7

FRIENDS, LOVERS AND WIVES

Introduction

 

The word “friend” has many meanings, and Gareth Owen’s inventory of schoolday relationships seems to include quite a few of them, each summarily rejected, leaving our heroine lonely but unbowed. I have heard this piece read many times, by men as well as women, and it works best when the next “friend” is the audience.

Sei Shōnagon’s meticulous guidelines for a lover’s early morning departure ring as true today as they must have done in tenth-century Japan, when at the age of twenty-seven she became lady-in-waiting to the fifteen-year-old Empress Sadako. And what a striking contrast is her down-to-earth pragmatism to Heloise’s towering passion, cast in the courtly medieval tradition that exalted distance between lovers. The romance of Heloise and Abelard is the tragic model of secret love, exposure, ruin and final separation, set amidst the convoluted church politics of twelfth-century France. Her words exalt the epistolary form to such a degree that she seems intoxicated not only by Abelard’s words but by the actual physical presence of his letters as well. Her prefatory salutation, which I have chosen not to include in the selection, states for all time the breadth of her love in terms that are especially useful to the actor: “To her Lord, her Father, her Husband, her Brother; his Servant, his Child, his Wife, his Sister, and to express all that is humble, respectful and loving to her Abelard, Heloise writes this.”

The counterpoint between the worldly and the sublime continues with Aphra Behn’s In Imitation of Horace, a seduction at once intensely sensual and self-consciously literary, scrupulously mindful of Roman and other antecedents to the form. Elizabeth Tollet’s fiercely protective Winter Song pledges romance and warm comfort amid the bleakest, most savage of landscapes, while Mirra Lokhvitskaya plumbs a mythic Russian “underworld” in a mesmerizing spell that entices her lover away from the merely human surface world. The three poems share a quality of enchantment—the beloved is bound in a hermetic world of consistent and powerful imagery from which no possibility of escape exists.

More practical and more immediate in scope are the next three pieces, all dealing with promises and their consequences. Adelaide Procter wistfully questions her intended, apparently on the eve of their wedding, at first demanding assurances, then, intercepting his reply, choosing to “risk it all” without the answers she fears. In Were I but His Own Wife, the nineteenth-century Irish poet Ellen Downing expresses her longing in a gentle, lyrical oath that promises flowers, harps, healing, and protection from the sorrows of the world. And in Lady Gregory’s magnificent translation of the anonymous Gaelic Grief of a Girl’s Heart, the very fabric of the universe is imperiled by a promise betrayed.

Anne Bradstreet is considered colonial America’s first woman poet, and her expansive cosmology when writing to her absent husband is reminiscent of John Donne’s metaphysical intricacies. Her work seems almost purposely dif ficult, a complex treasure map riddled with arcane clues, and therein lies its special interest. For her, even the most mundane concerns are placed within the grand web of celestial influences, and anything of lesser scale, small or underplayed, must be avoided in the presentation.

Absence, actual or anticipated, has certainly inspired more writing than contented domestic life has ever done. Lynne Yamaguchi Fletcher’s After DeliveringYour Lunch comes near a recipe for grief, the meticulous attention to the details of food preparation and service helping to keep back the tears for her dying husband. In Eleanor, a fictional biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, Rhoda Lerman explores the thresholds of patience, monotony, guilt, denial, and love itself in a vigil over the fevered Franklin. Both selections are dominated by the presence, just out of frame perhaps, of the dying person, a highly dramatic presence that colors and distorts the speaker’s world.

Even death, of course, does not sever truly powerful ties, and in her Epitaph for Sir William Dyer, his widow promises to join her “dearest dust.” Mary Shelley, too, writes in her journal to the departed Shelley himself. She examines what is left of her life through the lens of his absence, and then grudgingly accepts that new lonely life, releasing him with a fond “Good night!” Her lament that she cannot join him in death is a poignantly apt quote from his own work Adonais, an elegy on the death of John Keats.

Memory is the subject of Christina Rossetti’s search for personal history, TheFirstDay. The trap to be avoided here is excessive privacy and introspection, a dreamy surrender to the personal past. Instead, search actively for the past, almost as if it were a puzzle, in pieces, physically present in the objects around you.

Gareth Owen Friends

When first I went to school
I walked with Sally.
She carried my lunch pack,
Told me about a book she’d read
With a handsome hero
So I said,
“You be my best friend.”
After break I went right off her.

