Llangollen [Uskweirs #14]

This was one of the key events that I always wanted to put into New Girl, and I’m so happy that I got to do so. Llangollen is, like many elements in the novel, historical and broadly attested in multiple sources. Queer history is deep and goes back forever, and we need more accounts of historical queers to combat the utterly ahistorical claims that any of this is new. We have always been here!

And so without further ado, the chapter…

February 1813

Recovery was interminable. Amelia never came down with fever again, but the healing was slow and the throbbing pain ever-present.  She tried to read, but her attention and concentration eluded her.  She’d idled, bored, in her bed for more than a month; two months if you counted the stretch of time she’d lost to fever dreams.

When she had finally healed enough to rise, she did not go far.  She’d spent days simply walking the length of her room and back before collapsing back into bed.  Then a week of hobbling down the hall and back, by then with a teeth-gritting determination to push herself.  Because then it was Christmas, and Elizabeth never stopped talking about Christmas dinner, and Amelia meant to sit at the table for that.  She achieved that lofty goal, and then retired back to bed immediately thereafter.

Ashbourne left for London after the holidays to sit at Parliament.  Amelia missed her host but was endlessly touched when he addressed his frequent letters to both Elizabeth and Amelia with the simple salutation “Girls—”.  Sometimes he sent packages of fabric and ribbons and once two new complete frocks, one for each of them.  His letters never failed to ask after Amelia’s health, and otherwise betrayed his frustration with politics and his desire to return home.  For her part, Amelia only wanted the opposite: to leave the house.

She finally made it outside in the new year, although Elizabeth rushed her back into the warm house almost before she’d filled her lungs with crisp, fresh air.  She walked, she rested; by creeping progress her walks grew longer and her rests grew shorter.  But being restrained for so long, by both Elizabeth and by her weakened body, put her in a foul mood that persisted even after her friend stopped reining her in and it was just her recovering body holding her back.

She hadn’t called Elizabeth her jailer out loud more than twice.  The girl had responded with a longsuffering patience that Amelia recognized as Ashbourne’s demeanor when he had to deal with a trying house guest.  That recognition only served to frustrate Amelia, because she wasn’t being a poor guest, she was just… hurting and frustrated and impatient to see Theresa again.  She tried to banish her sulk by writing to the inmate.  Which is why she was in the library, the room of the manor which captured the most of the thin winter light, when the post came in.

“Oh,” murmured Elizabeth, who was looking over the latest dispatch from London.  Then she blushed and folded the letter, as if to put it away before Amelia could read it.

The invalid was having none of it.  “What is it?  What has he written?”

Her friend sheepishly handed over the letter.  “It seems Misses Woods and Pirie are back on the chopping block.”

Ashbourne’s letter was curt and acerbic, a sure sign that his frustration was at its height.  Lady Cumming Gordon had appealed to the House of Lords, as she had promised.  The judgement was therefore suspended and she need not pay her penalty to the two teachers.  The salt in the wound, however, was that as soon as her appeal had been accepted for consideration, it had been tabled.  Ashbourne expected it to be swept under the rug and rolled over to the following session, which would forestall any payment until next year at the earliest.

Amelia crushed the note into her lap in despair.  A moment later she thought better of the gesture and moved to smooth it back out, and then the next moment threw it to the floor in frustration.  “And in the mean time, what are Marianne and Jane to do?  They cannot start a new school without the settlement, they cannot teach anywhere else thanks to Cumming Gordon’s slander.  Do they starve?”

“They have friends,” Elizabeth said, bending over to pick up the letter.  “My father among them.  They will not starve.”

“But they will not live their lives, either,” Amelia spat.  “They’ll be trapped, penned in, unable to take any steps forward, losing time!”

Her friend lifted an eyebrow.

Amelia raised a warning finger at her friend.  “I’m not talking about me,” she insisted.  “I’m talking about them.  But also me.  Because that is, I fear, all that I have to look forward to once I leave here.  Is a life even possible for a woman like me?  Unless I marry a man, no matter how good or cherished a governess I become, I am doomed to spinsterhood on the margins of society.”

“The margins aren’t so bad.”

Amelia bunched up her lips to prevent herself from sneering at her friend.  Her friend who was going to marry a lord, become a lady, and have everything she’d ever wanted.  “It’s not a life!” she said instead.  “You can’t have a whole life on the margins.  They’ll never let you.  They’ll never let me.”

