He wrote to mother:
The Indians rose in a body, burning my settlements to a cinder. Many of my men were struck down in cold blood by their axes or bludgeoned before they could muster any defense. The fruits of our toil, brought about by arduous labor in an unforgiving climate, these were set adrift on the wide and merciless ocean. Compounding all, I hear from Chatham and the others of the committee that formed the chief cornerstone of my sponsorship that these once noble patrons have no intention of making good on their initial surety. For the time being, all, all is lost. It is with heavy heart that I thus enclose a copy of a bill of sale of my entire property, by whose authority you and the children will unfortunately be obliged to quit the house in Bristol.
My mother fainted on the spot.
It was a nasty surprise. I thought at that moment my life would end. I was just coming to grips with the death of our domestic felicity—but it had never entered my imagination that our situation would ever be anything but prosperous, my prospects anything but infinite, and my future assured as one of comfort and respectability. I was still a little girl. What would become of us now?
For days, Mother, who was never able to bear a burden with any degree of stoicism, would wander our rooms like a wraith, clutching Papa’s letter, now stained with her copious tears, rivers of sadness sprung from double pools of fear and betrayal. “Retrench? But where?” she would cry, her disorganized mind incapable of focusing on making new arrangements for our habitation or the inventorying of our property. Every spoon she enumerated was the source of a fresh burst of tears.
That unerring touchstone—adversity—soon showed who were our real friends, and who revealed themselves as shams. Many, with affected commiseration, dropped a tear—or rather seemed to drop one—on the disappointments of our family.
“It must feel dreadful to see such lovely things command so little.” Mrs. Linton, the wife of a well-to-do barrister of our acquaintance, shook her head with a little sigh as she handed my mother a draft for my beautiful bed, damasked linens and all. The bed was too costly for us to move, and in any event, too capacious for our new quarters. “What a shame that your beautiful home should be broken up for scrap, as ’twere.”
“I should never have let Mr. Mannering embark upon such a risky venture.” Mrs. Mannering, the wife of a prominent sugar merchant, had often dined in our home while her husband was at sea. Now the portly woman whose fleshy fingers bulged on either side of the corseted constraint of her garnets helped herself, at bargain prices, to my mother’s port and sherry glasses. Her sister, equally as vulgar, fingered my beautiful Kirkman harpsichord, which she could, alas, purchase from us for a song, as the saying goes. Not only would our retrenching deny me the proximity of the liturgical melodies I held so dear, but it was to deprive me of the ability to make my own. I had been robbed by my father’s misfortunes of my much beloved instrument, as precious to me as an artist’s chisel and brush or a writer’s quill.
Though Mrs. Abercrombie thought she was whispering to Mrs. Linton, her pronounced Scots burr did not lend itself to the subtleties of gentle conference. “If Mr. Darby hadna lavished sae much on his wife and bairns—look at that fine candelabrum, will ye—and allowed her to dress herself and the wee’uns in such elegant stuffs and extended his hospitality to offering so many courses at his dinners—I ask ye, who needs mutton and lamb, as well as three different puddings—he wouldna found himself in such narrow straits today. Prodigality is all very weel and good, but frugality is the sign of a truly prudent man.”
Through no fault of my own, it was clear that I was no longer good enough to marry their sons. A merchant’s daughter would have been quite suitable to them if she were sufficiently dowered, but now, said their pitying looks, I should consider myself fortunate, with my background and schooling, to secure a position as a governess.
My mother suffered them all in modest quietude, but our pecuniary losses were nothing compared to the emotional casualties. At about this time, my brother William was carried off by the measles at the tender age of six. Though my mother had lost a child before, she did not bear this all-too-common grief with equanimity, as did many women of her acquaintance. The only mercy to be obtained from this dreadful and most tragic event was that Will’s suffering was relatively brief. Dr. Samson bled him thrice, but the fever persisted, the spots increasing rather than abating, as the days wore on. Within a week, the bright blue eyes of my sweet brother, once so lively and animated, were closed for eternity, and his illness-ravaged body was laid in the cold and unforgiving ground alongside the church. I grew even more afraid to fall asleep at night, fearful that the Angel of Death might call for me as well. And I took to wearing nothing but white, so that I would be ready when he came.
Several days after Will’s death, I encountered my mother sobbing over a box of dishes. I touched her sleeve. “Our wedding dishes,” she wept. “As worthless now as…” The letter she’d been holding in her hand fell, crumpled, to the floor. I stooped to pick it up. Unfurling the paper, I read a love note, full of tenderness and passion, written when
