Strange Music

by Strange Music (retail) (epub)

  Everywhere are memories. Everywhere I am unfolding. Pains stretch right round my back; my spine feels swollen; and, from straining a muscle whilst saddling Moses, I suffer recurring agony. Dear Papa, and finally Mama, visit intermittently. I am treated for disease of the spine. This entails the horror of regular cuppings, which I only just survive; and being strung up four feet from the ground in a spine crib, and – with the fear of being driven, quite literally, batty, by boredom and inactivity – told to lie and wait. Never have I been without that dusky-brown drug since. Many women now take it from babyhood. Were I to completely cease the consumption of it, I would die.

  The woman stares across the room. Whey-faced, she rises, a sombre figure in a black satin dress; stumbles, falls. She tries to scoop herself up and then from exhaustion, collapses again, wilting into the smog of despair. For once our eyes truly meet, that she might reach me; a mysterious brown look with a mischievous glint. Closing my eyes I tell myself I will not look at her any more, that I have been dreaming. When I open my eyes she is staring at me. Have I been hypnotized? Can such a thing be achieved in the murky depths of sleep?

  Dimly I see the woman now as a whisper not of the past or present but of the future. Vast clouds of the agony of disappointment loom over her body. As long as she takes opium, that path journeying to hell remains open to me.

  16 May 1839

  I shall demand Bro stay on the sofa in my room after the sun has set. Is this selfish of me? This afternoon Henrietta and I had another scrape.

  All about me is red. Red as poppies’ yearning open succulent mouths. Mist breathes across the bloodshot sky, over cerise sheets of deep water. Mist circles the masts of the Hopeful Adventure as she slips sedately from the bay, sliding into that wondrous sea – forgetfulness.

  My dearest Miss Mitford,

  . . . what makes me write to you so very soon as this morning, is to beg you not to take the slightest trouble about the baskets which are worth none, & also to beg for Mr. Naylor’s book . . . Don’t send it in the basket, because that would be the overthrowing of the return-basket principle. I mentioned the returning of the baskets only because I had fancied you would have no more trouble in accomplishing it than was involved in writing my name on the other side of the direction card (by the way – the first came back safely), but I do assure you that the race of basket-makers is not extinct here, barbarous as we are, & that Dr. Mitford may & shall have his fish without any return-basket to put it in. In the meantime, try to forgive me. I am sure it must need an effort – for if it had not been for this fussy & most unpoetical thrift of mine, you might not have known a word of the neighbourhood of the omnibus – not for another year at least! . . .

  . . . No plan fixed about my removal to London! I LONG to be at home – but am none the nearer for that . . .

  I must train my thoughts away from the trivia of fish baskets. But does my dear friend Miss Mitford know what it is to be shut up in a room by oneself, to multiply one’s thoughts by one’s thoughts – how hard it is to know what ‘one’s thought is like’ – how it grows and grows, and spreads and spreads, and ends in taking some supernatural colour – just like mustard and cress on a (wet) flannel in a dark closet?

  4 June 1839

  Ever dearest Arabel,

  Bummy has just interrupted me by bringing in a ‘water-colour drawing left as a gift by Mr. Weale to me’. But no, no, Bummy! You can’t take me in so adroitly. It is a copy of a drawing of Mr. Weale’s, & very well executed by Brozie – excellently well considering that he never tried water-colours before, & I shall praise him for it up to the tops of the hills. In the meantime I am to tell you about our late visitors . . .

  Seeing Mr. Weale gave to me tremendous pleasure. He entered my bedroom. My heart leapt up. Could he not have stood nearer? Or, better still, sat upon the bed itself instead of the armchair opposite? There are two sides to my bed: the company side and the private side. This I will not explain to Mr. Weale should he return to Torquay, but instead beg that he take the private side, for it never shall be tainted with the memory of anyone else’s presence. Mr. Weale is a noble and handsome naval doctor from Plymouth. His strong Irish accent is potent music to my ears. His sepia paintings fill me with fire. My desire to touch him was overwhelming, to reach out and . . . If our lips should meet I would not faint but would draw him closer by warm tides of hope.

  Mr. Weale’s visit also brought certain discomforts – I longed so much for him not to leave my bedside.

