Adam Thorpe - Ulverton

I tell you this that you might beat with a fatherly devotion.

I would wish my ink watered — my glass is empty, I have run out of sand also — but I fear any interruption — I will blow on this till it not blot and I have the seal-wax from this morning — shall hand it to the maid with a coin that she be persuaded to give it to the black boy — he combs my Pekes but they will not let him in — they will never think to address their suspicions to him. Before it was Hodgetts the groom of chambers ’twas handed to by the maid — she is called Hambling — she is devoted to me and has too dull wits for intrigue, but Hodgetts wears gold garters and is insufferably proud — he has ambitions — Hambling has a wart the size of a guinea upon her forehead, but Hodgetts has told Wall that Bint has taken a great fancy to her, for otherwise she is shapely — Wall told me, and I told her I did not care if they married, or did not, I was so weary. Hambling must tell the black boy to conceal it — I have named him Scipio, and then again Leeward, for Scipio is my husband’s stallion — Leeward is then to give it to Mabberley — he being the hoary-headed gardener brought with me from Stagley, who cut roses for me when I was merely babbling, twenty year past, kind old soul — he will hang for me if I wished it. He takes it to the chaise. There — I have it in a nutshell they shall never crack.

Address your letters to Elijah Mabberley, of Maddle Lane.

I write in haste, lest you write too quick again (tho’ that be not likely) — your resumption of the Latin next month fills me with cheer and expectation my poor vessel of a heart can hardly bear — how each day drags itself to the moon — I spin patience with ropes of sand — there! I have blotted with my tears — imagine how I crouch trembling at every noise and knock — no great house has more quivering a caged bird. I have my fan ready to spread upon my desk, for the air lies like treacle and this early heat would have me faint — but my fan is as well my cunning concealer, it is so large when spread, and the herons painted upon it fly.

I would have you lie between me on the instant, but I must long more. Your expressions of affection were received as mine were — O ill-defined joys, that groan as they are cherished, and strew boughs of blossom as they sting our feet with longing!

I am,

ever yours –

A.C.

I plant this finger upon thy lips, and write my love upon them.

June 20th, ’43.

Dearest William, –

I am joyous our plot passed off without mishap, and our love spun itself happily over the distance, so strewn with traps and spies. I hope you are burning the letters. Leeward conducted himself with propriety — he is told to speak nothing of this task — lest he feel the deck beneath him that returns him to sugar-cane. Hambling told me he flinched at that, as at a whipping — he has welts upon his back, she says, from the smart of a cart-whip (not Aunt Eliza’s, I think). If only all our servants were so, and in no need of wages, that make them so hard on us, and intrusive.

The danger is in the passing of the letter from Mabberley to the boy, but he walks the Pekes, and Mabberley clips a great laurel that utterly conceals him from the house, that is on the way. If you had come before, we had no need of this.

Your poem I have read a hundred times, by night, and by the window at dawn, as I feel the perfumed air of morning upon my cheek. I have been in here near three months — I have wept to be released — my husband is officious on my health, speaks highly of Dr Mackernes, and has not fiddled my buttons. I do feel weak, and nauseous, but ’tis the heat. Nurse Fieldhouse has been severe on the rocker for standing at my door (we are opposite to the nursery) when she oped it. Perhaps my thin, pale countenance persuades them I am to be shut from ills. I flush so easily. I am wan only from your absence. They anger me. I would like to beat them all with my cane — they gave me a cane to walk from bed to canapé — I have only one use for it, if it were to come to that.

The fourth stanza pleased me best. But how does it sound with ‘vernal’ and ‘umbrageous’, favouring ‘sylvan’ & ‘silvery’ — and the chime ‘lawns’ & ‘fawns’ in the stead of ‘hay’ and ‘tea’?

So rears the golden face of this great house

Through th’unnumbered leaves, that trembling start

At your fair hand, when like a vernal breeze

You brush aside their hues, to fleet o’er lawns

Towards umbrageous glades, small cots, and fawns.

‘Tea’ was too thin for the swelling passion in your lines. Forgive my meddling. Do not be upset. It is a woman’s way to stitch up and mend.

We have forty deer now, if you think ‘fawns’ a conceit. Twenty are bucks, that will be stags in three years. At Blenheim, where they have more than a hundred, their antlers were loud and like posts being struck with the echoes, when they fought. It woke me very early, but I saw nothing for the mist. This was last summer, when you were a figure only glimpsed from my carriage, but nearer my thoughts.

I sat on the terrace on my return then, and let my coffee cool — I was so distracted by your scarce-seen face on the way.

Here is more money. I cannot give further without my husband knowing. Our mortgage has been raised to pay for the new improvements — there are to be curves introduced to the lake — ’tis tedious the number of times my Lord has rustled his plans before me — Mr Kent has measured and tutted over the straight lines — ’tis all to be wild — some cottages to be razed where he has marked ‘Wilderness’ very flowery upon the plan, tho’ it shall be naught but birch and bindweed — & brings to mind that tedious Bunyan my childish locks brushed slumberously too many times, at dear Stagley — yet all the better for us to sport within! — and cool glades to spring up, and an hermitage built from stone and turf — we might use it for other than study, quoth I. My husband games too much away — he says money is like powder sugar, it soaks away so quick, but not if the purse is lined with scruples. To pay the improvements and the new damask hangings I have ordered for the house (’tis all to be lined in crimson & green, and new stucco of ivy and wild clymatis and lilies etc., and chimney-pieces in Drawing Room and Library wholly replaced with Italian marble — inlay of pink & white roses, tho’ these alone are £400) he is to use the cash that was formerly to pay back the mortgage, and so forth. He tells me he has bonds from his nephew that his nephew’s widow wishes to settle — she requires cash, having a meagre jointure, and wishes to lay out £3,000 in land for her son. Our tenants are in arrears with low prices but all their stock, that we have seized from them, is not sufficient to discharge more than half the rent. We are to purchase an adjoining estate — ’tis a farm by the name of Plumm, we are to pluck it out from the pie, and then have the next valley to our own — ’tis a farm well handled but poor — there is a woman husbands it, a little proud — there is some scandal attached to her birth, but I forget what now. Then our estate will be reckoned more, but still not sufficient, for my husband’s family sank much into the South Sea with the Bubble, and our hold is still perilous, tho’ he don’t tell me that when I was hitched into my bridal apparel by my dear Papa.

But you find such talk tedious, I know. Do not send me books. Tho’ the Watts was small, ’tis trying for Mabberley and the boy to conceal beneath their coats. Have you a date for your return? I cannot bear this talk of ‘soon’. You don’t mention Italy. I hope it is forgotten. ’Tis feverish hot there.

Each blotch is a kiss.

Do not spend on Claret and Sherry, or maids by the belly.