by James Tipton
They said, This is not the time for you to distress yourself over something you can do nothing about. Your baby needs you to be calm, to rest. So I drank the tea and read Héloïse again, to be amused, but it did not amuse me. It made me think about distressed lovers.
A single candle stretched its flame across my page. Writing was the only thing that calmed the thoughts that unflaggingly paced through my mind. This time, however, I was not recording or reflecting in my diary, but starting a prose version of my favorite poem, the medieval epic The Romance of the Rose. I thought more people would read it now if it were in prose. But I suppose I really did it for myself.
I went from the writing table to my bed, blew out the candle, closed the bed curtains, and fell asleep as I listened to the wind in the shutters. In my dream Claudette knocked softly on the door and opened it, a candle in her hand illuminating her happy face. “Madame,” she said. “He is here. Monsieur la Valeur des Mots.” I had made a joke about his name once when I had translated its meaning to her, “the worth of words,” but I had never actually called him that. Now, in the dream, it was his regular name. “Monsieur les Mots is outside in the rain,” Claudette said. There was a panic in the dream about him being stuck outside. I went to the window and opened the shutters. I thought I could feel the cold rain blowing into my face. William stood below me, and he was singing. In my dream I recognized the melody of the Annachie Gordon song, about the sailor who came back too late and his lady had died. Then I saw a big black dog in the rain. It was behind William, coming out of some alley. I didn’t like the look of the dog. I called to William, but he didn’t hear me. He just lifted up his voice in the rain and finished his song. The dog crouched right behind him, as if ready to pounce.
Then my eyes opened suddenly. Thunder shook the shutters. In my mind I still heard William singing. I almost went to the window and looked out.
That afternoon this letter came, forwarded by Jean:
My Dearest Friend:
I walked to chez Vincent in search of thee and found a bevy of National Guard. I went to chez Vergez, hid in the stable, and noticed La Rouge was not there. I knew something had gone dreadfully wrong. I will leave this note in the post for chez Vergez and hope, somehow, it will find you. I am leaving for Paris now. I pray to your Lucette and to the Almighty Protector that you and the baby are safe.
I will find you, even if it takes years.
Adieu most tenderly thy dearest Friend,
William.
Perhaps he’s walking through Orléans right now, I thought. I madly wanted to run out to the rue de Bourgogne. Perhaps he would pass along that old Roman road, going east. I convinced Claudette it was logical, and we stood there for an hour in the rain, carts splashing mud on our skirts and coats, Claudette holding an umbrella and I scouting every tall pedestrian. “It is possible,” I said. “What if he came through Orléans, right near my door, and we both of us didn’t even know?”
“What if he went through Chartres, Madame? I heard Mademoiselle Angelique say that is the more logical route, the one you yourself said he took when he left Vendôme. Lovers,” Claudette said, “are not the most logical people.”
“I am always logical,” I said.
Claudette shrugged, made a sound like poof as she exhaled, and continued, as I scanned the gray street. People stared at us as they passed. “When I had to leave Benoît,” she said, “to come here, he was not logical. He said he would leave the count’s service and get a position in Orléans. That might not be so easy, I told him, and what about when we return, after Madame Annette’s baby is born, I said, and you, Benoît, are still stuck in Orléans, polishing a harness in some dim barn by a noisy street. Then, working in the count’s service, in his grand château with fresh game to eat, will sound very desirable to you, Monsieur Benoît the Groom of the château de Beauregard. That is what I told him, so he stayed with the count.”
“Your story is not at all like my situation, Claudette.”
“It is the same principle,” she said. “A woman, with a belly as big as a house, will stand in the rain, when it is not logical or good for the baby. Monsieur William— Monsieur les Mots, as you called him once—”
“What did you say?”
“You made a joke once about his name and called him—”
“Yes, but what made you think of that?”
“I was only trying to make a joke, to enliven our dull hour, waiting on this street for no purpose.”
“Claudette, have you seen a black dog?”
“Madame?”
“A big, black dog in the rain.”
“I think we should go in, Madame.”
“It was in a dream, Claudette. A dream I had last night about Monsieur William, and you called him that funny name in my dream also.”
“I do not know about the name, Madame,” she said, “but I do know—it is just an old superstition—but where I am from in the country, a big black dog in a dream is not a good sign. I think we should go in. Have some soup. Put your feet up on the settee. Work on your long story. Monsieur William, I was going to say, he can take care of himself. He is a resourceful Englishman. Rain does not bother him. Walking long distances is nothing to him. And he loves you. He will find a way, as he said in the letter.”
“Even if it takes years,” I added, and we left the old road in the rain on which Joan had once entered in triumph.
Two weeks later I received another letter forwarded from Jean.
My Dearest Friend,
I just received your dear letter from Orléans! I rejoice that you are safe and well.
On my return from Blois, Citizen Brissot succeeded in obtaining my new papers and a travel pass for me. The pass, however, is only good for two weeks. Brissot added that, since the anti-foreign sentiment continues to be strong with the constant threat from the Austrians, if I cared for my safety I should not wait to depart. It is not my safety, right now, for which I primarily care.
