What Is Visible: A Novel

by Kimberly Elkins

  We are grounded at last: Liverpool—hideous dankness—and now London, an admittedly marvelous metropolis for which I am still trying to gain the proper rapturous appreciation. Sixteen days on the Britannia, and I spent almost half of them abed, until Chev brought down a thumping tumbler of whiskey and insisted I exercise my will over what he termed my “fancy.” Stumbled on deck, half-fizzed, and my husband, as if we didn’t know already, proved to be a genius. Again.

  Married life so far attempted between different beds in different cities, but he is my constant, and will remain so. Little one, I urge you heartily to try this state when we have found a fellow worthy. And we won’t allow me to even think about anything that might upset my applecart six months down the road on my return! I know you have the gravest compassion for the unfortunate—we all do—but one’s own living room need not be the asylum frolic.

  The London season―we are already in the vortex—last evening at the Duchess of Sutherland’s at Stafford House, we were served cake sent from HRM Victoria herself in honor of her new babe’s christening. Invitations lined up: Thomas Carlyle; the childrens’ writer, Maria Edgeworth; and of course, Dickens, who is apparently eager to show my husband every workhouse, prison, and nuthatch on the island. But of course, Chevie lives to be surrounded by the most grotesquely enfeebled, and it has occurred to me that my own wit, for whatever it’s worth in our circles, is perhaps his least favorite of my charms.

  Anywise, he is finding other charms aplenty, my darling. You will grow up and see!

  May 1844, Dr. Howe to Charles Sumner

  I have never missed your sweet society more than I do now to share in my deepest happiness. You complain, mercilessly, half ironically, of your cold lot, and yet you, with your boundless wells of humor and natural affection, would benefit most from leaping the bachelor fence.

  I am so very happy that I am genuinely frightened: What does it mean? Is it some cruel illusion? Even if I deserve it, and you, dearest, would know whether I do—I never saw anything like it before. For all the happiness they tell you about in saturnine novels, it is humbug compared to this.

  June 1844, Laura to Dr. Howe

  Miss Swift has suggested that I visit my family in Hanover, but I don’t want to in case you decide to race back across the ocean to be with your Laura. I think Swift would like me to go away so she can loll about and do nothing. The newspapers say that you speak of me wherever you go there and that everyone knows my name, but if I did not have someone to read the papers to me, I would swear that you had forgotten me. I would like to go to the Baptist church, as my family does, but Swift says no. She is too strict with me. Please write to her.

  Please give my love to your wife. She has not replied to my letters either.

  June 1844, Julia to Louisa

  Chev heard tell of a woman, if you can believe it, even more God-slighted than Laura, and so of course, he had to visit her, though it meant a trip all the way to Portsmouth. Here is a ditty I composed in her honor which I thought might give you a titter:

  I found a most charming old woman,

  Delightfully void

  Of all that’s enjoyed

  By the animal vaguely called human.

  She has but one jaw,

  Has teeth like a saw,

  Her ears and her eyes I delight in:

  The one could not hear

  Tho’ a cannon were near,

  The others are holes with no sight in.

  Destructiveness great

  Combines with conceit

  In the form of this wonderful noddle,

  But benev’lence, you know,

  And a large philopro

  Give a great inclination to coddle.

  July 1844, Dr. Howe to Laura

  My dear girl, I cannot possibly keep up with your vast correspondence. I am so very glad that you enjoyed the tour of the Britannia and that you are faring well in my absence. Help Oliver as best you can with lessons, though I know he is far from your equal. Remember to be at your tip-toppest especially on Exhibition Days as you are now known the world over!

  July 1844, Julia to Louisa

  I have what one would consider the best of all possible news, and yet a great gift I’d wished for later rather than sooner: you will be an aunt. The honeymoon will extend itself into forever now, though with less honey. After being tea’d and pie’d all over Geneva, Vienna, and Milan, we have descended into Rome, a climate my husband has deemed optimal for my state. The city feels almost medieval—as do I at the moment—and we shall probably stay here to wait out my confinement. Impossible: less than a year ago, I was still a viable New York belle, holding court on Bond Street with you. I pray the child has your manageable chestnut locks, not my furlable red ones.

