Local Customs Read online

  Advance Praise for Local Customs:

  “Thomas is at the top of her game with this elegantly written, deeply felt gem of a novel.”

  — Ann Ireland, author of

  The Blue Guitar and The Instructor

  “Once again Audrey Thomas proves that a writer can deliver great narrative even while she is finding new ways to compose a book. I just sat and read her new novel while the world somehow went on without me.”

  — George Bowering

  Praise for Audrey Thomas’s Writing:

  “Thomas has a faultless ear for dialogue, for how people sound.… And she has a camera eye for physical detail.”

  — Margaret Atwood

  “Audrey Callahan Thomas’s specialty is not a region but a gender. She is intensely, assertively feminine … Mrs. Thomas’s perceptions … are brilliant.”

  — New York Times Book Review

  “The author’s writing is stylistically brilliant.”

  — Publishers Weekly

  “Audrey Thomas is not a romantic, nor is she a narrow satirist of false sophistication. She is a realist and a terrible comedian who exposes her characters in a light like ‘the intense glare of the sun against the white walls of the houses.’”

  — Globe and Mail

  To Sarah, Victoria, and Claire

  And to the memory of Peggy Appiah

  and Monty de Cartier

  Carte Generale De L’Afrique by Eustache Herisson, 1829. Dot indicates location of Cape Coast.

  Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.

  Duncan: “This castle hath a pleasant seat;

  the air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself

  Unto our gentle senses.”

  — Macbeth I, VI, I

  “Well,” exclaimed Lord Harvey,

  who had appeared to be absorbed in

  watching his own shadow on the water,

  “I do not think it is such a dreadful

  thing to be married. It is a protection,

  at all events.”

  — Ethel Churchill, by Letitia Landon

  “She no sick; she no complain, no nuttin’.

  And then she go die, one time.”

  — Isaac,

  sense-boy at Cape Coast Castle

  Letty: I can speak freely now that I am dead.

  Prologue

  MY NAME IS LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON, nickname Letty, early professional name L., and later L.E.L. It was a shock to several of the young beaux at Oxford when it was revealed that L.E.L., who wrote such sweetly melancholic poetry was a young woman, not a young man. The initials had been my publisher’s idea; they added to the mystery. I was also known, briefly, as Mrs. George Maclean, wife of the Governor of Cape Coast Castle, on the Guinea Coast. (“Mrs. Maclean as was,” as Mrs. Bailey would say. You haven’t met Mrs. Bailey yet, but you will.)

  I say “My name is,” not “was,” because your name is your name and stays with you forever; it will still be my name a hundred years from now, two hundred, even if no one by then can remember why it was important. “L.E.L.? Wasn’t there some mystery …”

  I was born on 14 August 1802, the eldest of three children, a brother named Whittington and a sister who was an invalid and died young. Our father was a partner in the firm of Adair and Company, who supplied the army during the Napoleonic Wars. He prospered, but then lost most of his money on speculation and the romantic idea of a gentleman’s hobby farm in the country. We became what I suppose one would call “shabby genteel,” a family with a good name who had come down in the world. In spite of being the engine of our rapid descent into almost-poverty, I adored him. It was not his fault that he was impractical, a dreamer, and even less his fault that he died very suddenly of a heart attack. At a very early age I became the financial head of the family and it was lucky for us all that I was not only prolific, but popular.

  They said I was a precocious child and knew my letters even before I could string them into words. Once I could actually read, nothing excited me so much as books. I was supposed to have been seen often rolling a hoop with one hand while holding up a book with the other, no doubt some romantic adventure. True or not, it paints a very pretty picture. I do know that I wasn’t the least bit interested in most of the things a young lady should be interested in. I did no embroidery, did not sing or play the piano, never asked for a receipt or a pattern in my life; I was totally deficient in the science of the spoon and the scissors. What I excelled in was words, they flowed from my pen almost as though I had nothing to do with the actual composition; I simply had to be quiet and let them come in. Of course there were revisions — that’s where the hard work comes in, that’s the exhausting part.

  I was considered a genius by some, a silly rhymester by others. I think I understood what people wanted, or some people, mostly, but not exclusively, women. I could definitely move about in Society and was welcome at the very best mansions. I was not a debutante, of course. I was never presented at Court in a white dress with the requisite three feathers in my hair, like some gigantic white cockatoo, but I was definitely part of the London literary scene without having to go through the rigors of The Season, or the “Meat Market,” as some wag called it, where the real purpose of all those fifty balls and thirty luncheons and numerous dinners was to secure a suitable husband as soon as possible. If the Honourable Lady Annabelle Thing hadn’t managed to be engaged by the end of her second season, she was considered a failure.

  I was invited to select Wednesdays at men’s clubs, where the men attempted to show us how well they could do without us, dining on greenish soup and overdone sole and some sort of pudding remembered from their nursery days; to the National Gallery; to walks in Hyde Park; to house parties in the country where one had to admire everything, from the park to the pigsty and where I never really had the right quantity of clothes for the many changes of wardrobe, but learned how to do wonders with a brilliant shawl and a smile.

