Cranky Ladies of History

by Tehani Wessely

  “She is indeed a most agreeable child,” the Grey Lady said.

  Frowning, the new mother glanced up. “You mock me?”

  “I have never mocked you, Mary Wollstonecraft. But I do worry.”

  Such concern was not misplaced.

  Barely three months of shared parenthood were hers to enjoy that summer before Gilbert Imlay, her once-soulful lover, now less-than-official husband chafing under harness, left for London on matters of business similar to those that had dragged him away during her pregnancy. As before, he promised to send for her when matters were settled. As before, months slid past with no firmer word on when that might occur.

  Her treatise on the French Revolution completed prior to Fanny’s birth, Mary was without a literary project with which to occupy herself. Instead, her word-churned mind bloated and burst itself over a near constant production of correspondence to Imlay—longing, scornful, desirous, admonishing letters that scarce received a satisfactory reply. Bodily, she devoted herself to Fanny, nursing the baby through smallpox, encouraging her efforts first to crawl and then to stand, rubbing her gums with chamomile as the first tooth began to cut.

  “She will need to be weaned,” Mary said, wincing as the child mauled a nipple between her newly armed gums.

  “She is not the only one,” the Grey Lady remarked.

  Abandoned and friendless in the port city of Le Havre, Mary bundled up her daughter and returned to Paris. With Robespierre fallen, the streets were at last clean of the bloody work of the guillotine, but that winter proved the harshest of her thirty-six years. It was a winter of poor harvests and famine-priced food, a winter of unobtainable coal and wood cut laboriously by her own chapped hands, a winter of despair and burgeoning suspicion.

  Imlay, came the whispers from foe and well-meaning friend alike, never intended to send for her or Fanny. Instead, he frittered his money away on the company of pretty London actresses.

  On one pretty London actress in particular.

  She tried to not heed them, but the words sank into her marrow.

  Mary’s latchless heart was ill. Her soul was weary. The impish, smiling face of her daughter undid her daily; she loved the child more than she would have once thought possible, and yet those soft and vivacious features bore so solid a stamp of Imlay upon them, it was sometimes nearer cruelty than kindness to behold them.

  At night, alone with the darkness and a silence that no sound save Fanny’s fluttering breath could penetrate, Mary’s thoughts thickened and set. She pitied the poor mite for being born a girl into a world run by men for their own ends, and wondered what earthly good she was showing herself to be as a mother. Certainly no better a mother than wife, or sister, or any kind of woman at all, and now that the child was no longer in need of her milk—

  “I am nothing,” Mary whispered to the empty air.

  She required, and received, no reply.

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  Finally, there came a summons to London, though she set off with little more than resignation in her breast. This was for Fanny, who deserved more from a father than the pauper-gift of his name, and it was for Fanny too that Marguerite accompanied them. The efficient new maid seemed as excited to see England as Mary had once been to visit France.

  Mary’s gelid, smoke-grey thoughts trailed them all.

  They were settled at Charlotte Street, the lodgings comfortably furnished with all but Imlay himself who vacillated between affection and apology, but remained acutely stubborn in his refusal to adopt the role of Paterfamilias. A refusal of which, it seemed, all of London was jovially aware.

  The laudanum, she later insisted, was an error of judgement.

  She had not intended—

  Certainly not—

  She had once been Mary Wollstonecraft.

  Movement was the key, as it always had been. If she remained still, in her body or in her mind, thick-thumbed gloom would smother her alive.

  And so, to the astonishment of many, she agreed to Imlay’s proposal of a Scandinavian journey—some long-outstanding business she might follow up on his behalf, a traitorous ship captain to track down in Sweden, a purloined cargo of silver and gold to pursue in foreign courts—with the insinuation that their personal situation might be further resolved over the months of her—and Fanny’s—absence. Having sighted once more the woman who had so inflamed his passions in Paris, having held again the child those passions had born, might it not be that Imlay merely required time and space in which to unfetter himself from present entanglements?

