The Alchemist's Daughter (33 page)

“He doesn’t mention my mother, except that you buried her,” I said.

“No, I thought not.”

“Only you. You are written about a lot.”

“That’s because I was there and she wasn’t.”

“But she must have been on his mind.”

“There was only one thing on his mind at that time. Nothing else existed but you. I had to remind him to eat.”

“But didn’t you think it strange that he never seemed to grieve for my mother or talk about her?”

She was silent a moment, then said, “It’s common, I think, for some men to become so enamored of a baby girl that all other thought goes out of their heads. Gill was the same.”

“Gill?”

“He used to take off his boots for fear of waking you, even if you were a dozen rooms away. You have no idea, Emilie, what a stir you caused in that great empty house.”

July 12, 1706

She grows strong. The muscles harden in her back and neck. Her eyes shine. She laughs and waves her hands. I carry her about and lay her amid cushions in the library so she can watch me work and grow used to the sight of books. Talk to her all the time. Have explained to her that am currently seeking to replicate Hooke’s experiments with condensed air. In fact intended to perform his experiment in which he placed a bird under a receiver until it was at the point of death, to see if it might be revived when the air from distilled vinegar was admitted. However, find myself unable to perform said experiment at present, even though I have a cage of three finches ready for the purpose. Captured one and put it under a bell jar, but when its bright eye looked at me through the glass I began to sweat. Was reminded of Emilie and couldn’t bear to see the bird’s black eye go dull, so released it.

Besides, she likes birds. She lies and watches them. It is good for the quickness of her eye to follow their movements.

N.B. Have begun the education of other senses.

Take her to the orchard and let her hear birdsong and watch the movement of shadows. Dip finger in honey and see her tongue lap it up. Give her whiff of menthol and she pouts. Told G. he might carry her to see and smell bonfire.

This is the start.

August 18, 1706

Am in great fear of leaving E. Must of course go to London, but what if anything should happen while I am away? She seems robust, though on Tuesday and Wednesday last she had a cough and rheumy eyes and nose. Questioned the girl they brought in to feed her and learn she has three healthy infants of her own, left with their grandmother. Her eyes are clear and her cheeks blooming, but I confided in Mrs. G. the hope that intelligence is not passed from nurse to nursling through the mother’s milk, as this girl is very dull. Mrs. Gill said, “You’d know about the internal workings of the human body more than me, sir, but I would imagine that whatever goes on in the head is somewhat separate from the other organs.” Cannot be sure. In cases of fever where the contents of the stomach are evacuated, the head may also ache and be prone to faintness, which suggests to me that the good of one part of the body is dependent on the whole. Certainly this would accord with Harvey et al.

There is so little of my Emilie. She fits into the crook of my arm, and her fingernails remind me of fish scales. Mrs. G. says she is still too young to spend much time in the laboratory with me, though I would like to keep her under my eye constantly. Thinks I should stay in London the usual length of time. Says that Emilie will thrive in my absence and that I will be pleased with the change in her when I get back.

September 3, 1706

Cut short my visit. Found I could not sleep at night. During reading of a paper by N. about particles in elastic fluids thought only of Emilie. Seemed impossible that some terrible accident had not happened to her; a candle left alight by a careless girl, or the babe forgotten as she lies under a tree in the orchard. The bees.

Journey home very long, and when Gill at last threw back the gates Mrs. Gill came running out to meet us—thought my worst fears confirmed—could not speak.

“I hadn’t expected you for weeks,” she said. “Good Lord, she is sleeping, sir,” and she led me up to the little bedchamber overlooking the garden, and there lay Emilie, plumper than I remembered, with her fist against her cheek and her lips moist, suck-sucking as I have noticed she does in sleep sometimes, as if remembering the nipple. Sat down beside her and watched and decided this watching must become a habit of mine, because isn’t it my life’s work now as much to study the growth of this human child as the alterations to a mineral heated in the test tube?

