Sir William Read online

  It was a quarter to nine by the clock on the library mantel. Above the clock hung the only small Paulus Potter in England, a portrait of a cow. Facing it, from the opposite wall, the Honourable Emily Bertie impersonated, though with delicacy, Thais. Since this had been touched up by the artist himself, to conform to the purity and exactitude—particularly to the exactitude—of Greville’s celebrated taste, the Honourable Emily Bertie looked smudged, but was large enough to balance the small Paulus Potter. Greville looked at her fondly. He had got her on the cheap, yet she was indisputably a Reynolds. She lent the room tone.

  He was in a good humor. Emma and he made a handsome couple, he thought, nor was he wrong, for he was a handsome man, at least from the neck up, despite that look of a baby which has not been given what it wants for some time.

  He had address. He was well-bred. It was merely that he could never understand why no one liked him better, since he was always careful to do everything the right way, from little compliments to even smaller gifts; from the procurement, on commission, of an urn, to agreeing with everyone when they told him to. He looked, in other words, like an Eton portrait, a presentation piece you give away as you leave, available always as a fourteenth at dinner if one had forgotten to ask him before, and as last man into the Cabinet.

  Now where, everyone asked, when everything was made up, shall we put Greville?

  “In his place,” said Lord North, the then First Minister.

  “Well, he won’t do for the Cabinet. A gentleman in waiting, perhaps? I doubt if the King would mind.”

  “The King has no mind. He has gone barmy again, so they say,” said North with a chuckle (or perhaps it was Pitt).

  As indeed he had. Father George was toppled down with tares, mostly of his own sowing, and all burdensome. He was having one of his rest periods. And as for Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, who had had a cool hoyden charm when young, she now looked like a dropsical mouse. But Greville had long ago given up trying to explain to Emma the nature of politics. She would not listen. The scramble for place did not interest her. As far as she was concerned, she had found hers, and high time, too, for she was seventeen.

  Meanwhile here was the carriage, the horses stomping methodically, like prisoners taking their exercise; into the carriage they got, and “Ranelagh, my man,” said Greville, in a youthful, manly tone, and off they went across Paddington Green, down Park Lane and over the fields to Chelsea. The trees in Hyde Park were pools of black, like ink blots by the Brothers Cozens, of no artistic merit, but a curiosity; and the shrubbery was fragrant, indeterminate and blobby. The night was clear with a shimmer to it, the sky a miniscus, and here and there a star danced—all of them Emma’s, all of them musical. Inside her muff her hands met with cosy delight. He was not a dull old stick. Things would go better now.

  The dull old stick sat with face averted, waiting. He was a town man. He preferred scenery where it belonged, at Drury Lane.

  The Thames was a black mirror, reflecting the firefly lanterns of wherries, for since it was possible to arrive at Ranelagh by both carriage and boat, no matter which side one entered from or with whom, one never knew who might be there. Above the trees rose the Central Edifice, a large, purring dome. Before the carriage, rose the gates.

  So they entered the gardens, a perfect Gainsborough couple, resembling that connubial self-portrait “The Walk,” in which, before feathery foliage which looks as though it had been taken from a hatbox rather than from nature, the painter, dressed as a gentleman, conducts his wife—who has a certain charm independent of assumed station—toward the spectator.

  Greville took Emma’s arm; it was the expected thing.

  Emma was disappointed. The trouble with respectability, even if perilously achieved, is that inevitably, since it consists in doing only the expected thing, it lacks spontaneity. It has no spirits. It does not run; it perambulates. They perambulated.

  “My God,” she said, “is there nothing else to do but this?”

  “What else would there be to do?” asked Greville indulgently, who was himself bored but found the sensation familiar and therefore congenial. Even the music was congenial.

  “But does nobody sing?”

  “Not during the symphony, no,” said Greville, and blinked like a barn owl. He had just seen some people he knew. He bowed.

  “Who was that?”

  “Nobody in particular,” said Greville, glossing over an actress, a member of Parliament and two disreputable duchesses, and for once he was right.