  And the most I can say for my delicate condition so far is that my wits have gone a’woolgathering…

  July 1844, Laura to Dr. Howe

  I wish that I could have a cameo of your head to wear as a brooch on the lace collar of my day dress. And then at night, alone in my bed, I would push the pin of the brooch right through the skin in the hollow of my neck so that your dear face would stay with me the whole night long and I could run my fingers over your raised likeness and never sleep. Miss Swift says they do not make cameos of men, but I don’t understand why not. Everyone says you are the handsomest man in Boston—who would not want you as an ornament?

  And if I can’t have that, might you please, please allow me the raised Bible like the blind girls? Do not tell God, though, that I would rather have your cameo to sleep with than His book. It will be our secret.

  August 1844, Jeannette Howe to Dr. Howe

  A request, dear brother, which I will trade you for a warning: Please write more often to Laura. She asks daily if there is a letter from you, and you have doubtless received bundles from her. She is becoming quite the lady in some regards—grown an inch, I’d say, since you left—and I hope that the money you left for her expenses will be enough to cover a new dress or two. She is, of course, too thin, but that is another matter. She sits sometimes addressing your chair, her hands out and fingers racing away, her head cocked at attention. We let her be, even when she laughs and rocks herself or cries a bit.

  This religious business could split open, you know, with you away so long. On Visiting Days, the Institution crawls with all manner of misguided proselytizers, and many of the most orthodox seem to be the most vested in Laura’s education, peppering us all with questions. I have never pretended to understand your choice of Miss Swift, an ardent Congregationalist with an even more ardent brother, as Laura’s chief teacher, and now that you are gone, I would feel remiss if I did not point it out to you yet again. She is a good teacher, but she is what she is and what she will be.

  I miss you, sir, and look forward to the new family’s return. It is heavy here.

  August 1844, Charles Sumner to Dr. Howe

  As Longfellow and Mann have kindly kept you up on the travails of my recent illness, you know that I was too weak to write, even to you. I hope you have not suffered unduly. My delirium, however, afforded me a vision. Why was I spared? For me there is no future, either of usefulness or happiness. I mock myself, and will doubtless be mocked, as I should be, but there it is.

  And as I have often requested, out of modesty or fear—you choose—BURN THIS.

  August 1844, Laura to Dr. Howe

  Oliver misses you very much and cries every night because you haven’t written. He asks me how God could let you leave us for such a long time. He does not understand about getting married, like I do. It is a shame that he is afraid of Julia. He says that her hands are colder and wetter than a fish.

  Are you farther away from me now than God or closer? How far away is God?

  September 1844, Miss Swift to Dr. Howe

  I am sorry that I must inform you again that Laura’s anxiety about religion is not at all relieved by my constant evasions on the subject, as instructed. She is becoming more difficult to manage, often flying into
inexplicable rages. Yesterday, she threw a book across the room, and when I told her to apologize, she said she would only if she could ask God to forgive her, but she didn’t know how. I told her, as I always tell her, that you will talk to her about God when you return. But she insists that if you are not here to forgive her when she does bad things—as she does frequently now—then the only other one who can possibly forgive and govern her is God. It’s a fine bit of blackmail is what it comes down to, Dr. Howe, but I can’t see my way clear of it.

  I beg you to answer some of Laura’s questions. I know she has been sending many letters. I am holding out as you have asked, but at this point, I fear that damage is being done to the child, if not to her immortal soul, then at least to her happiness and further growth.

  I know you love her dearly, and all the best for her rests in your hands and heart.

  September 1844, Dr. Howe to Laura and Oliver

  I trust you are both behaving well for your teachers, and that I will find the Institution still in one piece when I return. We are hobnobbing everywhere, and all of Europe knows your names. Rome is hotter than Boston on the worst day—you would hate all the sweating, Laura! Julia and I are eating too much macaroni; our hands might be too fat to even fit in yours by year-end.

  Keep up with your studies, and mind everything that Swift and Jeannette tell you, and who knows what treats I may bring back for you. I blow my love to both of you over the Atlantic like a strong wind. Can you feel it warm on your cheeks?

