CHAPTER
EIGHT
The news that the Fifth Earl had had three
illegitimate children at the age of eighty-one was announced in the notebook
with a truly aristocratic understatement.
No boasting, no self-congratulation.
Just a brief, quiet statement of the facts between the
record of a conversation with the Duke of Wellington and a note on the music of
Mozart. One hundred and twenty
years after the event, Dr Obispo, who was not an English gentleman, exulted
noisily, as though the achievement had been his own.
'Three
of them,' he shouted in his proletarian enthusiasm. 'Three! What do you think of that?'
Brought
up in the same tradition as the Fifth Earl, Jeremy thought that it wasn't bad,
and went on reading.
In
1820 the Earl had been ill again, but not severely; and a three months' course
of raw carps' entrails had restored him to his normal health, 'the health,' as
he put it, 'of a man in the flower of his age.'
A
year later, for the first time in a quarter of a century, he visited his nephew
and niece, and was delighted to find that Caroline had become a shrew, that
John was already bald and asthmatic, and that their eldest daughter was so
monstrously fat that nobody would marry her.
On
the news of the death of Bonaparte he had written philosophically that a man
must be a great fool if he could not satisfy his desire for glory, power and
excitement except by undergoing the hardships of war and the tedium of civil
government. '"This language of
polite conversation," he concluded, "reveals with a sufficient
clarity that such exploits as those of Alexander and Bonaparte have their
peaceful and domestic equivalents. We
speak of amorous Adventures, of the Conquest of a desired Female
and the Possession of her Person.
For the Man of sense, such tropes are eloquent indeed. Considering their significance, he perceives
that war and the pursuit of Empire are wrong because foolish, foolish because
unnecessary, and unnecessary because the satisfactions derivable from Victory
and Dominion may be obtained with vastly less trouble, pain and ennui behind
the silken curtains of the Duchess's Alcove or on the straw Pallet of the Dairy
Maid. And if at any time such simple
Pleasures should prove insipid, if, like the antique Hero, he should find himself
crying for new Worlds to conquer, then by the offer of a supplementary guinea,
or in very many instances, as I have found, gratuitously, by the mere
elicitation of the latent Desire for Humiliation and even Pain, a man may enjoy
the privilege of using the Birch, the Manacles, the Cage and any other such
Emblems of absolute Power as the Fancy of the Conqueror may suggest and the
hired Patience of the Conquered will tolerate or her consenting Taste
approve. I recall a remark by Dr Johnson
to the effect that a man is seldom more innocently employed than when making
Money. Making Love is an even more
innocent employment than making Money.
If Bonaparte had had the wisdom to vent his Desire for Domination in the
Saloons and Bed Chambers of his native Corsica, he would have expired in
Freedom among his own people, and many hundreds of thousands of men now dead or
maimed or blind would be alive and enjoying the use of their faculties. True, they would doubtless be employing their
Eyes, Limbs and Lives as foolishly and malignantly as those whom Bonaparte did
not murder are employing them today. But
though a Superior Being might applaud the one-time Emperor for having removed
so great a quantity of Vermin from the Earth, the Vermin themselves will always
be of another Opinion. As a mere Man of
Sense, and not a Superior Being, I am on the side of the Vermin."'
'Have
you ever noticed,' said Dr Obispo reflectively, 'the way even the most
hard-boiled people always try to make out their really good. Even this old buzzard - you'd think he
wouldn't care how he rated, so long as he got his fun. But no; he has to write a long screed proving
what a much better man he is than Napoleon.
Which, of course, he is by any reasonable standard. But you wouldn't expect him to go out of his
way to say so.'
'Well,
nobody else was likely to say so,' Jeremy put in.
'So
he had to do it himself,' Dr Obispo concluded.
'Which just proves my point. Iagos don't
exist. People will do everything Iago did; but they'll never say their villains. They'll construct a beautiful verbal world in
which all their villainies are right and reasonable. I'd hoped that old carp-guts would be an
exception. But he isn't. It's really rather a disappointment.'
Jeremy
giggled with a certain patronizing disdain.