It was now so dark that though I tilted the book to the window, I couldn’t make out any more words. “I need a candle,” I said.

“Certainly not. You must rest your eyes.” She got up, took the notebook, and packed it away in the basket.

“He still says nothing about my mother.”

She was already at the top of the stairs.

“Or my birth. Are you sure there isn’t an earlier notebook?”

But she’d gone.

[ 2 ]

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, there was no sign of the mushroom basket or the notebooks, so I sat up and swung my legs off the bed, intending to look for them. My calves flamed, my feet turned to powder, the room crackled. I had to wait.

“So,” said Mrs. Gill when she came at last, “you’re feeling better.”

“Curious, more like.”

“I presume this is all vanity, makes you so fond of reading about yourself.” She examined my feet, put her fingers under my chin, and turned my face from side to side. “You’re doing better than I hoped. I’ve small experience in the treatment of burns, thank the Lord, but I believe the air is the best cure, as it is for most things.”

May 30, 1707

Her second birthday. We must begin. Long arguments with Mrs. G. I accept that Emilie must have access to the fresh air and have undertaken to allow her outside for two hours every day. Accept also that she must sleep during the afternoon and have some recreation appropriate to her age.

Will adopt the experimental method advocated by Newton, which has not failed me yet, though I have puzzled how to apply it to this child who will not keep still for long. Have reflected upon the following for some time, studied it from all angles, and it now seems to me a fair plan, which should produce desired result.

H
EREWITH THE PROPOSED METHOD

The hypothesis I propose is that it is possible to take an unformed infant, of whatever sex or antecedents, and mold it into any shape or type desired. The type I desire for Emilie is that of natural philosopher and alchemist, like myself. I want her to be as I am, as soon as possible.

I am fifty-two years old. Time is running out, and I am only at the beginning of what I need to do. If I could give Emilie all I know, say by the age of eighteen, what might she not achieve by the time she is fifty?

There is much that I can’t foresee. According to Mrs. Gill, E. behaves as any infant her age might, although she is quicker than most. It is possible, however, that there are hidden properties in this child that may not be present in others. This is true of most animate beings, it seems to me. In a litter of pups one may be easily trained, another wild, another affectionate. There seems, on the face of it, no reason for these differences, although who knows what influence one pup might have upon another, given that I have noticed that in nature and in natural philosophy no thing, provided it has capacity for change at all, is left unchanged once it has come into contact, however slight, with another. Thus mercury will be dissolved in aqua fortis, expand on being heated, contract in the cold, and be precipitated in calomel to form a useful purgative. Similarly a plant, say a sunflower, will flourish according to the amount of water and heat that is applied and to the exact quality of the soil in which it grows, the proportion of acid to alkali, etc.

So, Emilie. I must supervise her growth exactly. After I had written the above, I realized how every last thing that happens will make a difference to Emilie—the hours she sleeps, the temperature in which she wakes, the constituents of her diet, all she sees and hears. I am awed by the responsibility of this and wonder how anyone else goes about the business of bringing up a child. They seem so careless, the mothers I have seen with children roaming about outside the gates.

T
HESE ARE THE TENDENCIES IN
E
MILIE MOST LIKELY TO LEAD TO EVIL, AND THE RESOLUTIONS
I
HAVE MADE

1.         Distraction. She is a flighty little thing, and in this I see her mother’s influence, I presume, or the wet nurse. Certainly I can’t see any tendencies to distraction in Mrs. Gill or myself. Emilie will not settle for more than a few minutes at a time to any task. Mrs. Gill says this is her age, and I must be sure to let her move about freely or she will come to hate the laboratory and the library. She says that all infants dislike confinement. So I have thought that the answer to this must be sufficient variety to ensure that Emilie does not realize she is confined, but not so much that she expects constant diversion.

