Childish Loves Page 19

  Elizabeth says to me, ‘It is strange you so often profess such a passion for solitude, when you strike me now as the most public of men.’

  ‘You used to consider me boyish and shy. I suppose I have changed.’

  ‘No, you are shy still, in certain company, and boyish enough I think.’

  ‘Then I don’t know what you do mean.’

  We were sitting on chairs at the edge of the Green, which we had carried ourselves from the Pigots’ front room. About four o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, when the families of Southwell make their parade of the town – a few hundred yards each way. Elizabeth had sketch-book and pen on her lap, with an ink-pot at her foot, and considered the view with her fine narrow ironical eye. But she liked to talk as she worked and did not look at me.

  ‘Your shyness,’ she said, ‘is only a sort of stage-fright. You hang back rehearsing your lines and preparing an entrance. It is nothing like real shyness, which wishes to be let alone. You wish to be brought out. John is shy.’

  ‘It may be you do not understand me.’

  ‘Oh, this is your great cry. You must have secrets, or something at least to confess to.’

  ‘Now I do not understand you. But I am never alone, when I write. I think this is what you mean. For then I am also rehearsing my lines, as you put it.’

  She looked at me sharply then and opened her mouth. But said only, with a kind of admiration, ‘My dear Lord Byron …’ The thought of what I could tell her, of what I might sincerely confess to, made me unhappy.

  Most days around noon, if it is hot enough, John and I meet in a corner of Mr Buckleby’s fields and play cricket. I wear seven waistcoats and sweat; John’s bitch mastiff chases the balls. Mr Becher joins us occasionally, and a few others, Captain Leacroft included. Afterwards, we go to the Pigots’ house, which is nearer, and I take nothing for lunch but biscuits and soda-water. Captain Leacroft has started the idea of putting on a play. His sister meets us there, with Elizabeth and one or two women, and we sit long hours in discussion. I have prevailed upon them to put on The Wheel of Fortune by Cumberland, as he was also a Trinity man, and I feel some affinity on that score. The part of Penruddock is very good, and I have picked it out for myself – the rest may dispose themselves as they please.

  Mary grows sulky if I don’t come till after tea. I find myself approaching the cottage, its plumes of smoke just visible from the road, reluctantly, and departing afterwards equally reluctant. Ridge said something odd to me once, that he had seen her in town going into the milliners, Mrs Michelson’s. Mary has a distinctive burrowing gait, low-shouldered and sprightly; he could not be mistaken; but when he followed her into the shop, she was nowhere to be seen. It appears she owes him money.

  Long has written to invite me to Littlehampton, where his father has taken a house. But I am still too much in the thick of Southwell affairs to think of leaving. Mary depends upon me entirely. I have passed more than two months in this desultory way, taking tea with the Pigots, walking out with Elizabeth and riding with John; cricketing swimming dancing; making love occasionally, and a few other things. Edleston complains that I have forgotten him, for I have not written above once or twice since departing the Cam. My head is so full of my rhymes (I wrote him at last) I have no words to spare for ordinary prosing. But perhaps I have been unfaithful, in my way – my heart always alights on the nearest perch.

  ***

  It is all over, and very suddenly, too. One day in Newark, coming out of Ridge’s, I thought I saw Mary’s shapeliness exiting swiftly towards Friary Road; but a grocer’s cart then overturning, with a confusion of bloody fruits, I could not follow in the carriage and gave her up. I made no mention of this to her in the afternoon (and she none to me), but drove away as usual, returning an hour later to find her in bed with one of the soldiers then stationed in Newark, from the Coldstream Guards; a fat pliable fair-haired gentleman, who seemed not at all sorry to see me, as he had got what he paid for. These were his words. It seems Mary had kept up a little of her old trade – ‘which would not be put off,’ she says to me, with the injured innocence of womankind. And though I was in rather a jealous passion at the time, I could not help laughing at this, which is always the death of me – one cannot be violent and amused. The guard and I parted on reasonable terms (for, after all, he meant me no harm), and Mary and I not much worse – though I could not help feeling a little shame-faced towards her, for imagining our affair to be anything but … what it was. But part we did, as we could not continue on the old terms and I had no intention of paying the new. This was at first a source of some heartache, which made the solitary ride afterwards to Newark appear very long, and the evening at home still longer (the Pigots had gone to Cheltenham for a week); but it declined into a fretfulness and died in the night, and I woke again the next morning feeling something like relief.