'You'd have liked him to do the Don-Juan-in-hell-act. The calme
héros courbé sur sa rapière. You're
more romantic than I thought.' He turned
back to the notebook and, after a pause, announced that in 1823 the Fifth Earl
had spent some hours with Coleridge and found his conversation deep, but
singularly muddy - "characteristics," he had added, "which are
admirable in Fish Ponds, but deplorable in rational Discourse, which should be
pellucid and always shallow enough for a man to wade through without risk of
drowning himself in an abyss of nonsense."
Jeremy beamed with pleasure.
Coleridge was not a favourite of his.
'When I think of the rot people are still talking about the rubbish that
old dope-addict wrote ...'
Dr
Obispo cut him short. 'Let's hear some
more about the Earl,' he said.
Jeremy
returned to the notebook.
In
1824 the old gentleman was lamenting the passage of the Bill which assimilated
the transportation of slaves to piracy and so made the trade a capital
offence. Henceforward, he would be a
matter of eight or nine thousand a year the poorer. But he consoled himself by thinking of Horace
living in philosophic tranquillity on his Sabine farm.
In
1826 he was deriving his keenest pleasure from a re-perusal of Theocritus and the company of a young female, called Kate,
whom he had made his housekeeper. In the
same year, despite the curtailment of his income, he had been unable to resist
the temptation of purchasing and exquisite 'Assumption of the Virgin' by
Murillo.
1827
had been a year of financial reverses; reverses that were conducted,
apparently, with the death, following an abortion, of a very young maid
employed by the housekeeper as her personal attendant. The entry in the notebook was brief and
obscure; but it seemed to imply that the girl's parents had had to be paid a
very substantial sum.
A
little later, he was unwell again and wrote a long and minute description of
the successive stages of decay in the human corpse, with special reference to
the eyes and lips. A short course of
triturated carp restored him to a more cheerful frame of mind, and in 1828 he
made a voyage to
In
1831 he was in negotiations for the purchase of a house near Farnham.
'That
must be Selford,' Jeremy put in. 'The house where these
things came from.' He indicated
the twenty-seven packing-cases. 'Where the two old ladies are living.' He continued his reading. '"The house is old, dark and
inconvenient, but stands in sufficiently extensive Grounds upon an Eminence
about the River Wey, whose southern bank at this
point rises almost perpendicularly in a Cliff of yellow sandstone, to the
height of perhaps one hundred and twenty feet.
The Stone is soft and easily worked, a Circumstance which accounts for
the existence beneath the house of very extensive Cellars, which were dug, it
would seem, about a Century ago, when the Vaults were used for the storage of
smuggled Spirits and other goods on their way from the coasts of Hampshire and
Sussex to the Metropolis. To allay the
fears of his Wife, who dreads to lose a child in their subterranean meanders,
the Farmer who now owns the House has walled off the greater part of his
Cellarage; but even that which remains presents the appearance of a veritable
Catacomb. In Vaults such as these a man
could be assured of all the Privacy required for the satisfaction of even the
most eccentric Tastes."' Jeremy
looked up over the top of his book.
'That sounds a bit sinister, don't you think?'
Dr
Obispo shrugged his shoulders. 'Nobody
can have enough privacy,' he said emphatically.
'When I think of all the trouble I've had for want of some nice cellars
like the ones you've been reading about ...' He left the sentence unfinished,
and a shadow crossed his face: he was thinking that he couldn't go on giving Jo
Stoyte those Nembutal capsules indefinitely, damn
him!
'Well,
he buys the house,' said Jeremy, who had been reading to himself. 'And he has repairs and additions made in the
Gothic manner. And an apartment is
fitted up in the cellars, forty-five feet underground and at the end of a long
passage. And, to his delight, he finds
that there's a subterranean well, and another shaft that goes down to a great
depth and can be used as a privy. And
the place is perfectly dry and has an ample supply of air, and ...'
'But
what does he do down there?' Dr Obispo asked impatiently.
'How
should I know?' Jeremy answered. He ran
his eyes down the page. 'At the moment,'
he went on, 'the old boy's making a speech to the House of Lords in favour of
the Reform Bill.'
'In
favour of it?' said Obispo in surprise.
'"In
the first days of the French Revolution,"' Jeremy read out, '"I
infuriated the adherents of every political Party by saying: 'The Bastille is
fallen; long live the Bastille.'
