Maria's eyes were cast down as I entered but she raised them to me as we were introduced. This gaze had an effect on me very different from what I expected. The eyes of Maria, as I have said, were huge, dark and very lovely. I expected her look to seduce me, win me. I had looked forward, with some enjoyment, to the effect of first meeting the eyes of Maria Clementi. Yet, as our glances met, I felt first—awe. There is what we call a “speaking look” where the eyes alone convey their possessor's meaning and mood. This “speaking look” is more common in women, creatures of sentiment, than in men, whose gaze is more direct and thoughtful. Maria's eyes were the opposite of “speaking.” They were silent, as her own tongue. To look into them was to gaze into the black waters of one of those bottomless tarns of the North. One fears; one half wishes to throw oneself into those still expressionless depths; one attempts to see through the dark waters—and sees nothing. As I made greetings I wondered if the silence imposed on Maria by her dumbness had created this great, fathomless calm in her slate-colored eyes.
As I gazed, half-mesmerized, into Maria Clementi's eyes the awe I had felt at once began to verge on fear. I knew I wished to look forever, to come closer, look again, and never cease to look.
Victor interrupted, mercifully, by proposing to introduce me to Maria's companion, Mrs. Jacoby. On hearing her name, this lady stood up from the window seat and came across the room to greet me. She was a woman of about forty years old, of medium height, erect in her bearing, with a direct look and what I believe ladies call a practical bonnet. She bore the stamp of a soldier's wife who has followed her husband on many a campaign, set up house in many a place, made do in all manner of hardships and difficulties. Her forthright blue eyes met mine, perfectly civilly but saying to me, as to all the world, I believe. “No nonsense from you, if you please.” As soon as I had bowed to her and murmured I was happy to meet her, she went back to her seat, leaving the three of us, Victor, Maria and myself, by the fire.
We all sat down, Maria in her former chair, Victor opposite her on the other side of the fireplace; I took a third chair between them. I had no idea how Victor had conducted his previous interview or how he meant to proceed, so I broke the silence, rather awkwardly, by commenting on the pleasant afternoon and saying I had walked to Chelsea from my lodgings. I spoke slowly, as if addressing a foreigner, and felt a little foolish for doing so. Maria bent her head to me, heeded me as if she understood, and when I had finished gave me a small, charming smile.
Victor, rather to my astonishment, then asked her in German if she would care to stand up and walk to the door. Maria merely gazed at him, biting her lip, seeming to be trying to understand him. Whereupon Victor addressed her in French, again asking her if she would go to the door. And Maria, smiling, stood up—and went to the door. She turned there, still smiling, asking, it would seem, for Victor's approval, which he, with a smile of great satisfaction, gave. And then he spoke to her in other languages, many of which I did not know myself, plainly asking her to do various things. In no case, except when he asked her in Italian to go to the window (which instruction he had to repeat various times before she could understand him), did she stir from her chair and do so. As this went on she gazed at him, I thought, with increasing weariness.
After this, Victor turned to me and asked, “Curious, is it not, that Miss Clementi knows French, evidently, and some Italian and English, but no other languages?”
I nodded, a little embarrassed. Maria was with us and could understand us, yet we discussed her as if she were not present, as often happens with children or the very old or ill. This seemed stranger still when the subject was a young woman in her right mind, merely dumb. I asked, “Have you spoken in various languages to Miss Clementi before?” And he said that he had not. I then spoke to Miss Clementi, asking her if she had known French since childhood or had learned it later in her life. She shrugged prettily, indicating she did not know—or perhaps could not understand what I was asking. Mrs. Jacoby then spoke up from her window seat. “Miss Clementi sings in all languages,” she said.
“But parrot-fashion,” Victor said. “For apparently she understands only French and English.” Then to Maria he proposed, “Well then, Miss Clementi, shall we try our exercises?”
