Strange Music

by Strange Music (retail) (epub)

  . . . The worst grief of all (a very heavy grief at first – until I learned to be wise & submissive about it) has been the departure for the West Indies of two of my dear brothers, who went from London without a last word or look from me. It was all kindly done – and I am reconciled – but I can’t write of it now . . .

  12 July 1839

  ‘Delightful!’ Bro exclaimed after reading my final draft of ‘The Legend of the Brown Rosary’, though he finds it melancholy and fears, as I do, that the ballad may be too long for Finden. It is soon to be despatched, accompained by an apology on account of the length.

  Again I have written to Papa and demanded that Bro stay. Am I being selfish? Am I trying to feather-line my life and cushion myself from past griefs at my brother’s expense? The days spent together in our Hope End drawing-room were heavenly. Sam enchanted us all with his gadding tongue, black silk stocks and couleur de rose garters. Such wit! Such a dandy! So amiable in every way. Sam’s is one of the faces, one most loved face, that never ceases to be present with me in this room. It was he who first told me that Hope End was advertised, and with a full description, in The Sun. The sound of prospective buyers’ footsteps brought terror to our hearts. Bro, Sam, Henrietta and I clung for comfort to the legs of chairs like silent cold clingy bats unable to flutter our black wings. All those horrible sounds . . . the noise of hammering and men walking up and down stairs, from morning to night. Five cart-loads of packing-cases went to the warehouse – the timber for the packing-cases alone cost one hundred pounds. It was clear we were leaving. Papa found it more difficult to accept than the rest of us. On a practical level all the arrangements had been made but mentally Papa seemed to be dodging the move. He spent our final evening playing cricket on the lawn with Bro and Sam. Smiling externally but his eyes couldn’t mask the blinding pain held within.

  13 July 1839

  My ever very dearest Arabel

  . . . My difficulty in regard to sleep, ordinarily, is from a want of calmness in the nervous system & circulation – therefore it stands to reason that whatever is of a disturbing character to body or mind, must increase the difficulty a little. But use will remove the obstacle (i.e. the irritation from moving) and in the process of doing this, my dearest papa’s wishes shall be attended to. There has been a week’s rest in consequence of the weather, for me, so that I ought to be fit for sailing round the world by today; and I expect Dr. Barry every moment to come & say so. He does not coerce, as it used to be his gracious pleasure to do once – and indeed Crow observed to me yesterday, ‘I am sure, ma’am, you are a much greater favourite of Dr. Barry’s than you used to be.’ ‘How do you mean, Crow?’ ‘Why, I observe that he does not seem to like to press you to do anything disagreeable to you. He gives up in a minute when he sees that you don’t like what he proposes – he seems so much more good-natured altogether.’ He is very kind, & I have nothing to complain of – & certainly if he does (as he does) treat me like a child, it is now like a very good child indeed – ‘it shall have its sugar plum! that it shall!’ – and not like a naughty perverse child that looks best with its face in the corner . . .

  . . . The ballad went away this morning. Brozie encourages me about it very much, but my impression is still that Miss Mitford won’t like it nearly as much as the last – without reference to the length, which is past all reason. Above three hundred & fifty lines, for the most part of fourteen syllables! A ballad in four parts. I have told her that as she can’t see me blush through England she must take my word for it! When you once begin a story you can’t bring it to an end all in a moment – & what with nuns & devils & angels & marriages & deaths & little boys, I couldn’t get out of the mud without a great deal of splashing, which Brozie liked extremely but which may cause less gentle critics to take up their doublets. The title is ‘The Legend of the Brown Rosary’, & the little heroine’s name is Lenora.

  ‘Lenora, Lenora!’ her mother is calling! –

  She sits at the lattice & hears the dew falling –

  There are the first two lines – & the only ones you shall see until I show them to you myself either HERE or in LONDON. I have vowed upon my rosary that you shall not!

  Since Sam’s departure Papa looks years, not weeks, older. And I feel a grating, gnawing, rising tension in my chest.

