Childish Loves Page 20

  The next day I travelled to London. I might have stayed longer (as there was plenty to amuse me), but felt a strange urge after all to return to Southwell. I wanted to see my book on someone’s shelf. But I stayed long enough in town to visit Edleston. He was living for a few weeks with his sister in Camden, sleeping in the parlour in front of the fire and rising early to make way for his brother-in-law, who departs at dawn for his office in Greville Street. Edleston hardly knew me at the door. For a second, or half of one, he gave me a stranger’s glance, taking me in with a cool eye, and then, and then, the transformation wrought upon his features was remarkable and highly gratifying to me. It was as if a lamp had been lit within – and flared before settling. His sister I met for the first time across his shoulder, appearing dimly in a dim hall, with a shawl about her neck to ward off the cold (though it was not cold).

  Edleston declares I have been ‘taken in’ so much, he does not know me; and treats me with pretended shyness. His sister hardly left us alone for a minute. But he is proud of her, too, of her looks, for one thing, and kept bidding me to admire her. This I did, freely enough, for she is pretty as a locket and smiled at me as brightly as if a button had been pressed.

  We walked as far as Bagnigge Wells, which was not far, and took a turn in the gardens. He held her hand, and I felt for an instant a pang of strong feeling at the sight of them – like children half-sleeping they dragged their feet through the gravel. They spoke humorously and affectionately of her husband; he might have been their uncle or schoolmaster. The day was intermittently fine but then a cloud blew over, with a little rain in it, and we took shelter under a sycamore. Her name is Anne; her married name is Ashdown. By the end of the day (we spent perhaps six hours together; after the gardens, I bought them lunch at a public-house) she had grown brave enough to take my arm in hers.

  Generally I prefer tall women, but I was glad to make myself useful, buying her one or two things she liked, and not just to eat. She was particularly pleased by my interest in her brother, to whom I could be of immediate service. As I am driving to Southwell in a few days, I said, and Cambridge is in my way, there is no reason he should not take advantage of me. Oh, says she, clasping her hands together. In her presence he is solicitous and ironical. When the rains came he held his coat over her head. I stood somewhat apart, consoling myself with the thought of our journey to Cambridge.

  Yet as the morning approached I found myself apprehensive. He was asleep when I called for him, and he tumbled into the carriage with his bag and continued sleeping. For an hour or two I watched him. As soon as he awoke he began talking. (When he is happy he talks, and I listen.) His sister is much less miserable than either of them had feared she would be. Mr Ashdown is decent and quiet; mostly he lets them alone. He is content to look at her. But when he does not let her alone it transpires she is perfectly content to be – and he blushed with such a childish air I could not help laughing. He laughed, too. He would lie in the parlour and listen to the noises they made. Like two doves squawking over a nut, he said.

  Mr Ashdown had taken him to Greville Street and introduced him. The thought of working in such a House no longer filled him with horror – if he could be near his sister, and me.

  ‘I was told I made a favourable impression,’ he said. ‘I believe I am good at making impressions. I made one on you.’

  There was still no place for him and Mrs Carmichael expects to keep him ‘at least another year’. But he had begun to see that a year is no very great term. For the next several hours we made plans together, until we reached Cambridge a little after two o’clock. (We dined at the Mitre and I deposited him afterwards at the Priory. There is a sort of garden in front of the orphanage, with a gate attached to it; we parted at the gate. I gave him a copy of my book, with the page folded back at the Cornelian; we both shed tears.) He could not live with his sister on the Pentonville Road, not in their parlour, not for more than a month. But he might live with me, if I meant to take up residence in the city. My rooms at Mrs Massingberd’s were of course too small for a brace of occupants, ‘even when one of them requires so little space’. He had really very few clothes, or wants, or needs; he wanted a bed, and a little company. He needed a roof. And in this way the hours passed quickly enough, with a great deal of enthusiasm on his part, and tenderness on mine.

  *

  It appears my poems have made a small sensation. I have been stared at in Southwell, and with my own eyes seen a mother put her arm around her daughter (the girl not much more than eleven years old) and guide her to the safety of – the far side of the street. But the women have not taken fright; they all wondered at my sudden departure. Our play is to be resumed and I have recounted a half-dozen times already, between the acts, to every Tom, Julia and Eliza, the story of my flight from Mrs Byron furiosa.