  After two or three days, I had really begun to think very little about the whole business – when I was awoken one night, about two in the morning, by my mother. She had found Mary at a window attempting to steal in. How the ‘poor lone woman’ came by the house I do not know; perhaps she recognized the carriage. Kitty had seized her by the ear or throat or whatever else she could fasten on and taken her into the kitchen, where I met them. It appears Mary is with child; her father had discovered this fact, and beaten her; and she had walked or run at dead of night all the way from Newark (eight miles on a muddy road) to claim the protection of her – protector. That she had previously sacrificed all claim to this protection, it did not suit my dignity to reveal; for my mother raised up such a storm of protest and abuse one could only keep from capsizing by sailing into it. It needed only this, says she, for me to go one better than my father, for he at least did not marry his whores. And other similar reflections. In the end, taking advantage of a brief abatement, I escaped with Mary to the carriage, which my groom had prepared, and we drove away in the ‘dead of night’ but without its silence – for Kitty pursued us as far as George Street in her night-gown.

  Mary was by this time considerably calmer; she is the kind to take this sort of farce with a laugh, which I like her for. But then in the moonlight I could see the marks on her cheeks and throat from her father’s hands.

  ‘You change your tune quick enough,’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A minute ago you were beating your breast – all tears and threats. I suppose the story about the child is no truer than anything else.’

  ‘You kept me like a whore; I don’t see what you was surprised about.’ Etc. Even then she could not entirely command herself and began to make her appeal.

  I had already formed the resolution of driving on towards London. But Mary must be deposited somewhere. She was too large to be kept like a cat and too small to be ridden like a horse. After a few miles, the houses of Southwell gave way to trees and hedgerows, and the moonlight carried across them into the road; a fine wild scene, fit for the brush of Cozens. We had taken the way to Newark, and I thought, after all, I can do no better than return an errant child to her father; but at the mention of this proposal, Mary, who had grown quiet, began to grow loud again and I preferred her quiet. When it became clear I had no intention of taking her with me, she requested to be set down at the miller’s cottage, which was, after all, in my way. I told her she could not stay there. As soon as the season began, it was used by hunters. She said she would not stay, but since I minded so little what became of her, she meant to ply her trade a few weeks longer, until it was exhausted (the regiment had already received its orders to decamp), whereupon she would decamp herself – to Nottingham probably, as it was nearest. And so I left her, almost without a pang, at the small ruined cottage above the quiet stream where we had known a great deal of pleasure, and some tenderness. I watched her out of the window turning the handle of the familiar low door and disappearing.

  A few days later I arrived in London and drove straight to Mrs Massingberd’s, who was not expecting me, but received
me nevertheless with the kindness of a landlady, who loves lucre, which I prefer after all to the affections of a mother. Kitty, I thought, was unlikely to follow me, and then, the next day, she knocked at my door, a little red-faced, but by this stage (and she had travelled many stages) more sorrowful than angry. She sat down in the deep chair by the window, where I like to sit reading, and called for a glass of water, which I gave her.

  After a minute she said, ‘I do not mean always to be fighting with you, Byron.’

  ‘It seems to me you have come too far, and in too much haste, not to fight. Peace is generally more patient.’

  ‘The things you do that put me in a rage make me smile after. I cannot stay angry at a Byron very long.’

  ‘In my estimation, which may not be exact, as there is too much feeling involved, you have been angry at a Byron for most of my life and at least half of yours.’

  ‘Permit me to say, then, that I am not angry now.’