  At this barest hint of oil, Mary’s heart flung open with a shriek.

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  It was dim inside the carriage, and her clothing was wet and stinking of the Thames. She stared at her trembling hands, at fingernails still tinged corpse-blue, as though they alone had managed to resist the pull of the wakeful world.

  “You are a foolish, obstinate woman, Mary Wollstonecraft.” The Grey Lady sat opposite, arms crossed over her breast, mouth drawn pencil thin.

  “Mary Imlay,” she corrected, as she had done countless times this past year. Her throat rasped with the sting of a thousand wasps; she would never forget the unexpected agony of drowning, the furious burn of all that water rushing to fill her. If she had been foolish, it was only in her expectation that such an end might be painless.

  The Grey Lady snorted. “You have never been Mrs Imlay, in truth, and pray never shall be.”

  “He is resolved that another might take that name.”

  “You knew this.”

  “Until yesterday, I only suspected.”

  “You knew, Mary, let us not pretend otherwise.”

  Mary shook her head. All those letters sent speeding back through Denmark, Norway, Sweden, all those notes received in turn from his deceitful hand, all those hints and promises that she and Fanny might still have a place by his side—only to return to find him setting up house with his actress. With the whole of London witness to her humiliation, to Imlay’s callous desertion, she had seen no other way to extricate herself or her daughter from the wretchedness into which they had been plunged.

  “It was you who saved me,” Mary said.

  “I breathed upon a fisherman’s nape,” the Grey Lady replied. “Encouraged him to turn towards Putney Bridge at the moment of your leaping; that was the furthest of my ability. It was he, and those in the tavern, who effected your resuscitation.”

  “You would play my guardian angel, then?”

  “I am no angel, Mary. Must we tread this patch anew?”

  “A monster then, to see me dragged back to life and misery.”

  “To life, yes, and to your child.”

  Tears coursed down her cheeks but Mary made no move to wipe at them. “I had—I had made provisions for Fanny. She was to return to France, to be raised safe from the taint of her mother’s errors, beyond the scorn of those who would damn her for her parents’ degradation.”

  “This performance is wasted,” the Grey Lady snapped. “You are no martyr to wail in sackcloth and ashes.”

  “You cannot know what I endure! What I have endured these past months—”

  “But I do. Each passion, each degradation, that has e’er passed through you, I have felt most keenly. I know you, Mary Wollstonecraft. I know that you suffer, I know that your suffering is genuine—but, oh, how you delight in feeding it.”

  “Do not presume to tell me—”

  “I shall do more than presume and, for once, you shall do naught but listen.” The Grey Lady leaned forward; her eyes were flat metal discs in their shadowed sockets. “You make of people what you would have them be—such superior beings! so worthy of your heart!—and then you mourn their failings, when you are not blinding yourself to them. Imlay, Fuseli, even Fanny Blood—yes, Fanny; do not appear so shocked—they are more vital to you in their absence, for their presence can never approach the chimeras you have fashioned in their stead.”

  “You take Gilbe
rt’s side in this?” Beneath her despair, a renewed anger simmered.

  “Never.” The Grey Lady’s voice was softer now, its barbs for the moment withdrawn. “I will always stand with you, but I will not tip soothing lies into your ear, nor will I aid this melancholy. You are stronger than you imagine, Mary, and I would have you see yourself through clear, unclouded eyes.”

  Shivering, Mary rubbed her cheeks. Rain pattered on the carriage roof and she found herself wishing the journey would never reach its end. For all her intellectual accomplishments, her much-prized rationality, she was terrified. Alone and abandoned she had been on several occasions, and penniless too, but never in so dire a situation as this. Never with a child—a girl child—for whom to care and somehow shield from the world’s most outrageous fortunes.

