Orlando
A Biography
by
Virginia Woolf
CHAPTER 1
Hefor there could be no doubt of his sex though the fashion of the time did something to disguise itwas in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters It was the colour of an old football and more or less the shape of one save for the sunken cheeks and a strand or two of coarse dry hair like the hair on a cocoanut Orlandos father or perhaps his grandfather had struck it from the shoulders of a vast Pagan who had started up under the moon in the barbarian fields of Africa and now it swung gently perpetually in the breeze which never ceased blowing through the attic rooms of the gigantic house of the lord who had slain him
Orlandos fathers had ridden in fields of asphodel and stony fields and fields watered by strange rivers and they had struck many heads of many colours off many shoulders and brought them back to hang from the rafters So too would Orlando he vowed But since he was sixteen only and too young to ride with them in Africa or France he would steal away from his mother and the peacocks in the garden and go to his attic room and there lunge and plunge and slice the air with his blade Sometimes he cut the cord so that the skull bumped on the floor and he had to string it up again fastening it with some chivalry almost out of reach so that his enemy grinned at him through shrunk black lips triumphantly The skull swung to and fro for the house at the top of which he lived was so vast that there seemed trapped in it the wind itself blowing this way blowing that way winter and summer The green arras with the hunters on it moved perpetually His fathers had been noble since they had been at all They came out of the northern mists wearing coronets on their heads Were not the bars of darkness in the room and the yellow pools which chequered the floor made by the sun falling through the stained glass of a vast coat of arms in the window Orlando stood now in the midst of the yellow body of an heraldic leopard When he put his hand on the windowsill to push the window open it was instantly coloured red blue and yellow like a butterflys wing Thus those who like symbols and have a turn for the deciphering of them might observe that though the shapely legs the handsome body and the wellset shoulders were all of them decorated with various tints of heraldic light Orlandos face as he threw the window open was lit solely by the sun itself A more candid sullen face it would be impossible to find Happy the mother who bears happier still the biographer who records the life of such a one Never need she vex herself nor he invoke the help of novelist or poet From deed to deed from glory to glory from office to office he must go his scribe following after till they reach whatever seat it may be that is the height of their desire Orlando to look at was cut out precisely for some such career The red of the cheeks was covered with peach down the down on the lips was only a little thicker than the down on the cheeks The lips themselves were short and slightly drawn back over teeth of an exquisite and almond whiteness Nothing disturbed the arrowy nose in its short tense flight the hair was dark the ears small and fitted closely to the head But alas that these catalogues of youthful beauty cannot end without mentioning forehead and eyes Alas that people are seldom born devoid of all three for directly we glance at Orlando standing by the window we must admit that he had eyes like drenched violets so large that the water seemed to have brimmed in them and widened them and a brow like the swelling of a marble dome pressed between the two blank medallions which were his temples Directly we glance at eyes and forehead thus do we rhapsodize Directly we glance at eyes and forehead we have to admit a thousand disagreeables which it is the aim of every good biographer to ignore Sights disturbed him like that of his mother a very beautiful lady in green walking out to feed the peacocks with Twitchett her maid behind her sights exalted himthe birds and the trees and made him in love with deaththe evening sky the homing rooks and so mounting up the spiral stairway into his brainwhich was a roomy oneall these sights and the garden sounds too the hammer beating the wood chopping began that riot and confusion of the passions and emotions which every good biographer detests But to continueOrlando slowly drew in his head sat down at the table and with the halfconscious air of one doing what they do every day of their lives at this hour took out a writing book labelled Aethelbert A Tragedy in Five Acts and dipped an old stained goose quill in the ink
Soon he had covered ten pages and more with poetry He was fluent evidently but he was abstract Vice Crime Misery were the personages of his drama there were Kings and Queens of impossible territories horrid plots confounded them noble sentiments suffused them there was never a word said as he himself would have said it but all was turned with a fluency and sweetness which considering his agehe was not yet seventeenand that the sixteenth century had still some years of its course to run were remarkable enough At last however he came to a halt He was describing as all young poets are for ever describing nature and in order to match the shade of green precisely he looked and here he showed more audacity than most at the thing itself which happened to be a laurel bush growing beneath the window After that of course he could write no more Green in nature is one thing green in literature another Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy bring them together and they tear each other to pieces The shade of green Orlando now saw spoilt his rhyme and split his metre Moreover nature has tricks of her own Once look out of a window at bees among flowers at a yawning dog at the sun setting once think how many more suns shall I see set etc etc the thought is too well known to be worth writing out and one drops the pen takes ones cloak strides out of the room and catches ones foot on a painted chest as one does so For Orlando was a trifle clumsy
He was careful to avoid meeting anyone There was Stubbs the gardener coming along the path He hid behind a tree till he had passed He let himself out at a little gate in the garden wall He skirted all stables kennels breweries carpenters shops washhouses places where they make tallow candles kill oxen forge horseshoes stitch jerkinsfor the house was a town ringing with men at work at their various craftsand gained the ferny path leading uphill through the park unseen There is perhaps a kinship among qualities one draws another along with it and the biographer should here call attention to the fact that this clumsiness is often mated with a love of solitude Having stumbled over a chest Orlando naturally loved solitary places vast views and to feel himself for ever and ever and ever alone
So after a long silence I am alone he breathed at last opening his lips for the first time in this record He had walked very quickly uphill through ferns and hawthorn bushes startling deer and wild birds to a place crowned by a single oak tree It was very high so high indeed that nineteen English counties could be seen beneath and on clear days thirty or perhaps forty if the weather was very fine Sometimes one could see the English Channel wave reiterating upon wave Rivers could be seen and pleasure boats gliding on them and galleons setting out to sea and armadas with puffs of smoke from which came the dull thud of cannon firing and forts on the coast and castles among the meadows and here a watch tower and there a fortress and again some vast mansion like that of Orlandos father massed like a town in the valley circled by walls To the east there were the spires of London and the smoke of the city and perhaps on the very sky line when the wind was in the right quarter the craggy top and serrated edges of Snowdon herself showed mountainous among the clouds For a moment Orlando stood counting gazing recognizing That was his fathers house that his uncles His aunt owned those three great turrets among the trees there The heath was theirs and the forest the pheasant and the deer the fox the badger and the butterfly
He sighed profoundly and flung himselfthere was a passion in his movements which deserves the wordon the earth at the foot of the oak tree He loved beneath all this summer transiency to feel the earths spine beneath him for such he took the hard root of the oak tree to be or for image followed image it was the back of a great horse that he was riding or the deck of a tumbling shipit was anything indeed so long as it was hard for he felt the need of something which he could attach his floating heart to the heart that tugged at his side the heart that seemed filled with spiced and amorous gales every evening about this time when he walked out To the oak tree he tied it and as he lay there gradually the flutter in and about him stilled itself; the little leaves hung the deer stopped the pale summer clouds stayed his limbs grew heavy on the ground and he lay so still that by degrees the deer stepped nearer and the rooks wheeled round him and the swallows dipped and circled and the dragonflies shot past as if all the fertility and amorous activity of a summers evening were woven weblike about his body
After an hour or sothe sun was rapidly sinking the white clouds had turned red the hills were violet the woods purple the valleys blacka trumpet sounded Orlando leapt to his feet The shrill sound came from the valley It came from a dark spot down there a spot compact and mapped out a maze a town yet girt about with walls it came from the heart of his own great house in the valley which dark before even as he looked and the single trumpet duplicated and reduplicated itself with other shriller sounds lost its darkness and became pierced with lights Some were small hurrying lights as if servants dashed along corridors to answer summonses others were high and lustrous lights as if they burnt in empty banquetinghalls made ready to receive guests who had not come and others dipped and waved and sank and rose as if held in the hands of troops of serving men bending kneeling rising receiving guarding and escorting with all dignity indoors a great Princess alighting from her chariot Coaches turned and wheeled in the courtyard Horses tossed their plumes The Queen had come
Orlando looked no more He dashed downhill He let himself in at a wicket gate He tore up the winding staircase He reached his room He tossed his stockings to one side of the room his jerkin to the other He dipped his head He scoured his hands He pared his finger nails With no more than six inches of lookingglass and a pair of old candles to help him he had thrust on crimson breeches lace collar waistcoat of taffeta and shoes with rosettes on them as big as double dahlias in less than ten minutes by the stable clock He was ready He was flushed He was excited But he was terribly late
By short cuts known to him he made his way now through the vast congeries of rooms and staircases to the banquetinghall five acres distant on the other side of the house But halfway there in the back quarters where the servants lived he stopped The door of Mrs Stewkleys sittingroom stood openshe was gone doubtless with all her keys to wait upon her mistress But there sitting at the servants dinner table with a tankard beside him and paper in front of him sat a rather fat shabby man whose ruff was a thought dirty and whose clothes were of hodden brown He held a pen in his hand but he was not writing He seemed in the act of rolling some thought up and down to and fro in his mind till it gathered shape or momentum to his liking His eyes globed and clouded like some green stone of curious texture were fixed He did not see Orlando For all his hurry Orlando stopped dead Was this a poet Was he writing poetry Tell me he wanted to say everything in the whole worldfor he had the wildest most absurd extravagant ideas about poets and poetrybut how speak to a man who does not see you who sees ogres satyrs perhaps the depths of the sea instead So Orlando stood gazing while the man turned his pen in his fingers this way and that way and gazed and mused and then very quickly wrote halfadozen lines and looked up Whereupon Orlando overcome with shyness darted off and reached the banquetinghall only just in time to sink upon his knees and hanging his head in confusion to offer a bowl of rose water to the great Queen herself
Such was his shyness that he saw no more of her than her ringed hands in water but it was enough It was a memorable hand a thin hand with long fingers always curling as if round orb or sceptre a nervous crabbed sickly hand a commanding hand too a hand that had only to raise itself for a head to fall a hand he guessed attached to an old body that smelt like a cupboard in which furs are kept in camphor which body was yet caparisoned in all sorts of brocades and gems and held itself very upright though perhaps in pain from sciatica and never flinched though strung together by a thousand fears and the Queens eyes were light yellow All this he felt as the great rings flashed in the water and then something pressed his hairwhich perhaps accounts for his seeing nothing more likely to be of use to a historian And in truth his mind was such a welter of oppositesof the night and the blazing candles of the shabby poet and the great Queen of silent fields and the clatter of serving menthat he could see nothing or only a hand
By the same showing the Queen herself can have seen only a head But if it is possible from a hand to deduce a body informed with all the attributes of a great Queen her crabbedness courage frailty and terror surely a head can be as fertile looked down upon from a chair of state by a lady whose eyes were always if the waxworks at the Abbey are to be trusted wide open The long curled hair the dark head bent so reverently so innocently before her implied a pair of the finest legs that a young nobleman has ever stood upright upon and violet eyes and a heart of gold and loyalty and manly charmall qualities which the old woman loved the more the more they failed her For she was growing old and worn and bent before her time The sound of cannon was always in her ears She saw always the glistening poison drop and the long stiletto As she sat at table she listened she heard the guns in the Channel she dreadedwas that a curse was that a whisper Innocence simplicity were all the more dear to her for the dark background she set them against And it was that same night so tradition has it when Orlando was sound asleep that she made over formally putting her hand and seal finally to the parchment the gift of the great monastic house that had been the Archbishops and then the Kings to Orlandos father
Orlando slept all night in ignorance He had been kissed by a queen without knowing it And perhaps for womens hearts are intricate it was his ignorance and the start he gave when her lips touched him that kept the memory of her young cousin for they had blood in common green in her mind At any rate two years of this quiet country life had not passed and Orlando had written no more perhaps than twenty tragedies and a dozen histories and a score of sonnets when a message came that he was to attend the Queen at Whitehall
Here she said watching him advance down the long gallery towards her comes my innocent There was a serenity about him always which had the look of innocence when technically the word was no longer applicable
Come she said She was sitting bolt upright beside the fire And she held him a foots pace from her and looked him up and down Was she matching her speculations the other night with the truth now visible Did she find her guesses justified Eyes mouth nose breast hips handsshe ran them over her lips twitched visibly as she looked but when she saw his legs she laughed out loud He was the very image of a noble gentleman But inwardly She flashed her yellow hawks eyes upon him as if she would pierce his soul The young man withstood her gaze blushing only a damask rose as became him Strength grace romance folly poetry youthshe read him like a page Instantly she plucked a ring from her finger the joint was swollen rather and as she fitted it to his named him her Treasurer and Steward next hung about him chains of office and bidding him bend his knee tied round it at the slenderest part the jewelled order of the Garter Nothing after that was denied him When she drove in state he rode at her carriage door She sent him to Scotland on a sad embassy to the unhappy Queen He was about to sail for the Polish wars when she recalled him For how could she bear to think of that tender flesh torn and that curly head rolled in the dust She kept him with her At the height of her triumph when the guns were booming at the Tower and the air was thick enough with gunpowder to make one sneeze and the huzzas of the people rang beneath the windows she pulled him down among the cushions where her women had laid her she was so worn and old and made him bury his face in that astonishing compositionshe had not changed her dress for a monthwhich smelt for all the world he thought recalling his boyish memory like some old cabinet at home where his mothers furs were stored He rose half suffocated from the embrace This she breathed is my victoryeven as a rocket roared up and dyed her cheeks scarlet
For the old woman loved him And the Queen who knew a man when she saw one though not it is said in the usual way plotted for him a splendid ambitious career Lands were given him houses assigned him He was to be the son of her old age the limb of her infirmity the oak tree on which she leant her degradation She croaked out these promises and strange domineering tendernesses they were at Richmond now sitting bolt upright in her stiff brocades by the fire which however high they piled it never kept her warm
Meanwhile the long winter months drew on Every tree in the Park was lined with frost The river ran sluggishly One day when the snow was on the ground and the dark panelled rooms were full of shadows and the stags were barking in the Park she saw in the mirror which she kept for fear of spies always by her through the door which she kept for fear of murderers always open a boycould it be Orlandokissing a girlwho in the Devils name was the brazen hussy Snatching at her goldenhilted sword she struck violently at the mirror The glass crashed people came running she was lifted and set in her chair again but she was stricken after that and groaned much as her days wore to an end of mans treachery
It was Orlandos fault perhaps yet after all are we to blame Orlando The age was the Elizabethan their morals were not ours nor their poets nor their climate nor their vegetables even Everything was different The weather itself, the heat and cold of summer and winter was we may believe of another temper altogether The brilliant amorous day was divided as sheerly from the night as land from water Sunsets were redder and more intense dawns were whiter and more auroral Of our crepuscular halflights and lingering twilights they knew nothing The rain fell vehemently or not at all The sun blazed or there was darkness Translating this to the spiritual regions as their wont is the poets sang beautifully how roses fade and petals fall The moment is brief they sang the moment is over one long night is then to be slept by all As for using the artifices of the greenhouse or conservatory to prolong or preserve these fresh pinks and roses that was not their way The withered intricacies and ambiguities of our more gradual and doubtful age were unknown to them Violence was all The flower bloomed and faded The sun rose and sank The lover loved and went And what the poets said in rhyme the young translated into practice Girls were roses and their seasons were short as the flowers Plucked they must be before nightfall for the day was brief and the day was all Thus if Orlando followed the leading of the climate of the poets of the age itself, and plucked his flower in the windowseat even with the snow on the ground and the Queen vigilant in the corridor we can scarcely bring ourselves to blame him He was young he was boyish he did but as nature bade him do As for the girl we know no more than Queen Elizabeth herself did what her name was It may have been Doris Chloris Delia or Diana for he made rhymes to them all in turn equally she may have been a court lady or some serving maid For Orlandos taste was broad he was no lover of garden flowers only the wild and the weeds even had always a fascination for him
Here indeed we lay bare rudely as a biographer may a curious trait in him to be accounted for perhaps by the fact that a certain grandmother of his had worn a smock and carried milkpails Some grains of the Kentish or Sussex earth were mixed with the thin fine fluid which came to him from Normandy He held that the mixture of brown earth and blue blood was a good one Certain it is that he had always a liking for low company especially for that of lettered people whose wits so often keep them under as if there were the sympathy of blood between them At this season of his life when his head brimmed with rhymes and he never went to bed without striking off some conceit the cheek of an innkeepers daughter seemed fresher and the wit of a gamekeepers niece seemed quicker than those of the ladies at Court Hence he began going frequently to Wapping Old Stairs and the beer gardens at night wrapped in a grey cloak to hide the star at his neck and the garter at his knee There with a mug before him among the sanded alleys and bowling greens and all the simple architecture of such places he listened to sailors stories of hardship and horror and cruelty on the Spanish main how some had lost their toes others their nosesfor the spoken story was never so rounded or so finely coloured as the written Especially he loved to hear them volley forth their songs of the Azores while the parrakeets which they had brought from those parts pecked at the rings in their ears tapped with their hard acquisitive beaks at the rubies on their fingers and swore as vilely as their masters The women were scarcely less bold in their speech and less free in their manner than the birds They perched on his knee flung their arms round his neck and guessing that something out of the common lay hid beneath his duffle cloak were quite as eager to come at the truth of the matter as Orlando himself
Nor was opportunity lacking The river was astir early and late with barges wherries and craft of all description Every day sailed to sea some fine ship bound for the Indies now and again another blackened and ragged with hairy men on board crept painfully to anchor No one missed a boy or girl if they dallied a little on the water after sunset or raised an eyebrow if gossip had seen them sleeping soundly among the treasure sacks safe in each others arms Such indeed was the adventure that befel Orlando Sukey and the Earl of Cumberland The day was hot their loves had been active they had fallen asleep among the rubies Late that night the Earl whose fortunes were much bound up in the Spanish ventures came to check the booty alone with a lantern He flashed the light on a barrel He started back with an oath Twined about the cask two spirits lay sleeping Superstitious by nature and his conscience laden with many a crime the Earl took the couplethey were wrapped in a red cloak and Sukeys bosom was almost as white as the eternal snows of Orlandos poetryfor a phantom sprung from the graves of drowned sailors to upbraid him He crossed himself He vowed repentance The row of alms houses still standing in the Sheen Road is the visible fruit of that moments panic Twelve poor old women of the parish today drink tea and tonight bless his Lordship for a roof above their heads so that illicit love in a treasure shipbut we omit the moral
Soon however Orlando grew tired not only of the discomfort of this way of life and of the crabbed streets of the neighbourhood but of the primitive manner of the people For it has to be remembered that crime and poverty had none of the attraction for the Elizabethans that they have for us They had none of our modern shame of book learning none of our belief that to be born the son of a butcher is a blessing and to be unable to read a virtue no fancy that what we call life and reality are somehow connected with ignorance and brutality nor indeed any equivalent for these two words at all It was not to seek life that Orlando went among them not in quest of reality that he left them But when he had heard a score of times how Jakes had lost his nose and Sukey her honourand they told the stories admirably it must be admittedhe began to be a little weary of the repetition for a nose can only be cut off in one way and maidenhood lost in anotheror so it seemed to himwhereas the arts and the sciences had a diversity about them which stirred his curiosity profoundly So always keeping them in happy memory he left off frequenting the beer gardens and the skittle alleys hung his grey cloak in his wardrobe let his star shine at his neck and his garter twinkle at his knee and appeared once more at the Court of King James He was young he was rich he was handsome No one could have been received with greater acclamation than he was
It is certain indeed that many ladies were ready to show him their favours The names of three at least were freely coupled with his in marriageClorinda Favilla Euphrosyneso he called them in his sonnets
