In January of my twelfth year, I first saw the sea. The journey from Kent to Brighton took several days, most of which I spent dozing against my nurse’s arm in the carriage, or curled under heaped coverlets on lumpy inn beds. Mamma was thin-lipped with anger for the entirety of the trip; it was Papa who said, Dr. Grant’s advice notwithstanding, they would be fools if they did not at least try to help me by any means possible. My sickliness had not seemed to worry him overmuch at first—he was, for most of my life until now, entirely satisfied with little glimpses of me throughout the day, and reports from my nurse that I was well. But my health had, it seemed, now begun to weigh upon him. Mamma might be fully committed to following Dr. Grant’s advice, but Dr. Grant was, in the end, nothing but a country physician, and the London doctors that Papa recently consulted were all eloquent in their praise of the restorative powers of sea bathing.
The sky was low and heavy as the underside of a mountain, and the sea, at first glimpse, seemed all whitecaps. The thought of going into the water was terrible; I was certain I would be swept under, or snatched away by great tentacled creatures. The wind coming off the water was cold enough to freeze the tears on my cheeks. I threw myself backward, tried to scramble back up the steps of the bathing machine to get away from the churning waves, but the ladies who were paid to help holiday-goers safely into the water were undaunted by my cries and thrashing. I found myself down the steps and in the water without quite knowing how it happened; my bathing costume inflated around me, swallowing me up like one of the sea monsters I dreaded meeting. I could hardly breathe, the cold was so profound, the pain of it not really so much pain as a terrible wrongness. With what little breath I had, I screamed, high and shrill like a fox’s cry, until one of the dippers clamped a hand over my nose and mouth, cutting off sound and breath entirely.
“Hush, child,” the woman said. “You’ll put everyone off their cures.” Her fingers pressed into the bones of my jaw; she only released her hold when I began to flail for air. The waves crashed against our backs, one after another, rhythmic and surging, and now I clung to the woman with her rough calloused fingers and sturdy arms who had nearly smothered me only moments before, raising my chin to keep it above the water, seeking my mother’s form on the beach. Finally I found her, wrapped in her warm cloak against the wind, one hand shading her eyes as she looked out over the water.
When at last the dipper concluded that I had been in the sea long enough for my healing to commence, she bundled me up the steps of the bathing machine and dried me briskly with a cloth. Nurse was inside, ready with my clothes; she exclaimed over the iciness of my fingers and toes, frowning when I shivered so violently that it was difficult to do up the fastenings of my gown. Then she helped me out of the bathing machine and out onto the stretch of wide, damp sand, where we found Mamma waiting.
“There is some color in her cheeks, at least,” Mamma said, looking down at my huddled form. “I suppose that will please Sir Lewis.” Then she took off her own cloak, sweeping it over my shoulders, warm and thick against the sea wind. Nurse scrambled to pick up the hem so it would not drag through the sand.
When we returned to the house we had taken for our stay in Brighton, I was put to bed, kept warm under layers of shawls and blankets, the fire in my room built up until I became too hot, throwing off my covers. Before leaving earlier in the day to meet some acquaintances in town, Papa told Nurse not to give me my usual doses. If I had any improvement, they must be able to tell whether the sea was truly the reason.
And so, once I warmed up, I was bored. Waiting for sleep, I listened to the house settle and creak, and to the wind outside; but without my drops, I was fidgety. I went to the window, the panes frosted along their edges, but my room overlooked the small back garden, which was winter-gray and dead. From somewhere down the row of terraced houses, I could just hear the voices of other children at play.
