My great-uncle was in his Library, peering at a letter, under the overmantel portrait of himself in his long tomato-red baronial robes with a bust of Homer. I tapped on the open door and asked if I should fetch my writing-desk and take down his answer. Lord Mansfield looked over his spectacles a little distractedly and said no, not today.
"Have you been into the Cold Bath yet this morning, sir? The doctor said—"
"I'm perfectly well, Dido, don't fuss."
I turned away, examined the carved letters on the bust by Nollekens. "Remind me. Uni Aequus Virtuti?"
He smiled at me indulgently and looked up at his plaster self. "Faithful to Virtue Alone," he translated.
"Why did you pick that as a motto?"
"It means, my dear, that as Lord Chief Justice of England I must never allow personal considerations or whims to sway my judgment: I must follow pure principle. And now what I must do"—the frown creeping over him again—"is finish reading this letter before I go in to the King's Bench."
I thought my great-uncle might change his mind and ask me to take dictation after all—his eyes, like the rest of him, being nearly seventy years old—so I stood quietly in one of the Library's recesses. Beside his coffee tray lay a knot of rosebuds; Mr. French the gardener always picked a nosegay on the summer days when the master had to drive into the stinking city. The Library was all blue and pink, sparkling with gold paint and red damask, and the air was still cool; the chill was delicious on my neck. I looked at the backs of the books, the orange and green and brown glow of their leathers; they would need another dusting soon. I contemplated the allegorical paintings above me. Justice reminded me of my great-uncle; Commerce, of my chickens, who were giving so many eggs this month that it was high time I sent some down to be sold in Hampstead. Navigation: that stood for my father, Rear Admiral John Lindsay of His Majesty's Navy. He had rescued my mother from captivity on a Spanish ship the year before I was born. I wrote him letters, telling him of my daily life at Kenwood with my cousin Elizabeth and our great-uncle and great-aunt, and sometimes when he was not too busy he dictated a reply.
The recess was lined with one of the great pier-glasses: seven and a half feet high, three and a half feet wide, the largest mirrors in England, or so Mr. Chippendale assured my great-uncle. They had been brought from France by road and sea and road again, and not one of them had broken. The glass was not tarnished yet. It gave me back to myself: my hair was dressed very high and frizzy today, and my pointed face was the colour of boiling coffee.
"Dido, are you still here?" Great-uncle Mansfield glanced up from his letter. "I forgot to say, you're wanted on the terrace. I've told Zoffany to put you in Lady Elizabeths portrait."
I grinned at him and seized my basket; went into the Ante-Room, shutting the door softly behind me; stepped out the Venetian windows and onto the grass.
"What a charming property this is, Miss Dido, this ravishing villa of Kenwood," murmured the painter with his foreign r's, as he arranged us. My cousin was to be seated on a rustic bench reading Evelina, catching my elbow as I rushed by—or pretended to, rather. "Lay down your book, Lady Elizabeth, if you would be so very kind. Reach out and caress your cousin in passing," he told her, "to convey the warmth of familial friendship, but regardez-moi, hein? Eyes forward."
Elizabeth was looking her usual loveliness in her new French pink saque, with her late mother's triple rope of pearls around her neck and rosebuds in her hair. I asked should I put on my patterned muslin, but Mr. Zoffany said on the contrary, he had a special costume for me in his trunk. It was a fanciful thing in loose white satin, with a gauze shawl and an ostrich-feathered turban to match. When I came downstairs, transformed, he clipped big gold earrings onto me; it was a most curious sensation. Catching sight of the basket of fresh-picked plums and grapes I had set down on the grass, he thrust it into my arms for a touch of the exotic, as he called it.
I stood as still as I could, in the frozen position he had put me in; I could not help but laugh at such theatricals. Elizabeth was just as bad; she kept her eyes forward in the correct pose, but she tickled my waist whenever the painter was not watching. Mr. Zoffany was staring at me now, with a little frown. "Miss Dido—if you would be so good as to touch your finger to your cheek just here—most becoming." I obeyed. "Exquisite," he murmured. "What contrasts!"