  She finished the glass of water and closed her eyes a minute. I sat on my bed. There was, outside the window, the prospect of a very fair summer’s day. The trees were green in Green Park and cast enough shade, even at ten in the morning, for the dogs to sleep in. I could hear the irregular hammering of a nail and looked out, above my mother’s head, to see a man setting up a stall in the grass; an awning lay in a roll at his feet, striped red and white. Carriages made their way along Piccadilly.

  ‘If you wish to lie down in my bed,’ I began to say; and then, ‘why don’t you sleep a little, Kitty.’

  ‘I’m very comfortable where I am,’ she said, but I lifted her up under her arms and put her to bed. She was very heavy and hot; her head was damp.

  This left the chair free for me to read in, and I sat down to read – and fell asleep. When I woke up, an hour or maybe a minute later, my mother was snoring, lying flat on her back with her nose in the air. I closed my eyes again and listened to her, a very regular soothing summer’s day sort of noise. The light in the window had changed colour; the day was hotter. I stood up suddenly and went out, to see a man I know on Bury Street, with whom I had left a few articles I was now in a position to redeem. Afterwards I dined at Brooks’. There were two or three others at the club I was glad to see, including Matthews, whom I know less well than Bankes but would like to know more. We got a little drunk together, not very. When I returned to number 16, it was after seven o’clock. Kitty had sat up in bed with a plate beside her, Mrs Massingberd having sent out for something to eat; the room stank of fish. We fought rather furiously for two or three hours about everything and nothing (she was angry I had left her alone), until I told her, she had better find a hotel as she could not stay here.

  ‘God knows what will become of you,’ she said, on her way out. ‘At this rate. You had better marry rich. I pity your poor wife.’

  But in the morning she promised to return to Southwell, as I had no intention of remaining in London. Long had invited me to join him for a week’s bathing in Littlehampton, where his father had taken a house – though once my mother had gone I tarried for a few days at Mrs Massingberd’s, dining out, mostly with Matthews and others of that set, before travelling to the coast.

  *

  The house revealed itself to be a square, modern, comfortless dwelling, of the kind in which the bed-posts obscure the windows, so I established myself at the Dolphin Inn, a few hundred yards away and nearer the pier. On the first morning Long and I walked out to the end of it and fired at oyster shells. It transpires that he is a little encumbered with a young brother, named Henry, and very like the older but fatter and more inclined to laugh; though he turned out to be useful enough, in hunting out shells. The morning was cloudy and the sea sick-looking and grey, with a brisk breeze pushing reluctant waves up-river. The report of our gun-shots echoed dully off sky and water. But by the afternoon the wind had pushed the clouds away, too, and the sea cleared, turning a very pleasant blue. We stripped to our drawers and shirts and jumped off the end of the pier. Henry did not trust himself against the current, but after a few turns in the water I climbed out again, and carrying him on my back, a little unwilling, tumbled in. But since the tide was running out, we did not stay long; and dressed again on the pier and dined at the Dolphin, and afterwards Long sent his brother home, for he had begun to tire of him, and together we got drunk.

  In this way, several days passed. In the morning we played cricket and Henry chased the balls. Then we lunched and swam or swam and lunched, or drank and did nothing. I met Long’s parents, too – the father not at all resembling him, but small and round, with a small, round face. Fond of his own wit, too; Mrs Long more sober and square-headed. In her company, Long acquired again the pious miserable airs I disliked him for at Harrow.

  One morning a letter arrived for me, from Elizabeth. It appears I am an author. Ridge has brought out a few hundred copies of Fugitive Pieces, which were sent to me in Southwell – from whence I had departed in too much haste to alert him. But Elizabeth kindly included one in her letter. I sat at breakfast perhaps a half-hour longer than usual (for I never eat much), putting it on the table and looking at it, then taking it up again, and opening some page and reading quietly to myself, for as long as I could bear. The first line of the first page (though the last I turned to), which should begin ‘loud the winds whistle’ had been changed to ‘round the winds etc.’, making a nonsense of the whole stanza – and after that I ‘read no more’, but devoted my attention to the letter.

