how I was an absolute nincompoop when it came to women, how she was the last person I should take out to the Coast; she’d be dead within a month.
“Have you told her that?”
“Not in such harsh words, but yes. The men die like flies, and I understand from a letter from William Topp, who is acting president while I’m away, that of the first group of missionaries who arrived in January, only one remains. The missionaries who already resided there were dead before the others stepped on shore.”
“But you knew about the climate when you asked her to marry you.”
“I did, I did. And I told her about the snakes and the poison berries, everything I could think of.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said, ‘You can’t scare me.’ This is a woman who lives life in her head; she has no idea … In fact, I think she finds all this ‘exotic.’”
I put my head in my hands. “What am I to do?”
Elisabeth said softly, “Do you love this woman, George?”
“I thought perhaps I did. Maybe I was simply in love with the idea of having an intelligent companion … out there.”
“Does she love you?”
“In her own way, I suppose. We haven’t used the word ‘love’ very much.”
“Well,” said my father, “you must make your own decision. The lady herself has given you an out. She sent you up here to ‘think it over,’ before the engagement was made public. You seem to have thought it over and you do not wish to marry.”
I could not bear to tell them that her latest letter threatened suicide. I was not a man who took kindly to threats. I told myself that she was merely hysterical — and justly so, considering my long silence — but suppose she meant it? What then? How could I live with myself?
The day after my talk with my parents, I determined to take a long walk to clear my head and then, that evening, to write to Letty and to tell her in the kindest way possible, that the engagement was off. “My dear sweet Letitia,” I would begin, “There is no nice way of saying this …”
I hiked to Lossiemouth, taking some bread and cheese and a flask of tea with me, and ate my simple meal leaning against a rock and staring out over the soft brown sand at the ocean beyond. The fishermen here were a hardy lot, but their wives were even hardier, hiking up their skirts and carrying their husbands on their backs, out to the boats, so that their garments would not be wet when they set out on those chill waters. When the men returned with the catch, it was these same women who filleted the fish and smoked them and packed them for transport south. All this as well as their ordinary household duties — meals, children, washing, and so on. They might have been ignorant of anything except their own rather narrow world, but even as a boy I admired them (although their children ran after me hurling stones and insults). What a contrast between these women, with their huge, competent hands and wind-scoured cheeks and the hot-house bloom I had asked to marry me. Strange to think that what I was staring at as I ate the last crumbs of cheese was that same ocean I look out on from Cape Coast Castle. So cold here it could drown a man, in wintertime, in a matter of minutes; so warm over there, it felt like soup.
“My dear sweet Letitia,” I practised, “I admire you so much, but I cannot find it I my heart to marry you.”
“Dear Letty, you told me to go away and think about our engagement, to be ‘absolutely sure’ — those were your words — that we were right for one another—”
“Dear Miss Landon …” No, too cold and uncaring.
I sat there most of the afternoon, dreading what was to come, cursing myself for ever getting involved with that woman, but knowing I had waited an unconscionable length of time before writing.
And then there, on the hall table, was a letter from her brother, accusing me of dishonourable behaviour toward his sister, of saying that I had made her ill by my silence, implying, in fact, that I was the cad to end all cads.
No one could be allowed to attack my honour. I could fight a duel or I could marry her. There really wasn’t any choice.
I sent off a letter to Letty, apologizing for the long silence, saying I was still terribly worried about her health in that climate, but that if she was game, then so was I.
Letty
“WHAT WILL YOU DO WITHOUT FRIENDS to talk to?” they said.
“Oh,” I said, “I shall talk to my friends through my books.”
I was about to undertake something new — a series of essays on Sir Walter Scott’s women, beginning with Effie and Jeanie Deans in The Heart of Midlothian. Scott had said their story was based on a true tale, where a young woman was accused of infanticide.
I was also contracted to do some verse illustrations for a new album. I was a dab hand at that sort of thing. If someone handed me an etching of the Fountain of Trevi, I could produce a suitable poem, with just a touch of melancholy, in spite of never having seen the actual thing. Ditto “A Moroccan Maiden” or “A Tuareg and his Camel.”
“Clothed in his robes of brilliant blue —” et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
I got my wedding without the delights of a wedding. George had said he wanted a quiet ceremony, with no fuss and he preferred we keep our marriage a secret until just before we set sail for the Gold Coast. And so five of us huddled at the front of the church (St. Mary’s, in Bryanston Square) one morning in early June and my brother Whittington did his best to make it a solemn occasion, enunciating every word in his beautiful, deep, clergyman’s voice.
“Do you, Letitia Elizabeth,” “Do you, George Edward,” take this man, take this woman. I was a proper Quakeress in my demure gown of dove grey peau de soie, but George looked splendid in scarlet. I felt like the female bird must feel, eyeing her mate’s more extravagant plumage. The night before I had a crazy vision of William Jerdan rushing in at the last minute, crying, “This wedding must not go forward” and then recounting our shabby past. A somewhat meagre wedding-breakfast followed and I thanked Heaven for Bulwer’s present of some splendid champagne. He made a nice toast, partly in jest, to the “voyage” upon which we were embarking.
George had said he could manage a few days’ honeymoon before he went back to his meetings with the Committee. “Fine,” I replied, “I always maintained that if I were ever to marry I hoped the honeymoon trip would extend no farther than Hyde Park Corner.”
“Oh I think we can stand something a little better than that.”
“Paris?”
In the end we went to Eastbourne, to a hotel which had seen better days. No one would know us in Eastbourne. The landlady, too, was in the initial stages of genteel decay: Mrs. Daisy Harkness, a widow. George liked it — lazy walks along the shingle, tramps up the Downs and down the Downs, damp bedsheets in spite of the stone hot-water bottles. A weekend at Browns’ would have suited me better. Servants with white gloves, starched linen in the dining-room, silver chafing dishes. As I have said, it’s not that I care for breakfast — I rarely partake myself — but the idea of breakfast at a first-class London hotel: that, I like. Coming in with George, my arm tucked into his, the other breakfasters looking up