When Nurse came in to check on me, I was in the thick of a very exciting game about pirates. Though stories of high adventure were usually deemed too stimulating for me, I had watched many times as Edward, John, and Fitzwilliam played at pirates, so I knew how the game was meant to go. My bed was my ship—its tall, curtained canopy made for excellent sails—and I was a navy captain. It was night, the ship surrounded by a pirate fleet, but my crew was fighting bravely. I crouched in the center of the bed, dress and petticoat rucked up around my knees to give my legs room to splay. Amidst the chaos of battle, I could hear someone approaching—a pirate was sneaking up on me, cutlass raised. I stayed very still so he would not realize I heard him coming, and then, just as the creak of the deck under his boots gave him away, I sprang.
There was a cry and a great clatter. I was jolted from the high seas and back into my bedchamber; flat on my back at the edge of the bed, I looked up and saw not billowing sails but a stiff yellow canopy. Then Nurse slipped an arm under my shoulders, helping me to sit.
“Miss!” Nurse said. “What were you doing?”
Nurse sounded angry. I frowned up at her, at the deep line between Nurse’s pale eyebrows and the turned-down corners of her wide lips, and jerked myself away from Nurse’s hands.
“I do not need help,” I said, and tried to smooth my dress down over my legs. “I was only playing.”
Nurse looked at me quite blankly for a moment, then turned her attention to something easier to comprehend, tutting under her breath. “Look at this mess,” she said, sweeping one hand out in a gesture that encompassed the dropped tray, biscuits tumbled everywhere, teapot smashed and leaking. She stooped to pick up the shattered bits of china, blotting with the edge of her apron at the carpet, where a pale brown stain had begun to spread. Then she looked up at me again. “You’re feeling well, then, Miss?”
I swung my legs, heels thunking against the side of the bed. “Wonderfully well.”
Nurse piled the last of the soggy biscuits and broken crockery on the tray then sat back on her haunches, staring at me with her mouth a little open. “Playing,” she said at last and, gathering up the tray, left the room.
My game had rather been ruined by the interruption, so I returned to the window, pressing my ear to one icy pane to try to hear what the children down the row were shouting about. When the door opened again a few minutes later, it was Mamma who entered first, Nurse scuttling behind her.
“It’s marvelous, Your Ladyship,” Nurse was saying. “Just see—”
I turned my head so I was looking over my shoulder at them. Mamma had very dark brows, and she raised one now at the sight of me leaning against the window. “I see nothing to make a fuss about,” she said.
Nurse bunched the fabric of her apron in her two fists. “She was at play, Your Ladyship, she was just there”—pointing to the bed—“acting boisterous as any normal child.”
“Boisterous? I hope not. I abhor children who cannot sit still. It portends a lifetime of poor self-control.” Mamma’s gown went swoosh-swoosh against the floor as she walked farther into the room. “How are you feeling, Anne?”
I stepped away from the window entirely, folding my hands in front of me. I wished Nurse had not mentioned my game; Mamma thought games of imagination undignified. “I am feeling very well, Mamma.”
My mother frowned down at me, looking into my eyes, as if for some sign of a great change.
“She is not a normal child,” Mamma said, with a suddenness that made both Nurse and me jump a little where we stood. “She is Anne de Bourgh. You oughtn’t allow such sudden excess, Nurse, for all that Anne seems to be so much better than usual. Let us see over time whether the sea truly has cured her.”
I ate heartily that night, to Nurse’s delight, soup and chicken and potatoes and two kinds of salad. After, my father came to visit me upstairs before I went to bed. He peered into my face just as Mamma had, searching for some secret that I was not sure actually existed there, then kissed my forehead with his dry lips and said, “You shall enjoy the sea again tomorrow, dear girl, and every day until we return home.”
I began to cry, thinking of the bitter waves and the dipper’s unforgiving hands, and Papa looked alarmed and stepped away from me. “Tell her, Nurse,” he said as he sidled out the door, and waved a hand in my direction. “Tell her it is for the best.”
I went sea bathing again the following morning after breakfast. I slept oddly without my drops, waking sometimes in the night rather than sleeping like a dead thing all the way through, but I was hungry for breakfast. My parents watched as I ate three pieces of toast slathered in preserves, then began to lick my fingers. Mamma rapped me smartly on the wrist with her knuckles.