  When Bro said, ‘Mr. Weale is half mad,’ I could have thrown my arms around Bro. I adore the wild spontaneity in Mr. Weale’s nature. I did implore him to examine me. And this he did twice for an hour and a half at a time. I felt then, as I do now, that I was purring. It was extraordinary. ‘The cough is spinal,’ he finally said. When we were next alone Mr. Weale said it was a ‘nervous cough’. He then made me talk of poetry, and gave me Coleridge’s works – though I was nervous, I did not cough. I remember one sentence he said when last examining me word for word: ‘There may be disease upon the lungs, but it is not beyond the reach of remedies, or you could scarcely have that countenance which buoys me up with hope every time I look at you.’ He asked, ‘Has the stethoscope been used?’ I replied, ‘Yes,’ thinking he would examine me with his. He did not. Yet I know he took a great fancy to me, and I to him. More of his exact words come to me; not words he said to me but to others of me: ‘As long as Miss Barrett is in the drawing-room I certainly will not think of going out of the house. She is a sensitive person, and whilst I was conversing with Miss Barrett, it was only by the strongest effort that I could keep myself from bursting into tears.’ How I would have wept too! Wept to share such deep emotion with him as he with me. Bro says Mr. Weale has confided to him his tendencies to fall in love, and his predilection to wanting to commit suicide, which still constantly recurs. He confided to Bro that, like me, he sometimes hates to be alive.

  And yet all joy turns to sadness – there is his wife, Mrs. Weale, to consider. I despise creatures such as she for their unwomanliness. Is despise too strong a word? I think not. I had to force my hand to shake hers. Simply touching her skin caused my insides to shiver. But she is of little – no – no importance to me. Mrs. Weale shed many tears and Bro tells me she said she was ‘very sure she was insane’. I could hardly keep from going downstairs to Mr. Weale and would have stayed there until dawn had Bro not carried me, bodily, protesting and gesticulating otherwise, from the drawing-room.

  I blame my frailness on this weather, and on gathering dust in bed for so long. I Believe I Am Better. Everyone was on the beach today but Bro laid me down and shut the door. He threatened to lock me into my room. I have persuaded Dr. Barry to let me go out. But ‘in the chair’! Staying ‘in the chair’ he insists upon. I shall show him I can do more. Papa has allowed Bro to purchase for me a small yacht, Bella Donna. I wish my yacht to be brought to the front door because the chairs are liable to irregular outbreaks of tremors and convulsions and give me palpitations.

  Dr. Barry has lent me Wanderings in Search of Health by Dr. Cummings, another of his patients. My discovery from having studied this is that my sudden improvement results from a healing of the soul and spirit effected by Mr. Weale, to whom, if he would but allow me, I would give all mine own inheritance in order for him to work no longer as a doctor but to give his days to artistry. He is to commence a series of graphic illustrations of English poetry and I am to let him have some references to passages susceptible of such illustration. Already I know what I will send – extracts from Prior, Chaucer, Browne and Fletcher. For me, Mr. Weale will do some illustrations to my poems in The Seraphim.

  . . . There now! You are more than obeyed. I have told you everything. Oh! but I shdnt. forget a parting party on Friday night. Dr. & Mrs. Barry stopped once or twice to beg Mr. Weale to moderate his ardour a little, as really nobody cd. hear them for him! Certainly he does ‘roar like a nightingale’. But I kept my gravity admirably upstairs – having got over the
first shock. Really, that first night there did seem no prospect for me but to laugh on till dawn! And Crow’s imperative, ‘Now indeed, ma’am, you MUST read your Psalms’, didn’t do much good – as you may suppose! . . .

  11 June 1839

  Dear Mr. Weale,

  The water-colour drawing is extremely beautiful and suggestive. The moonlight in it cannot be said to have ‘no business there’ – for it comes like a spirit upon the ruin – the place for spirits – and reconciles us to desolation. You have done what is said to be impossible, ‘painted a thought’. And I am satisfied to hear in the silence of your picture, Spenser’s very own voice . . .

  . . . Thank you again and again! I have written out some suggestions for paintings – as you asked me to do. Should you like any of them and wish for more, I shall be very glad to purvey for you again . . .

  My dear friend Mr. Hugh Stuart Boyd,

  I take the liberty, which I know you will not be angry about, of enclosing to you a letter of private gossip for my dear Arabel. Will you be so very kind as to enclose it to her as soon as you conveniently can. Perhaps you would allow a servant to take it to her in the course of the day . . .