I can’t say why
And anyway I met Joan
Who’s pretty with dark curls
And we sat in a corner of the playground
And giggled about the boy who brought the milk.
Joan upset me at lunch,
I can’t remember what she said actually,
But I was definitely upset
And took up with Hilary
Who’s frightfully brilliant and everything
And showed me her history
Which I considered very decent.

The trouble with Hilary is
She has to let you know how clever she is
And I said,
“You’re not the only one who’s clever you know,’
And she went all quiet and funny
And hasn’t spoken to me since.

Good riddance I say
And anyway Linda is much more my type of girl;
She does my hair in plaits
And says how pretty I look,
She really says what she thinks
And I appreciate that.
Nadine said she was common
When we saw her on the bus that time
Sitting with three boys from that other school,
And I had to agree
There was something in what she said.

There’s a difference between friendliness
And being cheap
And I thought it my duty
To tell her what I thought.

Well she laughed right in my face
And then pretended I wasn’t there
So I went right off her.

If there’s one thing I can’t stand
It’s being ignored and laughed at.
Nadine understood what I meant,
Understood right away
And that’s jolly nice in a friend.

I must tell you one thing about her,
She’s rather a snob.

I get the feeling
She looks down on me
And she’ll never come to my house
Though I’ve asked her thousands of times.
I thought it best to have it out with her
And she went off in a huff
Which rather proved my point
And I considered myself well rid.

 

At the moment
I walk home on my own
But I’m keeping my eyes open
And when I see somebody I consider suitable
I’ll befriend her.

Sei Shonagon On Parting

It is important that a lover should know how to make his departure. To begin with, he ought not to be too ready to get up, but should require a little coaxing: “Come, it is past daybreak. You don’t want to be found here ... and so on. One likes him, too, to behave in such a way that one is sure he is unhappy at going and would stay longer if he possibly could. He should not pull on his trousers the moment he is up, but should first of all come close to one’s ear and in a whisper finish off whatever was left half-said in the course of the night. But though he may in reality at these moments be doing nothing at all, it will not be amiss that he should appear to be buckling his belt. Then he should raise the shutters, and both lovers should go out together at the double-doors, while he tells her how much he dreads the day that is before him and longs for the approach of night. Then, after he has slipped away, she can stand gazing after him, with charming recollections of those last moments. Indeed, the success of a lover depends greatly on his method of departure. If he springs to his feet with a jerk and at once begins fussing round, tightening in the waist-band of his breeches, or adjusting the sleeves of his Court robe, hunting-jacket or what not, collecting a thousand odds and ends, and thrusting them into the folds of his dress, or pulling in his over-belt—one begins to hate him.

Heloise To Abelard

I have your picture in my room; I never pass it without stopping to look at it; and yet when you are present with me I scarce ever cast my eyes on it. If a picture, which is but a mute representation of an object, can give such pleasure, what cannot letters inspire? They have souls; they can speak; they have in them all that force which expresses the transports of the heart; they have all the fire of our passions, they can raise them as much as if the persons themselves were present; they have all the tenderness and the delicacy of speech, and sometimes even the boldness of expression beyond it.

We may write to each other; so innocent a pleasure is not denied us. Let us not lose through negligence the only happiness which is left us, and the only one perhaps which the malice of our enemies can never ravish from us. I shall read that you are my husband and you shall see me sign myself your wife. In spite of all our misfortunes you may be what you please in your letter. Letters were first invented for consoling such solitary wretches as myself. Having lost the substantial pleasures of seeing and possessing you, I shall in some measure compensate this loss by the satisfaction I shall find in your writing. There I shall read your most sacred thoughts; I shall carry them always about with me, I shall kiss them every moment; if you can be capable of any jealousy let it be for the fond caresses I shall bestow upon your letters, and envy only the happiness of those rivals.

Aphra Behn In Imitation of Horace [ode v, lib. 1]

I

What mean those Amorous Curls of Jet?
For what heart-Ravisht Maid
Dost thou thy Hair in order set,
Thy Wanton Tresses Braid?
And thy vast Store of Beauties open lay,
That the deluded Fancy leads astray.

II

For pitty hide thy Starry eyes,
Whose Languishments destroy:
And look not on the Slave that dyes
With an Excess of Joy.
Defend thy Coral Lips, thy Amber Breath;
To taste these Sweets lets in a Certain Death.

III

Forbear, fond Charming Youth, forbear,
Thy words of Melting Love:
Thy Eyes thy Language well may spare,
One Dart enough can move.
And she that hears thy voice and sees thy Eyes
With too much Pleasure, too much Softness dies.