He then launched into a series of consonants, as if encouraging a child to speak, “B-b-b-b, D-d-d-d, M-m-m-m.” He urged Maria, as one would a child, to copy him. But, lips parted and showing every sign of effort in trying to do as he asked, she had no success. She made no sound at all. All I heard were pitiful exhalations of breath—and sometimes a sigh—a sad contrast to that voice I had heard at the theatre, soaring high, in the duet of Polly Peachum and Captain Macheath:
I would love you all the day All day long we'd kiss and play.
If with me you'd fondly stray, Over the hills and far away . . .
There was nothing of that carefree spirit now. Maria was distressed. Victor then broke off, saying nothing but looking at her reprovingly; while she became confused and a little ashamed.
Then, “Again,” he urged. “Let us try again.” They began again, the demonstration becoming more painful but just as futile. I knew some method would have to be developed if Maria were to find her speaking voice, and that some toil, even agony might be involved if the method were to succeed. Nevertheless Maria's increasing distress was not pleasant to see. I abandoned the painful scene by the fire and crossed to the window to speak to Mrs. Jacoby, reasoning that she might, even without knowing it herself, possess some clue to the secret of Maria's locked tongue. Victor had embarked on vowels, “A-e-i-o-u,” he pronounced. “Come, Maria—try—try.” But she made no sound.
“So far there's been no success at all that you can see, Mrs. Jacoby?” I asked.
She shook her head and replied steadily. “We had much hoped—after Maria's time away, resting and working on the exercises—” Her voice trailed away.
“The exercises being what is happening now?”
“And some others connected with breathing,” she told me.
“It's very mysterious,” I said. “There is nothing organically wrong with Miss Clementi and she sings so beautifully—yet cannot speak. Tell me, Mrs. Jacoby, does she never, never make any sound—cry out, sob aloud, groan, laugh? Perhaps she talks in her sleep, or makes some sound—” And I noted as I spoke the last words that Mrs. Jacoby looked at me more attentively. There was a long silence between us. She was summing me up, as she might have summed up a subaltern newly arrived in her husband's regiment. Then she said, “Can you swear to keep a secret?” I responded that I was unwilling to swear to keep any secret when I did not know what it was.
“Well, then,” she said wryly, “you will never know, will you?” And at this point my curiosity so much got the better of me that I said, “If what you tell me is not a guilty secret, and will harm no one, then—I swear not to tell it.”
“Fair enough,” she said, with something of the decisiveness of the battlefield in her tone, “then I'll tell you. I have never heard Maria Clementi speak one word or make a sound—except at night. Then I have heard her, in nightmare, calling out, crying out in fear.”
“Have you told anyone of this?” I asked her.
“Never,” she replied. “Earlier she seemed content enough to be dumb—but lately she appears increasingly distressed by her position.”
I asked her, “You have not told Mr. Frankenstein of these cry-ings out, in nightmare?”
She shook her head. By now I was puzzled.
“Remember—you have promised,” she warned me.
“But Mr. Frankenstein should know this.” I reproached her. “Why do you not tell him?”
She did not reply because at that moment Victor stood and said, amiably enough, in our direction, “I think we have had enough for today. Miss Clementi must not get too tired. I know she is to perform tonight in Acis and Galatea. Mrs. Jacoby, if you return next week Mr. Goodall and I will have had the opportunity to discuss the matter and devise some new plan
s.”
And thus the first consultation, if that is what I should call it, ended. Maria, I thought, looked pale. In parting, she pressed my hand gently, while Mrs. Jacoby expressed goodwill and hoped she would see me at Cheyne Walk the following week.
After they left Victor bit his lip, looking anxious and thoughtful. “Let us sit down,” he said. “Some wine?”
I refused this and we sat down to talk. Frowning he said, “All this is most baffling. I know she can speak. I am certain of it, I know. Sometimes I feel Miss Clementi is defying me to help her. Her efforts to produce a voice appear great, but I do not think they are great enough. I fear she may be deceiving me. As an actress, she is fully capable of miming a struggle to speak. I must—must—discover the key to open that door—or break it down.” He sighed vigorously, then said impatiently, “I really do not understand. In all the literature there is no comparable case. And, my dear Jonathan, if only we could succeed, what might we not find out about the structure of our language and its connection with the workings of the mind?” He smacked his fist into his palm and I think if he had been another man he would have started swearing and cursing.