  I was good at being a guest. I liked talking; I looked charming when I talked. I liked strangers; every stranger presents a new idea. And I knew how to listen, how to make the person speaking to me feel as though he were the most important person in the room. That is a great talent and will take you a long way — even as far as the Gold Coast.

  The following is the story of my meeting with George Maclean, our engagement and marriage, our life at Cape Coast Castle, my unexpected death. You will also meet Brodie Cruickshank, another Scot, like George, in charge of the fort at Anamaboe, who became my great friend, and Mr. Thomas Birch Freeman, a Wesleyan missionary, Mrs. Bailey and several other characters of interest.

  The story takes place between 1836 and late 1838, in London and at Cape Coast, just before the rains end and the Dry Season is about to begin.

  It is curious how much of its romantic character a country owes to strangers, perhaps because they know least about it. I will try, at least, to give some sense of what that world on the coast was like.

  It is worthwhile having an adventure, if only for the sake of talking about it afterwards.

  “AND WILL THERE BE LIONS AND TIGERS?” I asked.

  “If you want those you must go elsewhere,” he said, smiling at my ignorance. “But lovely birds, Letty, and palm trees, hibiscus flowers. The landscape is quite beautiful.”

  “I was rather hoping for lions and tigers,” I said, but smiled up at him so that he would know I was only teasing, gave his arm a little squeeze.

  I don’t think I have ever walked so much as I did in the days of our courtship: Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park Gardens, Regents Park, Russell Square. In my plan of Paradise, I always said, people will ride very little but walk not at all. In revenge they shall have the most comfortable chairs from morn
ing to night. But George was better outside; drawing rooms and gossip did not interest him. He would have fled London for the hills of Scotland long before, except for me.

  He smiled at babies in perambulators, at little boys sailing their boats; I did not want him to look at babies or little boys; it was important that he keep his mind on me, on what he had been working up to say.

  “I’m feeling a little fatigued,” I said, spotting an empty bench. Just beyond, an old man was casting bread to the ducks.

  We sat down. There was a not unpleasant silence between us.

  “‘Cast thy bread upon the waters,’” I said, “‘for thou shall find it after many days.’ I’ve never been quite sure what that means.”

  Still silence, but less comfortable. I wondered if I should suggest we continue our promenade. We made a pretty picture, Captain Maclean in his scarlet tunic and I in my new pelisse. I made a small movement, as if to rise, but he grabbed my hand.

  “Letty,” he said, “I have no flowery way to say this. Will you marry me? Will you come back with me to the Coast?”

  Victory. (Bugles and pennants, but only in my head.)

  “Of course I will, George.” Then, “Shall we walk?”

  Letty

  I WAS THIRTY-FOUR when I first met George Maclean, and somewhat fearful and uncertain as to what my future was to be. Famous, yes, but solitary and I had recently noticed how some of my friends’ children called me “Aunt.” Soon those children would be having children and there would be another round of silver christening cups or porringers. Have you read Lamb’s essay about Poor Relations? Would I end up like that, an embarrassment, an elderly lady living in a pokey room at my brother’s house, his wife (I assumed he would marry now that his living was secure) treating me with condescension, his children (I assumed he would do the usual thing and have children) prompted to ask Auntie if she wanted the last tea cake or crumpet (Auntie declining even as her stomach rumbled). Or perhaps the Misses Lance would leave me their house when they slipped off their mortal coils, assuming old Mr. Lance, their brother, had already slipped his. I had a soft spot for old Mr. Lance. Whenever I was sent a gift of a brace of pheasants or a nice plump hare, he would remind us of what a crack shot he had been in his youth. The Lances did have nieces and nephews, so I probably could not really count on anything in that direction. If my brother didn’t want me, perhaps I would live out my declining years in a pokey cottage, seeing no one, alone with my books, my canary, and a cat, until, if a traveller knocked, he would be greeted only by a whisper behind a door.

  I had always declared I would never marry, but that is the sort of thing women say, isn’t it, when they are no longer girls and still single. I didn’t so much want a husband as want the security of a husband, the status that comes from being married. He would have to be a gentleman, of course (the Landons may have come down a bit in the world but we were of an old and respected Hertfordshire lineage). It would also be useful if he had a good income, but even an adequate income would suffice. I had my own money — from my books — although I didn’t see a great deal of it; as soon as it came, a goodly portion went out, to my brother, for his Oxford education, and to my widowed mother. There was a sister, sickly from birth, and she lived with my mother until the poor child died at age thirteen. You will be shocked, but at the moment I can’t remember her name. An ordinary name, nothing like Letitia or Whittington, my brother. Elizabeth, yes, that was it. I was the eldest and felt it was my duty to help out, although there were days when I could have killed for a new frock. Everything I wore was always just slightly behind the latest fashion, even with the help of new ribbons or a gift-pair of new gloves. My admirers did often send me things, pheasants, for example, gloves, once an incredible rainbow-coloured silk shawl. When they sent letters without gifts I was always a little disappointed.

