|
The Poddington Project: Christine
DeWinter
The Journals of Christine
DeWinter
(Fragments)
From 1852
5 April 1852
I greet this new volume of my diary with some trepidation.
A blank page is like a stranger to me...will she be friendly?
Will she, if I entrust her with some secret wish or some whim
too strong, turn against me and deny me her succour? As my thoughts
turn to these fancies, my fingers itch to dance their minuet
across the page, and even before the thought is complete, I write.
9 April 1852
My brother Gregory goes to meet the Collicotts today. They
are a family of some standing, though not quite of our set. But
in this remote section of the country, we cannot pick and choose
our society.
20 April 1852
Gregory writes to tell us the Collicott sisters with their
brother the Rvd. George Collicot will be visiting us the month
next, and that I am to have a new frock. Gentle brother! I smile
at his fancy that I shall not remain a spinster evermore, but
I and my pen know better.
3 May 1852
Eleanora provoked me this morning by flirting with Gregory
quite brazenly, despite his obvious attraction to her sister
Constance. I do not mean 'obvious' in the sense that he promises
too much. Rather, as his sister I see what is not apparent
to those he presents his public persona, and Constance is much
more suited to him.
7 May 1852
Eleanora interrupts my writing in the hedge. I am at work
on a poem based on a fairy tale of local origin my dear father
once told me. E. sniffs and informs me that such things will
only addle my brain. As if the vulgar, base emotion she
calls love and I call infatuation has not addled
hers! How tempting it is to think of telling her of the Curse,
but Gregory would scold me quite fiercely.
14 May 1852
Sweet Constance departed 4 a.m. Too upsetting . . . I cannot
write of it. Eleanora to stay.
1863
24 November 1863
She is at peace now with her Maker. I must comfort myself
with these thoughts. Eleanora cannot . . . nor, admittedly, can
I fully reconcile myself to the reality of the news we had last
night. Even after the Magistrate informed us of the discovery
of the child's bones in the woods, Eleanora could not believe
they belonged to her precious Alys. Five months we have waited
for some news, since her disappearance, yet even now, the tickling
fingers of doubt tease at me. What if the bones aren't hers?
I sometimes hear my sweet Alys in the garden hedges . . . I know
it is fancy, but it sounds so real . . . I heard a voice tell
me she was still alive and thought of me, when walking in the
moors near Mouse Lane Hill. I listen, hoping against hope that
these voices tell me something approaching the truth . . . it
is too easy to believe she was taken by a madman, murdered, a
babe sacrificed for no good . . . .
Am I crazed? Will I end up in an attic, like Bertha Rochester,
pacing and hearing voices that do not exist? Alys, sweet Alys,
I miss you as much as Eleanora, the woman you called your mother
. . . . you were daughter to my heart though. Surely I ache in
the same spots as she. Surely I loved you as well as she. . .
. Why can I not let you rest?
3 December 1863
I thought I heard her again . . . and saw her sweet face,
her beautiful curls . . . I even ran my fingers through her hair
again, as I used to in the days when she sat with me in the library,
working on her little sampler while I tried to put pen to paper
to sketch out my little fairy stories. And then she was gone,
like the sea foam on the sands, a night's vision, but no more.
5 December 1863
Gregory has forbidden talk of Alys in the house, just as
he forbade us to call the our home by its proper name because
of the Curse. It is but an empty order, for after the Magistrate's
news, we speak not of her anyway. With our lips, that is. But
my heart, it speaks, it shouts, it screams her name, over and
over, with every passing hour. Alys, Alys, come home to Barleymeade,
sweet Alys, my daughter. . . .
1870
20 May 1870
Even as I start this new volume I know it will be my last
. . . they call to me constantly now . . . the voices . . . the
bad as well as the good . . . my little bonny golden-haired girl
. . . she tells me she cannot come as frequently . . . the one
they call their black queen, she . . . no, no, this is the poem
I wrote . . . it is hard to remember, these days, what is mine,
and what is not . . .
22 May, 1870
They say it is fever, and they give me the powder . . .
but I know from the look in their eyes it is Madness they fear.
. . . Eleanora . . . she most of all. Does she know? Does she
fear I will tell, in the ravings of the little poetess? There's
rue, that's for regrets. . . . there's rosemary, that's for remembrance.
. . .
14 June 1870
They think they can restrain the madness . . . if they restrain
the pen . . . the moving pen that writes, and having writ. .
. . my pen . . . but they do not know where every pen in this
household is hidden . . . they took my poetry long ago, Eleanora
and her vultures . . . they cannot take . . . what is most essential
and private and . . . what is me . . . . they cannot
take me . . .
20 June 1870
I have made up my mind . . . they think I do not have the will
. . . they think I do not have resolve . . . resolve is an animal
of iron, of men, and their sweat . . . not befitting a lady,
a poetess . . . Alys, my daughter . . . I hope you will not mourn
. . . I only go to meet my Maker . . . . my God, in whose arms
you will rest one day, I hope, I pray they will release you .
. . . Alys, I pray you will meet me with your sweet kisses .
. . . I go . . . I shall not soil their precious house, their
quarantine of velvet and forks and corsets and stays . . . I
shall meet you in the hedges, where you walked with me at night,
sometimes . . . Alys . . . .my heart. . . .
(Editor's note: Miss Christine DeWinter died of a self-inflicted
gunshot wound on the night of 20 June, 1870, in her family's
gardens.)
(Vance Briceland)
|