Elizabeth pursed her lips, considering.  Finally, she said, “You’ve walked all the way to church and back, twice now.  Do you think you could ride in a carriage for a couple days?”

Still caught up in her own hauteur, Amelia wasn’t sure if she should scowl at her friend’s change of subject or squeal at the prospect of leaving the house.  Warily, she answered, “I think I can.”

Elizabeth clapped her hands together.  “Good.  Then we’re going to Llangollen tomorrow.”

Preferring to ask forgiveness rather than seek permission, Elizabeth ordered her father’s carriage and team prepared and they set out northward without so much as an invitation to the famous house that was their destination.

Amelia tried not to wince every time the carriage hit a bump or rut in the road.  “It’s a… literary sort of place?”  she hazarded when they reached what promised to be a level bit of good road.  She was only vaguely aware of Llangollen’s fame and had the impression that it had something to do with poets and novelists escaping London for the country.  Northern Wales seemed a bit excessive for that, though, so she might be mistaken.

“They attract colourful guests,” was Elizabeth’s only reply.  “You’ll see.”

When night fell, they stopped outside a crossroads inn and for the first time that day Elizabeth betrayed a trace of uncertaintly.  “I’m pretty sure this is the right place,” she muttered as she disembarked.  It was; the innkeeper knew her from years of visits made memorable by her father’s coin purse.  He showed them to his finest room, which was modest but clean.

It was just past midday the next morning when they arrived in the village of Llangollen.  Extracting an oversized wicker basket from the back of the carriage, Elizabeth bustled Amelia into the local butcher’s, the greengrocer’s, and then the haberdashery.  At each store she added more items to the basket, which was promptly overflowing.  “By way of apology for dropping in without invitation,” the girl explained.

Back in the carriage, they jostled and rocked their way along winding local roads up and down surprisingly severe slopes.  Amelia had thought she was doing well, but now balled up her fists at every shudder of the carriage.

At last they came upon a sizeable cottage surrounded by exuberant gardens.  Flashes of reflected sunlight betrayed more than one greenhouse hiding amidst the foliage.  The sign on the gate read Plas Newydd.

As the carriage rolled into the short yard, Amelia took in the gothic exterior that looked to have been bolted onto the front of the much older building.  Stained glass winked and shone from every window.  Creeping vines had overtaken half the building’s exterior, covering it in a verdant green blanket.

The whole house exuded the sort of air that some would enthusiastically call “charming” while others offered “quaint” through lips drawn tight in distaste.

They hadn’t finished descending from the carriage when a woman’s voice called out, “Is that Lizzie Randall?”

Elizabeth, basket clutched in one arm, turned towards the voice, beamed and waved.  “Sarah!  I brought the biggest ham I could find!”

From the gardens on the side of the house emerged a curious figure, clad in a muslin work apron draped over a black riding habit.  The old woman stooped over to beat the dirt where it had been pressed into her apron, scooped up a gardening basket, and strode forward.  She couldn’t have come up to Elizabeth’s shoulder.  “Well, isn’t she a pretty ham,” she said, looking Amelia up and down with a teasing smirk.  Her voice bore the barest trace of an Irish accent.

“This is Miss Amelia Wright,” Lizzie corrected with exagerrated exasperation.  “Amelia, this is Miss Sarah Ponsonby.”

Amelia dropped a curtsy; Ponsonby lifted her skirt an inch and then executed an unsteady twirl, ending with a feeble backwards kick.  “Welcome to Plas Newydd, dear.  Always a pleasure to meet new people.”  She shifted her basket onto her left and twined her free arm around Elizabeth’s.  “Let’s see if we can find Eleanor, shall we?  At this hour, she’ll be reading in the library—through the backs of her eyelids.”

They stomped into the cottage, making enough noise that by the time they reached the library, Miss Eleanor Butler was awake, if only just.  This lady was at least ten years older than the first, dressed in similar riding habit.  Where Sarah was short, spare, and energetic, Eleanor was tall, stolid, and reserved.  She welcomed the girls into their home and bid them sit in the library; she would call for some tea.

In the close proximity of the indoors, Amelia noted that both ladies were wearing powdered wigs.

“You must be patient with our girl,” Eleanor told Lizzie and Amelia quietly when the serving girl bustled out of the room to fetch something she’d forgotten.  “Local girl, not professionally trained.”

