The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion #1

by Beth Brower

He’s not only thin in person, he’s thin in humour and spirit and character.

I look in this mirror and recognise myself less now than when I was a child. I suppose that happens when you’ve grown up and still don’t understand your place in the world.

I myself cannot boast personal acquaintance, as I am a stumble or two below their lofty class, but in a place like London, one always knows of the most important people living nearby. You can’t help it. Gossip is as catching as the plague ever was.

Every shop front does have its signage either upside down or backwards, considered a mark of good luck since the ascension of Charles the Second. I know not what to say except it seems to have worked. All the businesses on King Henry’s Road do very well.

The houses are all of uniform design, each painted white, with roses flanking the stairs leading up to each perfectly painted green door.

(Byron once held a drunken duel in the middle of the road. Thrilling to young males everywhere.)

My favourite is a fox with a bird in his mouth, the bird being the light, only fitted with wings.

I am going to have to deal with my garret. A discouraging reality. A rigid practice in avoidance might be endurable for the present, while sleeping on the narrow bed stuffed between odd bits of furniture, my few belongings strewn about, but the dust and cobwebs are demanding attention. Perhaps tomorrow.

the promising side of her unpromising nature peeks through a window.

I walked longingly past The Dalliance today, St. Crispian’s Bookshop. I did not go in. There are realities we must face, an empty purse being one of them.

states that they sell books of the ‘New, Slightly Used, & Abominably Treated Yet Resurrected Variety’.

“Emma, screw your courage to the sticking place.” Quoting Lady Macbeth is not, perhaps, a morally comforting thing, but it did the job with aplomb.

It’s a relief. To have such crisp, clean days spread out before me. No Cousin Matilde to forbid my breathing. No Aunt Eugenia Spencer to order me about. And, as of yet, no Cousin Archibald to tempt me to violence.

Rain, dismal enough to be cosy.

Once the hour turned from late to ghastly,

This morning I have only a headache to show for my great anthropological efforts.

“Confounded though immortal” found on line fifty-three. If that is not counted a lovely pairing of words, what is?

“From morn To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve…” From noon to dewy eve. I don’t know if I’ve ever done anything from noon to dewy eve. Maybe I should try. Granted, this was a fall from Heaven, which is not likely to be as pleasant as a long read beside a window.

I found myself wakened in the early hours to a sound that haunted me at school. The scurry. The scrape. The scratch. Followed by an all too earthly squeak. The garret has mice. I weep.

He spoke of Grace, wrestled with it. His words part prayer, part soliloquy, and part an exploration of himself, his motives, and God’s place in it all. We all sat enrapt.

it was his unassuming honesty that gave his words their strength. He seems to know just what to do with language. It hovers beside him, a fluid and mischievous thing, like Prospero’s Ariel. And so Young Hawkes weaves spells with words and we sit enrapt.

Father May, observing it all, let the trespass of a slow smile cross his face, and the next morning he simply disappeared.

Hearing that man read is wonderful. Especially when the poem itself is less religious and more inclined towards the sentiments of the heart.

It is not that he is a hermit, or narcissistic, or odd—he simply maintains an economy of interaction that is spare in its elegance.

Imperterritus. I flipped the card over, and embossed in gold was a beautiful lion. It was not docile, neither was it ferocious or violent, rather, it was undaunted. Which is what, I learned upon investigation, Imperterritus means in Latin. Undaunted. Fearless.

I haven’t shared the story with anyone. It is our secret, his and mine. We have not spoken since.

It was very Dutch Painter of him. I almost suggested we hold a séance and call up Vermeer.

Cousin Archibald is a firm believer in forgiving everyone their trespasses except me. Me he desires to burn in eternal torment.

“That entire letter was a gross defamation of my character,” said I. I know this because I wrote out all her correspondence—one of my many duties—and posted it myself. Damned by my own hand.

My teacup broke from excessive force somehow.

am satisfied with the state of my living quarters. Of course, one can hardly welcome an acquaintance into a garret, but the only people I foresee visiting are Arabella—who will laugh—and Mary—who will be delighted.

Today I have performed two acts of theft.

found a partially rolled-up Turkish carpet. It is beautiful, woven with the colour of sunset—not orange, not pink, but somewhere in between, with designs of green, turquoise, and warm purple.

with floor, walls, and ceiling all painted white, it looks positively like a painting on the floor.

I found a bookcase in the west room of the garret and have commandeered it for my own purposes. It is painted, of all colours, a beautiful green.

I sat on my bed and stared at the empty bookcase across the room. It represents regret and hope, this bookshelf. It is folly and experience. Five empty shelves staring at you is a daunting thing, so I stood up, took Paradise Lost from the desk, and set it on the left side of the top shelf. Its brown leather spine has a stripe of deep red across it. Milton looks ready and willing and able to occupy the shelf alone until I can find him some companions. I appreciate his generosity. I truly do.

I wake up, read, study, fuss over a few things, and then break out into the weather. It is good. Very good. But my true love is the evening walk, that last hour of daylight that has its way with sunlight, shadow, and soul.

there walked I, alone, and not upset to be so.

there I was, on my own and responsible for my entire life.

I wanted Latin and Greek and all kinds of histories. I wanted science and theology and language and art. I did not wish to sew cushions all day. I did not wish to dance and sing.

My father had a well-loved, oft-read library. He pored over his books. He wrote in them. Scribbled on any open space with his racing thoughts. He wouldn’t let me read too many of them.

Each day, swaths of time were given over to silent contemplation. My quest for knowledge was starved.

This refusal to blame myself does not mean I don’t feel absolutely ill when I think of my father’s books and to know I could have had both, a solid foundation of knowledge and an entire bookshelf filled with my father’s observations.

“Flowers inside the brown coat of a poor girl is immoral,” said she. “Oh, Cousin Matilde! Did you say this brown coat makes me look immortal? Why, what a fine compliment. I shall leave you now and write it in my journal.”

She believes one ought always to capitalize the essentials.

She’s a rare breed, an artist who actually sells her work.

to move about as freely as a widow, only without the hassle of having to outlive a husband.

ask my father to speak brutally and honestly. He did. Miss March has told me in the years since that his critiques were what propelled her talents forward.

Most times what is amusing in my head is only that, in my head alone. This point was proved once again, only this afternoon.

she did bequeath him all the books in the library. I am beginning to suspect it was because she knew him to be a fool and hoped to provide remedy.