Strange Music
Page 1
Table of Contents
Cover
Copyright
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
Strange Music
Prologue
1. Elizabeth
2. Sheba
3. Kaydia
4. Elizabeth
5. Sheba
6. Kaydia
7. Elizabeth
8. Sheba
9. Kaydia
10. Elizabeth
11. Sheba
12. Kaydia
The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point
Note
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Copyright © Laura Fish 2008
Laura Fish has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
Quotations from the correspondence of Elizabeth Barrett Browning reproduced by kind permission of the Provost and Fellows of Eton College, The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
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No one is born fully-formed: it is through self-experience in the world that we become what we are.
Paulo Freire, 1921–1997
Author’s Note
While this novel is inspired by historical events and personages, it is a work of fiction. Elizabeth Barrett’s narrative includes extracts from diaries and correspondence with her family and friends. Some of these passages have been edited considerably and alterations have also been made to grammar and punctuation.
10 January 1845
New Cross, Hatcham, Surrey
I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett, – and this is no off-hand complimentary letter that I shall write . . . I can give reason for my faith in one and another excellence, the fresh strange music, the affluent language, the exquisite pathos and true new brave thought – but in addressing myself to you, your own self, and for the first time, my feeling rises altogether. I do, as I say, love these Books with all my heart – and I love you too . . .
Yours ever faithfully,
Robert Browning
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Majorie Stone of Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, for her remarkable patience when reading my work, and for sharing her knowledge of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poetry and life. I would also like to thank my son, Joshua Betton, for his cheerfulness and encouragement; my editor, Ellah Allfrey, for her brilliant suggestions; and the Norwich Consolidated Charities, Norwich, and Phil Jones for financial support during my studies and research.
I owe gratitude to Philip Kelley and Ronald Hudson, editors of The Brownings’ Correspondence, as these volumes provided an invaluable research source, especially for Elizabeth Barrett’s letters. I have borrowed ideas from the following sources: Jeanette Marks, The Family of the Barrett: A Colonial Romance; Julia Markus, Dared and Done: The Marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning; Robert A. Barrett, The Barretts of Jamaica: The Family of Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Elizabeth Berridge, The Barretts at Hope End: The Early Diary of Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Barbara Dennis, Elizabeth Barrett Browning: The Hope End Years; Ronald Hudson and Philip Kelley, Diary by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: The Unpublished Diary of Elizabeth Barrett Barrett.
I have chosen to follow the practice in Elizabeth Barrett Browning: A Selected, Annotated Critical Edition, of using 1856 as the basis for the version of ‘The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point’ which appears at the end of the book, as this was the last version of the poem overseen by Elizabeth and it incorporates her own revisions. I would like to thank Marjorie Stone and Beverley Taylor for providing this version of the poem.
I am grateful to the School of Literature and Creative Writing and the Library staff at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, for support in my writing. I would also like to acknowledge support and guidance from John Thieme; Michael Meredith at Eton College Library; Yvonne Pearson; Sarah Bower; Robin A. Barrett; Cynthia Burgess and all at the Armstrong Browning Library, Baylor University, Texas; Sandra Donaldson; Gis`ele and David Walker; Ian and Emmeline Kerr-Jarrett; and Michael Croucher; Bob and Ann Betton and Clare Alexander.
I must also thank John and Kathleen Betton-Small and not forgetting Tim, Pam, Tom and Helen Fish.
For his unfailing and generous support and advice I would like to give very special thanks to Jon Cook.
Prologue
Kaydia
CINNAMON HILL ESTATE
14 February 1840
In blue light Mister Sam lies, sickly face sweating yellow. Hips, shins, spine – him body curl up making spiral-shell shape.
Lifting him into bed don’t go easy. He retches, shudders, gasping for breath. But I can’t feel pity. Did him lips touch my cheek? Did him hands stroke my body? How we did share four-poster, I’m thinking, when he fills my soul with grief? Grief and deep dread.
Mister Sam moans weakly. Spit strands link lightly parted lips. I dab him mouth dry on my grey skirt, wrench mattress straight against wall, tug shoulders forward, wedge lace pillow beneath him head. Neck floppy, him head lolls back sliding into softness – Mister Sam mustn’t go. Not yet. He told me to wait at bedside. But I choose to run because I can’t cure bad fever like this.
I go from blue bedchamber to tell Pa to fetch Doctor Demar. Sea’s facing me. Silver-pink clouds. Cordia flowers bright and orange speckle coarse blades of grass, buckle beneath my bare feet.
Below great house I pass overseer’s house by sugar works, barracks for bookkeeper, masons, carpenters. I pass trash-house, plantation path sweeping round and down to coast road. I reach wharf planks. Ship’s sails flap as rigging grows taut.
Pa’s heading for main wharf hut. Striding along wood strips cool-like he gives me a glance. Him face kinda snarl up like a dog’s but inside him starts laughing. Pa slams hut door shut in my face, grey-green gecko shoot d
own wood shafts.
Pa’s refusing to open up. I knock to tell him Mister Sam’s worse again.
