The Illumination of Ursula Flight

by Anna-Marie Crowhurst

  On that – I do not know any wife who does what her husband commands unthinkingly and believe it would be better for the joke to be upon the man – as it often is in life.

  Query: do they have pease pudding in Africa?

  Sir Ladle I think is meant to be greatly attractive to women with all his preening – but mayhap the audience should laugh AT him rather than with him. He needs other qualities besides, to make it believable that Lady Scandalous would leave her husband for him at the drop of a pin. Perhaps he be very witty and may make her laugh, and her husband a drudge, and that is what motivates her to go.

  Query: do elephants come when called?

  In the scene in the castle, would it not be more amusing if it was the maid who was rescuing the man from captivity, and not the other way around? You could have this as a breeches part and the whole pit in an uproar at it.

  I have noted the audience are apt to get caught up in a tale if they are able to see a mirror of themselves in the hero. Might he be an ordinary sort of man trying to make his way in the world, as they themselves are, for the most part?

  I’m afraid I do not feel, upon reading it twice, that there is enough tension in the first act, for we do not feel Mistress Lightly is in any real peril from the mad and lusty count, aside from his wandering hands. Could things move more quickly in scene three to quicken the drama?

  Query: is it possible to get from London to Scotland in an afternoon? Mr Tibb the barber disappears and reappears at will.

  I pray you will not mind that I have made some adjustments to the speeches in order to show off the nature of the characters more plainly, for in many parts, every person sounds the same and has the same habits.

  I hope you will like what I have done, Mr Parrykin, for I greatly enjoyed it, and believe with these minor adjustments it will be a very great play indeed.

  ‘I must confess, though I did not think it would go well at first, that I am greatly enjoying our little writing partnership,’ said Parrykin to me as we sat in the room he had as his office; he sprawled on the chaise he used for naps, me at his desk, my bulk propped up by cushions, scratching away at our latest script.

  ‘Here is another note from Lord K saying he thinks What’s Wrong With Raking? the best one yet, and an anonymous lady who thinks I am the finest playwright in England!’

  ‘I suppose you will write back saying that you barely wrote a word of that one, and it was all the work of one Mrs Bearwood,’ I said, from the corner of my mouth.

  ‘She does not send her direction!’ he protested, flapping the paper. ‘And at any rate, Mrs Bearwood might think herself lucky to be in employ, despite being huge with child, and not fit to be seen in public.’

  ‘Not so huge, please, sir,’ I said, aiming a ball of paper at him. ‘I do not think anyone noticed, save for those in the pit when my cloak fell off in the bedchamber scene.’

  ‘Oh, they have seen it all before,’ said Parrykin, waving his hand. ‘And the takings will go up when you return, for it will be packed full of women with eye-glasses, looking to see if you have lost the weight, along with the babby.’

  ‘I have been thinking on that, Parry,’ I said, turning in my chair. ‘I do not know if I will want to go back to acting, after the child comes. I love being here,’ I said, gesturing about the room with my quill and helplessly watching the resulting spray of green ink fall onto my skirts. ‘But I do not think I am so very great an actress.’

  ‘I have seen worse,’ said Parrykin, picking up another letter and tearing off the seal. ‘You have improved immensely. And since you got plumpish, the admiring letters have greatly increased. There is one here praising the pretty fat pad under your chin.’ He waved it before me.

  ‘But I so much prefer to write the plays,’ I said, ignoring this. ‘The applause of the audience is nothing compared to the feeling of hearing an actor speaking the words that you wrote yourself! I have become quite used to it, and cannot bear the thought of leaving it off.’

  ‘Well, see how you feel when the child is come,’ said Parrykin absently, his nose still in a letter. ‘For women are apt to change their minds in these situations. I have seen such weathercocking many a time.’

  ‘I am having a babby, not a brain-fever,’ I said. ‘And I shall not change my mind on this, for I have never wanted anything more. P’raps,’ I added musingly, ‘I will go to the King’s Men, and show them all I have written here, and see if they will not take me on.’

  I saw that Parrykin had put down his letters at this.