To take them in order Clorinda was a sweetmannered gentle lady enoughindeed Orlando was greatly taken with her for six months and a half but she had white eyelashes and could not bear the sight of blood A hare brought up roasted at her fathers table turned her faint She was much under the influence of the Priests too and stinted her underlinen in order to give to the poor She took it on her to reform Orlando of his sins which sickened him so that he drew back from the marriage and did not much regret it when she died soon after of the smallpox
Favilla who comes next was of a different sort altogether She was the daughter of a poor Somersetshire gentleman who by sheer assiduity and the use of her eyes had worked her way up at court where her address in horsemanship her fine instep and her grace in dancing won the admiration of all Once however she was so illadvised as to whip a spaniel that had torn one of her silk stockings and it must be said in justice that Favilla had few stockings and those for the most part of drugget within an inch of its life beneath Orlandos window Orlando who was a passionate lover of animals now noticed that her teeth were crooked and the two front turned inward which he said is a sure sign of a perverse and cruel disposition in women and so broke the engagement that very night for ever
The third Euphrosyne was by far the most serious of his flames She was by birth one of the Irish Desmonds and had therefore a family tree of her own as old and deeply rooted as Orlandos itself She was fair florid and a trifle phlegmatic She spoke Italian well had a perfect set of teeth in the upper jaw though those on the lower were slightly discoloured She was never without a whippet or spaniel at her knee fed them with white bread from her own plate sang sweetly to the virginals and was never dressed before midday owing to the extreme care she took of her person In short she would have made a perfect wife for such a nobleman as Orlando and matters had gone so far that the lawyers on both sides were busy with covenants jointures settlements messuages tenements and whatever is needed before one great fortune can mate with another when with the suddenness and severity that then marked the English climate came the Great Frost
The Great Frost was historians tell us the most severe that has ever visited these islands Birds froze in midair and fell like stones to the ground At Norwich a young countrywoman started to cross the road in her usual robust health and was seen by the onlookers to turn visibly to powder and be blown in a puff of dust over the roofs as the icy blast struck her at the street corner The mortality among sheep and cattle was enormous Corpses froze and could not be drawn from the sheets It was no uncommon sight to come upon a whole herd of swine frozen immovable upon the road The fields were full of shepherds ploughmen teams of horses and little birdscaring boys all struck stark in the act of the moment one with his hand to his nose another with the bottle to his lips a third with a stone raised to throw at the ravens who sat as if stuffed upon the hedge within a yard of him The severity of the frost was so extraordinary that a kind of petrifaction sometimes ensued and it was commonly supposed that the great increase of rocks in some parts of Derbyshire was due to no eruption for there was none but to the solidification of unfortunate wayfarers who had been turned literally to stone where they stood The Church could give little help in the matter and though some landowners had these relics blessed the most part preferred to use them either as landmarks scratchingposts for sheep or when the form of the stone allowed drinking troughs for cattle which purposes they serve admirably for the most part to this day
But while the country people suffered the extremity of want and the trade of the country was at a standstill London enjoyed a carnival of the utmost brilliancy The Court was at Greenwich and the new King seized the opportunity that his coronation gave him to curry favour with the citizens He directed that the river which was frozen to a depth of twenty feet and more for six or seven miles on either side should be swept decorated and given all the semblance of a park or pleasure ground with arbours mazes alleys drinking booths etc at his expense For himself and the courtiers he reserved a certain space immediately opposite the Palace gates which railed off from the public only by a silken rope became at once the centre of the most brilliant society in England Great statesmen in their beards and ruffs despatched affairs of state under the crimson awning of the Royal Pagoda Soldiers planned the conquest of the Moor and the downfall of the Turk in striped arbours surmounted by plumes of ostrich feathers Admirals strode up and down the narrow pathways glass in hand sweeping the horizon and telling stories of the northwest passage and the Spanish Armada Lovers dallied upon divans spread with sables Frozen roses fell in showers when the Queen and her ladies walked abroad Coloured balloons hovered motionless in the air Here and there burnt vast bonfires of cedar and oak wood lavishly salted so that the flames were of green orange and purple fire But however fiercely they burnt the heat was not enough to melt the ice which though of singular transparency was yet of the hardness of steel So clear indeed was it that there could be seen congealed at a depth of several feet here a porpoise there a flounder Shoals of eels lay motionless in a trance but whether their state was one of death or merely of suspended animation which the warmth would revive puzzled the philosophers Near London Bridge where the river had frozen to a depth of some twenty fathoms a wrecked wherry boat was plainly visible lying on the bed of the river where it had sunk last autumn overladen with apples The old bumboat woman who was carrying her fruit to market on the Surrey side sat there in her plaids and farthingales with her lap full of apples for all the world as if she were about to serve a customer though a certain blueness about the lips hinted the truth Twas a sight King James specially liked to look upon and he would bring a troupe of courtiers to gaze with him In short nothing could exceed the brilliancy and gaiety of the scene by day But it was at night that the carnival was at its merriest For the frost continued unbroken the nights were of perfect stillness the moon and stars blazed with the hard fixity of diamonds and to the fine music of flute and trumpet the courtiers danced
Orlando it is true was none of those who tread lightly the corantoe and lavolta he was clumsy and a little absentminded He much preferred the plain dances of his own country which he danced as a child to these fantastic foreign measures He had indeed just brought his feet together about six in the evening of the seventh of January at the finish of some such quadrille or minuet when he beheld coming from the pavilion of the Muscovite Embassy a figure which whether boys or womans for the loose tunic and trousers of the Russian fashion served to disguise the sex filled him with the highest curiosity The person whatever the name or sex was about middle height very slenderly fashioned and dressed entirely in oystercoloured velvet trimmed with some unfamiliar greenishcoloured fur But these details were obscured by the extraordinary seductiveness which issued from the whole person Images metaphors of the most extreme and extravagant twined and twisted in his mind He called her a melon a pineapple an olive tree an emerald and a fox in the snow all in the space of three seconds he did not know whether he had heard her tasted her seen her or all three together For though we must pause not a moment in the narrative we may here hastily note that all his images at this time were simple in the extreme to match his senses and were mostly taken from things he had liked the taste of as a boy But if his senses were simple they were at the same time extremely strong To pause therefore and seek the reasons of things is out of the questionA melon an emerald a fox in the snowso he raved so he stared When the boy for alas a boy it must beno woman could skate with such speed and vigourswept almost on tiptoe past him Orlando was ready to tear his hair with vexation that the person was of his own sex and thus all embraces were out of the question But the skater came closer Legs hands carriage were a boys but no boy ever had a mouth like that no boy had those breasts no boy had eyes which looked as if they had been fished from the bottom of the sea Finally coming to a stop and sweeping a curtsey with the utmost grace to the King who was shuffling past on the arm of some Lordinwaiting the unknown skater came to a standstill She was not a handsbreadth off She was a woman Orlando stared trembled turned hot turned cold longed to hurl himself through the summer air to crush acorns beneath his feet to toss his arm with the beech trees and the oaks As it was he drew his lips up over his small white teeth opened them perhaps half an inch as if to bite shut them as if he had bitten The Lady Euphrosyne hung upon his arm
The strangers name he found was the Princess Marousha Stanilovska Dagmar Natasha Iliana Romanovitch and she had come in the train of the Muscovite Ambassador who was her uncle perhaps or perhaps her father to attend the coronation Very little was known of the Muscovites In their great beards and furred hats they sat almost silent drinking some black liquid which they spat out now and then upon the ice None spoke English and French with which some at least were familiar was then little spoken at the English Court
It was through this accident that Orlando and the Princess became acquainted They were seated opposite each other at the great table spread under a huge awning for the entertainment of the notables The Princess was placed between two young Lords one Lord Francis Vere and the other the young Earl of Moray It was laughable to see the predicament she soon had them in for though both were fine lads in their way the babe unborn had as much knowledge of the French tongue as they had When at the beginning of dinner the Princess turned to the Earl and said with a grace which ravished his heart Je crois avoir fait la connaissance dun gentilhomme qui vous etait apparente en Pologne lete dernier or La beaute des dames de la cour dAngleterre me met dans le ravissement On ne peut voir une dame plus gracieuse que votre reine ni une coiffure plus belle que la sienne both Lord Francis and the Earl showed the highest embarrassment The one helped her largely to horseradish sauce the other whistled to his dog and made him beg for a marrow bone At this the Princess could no longer contain her laughter and Orlando catching her eyes across the boars heads and stuffed peacocks laughed too He laughed but the laugh on his lips froze in wonder Whom had he loved what had he loved he asked himself in a tumult of emotion until now An old woman he answered all skin and bone Redcheeked trulls too many to mention A puling nun A hardbitten cruelmouthed adventuress A nodding mass of lace and ceremony Love had meant to him nothing but sawdust and cinders The joys he had had of it tasted insipid in the extreme He marvelled how he could have gone through with it without yawning For as he looked the thickness of his blood melted the ice turned to wine in his veins he heard the waters flowing and the birds singing spring broke over the hard wintry landscape his manhood woke he grasped a sword in his hand he charged a more daring foe than Pole or Moor he dived in deep water he saw the flower of danger growing in a crevice he stretched his handin fact he was rattling off one of his most impassioned sonnets when the Princess addressed him Would you have the goodness to pass the salt
He blushed deeply
With all the pleasure in the world Madame he replied speaking French with a perfect accent For heaven be praised he spoke the tongue as his own his mothers maid had taught him Yet perhaps it would have been better for him had he never learnt that tongue never answered that voice never followed the light of those eyes
The Princess continued Who were those bumpkins she asked him who sat beside her with the manners of stablemen What was the nauseating mixture they had poured on her plate Did the dogs eat at the same table with the men in England Was that figure of fun at the end of the table with her hair rigged up like a Maypole comme une grande perche mal fagotee really the Queen And did the King always slobber like that And which of those popinjays was George Villiers Though these questions rather discomposed Orlando at first they were put with such archness and drollery that he could not help but laugh and he saw from the blank faces of the company that nobody understood a word he answered her as freely as she asked him speaking as she did in perfect French
Thus began an intimacy between the two which soon became the scandal of the Court
Soon it was observed Orlando paid the Muscovite far more attention than mere civility demanded He was seldom far from her side and their conversation though unintelligible to the rest was carried on with such animation provoked such blushes and laughter that the dullest could guess the subject Moreover the change in Orlando himself was extraordinary Nobody had ever seen him so animated In one night he had thrown off his boyish clumsiness he was changed from a sulky stripling who could not enter a ladies room without sweeping half the ornaments from the table to a nobleman full of grace and manly courtesy To see him hand the Muscovite as she was called to her sledge or offer her his hand for the dance or catch the spotted kerchief which she had let drop or discharge any other of those manifold duties which the supreme lady exacts and the lover hastens to anticipate was a sight to kindle the dull eyes of age and to make the quick pulse of youth beat faster Yet over it all hung a cloud The old men shrugged their shoulders The young tittered between their fingers All knew that a Orlando was betrothed to another The Lady Margaret OBrien ODare OReilly Tyrconnel for that was the proper name of Euphrosyne of the Sonnets wore Orlandos splendid sapphire on the second finger of her left hand It was she who had the supreme right to his attentions Yet she might drop all the handkerchiefs in her wardrobe of which she had many scores upon the ice and Orlando never stooped to pick them up She might wait twenty minutes for him to hand her to her sledge and in the end have to be content with the services of her Blackamoor When she skated which she did rather clumsily no one was at her elbow to encourage her and if she fell which she did rather heavily no one raised her to her feet and dusted the snow from her petticoats Although she was naturally phlegmatic slow to take offence and more reluctant than most people to believe that a mere foreigner could oust her from Orlandos affections still even the Lady Margaret herself was brought at last to suspect that something was brewing against her peace of mind
Indeed as the days passed Orlando took less and less care to hide his feelings Making some excuse or other he would leave the company as soon as they had dined or steal away from the skaters who were forming sets for a quadrille Next moment it would be seen that the Muscovite was missing too But what most outraged the Court and stung it in its tenderest part which is its vanity was that the couple was often seen to slip under the silken rope which railed off the Royal enclosure from the public part of the river and to disappear among the crowd of common people For suddenly the Princess would stamp her foot and cry Take me away I detest your English mob by which she meant the English Court itself She could stand it no longer It was full of prying old women she said who stared in ones face and of bumptious young men who trod on ones toes They smelt bad Their dogs ran between her legs It was like being in a cage In Russia they had rivers ten miles broad on which one could gallop six horses abreast all day long without meeting a soul Besides she wanted to see the Tower the Beefeaters the Heads on Temple Bar and the jewellers shops in the city Thus it came about that Orlando took her into the city showed her the Beefeaters and the rebels heads and bought her whatever took her fancy in the Royal Exchange But this was not enough Each increasingly desired the others company in privacy all day long where there were none to marvel or to stare Instead of taking the road to London therefore they turned the other way about and were soon beyond the crowd among the frozen reaches of the Thames where save for sea birds and some old country woman hacking at the ice in a vain attempt to draw a pailful of water or gathering what sticks or dead leaves she could find for firing not a living soul ever came their way The poor kept closely to their cottages and the better sort who could afford it crowded for warmth and merriment to the city
Hence Orlando and Sasha as he called her for short and because it was the name of a white Russian fox he had had as a boya creature soft as snow but with teeth of steel which bit him so savagely that his father had it killedhence they had the river to themselves Hot with skating and with love they would throw themselves down in some solitary reach where the yellow osiers fringed the bank and wrapped in a great fur cloak Orlando would take her in his arms and know for the first time he murmured the delights of love Then when the ecstasy was over and they lay lulled in a swoon on the ice he would tell her of his other loves and how compared with her they had been of wood of sackcloth and of cinders And laughing at his vehemence she would turn once more in his arms and give him for loves sake one more embrace And then they would marvel that the ice did not melt with their heat and pity the poor old woman who had no such natural means of thawing it but must hack at it with a chopper of cold steel And then wrapped in their sables they would talk of everything under the sun of sights and travels of Moor and Pagan of this mans beard and that womans skin of a rat that fed from her hand at table of the arras that moved always in the hall at home of a face of a feather Nothing was too small for such converse nothing was too great
Then suddenly Orlando would fall into one of his moods of melancholy the sight of the old woman hobbling over the ice might be the cause of it or nothing and would fling himself face downwards on the ice and look into the frozen waters and think of death For the philosopher is right who says that nothing thicker than a knifes blade separates happiness from melancholy and he goes on to opine that one is twin fellow to the other and draws from this the conclusion that all extremes of feeling are allied to madness and so bids us take refuge in the true Church in his view the Anabaptist which is the only harbour port anchorage etc he said for those tossed on this sea
All ends in death Orlando would say sitting upright his face clouded with gloom For that was the way his mind worked now in violent seesaws from life to death stopping at nothing in between so that the biographer must not stop either but must fly as fast as he can and so keep pace with the unthinking passionate foolish actions and sudden extravagant words in which it is impossible to deny Orlando at this time of his life indulged
All ends in death Orlando would say sitting upright on the ice But Sasha who after all had no English blood in her but was from Russia where the sunsets are longer the dawns less sudden and sentences often left unfinished from doubt as to how best to end themSasha stared at him perhaps sneered at him for he must have seemed a child to her and said nothing But at length the ice grew cold beneath them which she disliked so pulling him to his feet again she talked so enchantingly so wittily so wisely but unfortunately always in French which notoriously loses its flavour in translation that he forgot the frozen waters or night coming or the old woman or whatever it was and would try to tell herplunging and splashing among a thousand images which had gone as stale as the women who inspired themwhat she was like Snow cream marble cherries alabaster golden wire None of these She was like a fox or an olive tree like the waves of the sea when you look down upon them from a height like an emerald like the sun on a green hill which is yet cloudedlike nothing he had seen or known in England Ransack the language as he might words failed him He wanted another landscape and another tongue English was too frank too candid too honeyed a speech for Sasha For in all she said however open she seemed and voluptuous there was something hidden in all she did however daring there was something concealed So the green flame seems hidden in the emerald or the sun prisoned in a hill The clearness was only outward within was a wandering flame It came it went she never shone with the steady beam of an Englishwomanhere however remembering the Lady Margaret and her petticoats Orlando ran wild in his transports and swept her over the ice faster faster vowing that he would chase the flame dive for the gem and so on and so on the words coming on the pants of his breath with the passion of a poet whose poetry is half pressed out of him by pain
But Sasha was silent When Orlando had done telling her that she was a fox an olive tree or a green hilltop and had given her the whole history of his family how their house was one of the most ancient in Britain how they had come from Rome with the Caesars and had the right to walk down the Corso which is the chief street in Rome under a tasselled palanquin which he said is a privilege reserved only for those of imperial blood for there was an orgulous credulity about him which was pleasant enough he would pause and ask her Where was her own house What was her father Had she brothers Why was she here alone with her uncle Then somehow though she answered readily enough an awkwardness would come between them He suspected at first that her rank was not as high as she would like or that she was ashamed of the savage ways of her people for he had heard that the women in Muscovy wear beards and the men are covered with fur from the waist down that both sexes are smeared with tallow to keep the cold out tear meat with their fingers and live in huts where an English noble would scruple to keep his cattle so that he forebore to press her But on reflection he concluded that her silence could not be for that reason she herself was entirely free from hair on the chin she dressed in velvet and pearls and her manners were certainly not those of a woman bred in a cattleshed
What then did she hide from him The doubt underlying the tremendous force of his feelings was like a quicksand beneath a monument which shifts suddenly and makes the whole pile shake The agony would seize him suddenly Then he would blaze out in such wrath that she did not know how to quiet him Perhaps she did not want to quiet him perhaps his rages pleased her and she provoked them purposelysuch is the curious obliquity of the Muscovitish temperament
To continue the storyskating farther than their wont that day they reached that part of the river where the ships had anchored and been frozen in midstream Among them was the ship of the Muscovite Embassy flying its doubleheaded black eagle from the main mast which was hung with manycoloured icicles several yards in length Sasha had left some of her clothing on board and supposing the ship to be empty they climbed on deck and went in search of it Remembering certain passages in his own past Orlando would not have marvelled had some good citizens sought this refuge before them and so it turned out They had not ventured far when a fine young man started up from some business of his own behind a coil of rope and saying apparently for he spoke Russian that he was one of the crew and would help the Princess to find what she wanted lit a lump of candle and disappeared with her into the lower parts of the ship
Time went by and Orlando wrapped in his own dreams thought only of the pleasures of life of his jewel of her rarity of means for making her irrevocably and indissolubly his own Obstacles there were and hardships to overcome She was determined to live in Russia where there were frozen rivers and wild horses and men she said who gashed each others throats open It is true that a landscape of pine and snow habits of lust and slaughter did not entice him Nor was he anxious to cease his pleasant country ways of sport and treeplanting relinquish his office ruin his career shoot the reindeer instead of the rabbit drink vodka instead of canary and slip a knife up his sleevefor what purpose he knew not Still all this and more than all this he would do for her sake As for his marriage to the Lady Margaret fixed though it was for this day sennight the thing was so palpably absurd that he scarcely gave it a thought Her kinsmen would abuse him for deserting a great lady his friends would deride him for ruining the finest career in the world for a Cossack woman and a waste of snowit weighed not a straw in the balance compared with Sasha herself On the first dark night they would fly They would take ship to Russia So he pondered so he plotted as he walked up and down the deck
