“First,” she said, “I shall tell you that I have been increasingly disappointed in you—in your care of yourself, both physically and mentally. Where once you showed yourself to be a charming and clever girl, now you display a kind of dullness and lack of interest in your studies. Deschartres tells me your work is careless and rarely completed; when he asks questions of you, your response is a yawn. You seem unconcerned about becoming attractive, as you could be, if you tried. Your hands are ill cared for, and your gait is clumsy—in part because you persist in wearing peasants’ shoes that deform your feet. Your complexion is too dark because you will not stay out of the sun; day after day you come home filthy as a potato digger. You seem uninterested in or unable to learn any social graces; you either speak not at all, as though you are above everyone around you, or you chatter on endlessly, boring everyone and leaving no room for the comments and observations of anyone else. I am exhausted by having to constantly tell you to take your elbows off the table, to eat slowly, to cut your meat into smaller pieces, to arrange your silverware properly to signal to the servants that you have finished your meal. You should by now know how to engage in lively and pleasant conversation, rather than sit silent or, worse, sit staring fixedly at nothing, as though you had half a brain. All of this should be second nature by now! I do believe your heart is good, but you must put time and effort into developing your mind in order to be a person of any worth at all.
“I have given up thinking I am the one who can help you achieve what I believe you are capable of. Therefore, in January, you will go to Paris, to the convent of the Dames Augustines Anglaises. It is a school run by the English, comparable to Sacré-Coeur or Abbaye-aux-Bois. Their students are well taught, and the tutors of the social graces there are renowned. Perhaps they can offer you something I cannot; I pray they can persuade you to use yourself and your gifts in a way that is appropriate.”
The community of English Augustines was the only surviving convent of its age, having been established in Paris at the time of Cromwell, and its housing had come through various revolutions without suffering much damage. In fact, during the 1793–94 uprising, the so-called Terror, which had preceded my grandmother’s move to Nohant, both she and my mother had coincidentally spent time behind its protective walls. I knew that the school’s reputation was excellent. But all I could think of was one thing.
I looked happily into my grandmother’s face to say, “I shall see my mother again!”
My grandmother nodded and spoke bitterly: “Yes. You will see your mother again. And then you will be separated from us both.”
It grew quiet, each of us caught up, I supposed, with our respective ideas about what my meeting with my mother might bring. I was sure she would immediately take me to live with her, at last.
January 1818
COUVENT DES AUGUSTINES ANGLAISES
RUE DES FOSSÉS-SAINT-VICTOR
PARIS
On the day after my arrival in the convent, my mother came to see me. I stood before her, grinning foolishly, waiting for her to tell me to gather my things and come home with her. Instead, she said, rather impatiently, “So, Aurore, now you are here. I suppose it’s for the best, though I know you will earnestly be taught ridiculous things by bloodless women who cannot decide for themselves how to dress, much less how to think. Mind you keep your wits about you. This is all part of your grandmother’s plan for how to properly educate you. You must endure it for a greater good; you must become in one way or another able to manage the riches you will inherit.”
I stared at her. “You are not taking me to live with you?”
She raised her eyes heavenward. “Surely you did not expect that. I agreed with your grandmother that you should be here and, in fact, have also agreed to her request not to take you out for visits, even during vacations. I believe she is right in saying it would interfere with your studies and your character development.”
My voice grew small in a way that I detested. “But, Maman, you said…I thought—”
Her entire upper torso jerked with impatience. “What did you think? That I would assume care for you when I have all I can do to take care of Caroline and myself?”
“But—”
“Be strong, Aurore. Pay attention to your lessons. And do as they ask of you.” She kissed me and turned to go.
I watched her walk away. And in that moment I saw clearly what I had been unable or unwilling to see before: I would never get what I needed from her.
