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.
I am,
yr ever loving & longing,
A.C.
July 4th. In confine still.
My only William, –
You say you shall unlock me. Why do you not? I cannot fear but that your being out at elbows — and staying thus in London — means you have lost your position — or you would fleet back on the instant to your Grammar, and your Lady. They say the boy is playing hoops in the garden of the Manor House. There is a murmur that he is to go to Eton this year — that is how Bint reported it to Wall, who let it drop with me last evening. I pine until I am husked of my soul. O this cavernous life, full of deep woes in which our unshining flesh lights nothing — a million candles would not shed this gloom from me — this bedroom does stretch a million miles — I am not yet finished with the ploughman — if I were in the land of the Indians I might feel less weary of needles and quills and clocks.
I shuffle my chair from a ruck of the carpet — I know its Persian lions in every claw — I have mapped out its maze until my feet do a jig & kick the wall — my shoe has undone its buckle — I am too fatigued to strap it — I let it fall — I study its silken corpse, till the clock strikes me out my dull transport — I straighten, sag — let my head fall upon my arms — emit a sigh that might tatter the ensign of any other lover — sit up once more — scratch my nose — fiddle the ribband at my neck — pick up my pen — let it hang on air until it fall insensible — a lifeless bird, that doth rest its plumage against the far more living wing of an ivory heron — then a knock at my door — a weary ‘come’ — the maid enters with her smell of the scullery following in a cloud — she does curtsey obligingly — I ignore — she removes my stool under its white cloth — she closes the door soft for she must think me close to slumber — which I am — the clock strikes a quarter, clears its throat, strikes again lest I be in doubt, grates a little — pit-a-pats on — or is that my heart — for I have thought of you! — the long winding road to London betwixt us — the motion of the carriage-wheels — your face at the fore-window — the dust upon your forehead — the passing cots and the stone that says, you are but a handful of miles from your love — but no — he don’t alight at the turning — the horses don’t stop, he don’t signal — he looks backward — a smile in the lips — our glade afar off — this room likewise — ’tis cast, a red ribband from the carriage — that flies up in the dust — tumbles to the verge — it does not scruple — it lies on the common highway — to be trampled upon — mangled by hooves & common boots — or ties a pedlar’s coat — or be obliterated forever — as the clock strikes again, & his carriage takes the slope — scarce touches the ground — post-haste — away — away — to a nothing — a nought — a silence! — she lifts her head — scratches her nose — doth sigh — doth wait for tea — doth pick up her pen — doth dip it — doth write — so –
ARE YOU FALSE?
I shall strike nothing out today, you perceive.
My aunts wonder I have writ them so much.
I have a spy-glass. It is my brother’s, from his school chest left me when he went to sea. A boy’s plaything, in brass. I spy through the window. The wood leaps up to me — it is the trick of the glass: I see the garlands woven about the wood — the lark come close — the buttons about the shepherd’s garters — I might gaze into the sun till it strike me blind. Last night ’twas full moon — with you also — I oped the window and the spy-glass caught it — my eye was filled — the light was like a maddened horse rearing over me — too white & wild to gaze upon! So all is brought nearer, but what excellent illusions we must live under, that our intelligence and reason does not expire from lack of fancy, and of hope!