He was recalled turning westward by the sight of the sun slung like an orange on the cross of St Pauls It was bloodred and sinking rapidly It must be almost evening Sasha had been gone this hour and more Seized instantly with those dark forebodings which shadowed even his most confident thoughts of her he plunged the way he had seen them go into the hold of the ship and after stumbling among chests and barrels in the darkness was made aware by a faint glimmer in a corner that they were seated there For one second he had a vision of them saw Sasha seated on the sailors knee saw her bend towards him saw them embrace before the light was blotted out in a red cloud by his rage He blazed into such a howl of anguish that the whole ship echoed Sasha threw herself between them or the sailor would have been stifled before he could draw his cutlass Then a deadly sickness came over Orlando and they had to lay him on the floor and give him brandy to drink before he revived And then when he had recovered and was sat upon a heap of sacking on deck Sasha hung over him passing before his dizzied eyes softly sinuously like the fox that had bit him now cajoling now denouncing so that he came to doubt what he had seen Had not the candle guttered had not the shadows moved The box was heavy she said the man was helping her to move it Orlando believed her one momentfor who can be sure that his rage has not painted what he most dreads to findthe next was the more violent with anger at her deceit Then Sasha herself turned white stamped her foot on deck said she would go that night and called upon her Gods to destroy her if she a Romanovitch had lain in the arms of a common seaman Indeed looking at them together which he could hardly bring himself to do Orlando was outraged by the foulness of his imagination that could have painted so frail a creature in the paw of that hairy sea brute The man was huge stood six feet four in his stockings wore common wire rings in his ears and looked like a dray horse upon which some wren or robin has perched in its flight So he yielded believed her and asked her pardon Yet when they were going down the ships side lovingly again Sasha paused with her hand on the ladder and called back to this tawny widecheeked monster a volley of Russian greetings jests or endearments not a word of which Orlando could understand But there was something in her tone it might be the fault of the Russian consonants that reminded Orlando of a scene some nights since when he had come upon her in secret gnawing a candleend in a corner which she had picked from the floor True it was pink it was gilt and it was from the Kings table but it was tallow and she gnawed it Was there not he thought handing her on to the ice something rank in her something coarse flavoured something peasant born And he fancied her at forty grown unwieldy though she was now slim as a reed and lethargic though she was now blithe as a lark But again as they skated towards London such suspicions melted in his breast and he felt as if he had been hooked by a great fish through the nose and rushed through the waters unwillingly yet with his own consent
It was an evening of astonishing beauty As the sun sank all the domes spires turrets and pinnacles of London rose in inky blackness against the furious red sunset clouds Here was the fretted cross at Charing there the dome of St Pauls there the massy square of the Tower buildings there like a grove of trees stripped of all leaves save a knob at the end were the heads on the pikes at Temple Bar Now the Abbey windows were lit up and burnt like a heavenly manycoloured shield in Orlandos fancy now all the west seemed a golden window with troops of angels in Orlandos fancy again passing up and down the heavenly stairs perpetually All the time they seemed to be skating in fathomless depths of air so blue the ice had become and so glassy smooth was it that they sped quicker and quicker to the city with the white gulls circling about them and cutting in the air with their wings the very same sweeps that they cut on the ice with their skates
Sasha as if to reassure him was tenderer than usual and even more delightful Seldom would she talk about her past life but now she told him how in winter in Russia she would listen to the wolves howling across the steppes and thrice to show him she barked like a wolf Upon which he told her of the stags in the snow at home and how they would stray into the great hall for warmth and be fed by an old man with porridge from a bucket And then she praised him for his love of beasts for his gallantry for his legs Ravished with her praises and shamed to think how he had maligned her by fancying her on the knees of a common sailor and grown fat and lethargic at forty he told her that he could find no words to praise her yet instantly bethought him how she was like the spring and green grass and rushing waters and seizing her more tightly than ever he swung her with him half across the river so that the gulls and the cormorants swung too And halting at length out of breath she said panting slightly that he was like a millioncandled Christmas tree such as they have in Russia hung with yellow globes incandescent enough to light a whole street by so one might translate it for what with his glowing cheeks his dark curls his black and crimson cloak he looked as if he were burning with his own radiance from a lamp lit within
All the colour save the red of Orlandos cheeks soon faded Night came on As the orange light of sunset vanished it was succeeded by an astonishing white glare from the torches bonfires flaming cressets and other devices by which the river was lit up and the strangest transformation took place Various churches and noblemens palaces whose fronts were of white stone showed in streaks and patches as if floating on the air Of St Pauls in particular nothing was left but a gilt cross The Abbey appeared like the grey skeleton of a leaf Everything suffered emaciation and transformation As they approached the carnival they heard a deep note like that struck on a tuningfork which boomed louder and louder until it became an uproar Every now and then a great shout followed a rocket into the air Gradually they could discern little figures breaking off from the vast crowd and spinning hither and thither like gnats on the surface of a river Above and around this brilliant circle like a bowl of darkness pressed the deep black of a winters night And then into this darkness there began to rise with pauses which kept the expectation alert and the mouth open flowering rockets crescents serpents a crown At one moment the woods and distant hills showed green as on a summers day the next all was winter and blackness again
By this time Orlando and the Princess were close to the Royal enclosure and found their way barred by a great crowd of the common people who were pressing as near to the silken rope as they dared Loth to end their privacy and encounter the sharp eyes that were on the watch for them the couple lingered there shouldered by apprentices tailors fishwives horse dealers cony catchers starving scholars maidservants in their whimples orange girls ostlers sober citizens bawdy tapsters and a crowd of little ragamuffins such as always haunt the outskirts of a crowd screaming and scrambling among peoples feetall the riffraff of the London streets indeed was there jesting and jostling here casting dice telling fortunes shoving tickling pinching here uproarious there glum some of them with mouths gaping a yard wide others as little reverent as daws on a housetop all as variously rigged out as their purse or stations allowed here in fur and broadcloth there in tatters with their feet kept from the ice only by a dishclout bound about them The main press of people it appeared stood opposite a booth or stage something like our Punch and Judy show upon which some kind of theatrical performance was going forward A black man was waving his arms and vociferating There was a woman in white laid upon a bed Rough though the staging was the actors running up and down a pair of steps and sometimes tripping and the crowd stamping their feet and whistling or when they were bored tossing a piece of orange peel on to the ice which a dog would scramble for still the astonishing sinuous melody of the words stirred Orlando like music Spoken with extreme speed and a daring agility of tongue which reminded him of the sailors singing in the beer gardens at Wapping the words even without meaning were as wine to him But now and again a single phrase would come to him over the ice which was as if torn from the depths of his heart The frenzy of the Moor seemed to him his own frenzy and when the Moor suffocated the woman in her bed it was Sasha he killed with his own hands
At last the play was ended All had grown dark The tears streamed down his face Looking up into the sky there was nothing but blackness there too Ruin and death he thought cover all The life of man ends in the grave Worms devour us
Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse
Of sun and moon and that the affrighted globe
Should yawn
Even as he said this a star of some pallor rose in his memory The night was dark it was pitch dark but it was such a night as this that they had waited for it was on such a night as this that they had planned to fly He remembered everything The time had come With a burst of passion he snatched Sasha to him and hissed in her ear Jour de ma vie It was their signal At midnight they would meet at an inn near Blackfriars Horses waited there Everything was in readiness for their flight So they parted she to her tent he to his It still wanted an hour of the time
Long before midnight Orlando was in waiting The night was of so inky a blackness that a man was on you before he could be seen which was all to the good but it was also of the most solemn stillness so that a horses hoof or a childs cry could be heard at a distance of half a mile Many a time did Orlando pacing the little courtyard hold his heart at the sound of some nags steady footfall on the cobbles or at the rustle of a womans dress But the traveller was only some merchant making home belated or some woman of the quarter whose errand was nothing so innocent They passed and the street was quieter than before Then those lights which burnt downstairs in the small huddled quarters where the poor of the city lived moved up to the sleepingrooms and then one by one were extinguished The street lanterns in these purlieus were few at most and the negligence of the night watchman often suffered them to expire long before dawn The darkness then became even deeper than before Orlando looked to the wicks of his lantern saw to the saddle girths primed his pistols examined his holsters and did all these things a dozen times at least till he could find nothing more needing his attention Though it still lacked some twenty minutes to midnight he could not bring himself to go indoors to the inn parlour where the hostess was still serving sack and the cheaper sort of canary wine to a few seafaring men who would sit there trolling their ditties and telling their stories of Drake Hawkins and Grenville till they toppled off the benches and rolled asleep on the sanded floor The darkness was more compassionate to his swollen and violent heart He listened to every footfall speculated on every sound Each drunken shout and each wail from some poor wretch laid in the straw or in other distress cut his heart to the quick as if it boded ill omen to his venture Yet he had no fear for Sasha Her courage made nothing of the adventure She would come alone in her cloak and trousers booted like a man Light as her footfall was it would hardly be heard even in this silence
So he waited in the darkness Suddenly he was struck in the face by a blow soft yet heavy on the side of his cheek So strung with expectation was he that he started and put his hand to his sword The blow was repeated a dozen times on forehead and cheek The dry frost had lasted so long that it took him a minute to realize that these were raindrops falling the blows were the blows of the rain At first they fell slowly deliberately one by one But soon the six drops became sixty then six hundred then ran themselves together in a steady spout of water It was as if the hard and consolidated sky poured itself forth in one profuse fountain In the space of five minutes Orlando was soaked to the skin
Hastily putting the horses under cover he sought shelter beneath the lintel of the door whence he could still observe the courtyard The air was thicker now than ever and such a steaming and droning rose from the downpour that no footfall of man or beast could be heard above it The roads pitted as they were with great holes would be under water and perhaps impassable But of what effect this would have upon their flight he scarcely thought All his senses were bent upon gazing along the cobbled pathwaygleaming in the light of the lanternfor Sashas coming Sometimes in the darkness he seemed to see her wrapped about with rain strokes But the phantom vanished Suddenly with an awful and ominous voice a voice full of horror and alarm which raised every hair of anguish in Orlandos soul St Pauls struck the first stroke of midnight Four times more it struck remorselessly With the superstition of a lover Orlando had made out that it was on the sixth stroke that she would come But the sixth stroke echoed away and the seventh came and the eighth and to his apprehensive mind they seemed notes first heralding and then proclaiming death and disaster When the twelfth struck he knew that his doom was sealed It was useless for the rational part of him to reason she might be late she might be prevented she might have missed her way The passionate and feeling heart of Orlando knew the truth Other clocks struck jangling one after another The whole world seemed to ring with the news of her deceit and his derision The old suspicions subterraneously at work in him rushed forth from concealment openly He was bitten by a swarm of snakes each more poisonous than the last He stood in the doorway in the tremendous rain without moving As the minutes passed he sagged a little at the knees The downpour rushed on In the thick of it great guns seemed to boom Huge noises as of the tearing and rending of oak trees could be heard There were also wild cries and terrible inhuman groanings But Orlando stood there immovable till Pauls clock struck two and then crying aloud with an awful irony and all his teeth showing Jour de ma vie he dashed the lantern to the ground mounted his horse and galloped he knew not where
Some blind instinct for he was past reasoning must have driven him to take the river bank in the direction of the sea For when the dawn broke which it did with unusual suddenness the sky turning a pale yellow and the rain almost ceasing he found himself on the banks of the Thames off Wapping Now a sight of the most extraordinary nature met his eyes Where for three months and more there had been solid ice of such thickness that it seemed permanent as stone and a whole gay city had been stood on its pavement was now a race of turbulent yellow waters The river had gained its freedom in the night It was as if a sulphur spring to which view many philosophers inclined had risen from the volcanic regions beneath and burst the ice asunder with such vehemence that it swept the huge and massy fragments furiously apart The mere look of the water was enough to turn one giddy All was riot and confusion The river was strewn with icebergs Some of these were as broad as a bowling green and as high as a house others no bigger than a mans hat but most fantastically twisted Now would come down a whole convoy of ice blocks sinking everything that stood in their way Now eddying and swirling like a tortured serpent the river would seem to be hurtling itself between the fragments and tossing them from bank to bank so that they could be heard smashing against the piers and pillars But what was the most awful and inspiring of terror was the sight of the human creatures who had been trapped in the night and now paced their twisting and precarious islands in the utmost agony of spirit Whether they jumped into the flood or stayed on the ice their doom was certain Sometimes quite a cluster of these poor creatures would come down together some on their knees others suckling their babies One old man seemed to be reading aloud from a holy book At other times and his fate perhaps was the most dreadful a solitary wretch would stride his narrow tenement alone As they swept out to sea some could be heard crying vainly for help making wild promises to amend their ways confessing their sins and vowing altars and wealth if God would hear their prayers Others were so dazed with terror that they sat immovable and silent looking steadfastly before them One crew of young watermen or postboys to judge by their liveries roared and shouted the lewdest tavern songs as if in bravado and were dashed against a tree and sunk with blasphemies on their lips An old noblemanfor such his furred gown and golden chain proclaimed himwent down not far from where Orlando stood calling vengeance upon the Irish rebels who he cried with his last breath had plotted this devilry Many perished clasping some silver pot or other treasure to their breasts and at least a score of poor wretches were drowned by their own cupidity hurling themselves from the bank into the flood rather than let a gold goblet escape them or see before their eyes the disappearance of some furred gown For furniture valuables possessions of all sorts were carried away on the icebergs Among other strange sights was to be seen a cat suckling its young a table laid sumptuously for a supper of twenty a couple in bed together with an extraordinary number of cooking utensils
Dazed and astounded Orlando could do nothing for some time but watch the appalling race of waters as it hurled itself past him At last seeming to recollect himself he clapped spurs to his horse and galloped hard along the river bank in the direction of the sea Rounding a bend of the river he came opposite that reach where not two days ago the ships of the Ambassadors had seemed immovably frozen Hastily he made count of them all the French the Spanish the Austrian the Turk All still floated though the French had broken loose from her moorings and the Turkish vessel had taken a great rent in her side and was fast filling with water But the Russian ship was nowhere to be seen For one moment Orlando thought it must have foundered but raising himself in his stirrups and shading his eyes which had the sight of a hawks he could just make out the shape of a ship on the horizon The black eagles were flying from the mast head The ship of the Muscovite Embassy was standing out to sea
Flinging himself from his horse he made in his rage as if he would breast the flood Standing kneedeep in water he hurled at the faithless woman all the insults that have ever been the lot of her sex Faithless mutable fickle he called her devil adulteress deceiver and the swirling waters took his words and tossed at his feet a broken pot and a little straw
CHAPTER 2
The biographer is now faced with a difficulty which it is better perhaps to confess than to gloss over Up to this point in telling the story of Orlandos life documents both private and historical have made it possible to fulfil the first duty of a biographer which is to plod without looking to right or left in the indelible footprints of truth unenticed by flowers regardless of shade on and on methodically till we fall plump into the grave and write finis on the tombstone above our heads But now we come to an episode which lies right across our path so that there is no ignoring it Yet it is dark mysterious and undocumented so that there is no explaining it Volumes might be written in interpretation of it whole religious systems founded upon the signification of it Our simple duty is to state the facts as far as they are known and so let the reader make of them what he may
In the summer of that disastrous winter which saw the frost the flood the deaths of many thousands and the complete downfall of Orlandos hopesfor he was exiled from Court in deep disgrace with the most powerful nobles of his time the Irish house of Desmond was justly enraged the King had already trouble enough with the Irish not to relish this further additionin that summer Orlando retired to his great house in the country and there lived in complete solitude One June morningit was Saturday the 18thhe failed to rise at his usual hour and when his groom went to call him he was found fast asleep Nor could he be awakened He lay as if in a trance without perceptible breathing and though dogs were set to bark under his window cymbals drums bones beaten perpetually in his room a gorse bush put under his pillow and mustard plasters applied to his feet still he did not wake take food or show any sign of life for seven whole days On the seventh day he woke at his usual time a quarter before eight precisely and turned the whole posse of caterwauling wives and village soothsayers out of his room which was natural enough but what was strange was that he showed no consciousness of any such trance but dressed himself and sent for his horse as if he had woken from a single nights slumber Yet some change it was suspected must have taken place in the chambers of his brain for though he was perfectly rational and seemed graver and more sedate in his ways than before he appeared to have an imperfect recollection of his past life He would listen when people spoke of the great frost or the skating or the carnival but he never gave any sign except by passing his hand across his brow as if to wipe away some cloud of having witnessed them himself When the events of the past six months were discussed he seemed not so much distressed as puzzled as if he were troubled by confused memories of some time long gone or were trying to recall stories told him by another It was observed that if Russia was mentioned or Princesses or ships he would fall into a gloom of an uneasy kind and get up and look out of the window or call one of the dogs to him or take a knife and carve a piece of cedar wood But the doctors were hardly wiser then than they are now and after prescribing rest and exercise starvation and nourishment society and solitude that he should lie in bed all day and ride forty miles between lunch and dinner together with the usual sedatives and irritants diversified as the fancy took them with possets of newts slobber on rising and draughts of peacocks gall on going to bed they left him to himself and gave it as their opinion that he had been asleep for a week
But if sleep it was of what nature we can scarcely refrain from asking are such sleeps as these Are they remedial measurestrances in which the most galling memories events that seem likely to cripple life for ever are brushed with a dark wing which rubs their harshness off and gilds them even the ugliest and basest with a lustre an incandescence Has the finger of death to be laid on the tumult of life from time to time lest it rend us asunder Are we so made that we have to take death in small doses daily or we could not go on with the business of living And then what strange powers are these that penetrate our most secret ways and change our most treasured possessions without our willing it Had Orlando worn out by the extremity of his suffering died for a week and then come to life again And if so of what nature is death and of what nature life Having waited well over half an hour for an answer to these questions and none coming let us get on with the story
Now Orlando gave himself up to a life of extreme solitude His disgrace at Court and the violence of his grief were partly the reason of it but as he made no effort to defend himself and seldom invited anyone to visit him though he had many friends who would willingly have done so it appeared as if to be alone in the great house of his fathers suited his temper Solitude was his choice How he spent his time nobody quite knew The servants of whom he kept a full retinue though much of their business was to dust empty rooms and to smooth the coverlets of beds that were never slept in watched in the dark of the evening as they sat over their cakes and ale a light passing along the galleries through the banquetinghalls up the staircase into the bedrooms and knew that their master was perambulating the house alone None dared follow him for the house was haunted by a great variety of ghosts and the extent of it made it easy to lose ones way and either fall down some hidden staircase or open a door which should the wind blow it to would shut upon one for everaccidents of no uncommon occurrence as the frequent discovery of the skeletons of men and animals in attitudes of great agony made evident Then the light would be lost altogether and Mrs Grimsditch the housekeeper would say to Mr Dupper the chaplain how she hoped his Lordship had not met with some bad accident Mr Dupper would opine that his Lordship was on his knees no doubt among the tombs of his ancestors in the Chapel which was in the Billiard Table Court half a mile away on the south side For he had sins on his conscience Mr Dupper was afraid upon which Mrs Grimsditch would retort rather sharply that so had most of us and Mrs Stewkley and Mrs Field and old Nurse Carpenter would all raise their voices in his Lordships praise and the grooms and the stewards would swear that it was a thousand pities to see so fine a nobleman moping about the house when he might be hunting the fox or chasing the deer and even the little laundry maids and scullery maids the Judys and the Faiths who were handing round the tankards and cakes would pipe up their testimony to his Lordships gallantry for never was there a kinder gentleman or one more free with those little pieces of silver which serve to buy a knot of ribbon or put a posy in ones hair until even the Blackamoor whom they called Grace Robinson by way of making a Christian woman of her understood what they were at and agreed that his Lordship was a handsome pleasant darling gentleman in the only way she could that is to say by showing all her teeth at once in a broad grin In short all his serving men and women held him in high respect and cursed the foreign Princess but they called her by a coarser name than that who had brought him to this pass