Rather than succumb to the despair I felt mounting in me, I shifted perspective. I turned and walked quickly back into the place I had thought I would be leaving that day. My head was crowded with thoughts. I was to live cloistered in this stone village? Enchanting! I was not to see the people of Nohant, even the villagers of whom I had become so fond? A good opportunity to meet others, to start afresh! I was no longer to see the rolling hills and picturesque views of the countryside? Then I was also rid of Deschartres’s galumphing along beside me on my walks and lecturing me to pay attention to things I did not feel were important. Who cared about boundaries and acreage and ownership and which particular bovine disease was of concern at the moment?
Yes, I was here now. And so I would be here now.
Here turned out to be a place behind tall iron gates that shaped my outlook and being in fundamental and irrevocable ways. When children lie on their backs to regard the sky for a long enough period of time, they become the sky. Such was my experience there.
—
AS A ROMANTIC, I found the convent a good place to be. It offered solitude and quiet, the scent of incense, candlelight illuminating heads bowed in devotion over rosaries, and the echo of chanting at matins and vespers. Everywhere you looked there were crucifixes that reminded you of a story at once beautiful, tragic, and inspiring.
We were cloistered in a stone labyrinth made up of several buildings, chapels, and courtyards. There was an air of mystery and intrigue to the parts that were hundreds of years old and had passageways that led nowhere. I was fascinated by the fact that the ancient remains of English Catholics rested beneath the flagstone walkways, and I found elegant the epitaphs on the tombs, as well as the religious axioms carved into the walls.
All of the nuns and two-thirds of the students were English, Scottish, or Irish, and most of the girls came from aristocratic backgrounds. There were tenants living on the grounds as well, private citizens who had sought refuge from the world; they lived alongside the staff and students.
English was the language spoken, and all the art and furniture was English, too. I began my habit of drinking tea here, and of speaking English much of the time, even sometimes dreaming in it.
By virtue of the reading I had done under my grandmother’s tutelage, I was advanced enough to enter the upper class. But because I could not yet speak a word of English, I was put in the lower class, made up of around thirty girls from ages six to fourteen.
I was relieved. I knew myself to be intelligent enough, but I had a great deal of ignorance about many of the subjects my grandmother believed I had mastered. In history and philosophy, I understood general concepts but was largely unaware of the sequence of events. I had not yet learned the tenets of the faith to which I claimed membership.
It was peaceful in that place where a heavy door at the end of the hall groaned shut every evening and was locked with a long iron key. That event signaled the end of the day as reliably as the setting of the sun. A small lamp burned all night in the cloisters, and it always seemed to signify that a watchful presence was among us. I was happy to be far from the contentious relationships I had with my mother and my grandmother, far from life as I had known it: both at Nohant and in my grandmother’s apartment in Paris. I did not miss her afternoon tête-a-têtes with her old-woman friends, they with their fluttering hankies and violet candies. I grew calm there.
But this calm did not come instantly. I had first to pass through my period of purposeful rebellion, when I became a member of a gr
oup called the Devils.
—
ON MY FIRST DAY OF CATECHISM, which was an hour-long class taught by a nun called Mother Alippe, I was asked, in a stultifying manner (for who could fail to know the answer to this most basic of questions?), what happened to babies who were not baptized before death. I did not know about limbo at that point, and so I answered quite naturally with what I thought the only answer could be: those souls were held tenderly in God’s bosom. A stunned silence fell in the classroom. Mother Alippe crossed her arms tightly over her bosom. “Where are those unfortunate souls?” she asked, and I sat silent until the girl behind me whispered, “Limbo.” That was what she said but not what I heard. “In Olympia?” I answered. The class erupted into laughter, and I couldn’t help joining in.
Mother Alippe rose up to her full height, her face full of fury, but I was able to convince her that it was an honest mistake, and so she administered a mild punishment: make the sign of the cross in order to calm myself and return to a serious state of mind. This I did, in the way I had been taught, which I soon learned was incorrect: I touched my right shoulder before the left. Mother Alippe sighed and called me a pagan.
