“What’s in the box, ma’am?”
Mrs. Lorrington lifted the cover; the dust made me sneeze again. The box’s contents were lovingly removed: a leather apron, which she laid across her lap, and a packet of letters, neatly tied with a length of black ribband. “He wrote many of these after he took sick,” Mrs. Lorrington said, untying the ribband as if the letters themselves might disintegrate absent their silken binding. “Here.” With trembling hands, she offered me one of her precious epistles. “Would you like to read it?”
Could I refuse? “‘My beloved wife,’” I read, feeling very much as though I was prying where I was not wanted. “‘I know not how many days are left to me, but I will account each one a blessing when I think of the woman whom God and Nature favored me as the consort of my journey through life. Daily—hourly—I feel the heavy obligation of apologizing to you, my fairest one, because it seems that journey will be so much shorter than either of us had ever planned….’” I glanced up at Mrs. Lorrington; her eyes were once again closed, her cheeks stained with silent tears. “Do you wish me to read on, ma’am?”
Mrs. Lorrington’s eyes flew open and she downed her tot of gin in a single draught. “No…perhaps better not. Thank you, Mary.” She took the letter from my hands as though she were cradling a dying bird, and kissed the top of my head. “You’re a good girl, my little friend. A dear girl.”
With some compunction she declared to me, her voice softly rumbling with emotion, that she flew to intoxication as the only refuge from the pang of prevailing sorrow. Such a sad being she was that I clasped her about the waist, whilst she wept into her handkerchief, the occasional teardrop missing its net and tumbling instead into my auburn curls.
During the fourteen months I spent under Mrs. Lorrington’s tutelage, she proved an inspiration, despite her unfortunate means of escaping her mental turmoil. Our reading sessions inspired me to indulge my fancy for writing verses, and my governess never failed to applaud the juvenile compositions I presented to her. Her own tales of woe—a personal tragedy fraught with despair, a swain snatched from her loving bosom by the claws of unpitying death, while her enduring love proved greater than any force of nature—all these formed in my young imagination the chief topics of my maiden efforts. Some of these, written between the ages of twelve and thirteen, I preserved and printed in a small volume shortly after my marriage, but as doomed love was the theme of my poetical fantasies, I never showed them to my too-sensible mother until I was about to publish them.
If nothing else, I proved consistent in my choice of subject, for not too long hence, when I would choose to dedicate myself to Erato, stanza upon stanza of gothic melancholy, of devoted lovers from each other’s arms untimely ripp’d, would prove as valuable as a jailer’s turnkey!
Three
A First Proposal and a Last Good-Bye
1770…age twelve
It was my custom every Sunday to take tea with my mother at the vicar’s home where she was boarding. She was always delighted to see me and the afternoons we spent in one another’s company flew by all too swiftly. Mother would always begin by remarking on what a young lady I was becoming—“and could it be you’ve grown so much in a week”—and then she would inquire as to how my instruction was getting on and ask after Mrs. Lorrington. My answers were always the same; my governess was in tolerable good health. I would not betray my dear mentor’s solitary weakness, even to my own mother.
One Sunday I found my mother in the parlor entertaining a gentleman near to her own age.
“Allow me to name you my daughter Mary, sir.”
He rose and offered a polite bow. “Captain Fredericks, of His Majesty’s Navy, miss.”
“The captain is a friend of your father’s,” Mother added.
I dropped a curtsy. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir.”
“Oh, no,” he insisted, “it is all mine, I assure you. We sailors scarcely have the opportunity to see a pretty face, let alone a lovely English rose such as yourself.”
I thought he overflattered me, for we’d barely been introduced, but he was pleasant looking—good hair and teeth, a fine enough figure—so I smiled modestly and thanked him for his courtesies.
“Allow me,” I said, and poured the tea for my mother and her guest, serving them with all the grace of a proper lady, rather than that of a coltish girl. Not a drop was spilt, nor a crumb of teacake lost. Neither dish nor spoon rattled or clattered.
Our conversation was polite. We discussed the weather, our opinions of the specimens in the Chelsea Physic Garden, and the hazards of shipboard life. Upon learning that he was fond of animals, I asked him if he had visited the menagerie at the Tower or seen the king’s men exercising His Majesty’s elephant on the grounds outside the Queen’s House.
The following Sunday, Captain Fredericks was again at the vicarage when I called on my mother, and he was in attendance the next Sunday and the next again.
On the fourth Sunday after we’d first made one another’s acquaintance, I encountered Captain Fredericks once more, but he didn’t quite appear himself, his face coloring deeply when he bowed to me upon my arrival. Turning to my mother, he said, “I have something especial I should like to say to you, Mrs. Darby”—he self-consciously cleared his throat—“concerning Miss Darby.”
As Mother could never have fathomed the import of the captain’s business, she did not dismiss me from the room; nor did Captain Fredericks request me to absent myself, for it seemed that he wished to enjoy the favor of my company rather than miss it.
“I’m not a man of many words, as you know,” he said, once