One Englishman, however, has just immigrated here because of the tyranny of the British government. I would have liked, my darling, for you to have met last night the writer Tom Paine. I thought, Annette would like this fellow; she could see that I am not the only Francophile in England. But Brissot said to me that it may not be safe for Monsieur Paine to stay here, either. He is a hero today, he said, but—and he shrugged.
In any case, I am almost penniless and cannot afford to stay any longer. It wrenches my heart to leave at this, of all times! I gave you my word, and now I must be leaving on the morrow. Forgive me. I will keep to our original plan: somehow to procure support from my uncle—a fierce endeavor sprung from Necessity but calling upon Sacrifice to carry it out—, publish a book of poems—I am almost finished with the long one which I have shared with you throughout my sojourn—and, thereby, as soon as is humanly possible, gain the means by which I may either return to thee or a situation which will allow me to send for thee.
The longings of absence are intolerable, but they are mitigated when I think toward the bliss of our reunion. By then I will have so many things to say to you, from each hour of each day, that the burden of those thousands of words in my memory will quite over-whelm my mind and I will have nothing at all to say, only embraces to give you. And so you see, sweet love, how dearly I should wish to be alone with you again, and that, forsooth, you may have the pleasure of being right after all: revolutions, it turns out, no longer hold the position of my highest esteem in life because they do not partake of the higher and more lasting values: they come and go; but love remains. Revolutions can call us to Duty, but never to love, and that, Darling, will always be their failure. I leave in sorrow, but dream of seeing my Beloved again in joy, when the light from the eyes of our child will exceed and extinguish any darkness we will have known from our separation. Then, let us not be parted again!
Adieu most tenderly thy dearest Friend, William.
So that look I had of him in Vendôme, beside the carriage, standing alone in the middle of the square, would be the
last look I would have for a long time.
My labor started late that afternoon. The letter was on the bedside table, and Claudette read it to me from time to time when I was in a fit state to listen. There were certain passages that I liked hearing again and again. The baby was born the next morning, on the fifteenth of December, 1792. With the Dubourgs present as godparents, she was baptized Anne Caroline Wordsworth, though the curate couldn’t understand the strange foreign name and wrote it Woodswodsth. I didn’t catch this mistake until I read the birth certificate later, and then I couldn’t do anything about it.
BOOK IV
1793–1802
Words
My Dearest Friend,
Are you well, and is our child in your arms?
My arrival in my native land was not a cause for rejoicing. I stood on the boat and gazed back to France. Everything I loved I was leaving. The coastline would not show itself for the driving mist.
I am on to London now, to speak with my stern uncle, who will not, I know, approve of you or of me, but I must move him to compassion. I have made it through the dangers of the Committee of Surveillance—my uncle cannot be as formidable.
I pray that I leave thee and our child in health.
I remain yours in exile, William.
I wanted to write to him immediately but had no address. William had posted the note as soon as he had landed in England.
All the news in the papers at that time was of the King’s trial.
People read, or had read to them, every detail reported of a trial the likes Europe had never seen. William’s friends, the Girondins, at the end had voted against the verdict of death, but the rest of the Assembly had disagreed with them. The King’s lawyer, the great Malesherbes, went without sleep preparing a brilliant last defense, portraying the King as a victim of calumny and circumstance. The King himself had wept when they asserted that he had shed French blood at the Tuileries. I know Papa had thought Louis rather a ninny, but one couldn’t help but feel sorry for a man trying so desperately to keep a vestige of his dignity when he was treated so callously by those around him, sneering accusations at him, calling him Capet instead of Louis, the mob eating ices in the balcony as he stood on trial for his life. His lawyer was not allowed to sit down for fourteen hours and cried when he heard the verdict. I did not read the papers then and only heard from the Dubourgs about Louis’s speech that cold January day on the scaffold, when he, in his new role as martyr, forgave everyone, and they didn’t care because they were so drunk with glee at the prospect of a king’s death right in front of them. His dangling head would solve everything. His head paraded on a pike would make the world a better place.
I preferred to look at my daughter in the light that fell through the gray day onto her face. I had never known anyone as beautiful as she.
I was glad William was safe in England. The world had turned upside down. Who would rule France now? Citizen Robespierre? One of William’s friends? General Dumouriez, who had won that victory in Valmy? No one seemed to care at this moment, for Louis’s lonely head was the prize of the century. I felt for his family, locked in that cold tower now and unable to see even each other. I sang my happier version of the Annachie Gordon song to Caroline, who knew nothing of kings or the fall of kings, and I didn’t let the fire in my grate go out that winter night.
Then I heard from William in London.
My dearest Friend,
We have heard here about the King, an outcome I knew was inevitable. I myself have been on trial, so to speak, before my uncle, and have not fared much better than your erstwhile king. In short, my guardian is not kindly disposed. It is so humiliating to be judged by him and to be in his miserly mercy. He does not see fit to give me or us a penny. My dear sister, who in spite of her disapproval of my actions, of her own gentle lecture to me, and of her scruples on the matter, is going to take up my cause and intercede for us. She can be very persuasive, arguing, as she always does, from a firm moral stance. This is a very courageous position for her to take, and I am deeply in her debt. Her name is Dorothy, and I am sure you will grow to respect and love her also.
