Mrs Gaskell and Me Read online

  In the Rare Books Reading Room, I am listlessly going over my writing from the day before when an email arrives in my university inbox. ‘The Institute of Psychiatry would like to invite eligible students to take part in a study we are conducting for the purpose of a Ph.D. project, which looks at the effects of temporarily decreasing your brain’s dopamine activity on your body image, eating, and exercise behaviours. We are seeking female participants between the ages of 25 and 35. Participants will be compensated with £150 upon completion of the study.’ It seems, in that moment, like a gift: instead of sitting there in that lifeless, airless room, I could do this other thing, which while not helping my Ph.D., would at least help somebody’s, and for my trouble I’d be paid enough to buy a train ticket to Paris. For the first time in weeks, it seems as though something adds up.

  1853

  The Casting of The Clasped Hands of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning by Harriet Hosmer

  ‘Will you let me take a cast of your hands?’

  Harriet Hosmer was sitting with Mr and Mrs Browning in one of the dining rooms at the Hôtel d’Angleterre, where a fire was lit and a young Italian man was waiting by the door, refreshing their coffee cups after each sip they took. She had been quiet for a while, listening to Elizabeth and Robert talk, watching the way they moved when they spoke.

  ‘A cast?’ said Elizabeth. She put down her cup and glanced at her fingers, splaying them out in front of her as though trying to judge whether or not she thought them worth preserving. From across the table, Harriet studied them too.

  ‘It wouldn’t take long,’ Harriet said. ‘The formatore will set the plaster, and I can sit with you while it dries. If we set ourselves up by the fire, just as we are now, it would be done in no time – a morning, maybe less. And I can see how it will be – quite lovely, the two hands clasped together just so.’ She entwined her own hands in front of her face, as though greeting herself.

  Robert, Elizabeth could see, was self-conscious. He had made fists, and half withdrawn them under his sleeves. But she knew that he liked the idea, despite himself. He liked anything that consolidated his view of himself as not just a poet but an artist. And he liked Hattie, too, with her soft, constant babble of ideas and stories. She was almost young enough, at twenty-three, to be his daughter, and he indulged and coddled her as though she was.

  ‘Robert always longed to be a sculptor,’ Elizabeth said.

  Harriet brushed this off, as though it was obvious, and to Harriet, it probably was.

  ‘It will represent,’ said Harriet, loftily, ‘the meeting of two great minds in marriage, and in their work. It will show what it is to be poets in love with one another and with Italy and with words.’

  Robert snorted. ‘You think people will take all that from a cast of my ugly paw?’ He was trying to suppress a smile.

  ‘Will you let me make the cast?’ Harriet said, again.

  ‘We will,’ Elizabeth said, ‘provided you will cast them. I will not sit for the formatore.’

  If a person was going to touch her, and touch Robert, and most intimate of all, touch them both while they were touching each other, it could not be a stranger. There was something that made Elizabeth’s skin crawl in the thought of the wet plaster being administered by a rough-fingered man; it would have to be Harriet herself, with her neat, quick hands.

  ‘All right,’ said Harriet. ‘I’ll do it.’

  It was agreed. Elizabeth and Robert would go to Harriet’s studio the next day.

  When Robert and Elizabeth arrived at the address on the Via della Fontanella that Harriet had given them, nobody was there. Robert knocked, and when there was no reply, he pushed the door.

  Inside the studio, they wandered between works in progress and finished pieces: a naked youth, all muscle and sinew, bending to hold back a dog; another, thrusting his groin forward as two enormous, topless nymphs slid robes off his shoulders. There was a model, still in the clay, of a young girl kissing a cherub. Her breasts were exposed and the crease between her thighs sharply cut. Elizabeth, embarrassed, turned to the canvases and books of loose papers that were stacked against the walls, and began to leaf through. In some there were sketches of places around the city that were instantly familiar – the ruins of the forum, Trajan’s column – but mostly she found pictures of statues and models for statues, a catalogue of arms and thighs and necks and nipples and unabashed, flaccid penises. She slid the pages back between the cardboard covers.