  “Oh!” she cried as her daughter’s round and rosy face flashed into her mind. “My little Fanny, I would have left you to them. How could I have thought…”

  “Your thoughts were elsewhere,” the Grey Lady said. “They have been elsewhere for too long now, and it is past time you collected them.” She sniffed the air, her nose wrinkling in displeasure. “Spoiled yeast and calla lilies and desperation, still.”

  “I can smell only mud and sewage.”

  The Grey Lady chuckled. “That too, of course.”

  “My heart beats, yet this feels a living death.”

  “While it seems so, I will not leave you.”

  Mary pressed her face to the window. “It is dark outside.”

  “It is October; the days grow short.”

  “It is so very dark.” For the barest of breaths, Mary imagined she could feel the squeeze of gloved hands about her wrists. She closed her eyes. “I am frightened.”

  “Know that I am here,” the Grey Lady said. “And cling to this, if nothing else: you are not a fate-spun heroine from one of those Gothic Romances you so despise.”

  This time she was certain that she felt it, the touch of flocked velvet soft as infant skin against her bare, chilled flesh. The impossible pressure of those thin and gentle fingers.

  “You are Mary Wollstonecraft, and you will die for no man.”

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  Even in darkness, words glimmered and beckoned, drawing her outwards. First, the mixed blessing of her journals, notes for the travelogue that Joseph Johnson had commissioned upon learning of her Scandinavian endeavour. She wrought from them an epistolary elevated by personal circumstance: a woman journeying alone with an infant; a woman caught in the process of betrayal and abandonment; a woman traversing the masculine spheres of commerce, politics, creativity and philosophy—and crafting such clever, such candid dispatches.

  Behold: Mary Wollstonecraft, Traveller-Philosopher!

  Her mind flexed, and lightened.

  Invigorated, finding solid footing once more among the literary circles of London, she conceived a fresh project by which she rapidly became consumed. Maria, the novel would be titled, or The Wrongs of Woman, and from the first she was resolved on a slow and calculated execution. The crafting of a truly excellent book was an arduous task, and this time Mary would not allow herself to be rushed. This time, she would reflect and revise and reconsider. This time, her words would ring with utter clarity.

  Behold: Mary Wollstonecraft, Polemic Novelist!

  Her heart, too, discovered a new fascination. Or perhaps rediscovered it.

  Upon the occasion of their first meeting years before at one of Johnson’s weekly dinners, Mary had found William Godwin irksome in his undiscerning admiration of supposedly eminent men. He had, in turn, thought her too outspoken in conversation, especially when he would have preferred to imbibe the opinions of others around the table. Other eminent men, an unspoken qualification she had perceived only too well.

  Newly reacquainted within overlapping social circles, they found themselves drawn to one another with the inexorable, near imperceptible weight of planetary bodies whose orbits, previously misaligned, now moved in startling synchronicity. Mary’s passions, never cooled, rekindled. William’s, to his own astonishment, burned all the bolder for their hitherto untested state.

  But non-planetary bodies, bodies of flesh and flagrant blood, follow their own particular, if not wholly predictable, paths and thus conceive projects of their own.

  See William Godwin, famous for his very public repudiations of marriage as a moral institution.

  See Mary “Imlay”, already sensitive to gossip and the subject of much speculation.

  Then imagine—oh imagine!—the fraught negotiation of these two proud and independent souls around the sudden expectation of a third. The small, private ceremony at St Pancras. The quiet series of announcements to friends. The united front against those who shunned them, those who mocked and scorned and professed outrage, or merely snide amusement, at a marriage for which the catalyst would soon became roundly apparent.

  Behold: Mary Wollstonecraft, Mother-To-Be, Redux.

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  The woman in the bed opens her eyes and tries to focus on the figures surrounding her. There is William, dear William, his tired face so pale, his eyes sunken. The doctor, the good doctor, whose name she cannot for the moment recall. And, of course, the other.

  “I did not finish,” the woman in the bed croaks. “I thought there was time, at last, to be still.”

  William clutches her hand. “There is time, my love.”

  “There is no time,” the Grey Lady says quietly.