But though it was probably cowardice or love of hot ale that led Mr Dupper to imagine his Lordship safe among the tombs so that he need not go in search of him it may well have been that Mr Dupper was right Orlando now took a strange delight in thoughts of death and decay and after pacing the long galleries and ballrooms with a taper in his hand looking at picture after picture as if he sought the likeness of somebody whom he could not find would mount into the family pew and sit for hours watching the banners stir and the moonlight waver with a bat or deaths head moth to keep him company Even this was not enough for him but he must descend into the crypt where his ancestors lay coffin piled upon coffin for ten generations together The place was so seldom visited that the rats made free with the lead work and now a thigh bone would catch at his cloak as he passed or he would crack the skull of some old Sir Malise as it rolled beneath his foot It was a ghastly sepulchre dug deep beneath the foundations of the house as if the first Lord of the family who had come from France with the Conqueror had wished to testify how all pomp is built upon corruption how the skeleton lies beneath the flesh how we that dance and sing above must lie below how the crimson velvet turns to dust how the ring here Orlando stooping his lantern would pick up a gold circle lacking a stone that had rolled into a corner loses its ruby and the eye which was so lustrous shines no more Nothing remains of all these Princes Orlando would say indulging in some pardonable exaggeration of their rank except one digit and he would take a skeleton hand in his and bend the joints this way and that Whose hand was it he went on to ask The right or the left The hand of man or woman of age or youth Had it urged the war horse or plied the needle Had it plucked the rose or grasped cold steel Had it but here either his invention failed him or what is more likely provided him with so many instances of what a hand can do that he shrank as his wont was from the cardinal labour of composition which is excision and he put it with the other bones thinking how there was a writer called Thomas Browne a Doctor of Norwich whose writing upon such subjects took his fancy amazingly
So taking his lantern and seeing that the bones were in order for though romantic he was singularly methodical and detested nothing so much as a ball of string on the floor let alone the skull of an ancestor he returned to that curious moody pacing down the galleries looking for something among the pictures which was interrupted at length by a veritable spasm of sobbing at the sight of a Dutch snow scene by an unknown artist Then it seemed to him that life was not worth living any more Forgetting the bones of his ancestors and how life is founded on a grave he stood there shaken with sobs all for the desire of a woman in Russian trousers with slanting eyes a pouting mouth and pearls about her neck She had gone She had left him He was never to see her again And so he sobbed And so he found his way back to his own rooms and Mrs Grimsditch seeing the light in the window put the tankard from her lips and said Praise be to God his Lordship was safe in his room again for she had been thinking all this while that he was foully murdered
Orlando now drew his chair up to the table opened the works of Sir Thomas Browne and proceeded to investigate the delicate articulation of one of the doctors longest and most marvellously contorted cogitations
For though these are not matters on which a biographer can profitably enlarge it is plain enough to those who have done a readers part in making up from bare hints dropped here and there the whole boundary and circumference of a living person can hear in what we only whisper a living voice can see often when we say nothing about it exactly what he looked like know without a word to guide them precisely what he thoughtand it is for readers such as these that we writeit is plain then to such a reader that Orlando was strangely compounded of many humoursof melancholy of indolence of passion of love of solitude to say nothing of all those contortions and subtleties of temper which were indicated on the first page when he slashed at a dead niggers head cut it down hung it chivalrously out of his reach again and then betook himself to the windowseat with a book The taste for books was an early one As a child he was sometimes found at midnight by a page still reading They took his taper away and he bred glowworms to serve his purpose They took the glowworms away and he almost burnt the house down with a tinder To put it in a nutshell leaving the novelist to smooth out the crumpled silk and all its implications he was a nobleman afflicted with a love of literature Many people of his time still more of his rank escaped the infection and were thus free to run or ride or make love at their own sweet will But some were early infected by a germ said to be bred of the pollen of the asphodel and to be blown out of Greece and Italy which was of so deadly a nature that it would shake the hand as it was raised to strike and cloud the eye as it sought its prey and make the tongue stammer as it declared its love It was the fatal nature of this disease to substitute a phantom for reality so that Orlando to whom fortune had given every giftplate linen houses menservants carpets beds in profusionhad only to open a book for the whole vast accumulation to turn to mist The nine acres of stone which were his house vanished one hundred and fifty indoor servants disappeared his eighty riding horses became invisible it would take too long to count the carpets sofas trappings china plate cruets chafing dishes and other movables often of beaten gold which evaporated like so much sea mist under the miasma So it was and Orlando would sit by himself reading a naked man
The disease gained rapidly upon him now in his solitude He would read often six hours into the night and when they came to him for orders about the slaughtering of cattle or the harvesting of wheat he would push away his folio and look as if he did not understand what was said to him This was bad enough and wrung the hearts of Hall the falconer of Giles the groom of Mrs Grimsditch the housekeeper of Mr Dupper the chaplain A fine gentleman like that they said had no need of books Let him leave books they said to the palsied or the dying But worse was to come For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens it so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the inkpot and festers in the quill The wretch takes to writing And while this is bad enough in a poor man whose only property is a chair and a table set beneath a leaky rooffor he has not much to lose after allthe plight of a rich man who has houses and cattle maidservants asses and linen and yet writes books is pitiable in the extreme The flavour of it all goes out of him he is riddled by hot irons gnawed by vermin He would give every penny he has such is the malignity of the germ to write one little book and become famous yet all the gold in Peru will not buy him the treasure of a wellturned line So he falls into consumption and sickness blows his brains out turns his face to the wall It matters not in what attitude they find him He has passed through the gates of Death and known the flames of Hell
Happily Orlando was of a strong constitution and the disease for reasons presently to be given never broke him down as it has broken many of his peers But he was deeply smitten with it as the sequel shows For when he had read for an hour or so in Sir Thomas Browne and the bark of the stag and the call of the night watchman showed that it was the dead of night and all safe asleep he crossed the room took a silver key from his pocket and unlocked the doors of a great inlaid cabinet which stood in the corner Within were some fifty drawers of cedar wood and upon each was a paper neatly written in Orlandos hand He paused as if hesitating which to open One was inscribed The Death of Ajax another The Birth of Pyramus another Iphigenia in Aulis another The Death of Hippolytus another Meleager another The Return of Odysseusin fact there was scarcely a single drawer that lacked the name of some mythological personage at a crisis of his career In each drawer lay a document of considerable size all written over in Orlandos hand The truth was that Orlando had been afflicted thus for many years Never had any boy begged apples as Orlando begged paper nor sweetmeats as he begged ink Stealing away from talk and games he had hidden himself behind curtains in priests holes or in the cupboard behind his mothers bedroom which had a great hole in the floor and smelt horribly of starlings dung with an inkhorn in one hand a pen in another and on his knee a roll of paper Thus had been written before he was turned twentyfive some fortyseven plays histories romances poems some in prose some in verse some in French some in Italian all romantic and all long One he had had printed by John Ball of the Feathers and Coronet opposite St Pauls Cross Cheapside but though the sight of it gave him extreme delight he had never dared show it even to his mother since to write much more to publish was he knew for a nobleman an inexpiable disgrace
Now however that it was the dead of night and he was alone he chose from this repository one thick document called Xenophila a Tragedy or some such title and one thin one called simply The Oak Tree this was the only monosyllabic title among the lot and then he approached the inkhorn fingered the quill and made other such passes as those addicted to this vice begin their rites with But he paused
As this pause was of extreme significance in his history more so indeed than many acts which bring men to their knees and make rivers run with blood it behoves us to ask why he paused and to reply after due reflection that it was for some such reason as this Nature who has played so many queer tricks upon us making us so unequally of clay and diamonds of rainbow and granite and stuffed them into a case often of the most incongruous for the poet has a butchers face and the butcher a poets nature who delights in muddle and mystery so that even now the first of November 1927 we know not why we go upstairs or why we come down again our most daily movements are like the passage of a ship on an unknown sea and the sailors at the masthead ask pointing their glasses to the horizon Is there land or is there none to which if we are prophets we make answer Yes if we are truthful we say No nature who has so much to answer for besides the perhaps unwieldy length of this sentence has further complicated her task and added to our confusion by providing not only a perfect ragbag of odds and ends within usa piece of a policemans trousers lying cheek by jowl with Queen Alexandras wedding veilbut has contrived that the whole assortment shall be lightly stitched together by a single thread Memory is the seamstress and a capricious one at that Memory runs her needle in and out up and down hither and thither We know not what comes next or what follows after Thus the most ordinary movement in the world such as sitting down at a table and pulling the inkstand towards one may agitate a thousand odd disconnected fragments now bright now dim hanging and bobbing and dipping and flaunting like the underlinen of a family of fourteen on a line in a gale of wind Instead of being a single downright bluff piece of work of which no man need feel ashamed our commonest deeds are set about with a fluttering and flickering of wings a rising and falling of lights Thus it was that Orlando dipping his pen in the ink saw the mocking face of the lost Princess and asked himself a million questions instantly which were as arrows dipped in gall Where was she and why had she left him Was the Ambassador her uncle or her lover Had they plotted Was she forced Was she married Was she deadall of which so drove their venom into him that as if to vent his agony somewhere he plunged his quill so deep into the inkhorn that the ink spirted over the table which act explain it how one may and no explanation perhaps is possibleMemory is inexplicable at once substituted for the face of the Princess a face of a very different sort But whose was it he asked himself And he had to wait perhaps half a minute looking at the new picture which lay on top of the old as one lantern slide is half seen through the next before he could say to himself This is the face of that rather fat shabby man who sat in Twitchetts room ever so many years ago when old Queen Bess came here to dine and I saw him Orlando continued catching at another of those little coloured rags sitting at the table as I peeped in on my way downstairs and he had the most amazing eyes said Orlando that ever were but who the devil was he Orlando asked for here Memory added to the forehead and eyes first a coarse greasestained ruffle then a brown doublet and finally a pair of thick boots such as citizens wear in Cheapside Not a Nobleman not one of us said Orlando which he would not have said aloud for he was the most courteous of gentlemen but it shows what an effect noble birth has upon the mind and incidentally how difficult it is for a nobleman to be a writer a poet I dare say By all the laws, Memory having disturbed him sufficiently should now have blotted the whole thing out completely or have fetched up something so idiotic and out of keepinglike a dog chasing a cat or an old woman blowing her nose into a red cotton handkerchiefthat in despair of keeping pace with her vagaries Orlando should have struck his pen in earnest against his paper For we can if we have the resolution turn the hussy Memory and all her ragtag and bobtail out of the house But Orlando paused Memory still held before him the image of a shabby man with big bright eyes Still he looked still he paused It is these pauses that are our undoing It is then that sedition enters the fortress and our troops rise in insurrection Once before he had paused and love with its horrid rout its shawms its cymbals and its heads with gory locks torn from the shoulders had burst in From love he had suffered the tortures of the damned Now again he paused and into the breach thus made leapt Ambition the harridan and Poetry the witch and Desire of Fame the strumpet all joined hands and made of his heart their dancing ground Standing upright in the solitude of his room he vowed that he would be the first poet of his race and bring immortal lustre upon his name He said reciting the names and exploits of his ancestors that Sir Boris had fought and killed the Paynim Sir Gawain the Turk Sir Miles the Pole Sir Andrew the Frank Sir Richard the Austrian Sir Jordan the Frenchman and Sir Herbert the Spaniard But of all that killing and campaigning that drinking and lovemaking that spending and hunting and riding and eating what remained A skull a finger Whereas he said turning to the page of Sir Thomas Browne which lay open upon the tableand again he paused Like an incantation rising from all parts of the room from the night wind and the moonlight rolled the divine melody of those words which lest they should outstare this page we will leave where they lie entombed not dead embalmed rather so fresh is their colour so sound their breathingand Orlando comparing that achievement with those of his ancestors cried out that they and their deeds were dust and ashes but this man and his words were immortal
He soon perceived however that the battles which Sir Miles and the rest had waged against armed knights to win a kingdom were not half so arduous as this which he now undertook to win immortality against the English language Anyone moderately familiar with the rigours of composition will not need to be told the story in detail how he wrote and it seemed good read and it seemed vile corrected and tore up cut out put in was in ecstasy in despair had his good nights and bad mornings snatched at ideas and lost them saw his book plain before him and it vanished acted his peoples parts as he ate mouthed them as he walked now cried now laughed vacillated between this style and that now preferred the heroic and pompous next the plain and simple now the vales of Tempe then the fields of Kent or Cornwall and could not decide whether he was the divinest genius or the greatest fool in the world
It was to settle this last question that he decided after many months of such feverish labour to break the solitude of years and communicate with the outer world He had a friend in London one Giles Isham of Norfolk who though of gentle birth was acquainted with writers and could doubtless put him in touch with some member of that blessed indeed sacred fraternity For to Orlando in the state he was now in there was a glory about a man who had written a book and had it printed which outshone all the glories of blood and state To his imagination it seemed as if even the bodies of those instinct with such divine thoughts must be transfigured They must have aureoles for hair incense for breath and roses must grow between their lipswhich was certainly not true either of himself or Mr Dupper He could think of no greater happiness than to be allowed to sit behind a curtain and hear them talk Even the imagination of that bold and various discourse made the memory of what he and his courtier friends used to talk abouta dog a horse a woman a game of cardsseem brutish in the extreme He bethought him with pride that he had always been called a scholar and sneered at for his love of solitude and books He had never been apt at pretty phrases He would stand stock still blush and stride like a grenadier in a ladies drawingroom He had twice fallen in sheer abstraction from his horse He had broken Lady Winchilseas fan once while making a rhyme Eagerly recalling these and other instances of his unfitness for the life of society an ineffable hope that all the turbulence of his youth his clumsiness his blushes his long walks and his love of the country proved that he himself belonged to the sacred race rather than to the noblewas by birth a writer rather than an aristocratpossessed him For the first time since the night of the great flood he was happy
He now commissioned Mr Isham of Norfolk to deliver to Mr Nicholas Greene of Cliffords Inn a document which set forth Orlandos admiration for his works for Nick Greene was a very famous writer at that time and his desire to make his acquaintance which he scarcely dared ask for he had nothing to offer in return but if Mr Nicholas Greene would condescend to visit him a coach and four would be at the corner of Fetter Lane at whatever hour Mr Greene chose to appoint and bring him safely to Orlandos house One may fill up the phrases which then followed and figure Orlandos delight when in no long time Mr Greene signified his acceptance of the Noble Lords invitation took his place in the coach and was set down in the hall to the south of the main building punctually at seven oclock on Monday April the twentyfirst
Many Kings Queens and Ambassadors had been received there Judges had stood there in their ermine The loveliest ladies of the land had come there and the sternest warriors Banners hung there which had been at Flodden and at Agincourt There were displayed the painted coats of arms with their lions and their leopards and their coronets There were the long tables where the gold and silver plate was stood and there the vast fireplaces of wrought Italian marble where nightly a whole oak tree with its million leaves and its nests of rook and wren was burnt to ashes Nicholas Greene the poet stood there now plainly dressed in his slouched hat and black doublet carrying in one hand a small bag
That Orlando as he hastened to greet him was slightly disappointed was inevitable The poet was not above middle height was of a mean figure was lean and stooped somewhat and stumbling over the mastiff on entering the dog bit him Moreover Orlando for all his knowledge of mankind was puzzled where to place him There was something about him which belonged neither to servant squire or noble The head with its rounded forehead and beaked nose was fine but the chin receded The eyes were brilliant but the lips hung loose and slobbered It was the expression of the faceas a whole however that was disquieting There was none of that stately composure which makes the faces of the nobility so pleasing to look at nor had it anything of the dignified servility of a welltrained domestics face it was a face seamed puckered and drawn together Poet though he was it seemed as if he were more used to scold than to flatter to quarrel than to coo to scramble than to ride to struggle than to rest to hate than to love This too was shown by the quickness of his movements and by something fiery and suspicious in his glance Orlando was somewhat taken aback But they went to dinner
Here Orlando who usually took such things for granted was for the first time unaccountably ashamed of the number of his servants and of the splendour of his table Stranger still he bethought him with pridefor the thought was generally distastefulof that great grandmother Moll who had milked the cows He was about somehow to allude to this humble woman and her milkpails when the poet forestalled him by saying that it was odd seeing how common the name of Greene was that the family had come over with the Conqueror and was of the highest nobility in France Unfortunately they had come down in the world and done little more than leave their name to the royal borough of Greenwich Further talk of the same sort about lost castles coats of arms cousins who were baronets in the north intermarriage with noble families in the west how some Greens spelt the name with an e at the end and others without lasted till the venison was on the table Then Orlando contrived to say something of Grandmother Moll and her cows and had eased his heart a little of its burden by the time the wild fowl were before them But it was not until the Malmsey was passing freely that Orlando dared mention what he could not help thinking a more important matter than the Greens or the cows that is to say the sacred subject of poetry At the first mention of the word the poets eyes flashed fire he dropped the fine gentleman airs he had worn thumped his glass on the table and launched into one of the longest most intricate most passionate and bitterest stories that Orlando had ever heard save from the lips of a jilted woman about a play of his another poet and a critic Of the nature of poetry itself Orlando only gathered that it was harder to sell than prose and though the lines were shorter took longer in the writing So the talk went on with ramifications interminable until Orlando ventured to hint that he had himself been so rash as to writebut here the poet leapt from his chair A mouse had squeaked in the wainscot he said The truth was he explained that his nerves were in a state where a mouses squeak upset them for a fortnight Doubtless the house was full of vermin but Orlando had not heard them The poet then gave Orlando the full story of his health for the past ten years or so It had been so bad that one could only marvel that he still lived He had had the palsy the gout the ague the dropsy and the three sorts of fever in succession added to which he had an enlarged heart a great spleen and a diseased liver But above all he had he told Orlando sensations in his spine which defied description There was one knob about the third from the top which burnt like fire another about second from the bottom which was cold as ice Sometimes he woke with a brain like lead at others it was as if a thousand wax tapers were alight and people were throwing fireworks inside him He could feel a rose leaf through his mattress he said and knew his way almost about London by the feel of the cobbles Altogether he was a piece of machinery so finely made and curiously put together here he raised his hand as if unconsciously and indeed it was of the finest shape imaginable that it confounded him to think that he had only sold five hundred copies of his poem but that of course was largely due to the conspiracy against him All he could say he concluded banging his fist upon the table was that the art of poetry was dead in England
How that could be with Shakespeare Marlowe Ben Jonson Browne Donne all now writing or just having written Orlando reeling off the names of his favourite heroes could not think
Greene laughed sardonically Shakespeare he admitted had written some scenes that were well enough but he had taken them chiefly from Marlowe Marlowe was a likely boy but what could you say of a lad who died before he was thirty As for Browne he was for writing poetry in prose and people soon got tired of such conceits as that Donne was a mountebank who wrapped up his lack of meaning in hard words The gulls were taken in but the style would be out of fashion twelve months hence As for Ben JonsonBen Jonson was a friend of his and he never spoke ill of his friends
No he concluded the great age of literature is past the great age of literature was the Greek the Elizabethan age was inferior in every respect to the Greek In such ages men cherished a divine ambition which he might call La Gloire he pronounced it Glawr so that Orlando did not at first catch his meaning Now all young writers were in the pay of the booksellers and poured out any trash that would sell Shakespeare was the chief offender in this way and Shakespeare was already paying the penalty Their own age he said was marked by precious conceits and wild experimentsneither of which the Greeks would have tolerated for a moment Much though it hurt him to say itfor he loved literature as he loved his lifehe could see no good in the present and had no hope for the future Here he poured himself out another glass of wine