  Dr. Barry says today is the day I am to go out on the sea.

  I experience a rush of energy – oh, to be out on the sea with no walls, simply breezes; no ceiling but the blue imposing sky; no hard floors.

  ‘Am I to sail the yacht?’ I ask Bro.

  ‘We’ll see,’ Bro replies.

  Bella Donna is at the end of a short jetty, the sails wrapped about the mast. Beside her, an aged barefoot sailor. His trousers, patched with sail cloth, emit the strong odour of sun-dried seaweed and stale salt-fish. The skin on his face resembles old wet leather. He speaks a language unknown to me. No doubt he is at home on the bare and empty water’s reach.

  ‘You must be the boatswain. Payment, in lieu of your mackerel catch, comes when the ladies are safely back. Understand?’ Bro says to him. The old boatswain doesn’t look like he understood.

  ‘Poor old beast,’ Bummy murmurs. ‘Won’t you join us?’ she asks Bro.

  ‘No’. He hesitates, glances along the jetty. ‘Tomorrow?’

  Crow unburdens herself of the blankets, pillows and feather eiderdowns, and they tumble onto thick sodden ropes coiled, hideously, in the bottom of the boat. She reaches a hand up to mine. I can only nod thanks. I am near to fainting on the cushioning when Bro says I must stand up to let Bummy in then sit down. This rocking sensation is abysmal. I find this place abhorrent and sourly dislike the low unharmonious lap of water against the blue clinker sides. I wish I was back on dry land, and as far from the sea as Hope End was. Places are ideas that can madden or kill.

  ‘Can you move?’

  ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘No, can you move?’ Bro asks the boatswain. The old man is searching the stern for the baler which, it transpires, I am seated upon; he then glares at Bro.

  My past seems to rise from the seabed, to the pitching tossing surface. Memories of girlhood: I am looking out across the Hope End gardens at rain melting snow; a hollowness inside me stares out too. I am searching through books for life’s answers, a feeling fizzes up like bubbles from an ocean bed; I miss the sensual pleasure of movement. Of feeling free. Aching with dispiritedness. It is that piercing pain of being worthless. I am searching through books for life’s answers . . .

  Leaning over the side of the boat, my face is broken into a thousand pieces; and, as the reflections floating on the gloomy surface diverge and diffuse into fragments that stare up at me, my life seems to be drifting far and rapidly.

  First we row out, then, before I know it, the boom is lowered. We women struggle ineffectually with the sheets and cloth. A fresh wind plays with my ringlets. The patched sails are hoisted. We are a jolly party of three in the boat: Bummy, Crow and me.

  The boatswain has shipped the oars. His hands are gnarled and scarred from rope cuts and sunburn. A cormorant circles the hull. Afternoon sunlight glints across the waves. Slanting its wings the bird dives – a black arrow driving at full speed after the flight of fish. It surfaces unexpectedly far from the boat, flapping wildly, gulping a large bulge down a thin throat set, impossibly, at right angles.

  The hull skims through waves. The sea seems flattened. Torquay is a thin line. Storms roll in from the sea.

  Sailing into the wind is reminiscent of galloping Moses on gusty days across the Malvern Hills. Wind gusts buffeted so strongly one could barely breathe. Moses angled into squalls, the wind blowing itself into a fury. I see a mistress in early girlhood who enjoyed riding best of all . . . galloping ’til the trees raced past her and clouds were shot over her head like horizontal arrows from a giant’s bow . . . leaping over ditches – feeling the live creature beneath her swerve and bound with its own force. And, with her hair splaying, she lets the reins fall slack. Moses gains speed in a sudden spurt, launching over a brook. Sky and hills, a boundless sea.

  Watching the hull rising and falling, I feel flushed and warm inside. I am almost venturesome for a long sea-voyage. With the boatswain holding the main sheet taut and steadying my hand on the tiller – I am sailing! As the boat leans more heavily the water lures me. Quite unexpectedly I fall in love. I do love the sea. Waves are liquid passion. The sea is visible poetry.