  They were in a cathedral of nudity, of bulging stone bodies, and when they came across a Venus, breasts displayed above a useless cloth that was draped over her arm and hid nothing at all, there was an awkwardness between them. The statue was dyed somehow, tinted in pink, fleshy hues that made the figure seem ready to blink, to pick up her robe and rearrange it over her shoulders to cover herself, and close her red lips around the apple she held in her left hand. The other statues, in their bare whiteness, seemed inert by comparison.

  ‘I don’t know where to look,’ Elizabeth said, and Robert, who seemed relieved that the silence was broken, said, ‘I would focus on the face, but even that seems a little indecent.’ Elizabeth stared at the statue’s expression: defiantly blank, a little bored.

  ‘I wouldn’t have imagined this from Harriet,’ Elizabeth said, and at that moment Harriet herself put her head around a door at the back of the room.

  ‘Oh, there you are.’

  ‘Is this not where we are supposed to be?’ asked Elizabeth, turning her attention at once to a bust of Helen of Troy, portraying only an elegant head and long neck, cut off neatly above the breasts.

  ‘I’m through here,’ said Harriet. ‘This isn’t my studio. It’s Mr Gibson’s.’

  Harriet’s room, at the back of Mr Gibson’s studio, was a dusty, high-ceilinged cave. Marble chips crunched underfoot as they crossed the floor, in between Harriet’s efforts at busts. The table tops, the clay models, everything was coated in a thick white powder. Robert ran his finger along a surface, and ground the dust between his fingers.

  ‘Yes, sorry,’ said Harriet. ‘It’s grimy in here. I’ve been experimenting with a new technique for polishing marble, but so far have only succeeded in making a tremendous mess.’

  ‘It’s a lovely room, Hattie,’ said Elizabeth, turning to look at two female heads in marble: a serpent-haired Medusa and a modest, retiring Daphne.

  ‘I’m no Mr Gibson, I know,’ she said, patting the busts casually, as though they were dogs. ‘This is just the beginning,’ she said. ‘I was very fond of my Medusa, until Mr Story came by and told me my snakes look like eels.’

  ‘They don’t look like eels,’ said Elizabeth at once, but Harriet laughed.

  ‘One day I’ll make great women with real power. They will make you tremble just to look at them. But while I’m still learning I must satisfy myself with disembodiment. I am hard at work putting together the pieces of the human body, bit by bit. Head, neck, shoulders. Look here, this is a cast of my own foot, crooked toes and all. It’s like a surgeon’s theatre in here, these days. But soon I’ll make a full woman and everybody will be embarrassed by her, as they are by Mr Gibson’s.’

  ‘Mr Gibson’s statues are …’ Robert paused, ‘very detailed.’

  ‘So will mine be,’ said Harriet, sitting down heavily on a stool, ‘so let’s begin.’ On the worktop in front of her, she had already mixed the wet plaster, and laid out the bandages.

  First was the grease, lewd and frictionless, which Harriet slathered on Elizabeth’s right hand. Elizabeth flinched. It was cold in the studio, and the wet fat was a shock to her skin. Then, as Harriet glided her fingers across Elizabeth’s palm, knuckles and joints, muttering, crossly, ‘Don’t be so tense,’ she relaxed and gave up her hand to Hattie’s rubbing.

  ‘Now hold it up,’ said Harriet. ‘Keep it away from your clothes.’

  Elizabeth sat awkwardly, arm aloft, as Harriet took Robert’s hand and began the process again, scooping grease out of the tin and smearing it
over the broad, bony back of his hand. She rubbed it all over his skin and wrist, and it was mesmerizing to watch, how quickly she worked, how easily her fingers moved over the shapes of Robert’s body.

  When the time came to take Robert’s hand in hers, Elizabeth blushed. Her hand, coated in fat, felt rubbery and odd. When Robert’s touched her, their palms slid against each other, their fingers interlaced and then slithered out of the grip. Harriet laughed and took hold of their wrists and arranged them as she wanted: Robert’s large hand supporting Elizabeth’s, which was bent just enough to expose bones and veins running along the back. Robert caught Elizabeth’s eye, and she swallowed.

