distaste for it in later years.
They reached the northern port late one evening and a banquet was held in their honour; they were toasted past midnight, leaving a scant handful of hours together before he was to depart at four in the morning. Masses of birds crowded the island across the bay from the small city; their cries, too alien, too early, woke them to the pale sun. She would return to England the next week, and he was assured she would be well looked after. How long it had been since they had sat at his brother’s table; and how many months she would sit there without him.
Parting is the Mackley romance. Parting, waiting, and romantic loss. Edward and Emily sailed out for the north on their honeymoon; their first and only months together were a journey to the place of their leave-taking. Julia’s Arctic is a dream of brilliant distance —
Everything is equidistant; everything is as far from me as he is far from me, I am heedless, I reach out from my centre towards him at the top of the world…
Waiting, serenely, with a pale ache. Desire over great distances: this is the romance of the story, Emily’s legacy. Emily waiting, waiting, the sea growing wider and hardening to ice as she stretched out towards him, watching him grow distant.
Who is this giant, after all? A man who set out for glory and failed to find it. A man who loved his wife, but left her for something greater; had he not been
handsome, he might have passed quite unnoticed. Had she not waited so faithfully, as if there could be no man on earth to replace him — this man who wasn’t made for earth at all, but for a place beyond its edge. Had she not made of him a hero.
He is little known, it’s true, beyond the family’s circle. The memories and treasures that fill the house are, to the visitor, little more than curios for the curious, scraps for specialists. His name appears in the records of the Royal Geographical Society three times: with Godspeed and accolades upon his departure; with hope, that he will be found; with regret, when he is, years after hope is gone. His diaries remain unpublished. He might have been the century’s first champion, reaching the pinnacle as the world turned under him; as it is he is only, to most, a vestige of Victoriana. Simon hadn’t heard of him, until he learned that Freely’s butterflies still hung in his brother’s house.
Still, his dark eyes in the portrait downstairs are fixed on greatness. They see to the top of the world. There is something about him that won’t relinquish, that cannot dim.
PART II
Look: here is Edward in his cabin as they sail out of Tromsø, the first Arctic city and their last port of call before Vardø and parting. The cabin is already the cosy, cramped nest of a bachelor. The shelves just visible at the top of the picture are stuffed with socks, sealskins, waterproofs; the bed is a neat nook made up with three blankets; Edward himself sits at a chair at his small desk, in a pose of easy authority, his diary open before him, smoking one of several pipes that hang on the wall. No open flames allowed below decks — except in the galley and in the captain’s cabin.
On a shelf above the bed, we can make out a slim collection of John Donne’s poems, slipped alongside the handful of books of reference (the ship’s main library is kept in the saloon). There are several volumes of the Dictionary of National Biography , including Vol. 35 (MacCarwell-Maltby). It will never be known if Edward discovered, between Brigadier William Mackintosh of Borlum and Charles Macklin, the actor, the entry his playful wife tacked in, describing the life of the eminent explorer and exemplary husband Edward Mackley — the tale she wrote for him, telling how he reached the Pole and revived England’s pride and passion; his brilliant, tall sons and beautiful tawny daughters, brilliant also: the Mackleys, who shaped the new century. But if Emily knew him at all, she was surely
They reached the northern port late one evening and a banquet was held in their honour; they were toasted past midnight, leaving a scant handful of hours together before he was to depart at four in the morning. Masses of birds crowded the island across the bay from the small city; their cries, too alien, too early, woke them to the pale sun. She would return to England the next week, and he was assured she would be well looked after. How long it had been since they had sat at his brother’s table; and how many months she would sit there without him.
Parting is the Mackley romance. Parting, waiting, and romantic loss. Edward and Emily sailed out for the north on their honeymoon; their first and only months together were a journey to the place of their leave-taking. Julia’s Arctic is a dream of brilliant distance —
Everything is equidistant; everything is as far from me as he is far from me, I am heedless, I reach out from my centre towards him at the top of the world…
Waiting, serenely, with a pale ache. Desire over great distances: this is the romance of the story, Emily’s legacy. Emily waiting, waiting, the sea growing wider and hardening to ice as she stretched out towards him, watching him grow distant.
Who is this giant, after all? A man who set out for glory and failed to find it. A man who loved his wife, but left her for something greater; had he not been
handsome, he might have passed quite unnoticed. Had she not waited so faithfully, as if there could be no man on earth to replace him — this man who wasn’t made for earth at all, but for a place beyond its edge. Had she not made of him a hero.
He is little known, it’s true, beyond the family’s circle. The memories and treasures that fill the house are, to the visitor, little more than curios for the curious, scraps for specialists. His name appears in the records of the Royal Geographical Society three times: with Godspeed and accolades upon his departure; with hope, that he will be found; with regret, when he is, years after hope is gone. His diaries remain unpublished. He might have been the century’s first champion, reaching the pinnacle as the world turned under him; as it is he is only, to most, a vestige of Victoriana. Simon hadn’t heard of him, until he learned that Freely’s butterflies still hung in his brother’s house.
Still, his dark eyes in the portrait downstairs are fixed on greatness. They see to the top of the world. There is something about him that won’t relinquish, that cannot dim.
PART II
Look: here is Edward in his cabin as they sail out of Tromsø, the first Arctic city and their last port of call before Vardø and parting. The cabin is already the cosy, cramped nest of a bachelor. The shelves just visible at the top of the picture are stuffed with socks, sealskins, waterproofs; the bed is a neat nook made up with three blankets; Edward himself sits at a chair at his small desk, in a pose of easy authority, his diary open before him, smoking one of several pipes that hang on the wall. No open flames allowed below decks — except in the galley and in the captain’s cabin.
On a shelf above the bed, we can make out a slim collection of John Donne’s poems, slipped alongside the handful of books of reference (the ship’s main library is kept in the saloon). There are several volumes of the Dictionary of National Biography , including Vol. 35 (MacCarwell-Maltby). It will never be known if Edward discovered, between Brigadier William Mackintosh of Borlum and Charles Macklin, the actor, the entry his playful wife tacked in, describing the life of the eminent explorer and exemplary husband Edward Mackley — the tale she wrote for him, telling how he reached the Pole and revived England’s pride and passion; his brilliant, tall sons and beautiful tawny daughters, brilliant also: the Mackleys, who shaped the new century. But if Emily knew him at all, she was surely
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