“I should be happy to live quite retired all my life,” she replied. “I saw enough of the world as a girl, and have in the past few years partaken of sufficient entertainments to inform my decision more than adequately.” She had no taste for adventure, as had I in my youth; but at least she had sense, which perhaps would serve her better.
I continued to expound upon my theme. “This dichotomy—that the weaker sex is expected to have stronger constitutions when it comes to avoiding the vices and temptations of the world, whilst the purportedly stronger sex is given license to indulge in the enticements that frail woman must at all costs avoid, maddens me to such a degree that I can actually feel the bile bubbling within my spleen. ‘Has vice then a sex?’” I posited. “Ah—another ‘eureka’ moment! Please dip your pen again, my sweet.”
My entire career, both on the stage and on paper, has been influenced by the greatest writer in the English language. Just as I had tapped the wellspring of experience, having played his Viola and his Rosalind, I imbued the trouser roles I wrote in my novels with echoes of Shakespeare’s own cross-dressing heroines; and the Semitic music of his Shylock seeped into the recesses of my brain. Now, like a specter, his cadences haunted me. “‘Let me ask this rational question,’” I dictated. “‘Is not woman a human being, gifted with all the feelings that inhabit the bosom of man? Has not woman affections, susceptibility, fortitude, and an acute sense of injuries received? Does she not shrink at the touch of persecution? Does not her bosom melt with sympathy, throb with pity, glow with resentment, ache with sensibility, and burn with indignation?’”
Through the secretarial skills of my lovely and sensible daughter, of whom I was so proud, I channeled my own philosophies. Were it not for the acquaintance of Miss Wollstonecraft and Mr. Godwin, I don’t think I should have had the courage to air them in such a public forum.
Longman & Rees reprinted the Letter in November 1799, with my true name attached to it, avowing that I had been the original author of the work, and defending my previous employment of the pseudonym of Anne Francis Randall.
Toward the end of the year, the shipping news reported the Tarletons’ return to England, on—of all ironies—a ship called Walsingham. Gossip held it that Ban’s young wife had metamorphosed from a dewy English rose into an imperious termagant. “He got what he deserved,” sighed Maria. “You were always far too good for him, Mummy, no matter how much you loved him.”
Evidently the former Miss Bertie was a bad-luck charm all around, for I was given to understand that Ban was now unhappy in their union, and the novel I’d begun with her illegitimacy in mind fared little better.
The Natural Daughter was not beloved by the critics, nor did the book garner me the sales I had hoped for, so as 1800 dawned, I decided to take a respite from novel writing. I had poured my soul into that manuscript; both my psyche and my sensibilities were too wounded to begin another story. Instead, I flung my energies into my editorial duties for the Morning Post, and through those channels I broadened my circle of acquaintances to include other poets whose trajectories were just beginning to blaze a trail in the literary firmament. Among these burgeoning luminaries was the twenty-seven-year-old Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
He was living in Keswick at the time; as I was rarely at my flat in Chapel Street, I no longer spent much time in London unless it was to see to my editorial responsibilities or attend the occasional play or opera. I invited Coleridge to visit me at Englefield Cottage, where I spent more than the moiety of my days in such discomfort that I rarely left my bed. The writer of the magnificently wrought Lyrical Ballads did not disappoint in person. He stood before my bedside, his face pale, almost womanly for its lack of angles, his lips soft and full as a female’s. Auburn locks the color of my own when I was his age tumbled past his collar.
“I thought not to come down to Windsor today after all,” were his first words. “Between melancholia and toothache, and my omnipresent neuralgic complaints, I was certain I would not be a welcome visitor for an invalid.”
“If pain is your boon companion, then you have met a kindred spirit in me. Many years ago—when I was younger than you are now—I suffered an accident from which I have never fully recovered. There are times when only laudanum will carry me through the nights.” I smiled. “And days. I worship at the shrine of Dr. Sydenham.”
Coleridge nodded gravely. “We are two cherries on one stem, then,” he said. “Laudanum gives me repose, not sleep; but you, I believe, know how divine that repose is, what a spot of enchantment, a green spot of fountain and flowers and trees in their very heart of a waste of sands! I began to avail myself of laudanum at first to alleviate the mortal pain that visited me daily. In time, I found I could not do without the sleep of the external senses—the pleasures it afforded my imagination, the flights of fancy and of phantasmagoria to which I was transported, and I admit to you that I am now a much devoted member of the class of men that denominates themselves as opium-eaters. In this life, if one is to be miserable in one way or another, one may as well do so under the self-induced delirium of the sainted poppy, particularly when one enjoys such a relatively solitary and retired existence.”
“Truly then, Mr. Coleridge, do you find it makes the world brighter and sharper? For though I have ingested the juice of the poppy for several years…I