  They were on their third lap around the Rotunda. Having deduced that she would be introduced to no one, Emma demanded to go outdoors. Greville was willing, for the third time around was never a novelty.

  Emma could hear the jagged sounds of song.

  “Oh let’s hurry, Greville, do,” she said, but Greville would not. He had heard Mrs. Bottarelli sing that moral aria da capo, “The Chaste Nymph Surprised,” before, and to judge by the pitch, she was up to the third, final, bitter resignation bit where she repines, tears her hair, slaps her bosom, rolls her eyes, creaks in her corsets, and never a fold or wrinkle out of place. Mrs. Bottarelli was getting on, and her enunciation was not correct, for how a dramatic soprano can sing with plumpers in her cheeks, he did not know. The only person he knew who might know was Towneley, who had a fine soprano shriek when surprised or when roistering upon the Continent, a thing he was fastidious enough never to do at home, except sometimes in the evenings; a little rouge for warmth, but you were not supposed to notice it.

  Mrs. Bottarelli was succeeded by a Mr. Hudson, who sang “Content,” a largo jig by a Mr. Goodwin—a curious melody to be likened only to the effect of a fat man falling through glue.

  Greville suggested an inspection of the ornamental water, but the lower ornamental water being bordered by far from ornamental members of the lower orders, turned back. Emma was again disappointed. She was willing to accept Greville as a model of deportment. He was the only model of deportment she had seen. But they seemed to be enjoying themselves down there, and she would have liked to watch.

  “Greville, I am excited. May we dance?”

  “It is not done unless there is a ball.”

  “They were dancing by the ornamental water.”

  Greville was shocked. His face recomposed itself and emitted a silent, peremptory hiss, which is what an owl does—hoot when it knows something, and hiss when it doesn’t—and he was very like an owl. “Those were the lower orders,” he said, and from his wrists shook back impatiently his bands, for in these moods he was a High Church clergyman too, not particularly devout, but way up in the thing, that was clear, and in regular attendance at Easter and at the marriage of his fortune-hunting friends—the last of the beagle pack, but there—whether it be St. George’s, Hanover Square, or over the hills and away as far as Wimbledon.

  They were now back to Mr. Hudson, still dispelling “Content,” or the last few lingering notes of it anyhow, with becoming diffidence.

  “I can sing better than that, and what is more, I shall,” shrieked Emma, and was away before she could be stopped, and up upon the podium. She was delighted with her own daring. So were the musicians. So was the audience. And as for Mr. Hudson, he had tired of “Content” years ago.

  It was her first audience. She forgot about Greville. An audience was an enthralling thing. She had not known. She had been given a few private lessons, to while away the tedium of those hours she could not spend with Greville, so she sang.

  “Hither Nymphs and Swains repair,

  Quit the baleful scenes of strife,

  Leave the rugged paths of care,

  And taste the joys that sweeten life …”

  she trilled, accompanying herself with a few experimental, but since she was eager to please, explicit gestures. The audience whistled, applauded and catcalled for more. She was a saucy lass.

  What these songs said was true. The way she sang them did show that she believed that. As an encore, because she could not
bear to leave yet, and as a tribute to Greville, she sang something more recent—Dr. Downman’s “To Thespia.” She could not see Greville in the crowd in front of her, but raising her arms toward where he had been, she warbled:

  “Oh come my fair one! I have thatch’d above

  And whiten’d all around my little cot,

  Shorn are the hedges leading to the grove,

  Nor is the seat and willow bow’r forgot,”

  and made it a joyous invitation, like the “Song of Solomon” in the version you are allowed to read, but Greville in a good mood had explained some of the naughtier bits, and my, she had had no idea it was such a racy thing.

  Emma’s gestures, though she had never before so deliberately made one, were those of a village Siddons. They had a mesmeric effect. As slowly she raised her arms toward Him, the audience turned to see to Whom. They found her most affecting.

  Greville, who never forgot himself, lost his nerve and jumped nimbly behind a tree.

  There was more applause. “Oh thank you,” said Emma. “But I can sing no more. I have exhausted my repertoire.”