Forty-three years have elapsed since the occurrence of that singularly
futile Event, and the correctness of my Prognostications has been demonstrated
by the rise of new Tyrannies and the restoration of old ones. It is therefore with perfect Confidence that
I now say: 'Privilege is dead; long live Privilege.' The masses of mankind are incapable of
Emancipation and too inept to direct their own Destinies. Government must always be by Tyrants or
Oligarchs. My opinion of the Peerage and
the landed Gentry is exceedingly low; but their own opinion of themselves must
be even lower than mine. They believe
that the Ballot will rob them of their Power and Privileges, whereas I am
sure that, by the exercise of even such little Prudence and Cunning as
parsimonious Nature has endowed them with, they can with ease maintain
themselves in their present pre-eminence.
This being so, let the Rabble amuse itself by voting. An Election is no more than a gratuitous
Punch and Judy Show, offered by the Rulers in order to distract the attention
of the Ruled."
'How
he'd have enjoyed a modern communist or fascist election!' said Dr Obispo. 'By the way, how old was he when he made this
speech?'
'Let
me see.' Jeremy paused for a moment to
make the calculation, then answered: 'Ninety-four.'
'Ninety-four!' Dr Obispo repeated. 'Well, if it wasn't those fish-guts, I don't
know what it was.'
Jeremy
turned back to the notebook. 'At the
beginning of 1833 he sees his nephew and niece again, on the occasion of
Caroline's sixty-fifth birthday.
Caroline now wears a red wig, her eldest daughter is dead of cancer, the
younger is unhappy with her husband and is addicted to piety, the son, who is
now a Colonel, has gambling debts which he expects his parents to pay. Altogether, as the Earl
remarks, "a most enjoyable evening."'
'Nothing about those cellars?' Dr Obispo complained.
'No; but his housekeeper, Kate, has been ill and he's giving her
the carp diet.'
Dr
Obispo showed a renewal of interest.
'And what happens?' he asked.
Jeremy
shook his head. 'The next entry's about
'
'He
says that
'He
may be right,' said Dr Obispo irritably.
'But what I want to know is what happened to that housekeeper.'
'She's
evidently alive,' said Jeremy. 'Because
here's a little note in which he complains about the tediousness of too much
female devotion.'
'Tedious!'
Dr Obispo repeated. 'That's putting it
mildly. I've known women who were like
flypaper.'
'He
doesn't seem to have objected to an occasional infidelity. There's a reference here to a young mulatto
girl.' He paused; then, smiling,
'Delicious creature,' he said.
'"She combines the brutish imbecility of the Hottentots with the
malice and cupidity of the European."
After which the old gentleman goes out to dinner at
'Nothing about Kate's health?' Dr Obispo persisted.
'Why
should he talk about it? He takes it for
granted.'
'I'd
hoped he was a man of science,' said Dr Obispo almost plaintively.
Jeremy
laughed. 'You must have very odd ideas
about fifth earls and eleventh barons.
Why on earth should they be men of science?' Dr Obispo was unable to answer. There was a silence, while Jeremy started a
new page. 'Well, I'm damned!' he broke
out. 'He's been reading James Mill's Analysis
of the Human Mind. At ninety-five. I
think that's even more remarkable than having a rejuvenated housekeeper and a
mulatto. "The Common Fool is merely
stupid and ignorant. To be a Great Fool
a man must have much learning and high abilities. To the everlasting credit of Mr Benthan and his Lieutenants it must be said that their Folly
has always been upon the grandest scale.
Mr Mill's Analysis is a veritable Coliseum of
silliness." And the next note is
about the Marquis de Sade. By the way,' Jeremy interpolated, looking up
at Dr Obispo, 'when are you going to return me my books?'
Dr
Obispo shrugged his shoulders. 'Whenever
you like,' he answered. 'I'm through
with them.'