“And she’s the only one here, taking care of absolutely everything in the house, so she’s stretched thin,” Sarah put in with a roll of her eyes.  “Eleanor forgets that and thinks everyone should be as capable as Mary was, when we were both spry enough not to need as much help as we do now.”

The other lady merely sniffed in response.

“She’s been gone two years, now,” Sarah went on with a sigh, “and we still miss her.  Not just for her tea.  Ah, here we are.”  The serving girl returned with a plate of tiny sandwiches that looked to have been slapped together in the last ten minutes.  Sarah gave the girl an encouraging smile and Eleanor nodded approvingly as everything was laid out.  “We’ll pour ourselves, dear.  I’m sure you have things to do.”  When the girl was gone, she told the room, “She’s beating out the rugs today, poor thing.”

Eleanor poured out a cup and handed it to Lizzie.  “I do enjoy your visits, my dear, although we are used to a little prior notice.  What brings you to our corner of the world with such alacrity?”

Elizabeth accepted the cup, blushing.  “I do apologize, Miss Butler.  I saw a need and an opportunity and I leapt on it.  Father is away in London, you see, and he left the carriage at home—”

“An adventure,” Sarah giggled.  “That’s the opportunity, but what was the need?”

Elizabeth exchanged a look with Amelia, for once asking for permission.  The latter girl half-nodded, still uncertain where her friend was going.  Lizzie smiled impishly and explained, “Amelia despairs of sharing her life with a woman she loves.”

“And so you brought her here,” Eleanor observed drily.  “Are we to serve as your object lesson?”

“Of course she brought her here,” Sarah retorted, beaming at Amelia.  “Oh my, let’s see, where to begin?”

Eleanor gestured feebly with a tea biscuit.  “Here we are.  We exist.  Surprise.  I think that’s all there is to it.”

Sarah swatted the other lady’s knee playfully.  “That is not all there is and you know it.  You forget what it’s like being young and—forgive me, dears—not knowing anything.  Because no one tells you.”

“They lie to you,” Eleanor corrected.  “And when that doesn’t work, they threaten you.”

The other lady nodded, conceding.  “It’s really not a happy story, is it?  Our families were absolutely beastly about it all.”  She took a deep breath and a small sip of tea.  “But we’re telling this all wrong.  Just a pair of doddering old ladies nattering away.”

“I first met Sarah forty-five years ago,” Eleanor said matter-of-factly.  But as she continued, her tone shifted, softened, and warmed.  “She was just a girl, then, and I was an old maid.  But she was already the most beautiful person I had ever seen.”

“Eleanor was so elegant, and so clever,” the other lady said wistfully, and reached over to put a hand on the other lady’s knee.  “I remember thinking that she’d read every book in Kilkenney.”

“I had; there wasn’t much there.”  She placed her hand on top of Sarah’s.

“I didn’t know what I was feeling, not at first,” Sarah went on.  “My guardian, Sir Fownes, he said it was a girlish infatuation.  He wanted me to marry him, you see.”

“And she held him off for ten years,” Eleanor interrupted with all the air of the victor of a prize fight.  “That was long enough for us to make our plans, put away a little money, and prepare.”

“And convince Mary to help us,” Sarah added.  “She was indispensible.  She booked us our fares, you see.  We couldn’t very well go down to the docks on our own.  Not without my guardian or her family noticing.”

“We convinced our families we were visiting each other to buy us a head start.  Rushed down to the docks and we were away.”  Eleanor chuckled nostalgically.  “We made it all the way across the Irish Sea before they caught up to us.”

“And by that time, we were out from under their thumbs,” Sarah looked sidelong at Eleanor, a wistful smile on her lips.  “You should have seen it.  Eleanor’s father and my guardian all bristling with indignation, and Eleanor bristling right back at them, spitting nails and threatening to make a scene so scandalous that they’d hear about it all the way back in Kilkenny.”  She laughed, delighted at the memory.  “I fell in love with her all over again that day.”

Eleanor squeezed Sarah’s hand.  “The rest is boring, I’m afraid.  We toured Wales, we found this place, we invited Mary to join us, and we settled in.  August will make it thirty-three years.”

