“Well!? And what do you want?”
I glanced at Mr. Robinson, but he was too cowed in the presence of his irate “uncle” to provide a reply. I had been the favored one on our previous visit to Tregunter. And my condition merited compassion. “We want shelter from the storm, as it were, sir,” I said quietly.
“What business have beggars to marry?” retorted Mr. Harris in disgust. Looking his son squarely in the eye, he added, “I should never have given you my blessing. How long do you think I will support you throwing my money to the winds like a couple of unruly, overindulged children who don’t know the value of a day’s hard work?”
My husband shrank into himself as his father’s words clouted him about the ear. We took our lumps, unpleasant as they were, for they were not entirely undeserved. But the following morning, after an anxious night’s sleep, due to the stresses of travel, our mean reception, and the baby within my belly no less active than a prancing pony, I found myself subjected to renewed torment.
“Mr. Harris has instructed me to inform you that we will be unable to accommodate your lying-in,” said Mrs. Molly, her grin a triumphant rictus. “You arrived at a most inopportune time, as the house is undergoing renovations. I am certain that, what with the clamor and the dust, you would prefer to avail yourself of a more congenial atmosphere.”
She spoke with the words of a diplomat, but her errand had been to banish us from Tregunter to another property on the Harris estate. A carriage arrived soon after breakfast to take us along the two-mile journey to Trevecca House, which contained the most modest of living quarters, in addition to a flannel manufactory. “Well, at least our baby will have plenty of swaddling,” I joked, hoping to lighten my husband’s spirits, but he would not be coaxed out of his moroseness. His father’s conduct had convinced him that there should never be a reconciliation between them and that all hope of ever inheriting Tregunter had vanished on the chill wind that had blown us across the Severn.
Though it had been intended as a punishment, our removal to Trevecca House was, to me, a blessing. There I did not have to endure the perpetual slings and arrows aimed to wound by Mr. Harris’s distaff ménage. Left to my own devices, I roamed freely—though slowly in my advanced condition—amid the long violet shadows of Sugar Loaf Mountain, inhaling the crisp autumn air and reveling in the heaven-sent vistas of russet and orange and gold, brought about by the changing seasons. I would take my constitutionals while the grass was still spangled with the dew of morning, my soul soaring as my mind remained exceeding tranquil amid all the sublime glories of God’s creation. My sallies became a respite from the realization that I had formed a union with a family who had neither sentiment nor sensibility, both of which I had felt acutely since earliest childhood. In this soulful aspect I favored my mother, though we were most decidedly not of one mind on many things.
I had been enjoying my solitary strolls for two weeks, when one afternoon as I crested a gentle hill from which I often reposed, gazing at Nature’s bounteous scenery, I found myself suddenly deluged with water.
“Help me!” My voice echoed through the valley. “Mother!” I knew my mother was back home in Bristol with George, but she was the first and only one I thought to shout for. “Mama!” The reverberation mocked me. How would I get home in my drenched state, doubled over, and fearful that the baby would drop out of my womb as an overripe apple plops from its lofty branch?
I trudged across the valley to Trevecca House, my fluids filling my boots, and collapsed on the flagstone steps. The next I knew it was night, and I was lying upon my bed, propped up on my side against a linen-covered bolster. Candles flickered about me, casting ghoulish shadows on the concerned faces of what seemed a bevy of onlookers. Beside the bed a basin and a pair of forceps glinted ominously.
“Must the servants see me thus?” I demanded, both weary and afraid. The doctor shooed them from the room as I yowled in pain.
“Push, my child!” He exhorted me to push as though my life depended upon it. I knew the life within me did so. I screamed for laudanum, but the physician, whose large hands frightened me, refused to grant my wish.
“We need you conscious, mum; the little one won’t come out on his own, otherwise,” he insisted. I felt as though I was trying to shit out a melon, though from the other orifice. I hollered for Thomas and even louder for my mother, cursing them who had conspired to bring me to this pain, first dashing my hopes of a theatrical career and then rending my body in two in the birthing of a child.
Daylight had long waned, the room becoming tomblike, illumined only by the flicker of lamps, when Maria Elizabeth Robinson—her middle name an homage to the elder sister I had never known—beheld her first glimpse of humankind through encrusted eyes and was too briefly laid against my breast before being handed off like a fragrant parcel to the wet nurse, a clean, Christian woman named Mrs. Jones. The date was October 18, 1774—I was just five weeks and two days shy of my own seventeenth birthday. What had, hours earlier, been naught but a reason to rage and curse suddenly became my only consolation in a world of precariousness and uncertainty.
Something had overtaken me during that most perilous event; a new and tender interest awoke within my breast. My child! My Maria! I cannot describe the sensations in my soul at the moment when I pressed the little darling to my bosom—my maternal bosom. When I kissed her hands, each of her tiny pink fingers, her