This may have been humiliating, but it was nothing compared to what all of us girls endured at the hands of our lay teacher for the rest of the day. That teacher, Mademoiselle D., was a fat and frankly ugly woman with a nearly lipless mouth and soiled petticoats. She acted the saint in front of the nuns, but to us girls she was a cruel taskmaster who delighted in delivering scoldings and administering punishments such as making us kiss the ground. This was a standard punishment at the convent, but the nuns would let us get away with cheating and kissing our hands rather than dirt. Mademoiselle D., on the other hand, all but pressed her boot onto our necks. She was one of those for whom the natural gaiety of childhood is an irritant, one who derived great pleasure from seeing others suffer as penance for her own grievances. She took an instant dislike to me, and the sentiment was returned. I fell in with the Devils because of their boldness and their idea that they belonged first and foremost to themselves, but also because they were unbowed by Mademoiselle D.
There were two other groups in the lower form: the Sages, who tried to be good in all ways, and the Beasts, who kept their own counsel and did not align themselves with anyone. The Devils were my clear choice. They broke rules as a matter of course, shrugging off any punishment. In fact, they often wryly despaired of the lack of creativity shown in attempts to discipline them; and if the teachers had listened to what the Devils discussed among themselves as being worthy retribution, they might well have employed the girls’ methods and gotten better results.
Another reason I fit well with the Devils was the fact that I did not fear but, rather, admired their leader, whom everyone else tiptoed around. Her name was Mary Gillibrand, but she was nicknamed “Boy” for her loud voice and physical strength. My first exposure to her came by way of stories about her that neared mythology. By the time we met in person in Mother Alippe’s classroom, I was expecting a gargantuan presence who breathed fire. Instead, I came face-to-face with a freckle-faced eleven-year-old girl. Mary’s way of introducing herself was to say to me, “Ah, so here we have Aurore Du-pain! Dawn bread! I salute you, you who calls Limbo ‘Olympia,’ you who will no doubt serve to entertain us all!”
There ensued great laughter, and I was part of it. Mary saw that I was not vain and was unbothered by her attack, and this interested her. She continued to make fun of me, and I continued to enjoy it as much as the other girls. Finally, Mary thwacked me on the shoulder, a blow powerful enough to rock me back on my heels. Straight-faced, I gave one back to her.
“Well, then,” she said, smiling, mindlessly rubbing her injury. “Shall we go for a walk, you and I?”
“When?”
“Now!”
“But we have class.”
Mother Alippe had just arrived with her pile of books and papers. With her back to us, she began arranging them on her desk.
“Watch!” Mary whispered, and as others bustled to their seats, she walked confidently out of the room as though she were invisible. I followed, biting my lip, holding my breath.
We sat down on a bench in a deserted cloister, and she put her face close to mine. “So you’re a Devil, eh?”
“I want to be.”
“Then you are; I can see you have the stuff. There were three of us; now there are four, a good round number. And now that I know your intentions, let us go back to class. No reason to waste our efforts on Mother Alippe, who is all right with me. But tonight, during evening recreation with Fatcheeks Mademoiselle D., we’ll sneak off and not return until bedtime prayers.”
“What happens if we are caught?”
Mary shrugged. “Most of the time she doesn’t notice. If she does, you might be made to wear a nightcap all the next day, that’s all. I find it quite fashionable, and on a cold day, it’s of great comfort.”
“Does she ever strike you?”
“She doesn’t dare. She doesn’t dare strike any of us.”
I did join the Devils in their adventure that night and the nights following, for what turned out to be marvelous expeditions along rarely used corridors, dimly lit or not lit at all. We tried to pry open locked doors with a table knife, we went up and down stairs that led to blank walls, and we once tried to dig through a wall using our fingernails—someone was sure she had heard faint wailing behind it. We had stubs of candles we’d stolen to light our way in the darkest places. We made up a mission: we were in search of a young woman who had been imprisoned in the convent and now languished in chains, waiting for the one who might find her.
