Homeland (13 page)

At least I won’t run out of paper. The attic here is chock-a-block with old magazines and sheet-music, some of them dating back to the twenties, and as you’ll soon see (this is my last sheet of Husband #3’s stationery) there are plenty of blank inside-covers and spaces. I’ve been drawing on them for weeks already. We still get firewood and coal by railroad from Jackson, but they’re shockingly expensive—over thirty dollars a cord! That’s Confederate dollars, but even so!

As late in the year as it is, I still haven’t had a bedroom fire, though I notice Aunt Sally always has one. We can’t get black lead, either, so it takes more scouring and fussing to get the grates clean
and they always look rusty and dingy. At least, even though we can’t get carborundum powder, either, we can still use brick-dust to clean the knives.

I remember how horrified I was last year to pay a dollar a yard for plain calico. Most ladies in town would scalp for a chance to get it for that little now. Aunt Sally, of course, always manages to “get” bolts of new and quite good muslin and calico as presents from the Generals here and in Jackson, all of whom are her dear good friends. As a result, Julia and I are suddenly the two best-dressed young ladies in Vicksburg. Everyone else’s dresses have all been turned once and some of them twice, and I’m told people in the country are setting up looms to weave their own cloth.

I still haven’t managed to find a copy of Mrs. Wollstonecraft’s
Vindication
. But, stowed away on a top shelf I found a marvelous book by her daughter. It’s about a doctor who creates a human being out of pieces of dead bodies, and by scientific means endows it with life … and having done so, refuses to take further responsibility for it, because it is misshapen and ugly. I have never read anything remotely like it, and
could not
put it down. I was totally enthralled. I suspect your Father would say it is completely morally unedifying, and yet—why is the story of a creature who is assumed to be evil because of his ugliness, different from that of one who is deemed unfit for a place in society because he, or she, is black? Or a woman?

No letter from you, and who knows how long, before I get one again? I pretend I can post this tomorrow, and in time get one back from you, reminding and reassuring me that … Well. Out calling today (with a two-inch burn on my temple from the curling-irons!),
there were several young artillery officers at Mrs. Lillard’s, one of whom—Captain F—seemed to think I would be enthralled to hear about his family, and his three plantations, and how he’d moved all his slaves except his valet down to Alabama where they’d be “safe.” I kept getting up to get tea (or whatever it was) or bread-and-butter for Julia so I could change my seat, and Captain F kept moving to wherever I was sitting, and on the way home Julia told me that he was clearly in love with me.

She sounded so
gleeful
, fussing with my hair and tweaking my lace, and I just stared at her: “Oh, Susie, you’re going to be the belle of Vicksburg!” And Aunt Sally, when we got home, took me aside and had a great deal to say about F’s family’s investments in France and Mexico and in New York banks—which is where
her
investments are. Both gave me much solid advice about how to “attach” a man.

And I’m ashamed to say my first thought was, “Gosh, if I
did
hook him, I’d get him to send me to the art academy in Philadelphia!” Please write me and remind me how stupid this is.

Mrs. Lillard has not been able to get her chimney repaired, and during tea, squirrels kept coming up to the hole and looking in, impatiently, as if they wished everyone would leave so they could get at the bread-and-butter. No fire can be made in that fireplace, of course, and you must imagine all the above scene of courtship with everyone muffled up in scarves and coats.

P.S. Actually, I know how stupid it is, because “hooking” Captain F would almost certainly involve kissing him, and he has flabby lips. (Tho’ Miss Austen does not say so, I feel sure Mr. Collins in
P&P
has flabby lips, too.)

[not sent]

My dearest Susie,

Monday a letter reached me, not from you, but from Eliza Johnson, who is now safe in Nashville after a horrifying journey across enemy lines. I rejoice to hear she and her family are out of danger, and re-united with the Senator; yet, my heart sinks as I realize that for a time, I will be unable to hear from you.

For a year now, I have thought of you as a friend, and more than a friend. It is not simply that you are on the same “side” as my husband, as some Daughters of the Union deride. The tide of patriotism runs so strongly over all the North that it has swept before it any possibility of regard for opinion different than that of the majority: one must be very, very careful now what one says. Yet in the night, between sleeping and waking, I still dream that I feel your hand gripping mine, though I can no longer hear your voice. As I am re-reading
David Copperfield
, I ask your forgiveness, if for a time you join the company of those friends he speaks of: present, close, treasured yet untouchable, whose invisible presence has become a lifeline which sustains my soul—the Bennet Sisters, Miss Summerson, the sturdy and faithful Quasimodo. All souls need friendship, even, I am convinced, the cats whom I see lying snug together in the loft, and the cows who seek one another out, with all the pasture’s acres to choose from. What is this human capacity, to keep flame burning for years without tangible fuel? Where does the line lie, between great distance and sheer fancy?

The school term is drawing to a close on Isle au Haut. I grieve its loss, for the fisher-folk of the island—whose soil is too thin and stony to permit much in the way of farming—though they regard me
as a “foreigner,” are less inclined to suspect me of treason. Yesterday I helped Mrs. Barter, who operates the general store at the Town Landing, to air and turn the bedding of the family rooms behind the store, in preparation for winter, she having scalded her hand severely at pig-killing. The moon is young and thin, setting just at twilight, or I would have stayed to help her with the second, and worse, part of the task: painting the mattress-seams with camphor and turpentine, against the inevitable winter live-stock of bedbugs and fleas. I returned home to find a similar scene in progress, Mother instructing Peggie in the art of applying the camphor with a feather, Peggie’s own family having been, I am sorry to say, entirely ignorant of the art.