“It’s not boring, it’s our whole lives!” the other lady chided in good humour, and then looked back to Amelia, eyes shining.  “We made this place the picture of our dreams.  You saw the facade out front.  And we’ve added so many greenhouses and gardens.  We are surrounded by beauty and books and green, growing things.  We have so many fascinating guests come visit us—we have a sort of notoriety, now.  But it brings us fresh young faces like yours.”

It took some time before Amelia asked the real question—until supper that evening was cleared and, Amelia imagined, the ladies were just on the cusp of excusing themselves to bed.  “But how does it work?” she asked, and blushed at her lack of context.  They had been talking about Sarah’s flowers.

But Eleanor understood the question immediately.  “How can two ladies afford to keep house together, in terms of both finances and reputation?”  She smirked when Amelia gave her an hesitant nod.  “It takes some doing.”

“Money does help,” Sarah offered, with a wan smile.

But Elanor huffed.  “Money is essential.  We were lucky to gather enough to get ourselves away from Ireland. Squirreled away our pin money, embezzeled bits and bobs with carefully-worded requests to the holders of our purse-strings.  It was the work of years.  And then, and only under threat of scandal, my father begrudgingly supported us as long as we kept our distance.  After he passed, my brother reduced that allowance—better insulated from scandal.”

“But we had Plas Newydd by then,” Sarah took up the narrative with a bright smile.  Her eyes shone in the candlelight.  “We have our gardens and fruit trees and chickens and even our own little dairy.”

“It’s not enough to feed the household, but that, plus renting out the fields, comes close,” Eleanor explained gravely.  “Enough that the generosity of friends and visitors can close the gap.”

That ridiculous ham, thought Amelia, nestled in Lizzie’s deep basket of other necessities.  It could probably feed two elderly ladies and a maid for a week.

Eleanor was saying: “…which is where the reputation comes in.  Or notoriety, as Sarah said over tea.”

“Visitors aren’t… scandalized?” Amelia couldn’t help but ask.

“They always think they will be,” the younger old lady explained with a titter, “and then they see that we are pleasant company and keep a charming home, and isn’t it convenient that we are along the way between London and Dublin.  We’ve even had the Queen here.”

Eleanor rolled her eyes.  “Which got it in our heads to try for a royal pension, and that was years of letter-writing to finally secure a pleasant promise from the crown—and a flurry of regrets from the treasury that the pension account is perpetually devoid of funds.  We have better luck with artists.”

“They’re better company, too,” Sarah smiled.  “So dramatic, effusive with praise over the smallest details of our home.  It goes to my head every time but I certainly don’t mind.  To hear them talk, we walk on clouds.”

“We are often praised for our sisterly devotion,” Eleanor said, with a lofty cadence that ended in a soft, derisive snort.  “Suffice to say, we walk a fine line, balancing the attraction of scandal against the assurances of respectability.”

“It sounds exhausting.”

Sarah shook her head, which shifted her wig back and forth.  Eleanor merely shrugged.  “Sometimes I tire of our maintenance always implicitly dangling from our ability to play hostess—no, Lizzie, this is different; we are so happy to meet Amelia—but playing hostess for our suppers is better than being shut up in a convent.”

“Or marriage to an old man.”

Eleanor reached over to clasp her partner’s hand.  “And despite the difficulties, we are happy.  And have been happy for many years.”  She fixed her eye on Amelia.  “It can be done, my dear.”

It was only as the carriage was pulling out of the little yard on the way home that Amelia asked Elizabeth: “But do they… you know?”

Lizzie lifted one eyebrow.  “What, fuck?”

Amelia tilted her head back and forth.  “Well.  Yes.”

The other girl laughed.  “They gave us each our own bedrooms, but they share one bedroom themselves.  And there’s only one bed in there.”

“That’s not… definitive.”

Lizzie glanced out the window, smirked at Amelia, and tapped the glass.  “Look.”

Back in the courtyard stood Eleanor and Sarah, having seen off their guests.  Their hands fell into each other’s with the familiarity of long habit, and then Eleanor slid her arm around the shorter woman’s waist.  They laughed at a shared joke and Eleanor pulled her close.  Sarah’s grin was visible fifty paces away, full of surprise and anticipation.

Eleanor dipped Sarah back.  Sarah stroked her hands up her partner’s arms (and surrepticiously braced her foot behind her to take her own weight off Eleanor’s arms).  And then they took what seemed like all the time in the world to kiss.

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