"Mr. Adam, his Lordship's designer, you know, says variety is all," I remarked.
"Very true, very picturesque," said Mr. Zoffany, his hands moving as fast as dragonflies.
"That's why he designed such a little vestibule leading to our Great Stairs," I told him.
"Is it?" murmured Elizabeth, her eyes stealing to her novel.
"He once told me that the large goes with the small, the narrow demands the wide, the bright calls out for the sombre; beauty depends on contrast."
Mr. Zoffany suddenly smiled at me over his canvas, and beckoned me with one finger.
I ran to took over his shoulder at the preliminary marks on the canvas, and suddenly I saw what he meant. It was indeed a study in contrasts. Elizabeth was shown against a great dark bush—how her face and dress would glow like an angel when they were painted in—while my sketched figure stood up as black as the plums I was carrying, black against the pale sky in my white turban, with one black finger pointing to my black face as if to say, look, look.
I did not know what to say. But the painter, absorbed in his work again, was not asking my opinion, so I went back and stood in position. Elizabeth, peeking at the next page of Evelina, rested her hand on my elbow for support. Oddly restless, I looked past the little lakes of our estate, over the ripening fields, the land gently sloping south for miles down towards Greenwich Hospital and the famous cathedral of St. Paul's. I often asked my great-aunt to take me into London, but she always said it was a wearisome place, and not healthful for a girl. If I narrowed my eyes I could just make out the Thames, speckled with traffic. I thought of my mother, who had been part of the cargo of a Spanish ship when my father had boarded it. My earlobes were beginning to ache under their weight of gold.
The housekeeper came out on the terrace to look for me. "There's a visitor here for Lord Mansfield, Miss Dido; I keep telling the fellow the master's out, but he won't go."
"I'll see to him."
I ran up the Back Stairs to change out of my costume first. But when I stepped into the Hall in my blue polonaise, ten minutes later, I stopped short. The stranger was gazing up at the portraits of my great-aunt's ancestors. He was tall, with an unfashionably long, shabby waistcoat, and carried a file of papers. I had never seen a black man before, except in books.
He looked startled to see me too; he bowed a little warily. "Good day, Miss." He had a strange accent; like some of my great-uncle's American visitors, but different. "Would you be Lady Mansfield's ... maid?"
"No," I said a little sharply, "her great-niece."
His eyes bulged white at that. "I understand Lord Mansfield is not at home?"
"That's so."
"I sent him a letter, Miss, Ma'am, I mean,"—he stepped forward, as if to reduce the distance between us, and his face loosened into dark lines—"a letter of great importance, at least to me, and I was wondering if he had received it safely."
"I do not know," I said. His hand was pink underneath, just like mine; I wanted to touch it.
"His Lordship must receive many letters," the man said hoarsely, and swallowed, "but I very much hope—it is of the greatest urgency, not just to me but to thousands of others—that he read it."
"I will be sure to pass on your message on his Lordship's return," I said, too stiffly.
He was turning away when I asked for his name. "I beg your pardon. Somerset," he said, and repeated it doggedly; "my name is Somerset."
After the stranger was gone I stood still for a moment, in the Hall. When I drifted into my great-uncle's Library, the letter he had been reading was still open on the desk, with the rosebuds forgotten and wilting beside it. I thought I would j
ust check the name on the bottom, to see if it said Somerset; then if the man came back, later that day, I would be able to tell him that his letter had been received and read, at least.
My eyes strayed up to the top of the page.
shackles and whipped me like a dog till the skin of my back was in ribbons. When after many years in England I ran away from this devilish master he had me kidnapped and pressed on a ship in the Thames wh was bound for Jamaica. Kind friends secured my release but now my so-called master demands me back and I live every day in periL The matter is in your bands Lord Mansfield sir. I hear that you have on sevl prior occasions ruled that blacks should be returned for resale in the Indies out of respect for the law of property. I ask you now your Lordship if I may be so bold to respect the law of humanity instead.