Orlando was shocked by these doctrines yet could not help observing that the critic himself seemed by no means downcast On the contrary the more he denounced his own time the more complacent he became He could remember he said a night at the Cock Tavern in Fleet Street when Kit Marlowe was there and some others Kit was in high feather rather drunk which he easily became and in a mood to say silly things He could see him now brandishing his glass at the company and hiccoughing out Stap my vitals Bill this was to Shakespeare theres a great wave coming and youre on the top of it by which he meant Greene explained that they were trembling on the verge of a great age in English literature and that Shakespeare was to be a poet of some importance Happily for himself he was killed two nights later in a drunken brawl and so did not live to see how this prediction turned out Poor foolish fellow said Greene to go and say a thing like that A great age forsooththe Elizabethan a great age
So my dear Lord he continued settling himself comfortably in his chair and rubbing the wineglass between his fingers we must make the best of it cherish the past and honour those writersthere are still a few of emwho take antiquity for their model and write not for pay but for Glawr Orlando could have wished him a better accent Glawr said Greene is the spur of noble minds Had I a pension of three hundred pounds a year paid quarterly I would live for Glawr alone I would lie in bed every morning reading Cicero I would imitate his style so that you couldnt tell the difference between us Thats what I call fine writing said Greene thats what I call Glawr But its necessary to have a pension to do it
By this time Orlando had abandoned all hope of discussing his own work with the poet but this mattered the less as the talk now got upon the lives and characters of Shakespeare Ben Jonson and the rest all of whom Greene had known intimately and about whom he had a thousand anecdotes of the most amusing kind to tell Orlando had never laughed so much in his life These then were his gods Half were drunken and all were amorous Most of them quarrelled with their wives not one of them was above a lie or an intrigue of the most paltry kind Their poetry was scribbled down on the backs of washing bills held to the heads of printers devils at the street door Thus Hamlet went to press thus Lear thus Othello No wonder as Greene said that these plays show the faults they do The rest of the time was spent in carousings and junketings in taverns and in beer gardens When things were said that passed belief for wit and things were done that made the utmost frolic of the courtiers seem pale in comparison All this Greene told with a spirit that roused Orlando to the highest pitch of delight He had a power of mimicry that brought the dead to life and could say the finest things of books provided they were written three hundred years ago
So time passed and Orlando felt for his guest a strange mixture of liking and contempt of admiration and pity as well as something too indefinite to be called by any one name but had something of fear in it and something of fascination He talked incessantly about himself yet was such good company that one could listen to the story of his ague for ever Then he was so witty then he was so irreverent then he made so free with the names of God and Woman then he was So full of queer crafts and had such strange lore in his head could make salad in three hundred different ways knew all that could be known of the mixing of wines played halfadozen musical instruments and was the first person and perhaps the last to toast cheese in the great Italian fireplace That he did not know a geranium from a carnation an oak from a birch tree a mastiff from a greyhound a teg from a ewe wheat from barley plough land from fallow was ignorant of the rotation of the crops thought oranges grew underground and turnips on trees preferred any townscape to any landscapeall this and much more amazed Orlando who had never met anybody of his kind before Even the maids who despised him tittered at his jokes and the menservants who loathed him hung about to hear his stories Indeed the house had never been so lively as now that he was thereall of which gave Orlando a great deal to think about and caused him to compare this way of life with the old He recalled the sort of talk he had been used to about the King of Spains apoplexy or the mating of a bitch he bethought him how the day passed between the stables and the dressing closet he remembered how the Lords snored over their wine and hated anybody who woke them up He bethought him how active and valiant they were in body how slothful and timid in mind Worried by these thoughts and unable to strike a proper balance he came to the conclusion that he had admitted to his house a plaguey spirit of unrest that would never suffer him to sleep sound again
At the same moment Nick Greene came to precisely the opposite conclusion Lying in bed of a morning on the softest pillows between the smoothest sheets and looking out of his oriel window upon turf which for centuries had known neither dandelion nor dock weed he thought that unless he could somehow make his escape he should be smothered alive Getting up and hearing the pigeons coo dressing and hearing the fountains fall he thought that unless he could hear the drays roar upon the cobbles of Fleet Street he would never write another line If this goes on much longer he thought hearing the footman mend the fire and spread the table with silver dishes next door I shall fall asleep and here he gave a prodigious yawn sleeping die
So he sought Orlando in his room and explained that he had not been able to sleep a wink all night because of the silence Indeed the house was surrounded by a park fifteen miles in circumference and a wall ten feet high Silence he said was of all things the most oppressive to his nerves He would end his visit by Orlandos leave that very morning Orlando felt some relief at this yet also a great reluctance to let him go The house he thought would seem very dull without him On parting for he had never yet liked to mention the subject he had the temerity to press his play upon the Death of Hercules upon the poet and ask his opinion of it The poet took it muttered something about Glawr and Cicero which Orlando cut short by promising to pay the pension quarterly whereupon Greene with many protestations of affection jumped into the coach and was gone
The great hall had never seemed so large so splendid or so empty as the chariot rolled away Orlando knew that he would never have the heart to make toasted cheese in the Italian fireplace again He would never have the wit to crack jokes about Italian pictures never have the skill to mix punch as it should be mixed a thousand good quips and cranks would be lost to him Yet what a relief to be out of the sound of that querulous voice what a luxury to be alone once more so he could not help reflecting as he unloosed the mastiff which had been tied up these six weeks because it never saw the poet without biting him
Nick Greene was set down at the corner of Fetter Lane that same afternoon and found things going on much as he had left them Mrs Greene that is to say was giving birth to a baby in one room Tom Fletcher was drinking gin in another Books were tumbled all about the floor dinnersuch as it waswas set on a dressingtable where the children had been making mud pies But this Greene felt was the atmosphere for writing here he could write and write he did The subject was made for him A noble Lord at home A visit to a Nobleman in the countryhis new poem was to have some such title as that Seizing the pen with which his little boy was tickling the cats ears and dipping it in the eggcup which served for inkpot Greene dashed off a very spirited satire there and then It was so done to a turn that no one could doubt that the young Lord who was roasted was Orlando his most private sayings and doings his enthusiasms and folies down to the very colour of his hair and the foreign way he had of rolling his rs were there to the life And if there had been any doubt about it Greene clinched the matter by introducing with scarcely any disguise passages from that aristocratic tragedy the Death of Hercules which he found as he expected wordy and bombastic in the extreme
The pamphlet which ran at once into several editions and paid the expenses of Mrs Greenes tenth lyingin was soon sent by friends who take care of such matters to Orlando himself When he had read it which he did with deadly composure from start to finish he rang for the footman delivered the document to him at the end of a pair of tongs bade him drop it in the filthiest heart of the foulest midden on the estate Then when the man was turning to go he stopped him Take the swiftest horse in the stable he said ride for dear life to Harwich There embark upon a ship which you will find bound for Norway Buy for me from the Kings own kennels the finest elkhounds of the Royal strain male and female Bring them back without delay For he murmured scarcely above his breath as he turned to his books I have done with men
The footman who was perfectly trained in his duties bowed and disappeared He fulfilled his task so efficiently that he was back that day three weeks leading in his hand a leash of the finest elkhounds one of whom a female gave birth that very night under the dinnertable to a litter of eight fine puppies Orlando had them brought to his bedchamber
For he said I have done with men
Nevertheless he paid the pension quarterly
Thus at the age of thirty or thereabouts this young Nobleman had not only had every experience that life has to offer but had seen the worthlessness of them all Love and ambition women and poets were all equally vain Literature was a farce The night after reading Greenes Visit to a Nobleman in the Country he burnt in a great conflagration fiftyseven poetical works only retaining The Oak Tree which was his boyish dream and very short Two things alone remained to him in which he now put any trust dogs and nature an elkhound and a rose bush The world in all its variety life in all its complexity had shrunk to that Dogs and a bush were the whole of it So feeling quit of a vast mountain of illusion and very naked in consequence he called his hounds to him and strode through the Park
So long had he been secluded writing and reading that he had half forgotten the amenities of nature, which in June can be great When he reached that high mound whence on fine days half of England with a slice of Wales and Scotland thrown in can be seen he flung himself under his favourite oak tree and felt that if he need never speak to another man or woman so long as he lived if his dogs did not develop the faculty of speech if he never met a poet or a Princess again he might make out what years remained to him in tolerable content
Here he came then day after day week after week month after month year after year He saw the beech trees turn golden and the young ferns unfurl he saw the moon sickle and then circular he sawbut probably the reader can imagine the passage which should follow and how every tree and plant in the neighbourhood is described first green then golden how moons rise and suns set how spring follows winter and autumn summer how night succeeds day and day night how there is first a storm and then fine weather how things remain much as they are for two or three hundred years or so except for a little dust and a few cobwebs which one old woman can sweep up in half an hour a conclusion which one cannot help feeling might have been reached more quickly by the simple statement that Time passed here the exact amount could be indicated in brackets and nothing whatever happened
But Time unfortunately though it makes animals and vegetables bloom and fade with amazing punctuality has no such simple effect upon the mind of man The mind of man moreover works with equal strangeness upon the body of time An hour once it lodges in the queer element of the human spirit may be stretched to fifty or a hundred times its clock length on the other hand an hour may be accurately represented on the timepiece of the mind by one second This extraordinary discrepancy between time on the clock and time in the mind is less known than it should be and deserves fuller investigation But the biographer whose interests are as we have said highly restricted must confine himself to one simple statement when a man has reached the age of thirty as Orlando now had time when he is thinking becomes inordinately long time when he is doing becomes inordinately short Thus Orlando gave his orders and did the business of his vast estates in a flash but directly he was alone on the mound under the oak tree the seconds began to round and fill until it seemed as if they would never fall They filled themselves moreover with the strangest variety of objects. For not only did he find himself confronted by problems which have puzzled the wisest of men such as What is love What friendship What truth but directly he came to think about them his whole past which seemed to him of extreme length and variety rushed into the falling second swelled it a dozen times its natural size coloured it a thousand tints and filled it with all the odds and ends in the universe
In such thinking or by whatever name it should be called he spent months and years of his life It would be no exaggeration to say that he would go out after breakfast a man of thirty and come home to dinner a man of fiftyfive at least Some weeks added a century to his age others no more than three seconds at most Altogether the task of estimating the length of human life of the animals we presume not to speak is beyond our capacity for directly we say that it is ages long we are reminded that it is briefer than the fall of a rose leaf to the ground Of the two forces which alternately and what is more confusing still at the same moment dominate our unfortunate numbskullsbrevity and diuturnityOrlando was sometimes under the influence of the elephantfooted deity then of the gnatwinged fly Life seemed to him of prodigious length Yet even so it went like a flash But even when it stretched longest and the moments swelled biggest and he seemed to wander alone in deserts of vast eternity there was no time for the smoothing out and deciphering of those scored parchments which thirty years among men and women had rolled tight in his heart and brain Long before he had done thinking about Love the oak tree had put forth its leaves and shaken them to the ground a dozen times in the process) Ambition would jostle it off the field to be replaced by Friendship or Literature And as the first question had not been settledWhat is Loveback it would come at the least provocation or none and hustle Books or Metaphors of What one lives for into the margin there to wait till they saw their chance to rush into the field again What made the process still longer was that it was profusely illustrated not only with pictures as that of old Queen Elizabeth laid on her tapestry couch in rosecoloured brocade with an ivory snuffbox in her hand and a goldhilted sword by her side but with scentsshe was strongly perfumedand with sounds the stags were barking in Richmond Park that winters day And so the thought of love would be all ambered over with snow and winter with log fires burning with Russian women gold swords and the bark of stags with old King James slobbering and fireworks and sacks of treasure in the holds of Elizabethan sailing ships Every single thing once he tried to dislodge it from its place in his mind he found thus cumbered with other matter like the lump of glass which after a year at the bottom of the sea is grown about with bones and dragonflies and coins and the tresses of drowned women
Another metaphor by Jupiter he would exclaim as he said this which will show the disorderly and circuitous way in which his mind worked and explain why the oak tree flowered and faded so often before he came to any conclusion about Love And whats the point of it he would ask himself Why not say simply in so many words and then he would try to think for half an houror was it two years and a halfhow to say simply in so many words what love is A figure like that is manifestly untruthful he argued for no dragonfly unless under very exceptional circumstances could live at the bottom of the sea And if literature is not the Bride and Bedfellow of Truth what is she Confound it all he cried why say Bedfellow when ones already said Bride Why not simply say what one means and leave it
So then he tried saying the grass is green and the sky is blue and so to propitiate the austere spirit of poetry whom still though at a great distance he could not help reverencing The sky is blue he said the grass is green Looking up he saw that on the contrary the sky is like the veils which a thousand Madonnas have let fall from their hair and the grass fleets and darkens like a flight of girls fleeing the embraces of hairy satyrs from enchanted woods Upon my word he said for he had fallen into the bad habit of speaking aloud I dont see that ones more true than another Both are utterly false And he despaired of being able to solve the problem of what poetry is and what truth is and fell into a deep dejection
And here we may profit by a pause in his soliloquy to reflect how odd it was to see Orlando stretched there on his elbow on a June day and to reflect that this fine fellow with all his faculties about him and a healthy body witness cheeks and limbsa man who never thought twice about heading a charge or fighting a duelshould be so subject to the lethargy of thought and rendered so susceptible by it that when it came to a question of poetry or his own competence in it he was as shy as a little girl behind her mothers cottage door In our belief Greenes ridicule of his tragedy hurt him as much as the Princess ridicule of his love But to return
Orlando went on thinking He kept looking at the grass and at the sky and trying to bethink him what a true poet who has his verses published in London would say about them Memory meanwhile whose habits have already been described kept steady before his eyes the face of Nicholas Greene as if that sardonic looselipped man treacherous as he had proved himself were the Muse in person and it was to him that Orlando must do homage So Orlando that summer morning offered him a variety of phrases some plain others figured and Nick Greene kept shaking his head and sneering and muttering something about Glawr and Cicero and the death of poetry in our time At length starting to his feet it was now winter and very cold Orlando swore one of the most remarkable oaths of his lifetime for it bound him to a servitude than which none is stricter Ill be blasted he said if I ever write another word or try to write another word to please Nick Greene or the Muse Bad good or indifferent Ill write from this day forward to please myself and here he made as if he were tearing a whole budget of papers across and tossing them in the face of that sneering looselipped man Upon which as a cur ducks if you stoop to shy a stone at him Memory ducked her effigy of Nick Greene out of sight and substituted for itnothing whatever
But Orlando all the same went on thinking He had indeed much to think of For when he tore the parchment across he tore in one rending the scrolloping emblazoned scroll which he had made out in his own favour in the solitude of his room appointing himself as the King appoints Ambassadors the first poet of his race the first writer of his age conferring eternal immortality upon his soul and granting his body a grave among laurels and the intangible banners of a peoples reverence perpetually Eloquent as this all was he now tore it up and threw it in the dustbin Fame he said is like and since there was no Nick Greene to stop him he went on to revel in images of which we will choose only one or two of the quietest a braided coat which hampers the limbs a jacket of silver which curbs the heart a painted shield which covers a scarecrow etc etc The pith of his phrases was that while fame impedes and constricts obscurity wraps about a man like a mist obscurity is dark ample and free obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness None knows where he goes or comes He may seek the truth and speak it he alone is free he alone is truthful he alone is at peace And so he sank into a quiet mood under the oak tree the hardness of whose roots exposed above the ground seemed to him rather comfortable than otherwise
Sunk for a long time in profound thoughts as to the value of obscurity and the delight of having no name but being like a wave which returns to the deep body of the sea thinking how obscurity rids the mind of the irk of envy and spite how it sets running in the veins the free waters of generosity and magnanimity and allows giving and taking without thanks offered or praise given which must have been the way of all great poets he supposed though his knowledge of Greek was not enough to bear him out for he thought Shakespeare must have written like that and the church builders built like that anonymously needing no thanking or naming but only their work in the daytime and a little ale perhaps at nightWhat an admirable life this is he thought stretching his limbs out under the oak tree And why not enjoy it this very moment The thought struck him like a bullet Ambition dropped like a plummet Rid of the heartburn of rejected love and of vanity rebuked and all the other stings and pricks which the nettlebed of life had burnt upon him when ambitious of fame but could no longer inflict upon one careless of glory he opened his eyes which had been wide open all the time but had seen only thoughts and saw lying in the hollow beneath him his house
There it lay in the early sunshine of spring It looked a town rather than a house but a town built not hither and thither as this man wished or that but circumspectly by a single architect with one idea in his head Courts and buildings grey red plum colour lay orderly and symmetrical the courts were some of them oblong and some square in this was a fountain in that a statue the buildings were some of them low some pointed here was a chapel there a belfry spaces of the greenest grass lay in between and clumps of cedar trees and beds of bright flowers all were claspedyet so well set out was it that it seemed that every part had room to spread itself fittinglyby the roll of a massive wall while smoke from innumerable chimneys curled perpetually into the air This vast yet ordered building which could house a thousand men and perhaps two thousand horses was built Orlando thought by workmen whose names are unknown Here have lived for more centuries than I can count the obscure generations of my own obscure family Not one of these Richards Johns Annes Elizabeths has left a token of himself behind him yet all working together with their spades and their needles their lovemaking and their childbearing have left this
Never had the house looked more noble and humane
Why then had he wished to raise himself above them For it seemed vain and arrogant in the extreme to try to better that anonymous work of creation the labours of those vanished hands Better was it to go unknown and leave behind you an arch a potting shed a wall where peaches ripen than to burn like a meteor and leave no dust For after all he said kindling as he looked at the great house on the greensward below the unknown lords and ladies who lived there never forgot to set aside something for those who come after for the roof that will leak for the tree that will fall There was always a warm corner for the old shepherd in the kitchen always food for the hungry always their goblets were polished though they lay sick and their windows were lit though they lay dying Lords though they were they were content to go down into obscurity with the molecatcher and the stonemason Obscure noblemen forgotten buildersthus he apostrophized them with a warmth that entirely gainsaid such critics as called him cold indifferent slothful the truth being that a quality often lies just on the other side of the wall from where we seek itthus he apostrophized his house and race in terms of the most moving eloquence but when it came to the perorationand what is eloquence that lacks a perorationhe fumbled He would have liked to have ended with a flourish to the effect that he would follow in their footsteps and add another stone to their building Since however the building already covered nine acres to add even a single stone seemed superfluous Could one mention furniture in a peroration Could one speak of chairs and tables and mats to lie beside peoples beds For whatever the peroration wanted that was what the house stood in need of Leaving his speech unfinished for the moment he strode down hill again resolved henceforward to devote himself to the furnishing of the mansion The newsthat she was to attend him instantlybrought tears to the eyes of good old Mrs Grimsditch now grown somewhat old Together they perambulated the house