—
WINTER AT THE CONVENT was difficult for me. I had always fared better in the country at Nohant; the yellow air in Paris never failed to make me sickly. Add to that the severe cold we had the first year I was there, and it made for a miserable specimen who lay in her cot at night with her teeth chattering like castanets, looking up in the dimness at the low ceiling of the ugly room she shared with about thirty other girls. We had a stove, but it seemed as if its function was to smoke and shimmy rather than provide any significant warmth.
After several months I became quite lively and was known by the nickname “Madcap.” I began to write both prose and poetry, for fun at first—to amuse and entertain my classmates and my teachers. Later, I wrote more seriously, even re-creating a play I had read at Nohant.
—
IN APRIL 1819 I moved from the dormitory to my own private cell at the convent. It measured ten feet long, and its width was six feet. I could touch its sloping ceiling as I lay in my bed, and it gave me a child’s thrill to do so. One couldn’t open the door without bumping it into the chest of drawers, or close the door without pressing oneself into the window’s embrasure. Icicles formed from my leaky ceiling in the winter, and in summer I could scarcely breathe for the closeness in the air. But I loved it.
In addition to my bed, I had a wicker chair, an old rug made only more beautiful to me by its faded pastels, and my grandmother’s little Louis XV harp, which seemed to anoint the space with a kind of grace and grandeur. The four-paned window did not offer a lovely view: when I looked down, I saw a drainpipe. But if I looked up, I could see parts of Paris.
The church bell was near my cell, and it took some time to get used to its tolling, but I came to love that sound. Rather than keep me from sleep, it lulled me into it. And then I would be awakened by the bells ringing matins, and by the chanting of the nuns, and by the songbirds, who always seemed to welcome the promise of a new day.
It had been a long time since I had sat alone in contemplation. Living in close proximity to the other girls offered many pleasures and comforts, not least among them the giggling fits that young women are prone to at the slightest provocation. But I paid a price as well: the constant presence of others meant that I could not have the kind of solitude my nature required.
Now I could lie in my bed at night and speak aloud to
various people: my long dead father, whose warm hand I could still feel holding mine; my fickle mother, whom I still loved; and my grandmother, who, despite my complaints, I knew loved me. I spoke to Corambe, and I said prayers to the Virgin Mary in English—not only to attempt to master the language but to enjoy the lyricism of the words.
Then, when I was fifteen years old, it happened that I suddenly became very religious.
One evening, I was looking out the window of my cell, and I saw one of the tenants of the convent walking slowly toward the chapel. She was old and bent over, and I watched with a kind of detached pity as she made her way to say her evening prayers with great difficulty. What drew people to such faith? How, lacking any evidence, could they so wholeheartedly accept the precepts handed to them as irrefutable truth? I decided to follow the old woman and take note of all that she did.
By the time I arrived in the chapel, the old woman was nowhere to be seen. There were the dim forms of a few nuns and tenants kneeling in prayer, but gradually they all left. The last to go was a nun who came to the altar and prostrated herself before she went out. All the nuns did this when they came to the altar; I had seen it many times and was always faintly amused by it. It seemed as though they had been shot down from where they had been flying about in the air.
But this time, I was profoundly moved by the gesture, by the wholehearted willingness to submit to such humiliation. And, in fact, I saw it now less as humiliation than as a gesture that one was privileged to feel compelled to make.
We students were not allowed to enter the chapel without permission at that hour, and in any case, the chapel would soon close. But I stayed there anyway. I moved into one of the polished wooden pews at the front of the chapel and sat very still.
It had grown dark inside; but the silver sanctuary light burned with a soft glow. I could make out the candles on the altar and the gold of the tabernacle, a bit of the whitewashed walls around me. Outside, the stars hung in their places in the sky, and I had the sense that I was being watched by them.