“You and your duchess are absolute farmers,” Mary smiles at William, who credits a recent rain.
“Naturally,” Margaret says, “every part and particle in nature hath an influence on each other, and effects have influence upon effects.” But Mary only eats her lunch, while, over the raisin pie, Evelyn tells how plague deaths are down in nearly every parish. How Hooke established the rotation of Mars. How Hooke discovered tiny rooms called “cells.” Of coming trouble with the Dutch. How a lead actor in Davenant’s company killed a man in a duel in a play. And an invention the size of a pocket watch meant to slice a human foot into many thousands of parts.
“For whatever possible reason?” Margaret finally blurts.
“For mathematical purpose,” says Evelyn.
Back outside they drink their wine. Blue and yellow flowers dot the garden wall. The couples split again: he with him and she with her. In gaps in his own conversation, William hears his wife: “I am sufficiently mistress of,” then, “with the devastating clearness that I do.” The sky is light as servants refill their glasses, yet evening shadows begin to creep cool air across the lawn. The two men soon fall quiet. “It is a great pleasure to me to write,” Margaret is telling Mary, “and were I sure that nobody read my books, yet I would not quit my pastime.”
“Indeed, Duchess,” Evelyn says, turning in his chair, “I’ve heard admiration of your new book.”
“Have you?” Margaret says — but jumps in her chair, for someone shoots in the woods.
“The Discovery of a New World Called the Blazing World,” he says.
“There, you see,” William says, taking a bite of fruit.
“From Samuel Pepys,” says John, “who works in the Navy Office.”
“Yes?” she says, straining to seem relaxed, as pop! pop! pop! go the woods.
“Indeed, he declares it quite romantic. Also from Robert Boyle, author of The Sceptical Chymist, you know, who,” he turns to catch William’s eye, “is lately writing an account of objects that oddly shine. Inspired, I am told, by a piece of rotten meat found glowing in his pantry.”
William and Mary smile.
“Forgive me,” John says, coming back to Margaret, “for I have not had the pleasure of reading your book myself.”
But before she can ask him, What were Boyle’s words? John has turned and attends his wife, who is speaking to William of their garden in Deptford, its many species of trees. “Conifers,” Mary tallies, “and laurels, oaks, and elms.” Margaret dabs her upper lip. Robert Boyle, she thinks. Robert Boyle. Samuel Pepys. She dabs her neck, her lip. She has had too much to drink. But would it be rude, she wonders, not to acquaint him with my book? On such a pleasant night? For he says he has not read it. Yet Boyle has, she thinks, and a man called Samuel Pepys. She could easily fetch a copy. She could read them the passage about Descartes. or the description of the Bird-men. or the one about the microscope. or the vehicles made of air. “Two potted limes!” laughs Mary, and John and William smile. Still someone shoots in the nearby woods, and a flock of rooks rises from the treetops like a cloud.
In bed that night, she won’t be sure what she said next. She’ll remember how the cloud of birds rose up over the trees. It begins as in a dream, she might have said. Then the cloud broke up and found itself again. But thing must follow thing. She must put her thoughts in order. I pray, she might have said, that if any professors of learning and art should humble themselves to read it, or even any part of it, I pray they will consider my sex and breeding, and will fully excuse those faults which must unavoidably be found.
“It starts as in a dream,” she likely said, “with the abduction of a lady, stolen by a merchant seaman, taken to his ship and into a mighty storm. Next comes the death of the merchant and his men. For after that storm, the ship drifts not only to the pole of the world, but even to the pole of another, which joins close to the first, so that this cold, having a double strength at the conjunction of two poles, is insupportable. Too weak to throw their bodies over, the lady lives for days amid blueing flesh, kept alive by the light of her beauty and the heat of her youth as the ship floats across the fish-bright sea. Eventually, she and the vessel pass — mysteriously, unavoidably — into the other world, a world called the Blazing World, where cometlike stars make nights as bright as days. When at last the lady spies land, it glitters with fallen snow, and talking bears, up on two legs, are coming to her rescue. But she is unable to eat what the gentle bears offer, so the bears take her to Fox-men, who take her to Geese-men, who take her to Satyrs, who take her to meet the emperor of the land. They travel for days on a golden ship in a river of liquid crystal.”
Then darkness fell, and John and Mary rose, but Margaret wasn’t tired. John and Mary curtsied, bowed. Margaret stayed and watched the moon wheel across the sky; she climbed the stairs; she lay upon the sheets.
Might it have been more prudent, she thinks, lying there in the room, to have better explained the book’s more serious philosophical contemplation, for without it the other half no doubt sounds pure fancy and could be easily misunderstood? The night is hot and close. An owl calls in the woods. Margaret sleeps. And she dreams of that room without a mirror on Bow Street, and Robert Boyle asleep in the bed with her Blazing World on his lap, open to a passage about a golden hollow rock, which produces a medicinal gum, which causes a body to scab, which scab will open along the back and come off like a suit of armor.
“Some believe I act as if drunk,” Margaret reports one night in early autumn, “as I stammer out words, or only pieces of the letters of words.” “You’re not so bad as that,” William replies, dipping bread in soup. A letter has come from London with most distressing news. It seems Mary Evelyn—“Was Deptford near to the fire?” he asks, but how should Margaret know — that Mary Evelyn has reported to her vast London acquaintance how Margaret’s “mien surpasses the imagination of the poets; her gracious bows, seasonable nods, courteous stretching out of her hands, twinkling of her eyes, and various gestures of approbation, show what may be expected from her discourse, which is as airy, empty, whimsical, and rambling as her books!” Evelyn himself, the letter writer maintains, came to Margaret’s defense, arguing that in the duchess’s body are housed together all the learned ladies of the age. “Never did I see a woman so full of herself,” countered Mary, “so amazingly vain and ambitious.” “Not that I should care what Mary Evelyn thinks,” Margaret says, pushing away her plate. I have made a world, she thinks, for which nobody should blame me.
“Yet it’s true I am so often out of countenance,” she says, walking with William in the garden before bed, “as I not only pity myself, but others pity me, which is a condition I would not be in.” Despite her radished curls and pleasant curtsies, Mary Evelyn has called her masculine and vain!
“My tongue runs fast and foolish,” she despairs the next day at tea, “so much, and fast, as none can understand.” In the sweet-smelling room, a pendulum clock: ping, ping, ping, ping. And looking across the table, she finds her husband grown old. No, only weary, she thinks, reaching for some toast. There have been so many disputes, and tenants unable to pay, and the draining of the marshes. “The truth is,” William suddenly says, “women should never speak more than to ask rational questions, or to give a discreet answer to a question asked of them. They ought,” he wipes his mouth, “to be sparing of speech, especially in company of men.” To which surprising rejoinder Margaret sits in silence, her throat blocked up with bread.