Your servant (tho no man's slave),
James Somerset
I dropped the page as if it was on fire. I was shaking all over. I had known that such things happened; I must have known. But I never had cause to think about them, in the course of a day at Kenwood. If I dwelt on such things at all, I supposed they happened far away, to unimaginable people who were used to such things, people for whom nothing could be done. Not here in England. Not to somebody like James Somerset. Like me.
I folded the letter up small and put it in my dress. Faintly I heard my name being called in the Ante-Room. "Dido! Dido!" Not a real name, of course, but a play one. I had been baptised Elizabeth, but when my cousin Elizabeth came to live at Kenwood, I became Dido—nicknamed for an African queen, I was told, who was once abandoned on a shore.
"I must go out, Elizabeth," I told my pink-cheeked cousin as I brushed past her in the Hall.
"Out?" she repeated, disconcerted. "Out where, Dido? For a walk?"
"An urgent message has come for his Lordship. I shall need the carriage—"
"But he's taken the carriage into town himself, silly."
Of course he had. "Then"—my heart pounding as if I was running a race—"I shall tell John to saddle the old roan to the little curricle."
"But Dido, dear—"
"I tell you, it can't wait."
I ran upstairs to fetch my shawl, before she could stop me. I had never behaved like this in my life. I was Dido Bell, known to the family and visitors as a sometimes pert but amiable girl. What was I doing? Was I a fool, or had I been a fool all my life till today? The walls of my room were covered in China papers; little people in strange draperies and pointed hats walked up and down. I remembered Mr. Adam telling me that Chinese figures were best for bedchambers, as they were conducive to dreaming. But I was not dreaming now.
Out in the coach house, I overrode Johns protests; I looked him square in the eye and told him that his Lordship had made me swear to bring him any message received today. In a quarter of an hour, the curricle was wheeling out the front gate and heading straight for the City.
The journey was a short one; it all went by me in a blur of stink and noise. I did not even know we had reached the Inner Temple till John pointed at the gate with his whip. As he was helping me jump down, a passing girl squealed "Look at that dirty blackamoor got up like a lady!"
Shock stopped my breath. I had never been spoken to that way in my life. My heart was stuck in my throat like a piece of gristle. What was I? I asked myself now. Blackamoor or lady? A terrible mixture. Neither fish nor flesh nor fowl.
I asked John to escort me in, but he set his jaw and said he had to stay with the horse and curricle or they would be stolen in a blink. So I marched in the gate myself. Pale men and red-faced ones pushed past me in long robes; I avoided their stares. My great-uncle's chambers were on King's Bench Walk, I knew that much. At the top of the steps I cleared my throat and asked to see Lord Mansfield. The porter did not hear me the first time, so I had to repeat myself.
He stared back with hostility. "About the Somerset case, is it? There's been dozens of you here already this week, plaguing his Lordship. I could report you for trying to pervert the course of justice, so I could. Who's your master?"
"I have none," I said through my teeth.
"Runaway rabbit, are you, then?" he said with a dirty grin. "Who's paying for those fine frills?" He pulled at my polonaise.
I could not bear to explain myself to him. "Kindly let me in. Lord Mansfield will wish to see me at once."
"That's what they all say, sweetheart!" But the porter stood back just enough to let me squeeze past him.
In the warren of chambers, I had to ask my way three times. I was on the verge of tears when I burst into my great-uncle's office at last.
"Dido?" He looked up, appalled.
The younger gentleman beside him looked me up and down in amusement. "I didn't know you'd any yourself, Mansfield."
There was a silence; I waited, sucking on my lip. Finally my great-uncle said, "Miss Bell is a close relation."
"Relation?" repeated his colleague. Then, "Pardon me, I'm sure," and he sauntered out of the room.
When we were alone I saw how angry my great-uncle was; there were red spots high on his wrinkled cheeks. "Why do you disturb me here?"
I wanted to burst into tears. Instead I stepped up to him and pulled Somerset's letter out of my bosom. I waited to be sure he recognised it, and then I said, "Am I your property, sir?"