IV

Cease, Cease, with Sighs to warm my Soul,
Or press me with thy Hand:
Who can the kindling fire control,
The tender force withstand?
Thy Sighs and Touches like wing’d Lightning fly,
And are the Gods of Loves Artillery.

Elizabeth Tollet Winter Song

Ask me no more my truth to prove,
What I would suffer for my love;
With thee I would in exile go
To regions of eternal snow;
O‘er floods by solid ice confin’d,
Through forests bare, with northern wind;
While all around my eyes I cast,
Where all is wild, and all is waste.
If there the timorous stag you chase,
Or rouse to fight a fiercer race,
Undaunted, I thy arms would bear,
And give thy hand the hunter’s spear.
When the low sun withdraws his light,
And menaces an half-year’s night,
The conscious moon and stars above
Shall guide me with my wandering love.
Beneath the mountain’s hollow brow,
Or in its rocky cells below,
Thy rural feast I would provide,
Nor envy palaces their pride;
The softest moss should dress thy bed,
With savage spoils about thee spread;
Whilst faithful love the watch should keep,
To banish danger from thy sleep.

Mirra Lokhvitskaya Tsarina of the Underworld

No, I’ve no need for the sun, nor the brilliant azure,
No desire for rustling leaves, nor singing birds;
All is inconstant, treacherous, and deceitful—
Leave the world—leave evil and suffering.
We’ll live in the depths of an impenetrable cavern—

The entrance blocked behind us by a boulder,
And, in place of nuptial torches, multicolored fires
Of rubies, sapphires, and diamonds will flash in the
gloom ...

There earthly cares and storms will not touch
Our happiness—we’ll guard it jealously,
In that night of our mute, subterranean kingdom—
We will be two, and love will bind us ...

I will reveal to you the mystery... O, look deep into my
eyes!
Do you know who I am? I—tsarina of the underworld! ...
The zealous, old gnomes obey me alone—
It is they who have carved our cave in the cliff..

Adelaide Anne Procter A Woman’s Question

Before I trust my fate to thee,
Or place my hand in thine,
Before I let thy future give
Color and form to mine,
Before I peril all for thee, question thy soul to-night for
me.

 

I break all slighter bonds, nor feel
A shadow of regret:
Is there one link within the Past
That holds thy spirit yet?
Or is thy faith as clear and free as that which I can
pledge to thee?

 

Does there within thy dimmest dreams
A possible future shine,
Wherein thy life could henceforth breathe,
Untouch’d, unshar’d by mine?
If so, at any pain or cost, O, tell me before all is lost.

 

Look deeper still. If thou canst feel,
Within thy inmost soul,
That thou hast kept a portion back,
While I have stak’d the whole;
Let no false pity spare the blow, but in true mercy tell
me so.

 

Is there within thy heart a need
That mine cannot fulfill?
One chord that any other hand
Could better wake or still?
Speak now—lest at some future day my whole life wither
and decay.

 

Lives there within thy nature hid
The demon-spirit Change,
Shedding a passing glory still
On all things new and strange?
It may not be thy fault alone—but shield my heart
against thy own.

 

Couldst thou withdraw thy hand one day
And answer to my claim,
That Fate, and that to-day’s mistake—
Not thou—had been to blame?
Some soothe their conscience thus; but thou wilt surely
warn and save me now.

 

Nay, answer not,—I dare not hear,
The words would come too late;
Yet I would spare thee all remorse,
So, comfort thee, my fate—
Whatever on my heart may fall—remember, I would risk
it all!

Ellen Mary Patrick Downing Were I but His Own Wife

Were I but his own wife, to guard and to guide him,
Tis little of sorrow should fall on my dear;
I’d chant my low love-verses, stealing beside him,
So faint and so tender his heart would but hear;
I’d pull the wild blossoms from valley and highland,
And there at his feet I would lay them all down;
I’d sing him the songs of our poor stricken island,
Till his heart was on fire with a love like my own.

 

There’s a rose by his dwelling,—Id tend the lone
treasure,
That he might have flowers when the summer would
come;
There’s a harp in his hall,—I would wake its sweet
measure,

 

For he must have music to brighten his home.
Were I but his own wife, to guide and to guard him,
Tis little of sorrow should fall on my dear;
For every kind glance my whole life would award him,
In sickness I’d soothe and in sadness I’d cheer.

 

My heart is a fount welling upward forever!
When I think of my true-love, by night or by day,
That heart keeps its faith like a fast-flowing river
Which gushes forever and sings on its way.
I have thoughts full of peace for his soul to repose in,
Were I but his own wife, to win and to woo;
O sweet, if the night of misfortune were closing,
To rise like the morning star, darling, for you!

