Once in my room, however, I felt foolish rather than ill. I’m, I thought — and turned to the window—I am much too—and up came a roar of laughter from the men. My face shone in the glass, pale and round. A depressing little street: sleety, slippery, with brash market voices, stinking heaps of trash. I could just make out the edge of Bedford Gardens — then the moon broke free of the clouds. London was transformed. London was set alight. The river, the frost. Like something out of a dream. Like something out of Shakespeare: hot ice and wondrous strange snow.
At last, all was silent, as if the house itself had froze. Yet even as the river slowed and the city changed to ice, something in me loosened, my thoughts were taking flight, into and out of questions I’d long held, over London’s rooftops, to the country, to converse with an oak tree, a parrot, a clap of thunder:
Why do men deny fairies, yet burn witches at the stake?
Do fishes have brains?
Are stars made of fiery jelly or are they flecks off the sun?
That night I wrote: “I Language want, to dresse my Fancies in.”
The following day:
Give me the free and noble style,
Which seems uncurb’d, though it be wild.
Hadn’t I thoughts, after all? A mind of my own? It cannot be infamy, I reasoned, to run or seek after glory, to love perfection, desire praise. There were other ladies in London who wrote — I’d met them at the secret Royalist concerts we’d attended. Yet the poems they circulated among themselves were anonymous elegies for dead children or praise for noble husbands. My own quill went marching across the page. I rejected any clocklike vision of the world. I chastised men who hunt for sport. The moon might be a ball of water, I proposed, and the lunar mountains we think we see only reflections of our own.
“Of Aiery Atomes.”
“On a Melting Beauty.”
“Similizing Thoughts.”
“Thoughts,” I wrote, “as a Pen do write upon the Braine.”
I drew a glittering fairy realm at the center of the earth, its singing gnats and colored lamps. I would not leave the house.
Rumors swirled. Servants talk, of course. The floorboards creaked as I paced and spoke alone. The hallway went sharp with the scent of burning ink. Did I cook up incantations? They sounded half afraid. Pacing, yes, reciting my favorite lines. My mind was elsewhere, halfway to the moon. If atoms are so small, why not worlds inside our own? A world inside a peach pit? Inside a ball of snow? And so I conjured one inside a lady’s earring, where seasons pass, and life and death, without the lady’s hearing.
Of course, there were moments I faltered, fell suddenly into doubt. I’d never been taught, after all, and knew so little the rules of grammar. I’d embarrass myself, the family. I warmed my hands before the fire. Took up a fork and put it down. A woman on the street sang bleak hymns on the corner. Yet why must grammar be like a prison for the mind? Might not language be as a closet full of gowns? Of a generally similar cut, with a hole for the head and neck to pass, but filled with difference and a variety of trimmings so that we don’t grow bored?
Then I took it a step too far: I would put forth.
~ ~ ~
THOUGH THERE WAS SCANTY PRECEDENT FOR WHAT I WAS ABOUT TO do, I hurriedly packed my papers and set out to St. Paul’s churchyard, to the foremost publisher in England: Martin & Allestyre, at the Sign of the Bell.
An oddity from an odd marchioness? They snapped it up.
It would be public. It was done. I’d breathed no word to William and bade the publishers hold their tongue. I’d return to Antwerp shortly. I would rather seek pardon there than ask permission first.
LONDON TO ANTWERP, 1653–1656
~ ~ ~
ONE WOMAN WROTE TO HER FIANCÉ IN LONDON: “IF YOU MEET WITH Poems & Fancies, send it me; they say ’tis ten times more extravagant than her dress.” Then a week later followed that note with another: “You need not send me my Lady’s book at all, for I have seen it, and am satisfied that there are many soberer people in Bedlam.” But oddity is fodder for talk, and my book was soon required reading in London’s most fashionable parlors. “Passionitt,” they sniggered — it seems my spelling did astonish—“sattisfackson,” “descouersce” for “discourse,” even “Quine” for “Queen.” Happily, I was already aboard a fourth-rate frigate bound for Antwerp. I saw a double rainbow, a porpoise in the waves. And when I arrived back home? William was astonished, yes, but not in the way I’d feared. He was proud. Far from being angry over the cost the printing incurred, he took it upon himself to send copies to his many and illustrious acquaintances. “It is a favor few husbands would grant their wives,” I said, relieved, and this was true. Then the tidal wave of gossip arrived in the mail.
I set down a letter from William’s daughter Jane. “It is against nature for a woman to spell right,” I bristled. William only kissed my cheek. “Such ill-informed, seditious readers,” he calmly said, “should exist beneath a marchioness’s notice.”
January, February, March.
One anonymous critic claimed that when he read Poems & Fancies his stomach began to rise — for Jane saw fit to send each notice the book incurred. Some readers were cross a lady had published at all, others that she had written of vacuums and war, rather than poems of love. William ignored the talk. He fenced and rode horses when the fashion was pall-mall. Still, I felt rotten, felt low. I hid and wished, or nearly wished, I had not published at all. I completely avoided the cabinet where my earlier writings lay. The days were short and dull, the garden in its thaw. Antwerp’s blue-gray cobblestones went slick with rain and moss.
At last a mild evening: we took our supper outside, the leaves still off the branches, the stars so clear in the sky. Over pigeon pie and cherry compote, we spoke of his new horse. When I set aside my fork, William produced a note. “A letter has come from Huygens,” he said, “who’s been traveling in the south.” He turned a page and read: “It is a wonderful book, whose extravagant atoms kept me from sleeping last night.” The blood whirred inside my head. “What’s this?” I managed to say. Here was a letter from Huygens — who mattered! — Huygens, who’d read my book. I could hardly hear the rest as William read aloud: something, something, something, vibrating strings, my book!
Thus by the time the spotted tulips blossomed, the nastiness of London seemed far across the sea. Indeed, it was a lovely spring. The sky was in the pond, the larks above. I tried to name each of the flowers we saw: double violet, lily, double black violet, plum.
William left Antwerp for a hunting trip in the Hoogstraten.
I, at last, unlocked the cabinet in my room.
~ ~ ~
THERE LAY EVERYTHING I’D WRITTEN BEFORE BEING SENT TO London: essays, puzzles, anecdotes, rhymes. Did I expect a trove of gems? I found some worthy ideas, but no structure to the mess. Still, it had to work — it must! — for there is more pleasure in making than mending, I thought, and I named it after an olio, a spicy Spanish stew (a pinch of this, dash of that, onions, pumpkin, cabbage, beef), sitting to pen a defensive preface: “This is to let you know, that I know, my Book is neither wise, witty, nor methodical, but various and extravagant, for I have not tyed myself to any one Opinion, for sometimes one Opinion crosses another; and in so doing, I do as most several Writers do; onely they contradict one and another, and I contradict, or rather please my self, since it is said there is nothing truly known.”