  Elizabeth congratulates me on the publication of my Pieces. It gives her great pleasure to disapprove of them. She disapproves of them several times a day, when she is stopped in the street, or run into at Mrs Crawley’s, or invited to take tea. She has read them aloud to Mrs Pigot, and John, and even to Mr Becher without a blush, though hers perhaps was the only unreddened countenance. But (to drop for once her customary manner) she advises against an open publication. She is even a little sorry for poor Julia Leacroft, who is a stupid, vain, promiscuous flirt, but perfectly capable of feeling an insult if it is explained to her. And there will be women enough in Southwell to explain.

  But it appears that only a handful of my verses give open offence. Becher has added a note to say, that with a few suppressions, there is nothing to prevent the publication of a ‘fine slim volume’.

  After breakfast, I made my way up to the house and showed Long a copy of the poems, which he turned in his hands admiringly and looked at glancingly. Indeed, it was handed around all the family, and stared at, as if it had been a baby or a piece of ambergris. I believe from that moment I began to go up in their estimation. But none of them allowed their admiration to tempt them into a perusal, which Long at least (who made the attempt) expressed himself grateful for, later in the day – as the book contained, he said, several passages he should not like his mother to see. There was something confidential about his manner I did not like, as if I knew very well which ones he meant; so I asked him what he meant. We were standing again among the stones of the beach, at the foot of the river at dirty low-tide, and firing intermittently at shells.

  Instead of answering, after a long pause, he said, ‘I am only a little surprised. I thought you more ambitious, that you wished to be something more than a little amusing. Of course, you will shock a few old ladies, but they are easily shocked.’

  ‘Do you know, I believe you are a little shocked yourself.’

  ‘I did not like your verses on the Cornelian,’ he admitted. ‘I know whom you intended by it. I should not like my mother to read them, under a mistake.’

  On the last night of my visit, Henry, being told of this fact, burst into tears, a very remarkable display for a boy of thirteen. It appears that until my arrival Long had refused to do anything but read in his room, or walk out by himself along the harbour and up the coast as far as Goring. Mr Long did not think his son at all happy at Cambridge – he asked my opinion on this matter several times, when Long was out of the room.

  I said, ‘I have never known him
particularly happy or high-spirited, even at school. But he is no less spirited now than formerly.’

  After dinner, which we ate en famille, Long and I walked out alone to the end of the pier and threw bottles at the water. It was midnight, or near enough; a fine clear starry evening, too warm for wind. The bottles splashed audibly and floated turning on their sides. Gleaming and rolling in the moonlight, they were rapidly borne away. After a while he said to me, ‘It is just as well that you are leaving. Henry is at the age when he is especially attachable – and when attachments are most dangerous to him.’

  ‘I have been attached, in one way or another, since the age of seven. I have never been shy of attaching myself.’

  ‘We all know of your attachments.’ Then, after another pause, ‘I should deeply regret any constraint in our own relations, which might be occasioned by – which I might be forced to adopt, for the sake of – in the light of – certain rumours, which have reached me.’ As I continued silent, he felt compelled to explain himself further: ‘You assured me once yourself, I am not so innocent as you suppose. I have warned you about William Bankes. It is not just a matter of his reputation, or yours. There is a question of law.’

  ‘You are a damned fool,’ I said, and stripped off my shoes, trousers, etc. Long watched me with an odd expression, but when I was already in the water and calling out to him, he stooped to the ground and emerged again, pale-skinned, and jumped in beside me. The tide was very low, and the current consequently fast. It ran us out to sea in a heart-beat, and for several minutes it was all I could do to stay upright in the water with the pull of the tide against my legs. The town dissolved and the coast replaced it, curving away to either side, and for these few minutes I was really half-afraid – the fear of the water contributing to and increasing the flush of anger I had felt rising in me. But then, Long appeared again suddenly at my side, and we drifted together a half-mile along the coast until the shore was near enough we could splash our way towards it, then stumble heavy-legged onto sand. For a minute we stood leaning audibly recovering our breaths, laughing, too; but after a long walk over rough stones to the pier, we were both a little silent and out of temper.