  (“Dear Letitia, do you remember how we walked with our arms around one another when we were young?”) I suppose all famous people get letters like that, often from virtual strangers. “Dearest Letitia, I have woven you a special bookmark depicting a scene from Ethel Churchill,” some ghastly scrap that she probably spent hours stitching. Or even worse, “Dear L.E.L., or may I call you Miss Landon? I have taken the liberty of enclosing a small selection of my verse …”

  They want a reply, those versifiers. “Dear Miss X, how kind you were to send me ‘A Sonnet Sequence on the Death of my Canary’…” They are hoping you will help them get published, of course, although they never come straight out and say so. I think I can safely state that never once, never once, did any of these unsolicited missives contain a spark of genius or even of good yeomanlike workmanship. The bookmarks had more craft than all these ballads or sonnet sequences or meditations in a graveyard. Can’t they tell? Ah well, we are told that love is blind and no doubt they love these things they write. If I am feeling kindly, then I do admire their courage, for it takes just as long to write a bad poem as a good one, perhaps longer, and even those of us who have been fortunate enough to have published and been praised, still tremble that next time, next time, we may be laughed at or even reviled. A horse at a mill has an easier life than an author.

  And I knew my work would not be fashionable forever, for tastes in art change just as tastes in costume do. I remember going to Madame Tussaud’s Waxworks with dear Lady Blessington and she said to me, “One day your likeness will be on display,” and I replied, “Complete with my little attic room and my hoard of candle ends?” We laughed, but that night I had a terrible dream about my wax doppelgänger and a great fire in the waxworks. I saw my face melting, my dress on fire, my lips running down my chin and onto my bodice. All the others were melting, too, the kings and queens, the murderers and heroes and soon we all ran together. When the firemen arrived with their water, we had congealed into a great, many-coloured lump full of glass eyes. I woke up with the Misses Lance pounding on my door, asking if I was all right.

  I had been reading Macbeth and I suppose I was thinking of “Out out, brief candle.” Who knows what ideas and images our sleeping selves can yoke together?

  I have come a long way from talking about spinsterhood, but from my thirtieth year on, however gaily I presented myself to Society, my future as a single, aged woman was always there in the back of my mind. (“Do offer Auntie the last crumpet.” And Auntie, with butter dripping down her whiskery chin and death spots on the backs of her hands, gives a grateful little mew.)

  In October 1836, I was staying with Matthew Forster and his family for a few days while my room at the Misses Lance was undergoing a good turnout and a new carpet was laid. My feet had been very cold the winter before, in spite of worsted stockings knitted by Miss Agatha and warm slippers donated by Miss Kate. My little coal fire did not cast the heat very far and as I had never been able to write on my lap, my poor appendages shivered beneath my desk. I often wrote far into the night, indeed sometimes until I heard the milk pails clatter and the sound of horses’ hooves in the street below. The solution, or at least a partial solution, was to have a carpet fitted. I decided I could not stand all the fuss this would entail so, leaving the Misses Lance to supervise, I threw myself on the mercy of the Forsters.

  When I came down to breakfast on the second morning of my stay (I dislike breakfast, but when one is a guest it is only good manners to put in an appearance, nibble on some toast and try not to look at the gentlemen eating kidneys and sausages, cold beef and pickle), Matthew waved a sheaf of papers at me and said, “This should interest you, Letty!”

  “Why would some dull report interest me?” I said, settling myself near the toast rack and marmalade.

  “This is not dull; in fact, it’s exceedingly interesting, a record of an excursion to Apollonia, on the Gold Coast, where the writer faced down an insurrection by the paramount chief. Quite a feat. And he signed a treaty with the old scoundrel as well.”

  “That’s nice,” I said, not terribly impressed.

  “And the writer, who is governor of Cape Coast Ca
stle, is on leave here and coming tonight to dine.”

  “And what is this paragon like?”

  “George? An excellent chap, one of our best. Of course you want to know if he’s handsome.”

  “That’s nonsense. I am much more interested in character than physiognomy.”

  “Then you must be the exception. In any event, you shall make up your own mind about him.”

  I took the report up to my room and read it carefully. There were words in it which set my blood racing: danger; price on my head; stood firm; the royal umbrellas; the heat; success; Africa. This last made me shiver with excitement. Our hero’s full name was George Maclean and so I sent the maid over to Regent Street for a length of Maclean tartan. By teatime I had concocted a shawl, a sash, and even a bit of ribbon for my hair. It was not that I expected much in the way of looks — or even manners. I had seen some of these Old Coasters at Matthew’s house before: stringy men, yellowish around the eyeball, prematurely grey or white, hands a bit shaky from the remains of fever or a steady diet of drink. After I became acquainted with cockroaches out there, I had a fancy, because of the similarity of skin colouring, that these ubiquitous insects were nothing but the souls of Old Coasters.

  I sat on a chair, in all my Scottish finery, and waited impatiently for George Maclean. Chatted to many of the guests — I was known for my quick wit and merry laugh — but kept an eye out for the hero of Apollonia. I must admit the idea of an Englishman getting the better of a black man out in Western Africa did not seem much of an accomplishment, but Matthew assured me it was, so I had practised looking impressed and intent in front of my looking-glass for a good half hour.