  ‘And,’ I said, turning back to my papers, ‘I’ll warrant they’ll give me more than ten shillings a week as I get playing company, for I have been asking around and many playwrights get seven pound per script at least.’

  At this he started up and knocked some of the letters to the floor, where they made swirls in the dust.

  ‘Do not be hasty, Ursula,’ he said, his nose getting redder. ‘For we love to have you and no mistake. And... and we shall not be prejudiced that you are a mother with a babby, and make it difficult for you, or enquire into the parentage of it – or of the whereabouts of your late husband’s family. Nay, we shall not do that at all.’

  ‘The babby is going out to nurse, as I told you, and so shall not be a burden or an impediment to my career in the slightest,’ I said firmly. ‘There is a goodly woman at Waltham Stow that Bunty has found me, who will let me visit it every week, or whenever I may, and I shall only bring it back when ’tis grown, and then I shall get a nurse for it, or some such.’

  ‘You may marry again,’ said Parrykin.

  ‘I shall not marry again, sir,’ I said, with a tilt of my chin. ‘So do not think of that. And as for the babby’s parentage, make what investigations you will, for you will find nothing to trouble any godly person on that account.’

  He was quiet then.

  I got up slowly from my chair. ‘Well, Mr Parrykin. Thank you for all that I have learnt here...’ I moved towards the door. ‘I will not forget your kindness when I most needed it.’

  ‘Now, now, madame,’ he said, and I saw that there were little beads of sweat on his bald pate. ‘Do not be so hasty. We can come to an arrangement that will satisfy us both. You shall have ten shillings a script, and for that you will go on as before, and help me write the plays...’

  ‘And I too would write my own play, under my own name.’ It had burst from my lips before I had even thought it through.

  His jaw sprang open at this.

  ‘Now you have astonished me,’ he said. ‘And I do not know the wisdom of that, for they know Mrs Bearwood as an actress, and may not take kindly to her wielding a quill, if they do any petticoat-writers...’

  ‘Then I shall go by Ursula Flight, which is the name I was born with, and I was loath to leave in the first place.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Ah.’

  ‘I have a play almost written, that I can have ready within the month,’ I said. ‘And it could not go on as a Clifford Montgomery Clyffe, for ’tis all about a woman’s condition, and is plainly written by one – I have been writing it all my life, as you shall see. As for being a petticoat-writer, if it is good enough for Mrs Behn, then it is good enough for me.’

  The next morning when I came to the theatre, Parrykin was waiting for me.

  ‘Fine, fine, have it your way, minx that you are,’ he said, mopping his brow with a kerchief. ‘I told Mrs Parrykin about it and she says if I do not let you put on your play I am more of a dolt than she thought I was. She for one would dearly like to see what you have written about the life of a female, and so I suppose she cannot be alone in it. She is not often wrong.’

  I threw my arms about him and kissed his nose. ‘And you shall pay me properly for it, and will not let my babby starve? For there’s the midwife’s fee to think of, and the price of its nursing, and...’

  ‘I will pay you two pound a script, and five per cent of the takings for the run. Which will probably not be more than a week or so...’

 
‘I will take five pound and twenty per cent of the takings, for I am certain this gamble will be worth my risk.’

  And, though he sighed, on that we shook hands.

  XV

  EXERTION

  In which I labour

  oh oh oh

  oh oh oh oh

  oh oh oh oh oh

  I BREATHE, I BREATHE, I HISS THROUGH MY TEETH

  (Hissing hissing hissing)

  If I could go back and undo it, I would. It was not worth—

  oh oh oh

  oh oh oh

  (Grind, grind grind, grind, wrench)

