We had been residing in Grandam’s well-appointed home at Monmouth for about a month when Mr. Robinson and I were invited to a ball. By this time my spirits and strength had been greatly rejuvenated by the change of scenery and I felt I was up to the exertions of a dance floor. But as I had undertaken to feed little Maria Elizabeth myself, how would I make it through the evening without giving my daughter her nourishment?
“You tread the measures like a sylph,” one partner commented, and I blushed at the compliment that made me give myself over even more to the music. Thus it was that heated and flushed I took Maria from the arms of a young miss who had expressed a wish to cradle and dandle her as I danced, and brought her into an antechamber where I could give the babe the only succor she had ever yet taken. If anyone had chanced to come upon us, they would sure have been appalled by the spectacle of a gentlewoman breast-feeding her own babe, a notion that paled in comparison to little Maria’s presence at a ball.
How could I know of the dangers inherent in such an activity? My body had been agitated by the violence of exercise, and the stifling heat in the crush of the ballroom had not ameliorated matters. On the carriage ride home, Maria became convulsed.
I panicked. “What do I do? Stop the coach! No—don’t stop—drive on—faster. We must make it home posthaste!” My state was frantic to the point of not being able to stimulate any milk, even when Maria’s little mouth was parched for the refreshment. All the night I sat up with her, awaiting the arrival of a medical man. I felt so foolish, embarrassed that I had brought my daughter to this danger, and all because I did not know of the perils of dancing whilst I was a nurse.
“If the Lord takes her, I pray He takes me too,” I wept. All through the night the convulsions continued with little abatement. A clergyman arrived and counseled the infant’s removal, but I resisted all attempts to displace her from my lap.
At long last, the doctor presented himself, and after examining Maria and observing the nature of the convulsions, assayed a recipe that had benefited one of his grandchildren. He mixed a tablespoon of spirit of aniseed with a small quantity of spermaceti and gave it to the poor mite to swallow. She took it with the saddest and most awful face I have ever seen, but in a few minutes’ time the spasms abated, and in less than an hour the brave little one lapsed into a sweet and tranquil slumber.
“The anise is beneficial in cases where expectoration is difficult,” the doctor explained. And though his remedy availed, he could not determine the precise cause of Maria’s convulsions, suggesting only that they were due to a bout of infantile catarrh.
To this day I blame myself for undertaking such festive exertions at the time, and thank God that Maria recovered fully from this prodigiously frightening episode.
Two days later, with the sun scarcely risen, there was a brusque knock at our door. “Sheriff! Open up in the name of the law!”
Clutching Maria Elizabeth to my bosom, I looked to Tom for guidance, but Mr. Robinson, his face ashen, was trembling with an even greater ferocity than was I. “What is to be done now?” I asked him fearfully.
With no choice but compliance, we admitted the sheriff’s man, who carried with him an execution for a considerable amount. With all hope vanished of ever again being well received at Tregunter, Mr. Robinson’s expectations for obtaining the vast sums he owed to his dunners were nonexistent.
Like the deus ex machina in a Greek tragedy, Grandam entered the room, having had her toilette discommoded by the ruckus. “Why, Mr. Wainwright,” she said charmingly, “whatever brings you calling at this early hour?”
The sheriff’s man stated his business, and to our utter astonishment Grandam invited him to sit down and enjoy a cup of tea and a plate of caraway biscuits.
“Dear heavens, I have known your employer for eons!” she exclaimed as she poured the tea. “I’m certain the sheriff would appreciate the embarrassment attendant on taking my granddaughter’s husband into custody in a town where our family is so well known and our connexions so extensive.”
Within minutes my elegant and doting grandam had convinced Mr. Wainwright that it would be better for all concerned if the sheriff were to grant us an escort who might accompany us down to London, where the matter might be resolved more anonymously.
Arriving there, we took up modest lodgings in Berners Street, but every moment of freedom managed to increase our fears, for the sword of Damocles still dangled above our heads.
A four-handled oblong basket of osier with a pillow and a small bolster was Maria’s bed by day. Placed near my chair and writing desk, she enjoyed the sleep of the innocent, her gurgled, soft cooing the sweet accompaniment to my poetic compositions. My table was spread with papers, and everything around me presented the mixed confusion of a writer’s study and a nursery. From the time Mrs. Jones had quit our presence back in Abergavenny, I had made it an invariable rule always to be the one to dress and undress my infant, and never to suffer her to be placed in a cradle or to be fed outside my presence. At night my daughter slept with me, for I had too often heard of the neglect that servants show to young children; and I had resolved never to let an infant of mine fall victim to their ignorance or inattention.
“I am becoming like you,” I wrote to my mother, much amused. “I despair of my daughter’s ever quitting my sight!”
She was concerned that as I was making a return
