Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - Donoghue [57]
Note
One of the puzzled of Mary Wollstonecraft's early career is her lading her job as governeds with the Kingsborough family in Cork. For "Words for Things," I have drawn on her Collected Letters (1979), but aldo her Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787), Mary, A Fiction (1788), and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). The character of "Mademoiselle" wad inspired by Mary Rusdell Mitford's "Early Recollections: The French Teacher" in Our Village (1826).
Wollstonecraft's pupil became Margaret King Moore on her marriage to the second Earl of Mount Cashell, to whom she bore eight children. The British Library had a letter from Bishop Percy to his wife in 1798 that mentions Margaret's vigorous defence of her former governess when Wollstonecraft was accused of being a bad influence on her charges. In 1805, Margaret eloped from her husband and children with George William Tighe; in Italy, they became friends with the daughter Wollstonecraft died giving birth to, Mary Shelley.
How a Lady Dies
Breathing hardly seems worth the trouble today. Elizabeth lets out her shallow mouthful of air. Her shoulders subside; her head sinks back against the obelisk. She stares up at the tapering stone, but the sight dizzies her. Her eye-lids fall. Fur is soft against her cheekbones.
There, between the breaths, is peace. A little more air seeps away between her withered lips. The forest inside her ribs is emptying. No sound, nothing stirring, no fear, nor inclination. How the end will come. This winter, surely. Perhaps this very month. Could it be today?
This is all she has to do, thinks Elizabeth with a sudden inspiration. No vulgar act of self-destruction is called for; nothing to trouble her conscience or her taste. It is necessary only to relinquish: the daily effort, the stale cold air.
Her whole self hisses away through the crack of her mouth. Her stomach gives a startling rumble. She feels it fold in on itself. Soon she will be quite hollowed out. The weight on her chest grows, but she tells herself not to tremble, not to resist, not to bother with another breath.
"Elizabeth?"
The voice of love is a noose. It keeps you dangling between two worlds.
Her lungs suck in a huge mouthful of air. Her stays crack mightily, like a ship turning into the wind. How this worthless body fights for life. She turns to see her friend's anxious face, cooped up in a silk bonnet. Dark eyes, a high forehead traced like paper. By the world's standards, a plain woman, twenty years past her best. "I am only resting, my dear," Elizabeth murmurs.
"Do you feel a little better in yourself today?" suggests Frances.
"Indeed," faintly.
The only thing one can do in Bath that one did not do the day before is die. This is the undisputed bon mot of the season of 1759. Airs. Montagu's words will be misquoted long after these swarms of visitors have dispersed to their respective altars and graves.
Every year more yellowstone houses seize their share of tawny light. Every day more carriages scurry across the valley. Each duke married off is replaced by another five; every beggar arrested leaves room for fifty more. What was once a gracious maiden of a town has become a bloated dowager.
Bath is known for social rules and hard drinking, exquisite refinement and filthy jokes. Money is the air it breathes. Half a guinea to the Bellringers to herald your arrival, another to the City Waits for the obligatory serenade, then two guineas' subscription to Harrison's Rooms, where the tea is only ever lukewarm. People come to Bath to take the waters, but also to take the air in the Orange Grove, to take heart at the sight of a handsome face. They take their turns at scandal and glory, pleasure and spleen; they take their time about living and dying. The town is full of sound lungs proclaiming their sickness, old men insisting on their youth, married women whispering their unhappiness.
"That's Miss Pennington,"