  The boatswain says, ‘Rain comin.’ Unmoved, he stares ahead. The sky is wild. Above the chop of waves an elevated dark jagged dome appears, thrashed by spuming foaming breakers. I watch black wings of clouds unfold against the sky. The boatswain swoops down on me, the tiller shudders under my grip; the rudder resists shoving weighty water around.

  ‘Good steering, by Jove!’ Bummy shouts. ‘That rock, I see it clearly now.’

  And, as the sky grows darker, for the swarthy bank of cloud rolls nearer, I turn my head quickly. This makes me giddy. The boatswain says not a word.

  From the water Torquay is a long green line backed by deep blue hills. It is like viewing the bay through a telescope; houses reside snugly folded into dales. I can make out people on the steep rises up cliffs, between buildings and on winding paths; paths which look the same as those I thought nothing of scrambling up six years ago when scaling the slopes to Ruby Cottage . . . the view is grand, extensive, and beautiful beyond description. But the five-mile journey to the Boyds’ was problematic, with the toll to pay to pass through two turnpikes. Oh, but the scenery was glorious. Such a sea of land; the sunshine throwing its light; & the clouds, their shadows, upon it! Sublime sight . . . I looked on each side of the elevated place where I sat. Herefordshire all hill & wood – undulating & broken ground! – Worcestershire throwing out a grand, unbroken extent . . . One prospect attracting the eye, by picturesqueness: the other the mind, by sublimity. My mind seemed spread north, south, east & west over the surface of those extended lands: and, to gather it up again into its usual compass, was an effort. But I was full of energy then. Dashing up hills; rolling presto, prestissimo down.

  Mr. Boyd and I had corresponded for nearly a year before our first meeting. Papa would not permit me to visit Mr. Boyd before he had visited me, because that ‘wouldn’t do’. But I was lucky enough to pass him one morning on my way to the Trants’ and a meeting was arranged. As luck would have it though, when the day arrived, the pony pulling the wheelbarrow, our three-wheeled carriage, bolted downhill, throwing Arabel and me from our vehicle, which promptly overturned. So I was badly shocked when introduced to this pleasantly attractive man, tallish and yet like a boy, with a slight figure. I remember his fair features; his skin almost bleached of colour; his expression, placid. He is completely blind. His eyes lack even the slightest hint of life, and any promise of ever having sight! Hugh Stuart Boyd. I am not as cold as he, & if our friendship seemed strained it was because of this: I am not of a cold nature, & cannot bear to be treated coldly. When cold water is thrown upon a hot iron, the iron hisses. So I would boil over for hours in near hysterics after my long visits amounted, at most, to my reading Greek aloud to hi
m. How often did I wail O God, if there is a God, save my soul, if I have a soul.

  Bummy leans over the yacht’s side, suddenly horribly sick. Fluctuating with now gentle breezes are waves of a nauseous stench, as the long white trail sinks. Bummy questioned my visits, she could see through a post.

  She decided Boyd ungentlemanly and disgusting – because I was goose enough to say I’d spent an evening alone with him. She had an evident aversion to my friendship and everything and anybody connected with him, which lighted me up into a passion. I must have been twenty-five when I wrote of him excessively in my diary . . . the mention of Mr. Boyd’s name at a dinner party amongst a crowd of people whom I cared nothing about was like Robinson Crusoe’s detection of a man’s footprint in the sand. But my diary was not to be shown to anyone. How many entries Mr. Boyd has I dare not think. I remember once writing . . . I wish I had half the regard which I retain for him impressed on this paper that I might erase it thus ****. But I could not! In truth I longed for love, exceeding love; a love which after dear Mama died I would never find again. Poor health, as many a Shakespearean character demonstrates, comes from unrequited love.

  Did Mr. Boyd ever feel anything for me? My feelings for him now are tarnished.

  On land the boatswain moves awkwardly, like a wounded animal. ‘Poor beast,’ I echo Bummy in a muffled voice. Bro says he was worried we had been caught in the throes of a storm and would never again be seen. He scolds the boatswain. For a weird moment the breath of life deserts me. Resting in the bottom of the boat, I am shattered, broken. I fear it is Bro who will leave, never to return. This madness – a deep, deep woe, the crippling agony of sorrow; of grief – departs as quickly as it came as Bro helps me from the boat. He carries me to the chair and wheels me back to Beacon Terrace, and I see the fear for what it was. Absolute madness.