Read Online In Search of Mary by Bee Rowlatt - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Bee Rowlatt
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should’ve seen it coming.” But he didn’t. “I was totally gutted. I’m gradually getting back on my feet, after six years.”
He says he still can’t believe that she’s gone. It’s hard to know what to say to a heartbroken sea captain. I want to tellhim about Wollstonecraft’s heartbreak, only it doesn’t seem helpful. Just then Gunnar the dark horse unexpectedly joins in, with some tales of his own. A disastrous love affair, a new romance when he least expected it; love at first sight with a wonderful woman. They now have two young children. “But I’m too old for this; I had a crisis when I was fifty-five that I was too old to be doing this.”
A tender moment between a salty sea dog and an introverted historian, afloat at sea, is the last thing I’d expected. I’m managing with some difficulty to contain my regular exclamations on the completely fantastic, amazing brilliance of the sea, the sky, the jellyfish, the boat, the cinnamon buns. I sit in unusual silence, the map and the book propped on my knees, while they unburden their hearts.
Wollstonecraft praises Norwegian pilots as being the best in the world. And they certainly had to be:
I soon perceived that an experienced mariner was necessary to guide us, for we were continually obliged to tack about to avoid the rocks – which, scarcely reaching to the surface of the water, could only be discovered by the breaking of the waves over them.
The pilots lived in small houses dotting the islands, and earned a living by guiding passing vessels through the rocks and round the shores. It was a competitive business: pilots would all rush out to an approaching ship, and the first one to get there would fling himself aboard, thereby claiming the reward of steering it around. His abandoned boat would then be brought backin, sometimes by his children. It wasn’t uncommon for pilots to die attempting to throw themselves on board.
Human frailty in the face of these fierce, wild shores affects Wollstonecraft deeply, but it’s not only herself she pities. She begins to spin out a thread of thought revealing her love for humanity, and her curious mind at its best. Wollstonecraft is inspired to imagine a future, a couple of million years hence, when earth would be
so completely peopled as to render it necessary to inhabit every spot – yes: these bleak shores. Imagination went still farther, and pictured the state of man when the earth could no longer support him. Where was he to fly from universal famine? Do not smile: I really became distressed for these fellow creatures, yet unborn.
It’s not for another few years that the man whose name has become shorthand for over-population, Thomas Robert Malthus, visits this part of the world. In 1799 he visits with the travel writer Edward Daniel Clarke, who, as it happens, is reading
Letters from Norway
. Around the same time, Malthus publishes his famous book,
An Essay on the Principle of Population
. In it, he argues that continued population growth will lead to poverty and famine. Once again, our gal Wolly is ahead of the curve.
She hopes to press onwards to Risør, but her journey is broken sooner than she expects. Darkness and bad weather force them ashore at a tiny place called Portør. “It is indeed a corner of the world,” she writes. And it’s here that we plan to makeour first stop of the day. I think back to reading about Portør at home, and how long it took me to find it on the map. It is a miniscule coastal fleck, dwarfed even by the letters of its own name. Mick jumps to his feet as we approach. Passing a number of islands, through a tiny channel into a natural harbour, we find the modest cluster of wooden houses that is Portør.
The miracle of approaching land on a boat is how the world gradually returns itself to you. The land comes into focus, revealing itself bit by bit until suddenly there you are, about to leave the floating existence and become solid, normal again. It’s dull to be
He says he still can’t believe that she’s gone. It’s hard to know what to say to a heartbroken sea captain. I want to tellhim about Wollstonecraft’s heartbreak, only it doesn’t seem helpful. Just then Gunnar the dark horse unexpectedly joins in, with some tales of his own. A disastrous love affair, a new romance when he least expected it; love at first sight with a wonderful woman. They now have two young children. “But I’m too old for this; I had a crisis when I was fifty-five that I was too old to be doing this.”
A tender moment between a salty sea dog and an introverted historian, afloat at sea, is the last thing I’d expected. I’m managing with some difficulty to contain my regular exclamations on the completely fantastic, amazing brilliance of the sea, the sky, the jellyfish, the boat, the cinnamon buns. I sit in unusual silence, the map and the book propped on my knees, while they unburden their hearts.
Wollstonecraft praises Norwegian pilots as being the best in the world. And they certainly had to be:
I soon perceived that an experienced mariner was necessary to guide us, for we were continually obliged to tack about to avoid the rocks – which, scarcely reaching to the surface of the water, could only be discovered by the breaking of the waves over them.
The pilots lived in small houses dotting the islands, and earned a living by guiding passing vessels through the rocks and round the shores. It was a competitive business: pilots would all rush out to an approaching ship, and the first one to get there would fling himself aboard, thereby claiming the reward of steering it around. His abandoned boat would then be brought backin, sometimes by his children. It wasn’t uncommon for pilots to die attempting to throw themselves on board.
Human frailty in the face of these fierce, wild shores affects Wollstonecraft deeply, but it’s not only herself she pities. She begins to spin out a thread of thought revealing her love for humanity, and her curious mind at its best. Wollstonecraft is inspired to imagine a future, a couple of million years hence, when earth would be
so completely peopled as to render it necessary to inhabit every spot – yes: these bleak shores. Imagination went still farther, and pictured the state of man when the earth could no longer support him. Where was he to fly from universal famine? Do not smile: I really became distressed for these fellow creatures, yet unborn.
It’s not for another few years that the man whose name has become shorthand for over-population, Thomas Robert Malthus, visits this part of the world. In 1799 he visits with the travel writer Edward Daniel Clarke, who, as it happens, is reading
Letters from Norway
. Around the same time, Malthus publishes his famous book,
An Essay on the Principle of Population
. In it, he argues that continued population growth will lead to poverty and famine. Once again, our gal Wolly is ahead of the curve.
She hopes to press onwards to Risør, but her journey is broken sooner than she expects. Darkness and bad weather force them ashore at a tiny place called Portør. “It is indeed a corner of the world,” she writes. And it’s here that we plan to makeour first stop of the day. I think back to reading about Portør at home, and how long it took me to find it on the map. It is a miniscule coastal fleck, dwarfed even by the letters of its own name. Mick jumps to his feet as we approach. Passing a number of islands, through a tiny channel into a natural harbour, we find the modest cluster of wooden houses that is Portør.
The miracle of approaching land on a boat is how the world gradually returns itself to you. The land comes into focus, revealing itself bit by bit until suddenly there you are, about to leave the floating existence and become solid, normal again. It’s dull to be
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