by James Tipton
Now that is what I wanted to hear. He had found a way, he said, to work me into his poems, although he didn’t say what it was. He said even lying on his bed after a letter from me (not “from France”), with a headache splitting his brain apart, he was composing poems about me, but in a way that others couldn’t tell.
Then I didn’t hear from him for months. But I heard from Dorothy. Her news, after she politely inquired about Caroline, was all about Mary. Mary was her old friend who had lived with them all one summer—though William had kept excusing himself to go on walks. Mary now roamed the Lake Country with her, William, and Coleridge. Mary delighted in discussing poetry with them, and William always asked the opinion of Dorothy and Mary on a new work.
Coleridge had fallen in love with Mary’s sister, even though he was married. His wife didn’t understand him, though, Dorothy said.
I wanted to know what William thought of this Mary. Instead, I wrote that they sounded like a happy group, and perhaps we could all live by each other someday. Dorothy replied that it would be nice to have Caroline and me visit their cottage, though it was rather small.
I told her William could stay in our cottage when the war ceased. We had a room he could write in, miles of river by which to walk, and, very best of all, his own daughter to delight him. To this Dorothy didn’t say anything at all, except for a reference to France as “a very excitable place” and to her, William, Coleridge, Mary, and Mary’s sister all being “like a family.”
William sent me a copy, in English, of the book, Lyrical Ballads, that he and Coleridge had written together. I could make out his name and therefore which poems were his and not Coleridge’s. I could catch a few words, like nature, mountain, and hermit; love he himself had taught me. I tried to sound out William’s poems, but wasn’t very good at it. I would have to wait either for him or someone else to translate them, and the next month he did send me translations of “Lines Written in Early Spring,” “The Tables Turned,” and one he hadn’t published yet, on seeing a rainbow. I liked them all very much.
William said his critics made fun of him, saying they weren’t really poems, but he didn’t care. His critics called them “simple,” and he took that as a compliment. He also said it seemed that the war would go on forever, and that his thirty-second birthday was approaching. I didn’t see the connection.
Only Dorothy wrote to me of Mary.
Unexpectedly, in the late spring of 1802, since Napoleon had beaten everybody several times over (except the British, who had wisely only opposed him on the sea, where they always won), he declared a peace. After nine years of war, suddenly there was peace, and no one knew quite what to do about it and whether to trust it or not. But William knew what to do. He wrote, could I travel to Calais and meet him there?
So on August 1, 1802, after almost nine years’ absence, we met again. But it was not just us. I brought Caroline, and William brought Dorothy.
BOOK V
1802–1820
Mutability
With the peace, the émigrés could return for a visit.
Marguerite wrote and said they would all cross the Channel in the autumn. She wanted to see my cottage. She longed to see Caroline. Gérard was going to a boarding school now, like most English boys, and she was afraid he was forgetting that he was French. But he still talked of his aunt Annette. Marie had suitors who were naval officers. Paul had just left for Spain and Portugal, purchasing sherry, madeira, and port for the British import company. Then Marguerite talked of the roses in bloom in her garden. She was fond of her English garden. It was like a dream to be going to see them all again, yet like a dream it was also strange. As William once pointed out to me, when you are away from people, you think of them as being stuck in time, as they were when you last saw them. We were all different.
Now, in the diligence on our way to Calais, I described each of the Vincents in detail to Caroline, in the way I remembered them, and in the way I had heard from Marguerite. Then she wanted me to describe her father to her. “I’ve already told you all about him,” I said. “But I want to hear it again,” she said. We had a long journey.
I explained that her father had an even longer one, from the north of England, then across the Channel.
This man of myth and legend, of the pink cap she still had in her room, whom she claimed she remembered singing her good night when she was less than a year old, she would meet soon, and I think she was a little nervous about it, and of course, so was I. She was so used to him being in the realm of myth, it was very odd all of a sudden to be seeing him, like meeting a character out of a favorite story that one has read or heard many times. I told her I had tutored Marie and Gérard as I tutored her, and they, too, had become beloved characters in her nightly fictions. She was nine years old now, and a lovely girl, pleasant to be with.
Caroline and I walked along the seashore together as we waited for William’s boat to arrive in the evening. Caroline liked the waves, and we kicked our feet in the shallows, getting the hems of our skirts wet.
I gave her the parasol. She was fair, like her father, and I liked to feel the sun on my shoulders.
The boardwalk along the beach was crowded. All the people who had not come out to enjoy the sun and walk by the sea for ten years of war were now out promenading in their shabby best. It seemed like an ordinary hot end of July, yet there was something frantic about it; we all wanted to be here before something started again. But France was on top of the world. That would last, they all thought, as long as Bonaparte lasted, and he was young.
It was hot and muggy, and I shaded my eyes when I looked at the sea. Many gold fires were spinning on it, as on a summer day on the Loire, when Marguerite and I would look down from her terrace. But there we were so far above the river, the sun was not so bright on the water. Here, I could hardly see for the glare.
Caroline liked walking with the parasol. “Do you think that’s Papa’s ship?” she asked.