  I cannot I cannot I cannot

  Forgive me, but I’m terribly sorry, I cannot

  oh oh ohhhhhhhhhh

  oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh

  Will I die? I do not want to die. Hello? Will I die? Will I—

  I will break it. I will break his face. I will break his—

  I beg

  It was but one hour past dawn when the midwife went away with the bloodied sheets, leaving me dazed and propped on my bolster in the grey morning light. Having laboured for the best part of a day, I was dappled all over with sweat; the babby she had bathed and rubbed and slapped into life beside me, a red little thing, with balled-up hands and fists. My head dipping with fatigue, hair plastered across my forehead, I gazed at her in wonder, watching her swivel her eyes and lay her arms across her face, moving all of her limbs in turn as if testing that they belonged to her. My babby worked her mouth and kicked her stiffened legs, and howled a little, at which I rubbed her belly until she blinked and quietened. The cries had made my breasts, bound up by the midwife in cabbage leaves and bandages, feel fit to bursting, and I twisted my body to ease the discomfort. Against the midwife’s instructions, I picked my babby up, nudging her into the crook of my arm. She groped blindly for my breast and, when she could not find what she sought, stretched her mouth into a round gummy squawk.

  ‘I am sorry,’ I said, looking down at it tenderly, ‘but I cannot feed you if my milk is to stop as it must. You are to go to another lady who will give you what you need.’ The babby closed her mouth and goggled at me a while. ‘You know me, do you not?’ I whispered, touching her feather-soft face with my thumb. ‘I am your mother. You are my daughter and you are the most beautiful thing I have ever known.’

  I watched her for a while. Then I whispered: ‘I will name you Cassiopeia, for I looked at the stars last night and saw that very constellation burning bright above me, and knew then that my father had sent you to me, to love me in his place.’

  The babby closed her eyes, seemingly satisfied at her new name. So did I.

  I woke at a knocking within and called out ‘Enter.’ It was the wet-nurse, cloaked against the rain, and she came in, trailing water, in a great bustle of skirts.

  ‘Oh, what a dear thing. How did you do? Mistress Mould said you had a long time of it – ’tis always like that with the first.’

  ‘I – I am tired,’ I said.

  ‘Let me see the precious babe,’ she said, advancing. I reluctantly held out my arms.

  ‘’Tis best I take her now, madame, before either of you get too attached.’

  The babby burst into a guttural cry.

  ‘There, she is hungry. I will feed her now, if I may, madame, and that will right her for the journey.’

  I nodded my assent, and she pulled out a chair and sat in it, before pulling at her clothing and putting the baby to her in one smooth motion.

  ‘There, she has latched on most hungrily, madame. ’Tis a good sign.’

  I found I did not like to watch my babby in the arms of another woman. I began to feel quite wretched and as if I might weep.

  She was watching my face. ‘’Tis hard at first, madame, but it will grow easier, with time. And you will see her seven days hence – or sooner, if you may.’

  ‘Oh yes, can I come sooner?’ I said eagerly. ‘Perhaps in a few days, when I have rested a while and am fit for the coach.’

  ‘Aye, madame, that will be well.’

  I watched them.

  ‘Her name is Cassiopeia,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, aye,’ said the nurse, ‘very pretty. Is it foreign?’

  ‘Greek,’ I said. ‘My father taught it to me when I was but a child myself.’

  She did not seem to hear this, engrossed as she was in the feeding. She looked down at my child. ‘She sleeps now. I will bind her to me, and carry her under my cloak, for we do not want you to catch a chill on your first day in the world, do we, Miss Cassy-oh-peeah?’ This she said to my babby, carefully sounding the foreign vowels of her name.

  ‘Nay, we do not!’ I said, the fear rising in me that she would catch a fever and be dead before I could see her again.

  ‘Be not afeard, madame,’ said the nurse. ‘All will be well.’

  ‘Aye,’ I said, but before the last footsteps of the nurse had died away and the cries of my daughter with it, I had burst into a fit of weeping, that lasted until I slept.

  MY DEARLING DAUGHTER, I SWEAR TO YOU, ON YOUR BIRTH-DAY:

  I shall give you everything I never had.

  I shall never make you marry where you do not love.

  I shall be a friend to you, and always keep your secrets.

  I shall teach you everything I know & I shall never punish you for wanting to know more than you should.

  I shall furnish you with books and papers and you shall write to your heart’s content (if it be your wish).

  I shall never send you away or push you from me, but I shall love you and cherish you all the days of my life.

