Fanny's Journal Entries 1780-1782 (translated from the
original French and transcribed)
November 8, 1780
Stoney Grove, Nevis
I am to be the property of an Englishman. Not as another of his country owned my grandmother, for that ownership would not serve his means. My brother loathes me, is shamed by a father who could create me, frightened by a mother who did not envy his English ways nor honour his English laws. For this shame, this fear, he would sell his sister.
March 15, 1781
London, my wedding day
I am a teacup, a bolt of kersey, an ass, a cow, a goat, goods to be bartered or sold to seal a stranger’s bargain and make him rich, make him master, make him father to my unborn sons. I am dressed up in Homer, in Euclid, in Herodotus, but I am still a merchant’s whore.
February 2, 1782
Stoney Grove, Sussex
I dream of light. Night upon night I close my eyes and light shimmers, dances, beats upon me. It dances through water, dazzling bright. It flashes on the silvered glass of my father’s drawing room in the brilliance of noontime, it beats against the pure white stucco of the mansion’s walls. I see the white-gold belly of a giant fish in my grandmother’s leather-brown hands. I see the light of bonfires, great infernos burning the sand and the still waters of the bay into a brightness that quenches the stars. I move in the light, towards the light, I am the light. And then I awake in the darkness that is England in winter.