There was a bulk on the horizon. “Perhaps,” I said.
She held my hand and swung our hands to and fro as we looked at the sea. “How tall is he, Mama?”
“He is much taller than we. He has long legs and loves to walk.” I had told her all this before.
“I love to walk.”
“Perhaps we can go walking together.” Then, with Dorothy, I added to myself. But I was anxious to see her too. I wanted to meet this woman who had answered so many of my letters with such friendship and concern, who even called me “sister.” She had taken care of William when he had come back from France, depressed, worried, and having no clear path in life. She gave him back his confidence, I thought. Can she give him back his life? Do we still have a life together?
“I’m thirsty, Maman. The ship is too slow.”
We waited at a café, and Caroline poured water from a carafe into the pale yellow-green citron juice in each of our glasses. She then put spoonfuls of sugar into each glass and stirred them. I was looking out across the boardwalk at the sea, and when I looked down at our table, I saw she had done all this.
“Thank you. Did you put two spoonfuls in?”
“Of course.”
“We like it sweet, chérie. You are so grown up. Your father will be proud of you.”
“Will we have dinner together?”
“Probably, unless they are too tired from traveling. We have had a day to rest. But we will do everything together. We have a whole fortnight.” Two weeks against nine years is not a lot, but to a child, a fortnight is forever.
We ordered some bread and a little jam for Caroline. Butter was too expensive, but the bread did not need it. It was lighter than our bread from the big oven at home, fresh and flaky, and I could not believe how delicious it was. Caroline carefully spread the jam on her bread. She was so beautiful, especially here, with her profile, looking down, being serious over her bread. She did remind me of William, her sudden quick movements and her feeling that every little thing was significant in some way.
&nb
sp; We walked to read the charts of the vessels coming in, and we found we had made a mistake, and the Wordsworths’ ship would not come in until four the next morning. Or perhaps we had not made a mistake, and the tides had changed and delayed them. I could not tell.
It was hot, and I was having a difficult time reading the charts.
“The Ceylon will not come in until four in the morning?” I asked.
“That’s what it says,” said the man behind the window and beneath the charts. Beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead. It must be stifling in there, I thought.
“But I thought it was coming in today.”
“Not this ship.”
“Is something wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, Madame. That’s just the way it is. The Ceylon’ s coming in on the morning tide.”
He looked down at the papers on his desk.
Caroline was very disappointed. She walked by my side and swung my hand listlessly in the heat. The boardwalk was empty now, and the flag on the quai lay limp and still in the heat. Shutters were closed on the windows of the shops, and the street seemed devoid of movement.
“But I will be asleep when Papa’s ship arrives. I wanted to see it come in. I wanted to greet him on the quai.”
“I know, chérie, but we ’ll see him tomorrow morning.”
After nine years, what was another day, more or less?
For some reason I felt that I had got something wrong. I was sure William’s letter said he was arriving today. But things change. How could he have known, when he wrote the letter, about the tide? No one can control the tide.
When I saw William again, it was through the fine cambric curtain of our rooms on the rue de la Tête d ’Or. We had just finished our rolls and coffee and hot chocolate. A rather tall man helped a woman, dressed in black, out of the cabriolet. She was even smaller than I.
They did not look like brother and sister. I could not see his face well.
I could see more the top of his head, but I knew it was he.
I had faced dangers in the last ten years with some degree of equanimity. Why was it now that I had the desire that we should not have come? Why couldn’t we leave it comfortably in the realm of fine memories and the legend of the English father, the great poet who lived across the seas? My stomach knotted as if the old Committee of Safety were at my door. After all, what would we say to each other? I was glad his sister was here now, for she could help us talk. But what could she say, either? He had traveled hundreds of miles, and I was afraid I would disappoint him. I wasn’t the young woman he remembered. I was almost middle-aged. I didn’t know any English. I had a sudden impulse to pretend we were not home and to go back to Blois in the afternoon. Caroline, sticking a roll in her mouth, noticed me staring out the window.
“Is it them? Is it Papa?”
She squeezed in between the window and me, then wriggled out and ran out the door. I stayed and watched him go under the eaves of the house and heard him knock at the door. I heard the concierge, Madame Avril, scurry to the door downstairs and open it.
Below the window that same English voice said, “Is Mada—”
Before he could finish, I heard Caroline squeal “Papa!” Madame Avril’s shuffling tread came up the stairs to get me.
“Madame, they are here, your English husband”—she emphasized the word disapprovingly—“and his sister. They are here. Shall I have them come up?”
But before I could answer, I heard Caroline’s footsteps running up the stairs, “Come, Papa! Come! Maman is upstairs!” and I heard his boots on the stairs and slower steps behind him. Then Caroline burst in the room from underneath Madame Avril’s arms.
“Maman! They’re here! Here is Papa!”
Madame Avril retired.
William stood at the open door, and Caroline held his hand. Behind him in the hall was a small black figure.
I wondered what I was supposed to do. I had thought so much about this moment. We had embraced, of course, in those thoughts.