The sea was as cold this morning as it was yesterday. This time, only Nurse accompanied me down to the beach; Mamma had calls to pay, and Papa could not have come even had he wished to, for the bathers were segregated by sex to preserve the ladies’ modesty. I struggled again against the dippers’ strong arms, but I did not scream, and only cried a little after I was taken out of the water.
In the afternoon, though, I did not feel like playing as I had the day before. Something had settled at the small of my back, a pressing feeling like a fist that would not go away. My legs felt strange, almost as if they were not there at all, and yet there was sometimes a horrible sensation, too, like ants crawling up and down my calves under my stockings. I wriggled and squirmed, trying to get the feeling to go away, but during the moments it was gone there was only a terrible numbness, and I had to lift my skirt, to Nurse’s exclamation of dismay, to make sure my legs had not fallen off.
By evening, I was shivering. It was cold in my chamber, so cold that my skin was covered all over in little bumps and my nose was running. I whinged and snapped, twisting away when Nurse tried to smooth back my hair, annoyed by the very presence of the maid who came to build up the fire. When Mamma and Papa came in to see me before their dinner, their faces grew flushed from the fire’s heat, but I still shook under the covers. Papa’s distress at finding me so unwell was visible, but my mother looked almost pleased.
“This is what comes,” she said, “of ignoring a trusted doctor’s advice.”
Papa, however, was determined that the cure be thoroughly tested. Only see, he said, how well I had done the day before! I had a little cold, now, that was all—it was only a minor setback, and in a few days I would be well again and could again be dipped in the sea. The bracing saltwater could only strengthen anything, or anyone, with which it came into contact.
But the following morning, my condition had worsened. Nurse, drawn and exhausted-looking, told Mamma that the young mistress was awake most of the night, writhing about in bed and complaining that there were insects all over her, and they would not leave her alone.
I was crying out when they came upstairs, my hair stuck to my face, which was wet with both tears and perspiration. I hurt deep within my limbs, pain at the very core of me, squeezing; but I could not find the words to express what I was feeling beyond moaning, “It hurts, make it stop,” over and over.
“She says she is freezing,” Nurse said, “but just look at the state of her.”
“‘Just a cold,’ indeed,” said Mamma.
Though I had eaten almost nothing for more than a day, it seemed my body still had plenty of reserves to reject. Nurse was not quite quick enough when I began to vomit, and the bed linens, already sweat-damp, needed to be changed immediately. Usually so placid, today I lashed out at the maids as they tried to urge me off the mattress. I crawled back onto the newly made-up bed like a half-drowned man onto shore, and then proceeded to vomit again. This time, at least, my nurse was ready with a bowl.
She was not ready, however, when my body began to purge itself from the other end, and at last she summoned a maid to bring my parents. They found me curled in a miserable ball around my cramping belly, eyes tightly closed against the light of the fat tallow candles.
A doctor was summoned with alacrity. Mamma narrowed her eyes at the unfashionable cut of his coat and the mud on his boots but kept silent at a sharp look from my father. They watched as the doctor gently straightened my body so that he could probe my belly and feel my neck; it took some persuading, but at last he managed to get me to open my eyes, to find himself faced with pupils blown monstrously wide. My lips were cracked but my skin was pale and clammy; I would, he declared, be dangerously dehydrated soon. When he listened to my chest, my heart thundered in his ear with worrisome rapidity.
Laudanum, he said, producing a bottle of the sweetened brown liquid with which we were all so familiar, was the only thing for me. It would stopper the looseness of my bowels and allow me to drink water and tea. Mamma’s expression softened with relief when, only a short time after a dose had been administered, I began to relax toward sleep. Papa was wise enough not to suggest a repeat of the sea bathing experiment, and we passed our remaining days in Brighton much as we would have had we been at home in Kent.