  Mary has gone. I drove one afternoon to the cottage – a late September afternoon, overcast and warm. How quickly nature reclaims her own. There had been a heavy warm rain in the night, and the stream had flooded again and made its bed in the parlour. A vine had climbed into the window, and flowered, and shed its flowers on the floor. There were bees in the grate, dead and bright. But no sign of Mary and Ridge had not seen her either, when I enquired of him; I suppose she is in Nottingham.

  But the play’s the thing. We began to rehearse at the Pigots’, for their drawing room would do very nicely. There is a set of doors onto the balcony, which might serve for an entrance, and the room itself is large enough to accommodate ten or a dozen spectators and a few changes of scene. John, who cares little for acting, is nevertheless devoted to changes of scene; he has taken the carpentry in hand and with his sister begun work on a large canvas almost as big as a wall, on which they have daubed trees and woods, a moon, a ruined hovel. But Mrs Pigot looked at the play and would have none of it. It is altogether too loud, she says; she wants a quiet life. Elizabeth had been talked of for the part of Arabella (which I was not much in favour of, as it would be rather like kissing your sister), but this was also forbidden.

  ‘I believe I am not very strict,’ says Mrs Pigot to me, ‘but I will not have you making love to my daughter in my own house before half the young women in Southwell. If you must make love to her, do it quietly; but if you wish only to put on a play, you may do it elsewhere. I have no objection to Elizabeth’s acting either. She may take the part of Dame Dunckley. A mother could make no objection to her.’

  The trouble is, it is a very good play, but there are not many parts in it for ladies. I am rather surprised it was agreed on, as the ladies always have their way in these matters. But Penruddock is an excellent role – Kemble took it at Drury Lane last year and was much admired. Miss Leacroft was so good as to tell me she had never seen Kemble perform in London, but she had ‘no wish to any more’. For a while she was spoken of for Arabella, and would have made a fine Arabella. After Mrs Pigot threw us out, Miss Leacroft and her brother persuaded us to shift the scene to their own house, a few hundred yards away at the other end of the Green.

  Captain Leacroft is to take the part of Woodville, my inveterate enemy. But Miss Leacroft has been disappointed. Her mother inquired of Elizabeth why Mrs Pigot refused to put the play on at her own house, and Elizabeth answered her, with as much mischief as honesty, that she did not wish to see her daughter made love to by Lord Byron. Now Mrs Leacroft refuses, unless Julia takes on another role, and she has been forced to accept the part of Miss Tempest, which is no part at all. Arabella is to go to Miss Bristoe. I have no objection to Miss Bristoe, who is only a little dark, to my taste, with strange wide cheeks and a rather foolish smile, which she turns upon me as if opening a purse; but what I cannot stand is to have Julia Leacroft and Charlotte Bristoe continually complaining at me about the wantonness of the other. Mr Becher was supposed to act as cicerone; Elizabeth persuaded him. But meanwhile he has accepted the role of Weazel and is too busy acquiring his lines to make any objection to the ladies’ ‘sweet behaviour’.

  Elizabeth,
of course, is an exception. She is really a very superior woman – clever, amusing, good. She is only too good for Southwell, which accounts in large measure for her sometimes lonely air. She has a sharp edge, but a little society might have rounded her out. I have begun to confide in her about Edleston, whom she longs to meet. It is a pleasure to me to talk of him to her.

  ‘You are not so much changed after all,’ she says to me. ‘You had always a capacity for affection.’

  ‘He certainly is perhaps more attached to me than even I am in return. During the whole of my first term at Cambridge we met every day summer and winter without passing one tiresome moment, and separated each time with increasing reluctance. He is the only being I esteem, though I like many.’

  ‘My lord,’ she said, for she saw me blushing, ‘I am not so jealous of your liking as that; you needn’t mind me.’

  She delighted at first in referring to him as my Cornelian, which was a sort of code between us, for all this kind of talk. But she has lately added to it, and calls him the Edlestone.