I felt some guilt at suppressing the information Mrs. Jacoby had given me, that Maria cried out in her sleep, but I had given my word, and could see no way of breaking it. Worse, it was my impression that Mrs. Jacoby had not only made me swear to keep the secret in general but specifically to keep it from Victor. This seemed absurd—why should not the whole world know Maria Clementi had some voice and particularly why should not Victor, who was dedicated to helping her? However, there was nothing I could do.
“You have established that Miss Clementi has knowledge of two languages but no others,” I said. “That is interesting. We may assume her understanding of speech is like that of any other person. She knows these tongues she has encountered, or learned. But tell me, what is her past? Where does she come from? Who are her parents?”
“Very little is known of her,” Victor said. “She, of course, can tell people nothing of herself. But it would seem she was found by the man who is still her impresario—whatever that may mean—in Ireland some four years ago and was taken by him to the manager of Drury Lane, the famous Mr. Robert Elliston. He took her up with enthusiasm and began her career.”
“And is Maria Clementi truly her name?”
“I believe it was invented by her manager, the impresario Mr. Gabriel Mortimer, in discussion with Mr. Elliston,” Victor told me. “I suppose no one knows her real name.”
“Except herself, and she cannot tell us,” I responded.
“What a strange, sad time she must have had of it, poor Miss Clementi.”
“She is a most beautiful and gifted creature,” Victor said. “Unique. Extraordinary. Compensation enough.”
I could not answer him.
Naturally I asked Victor if Maria was able to communicate her thoughts in writing but in those days fewer could read and write than in these more enlightened times, so it was no surprise when Victor informed me that Maria was scarcely literate. I suggested to Victor, therefore, that the restoration of Miss Clementi's voice would not be harmed by learning to read and write. The study of words in their written form might help to concentrate her mind and will on speaking them out loud. And even if this was not the effect, then at least she would have the benefit of expressing herself more freely in writing. Victor showed little enthusiasm for this scheme.
Mrs. Jacoby had said nothing would persuade Maria to write more than the odd scribbled word—and that she could do. He added, “Cannot—will not—I do not know. Sweet-natured and good as she appears, I wonder if there is not something hard, uncooperative, obstinate about the girl.”
For my part, I wondered if, like many a teacher, in the momentary frustration of making no progress with a pupil, Victor was not resorting to blaming his student, instead of devising a method to encourage her.
“You cannot mean that she is a fraud—could write but will not and therefore—could speak but will not?” I asked wonderingly.
“No,” he said. “But there must be something—some machinery—which would make her speak.”
I saw in him the ever-enthusiastic, ever-able student unable to believe there are those in the world who cannot learn. This was to him a battle which he must win. Mercifully at that moment in came his charming wife and offered us tea; Victor became more easy and the atmosphere more cordial. We began to talk rationally about finding some method to make Maria talk, deciding that one course would be to ask Maria to start by singing, then induce her to say the words of the song instead of singing them. It was a simple plan, but simplicity is sometimes effective.
We did not begin that week, or the week after, for Maria was studying a new operetta, Hera's Revenge by Maestro Valli and encountering difficulties with the work. Rehearsals were prolonged and, as she was also performing daily at die playhouse in another piece it was not until that gloomy afternoon in November, which I have previously described, that we met again at Cheyne Walk in the same small parlor as before.
Though the fire burned, fog from the river crept through the drawn curtains making the atmosphere in the room obscure. Once again, Mrs. Jacoby, now in a thick Paisley shawl, sat by the window. Maria was in her old position by the fire, with Victor again opposite her and I between them.