The towel horse in the Kings bedroom and that was King Jamie my Lord she said hinting that it was many a day since a King had slept under their roof but the odious Parliament days were over and there was now a Crown in England again lacked a leg there were no stands to the ewers in the little closet leading into the waiting room of the Duchesss page Mr Greene had made a stain on the carpet with his nasty pipe smoking which she and Judy for all their scrubbing had never been able to wash out Indeed when Orlando came to reckon up the matter of furnishing with rosewood chairs and cedarwood cabinets with silver basins china bowls and Persian carpets every one of the three hundred and sixtyfive bedrooms which the house contained he saw that it would be no light one and if some thousands of pounds of his estate remained over these would do little more than hang a few galleries with tapestry set the dining hall with fine carved chairs and provide mirrors of solid silver and chairs of the same metal for which he had an inordinate passion for the furnishing of the royal bedchambers
He now set to work in earnest as we can prove beyond a doubt if we look at his ledgers Let us glance at an inventory of what he bought at this time with the expenses totted up in the marginbut these we omit
To fifty pairs of Spanish blankets ditto curtains of crimson and white taffeta the valence to them of white satin embroidered with crimson and white silk
To seventy yellow satin chairs and sixty stools suitable with their buckram covers to them all
To sixty seven walnut tree tables
To seventeen dozen boxes containing each dozen five dozen of Venice glasses
To one hundred and two mats each thirty yards long
To ninety seven cushions of crimson damask laid with silver parchment lace and footstools of cloth of tissue and chairs suitable
To fifty branches for a dozen lights apiece
Alreadyit is an effect lists have upon uswe are beginning to yawn But if we stop it is only that the catalogue is tedious not that it is finished There are ninetynine pages more of it and the total sum disbursed ran into many thousandsthat is to say millions of our money And if his day was spent like this at night again Lord Orlando might be found reckoning out what it would cost to level a million molehills if the men were paid tenpence an hour and again how many hundredweight of nails at fivepence halfpenny a gill were needed to repair the fence round the park which was fifteen miles in circumference And so on and so on
The tale we say, is tedious for one cupboard is much like another and one molehill not much different from a million Some pleasant journeys it cost him and some fine adventures As for instance when he set a whole city of blind women near Bruges to stitch hangings for a silver canopied bed and the story of his adventure with a Moor in Venice of whom he bought but only at the swords point his lacquered cabinet might in other hands prove worth the telling Nor did the work lack variety for here would come drawn by teams from Sussex great trees to be sawn across and laid along the gallery for flooring and then a chest from Persia stuffed with wool and sawdust from which at last he would take a single plate or one topaz ring
At length however there was no room in the galleries for another table no room on the tables for another cabinet no room in the cabinet for another rosebowl no room in the bowl for another handful of potpourri there was no room for anything anywhere in short the house was furnished In the garden snowdrops crocuses hyacinths magnolias roses lilies asters the dahlia in all its varieties pear trees and apple trees and cherry trees and mulberry trees with an enormous quantity of rare and flowering shrubs of trees evergreen and perennial grew so thick on each others roots that there was no plot of earth without its bloom and no stretch of sward without its shade In addition he had imported wild fowl with gay plumage and two Malay bears the surliness of whose manners concealed he was certain trusty hearts
All now was ready and when it was evening and the innumerable silver sconces were lit and the light airs which for ever moved about the galleries stirred the blue and green arras so that it looked as if the huntsmen were riding and Daphne flying when the silver shone and lacquer glowed and wood kindled when the carved chairs held their arms out and dolphins swam upon the walls with mermaids on their backs when all this and much more than all this was complete and to his liking Orlando walked through the house with his elk hounds following and felt content He had matter now he thought to fill out his peroration Perhaps it would be well to begin the speech all over again Yet as he paraded the galleries he felt that still something was lacking Chairs and tables however richly gilt and carved sofas resting on lions paws with swans necks curving under them beds even of the softest swansdown are not by themselves enough People sitting in them people lying in them improve them amazingly Accordingly Orlando now began a series of very splendid entertainments to the nobility and gentry of the neighbourhood The three hundred and sixtyfive bedrooms were full for a month at a time Guests jostled each other on the fiftytwo staircases Three hundred servants bustled about the pantries Banquets took place almost nightly Thus in a very few years Orlando had worn the nap off his velvet and spent the half of his fortune but he had earned the good opinion of his neighbours held a score of offices in the county and was annually presented with perhaps a dozen volumes dedicated to his Lordship in rather fulsome terms by grateful poets For though he was careful not to consort with writers at that time and kept himself always aloof from ladies of foreign blood still he was excessively generous both to women and to poets and both adored him
But when the feasting was at its height and his guests were at their revels he was apt to take himself off to his private room alone There when the door was shut and he was certain of privacy he would have out an old writing book stitched together with silk stolen from his mothers workbox and labelled in a round schoolboy hand The Oak Tree A Poem In this he would write till midnight chimed and long after But as he scratched out as many lines as he wrote in the sum of them was often at the end of the year rather less than at the beginning and it looked as if in the process of writing the poem would be completely unwritten For it is for the historian of letters to remark that he had changed his style amazingly His floridity was chastened his abundance curbed the age of prose was congealing those warm fountains The very landscape outside was less stuck about with garlands and the briars themselves were less thorned and intricate Perhaps the senses were a little duller and honey and cream less seductive to the palate Also that the streets were better drained and the houses better lit had its effect upon the style it cannot be doubted
One day he was adding a line or two with enormous labour to The Oak Tree A Poem when a shadow crossed the tail of his eye It was no shadow he soon saw but the figure of a very tall lady in riding hood and mantle crossing the quadrangle on which his room looked out As this was the most private of the courts and the lady was a stranger to him Orlando marvelled how she had got there Three days later the same apparition appeared again and on Wednesday noon appeared once more This time Orlando was determined to follow her nor apparently was she afraid to be found for she slackened her steps as he came up and looked him full in the face Any other woman thus caught in a Lords private grounds would have been afraid any other woman with that face headdress and aspect would have thrown her mantilla across her shoulders to hide it For this lady resembled nothing so much as a hare a hare startled but obdurate a hare whose timidity is overcome by an immense and foolish audacity a hare that sits upright and glowers at its pursuer with great bulging eyes with ears erect but quivering with nose pointed but twitching This hare moreover was six feet high and wore a headdress into the bargain of some antiquated kind which made her look still taller Thus confronted she stared at Orlando with a stare in which timidity and audacity were most strangely combined
First she asked him with a proper but somewhat clumsy curtsey to forgive her her intrusion Then rising to her full height again which must have been something over six feet two she went on to saybut with such a cackle of nervous laughter so much teeheeing and hawhawing that Orlando thought she must have escaped from a lunatic asylumthat she was the Archduchess Harriet Griselda of FinsterAarhorn and ScandopBoom in the Roumanian territory She desired above all things to make his acquaintance she said She had taken lodging over a bakers shop at the Park Gates She had seen his picture and it was the image of a sister of hers who washere she guffawedlong since dead She was visiting the English court The Queen was her Cousin The King was a very good fellow but seldom went to bed sober Here she teeheed and hawhawed again In short there was nothing for it but to ask her in and give her a glass of wine
Indoors her manners regained the hauteur natural to a Roumanian Archduchess and had she not shown a knowledge of wines rare in a lady and made some observations upon firearms and the customs of sportsmen in her country which were sensible enough the talk would have lacked spontaneity Jumping to her feet at last she announced that she would call the following day swept another prodigious curtsey and departed The following day Orlando rode out The next he turned his back on the third he drew his curtain On the fourth it rained and as he could not keep a lady in the wet nor was altogether averse to company he invited her in and asked her opinion whether a suit of armour which belonged to an ancestor of his was the work of Jacobi or of Topp He inclined to Topp She held another opinionit matters very little which But it is of some importance to the course of our story that in illustrating her argument which had to do with the working of the tie pieces the Archduchess Harriet took the golden shin case and fitted it to Orlandos leg
That he had a pair of the shapliest legs that any Nobleman has ever stood upright upon has already been said
Perhaps something in the way she fastened the ankle buckle or her stooping posture or Orlandos long seclusion or the natural sympathy which is between the sexes or the Burgundy or the fireany of these causes may have been to blame for certainly blame there is on one side or another when a Nobleman of Orlandos breeding entertaining a lady in his house and she his elder by many years with a face a yard long and staring eyes dressed somewhat ridiculously too in a mantle and riding cloak though the season was warmblame there is when such a Nobleman is so suddenly and violently overcome by passion of some sort that he has to leave the room
But what sort of passion it may well be asked could this be And the answer is double faced as Love herself For Lovebut leaving Love out of the argument for a moment the actual event was this
When the Archduchess Harriet Griselda stooped to fasten the buckle Orlando heard suddenly and unaccountably far off the beating of Loves wings The distant stir of that soft plumage roused in him a thousand memories of rushing waters of loveliness in the snow and faithlessness in the flood and the sound came nearer and he blushed and trembled and he was moved as he had thought never to be moved again and he was ready to raise his hands and let the bird of beauty alight upon his shoulders whenhorrora creaking sound like that the crows make tumbling over the trees began to reverberate the air seemed dark with coarse black wings voices croaked bits of straw twigs and feathers dropped and there pitched down upon his shoulders the heaviest and foulest of the birds which is the vulture Thus he rushed from the room and sent the footman to see the Archduchess Harriet to her carriage
For Love to which we may now return has two faces one white the other black two bodies one smooth the other hairy It has two hands two feet two nails two indeed of every member and each one is the exact opposite of the other Yet so strictly are they joined together that you cannot separate them In this case Orlandos love began her flight towards him with her white face turned and her smooth and lovely body outwards Nearer and nearer she came wafting before her airs of pure delight All of a sudden at the sight of the Archduchess presumably she wheeled about turned the other way round showed herself black hairy brutish and it was Lust the vulture not Love the Bird of Paradise that flopped foully and disgustingly upon his shoulders Hence he ran hence he fetched the footman
But the harpy is not so easily banished as all that Not only did the Archduchess continue to lodge at the Bakers but Orlando was haunted every day and night by phantoms of the foulest kind Vainly it seemed had he furnished his house with silver and hung the walls with arras when at any moment a dungbedraggled fowl could settle upon his writing table There she was flopping about among the chairs he saw her waddling ungracefully across the galleries Now she perched top heavy upon a fire screen When he chased her out back she came and pecked at the glass till she broke it
Thus realizing that his home was uninhabitable and that steps must be taken to end the matter instantly he did what any other young man would have done in his place and asked King Charles to send him as Ambassador Extraordinary to Constantinople The King was walking in Whitehall Nell Gwyn was on his arm She was pelting him with hazel nuts Twas a thousand pities that amorous lady sighed that such a pair of legs should leave the country
Howbeit the Fates were hard she could do no more than toss one kiss over her shoulder before Orlando sailed
CHAPTER 3
It is indeed highly unfortunate and much to be regretted that at this stage of Orlandos career when he played a most important part in the public life of his country we have least information to go upon We know that he discharged his duties to admirationwitness his Bath and his Dukedom We know that he had a finger in some of the most delicate negotiations between King Charles and the Turksto that treaties in the vault of the Record Office bear testimony But the revolution which broke out during his period of office and the fire which followed have so damaged or destroyed all those papers from which any trustworthy record could be drawn that what we can give is lamentably incomplete Often the paper was scorched a deep brown in the middle of the most important sentence Just when we thought to elucidate a secret that has puzzled historians for a hundred years there was a hole in the manuscript big enough to put your finger through We have done our best to piece out a meagre summary from the charred fragments that remain but often it has been necessary to speculate to surmise and even to use the imagination
Orlandos day was passed it would seem somewhat in this fashion About seven he would rise wrap himself in a long Turkish cloak light a cheroot and lean his elbows on the parapet Thus he would stand gazing at the city beneath him apparently entranced At this hour the mist would lie so thick that the domes of Santa Sofia and the rest would seem to be afloat gradually the mist would uncover them the bubbles would be seen to be firmly fixed there would be the river there the Galata Bridge there the greenturbaned pilgrims without eyes or noses begging alms there the pariah dogs picking up offal there the shawled women there the innumerable donkeys there men on horses carrying long poles Soon the whole town would be astir with the cracking of whips the beating of gongs cryings to prayer lashing of mules and rattle of brassbound wheels while sour odours made from bread fermenting and incense and spice rose even to the heights of Pera itself and seemed the very breath of the strident multicoloured and barbaric population
Nothing he reflected gazing at the view which was now sparkling in the sun could well be less like the counties of Surrey and Kent or the towns of London and Tunbridge Wells To the right and left rose in bald and stony prominence the inhospitable Asian mountains to which the arid castle of a robber chief or two might hang but parsonage there was none nor manor house nor cottage nor oak elm violet ivy or wild eglantine There were no hedges for ferns to grow on and no fields for sheep to graze The houses were white as eggshells and as bald That he who was English root and fibre should yet exult to the depths of his heart in this wild panorama and gaze and gaze at those passes and far heights planning journeys there alone on foot where only the goat and shepherd had gone before should feel a passion of affection for the bright unseasonable flowers love the unkempt pariah dogs beyond even his elk hounds at home and snuff the acrid sharp smell of the streets eagerly into his nostrils surprised him He wondered if in the season of the Crusades one of his ancestors had taken up with a Circassian peasant woman thought it possible fancied a certain darkness in his complexion and going indoors again withdrew to his bath
An hour later properly scented curled and anointed he would receive visits from secretaries and other high officials carrying one after another red boxes which yielded only to his own golden key Within were papers of the highest importance of which only fragments here a flourish there a seal firmly attached to a piece of burnt silk now remain Of their contents then we cannot speak but can only testify that Orlando was kept busy what with his wax and seals his various coloured ribbons which had to be diversely attached his engrossing of titles and making of flourishes round capital letters till luncheon camea splendid meal of perhaps thirty courses
After luncheon lackeys announced that his coach and six was at the door and he went preceded by purple Janissaries running on foot and waving great ostrich feather fans above their heads to call upon the other ambassadors and dignitaries of state The ceremony was always the same On reaching the courtyard the Janissaries struck with their fans upon the main portal which immediately flew open revealing a large chamber splendidly furnished Here were seated two figures generally of the opposite sexes Profound bows and curtseys were exchanged In the first room it was permissible only to mention the weather Having said that it was fine or wet hot or cold the Ambassador then passed on to the next chamber where again two figures rose to greet him Here it was only permissible to compare Constantinople as a place of residence with London and the Ambassador naturally said that he preferred Constantinople and his hosts naturally said though they had not seen it that they preferred London In the next chamber King Charless and the Sultans healths had to be discussed at some length In the next were discussed the Ambassadors health and that of his hosts wife but more briefly In the next the Ambassador complimented his host upon his furniture and the host complimented the Ambassador upon his dress In the next sweet meats were offered the host deploring their badness the Ambassador extolling their goodness The ceremony ended at length with the smoking of a hookah and the drinking of a glass of coffee but though the motions of smoking and drinking were gone through punctiliously there was neither tobacco in the pipe nor coffee in the glass as had either smoke or drink been real the human frame would have sunk beneath the surfeit For no sooner had the Ambassador despatched one such visit than another had to be undertaken The same ceremonies were gone through in precisely the same order six or seven times over at the houses of the other great officials so that it was often late at night before the Ambassador reached home Though Orlando performed these tasks to admiration and never denied that they are perhaps the most important part of a diplomatists duties he was undoubtedly fatigued by them and often depressed to such a pitch of gloom that he preferred to take his dinner alone with his dogs To them indeed he might be heard talking in his own tongue And sometimes it is said he would pass out of his own gates late at night so disguised that the sentries did not know him Then he would mingle with the crowd on the Galata Bridge or stroll through the bazaars or throw aside his shoes and join the worshippers in the Mosques Once when it was given out that he was ill of a fever shepherds bringing their goats to market reported that they had met an English Lord on the mountain top and heard him praying to his God This was thought to be Orlando himself and his prayer was no doubt a poem said aloud for it was known that he still carried about with him in the bosom of his cloak a much scored manuscript and servants listening at the door heard the Ambassador chanting something in an odd singsong voice when he was alone
It is with fragments such as these that we must do our best to make up a picture of Orlandos life and character at this time There exist even to this day rumours legends anecdotes of a floating and unauthenticated kind about Orlandos life in Constantinoplewe have quoted but a few of them which go to prove that he possessed now that he was in the prime of life the power to stir the fancy and rivet the eye which will keep a memory green long after all that more durable qualities can do to preserve it is forgotten The power is a mysterious one compounded of beauty birth and some rarer gift which we may call glamour and have done with it A million candles as Sasha had said burnt in him without his being at the trouble of lighting a single one He moved like a stag without any need to think about his legs He spoke in his ordinary voice and echo beat a silver gong Hence rumours gathered round him He became the adored of many women and some men It was not necessary that they should speak to him or even that they should see him they conjured up before them especially when the scenery was romantic or the sun was setting the figure of a noble gentleman in silk stockings Upon the poor and uneducated he had the same power as upon the rich Shepherds gipsies donkey drivers still sing songs about the English Lord who dropped his emeralds in the well which undoubtedly refer to Orlando who once it seems tore his jewels from him in a moment of rage or intoxication and flung them in a fountain whence they were fished by a page boy But this romantic power it is well known is often associated with a nature of extreme reserve Orlando seems to have made no friends As far as is known he formed no attachments A certain great lady came all the way from England in order to be near him and pestered him with her attentions but he continued to discharge his duties so indefatigably that he had not been Ambassador at the Horn for more than two years and a half before King Charles signified his intention of raising him to the highest rank in the peerage The envious said that this was Nell Gwyns tribute to the memory of a leg But as she had seen him once only and was then busily engaged in pelting her royal master with nutshells it is likely that it was his merits that won him his Dukedom not his calves
Here we must pause for we have reached a moment of great significance in his career For the conferring of the Dukedom was the occasion of a very famous and indeed much disputed incident which we must now describe picking our way among burnt papers and little bits of tape as best we may It was at the end of the great fast of Ramadan that the Order of the Bath and the patent of nobility arrived in a frigate commanded by Sir Adrian Scrope and Orlando made this the occasion for an entertainment more splendid than any that has been known before or since in Constantinople The night was fine the crowd immense and the windows of the Embassy brilliantly illuminated Again details are lacking for the fire had its way with all such records and has left only tantalizing fragments which leave the most important points obscure From the diary of John Fenner Brigge however an English naval officer who was among the guests we gather that people of all nationalities were packed like herrings in a barrel in the courtyard The crowd pressed so unpleasantly close that Brigge soon climbed into a Judas tree the better to observe the proceedings The rumour had got about among the natives and here is additional proof of Orlandos mysterious power over the imagination that some kind of miracle was to be performed Thus writes Brigge but his manuscript is full of burns and holes some sentences being quite illegible when the rockets began to soar into the air there was considerable uneasiness among us lest the native population should be seizedfraught with unpleasant consequences to allEnglish ladies in the company I own that my hand went to my cutlass Happily he continues in his somewhat longwinded style these fears seemed for the moment groundless and observing the demeanour of the nativesI came to the conclusion that this demonstration of our skill in the art of pyrotechny was valuable if only because it impressed upon themthe superiority of the BritishIndeed the sight was one of indescribable magnificence I found myself alternately praising the Lord that he had permittedand wishing that my poor dear motherBy the Ambassadors orders the long windows which are so imposing a feature of Eastern architecture for though ignorant in many wayswere thrown wide and within we could see a tableau vivant or theatrical display in which English ladies and gentlemenrepresented a masque the work of oneThe words were inaudible but the sight of so many of our countrymen and women dressed with the highest elegance and distinctionmoved me to emotions of which I am certainly not ashamed though unableI was intent upon observing the astonishing conduct of Ladywhich was of a nature to fasten the eyes of all upon her and to bring discredit upon her sex and country whenunfortunately a branch of the Judas tree broke Lieutenant Brigge fell to the ground and the rest of the entry records only his gratitude to Providence who plays a very large part in the diary and the exact nature of his injuries