We have had hard freezes these past four nights. Saturday, when Papa comes, we will spend the day at Uncle M’s butchering. All week, my students have been erratic in their attendance, from their families being themselves so engaged.

[not sent]

Dear Cora,

As you can see by the sketches, I’m writing this in the maids’ room in the attic. Nellie is down with pneumonia. Cook will be up to
relieve me at four. Nellie was off her head with fever earlier this evening, which was quite terrifying. Julia has taken it into
her
head that Nellie has either scarlet fever or the Black Death, and forbade me to help nurse her because I’d transmit it to Little Tommy. I’ve been doing all the doctor said to keep the fever down, wrapping Nellie in a cool-water pack, and she seems to be sleeping a little easier now. I brought a book with me, but have discovered that
Frankenstein
is not something you want to read at two in the morning when the house is so silent you can hear the rats discussing politics in the main attic.

Speaking of books, someone (and I can guess who!) evidently whispered to Captain F that I “read books,” because he offered me a
tremendous
bribe for my affection—Charles Dickens’s newest, which I understand is an historical novel set in the French Revolution! Captain F himself finds Dickens “common” and “sensationalistic.” (I’ll bet he’s never read him, or anything else, ever.) I am in agonies. I conjure your response, in your fine Italianate handwriting, before me on my lap-desk:

My darling Susie—Why expend ink (at $2.50 per bottle) discussing such callow perfidy? I know you will spurn such offers with the contempt they deserve, without the slightest prompting from me. You are destined for Art: never waver in your pursuit of your chosen Star. Moreover, I have written to Mr. Dickens in London and he adds his encouragement to mine. He intends to base the villain of his next novel (Phineas Slunchbug) upon F. Mr. Slunchbug will be transported to Australia and then struck by lightning upon arrival. Your own, Cora.

I miss you.

Nellie is no better. She keeps calling out for her mother, and crying; she is no older than I. When I was little, and Payne and I both
had scarlet fever, Julia nursed me; our Stepmother had us both put out into the overseer’s house, so
she
wouldn’t catch it.

I kept falling asleep all day, when I should have been helping Cook do the lamps.

It’s three in the morning again and Nellie has just drifted off to sleep. The stillness is frightening. Every time I doze, I wake up trembling, thinking I hear Regal’s militiamen stumbling and cursing in the hall, or trying the bedroom door. How long does it take to forget something like that? I have a book with me—
Persuasion
, NOT
Frankenstein
!—but am far too weary to make sense of words on the page.

Dr. Driscoll says, Nellie might very well have died, if she hadn’t been nursed as she was, for which Cook deserves far more credit than I. Last night was my first good night’s sleep, and I slept most of the morning. All the strange dreams I had, half-sleeping up in the attic, seem to have shrunken back down to little things, memories of something that happened to me once.

I will seal this up, and drop it into the imaginary post-box, and imagine that you unfold it on Deer Isle on some snowy afternoon. I pretend I can look forward to hearing from you, about your Mother, and the lovely Miss Mercy, making cheeses and cider, and setting forth across the glittering sea to earn your own keep.

[not sent]

Dearest,

Winter closes in. Icy winds and sleet for weeks now, while like squirrels Mother, Peggie, and I try to outrace them: making head-cheese and sausage, feeding the slow-burning fire in the smoke-house, digging potatoes, patiently rubbing butter over the newly-pressed cheeses: big cow-cheeses, small strong-smelling goat cheeses. Uncle M sent one of his sailors to bring wood into the shed and the summer kitchen, cut boughs to bank the house, and sharpen all the tools, Papa being disastrously unhandy with edged metal. The house is dark, and it has begun to snow, which I fear means Papa will not be able to come from New Haven this Saturday.

Having added you, for the moment, to those friends who exist only on paper, I have come to meditate on friendship, its nature, and its comforts. As I re-read my way slowly through this precious hoard of volumes, this is what I see: Who in these tales are friends with who, what they do for their friends, and what they ask of them. Coming new to novels, I find that those which seem to me the most convincing are those in which the heroes and heroines are loyal friends, as well as ardent lovers or passionate martyrs. It interests me that the villainous Montonis and Ambrosios, and even the Tulkinghorns and Heeps, have Evil Henchmen, but not a single friend. Perhaps I only see this because I am quite desperately lonely myself. Isn’t it curious how few sets of friends one finds in the Bible? David and Jonathan; Ruth and Naomi; Paul and Luke; Jesus and his Apostles; Job’s four unhelpful “comforters.” Fitting, I suppose, in a book whose purpose is to define Man’s relationship with God, and only secondarily with Mankind.

Tell me what you think of this, my own dear friend.

Six inches of snow, and a hush upon the world, as if somewhere, someone has pricked her finger on the spindle of a spinning-wheel, and all the world lapsed into slumber. Going into the barn to milk, all the cats were curled up tight next to Mrs. Brown, the matriarch of our little herd—Mother does not believe in fanciful names for animals—like six hats dropped down in a row. Such peace, gold eyes blinking at me in the lantern-light.

[not sent]

Dearest Cora,

I forgot to mention, during Nellie’s illness, that I got a commission for a full-sized portrait! (In colored chalks, for there are of course no oils to be had in the town!) The subject is Mrs. R, who is the head of the Episcopal Church Hospital Committee and runs the lives of half the people in Vicksburg, and can get Aunt Sally invited to her reception when President Davis comes to town next month. Mrs. R also promised me all the paper in her husband’s desk, and all the pen nibs and ink. As you can see, I’m still writing—and drawing!—with a quill, and making ink out of lampblack and elderberry juice.