Meanwhile, I have also been unsuccessful in publishing my book of poems and am actively engaged upon rewriting their many imperfections. I have consulted newspapers and feel I may be able to procure some means of livelihood there, so I may send for thee.
But I would have done far better as a gentleman’s tour guide, with headquarters at a certain charming town on the Loire, had not the world and its troubles interfered.
I write this in haste so it can go out with the morning post and you can receive my London address. I long to hear from you. You and our child, who is perhaps slumbering by your side as you read this, are never out of my thoughts. Dear Annette, I love thee with a passion that, were it known, would stun this meager world.
Yours in exile, William.
In spite of William’s vision of us, every time I laid Caroline down, she awoke. I was dying to write to him. I sang her the Annachie Gordon song a hundred times, it seemed. Then I laid her down and hummed softly as I wrote:
Monsieur William Wordsworth
Staple Inn No. 11
London, Angleterre
My dearest Friend,
The cap I started working on when I last saw you is almost finished now. You can place it on your daughter’s head yourself, when you return. I tell her that her father has put it to his own lips! It will keep her very warm. When I look at her I see your eyes; when I read your letters I hear your voice; you are in the room...Good-bye, my friend...always love your little daughter and your Annette, who kisses you a thousand times on the mouth, on the eyes...
Good-bye, I love you for life.
There was more that I wrote, both in this letter and in others, but the word Angleterre in the address, it turns out, alerted the Committee of Surveillance, who impounded the letters on the spot. Once one did get through, for William exclaimed how ecstatic he was to hear from me and that the baby and I were well. But mostly I heard of how distraught he was that I wasn’t writing, or that something ill had befallen the baby or me.
I continued to write to William, whether he received my letters or not, and even though, after a few weeks when war was declared between our nations, I received none at all myself. I told him of the pink cap, how Caroline now wore it. I wrote of many other things, but it is sad for me to think of them, even now, as an old woman, for none of those words ever reached him.
La Boucherie
I remember sitting with Caroline many, many hours, late, early, a small fire in the grate, her crib set next to my bed, so often I was not sitting, but lying with her by my side, nursing her while I myself was half asleep, hearing dimly the rain outside, then feeling her going back to sleep, her tiny back rising and falling with her breath, and the bedcovers over us both, and when Claudette would come in with the tisane in the morning, she ’d find us both asleep, side by side.
I was fascinated by Caroline’s small but complete body—the miniature ears with whorls like seashells, the palms deeply lined like an ancient soul. I made up songs—what did she care about lyrics? I fancied that she knew my voice from the day she was born and that her eyes turned in my direction when I spoke.
When Caroline was about two months old, I had a letter from my mother that she was sending a nurse to help me out. Now, Claudette and I were quite capable of doing everything, but still, one more pair of hands could not hurt, and I was pleased with the gesture from Maman—it was a long trip on winter roads to Orléans, and she herself had still not come to visit her granddaughter, even though I had written her several times of Caroline’s health and beauty.
When the nurse arrived, I was not impressed. She was tall and thin as a stick, had a stern demeanor, and said I should let Caroline cry instead of picking her up and soothing her. “How else will she learn that in this world you cannot always get whatever you want?”
she said. I told her that was a heartless and impractical notion—t
he baby was telling me something in the only way she knew how, and it was my job to listen to her. I let the nurse help then only by cleaning and watching Caroline while she slept, so I would be free to leave the room and occasionally even walk, whether about the house or even on the street. It was still cold, but I longed sometimes to be out in the fresh air and to see the liveliness of the world outside our walls.
One clear morning in late February Claudette and I walked down the busy rue de Bourgogne all the way to the quai, and, even with the fewer boats and barges of the winter, after months of being inside it was like a tonic to hear the coarse shouting of the bargemen and the noise of the carts on the cobbles, the smell of the river and the cold sunlight glinting on it, and the men carrying loads on their shoulders for whom we stepped aside to make way. I knew when Caroline’s nap would be most likely over, and we returned to chez Dubourg about that time. I was exhausted but happy—I hadn’t walked that far in a long time.
I went to the room that Caroline and I shared, but she wasn’t there.
I asked one of Madame Dubourg’s servants, and she said the nurse herself had taken Caroline, all bundled up, out for some fresh air.
This seemed incongruous with the nurse’s character; I myself had only taken Caroline out once, in an afternoon of sudden sunlight, and had come back in ten minutes.
But we waited. Ten minutes turned into an hour, and by then I was near panic. I went out with Claudette again, up and down rue de Bourgogne, asking anyone if they had seen a tall woman carrying a baby. No one had seen a thing. I thought when we returned to chez Dubourg, Caroline and the wayward nurse, whom I would now discharge, would be there. But they were not. A maid thought she had seen a carriage briefly pull up to the front of the house about the time the nurse had left with the baby, but she had taken no notice, as she had chores to do.
It was Angelique, with a sad and shocked expression, who approached me down the stairs with a letter dangling from her hand.