  September 1844, Horace Mann, Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, to Dr. Howe

  The evangelical zealots are digging my grave, Howe. In the legislature, the press, and from the pulpits, they batter me to put religious education back into the schools. Sometimes it is almost impossible to believe that these Calvinists are our brothers in the Protestant faith; they often seem as far over the wall as the Catholics. We Unitarians still hold Harvard, of course, and most of the State House, but I am sicker with dread than you have ever seen me, friend. I cannot fault your being away at such a critical time in our long mutual fight against these Calvinists, but I must be assured that you are safekeeping Laura’s soul from this mess. She is our living proof that children learn morality and reverence by example and inference, not through indoctrination.

  There are many orthodox and Good News bearers about, even on the grounds of your Institution, and you must protect the sanctity of our best and brightest philosophical weapon. The public still weeps before Laura’s goodness and purity, but once she is sullied with brimstone, we will have lost half the battle. Or more.

  I care what is best for the girl, who is so dear to us all. What a perfect phrenological specimen, Dr. Combe tells me, as is your wife. My congratulations. I know no other man as lucky. The baby will most certainly sport the finest head in town.

  September 1844, Laura to Dr. Howe

  I don’t want a letter to share with Oliver. He doesn’t care. Miss Swift says that I cannot ask any questions about God. You have left me, so what I am supposed to do in a house full of silly girls?

  I hope you and Julia are having a very excellent time.

  October 1844, Dr. Howe to Miss Swift

  I might long ago have taught the scriptures to Laura, and she might have learned, as other children do, to repeat line after line, precept upon precept, and to imitate others in prayer. But her enormous handicaps have proven a shield to protect her from being relentlessly subjected to the crude ideas and dogma with which other poor children are pilloried. God himself has given us the purity of her consciousness to be spared from the masses’ metaphysical speculations. I do not ask you to sin, in your book, but I will regard it as a sin in mine, if your Calvinist beliefs interfere with the generous terms of your employment.

  I am surprised that you imagine that Laura’s eternal welfare will be imperiled by her remaining in ignorance of certain religious truths for a few more months. You are only her teacher in the seven subjects we have granted, nothing more. As the one who rescued her from darkness, I hold the high responsibility of the charge of her soul, at least for now. You may take it as sacred, Miss Swift, that even from afar, I bear that gift and burden as seriously as would the mother who bore her. I have been carefully preparing Laura’s mind for religious consciousness for eight years, and she will come gradually to understand every religious truth that it may be desirable for her to know.

  If she behaves badly, you have my permission to punish her as you see fit; other than that, our accord remains the same.

  November 1844, Julia to Louisa

  I can’t help thinking of Mother’s death, of course. Maybe the fear of childbirth is all that is shrouding my happiness. Chev, archphysician that he is, has already pooh-poohed my apprehension. He swears it will be my finest hour. Actually, he says that it is every woman’s finest hour. Until now, my best have been those spent on poetry, but that life is now undone, and in its place, I have chosen a blended life. Forgive my grayness, darling. I am getting old and foreign.

  November 1844, Miss Swift to Mrs. Bridgman, Laura’s mother

  It is not my place, but with the Doctor gone, I am the one who must ask: please, Mrs. Bridgman, write to Laura. He is abroad on his honeymoon until we don’t know when, and she is very lonely. It’s back to being hard for her to eat, etc. It is also clear to me that she is upset that she hasn’t heard from you in several months, and it would do her more good than you know. She is smart as a lick, but she is more of a child at fifteen than your other children. She would no doubt like to come to Hanover, perhaps for the holidays.

  Of course, we know that the Lord would prove the greatest source of comfort in her suffering, but Dr. Howe has forbidden me from giving your daughter even one page from the Good Book. I speak to you as a Congregationalist to a Baptist, and know that you and I are not far apart in our hearts and minds on this subject, unlike the radical Unitarians, so I tell you that I do my best to preserve Laura from harm. Give my kind regards to the rest of your family. God bless you and keep you.

