So passed several months.
She even tried to help with the sheep.
Then, one spring day, her missing crates arrived.
~ ~ ~
SHE WAS READING FRANCIS GODWIN’S MAN IN THE MOONE—ITS MAN borne into space in a carriage drawn by swans — when she heard the sound of wheels upon the gravel. Two boxes from Martin & Allestyre were set down on the drive. “My modest closet plays,” she said. She nearly ran to the stairs — for the recovery of her wayward crates that spring and the preparation of her plays for publication had rekindled inside Margaret a flame she’d feared gone out. Indeed, she’d said to William: “a flame I’d feared gone out!” But now, in turning the pages, she grew concerned and then incensed: “reins” where she had written “veins,” “exterior” when she had clearly meant “interior.” The sun went down. The room grew dim. She tipped a wick into the fireplace and nearly lit herself—ting ting ting went the kitchen bell — then hurried with a candle down the long and flickering hall.
William was already seated before a small beer and lamb. Margaret placed a napkin in her lap.
“Before the printer ruined it,” she cried, “my book was good!”
“Could it be,” he asked, soaking his bread in blood, “that you were yourself the cause of this misfortune?”
“It could not,” she said, and took a bite of pie.
“Perhaps,” he said, “you had not yet come, at that time, to so fully understand the words which you were using. You’ve been on such a course of reading that I’m sure you will be happier with the next.”
Cyrano de Bergerac, Francis Bacon, Robert Hooke. And pamphlets from that Invisible College now chartered and renamed: the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, with rooms at Gresham College and a silver mace from the king.
“I suspect they gave it very little attention,” she finally said. “A little book by a little woman, they thought.”
That night she wrote to Flecknoe: “My wit at last run dry!” Since leaving Antwerp, since returning to England, she’d written nothing new, only tidied up those plays. “And yet,” she pressed on, “perhaps these plays will find some profitable use?” She snuffed the candle, closed her eyes.
But weeks passed with no word from Flecknoe, no word about her book. The summer grew heavy with rain.
“Margaret,” William asked one day, “what is it you are doing?”
“Revising my books,” she said.
“I’ve long admired your books as they are.”
“And that is a huge consolation to me,” she told him, “in this censorious age,” but went on fixing sour rhymes, replacing omissions, undoing misplacements — and not only words but entire passages, theories. “Now,” she said, and dipped her quill in ink, “it will be for all history as if my errors never were.”
“And you’re happy in our new life?” he asked.
“Very happy, My Lord.”
Again, he worked to get her out. They watched a licorice harvest near Worksop one day, where millions of capricious insects glittered in the fields. They shared a radish salad, spotted a white-tailed deer. And when they returned to Welbeck that night, a letter was waiting from William’s daughter Jane.
Now Margaret learned that readers thought her plays lacked all direction: no catastrophes, no drama, just a jumble of speeches and scenes. They tire the brain. Only flit from place to place.
“But I’d have my plays,” she said, still standing in her jacket, “be like the natural course of all things in the world. As some are newly born, when some are newly dead, so some of my scenes have no acquaintance to the others.”
“Surely you cannot hope to please every reader, my dear.”
“It seems I cannot hope to please a single one!”
And as the leaves yellowed, Margaret withdrew. The evenings grew darker faster. She sank into herself. William had seen it more than once, yet he couldn’t always be there. He spent some nights each week at Bolsover Castle, attending to the rebuilding: an entire new roof for the western wing, where rooks had nested and frogs in puddles croaked. Ensconced in her rainbow gallery, Margaret sat late with pamphlets by Hooke, Boyle, and Wren: on optic lenses, windy holes, or ways of killing rattlesnakes, or making maps from wax. Then Christmas arrived. Then New Year’s Eve with oysters. Her stepchildren paid a visit.
“Come, Margaret,” William said.
“Come along,” the grandchildren called.
At last, she stepped outside. She squinted in morning light. Small green shoots shot up across the yard. Spring had come to Welbeck in a burst of green-winged orchids. Margaret walked to the village in a hat like a Chinese fan. The villagers hadn’t seen her in months, only heard of her from the household staff. An old man in the market square wore bluebirds on his arms. She passed the bakery, the dressmaker’s, and then she opened a door. For she’d ordered a book — Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis—and began to read it there in the shop, of a traveler caught in a storm, led to discover an unknown world, the utopian Bensalem, its Salomon’s House the ideal college of learned men: investigating, experimenting, for the good of all mankind. “We must hound Nature in her wanderings,” she read. Unlock her secrets and penetrate her holes. “Break her,” Bacon argued, “and soon she will come when you call.” The stationer watched the marchioness. As she read, her face grew taut. She closed the book and turned to go. He watched her cross the busy square toward the path back to Welbeck alone.
~ ~ ~
IT BROKE UPON HER WITH THE RAIN. AFTER NEARLY TWO YEARS OF stagnation, fearing her wit run dry, as the rains washed over the forest, muddying roads, and the bluebells bloomed, Margaret sat and wrote.
Orations of Divers Sorts, Accommodated to Divers Places is set in a nameless city somewhat like London, a little like Colchester, and a bit like Antwerp besides. This is how it starts: Margaret invites the reader to imagine herself in a market.
Imagine yourself in a market that bustles.
The sunny smell of hay and shit. See stalls of cabbage and leek, fish with frosted eyes, baskets of eels and flowers. See herbs and chickens, hanging capons, and soap and cows. See the barber who performs surgery on a man with bleeding teeth. See packets of peppercorns, dry-salted meat. There are musicians somewhere, tuning, and many men preparing to step up onto boxes and speak. But all around you, too, observe the ruins of war. You have only to alter your gaze to witness endless rubble. Dress in comfortable shoes — we’ll be moving from place to place — yet in something fit to be seen, for who knows if we’ll happen upon the king playing tennis in the park. Have no fear, gentle reader, for you will be returned to your home, and safely, as soon as the orators have done. But expect disagreement, hullaballoo. Some men will argue for war and others for peace, some for the rights of the rich and others that all ownership is theft. Then, in the middle of the day, with the sun at its summery zenith, after a series of speeches that are none too kind to women, and despite the fact that women are not born orators, we women, who’ve been listening, will gather ourselves to speak.
The first of us will say: “Men are so Unconscionable and Cruel against us, as they Indeavor to Barr us of all Sorts or Kinds of Liberty, as not to Suffer us Freely to Associate amongst Our own Sex, but would fain Bury us in their Houses or Beds, as in a Grave; the truth is, we Live like Bats or Owls, Labour like Beasts, and Dye like Worms.”
The second will add: “Our Words to Men are as Empty Sounds, our Sighs as Puffs of Wind.”