Pa don’t know why Mister Sam mustn’t go. Not before a will’s made.
I run back up coast road to plantation path. Evening air comes cooled. I turn, looking for Pa. Orange sun ball perches, fuming, on blue ocean rim.
Pa squats beside sugar winch now. Running faster onto coast road, towards wharf hut. ‘Pa,’ I shout, approaching him back. ‘Pa, fetch Doctor Demar fe Mister Sam.’
Pa stretches bony arms; legs slowly clamber down from plank wharf, wade into clear shallow sea; water laps round him knee. He leans against strong sour evening light, angry ocean blue. He don’t speak. My head’s burning. Pa, you can’t see?
Wet up to him waist, wading onto shore, Pa’s soaked overalls stick on him body. Waves wash my feet, shifting worry lines on yellow sand. Pa bends over, wrings frayed trouser bottoms. Salt water trickles into star shapes on sand.
Pa shakes him feet, saying, ‘Yu hot wid fiah. Wot yu waan?’ Then he strides back onto coast road, salt water running from clothes.
Pa’s spirit unleashes like green-bronze flash of gecko. ‘How come yu come on such a day as dis? Yu don’t know wot day is it?’
I say, ‘No.’
‘It Friday’s birthday.’
Inside I’m moving so I say, ‘Wot bout May’s or Mary Ann’s or mine? Yu don’t know wen dat is?’
‘No.’ Him voice leave no questions. But I look at him, questions whirling round my head.
Fast I run to plantation path to Pa’s brother, Dick. Because he my uncle and knows about Pa. Dick’s bamboo hut’s raised off soft sandy earth, keeping cool. Each dusk Dick stumbles back from masonry, chipped, grey from grinding stone. Dick’s humming, ‘Hi! De buckra, hi!’ Having no more work till Mister Sam sends orders, he sits on top-step edge, waiting, watching like he knows why I come. Dick, him eye walking up and down, spying from under hat brim, says loud, ‘Why yu flee like devil chase behind yu?’
‘Yu cun tell why Pa’s mad at me? E treat me like me not a dawta. Pa’s same Pa to Sibyl an me.’
Dick’s strong hand, bathed in white stone dust, wipes silvered streaks down sweat-polished cheeks. ‘Because yu are of one blood an still e treat yu bad, ave noting more to do wid im.’
‘But we living in same place.’
Dick sighs long. ‘Me cyaan say wot mek Pa wot e is.’
I think it’s a nigger I see on horseback for him clumping so quick up silent slope swerve.
‘Yu betta go back to de great house,’ Uncle Dick says. Standing up, wordless, he turns round. I feel him wanting to break talk off. Him feet siss then, edging away.
Conch-blow bellows Fuuuuffuu-ffuu like it struggles free from a monster’s heart swooping through air, roaring towards quietly hunched tamarind trees edging plantation path. I’m staring past Dick at hut’s outline, washed-out sky – there’s space for sky between branches, leaves – and as conch-blow hurries into it, Dick’s cold words close in on me.
Dusky air falls silent. Waiting for something. Someone. Darkness steadily sweeps across deepest blue fading to deeper black.
Duppy was on great-house track? No, its body too thick, too bold. Must be a nigger. Then I’m running down plantation path hill to coast road, running round wharf-hut back. Pa’s shape’s a smear behind grimy glass. Wharf room holds a stale wood, stale fish smell. Where boards don’t overlap Pa’s smear shape shifts, fusing with rough-edged planks. I run to hut front, thump hut door. My shadow don’t follow me round any more.
Door opens. Earthy floor looks sameway but a gap between we widens. My armpits tickle, tingling.
Pa says I’m a bully coming back again, he getting ready to fetch Doctor Demar and because I’ve come back he won’t. Says I’m to serve and save white buckra. Pa says, ‘De devil widin yu.’
I’m struggling to tell what is it. ‘Eeee? Me cyaan ear yu.’
‘Don’t be renk. Mek me tell yu.’
‘Yu’s dawg. It mek yu too ugly.’
‘Don’t ax me. Me cyaan go now, me busy. Me head a-hurt me.’
Sibyl walks in. Then I can’t throw insults at Pa. ‘Sibyl. Sibyl,’ I’m calling to she, because she also don’t know where’s we mama. Rebecca Laslie’s we mama for sure. Sibyl’s face answers silent. Empty. She don’t understand sickness I live in. Me was back because me was smashing an tearing, wanting to be rid of wot’s in me belly.
Pa says, ‘Yu behaving white again.’
Inside I’m warring. I’m saying to Sibyl, ‘E too hard,’ running out. Running from wharf. Running back to great house.
Chapter One
Elizabeth
3, BEACON TERRACE, TORQUAY
13 November 1838
My dearest Miss Mitford,
My beloved father has gone away; he was obliged to go two days ago, and took away with him, I fear, almost as saddened spirits as he left with me . . . His tears fell almost as fast as mine did when we parted, but he is coming back soon – perhaps in a fortnight, so I will not think any more of them, but of that. I never told him of it, of course, but, when I was last so ill, I used to start out of fragments of dreams, broken from all parts of the universe, with the cry from my own lips ‘Oh, Papa, Papa!’ . . . Well! But I do trust I shall not be ill again in his absence and that it may not last longer than a fortnight . . .