Jeremy
tried not to show his delight and, with a cough, returned to the notebook. '"The Marquis de Sade,"'
he read aloud, '"was a man of powerful genius, unhappily deranged. In my opinion, an Author would achieve
Perfection if he combined the qualities of the Marquis with those of Bishop
Butler and Sterne."' Jeremy paused. 'The Marquis, Bishop Butler and Sterne,' he repeated slowly. 'My word, you'd have a pretty remarkable
book!' He went on reading. '"October 1833. To degrade oneself
is pleasurable in proportion to the height of the worldly and intellectual
Eminence from which one descends and to which one returns when the act of
Degradation is concluded." That's
pretty good,' he commented, thinking of the Trojan Women and alternate Friday
afternoons in Maida Vale. 'Yes, that's
pretty good. Let me see, where are
we? Oh yes. "The Christians talk much of Pain, but
nothing of what they say is to the point.
For the most remarkable Characteristics of Pain are these: the
Disproportion between the enormity of physical suffering and its often trifling
causes; and the manner in which, by annihilating every faculty and reducing the
body to helplessness, it defeats the Object for which it was apparently devised
by Nature: viz. to warn the sufferer of the approach of Danger, whether from
within or without. In relation to Pain,
that empty word, Infinity, comes near to having a meaning. This is not the case with Pleasure; for
Pleasure is strictly finite and any attempt to extend its boundaries results in
its transformation into Pain. For this
reason, the infliction of Pleasure can never be so delightful
to the aspiring Mind as the infliction of Pain.
To give a finite quantity of Pleasure is a merely human act; the
infliction of the Infinity we call Pain is truly god-like and divine."'
'The
old bastard's going mystical in his old age,' Dr Obispo complained. 'Almost reminds me of Mr Propter.' He lit a cigarette. There was a silence.
'Listen
to this,' Jeremy suddenly cried in a tone of excitement. '"
'I
suppose this is what you were talking about before we started reading,' said Dr
Obispo. 'The final
scandal. What happened?'
'Well,
I suppose the girl must have told her story.' Jeremy answered, without looking
up from the page before him. 'Otherwise
how do you account for the presence of this "hostile Rabble" he's
suddenly started talking about? "The Humanity of men and women in inversely proportional to
their Numbers. A Crowd is no more
human than an Avalanche or a Whirlwind.
A rabble of men and women stands lower in the scale of moral and
intellectual being than a herd of Swine or of Jackals."'
Dr
Obispo threw back his head and uttered a peal of his surprisingly loud,
metallic laughter. 'That's exquisite!'
he said. 'Exquisite! You couldn't have a better example of
typically human behaviour. Homo conducting
himself like sub-homo and then being sapiens in order to prove
that he's really super-homo.' He
rubbed his hands together. 'This is
really heavenly!' he said; then added: 'Let's hear what happens now.'
'Well,
as far as I can make out,' said Jeremy, 'they have to send a company of militia
from
'One
of those delightful family reunions,' said Dr Obispo. 'But I suppose he doesn't give us any of the
details?'
Jeremy
shook his head. 'No details,' he
said. 'Just an outline
of the negotiations. On March the
seventeenth they tell him that he can avoid prosecution if he makes over his unentailed property by deed of gift, assigns them the
revenues of the entailed estates, and consents to enter a private asylum.'
'Pretty stiff conditions!'
'Which
he refuses,' Jeremy continued, 'on the morning of the eighteenth.'
'Good
for him!'
'"Private
madhouses,"' Jeremy read out, '"are private prisons in which,
uncontrolled by Parliament or Judiciary, subject to no inspection by the Police
and closed even to the humanitarian visitations of Philanthropists, hired
Torturers and Gaolers execute the dark designs of family Vengeance and personal
Spite."'
Dr
Obispo clapped his hands with delight.
'There's another beautiful human touch!' he cried. 'Those humanitarian visitations of
philanthropists!' he laughed aloud. 'And hired torturers!
It's like a speech by one of the Founding Fathers. Magnificent!
And then one thinks of those slave-ships and little Miss Priscilla. It's almost as good as Field-Marshal Goering denouncing unkindness to animals. Hired torturers and
gaolers,' he repeated with relish, as though the phrase were a delicious
sweetmeat, slowly melting upon the palate. 'What's the next move?' he asked.
'They
tell him he'll be tried, condemned and transported. To which he answers that he prefers
transportation to a private asylum.