"No, Dido. What nonsense. You're—"
"Am I your great-niece, just as Elizabeth is?" I cut in.
"Of course," he said, bewildered.
"Do you love me like her?"
"Rather more, if the truth be told," he said through his teeth.
This startled me a little. I sat down in a velvet chair, without being asked. After a minute, I said, "The porter seemed to think I was your slave."
"Well, he was mistaken."
I lifted my chin. "How are people to know I'm free, if my skin says otherwise?"
My great-uncle struggled for words. He opened his hands, at last. "It's an imperfect world. What would you have of me, Dido?"
He meant it rhetorically, I knew, but all of a sudden I felt like the girl in the fairy tale, who demanded three wishes. "The first thing I want," I improvised, "is a piece of paper stating that I am a free person."
He shrugged. "Certainly. But there's no need—"
"No need? What if you're not here, next time? What if the porter decides to presume that I've stolen your chaise, stolen this dress, even?" I plucked at my skirts. "What if I end up in gaol or on a ship in the Thames, seized as lost property?"
"I'll do it, then. I'll write a declaration of your freedom this minute," his Lordship said crossly, reaching for a pen.
"And I want a salary," I added.
His brow creased. "What fit of sulks is this, Dido? You're one of the family."
"Am I, though? Am I not the dairy-maid, and the poultry-keeper?"
He sighed. "Your position at Kenwood—"
"When you have guests," I interrupted him, "I'm not asked in till dinner's over."
My great-uncle squirmed. "Why, you know what guests can be like. The English were famed for their prejudice against foreigners. Why I myself, for instance, as a Scot—"
"I was born in England," I interrupted him.
"Well, Dido," he said miserably, "you must come in to dinner in future. Truly, I never knew you minded."
"I didn't, till today," I said. "Till I knew what it meant. Now I see why you've kept me hidden away at Kenwood."
"The country air is much more wholesome for you, and for all my family," he insisted, putting his hand over mine.
His skin was as soft as chicken feathers, and spotted with age; I pulled away. "Did you take me in as an unpaid companion for Lady Elizabeth, was that it?" I asked, searching his face. "One little motherless girl to amuse the other. A black face in the painting, as a foil for the white!"
"You are most precious to your cousin, to us all," he said, his throat working. "I thought you understood that."
I steeled myself against him. "What about my salary?"
"It
's not money I grudge you, my dear," he said painfully; "don't I often give you presents in silver? But a salary—that has such a cold ring to it."
"Call it a quarterly allowance, then," I said.
He sighed heavily and began sharpening his pen.
A third wish, I thought, there has to be a third. And then I remembered what began it all. "One last thing. James Somerset," I said. "Let him go."
"Ah, now, my dear," said my great-uncle grimly, "that's a complicated matter."
"Don't I know it?"
"You meddle in what doesn't concern you."
Rage, like ink, spilled across my eyes. "Whom does it concern more than me," I shouted, "whose mother was a slave, your nephew's slave and whore? I wonder, did he free her before she died? Did he take the shackles off when she was giving birth to me?" Now I did not care if I could be heard all through the Inner Temple. "Whom should such matters concern more than me, your little dusky plaything?"
Lord Mansfield bent across the desk and seized me, then, enclosed me in his arms. I could smell the dust and sourness of his old robes. "Dido," he sobbed, "Dido Bell, my sweet girl, how can you say such things?"
I rested in his embrace for a few seconds, then pulled away. "Let James Somerset go free."
"But don't you see, my dear," he said, straightening his spectacles with one shaky hand, "I mustn't be swayed by personal loyalties. Faithful to Virtue Alone, don't you know."
"What virtue has a man with no loyalties?"
He winced. "But I have many. The very fact that I am known to have in my family—to be bound by every tender tie, to, to—"
"A mulatto."
"—to you, Dido, makes it all the more imperative that I should be seen to maintain objectivity in this most controversial case."
The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits: Stories Page 16