Anonymous Grief of a Girl’s Heart

O Donal Oge, if you go across the sea,
Bring myself with you and do not forget it;
And you will have a sweetheart for fair days and market
days,
And the daughter of the King of Greece beside you at
night.

 

It is late last night the dog was speaking of you;
The snipe was speaking of you in her deep marsh.
It is you are the lonely bird through the woods;
And that you may be without a mate until you find me.

 

You promised me, and you said a lie to me,
That you would be before me where the sheep are
flocked;
I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to you,
And I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.

 

You promised me a thing that was hard for you,
A ship of gold under a silver mast;
Twelve towns with a market in all of them,
And a fine white court by the side of the sea.

 

You promised me a thing that is not possible,
That you would give me gloves of the skin of a fish;
That you would give me shoes of the skin of a bird;
And a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland.

 

O Donal Oge, it is I would be better to you
Than a high, proud, spendthrift lady:
I would milk the cow; I would bring help to you;

And if you were hard pressed, I would strike a blow for you.

 

You have taken the east from me; you have taken the west from me,

You have taken what is before me and what is behind me;

 

You have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me,

 

And my fear is great that you have taken God from me!

Anne Bradstreet A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Publick Employment

My head, my heart, mine Eyes, my life, nay more,
My joy, my Magazine of earthly store,
If two be one, as surely thou and I,
How stayest thou there, whilst I at Ipswich lye?
So many steps, head from the heart to sever
If but a neck, soon should we be together:
I like the earth this season, mourn in black,
My Sun is gone so far in’s Zodiack,
Whom whilst I ‘joy’d, nor storms, nor frosts I felt,
His warmth such frigid colds did cause to melt.
My chilled limbs now nummed lye forlorn;
Return, return sweet Sol from Capricorn;
In this dead time, alas, what can I more
Then view those fruits which through thy heat I bore?
Which sweet contentment yield me for a space,
True living Pictures of their Fathers face.
O strange effect! now thou art Southwardgone,
I weary grow, the tedious day so long;
But when thou Northward to me shalt return,
I wish my Sun may never set, but burn
Within the Cancer of my glowing breast,
The welcome house of him my dearest guest.
Where ever, ever stay, and got not thence,
Till natures sad decree shall call thee hence;
Flesh of thy flesh, bone of thy bone,
I here, thou there, yet both but one.

Lynne Yamaguchi Fletcher After Delivering Your Lunch

Empty-handed, I return home
along the same path above the Kamo’s west bank.
I am trying to whistle, that sort of day.
Today the nurse will try feeding you,
her chopsticks efficient, insistent;
you will clench your face, swallow.
This last week I have watched every mouthful
feed the bandage thickening around your neck.

 

 

I stop to choose three persimmon leaves,
slide them into a breast pocket, walk
past the steps descending to river
to where the crooked limb of the middle-aged pine,
like the entrance to a tea room, asks everyone to bend.
This time before I duck I clasp
the rough bark to my cheek, lean into the wind.

The leaves, one red, two yellow,
garnish a Kutani plate I brought you from summer one
year.

I arrange the fish on them, three bites
now twelve translucent morsels you can swallow.
A cobalt-brushed porcelain dish holds five young spinach
leaves,
boiled to peak color in salted water, chopped fine,
mounded.

I add six drops of soy sauce.
Into a bowl smaller than your cupped hand
I slip a cube of tofu;
into a second, muskmelon ripe to melting,
the softest, juiciest bits.
I think I know just how little you will eat, how few
times I can watch you swallow.
Tonight, in the shopping bag I delivered your lunch in,
dishes will rattle as I carry your leftovers home in a cab.

Rhoda Lerman from Eleanor

I remember the soldiers going over No-Man‘s-Land, reciting as they took the German bullets. Fourteen times fourteen, to be or not to be. The lead moves slowly, deepening in his limbs. Do rub his muscles. Do feed him solids. Don’t. Do. Whom fire doth spare, sea doth drown. Whom sea spares, pestilent air doth send to clay, whom war ’scapes, sickness takes away. And the mackerels float fermenting silver-bellied on their backs in green pools at the water’s edge.

“His mind, Louis?”

“Let’s not make decisions. Let’s not ask questions, Eleanor. We have too much work to do. Worry about your own mind. ”

“If only he’d taken off the wet bathing suit, Louis.”

“It’s more than that. One thing I understand, Eleanor, is being sick. Let’s get to work.”