  “Indeed you cannot and have,” snapped Greville, rearing up out of nowhere. He grabbed her down and made off with her, followed by jeers, catcalls, admirative noises, empty gin bottles and derisory shrieks.

  There would never, never, never be an end to it. He shook like the most expensive lap dog from Peru, shivering not for warmth, but as far away from her as he could get, with the rage of a baby most devilishly betrayed, let down, exposed, unmasked, traduced, made common sport of, should have known better than to take up with a common trull, I do not doubt Sir Harry’s taste, he has married his housekeeper, that explains his taste, but though he flung you out into the ungrateful grass after a mere six months, I wonder at his patience, even so; in other words, hate hath no synonym and rage no end to simile. Apart from that he would not speak.

  “Why, whatever ’as ’appened?” demanded Mrs. Cadogan, surprised into the vernacular.

  “Madam, you are her mother. Need you ask? She has shown her upbringing, lapsed into her native vulgarity, and made a fool of me,” snapped Greville, going into the library and slamming the door so hard that he set in motion both the small chandelier in the library and the large one in the dining room, whose vitreous derision lasted for a minute and a half by the clock—to Mrs. Cadogan, for an eternity.

  The life here may not have been much, but as she had feared, it had been much too good to last. Wearily she trudged up the stairs, as far as she was concerned, just twenty-four hours before the removers, and already mentally bending with them to remove. If you cannot afford the theatre, you can always read the sonnets at home instead.

  But Emma’s thespian talents, so freshly awakened only to be trampled underfoot, carried her through. Ripping off her ludicrous finery, a task not difficult—it had been basted merely; unstringing her corset, her dearest, most secret grownup possession so far, and he had not even noticed it; letting down her auburn hair; slipping into a simple cottage dress (which suited her to perfection, as she well knew); and pausing only for an instant before her mirror to make sure her wild, disheveled and grief-stricken locks were disheveled to the best possible advantage;—a Fair Penitent, a Magdalen, A Woman Undone and Utterly Given Up to Shame (it was at this point that she collided with Mrs. Cadogan on the stairs), a Village Milkmaid, La Penserosa with good cause, a Wailing and Abandoned Woman (taken from an engraving after Poussin’s “Massacre of the Innocents”), an Andromache, both Marys at the Tomb, Niobe Humbled utterly, Penelope perhaps—she dashed down the stairs, giggled out of nervousness, remembered to cry, and burst in upon him, weeping bitterly.

  He was seated in a Greek chair, calming himself by the examination of a few choice rocks from his collection, two pieces of branch coral and a sea sponge of rare and intricate design. He looked annoyed.

  “Forgive, forgive poor repentant Emma,” cried Emma, raising her hands clasped in the gesture of the old Hellenistic Beggar he admired so much—the wrong sex, but of that no matter. “Forgive”—she said, and paused—“an Errant Soul. Or, if you are ashamed of me, Dismiss me, Abandon Me, and I shall disappear as Poor and Miserable as when you found me—in fact, more miserable, for never again to see my Dear, Devoted Greville.”

  From real emotion Greville shrank. But in this tirade he seemed to detect the authentic notes of a comfortable, conformable and convincing insincerity. Laying aside his branch coral, he consented to look at her, his pale blue eyes full for the moment of a responsive and therefore insincere tenderness, while at the same time having a blinding image of himself as he must have looked leaping behind that tree. But he decided to forgive. He was mollified.

  “Free from ambitious pride and envious care,

  to love and to be loved is all my prayer,”

  Emma recited, adapting freely from Hayley, the house poet, and drying her tears—since he would not dry them for her—she abandoned the one attitude to take up another, head on his hand, sitting on the floor to be more comfortable.

  “Come, it is too late in the evening for Greek attitudes,” said Greville. “Go to bed.”

  At these kind words she scrambled up and went away. Her dress was thin. It could not be gainsaid, she had pink and delightful thighs.

  Nonetheless the girl needed discipline, so he decided to abandon his spontaneous Tuesdays for the time being. When Thursday came around, he omitted Thursdays as well, and since Thursdays were a part of that system by which he regulated his life, this was the more serious omission. It was all very touch and go.