  Meanwhile, Becher talks to me about my verses, repeating at length his earlier advice, that with a few judicious excisions there is nothing to prevent their open publication. But he has no real ambitions for me in this respect; he considers it a useful step on the way to a parliamentary career. In two years I take my place in the House of Lords. The poems to Mary must go, and indeed I am not sorry to see them cut. It is like cutting away a part of me, and not the best part. Everything humorous, amorous, lecherous must be suppressed; what remains, what emerges, is a collection of very fine sentiments (it is Elizabeth who complains of this fact).

  ‘You will please the ladies,’ she says.

  But this can’t be helped. ‘It is what we are all condemned to,’ I tell her.

  John Pigot and I drove down to Harrogate for a week, to catch the end of summer and rehearse our lines. He has perhaps seventeen of them, but they cause him a world of trouble. He marvels at my facility. It rained steadily. We had brought our dogs – his bitch mastiff Nelson, and Boatswain, my own Newfoundland, whom I have had from a puppy. As there was a sort of jealous feud between them, whenever one or the other came into the room, it took all three men, myself, John, and Frank the groom, and whatever waiters we could find, to separate them with a pair of pokers and tongs. This kept us busy enough. John returns to Edinburgh in a few weeks – as soon as our play is finished; and has been feeling a little painfully the preference of womankind against him (or rather, in my favour).

  Becher is in an odd position. We meet to rehearse in the Leacrofts’ drawing room every afternoon, and he appears among us, a little older, very sober, his face partly obscured by what Elizabeth calls a good ancient clerical beard, such as you find in the old prints. He looks, she says, like Pliny the Elder, of whom she knows nothing but that he died of his curiosity and wrote books – but she likes calling him the elder, this is what principally amuses her. He sits quietly among us, rehearsing his lines, while we all make love in our way. And he says nothing, or nothing publicly; he only looks a sermon.

  He has one scene with Elizabeth, which is why to be sure he accepted the part. Elizabeth plays an old crone, who keeps house for me; and Weazel has come to apprehend me of my inheritance. Elizabeth tells him that I don’t like to be disturbed at my books. Penruddock is supposed to be very fierce. She is got up in her mother’s old crinoline skirts, which are so stiff and old, it requires of her no pretending to shuffle about the stage, bent almost double, with her face half concealed by a bonnet, mothy and large, that hangs over her cheeks and brows. But I am always a fool for such contrasts, and Becher is not much better. He says to her, What am I to do then, who have come some hundred miles upon his business? And she, by way of aside: Go on, go on; by the living, my fine spark, I would not be in your place for a little. The accent she gives to My fine spark is wonderful; it is a sort of teasing easy to feel but impossible to account for. Later, he says to me, as Dame Dunckley crosses the stage, Ah, Sir, you surely can’t forget there are such things in this world as beauty, love, irresistible woman … But it is cruel to laugh at him.

  Elizabeth is cruel. I wonder in fact what she is about – as she likes him well enough and has besides, at other times, a decent respect for him, which is perfectly mutual. And she is not so young and he not so old, and neither much in want of a fortune. In short, the match is eminently suitable. But though she is frank about most things and delights in all kinds of personal talk, she prefers to direct her inquiries outwards.

  Miss Leacroft likes to quiz me about her; she has a quizzing manner. She has a way of tilting her head a little backwards and lowering her eyes and saying whatever comes to mind (which is not a great deal), as if no one had ever been so wicked. Such as, ‘You go about with Miss Pigot, I believe; you are often seen together.’ We were sitting at dinner, with one or two others, in the Leacrofts’ fine hall with its portraits and panels. Captain Leacroft had got a ship; the dinner was in his honour. As I like him exceedingly, I am both glad of it and sorry to see him go, but he has determined to remain until the end of the play. He must see the play through to the end, he will not leave us ‘in the lurch’ – with the result that everything has been brought forward a week. For most of the evening, we hardly exchanged a word. He had stationed me beside his sister, and Miss Leacroft’s confidential airs prevented our conversation from becoming general.

  ‘We make no attempt to conceal the fact,’ I told her. ‘I am on good terms with all the family, especially John. But I expect to see still more of Elizabeth, when he returns to Edinburgh. Mrs Pigot is not very lively; she misses her son.’

