Danielle Dutton - Margaret the First

“But I’d have my plays,” she said, still standing in her jacket, “be like the natural course of all things in the world. As some are newly born, when some are newly dead, so some of my scenes have no acquaintance to the others.”

“Surely you cannot hope to please every reader, my dear.”

“It seems I cannot hope to please a single one!”

And as the leaves yellowed, Margaret withdrew. The evenings grew darker faster. She sank into herself. William had seen it more than once, yet he couldn’t always be there. He spent some nights each week at Bolsover Castle, attending to the rebuilding: an entire new roof for the western wing, where rooks had nested and frogs in puddles croaked. Ensconced in her rainbow gallery, Margaret sat late with pamphlets by Hooke, Boyle, and Wren: on optic lenses, windy holes, or ways of killing rattlesnakes, or making maps from wax. Then Christmas arrived. Then New Year’s Eve with oysters. Her stepchildren paid a visit.

“Come, Margaret,” William said.

“Come along,” the grandchildren called.

At last, she stepped outside. She squinted in morning light. Small green shoots shot up across the yard. Spring had come to Welbeck in a burst of green-winged orchids. Margaret walked to the village in a hat like a Chinese fan. The villagers hadn’t seen her in months, only heard of her from the household staff. An old man in the market square wore bluebirds on his arms. She passed the bakery, the dressmaker’s, and then she opened a door. For she’d ordered a book — Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis —and began to read it there in the shop, of a traveler caught in a storm, led to discover an unknown world, the utopian Bensalem, its Salomon’s House the ideal college of learned men: investigating, experimenting, for the good of all mankind. “We must hound Nature in her wanderings,” she read. Unlock her secrets and penetrate her holes. “Break her,” Bacon argued, “and soon she will come when you call.” The stationer watched the marchioness. As she read, her face grew taut. She closed the book and turned to go. He watched her cross the busy square toward the path back to Welbeck alone.

IT BROKE UPON HER WITH THE RAIN. AFTER NEARLY TWO YEARS OF stagnation, fearing her wit run dry, as the rains washed over the forest, muddying roads, and the bluebells bloomed, Margaret sat and wrote.

Orations of Divers Sorts, Accommodated to Divers Places is set in a nameless city somewhat like London, a little like Colchester, and a bit like Antwerp besides. This is how it starts: Margaret invites the reader to imagine herself in a market.

Imagine yourself in a market that bustles.

The sunny smell of hay and shit. See stalls of cabbage and leek, fish with frosted eyes, baskets of eels and flowers. See herbs and chickens, hanging capons, and soap and cows. See the barber who performs surgery on a man with bleeding teeth. See packets of peppercorns, dry-salted meat. There are musicians somewhere, tuning, and many men preparing to step up onto boxes and speak. But all around you, too, observe the ruins of war. You have only to alter your gaze to witness endless rubble. Dress in comfortable shoes — we’ll be moving from place to place — yet in something fit to be seen, for who knows if we’ll happen upon the king playing tennis in the park. Have no fear, gentle reader, for you will be returned to your home, and safely, as soon as the orators have done. But expect disagreement, hullaballoo. Some men will argue for war and others for peace, some for the rights of the rich and others that all ownership is theft. Then, in the middle of the day, with the sun at its summery zenith, after a series of speeches that are none too kind to women, and despite the fact that women are not born orators, we women, who’ve been listening, will gather ourselves to speak.

The first of us will say: “Men are so Unconscionable and Cruel against us, as they Indeavor to Barr us of all Sorts or Kinds of Liberty, as not to Suffer us Freely to Associate amongst Our own Sex, but would fain Bury us in their Houses or Beds, as in a Grave; the truth is, we Live like Bats or Owls, Labour like Beasts, and Dye like Worms.”

The second will add: “Our Words to Men are as Empty Sounds, our Sighs as Puffs of Wind.”

The third counter: “We have more Reason to Murmur against Nature than against Men, who hath made Men more Ingenious, Witty, and Wise than Women, more Strong, Industrious, and Laborious than Women, for Women are Witless, and Strengthless, and Unprofitable Creatures, did they not Bear Children.”

The fourth propose: “We should Imitate Men, so will our Bodies and Minds appear more Masculine, and our Power will Increase.”

“Hermaphroditical!” the fifth will cry.

“Masculine Women ought to be Praised” will say the sixth.

And the last of us will speak: “Women have no Reason to Complain against Nature, or the God of Nature, for though the Gifts are not the Same they have given to Men, yet those Gifts they have given to Women are much Better.”

In 1662 Margaret’s Orations was published — to outrage, wonder, and scorn.

IT IS A COLD MORNING IN EARLY SPRING. THE SUN HAS RISEN; THE sky is piled with clouds. Soon the snow will fall. Over the trees, the pond. The cows and pigs and sheep. Now smoke rises from a chimney in the village, a grayish plume into the grayish sky. The little village houses are not visible from the window, not through the woods, the innumerable leaves, though on certain days, if the wind is right, she can hear the village children shouting and playing games. She can smell the bacon fried. When she drives through in her carriage, when she makes her daily tour, she sees their faces peering out from cottage doors. She is a specter. A spectacle? The snow will blanket the road.

Margaret stands inside her room and stares out at the grounds. It is early spring. Or is it winter’s end? So much now is changed. Yet like the flakes beyond the window glass, some years rise up while others sink down, out of her view, without concern for order. She remembers a day six years ago, which feels much further back, how the fountains plashed with wine — soldiers, trumpets, a drift of pigs in the street. Every bell in London swung. It was the king’s thirtieth birthday, and he arrived on a ship awash in satin and guns — the Royal Charles moaned in shallow water — then disembarked and spat upon the ground. “A pox on all kings!” cried a hag. He flipped on a wig and mounted his stallion, rode with billowing hair down billowing streets, the bluster of many horses’ hooves muffled by petals and tapestries, puddles of wine and shit — Fleet Street to the Strand to Charing Cross to the palace — then ordered Cromwell’s traitorous head severed from its body, stuck up on a twenty-foot spike above Westminster Hall evermore.

Or had she only heard that part from William?

She paces as it snows. Her skirts wave around her as she takes this morning exercise, fold upon fold of fabric unfurling in continued variation. Of course, it doesn’t snow inside her room, onto the floor, the Turkey carpets, yet every other minute she flicks her hand before her face as if hurrying away a flake. No, winter is kept outside. Or is it early spring? In any case, the room is warm — stuffed with roses, a blazing fire, the honeyed air her husband finds so stifling. He prefers she visit him in his chamber a floor above, where the Ballad of Robin Hood is painted on the ceiling. He isn’t at Welbeck today, however, gone to London on forest business, having been named at last the Justice-of-Eyre. Not the position he’d hoped for at court. At least they are a duke and duchess — she is Duchess of Newcastle now.