Just weeks ago I swooped down on my dear brother Bro in a storm of emotion which quite wore me out, hence my recent removal to Torquay; yet this detail need not be revealed in correspondence – it is safer to say a blood vessel burst during one of my coughs and I fell gravely ill, which is also true. To have stayed in London would, Dr. Chambers said, have been suicidal, so here I must remain.
I hang by a thread between life and death, and can feel with each morsel my weight increase. Bro says I have grown vain. But I am bloated with guilt. Any desire to eat left me in March last. Since then I have shed weight as a snake sheds skin. In but three months I shall be thirty-three yet my anxiety increases as does my weakness. My new doctor, Dr. Barry, believes blisters and leeches will remedy this. I can’t see how such a miserable treatment will effect the shedding of guilt and anxiety. Doctors can be full of absurdities.
This doctor forbids me to write anything! Especially poetry. Which is good, for I never can write when ordered to, but when refused, that is when I can. And do. It is a mercy Bro is with me in this conspiracy. I would not dream of sending my verses to anyone without first passing them under his keen and critical eye.
Although this morning Dr. Barry caught me in the act – I was mid-way through ‘The Sea-Mew’ – and I have sworn not to write again, already I know what I shall write next. And there is another poem I am thinking on while I sit watching over this mesmerizing sea.
14 November 1838
Kind Papa has written permitting my sister, Henrietta, to stay permanently during my confinement to this room. Bro is to remain too – I shall see to that. Dearest Georgie travelled here with us but Papa says he must soon return to London. Weaving a tapestry of comings and goings my other brothers – Stormie, Henry, Daisy, Sette, Occy – circulate as regularly as their other engagements will allow; as will my sister Arabel. Hopefully Sam is sailing back from Jamaica – he is a constant cause for distress. Papa himself has promised to visit every two weeks.
My beloved Arabel, do pray write, & don’t wait for me to do it . . .
. . . Now mind! – you are not to fancy that I am in the least worse if you hear of any more blisters. Dr. Barry made up his mind from the first I believe that he wd. give me plenty of them – & the better I declare myself, the firmer became his resolve . . . he really does take most incessant pains, & everybody says with a corresponding ability, to do me good – and doing good does not always mean, in this world, giving pleasure. You see, I had made up a hope of my own, encouraged by Dr. C’s permission, to manage here without medical visits, & to trust simply to God’s sun & air as the means of accomplishing whatever mercy He intended for
me. So that I had the less ready patience for certain persecutions – & for not being allowed to write or read or eat or drink or go out or stay in, or put on my stockings, without a certificate from Dr. Barry. And really it has come to this.
Now fancy – on the occasion of my writing-case being accidentally visible – ‘Have you been writing today, Miss Barrett?’ ‘No.’ – ‘Did you write yesterday?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘You will be so good as not to do so any more!’ – And again – ‘You have observed my directions & been idle lately, Miss Barrett?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And within these last three weeks you have never written any poetry . . . Well then! I may as well take my leave! I have told you the consequence. You must do as you please; but if you please to do this, neither I nor anyone else can do anything for you.’ And then there are flannel waistcoats up to the throat – & next to the skin – & most of the most disagreeable things you can think of besides . . . provided that you happen to be particularly imaginative whilst you think!
My bed is shaken with vibrations! The steam packet departs. Soon Crow, the maid, will knock with my tray, for that dreadful hour, eleven o’clock, is close at hand – as are letters to me from Papa and Arabel. Bro’s rowing across the bay to the steam packet will not have been wasted.
Every morning at eleven o’clock I am made to take asses’ milk and soup, and a meal in the evening at six. Oysters or macaroni. At these times I have no appetite; this surprises me not, for ever since my eyes first opened I have felt hunger only for books. Though oysters have on occasion proven reasonably palatable.
Bro’s footsteps are upon the stairs.
‘No mail today?’ I ask. Bro shakes his head, licks his pale dry lips and rubs his wind-chaffed cheeks with an open hand. ‘Dr. Barry left hours ago. Why did you not come to see me immediately after the examination?’
‘I was afraid of what he might have said,’ Bro replies, ‘and I’ve been working below with water-colours.’
‘Dr. Barry said I look as though I carry the world’s burdens with me and should worry less. He also gave his opinions concerning the situation on West Indian plantations, saying that although the apprenticeship system was in ruins it should never have ended early.’ I feel a spirit of rebellion rising in me like flames from a burning torch. ‘Was slavery not immoral?’ I ask in a tone more heated than I had intended, but even my strident pitch belies the true feelings within my heart, which are more fiery than Bro would suppose. ‘The emancipationists should have just waited, Bro, for apprenticeship to end, and done nothing?’ Bro looks blankly at the sea. Has he no sense of guilt? Not one breath of sorrow? ‘People will continue to be hurt and it’s no one’s fault if we do nothing. Is that it?’