  ‘Oh, Elizabeth is it? That’s very fine. I suppose you know she means to marry Mr Becher.’

  ‘I know nothing of the kind, but I have my hopes. He certainly esteems her as a very excellent woman. And she likes him well enough. But if it is enough for that, I cannot say.’

  ‘Mr Becher would do very well for her. But she thinks herself terribly superior – nothing but a lord will do. I hope she is not disappointed.’

  This is all very tiresome, but as she has bright blue eyes and soft gold hair, I do not mind it much. After dinner, Captain Leacroft took me by the elbow and walked me as far as King’s Crescent, before turning back. A damp September night with the clouds still heavy in the air. There was a fire lit in the dining room and you could see the heat of it reflected in his cheeks. The ship he has got is called the Diana. A 22-gun frigate; she sails for the West Indies in convoy in a week’s time. It is a great opportunity, he repeated, and expressed himself delighted to leave his family ‘in every expectation of happy news’. But as it was late, and he sufficiently obscure, I did nothing to correct his impression.

  ***

  The play is over. We gave three performances, one of them in the garden, as it was a mild dry evening, which went off very well. Everything went off well. Penruddock in particular was much admired, and there was talk of Kemble and Drury Lane among the spectators. Indeed, it was talked about for weeks and months afterwards. Even Kitty joined in the general applause. She loves a play (and any other kind of amusement) and saw us three times, sitting very properly upright on the Leacrofts’ high-backed rosewood chairs. She never slept and laughed sometimes even when she was supposed to.

  We have all felt painfully the want of occupation; there has been nothing to replace it. John is gone; Captain Leacroft, too. Kitty, at least, has become less unreasonable – she is too grateful. I have decided not to take up my place at Trinity this autumn, and the presence of her son has allowed Mrs Byron to resume many of her old relations. But then, I have been too busy reading, reflecting, composing to think of returning to college, where these things are unheard of. The second volume of verse is under preparation. It is to be called Poems on Various Occasions, a fine, mild, meaningless title that can offend no one, not even Mr Becher. Ridge has spoken for it and I ride to Newark weekly, thinking of Mary, and my Cornelian, and – many other things.

  Only Ed
leston regrets my absence. Long and I have hardly exchanged a letter. Bankes wrote to congratulate me on the volume of my poesies which Long had given him. He did not know I wrote, and underlined ‘volume’ twice as if the chief source of his wonder lay in the quantity of verse. It surprised me to find Bankes and Long in communication. I made Bankes a suitable reply and expressed my resentment to Long for distributing without my consent what was always intended for private circulation. Especially as I am in the midst of preparing a revised edition. But I have not heard from him. It is left to Edleston to wonder at and regret my absence. The truth is I wonder at it, too. But when the play was over I felt the need of some other occupation and was surprised at how well the task of revising answered. I have become as sociable as a wolf and see no one for whole days at a stretch, excepting Elizabeth and Mr Becher and sometimes Julia Leacroft.

  *

  It is quite shameful how the weeks go by, and nothing to show for them but a few bound volumes. Poems on Various Occasions appeared, fatter than its predecessor, but soberer, too – a good burgher of a book, Mrs Pigot calls it. It produced no great sensation, but then, I aimed at none. The daughters of Southwell may read it safely in their fathers’ drawing rooms. Indeed, I have seen them do it, and the effect is gratifying. Elizabeth mocks me for becoming respectable, but (as I tell her) nothing but virtue will do in this damned world. I am already at work on a sequel, for public circulation; it is only in want of a title.

  We have all become very dull and the worst of it is, we are too dull to mind it much. On St Stephen’s Day, at least, we had a revival of the play. John was at home for Christmas and for two or three days we amused ourselves, in the sudden fever of rehearsal; but the performance itself fell rather flat. Captain Leacroft had been replaced with Miss Bristoe’s brother, who is only fifteen. He forgot his lines and when he remembered them spoke so loudly no one could understand them. Afterwards it emerged that he had drunk a bottle of sherry beforehand; we were only lucky he was not sick. Mr Becher felt the awkwardness of his position. To be seen one day before an altar, and the next on a painted stage.