Happily Miss Penelope Hartopp daughter of the General of that name saw the scene from inside and carries on the tale in a letter much defaced too which ultimately reached a female friend at Tunbridge Wells Miss Penelope was no less lavish in her enthusiasm than the gallant officer Ravishing she exclaims ten times on one page wondrousutterly beyond descriptiongold platecandelabrasnegroes in plush breeches pyramids of icefountains of negusjellies made to represent His Majestys shipsswans made to represent water liliesbirds in golden cagesgentlemen in slashed crimson velvetLadies headdresses AT LEAST six foot highmusical boxesMr Peregrine said I looked QUITE lovely which I only repeat to you my dearest because I knowOh how I longed for you allsurpassing anything we have seen at the Pantilesoceans to drinksome gentlemen overcomeLady Betty ravishingPoor Lady Bonham made the unfortunate mistake of sitting down without a chair beneath herGentlemen all very gallantwished a thousand times for you and dearest BetsyBut the sight of all others the cynosure of all eyesas all admitted for none could be so vile as to deny it was the Ambassador himself Such a leg Such a countenance Such princely manners To see him come into the room To see him go out again And something INTERESTING in the expression which makes one feel one scarcely knows why that he has SUFFERED They say a lady was the cause of it The heartless monster How can one of our REPUTED TENDER SEX have had the effrontery He is unmarried and half the ladies in the place are wild for love of himA thousand thousand kisses to Tom Gerry Peter and dearest Mew presumably her cat
From the Gazette of the time we gather that as the clock struck twelve the Ambassador appeared on the centre Balcony which was hung with priceless rugs Six Turks of the Imperial Body Guard each over six foot in height held torches to his right and left Rockets rose into the air at his appearance and a great shout went up from the people which the Ambassador acknowledged bowing deeply and speaking a few words of thanks in the Turkish language which it was one of his accomplishments to speak with fluency Next Sir Adrian Scrope in the full dress of a British Admiral advanced the Ambassador knelt on one knee the Admiral placed the Collar of the Most Noble Order of the Bath round his neck then pinned the Star to his breast after which another gentleman of the diplomatic corps advancing in a stately manner placed on his shoulders the ducal robes and handed him on a crimson cushion the ducal coronet
At length with a gesture of extraordinary majesty and grace first bowing profoundly then raising himself proudly erect Orlando took the golden circlet of strawberry leaves and placed it with a gesture which none that saw it ever forgot upon his brows It was at this point that the first disturbance began Either the people had expected a miraclesome say a shower of gold was prophesied to fall from the skieswhich did not happen or this was the signal chosen for the attack to begin nobody seems to know but as the coronet settled on Orlandos brows a great uproar rose Bells began ringing the harsh cries of the prophets were heard above the shouts of the people many Turks fell flat to the ground and touched the earth with their foreheads A door burst open The natives pressed into the banqueting rooms Women shrieked A certain lady who was said to be dying for love of Orlando seized a candelabra and dashed it to the ground What might not have happened had it not been for the presence of Sir Adrian Scrope and a squad of British bluejackets nobody can say But the Admiral ordered the bugles to be sounded a hundred bluejackets stood instantly at attention the disorder was quelled and quiet at least for the time being fell upon the scene
So far we are on the firm if rather narrow ground of ascertained truth But nobody has ever known exactly what took place later that night The testimony of the sentries and others seems however to prove that the Embassy was empty of company and shut up for the night in the usual way by two AM The Ambassador was seen to go to his room still wearing the insignia of his rank and shut the door Some say he locked it which was against his custom Others maintain that they heard music of a rustic kind such as shepherds play later that night in the courtyard under the Ambassadors window A washerwoman who was kept awake by toothache said that she saw a mans figure wrapped in a cloak or dressing gown come out upon the balcony Then she said a woman much muffled but apparently of the peasant class was drawn up by means of a rope which the man let down to her on to the balcony There the washerwoman said they embraced passionately like lovers and went into the room together drawing the curtains so that no more could be seen
Next morning the Duke as we must now call him was found by his secretaries sunk in profound slumber amid bed clothes that were much tumbled The room was in some disorder his coronet having rolled on the floor and his cloak and garter being flung all of a heap on a chair The table was littered with papers No suspicion was felt at first as the fatigues of the night had been great But when afternoon came and he still slept a doctor was summoned He applied remedies which had been used on the previous occasion plasters nettles emetics etc but without success Orlando slept on His secretaries then thought it their duty to examine the papers on the table Many were scribbled over with poetry in which frequent mention was made of an oak tree There were also various state papers and others of a private nature concerning the management of his estates in England But at length they came upon a document of far greater significance It was nothing less indeed than a deed of marriage drawn up signed and witnessed between his Lordship Orlando Knight of the Garter etc etc etc and Rosina Pepita a dancer father unknown but reputed a gipsy mother also unknown but reputed a seller of old iron in the marketplace over against the Galata Bridge The secretaries looked at each other in dismay And still Orlando slept Morning and evening they watched him but save that his breathing was regular and his cheeks still flushed their habitual deep rose he gave no sign of life Whatever science or ingenuity could do to waken him they did But still he slept
On the seventh day of his trance Thursday May the 10th the first shot was fired of that terrible and bloody insurrection of which Lieutenant Brigge had detected the first symptoms The Turks rose against the Sultan set fire to the town and put every foreigner they could find either to the sword or to the bastinado A few English managed to escape but as might have been expected the gentlemen of the British Embassy preferred to die in defence of their red boxes or in extreme cases to swallow bunches of keys rather than let them fall into the hands of the Infidel The rioters broke into Orlandos room but seeing him stretched to all appearances dead they left him untouched and only robbed him of his coronet and the robes of the Garter
And now again obscurity descends and would indeed that it were deeper Would we almost have it in our hearts to exclaim that it were so deep that we could see nothing whatever through its opacity Would that we might here take the pen and write Finis to our work Would that we might spare the reader what is to come and say to him in so many words Orlando died and was buried But here alas Truth Candour and Honesty the austere Gods who keep watch and ward by the inkpot of the biographer cry No Putting their silver trumpets to their lips they demand in one blast Truth And again they cry Truth and sounding yet a third time in concert they peal forth The Truth and nothing but the Truth
At whichHeaven be praised for it affords us a breathing spacethe doors gently open as if a breath of the gentlest and holiest zephyr had wafted them apart and three figures enter First comes our Lady of Purity whose brows are bound with fillets of the whitest lambs wool whose hair is as an avalanche of the driven snow and in whose hand reposes the white quill of a virgin goose Following her but with a statelier step comes our Lady of Chastity on whose brow is set like a turret of burning but unwasting fire a diadem of icicles her eyes are pure stars and her fingers if they touch you freeze you to the bone Close behind her sheltering indeed in the shadow of her more stately sisters comes our Lady of Modesty frailest and fairest of the three whose face is only shown as the young moon shows when it is thin and sickle shaped and half hidden among clouds Each advances towards the centre of the room where Orlando still lies sleeping and with gestures at once appealing and commanding OUR LADY OF PURITY speaks first
I am the guardian of the sleeping fawn the snow is dear to me and the moon rising and the silver sea With my robes I cover the speckled hens eggs and the brindled sea shell I cover vice and poverty On all things frail or dark or doubtful my veil descends Wherefore speak not reveal not Spare O spare
Here the trumpets peal forth
Purity Avaunt Begone Purity
Then OUR LADY OF CHASTITY speaks
I am she whose touch freezes and whose glance turns to stone I have stayed the star in its dancing and the wave as it falls The highest Alps are my dwelling place and when I walk the lightnings flash in my hair where my eyes fall they kill Rather than let Orlando wake I will freeze him to the bone Spare O spare
Here the trumpets peal forth
Chastity Avaunt Begone Chastity
Then OUR LADY OF MODESTY speaks so low that one can hardly hear
I am she that men call Modesty Virgin I am and ever shall be Not for me the fruitful fields and the fertile vineyard Increase is odious to me and when the apples burgeon or the flocks breed I run I run I let my mantle fall My hair covers my eyes I do not see Spare O spare
Again the trumpets peal forth
Modesty Avaunt Begone Modesty
With gestures of grief and lamentation the three sisters now join hands and dance slowly tossing their veils and singing as they go
Truth come not out from your horrid den Hide deeper fearful Truth For you flaunt in the brutal gaze of the sun things that were better unknown and undone you unveil the shameful the dark you make clear Hide Hide Hide
Here they make as if to cover Orlando with their draperies The trumpets meanwhile still blare forth
The Truth and nothing but the Truth
At this the Sisters try to cast their veils over the mouths of the trumpets so as to muffle them but in vain for now all the trumpets blare forth together
Horrid Sisters go
The sisters become distracted and wail in unison still circling and flinging their veils up and down
It has not always been so But men want us no longer the women detest us We go we go I PURITY SAYS THIS to the hen roost I CHASTITY SAYS THIS to the still unravished heights of Surrey I MODESTY SAYS THIS to any cosy nook where there are ivy and curtains in plenty
For there not here all speak together joining hands and making gestures of farewell and despair towards the bed where Orlando lies sleeping dwell still in nest and boudoir office and lawcourt those who love us those who honour us virgins and city men lawyers and doctors those who prohibit those who deny those who reverence without knowing why those who praise without understanding the still very numerous Heaven be praised tribe of the respectable who prefer to see not desire to know not love the darkness those still worship us and with reason for we have given them Wealth Prosperity Comfort Ease To them we go you we leave Come Sisters come This is no place for us here
They retire in haste waving their draperies over their heads as if to shut out something that they dare not look upon and close the door behind them
We are therefore now left entirely alone in the room with the sleeping Orlando and the trumpeters The trumpeters ranging themselves side by side in order blow one terrific blast
THE TRUTH
at which Orlando woke
He stretched himself He rose He stood upright in complete nakedness before us and while the trumpets pealed Truth Truth Truth we have no choice left but confesshe was a woman
The sound of the trumpets died away and Orlando stood stark naked No human being since the world began has ever looked more ravishing His form combined in one the strength of a man and a womans grace As he stood there the silver trumpets prolonged their note as if reluctant to leave the lovely sight which their blast had called forth and Chastity Purity and Modesty inspired no doubt by Curiosity peeped in at the door and threw a garment like a towel at the naked form which unfortunately fell short by several inches Orlando looked himself up and down in a long lookingglass without showing any signs of discomposure and went presumably to his bath
We may take advantage of this pause in the narrative to make certain statements Orlando had become a womanthere is no denying it But in every other respect Orlando remained precisely as he had been The change of sex though it altered their future did nothing whatever to alter their identity Their faces remained as their portraits prove practically the same His memorybut in future we must for conventions sake say her for his and she for heher memory then went back through all the events of her past life without encountering any obstacle Some slight haziness there may have been as if a few dark drops had fallen into the clear pool of memory certain things had become a little dimmed but that was all The change seemed to have been accomplished painlessly and completely and in such a way that Orlando herself showed no surprise at it Many people taking this into account and holding that such a change of sex is against nature have been at great pains to prove 1 that Orlando had always been a woman 2 that Orlando is at this moment a man Let biologists and psychologists determine It is enough for us to state the simple fact Orlando was a man till the age of thirty when he became a woman and has remained so ever since
But let other pens treat of sex and sexuality we quit such odious subjects as soon as we can Orlando had now washed and dressed herself in those Turkish coats and trousers which can be worn indifferently by either sex and was forced to consider her position That it was precarious and embarrassing in the extreme must be the first thought of every reader who has followed her story with sympathy Young noble beautiful she had woken to find herself in a position than which we can conceive none more delicate for a young lady of rank We should not have blamed her had she rung the bell screamed or fainted But Orlando showed no such signs of perturbation All her actions were deliberate in the extreme and might indeed have been thought to show tokens of premeditation First she carefully examined the papers on the table took such as seemed to be written in poetry and secreted them in her bosom next she called her Seleuchi hound which had never left her bed all these days though half famished with hunger fed and combed him then stuck a pair of pistols in her belt finally wound about her person several strings of emeralds and pearls of the finest orient which had formed part of her Ambassadorial wardrobe This done she leant out of the window gave one low whistle and descended the shattered and bloodstained staircase now strewn with the litter of wastepaper baskets treaties despatches seals sealing wax etc and so entered the courtyard There in the shadow of a giant fig tree waited an old gipsy on a donkey He led another by the bridle Orlando swung her leg over it and thus attended by a lean dog riding a donkey in company of a gipsy the Ambassador of Great Britain at the Court of the Sultan left Constantinople
They rode for several days and nights and met with a variety of adventures some at the hands of men some at the hands of nature, in all of which Orlando acquitted herself with courage Within a week they reached the high ground outside Broussa which was then the chief camping ground of the gipsy tribe to which Orlando had allied herself Often she had looked at those mountains from her balcony at the Embassy often had longed to be there and to find oneself where one has longed to be always to a reflective mind gives food for thought For some time however she was too well pleased with the change to spoil it by thinking The pleasure of having no documents to seal or sign no flourishes to make no calls to pay was enough The gipsies followed the grass when it was grazed down on they moved again She washed in streams if she washed at all no boxes red blue or green were presented to her there was not a key let alone a golden key in the whole camp as for visiting the word was unknown She milked the goats she collected brushwood she stole a hens egg now and then but always put a coin or a pearl in place of it she herded cattle she stripped vines she trod the grape she filled the goatskin and drank from it and when she remembered how at about this time of day she should have been making the motions of drinking and smoking over an empty coffeecup and a pipe which lacked tobacco she laughed aloud cut herself another hunch of bread and begged for a puff from old Rustums pipe filled though it was with cow dung
The gipsies with whom it is obvious that she must have been in secret communication before the revolution seem to have looked upon her as one of themselves which is always the highest compliment a people can pay and her dark hair and dark complexion bore out the belief that she was by birth one of them and had been snatched by an English Duke from a nut tree when she was a baby and taken to that barbarous land where people live in houses because they are too feeble and diseased to stand the open air Thus though in many ways inferior to them they were willing to help her to become more like them taught her their arts of cheesemaking and basketweaving their science of stealing and birdsnaring and were even prepared to consider letting her marry among them
But Orlando had contracted in England some of the customs or diseases whatever you choose to consider them which cannot it seems be expelled One evening when they were all sitting round the camp fire and the sunset was blazing over the Thessalian hills Orlando exclaimed
How good to eat
The gipsies have no word for beautiful This is the nearest
All the young men and women burst out laughing uproariously The sky good to eat indeed The elders however who had seen more of foreigners than they had became suspicious They noticed that Orlando often sat for whole hours doing nothing whatever except look here and then there they would come upon her on some hilltop staring straight in front of her no matter whether the goats were grazing or straying They began to suspect that she had other beliefs than their own and the older men and women thought it probable that she had fallen into the clutches of the vilest and cruellest among all the Gods which is Nature Nor were they far wrong The English disease a love of Nature, was inborn in her and here where Nature was so much larger and more powerful than in England she fell into its hands as she had never done before The malady is too well known and has been alas too often described to need describing afresh save very briefly There were mountains there were valleys there were streams She climbed the mountains roamed the valleys sat on the banks of the streams She likened the hills to ramparts to the breasts of doves and the flanks of kine She compared the flowers to enamel and the turf to Turkey rugs worn thin Trees were withered hags and sheep were grey boulders Everything in fact was something else She found the tarn on the mountaintop and almost threw herself in to seek the wisdom she thought lay hid there and when from the mountaintop she beheld far off across the Sea of Marmara the plains of Greece and made out her eyes were admirable the Acropolis with a white streak or two which must she thought be the Parthenon her soul expanded with her eyeballs and she prayed that she might share the majesty of the hills know the serenity of the plains etc etc as all such believers do Then looking down the red hyacinth the purple iris wrought her to cry out in ecstasy at the goodness the beauty of nature; raising her eyes again she beheld the eagle soaring and imagined its raptures and made them her own Returning home she saluted each star each peak and each watchfire as if they signalled to her alone and at last when she flung herself upon her mat in the gipsies tent she could not help bursting out again How good to eat How good to eat For it is a curious fact that though human beings have such imperfect means of communication that they can only say good to eat when they mean beautiful and the other way about they will yet endure ridicule and misunderstanding rather than keep any experience to themselves All the young gipsies laughed But Rustum el Sadi the old man who had brought Orlando out of Constantinople on his donkey sat silent He had a nose like a scimitar his cheeks were furrowed as if from the agelong descent of iron hail he was brown and keeneyed and as he sat tugging at his hookah he observed Orlando narrowly He had the deepest suspicion that her God was Nature One day he found her in tears Interpreting this to mean that her God had punished her he told her that he was not surprised He showed her the fingers of his left hand withered by the frost he showed her his right foot crushed where a rock had fallen This he said was what her God did to men When she said But so beautiful using the English word he shook his head and when she repeated it he was angry He saw that she did not believe what he believed and that was enough wise and ancient as he was to enrage him
This difference of opinion disturbed Orlando who had been perfectly happy until now She began to think was Nature beautiful or cruel and then she asked herself what this beauty was whether it was in things themselves, or only in herself so she went on to the nature of reality, which led her to truth which in its turn led to Love Friendship Poetry as in the days on the high mound at home which meditations since she could impart no word of them made her long as she had never longed before for pen and ink
Oh if only I could write she cried for she had the odd conceit of those who write that words written are shared She had no ink and but little paper But she made ink from berries and wine and finding a few margins and blank spaces in the manuscript of The Oak Tree managed by writing a kind of shorthand to describe the scenery in a long blank version poem and to carry on a dialogue with herself about this Beauty and Truth concisely enough This kept her extremely happy for hours on end But the gipsies became suspicious First they noticed that she was less adept than before at milking and cheesemaking next she often hesitated before replying and once a gipsy boy who had been asleep woke in a terror feeling her eyes upon him Sometimes this constraint would be felt by the whole tribe numbering some dozens of grown men and women It sprang from the sense they had and their senses are very sharp and much in advance of their vocabulary that whatever they were doing crumbled like ashes in their hands An old woman making a basket a boy skinning a sheep would be singing or crooning contentedly at their work when Orlando would come into the camp fling herself down by the fire and gaze into the flames She need not even look at them and yet they felt here is someone who doubts we make a roughandready translation from the gipsy language here is someone who does not do the thing for the sake of doing nor looks for lookings sake here is someone who believes neither in sheepskin nor basket but sees here they looked apprehensively about the tent something else Then a vague but most unpleasant feeling would begin to work in the boy and in the old woman They broke their withys they cut their fingers A great rage filled them They wished Orlando would leave the tent and never come near them again Yet she was of a cheerful and willing disposition they owned and one of her pearls was enough to buy the finest herd of goats in Broussa
Slowly she began to feel that there was some difference between her and the gipsies which made her hesitate sometimes to marry and settle down among them for ever At first she tried to account for it by saying that she came of an ancient and civilized race whereas these gipsies were an ignorant people not much better than savages One night when they were questioning her about England she could not help with some pride describing the house where she was born how it had 365 bedrooms and had been in the possession of her family for four or five hundred years Her ancestors were earls or even dukes she added At this she noticed again that the gipsies were uneasy but not angry as before when she had praised the beauty of nature. Now they were courteous but concerned as people of fine breeding are when a stranger has been made to reveal his low birth or poverty Rustum followed her out of the tent alone and said that she need not mind if her father were a Duke and possessed all the bedrooms and furniture that she described They would none of them think the worse of her for that Then she was seized with a shame that she had never felt before It was clear that Rustum and the other gipsies thought a descent of four or five hundred years only the meanest possible Their own families went back at least two or three thousand years To the gipsy whose ancestors had built the Pyramids centuries before Christ was born the genealogy of Howards and Plantagenets was no better and no worse than that of the Smiths and the Joneses both were negligible Moreover where the shepherd boy had a lineage of such antiquity there was nothing specially memorable or desirable in ancient birth vagabonds and beggars all shared it And then though he was too courteous to speak openly it was clear that the gipsy thought that there was no more vulgar ambition than to possess bedrooms by the hundred they were on top of a hill as they spoke it was night the mountains rose around them when the whole earth is ours Looked at from the gipsy point of view a Duke Orlando understood was nothing but a profiteer or robber who snatched land and money from people who rated these things of little worth and could think of nothing better to do than to build three hundred and sixtyfive bedrooms when one was enough and none was even better than one She could not deny that her ancestors had accumulated field after field house after house honour after honour yet had none of them been saints or heroes or great benefactors of the human race Nor could she counter the argument Rustum was too much of a gentleman to press it but she understood that any man who did now what her ancestors had done three or four hundred years ago would be denouncedand by her own family most loudlyfor a vulgar upstart an adventurer a nouveau riche
