. She told me everything. She took me wherever she went and she had to go where the man went, but she always took me. And when she set up with her gentleman it was my task to manage the household, so I was like a servant, but I am her mother.

  How proud of her I was. To have such a beautiful daughter, admired by so many. When she was little I already knew men would not be able to resist her. But she wasn’t born to be empty-headed as Sir Harry wanted her to be. He was the first, and he was the worst, perhaps it is always like that. He and his friends were all day out shooting and fishing and racing in phaetons down the muddy roads, and every evening was cards and dice and charades and jugs of port and punch. The charades, that always ended with someone taking off his clothes and led straight to bed. But still my darling did her best, and watched with those beautiful bright eyes what the rich did and how they dressed. And Sir Harry did teach her to ride, and she was so handsome and right on a horse. And sometimes there was Charles for a week, and she liked to talk to him. And so many servants, I was not her servant, but stayed in our room. I was her mother.

  After the sixmonth with Sir Harry, she wrote a desperate letter to the other one, Charles, for we needed help. Sir Harry had seemed better than Charles because he was richer. But soon as he found a child was coming, he could only think of turning us off. And as there was no way we could keep Sir Harry’s bastard, I did not want her to cling to her babe as a mother can do. What a pain there was in my heart when my darling wrapped her tiny hand round my finger and pulled me to her. A child is the best happiness a woman ever knows. I’m not taking against men, I’ve known men, and had my go
od times, and some was fond of me. But a child’s love and the love a mother feels for a child is the best of all.

  We had to wait a while, already back in London and near starving, and I knew what the next step for a woman is, oh that my darling should come to that. But then Charles answered her letter and our state was changed. He wanted her to live with him, but she wouldn’t go without me, and he did not make objection. This was a long time, years. And I got on with her Charles, I always made a point to get on with the man who was appreciating her, and he wasn’t like Sir Harry at all, though he was one of Sir Harry’s friends. For he wasn’t as rich and he hardly touched the bottle and he was always with a book in his hands. He wanted my darling to learn to read books and write letters, and pour tea and receive guests with him just like a wife. And I was there, I was there, so he saved the wages of a servant, for he had not much money, he said. He taught her to write a book of her own, in a neat hand, with all the words on the left side going down the page, the Bread, Leg of Mutton, Wood, Sugar, Pins and Thread, Pork, Mop, A Nutmeg, Mustard, Mold Candles, Cheese, Pint of Porter, and, such, and then a line. And on the right side the sums, and he would go over them with her every week and said he was glad with how thrifty she was. But after he let me do it for her, I wanted her to be free to be more with him, so she could improve herself more by copying him and his fine friends, so she would talk more like them than like me. And one of the friends took a fancy to her, and asked her to sit for him, for a real painting, and after he said he would use no other model again. Mr. Romney he worshipped her, he said she was a genius and there was no woman in the world like her, and they weren’t even lovers. My daughter was very particular.

  And so we had a fine life, I could imagine no better, with Charles in a big house that was warm in the winter, and I had my own room, and she was improving herself all the time, and I was happy too, with her, that’s all I wanted, except that I met Cadogan and lost my heart. He was devilish handsome, and after a week I told her Charles I was called to the village to see my sister, the one who was dying of scrofula and had nine young children. But the truth was, as my darling knew, for I never kept secrets from her, that I was going with my Cadogan. And we went in a wagon to Swansea, where his brother kept a tavern and I slaved there seven months, sleeping in the attic, and then he went off with a hussy he met in the tavern, disappeared, and his brother turned me off. I walked back, having many hard times on the road from men in fields but no matter, I reached London safely, and my darling was very angry with me but forgave me, she was so happy to see her mother. We told Charles that I had got wed to someone in the village thinking I would have to stay there, then my sister didn’t die, so I come back to London because I missed my daughter too much. Which in a way was the truth.

  I don’t know why I chose Cadogan for my married name that I had to tell Charles, it being the name of that Welshman who broke my heart. I could have told him I married a man named Cooper. But my heart was too fond. So Cadogan I said, and Cadogan it was to be. We women always have more than one name. A man who changed his name four times in his life, you would think he had something to hide. But not a woman. Imagine a man who changed his name each time he married a woman or said he did. It makes me laugh. That would be a topsyturvy world.

  Anyway, that was my last name, my last man, I was so glad I was back. And from then on this fond old soul, for though I was not so old then I let myself look old, it is men that keep a woman young, and I was done with men, I would think only of my darling and help her. And never was I happier, because this is the greatest happiness. Men are bad, there I have said it. They think only of their own pleasure, and they can hurt a woman when they are drunk. I never hurt anyone when I was drunk, and I wager I have liked my gin as much as any man. But women are different. Men are bad, I will say it one more time and then hold my peace, but we can’t do without them, and I am glad I did not have to do without them, like those poor girls in Ireland who are locked in convents and can never come out. The Romish church is so wicked, I never understood why my darling late in her life … but that is another story, I was saying about men. And how we poor women need them, and go to them as an insect to the flame, we can’t help ourselves, but the best part is the child. That is true love, the mother for a child.

  Though a mother can’t expect her child to love her as fierce, specially when the child be grown, it’s enough that she needed me and wanted me always to be with her.