"At this it was evident that my precious nephew and niece were
nonplussed. They swore that my treatment
in the Madhouse should be humane. I
answered that I would not accept their word.
John talked of his honour. I
said, An Attorney's honour, no doubt, and spoke of the manner in which a lawyer
sells his convictions for a Fee. Then
they implored me for the good name of the Family to accept their offers. I answered that the good name of the Family
was indifferent to me, but that I had no desire to undergo the Humiliations of
a Public Trial or the pains and discomforts of Transportation. I was ready, I said, to accept any reasonable
alternative to Trial and Transportation; but I would regard no Alternative as
reasonable which did not in some sort guarantee my proper treatment at their
hands. Their word of honour I did not
regard as such a Guarantee; nor could I accept to be placed in an Institution
where I should be entrusted to the care of Doctors and Keepers in the pay of
those whose Interest it was that I should perish with
all possible Celerity. I therefore
refused to subscribe to any Arrangement which left me at their Mercy without
placing them to a corresponding extent at mine."'
'The
principles of diplomacy in a nutshell!' said Dr Obispo. 'If only Chamberlain had understood them a
little better before he went to
'I
don't know yet,' Jeremy answered from the depths of the recorded past. 'He's gone off on one of his philosophizing
jaunts again.'
'Now?'
said Dr Obispo in astonishment. 'When
he's got a warrant out against him?'
'"There
was a time,'" Jeremy read, '"when I believed that all the Efforts of
Humanity were directed towards a Point located approximately at the Centre of
the female Person. Today I am inclined
to think that Vanity and Avarice play a more considerable part even than Lust
in shaping the course of men's Actions and determining the nature of their
Thoughts." And so on. Where the devil does he get back to the point
again? Perhaps he never does; it would
be just like him. No, here's something:
"March 20th. Today, Robert Parsons,
my Factor, returned from London bringing with him in the Coach, three strong
boxes containing Gold coin and Bank Notes to the value of two hundred and
eighteen thousand pounds, the product of the sale of my Securities and such
Jewels, Plate and works of Art as it was possible to dispose of at such short
notice and for cash. With more time I
could have realized at least three hundred and fifty thousand pounds. This loss I can bear philosophically; for the
sum I have in hand is amply sufficient for my purposes."'
'What
purposes?' asked Dr Obispo.
Jeremy
did not answer for a little while. Then
he shook his head in bewilderment. 'What
on earth is happening now?' he said.
'Listen to this: "My funeral will be conducted with all the Pomp
befitting my exalted Rank and the eminence of my Virtues. John and Caroline were miserly and ungrateful
enough to object to the expense; but I have insisted that my Obsequies shall
cost not a penny less than Four Thousand Pounds. My only Regret is that I shall be unable to
leave my subterranean Retreat to see the Pageantry of Woe and to study the
expression of grief upon the withered faces of the new Earl and his
Countess. Tonight I shall go down with
Kate to our Quarters in the Cellarage; and tomorrow morning the world will hear
the news of my death. The body of an
aged Pauper has already been conveyed hither in Secret from Haslemere,
and will take my place in the Coffin.
After the Interment the New Earl and Countess will proceed at once to Gonister, where they will take up their Residence, leaving
this house untenanted except for Parsons, who will serve as Caretaker and
provide for our material wants. The Gold
and Bank Notes brought by Parsons from London are already bestowed in a
subterranean hiding-place known only to myself, and it has been arranged that,
every First of June, so long as I live, five thousand pounds in cash shall be
handed over by myself to John, or to Caroline, or, in the event of their
predeceasing me, to their Heir, or to some duly authorized Representative of
the Family. By this arrangement, I
flatter myself, I fill the Place left vacant by the
Affection they most certainly do not feel." And that's all,' said Jeremy, looking
up. 'There's nothing else. Just two more blank pages, and that's the end
of the book. Not another word of
writing.'
There
was a long silence. Once more Dr Obispo
got up and began to walk about the room.
'And
nobody knows how long the old buzzard lived on?' he said at last.
Jeremy
shook his head. 'Not outside the
family. Perhaps those two old ladies
...'
Dr
Obispo halted in front of him, and banged the table with his fist. 'I'm taking the next boat to