Thus I allow her to watch the mice and birds in the cages, and to play with water, which she loves to do. Fire also attracts her. Gill has devised a wire cage that enables her to approach a candle safely and to blow its flame without in any means endangering herself. I have given her slate and a chalk so that she may write, though she has broken several pieces of chalk and makes only meaningless scrawls on the slate. She likes best of all substances such as clay and sand, which she has a tendency to eat but seem to do her no harm. I have noticed that almost from birth she has used her mouth to test the qualities of a new substance, and this shows promise.

2.         Tears. I have experimented with how to deal with this business of tears. When she fell against a chair leg and cried, I beat her, thinking that she might thereafter associate tears with more pain, but she only cried louder until Mrs. Gill came and carried her off. When the child was at last returned to me, Mrs. Gill said that if I beat her I would make her afraid of me. Besides, have no heart to beat her more. The shock in her eye was very terrible to see. Next I tried distraction to prevent tears, but I found that she quickly associated pleasure with wrongdoing and thought that if she cried I would reward her with a trip to the bee orchard or a spoon of honey. Now I ignore her tears, and I find this works best of all. When I withdraw my attention, she soon grows weary of weeping and climbs into my lap instead and tucks her head inside my waistcoat, which I confess gives me great joy.

3.         Clumsiness. Have made her a series of boxes out of paper and I show her how to hold them so they don’t crumple. Mrs. Gill says I may not experiment by giving her flasks or alembics to carry, these being too dangerous for the child, and with this I concur, alembics being costly.

4.         And of course the question of affections or the lack of them. Will the child be prone to flirtatiousness, to an ill-developed sense of right and wrong? My answer is to instill a degree of reserve, both physical and emotional, so that she in time curbs her instinct to embrace, to turn to others for comfort. If she is sufficient to herself, if she depends only on her own good opinion, she will not be easily led.

I find this a hard resolve—indeed, I break it every day—but this is my plan. I resolve not to touch her except in the morning and last thing at night, when I may embrace her. She is inclined to run up and clasp my knees or pull off my wig and cover me with kisses at all times of day. This I cannot allow because of where it may lead. Shall ask Mrs. Gill to refrain likewise. In a similar way I shall not use verbal endearments, and I shall not encourage singing and childish games. I want her to have a serious mind untroubled by thoughts of superficial pleasure. Mrs. Gill resistant to this and inclined to argue, and it pains me to write that I don’t trust her to keep to my rules.

5.         Worldliness. I fear that Emilie will be seduced the minute she leaves Selden, that there may be a part of her that will recognize vice as being intrinsic to her nature. So I resolve to keep her enclosed until such time as I believe her strong enough to know good from evil. In this again I struggle with Mrs. Gill, who sometimes is so troublesome I wonder I keep her here. In the end, we have agreed that she will take her to church on one Sunday a month, and visiting in the village when appropriate. The reason: to instill in Emilie a sense of her place in the world. Furthermore, Mrs. Gill insists that the child has a natural curiosity that must be satisfied and that she must learn to recognize evil, which she never will do if she is hidden from it. Mrs. Gill points out that Emilie now has an appropriate respect for the damage a flame can do because I have brought a flame up close to her hand and shown her how it may burn.

C
ONCLUSION

These then are my plans for the child, and these notebooks will keep a faithful tally of her progress, and in them I will note down not only her own lapses but my own. I find that the child has a way of undermining my best intentions and this must stop.

[ 3 ]

I
READ THE
notebooks piecemeal because my mind was still fuddled by the explosion. I would fall asleep suddenly in midsentence, or if the book dropped from my hand I lacked the strength to pick it up. Besides, I was afraid of those notebooks and the truth that glimmered just beneath the surface, so I couldn’t bear too much of them at a time. Though my knowledge of prose other than of the alchemical or natural philosophical variety was very limited, even I could see that an extraordinary metamorphosis had taken place during the writing. While my father had set out to record an ambitious experiment, what he’d actually produced was an account of falling in love.