  Emma kept to her room, too weak with shame to take any nourishment other than a custard at noon and a very large tea, three oranges, a bowl of apples, a bunch of grapes, half a pound cake, two bowls of Devonshire cream, a basket of strawberries, half a saddle of mutton, thirteen haws, to keep her hands busy, and two Anjou pears. Grief, she found, had made her hungry.

  “What have I done?” she wailed. “What have I done?”

  “You’ve been yourself, and it won’t do,” said Mrs. Cadogan. “Not in this household, anyway. From now on you must emulate others. There is no other way to please them.”

  But it was Towneley who saved them.

  *

  “Of course I have heard about it,” he said, wagging a modish tasseled slipper. “It’s all over town. Which do you suggest, that I stuff my ears with loyalty, or cotton wool?”

  Towneley was fond of Charles. If not his own sort of man, he was at least the next best thing—a fussy, prissy, predestinated bachelor, manly of course, but given to gossip in the right congenial way.

  Someday the boy might marry. There are heiresses in Cumberland who will put up with anything. He had no desire to diddle him out of £10,000 a year. On the other hand, he had no desire to lose his company, either. Therefore he must be induced to keep Emma on. Besides, Towneley liked Emma, mildly. He judged people by his own evoked images—all of them artistic—and when he thought of Emma he saw first of all the Borghese hermaphrodite, and second, “St. Cecilia,” also in Rome, huddled up under her altar like Andromache in the snow. Since both these statues were among his favored female works (his favored male work was Georghetti’s “St. Sebastian” on the Palatine. Ah, if we had Georghetti’s “St. Sebastian” we should all be happy, if, as usual, bored), he had a soft spot in his heart for her. She was as sexless and as séduisant as a boy.

  Towneley had a discursive mind. He returned abruptly to the point.

  “My dear Charles,” he said. “You have mistaken your vocation. No wonder you are tired. You are minute in particulars, and have no principles whatsoever. Therefore you are either a scoundrel or a pedant. Since you live on unearned income, are precise in your accounts, and related to almost everybody, clearly you cannot be a scoundrel. Therefore a pedant you must be. You want employment, you relish the antique, you have an eye for sculpture—at any rate you seem to have an eye for mine—nature has supplied you with a Galatea, so chip away. Fashion her into one of the h
etaerae. And then, if you really cannot abide her, sell her, for by that time she will fetch a better price.”

  “Sell her?”

  “Oh come now, Charles, what else is there to do with her? Think of the future. Every man has two chances at a good match: when he is young and seems romantic, and when he is older and seems a good catch. There are many women eager to marry a minister, should you become one, with or without portfolio. Meanwhile enjoy yourself: instruct the girl.”

  “It is true that I have much to teach,” said Greville, with the obliviousness of true humility.

  “My dear boy, of course you have,” said Towneley, with a cockatoo prance. “So why not get it out of your system now, while there is still time?”

  So Emily was saved, in the best Hannah More style, by education. Greville commenced at once, though he would need advice.

  The most notable exponent of education, excepting always Hannah More, was Mr. Day, the friend of Erasmus Darwin, the friend of Anna Seward, the friend of Johnson, who in his turn was the friend of Mrs. Thrale, who had married a merchant, so none of them was exactly respectable. Nor would the Bishop of Derry do. He was an admirable sedentary old rip whom eminence had rendered plummy, who admired erudition, could pull odds and ends of Horace out of a hat with the best of them, read the worst parts of Procopius in his cabinet, and had no use for education whatsoever. He preferred, he said, learning, for you can educate a rabbit, but nothing will make him learned unless he wants to be, in which case he is not a rabbit, so why stuff the memory with forcemeat, like a Michaelmas goose? It is a waste of time.

  There was Rousseau….

  Looking up at the Paulus Potter, Greville uttered an ungulate groan: should he begin with Taste or Tacitus? Or would his own moral apothegms be better? He had already instituted a course of instruction in those.