  December 1844, Charles Sumner to Dr. Howe

  I am hurt to hear that all the Continent’s bigwigs desire from you is the dreary decanting of Laura. Don’t they know she is but the tip of your little finger? Pope Gregory XVI in Rome, the biggest wig of all, and he asks you only what Laura knows of God—how inhuman! What if you told them that your poor lawyer friend stopped by to check on the little package last week and that she bit him on the forearm? “You touched me too hard,” she said. This is what they revere and write about in Europe these days, a rabid child?

  I have been vigilant in keeping my eyes and ears in at the Institution as you have sworn me to, but the girl’s behavior at this point is beyond the pale. And it so hard to tell the foxes from the chickens there at the moment, not to mention the snakes.

  Good luck slipping off that mantle of fame you have laid across your too-broad shoulders, my Chevie.

  December 1844, Dr. Howe to Laura

  My girl, you have asked me so many questions in so many letters that I am dizzy keeping track. You are a threat to your Doctor’s sanity. It would take very much time and reams of good paper to tell you all I know and think about the subject of religion, and you should be clear that I am very busy at the moment taking care of my wife. I shall try to tell you a little, because I fear that you might be receiving information from the wrong sources, which would be disastrous for us all.

  First, it is the Christmas season, and you will no doubt be hearing much about the birth of Jesus, etc., but you are simply to enjoy the day and the festivities. God is a loving father, the most loving father, who has made the world and everything in it beautiful for us. You don’t need to be told about it or read books about it to understand. Just take it in and be happy. That is as much as I can tell you for now, but that should be more than enough to hold you until my return. Your mind is tender, and the harder things I will explain when you are ready. All that heaven allows you shall have, my dear. Nothing m
ore can be promised.

  You have heard the joyous news that Mrs. Howe and I are having a baby. Not the Christ child, but a real live baby I will bring home for you from across the sea!

  December 1844, Laura to Dr. Howe

  Just one thing: Why didn’t God let me die when I was sick?

  Chapter 6

  Laura, 1845

  I’m glad Mama said it would be too busy with me home at Christmas. I don’t like New Hampshire in the snow. Everyone says it’s so beautiful and that each snowflake is different, but they certainly feel the same, though I do like to melt them on my tongue. The only good thing about winter is wearing my fur muff. And at home I probably wouldn’t have gotten presents as nice; Mama doesn’t even give us real stockings. Of course Doctor wasn’t here to be my Saint Nicholas this year, but I did get an orange (I hate its seeds), a ball of yarn, and new crochet hooks. Some of the younger girls still believe there’s a jolly old elf, but I never really believed that. Jeannette read Mr. Dickens’s Christmas Carol to the six of us who stayed here for the holidays, but there was no one to translate for me. Thank goodness I am already familiar with the story. I feel an allegiance with sweet Tiny Tim, but at the same time, I’m not sure I want him to get all better and strong. Of course, I don’t want him to die, but must every single thing turn out so well for him? What if Julia’s baby is very frail, like Tiny Tim, and maybe lame? That would be very sad.

  Now that it’s April, Mama says I can come home for a month. The only terrible thing is that I won’t be able to get Doctor’s letters. I hope that I will have a pile waiting for me on my return to Boston. I am so happy to see Pearly, our cat, though she still gives me a wide berth; apparently, animals have a memory as good as mine. When I was six, I tossed her into the fireplace because she’d scratched me, and though she was not dreadfully burned, Papa said her silky tail was singed black, and he stamped his feet harder that time than I ever remember. That’s his way of letting me know he’s angry, and it’s very unpleasant to feel the wood floors shake so long and so hard, but it’s still better than being cuffed on the head or slapped on the bottom, which is what he used to do until Mama stopped him. She didn’t think it was fair to punish me like Mary and Addison because most of my sins were accidents. I was happy to let her believe that, anyway. After the fireplace, I wasn’t allowed to play with the cat and had to content myself with the doll I’d made from one of Papa’s old boots. I would untie the laces and pretend they were her long strands of hair, and touch the twelve tiny eyes that meant she could see more than anyone in the whole world. Caroline I called her, my boot baby, and I rocked her to sleep every night.