  Life, as I say, could be no better, except that Charles was always glooming about money and making us watch every penny. He could go out and buy an old picture for himself, in a big gold frame that must have cost many guineas, and then he raised his voice at my darling when in her book in between fourpence for Eggs and twelve shillings for Tea he saw tuppence for Poor Man. But still he was very kind to her, he called her his dear girl, and she came to love him desperate and think only to please him and he was fond of her, I could see it in his face, I know men. And he gave us money to go for two weeks to sea bathe for the nettle rash on her pretty elbows and knees. And he paid a family in the country for the keep of her infant, which was kind of him, since it was not his but Sir Harry’s who would hear nothing of her.

  So all was well, except that Charles was not so fine a character as he seemed. For he decided to give this priceless girl up so he could marry money, but did not have the courage to tell, and lied to her, and though it all turned out for the best, first my darling’s heart had to bleed until she be used to it. For Charles had a rich old uncle, and he wanted the uncle to pay his debts. He was always writing letters to his uncle, and Charles truly looked up to him, and he was very tall, but so was Charles, because they both come from the same family. They did look alike, both fine men, except the uncle did not seem always so worried like Charles. He was in England now for he had lost his Welsh wife, and had to bring the poor woman’s body back so she wouldn’t be buried in heathen ground. And after that he came often to visit us. I don’t think he had an eye on my beautiful girl, I believe it was all Charles’s idea, but you never know, men can turn ruttish so quick. And the next thing you know, the uncle had gone back to where he lived, where he was very grand, Charles said, and Charles wanted us both go visit him, so my darling could speak Italian and French and learn the piano and all that which make a lady. And my darling, who never could resist a chance to better herself, said yes. She was so happy to go to foreign parts and see what was in books, but she mainly did it so Charles would love her more and be proud of her. I know she thought nothing but still she made Charles swear over and over he would come soon, in just a few months. I was not so keen to go, being a little feared of the travel, and having my old bones bumped over so many roads and high places. I heard that we would cross the Alp, which I thought then was just one mountain, and that the countries are very dangerous, and a body can starve from not eating the food, which is full of hot pepper. But if my darling wanted to go, I said, then I would be happy. And she kissed me.

  It was a very long journey, I did not know any place could be so far away, but very enjoyable for me because we were seeing new sights all the time, which is natural because we had not come this way before. My darling was hanging out the coach from morning to night, so joyful to see everything she had not seen. With us we had a painter who was a friend of Charles and lived in Rome and he was going back, and he said that all good painters had to live in Italy now. And she said to him, Mr. Romney don’t want to live in Rome, which was a bit forward of her, because she meant Mr. Romney is a better painter than you, but she didn’t say that. But he knew it. My darling loved Mr. Romney so much, like a father. She was almost as grieved to quit him as Charles, though she thought it only for a year at most before she would see her painter again, and five months before seeing Charles. Little did she know it would be five YEARS.

  Even if it was less time, these changes and being apart are hard to bear if you are truly fond. How happy I am that after Cadogan, God take his black Welsh heart, I never was parted
with my darling again.

  When we reached Rome she wanted to see the buildings, but the uncle had sent a steward to fetch us and we went on the rest of the journey with him in the uncle’s carriage. This steward told us his master had seven carriages, and this was the least good of them. Seven carriages. How does one man need seven carriages, even if he be a fine gentleman, since his wife is gone now, and I suppose a rich pair want to travel separate, but even if his wife was still alive that would only make a need for two. So what did he do with the other five? While I was breaking my skull over these foolish questions, for foolish they were as I was soon to find out, for the rich always find a use for their luxury, one need not worry about them, my darling was taking in the sights to be seen from the carriage window, which was real glass by the way. She had her questions that she put to the steward Valerio, who spoke a bit of the King’s English. She was asking the names of the flowers and the trees and the fruit in them, and writing on a tablet what he told her. And she asked him to say very slow some words in his language, good day and farewell and please and thank you and how beautiful and I am so happy and what is that. She wrote these down too. She was always learning.

  And when we arrived where we were going, this great house where Charles’s uncle was ambassador in, that was truly a surprise. I never saw such a house, and more servants than you could count, and the uncle gave us four big rooms and servants for my darling all for herself. And I was so happy for her, for I could see the uncle looking at her, and I thought why not. But she, poor darling, she didn’t see it at first. She thought his being so kind to her was because he loved his nephew so much. My daughter had such a good heart, she could be very innocent. I had to tell her what was as plain as the nose on the uncle’s face, and Charles sent us here for that, and she fell in a rage. It was the first time my own child ever raged against her own mother, and it was cruel to bear. She threatened to send me back to England the next day to beg forgiveness of her dear Charles for insulting him, but I didn’t take it personal. She said it was her own mother who was trying to sell her to the uncle. Mr. Romney had told her about a picture of someone like me, she said, by a French painter that showed an artist and a model and an old woman in the corner who could have been the mother and was really a bawd, and how this may be the custom in other countries like France or Italy, but it wasn’t like that in England. Look at Mr. Romney, she had gone to his studio so many times alone, without any chaperone, and he never laid a hand on her. And her Charles was his friend and could not be base. How could I suggest Charles would pass her on to his uncle for money. Then tell me, I said, why you have never had one letter from him since we come here, and you writing him fond letters every day. And then she looked so sad, and cried, oh, he must come, I will make him come and fetch me. How I wished I was wrong, but I was right. I don’t say a mother is always right, but sometimes she is when she don’t want to be.