Now, for some reason, that seemed out of the question. I didn’t want to shake hands, like English gentlemen. I took a step forward. I felt a bit paralyzed. Caroline was swinging his arm. William had been looking at me, standing still in my silence. Suddenly he lifted Caroline in his arms, kissed her cheeks, and said, “Now here’s a beauty. Annette, you did not convey accurately the extent of her beauty. Shame on you.” His French was good. And Caroline hugged him with both arms around his neck.
“This is Papa,” she said to me, as if I, myself, did not know that fact. William came up to me, our child in his arms. “She’s going to be taller than you soon,” he said. And with our child between us suddenly it was easier, and he bent down and kissed me on both cheeks.
“You should be proud of her,” he said. “You should be very proud.”
I felt my confusion melt and was about to embrace him, standing before me carrying Caroline. We would embrace awkwardly, with her between us, and that would be fine. Then he ushered the small black figure in front of him.
“Annette, I want you to meet someone,” he said.
She smiled at me.
“Dear sister,” I said, and extended both my hands to her and leaned forward to kiss her cheeks. She stood her ground and took my hands in hers, and I had to lean far forward to kiss her. I felt as though I had done something wrong.
“It is a pleasure to meet you,” she said.
“Thank you for your many letters,” I said. “You’ve taken good care of William for me.” She smiled again.
“You have raised a very pretty daughter. You have done well, yourself,” she said, in slow, deliberate French. Apparently it was easier for her to write, than to speak it.
“Oh, Caroline, this is Dorothy, the sister of Papa,” I said.
“I know, Maman,” and she stuck out her cheeks, still half full with unfinished roll, to Dorothy, to be kissed, as she still held William’s hand. Dorothy took Caroline’s other hand and pressed it.
“You are a lovely child,” she said, “and an excitable one.”
“She gets that from her father,” I said, and laughed.
“She gets that from her mother,” William said, and smiled. I had not seen him smile in nine years, and I felt a sudden desire to wrap him in my arms and kiss him. But that seemed as impossible as if he were still on the opposite side of the Channel. Instead, I reached out my hand, and William held it.
“It is good to see you,” he said. “You are looking well; the years have been kind.”
“Not exactly kind,” I said.
We would meet that evening at their lodging for dinner, William said. But when that evening came, he sent us a note that Dorothy was tired and ill from the voyage, and they would just have a small meal in their room. Would we please meet them the next morning at ten, at the Republic Café near their lodging? We would walk by the seashore then, together. William was glad that Caroline and I both looked so healthy.
“We didn’t see them very much today,” Caroline said.
“They will be here a whole fortnight.”
“Good, and we can go bathing?”
“Yes, if it continues to be warm.”
Caroline went to bed early. The night was hot, and we slept with the windows and shutters open, and a slight breeze from the sea blew the white lace curtains in front of the windows. I felt the cooling breeze on my face and listened to Caroline’s quiet breathing.
I had Caroline; he had Dorothy. I had wondered, before I came, if we would make love, and what it would be like. I had assumed, actually, that we would. But that seemed another world, now, another lifetime, those thoughts and those actions. They belonged in another century. Still, if we could just walk alone. If we could hold each other for a moment, wouldn’t we feel all the old feelings? Was he perhaps afraid of them? Why? Had he urged his sister in between us on purpose, when we were about to embrace, or was that coincidence, or a nervous movement, or something he thought he should do? She had stood behind him, ig
nored, when we met. Perhaps he was just being polite. But there was something wrong. I knew it. And it wasn’t just my own fears. I wanted Dorothy to be gone, back in England.
How could we talk with her here? She wasn’t a traveling companion; she was a chaperone.
“Papa is very nice, but I want to talk to him more,” Caroline said over breakfast at the Republic Café.
“He was tired yesterday.”
“I want to ask him things.”
“Like what?”
“Like what is it like in England? Are you going to take us there? Are you going to marry my mother in an English church? Now that the war is over, are you going to live with us in our cottage? I’d tell him I’d prefer that. Am I ever going to have any brothers and sisters?”
“I think it would not be appropriate to ask all those questions yet.”
“Why not?”
“Perhaps he doesn’t know all the answers yet.”
“But you’ve said that we would go to England some day when the war was over.”
“Didn’t I say, ‘might go’?”
“No, you said, when I was a baby, that my father was coming and we were going to live where my cousins lived. I did not know where that was then. I thought it was across the river.”
“It is.” I laughed.
“Yes, very far across.” She laughed back and forgot, for now, what I had said when she was a baby.
“And I have a hard time understanding Papa.”
“His accent’s good, for an Englishman.”
“It’s even harder to understand Aunt Dorothy.”
“I’m not sure if you should call her ‘Aunt Dorothy.’”
“Why not?”
“I’m not sure if she thinks of herself as an aunt.”
The delicious bread was finished, and the coffee and hot chocolate.
“You ate all the jam again,” I said. Caroline grinned up at me. The morning sunlight caught her blonde curls, like Angelique’s.
“Remember those shells we saw yesterday, Maman? I kept one for Papa. It has the white ridges on it. I will show it to him today. It is my present, welcoming him home, after the war. People do that, yes, for men coming home?”