  This I do swear ’pon the soul of my blessed Father. AMEN

  XVI

  RECUPERATION

  In which I return to the playhouse

  My stomach was a loose spongy thing beneath my corsets and my bubbies still bound and given to leaking when, conscious that I must not lose my place, I was back at the playhouse but nine days later. I stamped through the doors unsteadily, as if on sea legs, hoping my friends would not smell what I could – the milky, earthy smell beneath the orange-flower water. Besides the tender, torn sensation in the lower half of my body, I was somewhat cast down in spirits – my heart ached at the loss of my child, and my eyes were pink slitted things that too were sore – for against my will I had spent much of the past week weeping. Being glad of the distraction that work would bring in this regard, I pasted on a feeble smile and tried to look cheerful.

  ‘What’s this!’ cried Manners, leaping down from the stage, and coming to embrace me no sooner than I shuffled through the doors, half hunched over. ‘Out of bed so soon! And even wearing a smile. Well, a grimace. See, I told you ladies. Ursula is one of the bravest women I know.’

  ‘Did it live?’ said Thruckle, her eyes rolling down my body.

  ‘Oh aye,’ I said. ‘Alive and lusty as the day is long. She is out to nurse. I have named her Cassiopeia.’

  ‘Of course you did,’ said Manners. ‘Halloo hallay for Cassie.’

  ‘Will you not sit down,’ said Thruckle. ‘For you look fit to drop.’

  ‘Sitting down,’ I said, ‘is just the thing I cannot do.’

  Careby and Parrykin came onto the stage then, Parrykin with a roll of papers in his hand, looking consternated and pink about the jowls.

  ‘Ah, there she is,’ he said.

  ‘Just in time,’ said Careby. ‘For he has written another one and it gets increasingly terrible the more he scratches at it.’

  ‘Punk!’ cried Parrykin, throwing the sheaf of papers down.

  ‘I will do what I can,’ I said. ‘But is this a propitious time to say that I have something else here that we could try?’ I rummaged about in the bundle I was carrying. ‘I have made copies for you all. And many hours it took me, all the hours that I was laid up abed in fact. But I finished the last at the stroke of midnight last night, and so here I am.’

  ‘What’s this, imp?’ said Manners, dancing a few steps across the pit. ‘Ah, a new play. Who am
I to be?’

  ‘You shall play two parts, if you will, Manners, in turn: the first one being disguised as a villain, the second as a gallant.’

  ‘Huzzah,’ he said.

  ‘Oh now I do not have a say in the casting neither?’ said Parrykin, blowing out his cheeks and kicking a piece of scenery, which was hanging by a thread. It splintered.

  ‘Forgive me, Parry. But there is something I wanted to ask you – will you... come out of retirement and play the father? ’Tis a mighty good role, for he is the kindest man, and all the audience will love him.’

  ‘Well, I do not know,’ huffed Parrykin. And then under his breath: ‘I am ever being subdued by women!’

  ‘Letty shall be the child,’ I went on, ‘and Sukey shall take the parts of the companion, and the mother-in-law, and for the latter she shall be aged and wear a false nose. And I shall need more actors, for the other parts – and the servants... well, perhaps you would all take it and read it and think upon it withal.’

  Parrykin had his nose in the pages of his script. ‘I do like this fellow,’ he said. ‘On reflection. A kind man. Very learned.’

  ‘But what is it to be called, Urse? For there is no title page,’ said Manners.

  ‘Well, I have been dwelling on it, and could not decide,’ I said. ‘What think you all of The Illumination of Ursula Flight?’

  ‘Fairly well,’ said Careby. ‘Apart from the bit where it has your name.’

  ‘She is a moth to a candle when it comes to the limelight, sister,’ nodded Thruckle. ‘So the illumination part is apt.’

  ‘’Tis a story I have drawn from life, only I have changed the names, for all but my own.’

  ‘By the beard of Juno, I love it,’ said Manners. ‘And I shall have to kiss you for it.’

  Parrykin put down his papers and lifted his nose.

  ‘It will do, I suppose,’ he said. ‘But what is this scene here? ’Tis not finished.’