  ‘There,’ said Hattie, then, to Robert, ‘but hold her harder. Hold her as though she were slipping away.’ She began to apply the plaster in cold, wet strips, working over and around their grip, so gently and tenderly it seemed to Elizabeth that she was being swaddled.

  Afterwards they sat in a strange silence, waiting for the cast to harden, Robert and Elizabeth stuck together, hand in hand, and Harriet beside them, reaching out occasionally to tap the plaster.

  Harriet looked towards the empty fireplace and sighed. ‘I’m sorry. I promised a fire but the girl didn’t light it. I don’t know why.’

  Elizabeth shook her head, and even this movement made her aware of the solidifying grip of the cast on her hand. ‘I’m not cold.’

  ‘It will take longer to set,’ said Harriet.

  Inside the cast, Robert’s hand twitched against Elizabeth’s.

  ‘We don’t mind,’ Elizabeth said, and when the time came for Hattie to get the knife and cautiously, gingerly, cut through the plaster right up to the surface of the skin, it felt too soon, as though she was sawing through something still underway, as though their hand-holding had only just begun.

  2013

  Body Study

  Here’s how it goes: the day before the study, I eat a prescribed diet that contains no protein, a lot of vegetables, and, oddly, a two-finger Kit-Kat; dinner is half a cucumber and a head of lettuce. The next morning, I present myself to a research lab adjoining King’s College Hospital in Denmark Hill. On the walk from the bus stop, I pass two cafes, where people in the windows are nursing mugs and looking satisfied.

  The lab itself, when I reach it, smells disconcertingly of coffee. While I wait to be seen, I distract myself from caffeine cravings by reading the posters on the waiting-room walls: ‘Are you a twin or do you know a twin? Join 13,000 other identical and non-identical twins aged 16 and above already registered with TwinsUK’; ‘Are you a WORRIER? We are looking for people aged 18–65 who tend to worry a lot about different topics, have normal or corrected-to-normal vision or hearing and are fluent in English’.

  We would like to invite you to take part in a research study with human subjects. This study is being conducted for a Ph.D. in Psychology degree. You should only participate if you want to. Please take time to read the following information carefully. Talk to others about the study if you wish.

  This study is investigating the effects of temporarily decreasing your brain’s dopamine activity on the way you feel about your body. The research involves reducing the availability of certain amino acids for entry into your brain. On the day of the study, you will ingest an amino acid drink that is selectively lacking in dopamine’s precursors, which will cause a short-term reduction in your brain’s dopamine activity.

  Danielle, the Ph.D. student whose study this is, introduces herself in a soothing voice, as though she’s worried I might have second thoughts and make a run for it. She escorts me into the main hospital building to have a blood sample taken, past patients being wheeled along on trolleys or in chairs, and an elderly man who stands motionless, looking blankly at a wall. She touches me on the arm occasionally to check I’m all right, and though I am perfectly well, in the echoey, sanitized hospital, I start to feel a bit pathetic, as though I really am ill.

  As the technician sticks a needle in my arm and the syringe turns dark red, I remind myself why I am here, why I am doing this. With my free arm, I get out my phone and text Max, ‘I am literally bleeding for you,’ to which he responds, at once, ‘You are a hero of our time,’ and then, moments later, ‘Take care. Love you. Don’t do anything you don’t want to.’ It feels more awkward than I thought it would, being a test subject, giving up blood and data in exchange for money.

  ‘What do you do?’ Danielle asks, as we walk back towards the lab.

  ‘I’m doing my Ph.D.,’ I say.

  ‘What in?’

  ‘English Literature.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  I am feeling a bit woozy after the blood being taken, and without coffee. The words that come out of my mouth are, ‘Dead people.’

  Danielle smiles politely.

  ‘I mean,’ I say, ‘Victorians. British and American writers and artists who lived in Rome in the middle of the nineteenth century. I just meant, they are dead, they aren’t around to give blood and tell me what they’re feeling.’

  Danielle nods, but she is flipping through the papers in her folder as we walk and making little notes in biro. ‘That’s tough,’ she says.