  An atmosphere of disquiet hangs about this room in which I lie for half the day and more. The tall masts of a vessel pierce the blueness where sea and sky meet. I pray the white sails billowing so magnificently in the bay are not those of the Hopeful Adventure, the packet bringing mail and yet more dreadful tales from the West Indies. Hours will pass before I can tell for sure.

  Most days now Dr. Barry allows me peace until almost two in the afternoon but this morning he suggested I went straight to the boat without touching down in the drawing-room. Brozie was excited by my broncher and later brought me two extraordinarily slim and high blue glass vases. I think only one flower will fit into each for their necks taper severely. How pretty they look upon the chimney-piece opposite the bed, & on either side of a blue flower-pot from which grow some most splendid geraniums; their luminous red faces so filled with the rage of loneliness as quite to flare through the room.

  14 July 1839

  My ever dearest Arabel,

  . . . My best love to dearest Trippy. She is a very naughty person to think of sending me or Henrietta either these mantillas. Why won’t she pack up herself to our direction, in a fit of generosity which we cd. appreciate? . . .

  I am exhausted and must rest a while longer to reflect upon the gladness filling my heart. I am joyful. It was an article in The Times Bro read at breakfast that brought the glad tidings. Corporal punishment of the freed Negroes is to be ended in Jamaica and, due to extreme hardships and inhuman conditions, the management of Jamaican prisons is to be transferred from local authorities to the Governor. So glad was I when I heard last August that the apprenticeship system, which brought only sadness, bitterness and greed, had officially ended and set all the Negroes completely free! Although the Negro apprentices received low wages, I do not doubt dear Uncle Samuel was always more than generous; I still possess a pretty locket he gave me as a child. Uncle Samuel not only left me shares in his ship, the David Lyon, but also a legacy of several thousand pounds: that, combined with the four thousand I received from dear Grandmama – profits from the enormous holding of her father, Edward of Cinnamon Hill – allows me this past year eight thousand for investment.

  The legacies give great independence: Bro has pointed this out to me.

  3 August 1839

  Dearest Miss Mitford,

  . . . Between my physician & my maid I did what is called walking (by courtesy) a few days ago . . .

  15 August 1839

  Papa’s lips breeze across mine as he stands from prayer. ‘It’s nearly eleven o’clock, I must write to George.’ But Papa is given to a sudden change of mind and turns back from the doorway. His voice covers the room: ‘Ba, you cause me much displeasure. Not only do you refrain from living by the Scriptures daily, Henrietta tells me you fail to read them, that it is your preference to write poetry.’ His expression frightens me, so often is his face drawn with fury, with fear. It is one of those suffocating family moments when there’s too little space, and what little there is closes in. I hear my own footsteps in flight. I know how dearly Papa loves me. He loves me too well.

  Sometimes at Hope End the walls would shake with his wrath. I pray he won’t go into a passion, as I fear I would if I thought someone had betrayed my love. Papa’s hand smothers mine. His touch speaks, each veined ridge of his skin yearning for all I cannot give, for he wants everything.

  Henrietta looks away, despairingly. I cannot live up to either of their expectations. Emotions, like drawstrings tightening, pull on Papa’s jaw.

  ‘Believe me,’ Papa says. ‘Trust in God for your swift recovery. You must do as is His will. We each are one of His children.’ He drops to his knees. I wish he had Mama to talk to.


  ‘A year ago, my dear,’ he says earnestly, ‘I received from Jamaica a letter which illustrated the interment of a coffin containing chains and with the inscription upon it: The monster is dead. You may recall the occasion, the first of August, 1838. I am now in receipt of more correspondence upon matters connected with the management of my estates, from an informant of William Knibb. There is sufficient condemnation of Mr Knibb as an interferer in other men’s affairs. Had it not been for Wilberforce, and now Knibb, the situation on my estates would have remained stable. Of the abolitionist missionaries continually stirring up unrest – and the House of Assembly is in concordance with me on this – Knibb is the most despicable.’

  I give to him a questioning glance. ‘The West Indian magistrates began burning Baptist chapels; surely you did not agree with that.’