And so, as if being organized would help, Louis and I made up a schedule for the water after the local doctor came and warned us of dehydration, a danger I had forgotten, I was so stricken. And since I was to sleep in Franklin’s room during the night, it became my duty to make certain he had water every hour and every hour I dragged myself more and more slowly from the cot to the washstand to the bed to his lips. Some nights I dreamed I had already awoken, gone to the washstand, to the bed, to his lips, and back to my cot and I would somehow cut through the dream and force myself up. Nothing existed except that fever. Once I slept through the night until I heard Franklin call for water. His head was a fiery stone and his lips were bleeding. I who had lived on dreams vowed I would never dream again as long as I lived. My dreams had nearly killed him.

I prayed. “I will look up to the hills, from whence comes my help.” From whence comes my help became a question. I did not pray. But it happened so suddenly, I said to no one, a sudden storm. A cobalt sky, lightning filling the bowl of mountains. There is always that sense of yet another suddenness, waiting in the wings and sweeping in just before the curtains go down. There, my dear. You may rest now. It is over. See, the sky is blue, dear girl, and a gentle rain to cleanse your hands and see, the gulls again skim the bay and even the suicidal bellies of the mackerel turned up dead six-deep on the shore in some horror of nature beyond ken, even the mackerels will be restored and turn again on their bellies, verily, and go back to the sea, and your husband will stand and walk and run and come alive just as soon as the mackerels turn over. Just as soon as the lights dim and intermission is over.

Mary Shelley My Beloved Shelley

May 31.—The lanes are filled with fireflies; they dart between the trunks of the trees, and people the land with earth-stars. I walked among them tonight, and descended towards the sea. I passed by the ruined church, and stood on the platform that overlooks the beach. The black rocks were stretched out among the blue waters, which dashed with no impetuous motion against them. The dark boats, with their white sails, glided gently over its surface, and the star-enlightened promontories closed in the bay: below, amid the crags, I heard the monotonous but harmonious, voices of the fishermen.

How beautiful these shores, and this sea! Such is the scene—such the waves within which my beloved vanished from mortality.

The time is drawing near when I must quit this country. It is true that, in the situation I now am, Italy is but the corpse of the enchantress that she was. Besides, if I had stayed here, the state of things would have been different. The idea of our Child’s advantage alone enables me to keep fixed in my resolution to return to England. It is best for him—and I go.

Four years ago, we lost our darling William; four years ago, in excessive agony, I called for death to free me from all I felt that I should suffer here. I continue to live, and thou art gone. I leave Italy and the few that still remain to me. That, I regret less; for our intercourse is [so] much chequered with all of dross that this earth so delights to blend with kindness and sympathy, that I long for solitude, with the exercise of such affections as still remain to me. Away, I gainsay the pure attachment which chiefly clings to them, because they knew and loved you—because I knew them when with you, and I cannot think of them without feeling your spirit beside me.

I cannot grieve for you, beloved Shelley; I grieve for thy friends—for the world—for thy Child—most for myself, enthroned in thy love, growing wiser and better beneath thy gentle influence, taught by you the highest philosophy—your pupil, friend, lover, wife, mother of your children! The glory of the dream is gone. I am a cloud from which the light of sunset has passed. Give me patience in the present struggle. Meum cordium cor! Good night!

 

I would give
All that I am to be as thou now art!
But I am chain’d to time, and cannot thence depart!⁵

Lady Catherine Dyer Epitaph on the Monument of Sir William Dyer at Colmworth, 1641

My dearest dust, could not thy hasty day
Afford thy drowsy patience leave to stay
One hour longer: so that we might either
Sit up, or gone to bed together?
But since thy finished labour hath possessed
Thy weary limbs with early rest,
Enjoy it sweetly: and thy widow bride
Shall soon repose her by thy slumbering side.
Whose business, now, is only to prepare
My nightly dress, and call to prayer;
Mine eyes wax heavy and the day grows old,
The dew falls thick, my blood grows cold.
Draw, draw the closed curtains; and make room:
My dear, my dearest dust; I come, I come.

Christina Rossetti The First Day

I wish I could remember the first day,
First hour, first moment of your meeting me;
If bright or dim the season, it might be
Summer or winter for aught I can say.
So unrecorded did it slip away,
So blind was I to see and to foresee,
So dull to mark the budding of my tree
That would not blossom yet for many a May.

If only I could recollect it! Such
A day of days! I let it come and go
As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow.
It seemed to mean so little, meant so much!
If only now I could recall that touch,
First touch of hand in hand!—Did one but know!