Victor explained to Maria the plan that she should begin with song then modify the song into speech. She appeared to understand what was said, though she frowned a little, whether because she disliked the idea or because she secretly believed it would not work. I do not know. I said, recalling the happy evening at Old Hall in Kent when we had all so merrily sung “Youth's the season made for joys” from Mr. Gay's The Beggar's Opera, that I would dearly love to hear Maria sing some of the work and she cheerfully agreed.
I shall never forget, even after all that occurred later, the spectacle of that small, slender figure, standing at the fireplace as, in that thrilling voice, she began to sing the simple air, forget her beautifully shaped face and great, sad eyes turned slightly upwards, the fall of her black curls, the perfect oval of her opened mouth giving out such a glorious, effortless sound in the dull, foggy room.
Dance and sing, Time's on the wing, Life never knows the return of spring Let us drink and sport today, Love with youth flies swift away.
Perhaps it was then I became fascinated by her, doomed to fulfill the dark suspicions I thought Cordelia Downey harbored concerning my motives in wishing to assist Victor in his work with Maria Clementi. I sat entranced, wishing that this perfect, untouched creature—for so she seemed to me at that time—could be mine.
A part of me, recognizing danger, tried to insist it was the artist, not the woman I admired. But this was not true. I felt hopeless longing. When she finished her song I sat in awe, knowing how few men can have been so privileged as to have sat on a drab afternoon, in an ordinary room, hearing Maria sing. But I yearned for her at that moment and whatever occurred later I cannot swear I ever lost that longing. Bluntly, she was an actress; she was mute. Both in terms of society and because of her disablement I knew she could have become unconditionally mine. I am a man. I think as men do and I am no better than the others.
Then, our efforts had to begin. The song had been well chosen for our purposes, and it ought to have been easy enough to eliminate the music from it, gradually turning the song into speech, rather like operatic recitative. Or like a chanted psalm, half-speech, half-song. This exercise, as I say, should have been easy—but was not. Maria would sing a line with perfect purity, would sing it in a minor key if required to do so, but what it seemed she could not do was take the song word by word, or make the words sound like ordinary speech. It was as though she saw words and music as one single entity and could not separate the two. Asking her to break up a phrase into its component parts was as if one required a bird to stop its song at a certain point or slow it, or repeat a phrase of its cadence. A bird could not do this; nor, apparently, could Maria.
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All afternoon we labored, altering from song to song, then attempting some psalms. But Maria could not “drone” psalms any more than she could “speak” songs, though her voice rose and fell like an angel's. An hour passed, then another. Victor's demands grew sharper and Maria, I thought, began to tire. At one point I glanced at Mrs. Jacoby and her face told me she was regretting the exercise. As Victor felt doubt and fatigue overwhelming hope he grew ever more determined, while my role became less that of the helper and witness of the attempt, more that of one trying to contain the worst elements of the struggle. It was then that Maria, unprompted, embarked on the lament addressed to Aeneas by the deserted Queen Dido in Purcel's opera, Dido and Aeneas, wherein she sadly sings: “When I am laid in earth, may my wrongs create no trouble in thy breast. Remember me—but forget my fate.”
I was entranced. I glanced at Victor who was strained and pale. He looked like a man who had been struck. Then he rallied and broke into the song, chanting unmelodically the words for her to imitate, “My wrongs create no trouble—Remember me . . .” And Maria tried to copy him—and sang, her voice soaring to the ceiling. And “Remember me,” said Victor in a speaking voice, and “Remember me” sang Maria. They went over and over it until Maria followed Victor, who had once more said-sung “Remember me,” by bursting triumphantly out with the rest of the song—and concluding it. Victor sprang from his chair with an exclamation of impatience he could not control—at which poor Maria sat down abruptly, put her hands to her face and broke into dreadful, soundless sobs. Victor was at her side in an instant, kneeling at her side with his arms around her, soothing her, apologizing for his behavior: “I have pressed you too hard. I am a villain. Forgive me—I have asked too much of you.” These were the muttered words I heard.
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