  ‘Religion should not be mixed with politics. The Baptist preachers’ testimonies poisoned the slaves’ minds, causing rebellions and violent destructive crimes and, in turn, the deaths of many great British planters. King Knibb indeed! He made peace impossible.’

  ‘Papa . . .’

  ‘What was and what is his object in remaining in Jamaica? If he wants to preach glad tidings unto all men, to advance the house of God Our Saviour unto all with a meek and quiet spirit, to direct the people to the mountain which, we are told, is the will of God, and to know nothing amongst men but Jesus Christ; to exchange ill for good, to spread the word of the Gospel of Christ, to show faith in all ways and by all actions in word and conduct that Jesus Christ, who was crucified for us, was unlike other men – as your dear brother Sam has done, for he strives to be like the Prince of Peace – I say, if these are his objects, then I hesitate not to say that he has woefully blundered. But on the contrary; if to attack secular affairs, if to decide worldly bargains for the people, if to get up political union, if to set man against man, truly William Knibb has fulfilled his vocation.’

  As though blind and treading a rocky path Papa moves to leave my chamber.

  I daren’t mention Mama. Nor Sam. Nor dare I ever mention Hope End to Papa. He loved the place so . . . And I cannot bear to think that the rooms and walls in which we have not been for so long will be inhabited and trodden and laughed in by strangers.

  ‘Papa, I don’t wish you to feel deceived by me,’ I say after him. ‘Let’s read the Scriptures together tomorrow.’

  Staring as though afflicted by a violent memory, his expression is the want of indescribable desires. ‘Don’t you recall? Tomorrow I must journey to London.’ He closes the door.

  It is clear I cannot obey him as Sam has attempted to do. Papa is obsessed with his own beliefs. His acute sternness and harshness – something beyond eccentricity – leaves one feeling cold and dead, and I feel unable to remain part of a family financially supported by a vulgar industry. Can I carry this weight with which I am burdened?

  Tentatively, Crow enters my room to make Henrietta’s bed on the sofa. Caught on the edge of my mind is an episode which now becomes central to my reverie. In my twenty-sixth year I showed Papa a poem on the development of genius, his biting reply comes clearly: ‘You see, the subject is beyond your grasp – and you must be content with what you can reach . . . I advise you to burn the wretched thing.’

  Thus I was dismissed after months of anxious solitary thought, after months of apprehension mingled with rejoicing expectation. I did not say a word: it was harder to prevent myself from shedding a tear . . . I have hardly ever been mortified as I was last night . . . For all my futile scribblings and study Papa’s expression that ‘my subject was beyond my grasp’, lets me see . . . how limited he considers my talents. I believe I did not consider my talents so limited, and I certainly did not know he thought so . . . I could not give up completing the poem I was advised to burn.

  I lie back on soft pillows, Papa’s fingerprints ingrained on my skin.

  17 August 1839

  My dear Lady Margaret,

  . . . I must stay, I suppose, here until next spring again – and indeed it is grievous to think of such an absence – grievous not merely to my own account but on my poor dearest Papa’s whose comforts it breaks up in many ways. His tender affection for me has expressed itself so touchingly & disinterestedly that I am deeply moved into adverting to it – and now he has made presents to me of my brother George who is here for his law vacation (he is to be called to the Bar in November) & my sister Arabel who is coming to me immediately by some element or other – which, I cannot guess at. And Papa too is coming – and I am as happy as I can be under the circumstance of feeling that they must, one after another, before the winter, go away again & leave me to the consciousness of exile & winds. But it is ingratitude to God’s mercy (is it not, dear Lady Margaret?) to be sad now . . . to begin to shiver before the time comes for lighting fires? . . .

  21 August 1839

  Arabel sits at my bedside. She arrived from London this afternoon bursting with news. George, it transpires, had sent Papa my latest ballad. Papa says in doing so George has committed a breach of morality. Papa refuses to read the ballad until I know, and have given him permission to do so. Thankfully Arabel is not so strict. She read the ballad immediately it arrived and thinks it ‘most superior’ to the ‘Romaunt of the Page’ and ‘very beautiful’. But dearest Arabel did admit that her hair tended to curl upward as she read it for she found the events so horrible.