  No attention is paid to her by any soul present save the woman in the bed, who struggles now to sit up, who is restrained by the gentlest of palms placed against her panting sternum, who is entreated to rest, to save her words for when she is well. William’s eyes are glossy with tears.

  The woman in the bed stares past him. “My baby, who will teach her, who will protect her?”

  “Hush.” William brushes damp hair from her face. “There will be time to talk of such matters.”

  “There is no time,” the Grey Lady repeats. “I will not lie to you, Mary.”

  “You must look to her,” the woman in the bed pleads. “Look to her as you have me.”

  Hush, my love, do not worry yourself so needlessly.

  “That is not my purpose,” the Grey Lady says.

  “Then make it your purpose. My daughter will not know her mother.”

  Carlisle? Carlisle, she is raving; see how her face contorts?

  Mr Godwin, I can do nothing further to help her.

  The Grey Lady moves closer to the bed. A yellow wasp crawls down her sleeve and into the palm of her hand. “I am sorry, Mary. If it were in my power, I would ease all the suffering in the world, beginning with your own.”

  “It is dark,” the woman in the bed whispers. “It is dark as the Thames.”

  Carlisle, fetch that lamp here. Mary, see? There is yet light.

  I fear it will not be long, Mr Godwin.

  “I felt as one standing on a precipice,” the woman in the bed says. “All the world bustled and buzzed below me and for once I need not race away. There would be time, the baby would come, and there would yet be time for all I wished to do.” Her chapped lips crack around a smile. “I should be at my desk.”

  Mary, be still now. Hush.

  “Do not leave me, I beg you.”

  Never, my love. I am here always.

  “I will not leave you.” The Grey Lady extends a hand. “But here, open your mouth.”

  Insect legs scratch and tickle as they crawl over her tongue. The woman in the bed presses the wasp against her palate, feels its barbed abdomen burst even as it sinks its sting into her flesh. Where she expected pain, there is instead a spreading languid heat and the taste of molasses on fresh-baked bread.

  “It is all I can do,” the Grey Lady says.

  It is enough.

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  Do not suppose this to be her ending.

  It is a play truncated in its second a
ct, a journey derailed before its terminus, a cloth cut short by miser’s blades; you cannot decipher the whole pattern from but a fragment in your hand.

  She would not have remained still. She could not have remained still.

  There would have been more words. There would always have been more words.

  Her story cannot be shaped to a convenient arc, to a neat and satisfactory conclusion.

  This is not her ending; it is merely where she left off.

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  It is not her purpose and yet the Grey Lady comes regardless, propelled by curiosity perhaps, or perhaps by some deeper compulsion. The baby is sleeping in a simple wooden crib which once rocked the Reveleys’ own children to slumber, now retrieved from storage and pressed into tragic and unexpected service. Nearby, little Fanny plays mother to a favourite doll, fussing with its hair and dress and planting noisy kisses upon its porcelain cheeks. The child does not notice the Grey Lady’s arrival in the room, just as she has never noticed her myriad comings and goings. That is as it should be.

  The Grey Lady approaches the crib, drops to one knee beside it. “Let me look at you, then.” Her eyes scan the infant’s chubby features, hoping to discern some familiarity in the shade of the nose, in the turn of the mouth, but her efforts are ill-rewarded. Babies are, after all, babies. In time, there might be something of the mother in this one, or the father, but that time will not be the Grey Lady’s to witness.

  She sighs. “Good life to you, child, and to your sister.”

  The baby opens her eyes. Dark brown as her mother’s were, and curious, they fix themselves upon the Grey Lady’s face. Those eyes see her.

  “Oh my,” she whispers. Leaning forward, her nose inches from the newly fascinating creature in the crib, she takes a delicate sniff. Oh my, indeed. “Mary Godwin…” The Grey Lady frowns; the name feels unfinished on her tongue. “Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, or however you shall be someday known, you smell of thunderstorms and secret truths and…and monsters?”