  I’ve read through the study information, but I don’t yet have a clear idea of how I’ll be spending my day. The only thing I know is that there will be a phase, early on, called, ominously, ‘drink ingestion’.

  ‘Some people find the amino acid a bit tricky to get down,’ Danielle says, filling a large plastic cup with water from the cooler. ‘And some people can’t keep it down. The best way to do it, I’ve found, is very slowly, through a straw. I’ll leave you to it. Most people manage to get through the whole thing in about an hour.’

  She sets the cup down on the table in front of me. Over it, she opens and empties large capsules, as though she is cracking eggs into cake mix. The powder from the pills doesn’t dissolve in the water, but instead froths up and gives off a plastic-y, chemical smell. It looks like the foam left on tidelines of polluted beaches. She gets a straw and dunks it into the mixture, but it floats up to the top with the foam, and lies at an awkward angle across the top.

  ‘Fill out the questionnaire,’ Danielle says, patting a clipboard, ‘and then do the drink, and I’ll be back in an hour.’

  In this booklet you will find statements people might use to describe their attitudes, opinions, interests, and other personal feelings. For each of the following questions, circle the number that best describes the way you usually or generally act or feel.

  1 = Definitely false, 3 = Neither true nor false, or equally true or false, 5 = Definitely true.

  I feel so connected to nature, everything is part of one living process.

  1 2 3 4 5

  When I meet a group of strangers, I am more shy than others.

  1 2 3 4 5

  I am more sentimental than most people.

  1 2 3 4 5

  I think that most things that are called miracles are just chance.

  1 2 3 4 5

  When someone hurts me in any way, I try to get even.

  1 2 3 4 5

  My actions are determined largely by influences outside my control.

  1 2 3 4 5

  I think I am a special person with a special purpose.

  1 2 3 4 5

  Each day I take another step toward my goals.

  1 2 3 4 5

  Please circle the number four, this is a validity item.

  1 2 3 4 5

  I am a very ambitious person.

  1 2 3 4 5

  The next page is full of silhouettes of women in rows of ten. They begin narrow on the left-hand side and get gradually wider towards the right, like a ‘march of progress’ illustration charting weight gain instead of evolution. ‘Please mark the silhouette that best represents your body shape,’ the first line says, and I draw a cross under woman number five. Line two: ‘Please mark how you wish to look’; I dither and then choose one slightly to the left of my first pick. Line three: ‘Which is the most attr
active silhouette?’ I pick the same one as on the line above. Then, on the last line: ‘Which is the most attractive silhouette to the opposite sex?’ I think about Max, and riding a wave of smugness, revert to silhouette number five. Then, in a rush and before I can overthink it, I pick up the plastic cup of chemical froth, and down it.

  I am suppressing the urge to vomit by gritting my teeth and clenching my throat, and Danielle is affixing sensors to my face. She sticks one just below my left eye, and another just above it, and a third on my neck. If I move too much, the wires tug on my skin, so I am sitting as still as I can. With a flourish, as though she is adding the finishing touches to some kind of art installation, she tucks headphones into my ears.

  ‘I’m going to show you a series of images, and I want you to note down how interested you feel in them, OK?’

  ‘Interested?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, and doesn’t offer further explanation. ‘The sensors on your face are measuring your blinking, which is a startle response. Periodically throughout the next thirty minutes, you will be startled with a tone.’

  I’m about to ask what she means by ‘startled with a tone’ when a shrill beep sounds in my ears, and I jump so hard the sensor wires pull taut.

  ‘Like that,’ Danielle says. ‘It’s a control measure.’

  The images flashing up on the screen belong to four different categories: fat people, thin people, exercise equipment, and furniture. An obese man struggling to climb some stairs is followed by a rocking chair, and then a treadmill, and then a hat stand, and then an emaciated teenager being measured by a doctor, and then a laundry basket. For each image, I note down my interest out of ten, finding nearly every one to be moderately interesting, in the six to seven range. A very attractive wardrobe gets an eight. Overweight woman in a leotard? Six. Set of dumbbells? Five. Sporadically the tone blares in my ears. I am painfully aware that I am blinking far more throughout this test than I would if I didn’t have sensors stuck to my face.