  I have told Arabel to send the ballad to Sam and Stormie and to warn them that no one should read it by candle-light and far less by rush-light. I have said she must tell them that though still weak I am better, that I will write to them once I have regained more strength, that I am praying God will keep them always in His sight, and that they must not worry on account of my health. For I am better! Much better than I was in London last summer, at least.

  I shall not think on verses I have recently published in The Seraphim, and Other Poems – all of which were pervaded by a deathly odour – I shall meditate on future works.

  But I taste my own tears again. I live as a blind poet, only inwardly. Although I wish my imagination to soar it refuses to do so. My helpless knowledge of books has built cumbersome walls around my creative mind, my ideas are caged by want of experience. There is an exquisite pain and silence to this lack of life, a profound and painful silence within. Reaching into the dungeon of myself, penetrating walls of darkness, I will strive to breathe life through words. Past hills and hollows I will soar and into the landscape of mind, through to the understanding and wisdom that brings with it freedom and liberation to experience – with intensity, with vitality – an otherness. If I can sweeten this strange music called life, add light to dismal, sombre, unharmonious tones, I shall be pleased yet.

  31 August 1839

  Papa, Bro, Henrietta and Georgie all come up to my bedside this evening to pray. Papa says, after reading the reviews, that much of the British public agree with The Metropolitan Magazine reviewer’s opinion that ‘the awful mysteries of the Christian faith are not suited to mortal verse’. That is the core of Papa’s argument against The Seraphim, and so it remains. Expressing my own opinions on this matter I am unable to agree less with Papa and the reviews. I will not be pinned down on politics! As a child, I was in danger of becoming the founder of a religion based upon my own imaginings. Though unfit to attend prayer meetings, and may I suffer all the more for it, I am henceforth a tolerant Congregationalist – a kind of heretic believer – I was always of an Eveish constitution, and always shall be. I am certain that if the goodness of Christianity could be suffocated by evils in society and die, tragedy would persist. Tragedy is the highest form of poetry. I tell Papa this. I tell Papa I believe that in almost every religious controversy there are two wrong sides – and one bad spirit, which is common to both; this angers Papa dreadfully. He is fanatical. He sees the law and gospel on his side.

  ‘Now, Henrietta, listen to me,’ I say as Papa, Bro and Georgie descend to the drawing-room for their dinner aperitif, ‘the
review of The Seraphim in The Examiner commented that “sacred objects” are not fit for poetry except on very rare and brief occasions. What do you think of that, and of The Metropolitan Magazine’s response?’

  Henrietta lies on the sofa, eyes tightly shut. The silence is wintry. Is my sister ignoring me? ‘To me, God’s love is the true mystery,’ I continue, ‘whether we are, or are not, at home speculating on the minds of angels.’ Perhaps Henrietta is sleeping already. She said earlier she was too exhausted to eat.

  Sleep escapes me tonight. I wrestle with too many thoughts, and am at odds with my world in general, and no matter how many times I say to myself I won’t see Papa’s furious face in my mind any more, there it constantly remains. I can’t forget his expression. It grows more clearly defined whenever I close my eyes.

  Papa is impossible to understand. Impossible. He seems unable to express feelings to anyone except me. His violent temper is equal in strength to a hurricane. His will, inflexible.

  1 September 1839

  Tonight Dr. Barry was late and his consultation brief to say the least. He came in from a torrential shower, trouser bottoms dripping, and had barely finished unbuckling his brown leather bag than he was rushing downstairs.

  I have taken Dr. Barry under my protection and will not have him chastised, yet I find annoyance grips me. Henrietta believes one hundred and twenty-five pounds to be a moderate charge. Though I may be unreasonable, I think otherwise, because of the number of months Dr. Barry has taken to send the pecuniary part of my obligations to him. I also have the druggist’s bill to pay – fifty pounds. With all these expenses my finances will hardly bear the rent at this house.