She sought to answer such arguments by the familiar if oblique method of finding the gipsy life itself rude and barbarous and so in a short time much bad blood was bred between them Indeed such differences of opinion are enough to cause bloodshed and revolution Towns have been sacked for less and a million martyrs have suffered at the stake rather than yield an inch upon any of the points here debated No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high Whigs and Tories Liberal party and Labour partyfor what do they battle except their own prestige It is not love of truth but desire to prevail that sets quarter against quarter and makes parish desire the downfall of parish Each seeks peace of mind and subserviency rather than the triumph of truth and the exaltation of virtuebut these moralities belong and should be left to the historian since they are as dull as ditch water
Four hundred and seventysix bedrooms mean nothing to them sighed Orlando
She prefers a sunset to a flock of goats said the gipsies
What was to be done Orlando could not think To leave the gipsies and become once more an Ambassador seemed to her intolerable But it was equally impossible to remain for ever where there was neither ink nor writing paper neither reverence for the Talbots nor respect for a multiplicity of bedrooms So she was thinking one fine morning on the slopes of Mount Athos when minding her goats And then Nature in whom she trusted either played her a trick or worked a miracleagain opinions differ too much for it to be possible to say which Orlando was gazing rather disconsolately at the steep hillside in front of her It was now midsummer and if we must compare the landscape to anything it would have been to a dry bone to a sheeps skeleton to a gigantic skull picked white by a thousand vultures The heat was intense and the little fig tree under which Orlando lay only served to print patterns of figleaves upon her light burnous
Suddenly a shadow though there was nothing to cast a shadow appeared on the bald mountainside opposite It deepened quickly and soon a green hollow showed where there had been barren rock before As she looked the hollow deepened and widened and a great parklike space opened in the flank of the hill Within she could see an undulating and grassy lawn she could see oak trees dotted here and there she could see the thrushes hopping among the branches She could see the deer stepping delicately from shade to shade and could even hear the hum of insects and the gentle sighs and shivers of a summers day in England After she had gazed entranced for some time snow began falling soon the whole landscape was covered and marked with violet shades instead of yellow sunlight Now she saw heavy carts coming along the roads laden with tree trunks which they were taking she knew to be sawn for firewood and then appeared the roofs and belfries and towers and courtyards of her own home The snow was falling steadily and she could now hear the slither and flop which it made as it slid down the roof and fell to the ground The smoke went up from a thousand chimneys All was so clear and minute that she could see a Daw pecking for worms in the snow Then gradually the violet shadows deepened and closed over the carts and the lawns and the great house itself All was swallowed up Now there was nothing left of the grassy hollow and instead of the green lawns was only the blazing hillside which a thousand vultures seemed to have picked bare At this she burst into a passion of tears and striding back to the gipsies camp told them that she must sail for England the very next day
It was happy for her that she did so Already the young men had plotted her death Honour they said demanded it for she did not think as they did Yet they would have been sorry to cut her throat and welcomed the news of her departure An English merchant ship as luck would have it was already under sail in the harbour about to return to England and Orlando by breaking off another pearl from her necklace not only paid her passage but had some banknotes left over in her wallet These she would have liked to present to the gipsies But they despised wealth she knew and she had to content herself with embraces which on her part were sincere
CHAPTER 4
With some of the guineas left from the sale of the tenth pearl on her string Orlando bought herself a complete outfit of such clothes as women then wore and it was in the dress of a young Englishwoman of rank that she now sat on the deck of the Enamoured Lady It is a strange fact but a true one that up to this moment she had scarcely given her sex a thought Perhaps the Turkish trousers which she had hitherto worn had done something to distract her thoughts and the gipsy women except in one or two important particulars differ very little from the gipsy men At any rate it was not until she felt the coil of skirts about her legs and the Captain offered with the greatest politeness to have an awning spread for her on deck that she realized with a start the penalties and the privileges of her position But that start was not of the kind that might have been expected
It was not caused that is to say simply and solely by the thought of her chastity and how she could preserve it In normal circumstances a lovely young woman alone would have thought of nothing else the whole edifice of female government is based on that foundation stone chastity is their jewel their centrepiece which they run mad to protect and die when ravished of But if one has been a man for thirty years or so and an Ambassador into the bargain if one has held a Queen in ones arms and one or two other ladies if report be true, of less exalted rank if one has married a Rosina Pepita and so on one does not perhaps give such a very great start about that Orlandos start was of a very complicated kind and not to be summed up in a trice Nobody indeed ever accused her of being one of those quick wits who run to the end of things in a minute It took her the entire length of the voyage to moralize out the meaning of her start and so at her own pace we will follow her
Lord she thought when she had recovered from her start stretching herself out at length under her awning this is a pleasant lazy way of life to be sure But she thought giving her legs a kick these skirts are plaguey things to have about ones heels Yet the stuff flowered paduasoy is the loveliest in the world Never have I seen my own skin here she laid her hand on her knee look to such advantage as now Could I however leap overboard and swim in clothes like these No Therefore I should have to trust to the protection of a bluejacket Do I object to that Now do I she wondered here encountering the first knot in the smooth skein of her argument
Dinner came before she had untied it and then it was the Captain himselfCaptain Nicholas Benedict Bartolus a seacaptain of distinguished aspect who did it for her as he helped her to a slice of corned beef
A little of the fat Mam he asked Let me cut you just the tiniest little slice the size of your fingernail At those words a delicious tremor ran through her frame Birds sang the torrents rushed It recalled the feeling of indescribable pleasure with which she had first seen Sasha hundreds of years ago Then she had pursued now she fled Which is the greater ecstasy The mans or the womans And are they not perhaps the same No she thought this is the most delicious thanking the Captain but refusing to refuse and see him frown Well she would if he wished it have the very thinnest smallest shiver in the world This was the most delicious of all to yield and see him smile For nothing she thought regaining her couch on deck and continuing the argument is more heavenly than to resist and to yield to yield and to resist Surely it throws the spirit into such a rapture as nothing else can So that Im not sure she continued that I wont throw myself overboard for the mere pleasure of being rescued by a bluejacket after all
It must be remembered that she was like a child entering into possession of a pleasaunce or toy cupboard her arguments would not commend themselves to mature women who have had the run of it all their lives
But what used we young fellows in the cockpit of the Marie Rose to say about a woman who threw herself overboard for the pleasure of being rescued by a bluejacket she said We had a word for them Ah I have it But we must omit that word it was disrespectful in the extreme and passing strange on a ladys lips Lord Lord she cried again at the conclusion of her thoughts must I then begin to respect the opinion of the other sex however monstrous I think it If I wear skirts if I cant swim if I have to be rescued by a bluejacket by God she cried I must Upon which a gloom fell over her Candid by nature and averse to all kinds of equivocation to tell lies bored her It seemed to her a roundabout way of going to work Yet she reflected the flowered paduasoythe pleasure of being rescued by a bluejacketif these were only to be obtained by roundabout ways roundabout one must go she supposed She remembered how as a young man she had insisted that women must be obedient chaste scented and exquisitely apparelled Now I shall have to pay in my own person for those desires she reflected for women are not judging by my own short experience of the sex obedient chaste scented and exquisitely apparelled by nature They can only attain these graces without which they may enjoy none of the delights of life by the most tedious discipline Theres the hairdressing she thought that alone will take an hour of my morning theres looking in the lookingglass another hour theres staying and lacing theres washing and powdering theres changing from silk to lace and from lace to paduasoy theres being chaste year in year out Here she tossed her foot impatiently and showed an inch or two of calf A sailor on the mast who happened to look down at the moment started so violently that he missed his footing and only saved himself by the skin of his teeth If the sight of my ankles means death to an honest fellow who no doubt has a wife and family to support I must in all humanity keep them covered Orlando thought Yet her legs were among her chiefest beauties And she fell to thinking what an odd pass we have come to when all a womans beauty has to be kept covered lest a sailor may fall from a masthead A pox on them she said realizing for the first time what in other circumstances she would have been taught as a child that is to say the sacred responsibilities of womanhood
And thats the last oath I shall ever be able to swear she thought once I set foot on English soil And I shall never be able to crack a man over the head or tell him he lies in his teeth or draw my sword and run him through the body or sit among my peers or wear a coronet or walk in procession or sentence a man to death or lead an army or prance down Whitehall on a charger or wear seventytwo different medals on my breast All I can do once I set foot on English soil is to pour out tea and ask my lords how they like it Dyou take sugar Dyou take cream And mincing out the words she was horrified to perceive how low an opinion she was forming of the other sex the manly to which it had once been her pride to belongTo fall from a masthead she thought because you see a womans ankles to dress up like a Guy Fawkes and parade the streets so that women may praise you to deny a woman teaching lest she may laugh at you to be the slave of the frailest chit in petticoats and yet to go about as if you were the Lords of creationHeavens she thought what fools they make of uswhat fools we are And here it would seem from some ambiguity in her terms that she was censuring both sexes equally as if she belonged to neither and indeed for the time being she seemed to vacillate she was man she was woman she knew the secrets shared the weaknesses of each It was a most bewildering and whirligig state of mind to be in The comforts of ignorance seemed utterly denied her She was a feather blown on the gale Thus it is no great wonder as she pitted one sex against the other and found each alternately full of the most deplorable infirmities and was not sure to which she belongedit was no great wonder that she was about to cry out that she would return to Turkey and become a gipsy again when the anchor fell with a great splash into the sea the sails came tumbling on deck and she perceived so sunk had she been in thought that she had seen nothing for several days that the ship was anchored off the coast of Italy The Captain at once sent to ask the honour of her company ashore with him in the longboat
When she returned the next morning she stretched herself on her couch under the awning and arranged her draperies with the greatest decorum about her ankles
Ignorant and poor as we are compared with the other sex she thought continuing the sentence which she had left unfinished the other day armoured with every weapon as they are while they debar us even from a knowledge of the alphabet and from these opening words it is plain that something had happened during the night to give her a push towards the female sex for she was speaking more as a woman speaks than as a man yet with a sort of content after all stillthey fall from the masthead Here she gave a great yawn and fell asleep When she woke the ship was sailing before a fair breeze so near the shore that towns on the cliffs edge seemed only kept from slipping into the water by the interposition of some great rock or the twisted roots of some ancient olive tree The scent of oranges wafted from a million trees heavy with the fruit reached her on deck A score of blue dolphins twisting their tails leapt high now and again into the air Stretching her arms out arms she had learnt already have no such fatal effects as legs she thanked Heaven that she was not prancing down Whitehall on a warhorse nor even sentencing a man to death Better is it she thought to be clothed with poverty and ignorance which are the dark garments of the female sex better to leave the rule and discipline of the world to others better be quit of martial ambition the love of power and all the other manly desires if so one can more fully enjoy the most exalted raptures known to the humane spirit which are', she said aloud as her habit was when deeply moved contemplation solitude love
Praise God that Im a woman she cried and was about to run into extreme follythan which none is more distressing in woman or man eitherof being proud of her sex when she paused over the singular word which for all we can do to put it in its place has crept in at the end of the last sentence Love Love said Orlando Instantlysuch is its impetuositylove took a human shapesuch is its pride For where other thoughts are content to remain abstract nothing will satisfy this one but to put on flesh and blood mantilla and petticoats hose and jerkin And as all Orlandos loves had been women now through the culpable laggardry of the human frame to adapt itself to convention though she herself was a woman it was still a woman she loved and if the consciousness of being of the same sex had any effect at all it was to quicken and deepen those feelings which she had had as a man For now a thousand hints and mysteries became plain to her that were then dark Now the obscurity which divides the sexes and lets linger innumerable impurities in its gloom was removed and if there is anything in what the poet says about truth and beauty this affection gained in beauty what it lost in falsity At last she cried she knew Sasha as she was and in the ardour of this discovery and in the pursuit of all those treasures which were now revealed she was so rapt and enchanted that it was as if a cannon ball had exploded at her ear when a mans voice said Permit me Madam a mans hand raised her to her feet and the fingers of a man with a threemasted sailing ship tattooed on the middle finger pointed to the horizon
The cliffs of England Maam said the Captain and he raised the hand which had pointed at the sky to the salute Orlando now gave a second start even more violent than the first
Christ Jesus she cried
Happily the sight of her native land after long absence excused both start and exclamation or she would have been hard put to it to explain to Captain Bartolus the raging and conflicting emotions which now boiled within her How tell him that she who now trembled on his arm had been a Duke and an Ambassador How explain to him that she who had been lapped like a lily in folds of paduasoy had hacked heads off and lain with loose women among treasure sacks in the holds of pirate ships on summer nights when the tulips were abloom and the bees buzzing off Wapping Old Stairs Not even to herself could she explain the giant start she gave as the resolute right hand of the seacaptain indicated the cliffs of the British Islands
To refuse and to yield she murmured how delightful to pursue and conquer how august to perceive and to reason how sublime Not one of these words so coupled together seemed to her wrong nevertheless as the chalky cliffs loomed nearer she felt culpable dishonoured unchaste which for one who had never given the matter a thought was strange Closer and closer they drew till the samphire gatherers hanging halfway down the cliff were plain to the naked eye And watching them she felt scampering up and down within her like some derisive ghost who in another instant will pick up her skirts and flaunt out of sight Sasha the lost Sasha the memory whose reality she had proved just now so surprisinglySasha she felt mopping and mowing and making all sorts of disrespectful gestures towards the cliffs and the samphire gatherers and when the sailors began chanting So goodbye and adieu to you Ladies of Spain the words echoed in Orlandos sad heart and she felt that however much landing there meant comfort meant opulence meant consequence and state for she would doubtless pick up some noble Prince and reign his consort over half Yorkshire still if it meant conventionality meant slavery meant deceit meant denying her love fettering her limbs pursing her lips and restraining her tongue then she would turn about with the ship and set sail once more for the gipsies
Among the hurry of these thoughts however there now rose like a dome of smooth white marble something which whether fact or fancy was so impressive to her fevered imagination that she settled upon it as one has seen a swarm of vibrant dragonflies alight with apparent satisfaction upon the glass bell which shelters some tender vegetable The form of it by the hazard of fancy recalled that earliest most persistent memorythe man with the big forehead in Twitchetts sittingroom the man who sat writing or rather looking but certainly not at her for he never seemed to see her poised there in all her finery lovely boy though she must have been she could not deny itand whenever she thought of him the thought spread round it like the risen moon on turbulent waters a sheet of silver calm Now her hand went to her bosom the other was still in the Captains keeping where the pages of her poem were hidden safe It might have been a talisman that she kept there The distraction of sex which hers was and what it meant subsided she thought now only of the glory of poetry and the great lines of Marlowe Shakespeare Ben Jonson Milton began booming and reverberating as if a golden clapper beat against a golden bell in the cathedral tower which was her mind The truth was that the image of the marble dome which her eyes had first discovered so faintly that it suggested a poets forehead and thus started a flock of irrelevant ideas was no figment but a reality; and as the ship advanced down the Thames before a favouring gale the image with all its associations gave place to the truth and revealed itself as nothing more and nothing less than the dome of a vast cathedral rising among a fretwork of white spires
St Pauls said Captain Bartolus who stood by her side The Tower of London he continued Greenwich Hospital erected in memory of Queen Mary by her husband his late majesty William the Third Westminster Abbey The Houses of Parliament As he spoke each of these famous buildings rose to view It was a fine September morning A myriad of little watercraft plied from bank to bank Rarely has a gayer or more interesting spectacle presented itself to the gaze of a returned traveller Orlando hung over the prow absorbed in wonder Her eyes had been used too long to savages and nature not to be entranced by these urban glories That then was the dome of St Pauls which Mr Wren had built during her absence Near by a shock of golden hair burst from a pillarCaptain Bartolus was at her side to inform her that that was the Monument there had been a plague and a fire during her absence he said Do what she could to restrain them the tears came to her eyes until remembering that it is becoming in a woman to weep she let them flow Here she thought had been the great carnival Here where the waves slapped briskly had stood the Royal Pavilion Here she had first met Sasha About here she looked down into the sparkling waters one had been used to see the frozen bumboat woman with her apples on her lap All that splendour and corruption was gone Gone too was the dark night the monstrous downpour the violent surges of the flood Here where yellow icebergs had raced circling with a crew of terrorstricken wretches on top a covey of swans floated orgulous undulant superb London itself had completely changed since she had last seen it Then she remembered it had been a huddle of little black beetlebrowed houses The heads of rebels had grinned on pikes at Temple Bar The cobbled pavements had reeked of garbage and ordure Now as the ship sailed past Wapping she caught glimpses of broad and orderly thoroughfares Stately coaches drawn by teams of wellfed horses stood at the doors of houses whose bow windows whose plate glass whose polished knockers testified to the wealth and modest dignity of the dwellers within Ladies in flowered silk she put the Captains glass to her eye walked on raised footpaths Citizens in broidered coats took snuff at street corners under lampposts She caught sight of a variety of painted signs swinging in the breeze and could form a rapid notion from what was painted on them of the tobacco of the stuff of the silk of the gold of the silver ware of the gloves of the perfumes and of a thousand other articles which were sold within Nor could she do more as the ship sailed to its anchorage by London Bridge than glance at coffeehouse windows where on balconies since the weather was fine a great number of decent citizens sat at ease with china dishes in front of them clay pipes by their sides while one among them read from a news sheet and was frequently interrupted by the laughter or the comments of the others Were these taverns were these wits were these poets she asked of Captain Bartolus who obligingly informed her that even nowif she turned her head a little to the left and looked along the line of his first fingersothey were passing the Cocoa Tree whereyes there he wasone might see Mr Addison taking his coffee the other two gentlementhere Maam a little to the right of the lamppost one of em humped tother much the same as you or mewere Mr Dryden and Mr Pope Sad dogs said the Captain by which he meant that they were Papists but men of parts, none the less he added hurrying aft to superintend the arrangements for landing The Captain must have been mistaken as a reference to any textbook of literature will show but the mistake was a kindly one and so we let it stand
Addison Dryden Pope Orlando repeated as if the words were an incantation For one moment she saw the high mountains above Broussa the next she had set her foot upon her native shore
But now Orlando was to learn how little the most tempestuous flutter of excitement avails against the iron countenance of the law how harder than the stones of London Bridge it is and than the lips of a cannon more severe No sooner had she returned to her home in Blackfriars than she was made aware by a succession of Bow Street runners and other grave emissaries from the Law Courts that she was a party to three major suits which had been preferred against her during her absence as well as innumerable minor litigations some arising out of others depending on them The chief charges against her were 1 that she was dead and therefore could not hold any property whatsoever 2 that she was a woman which amounts to much the same thing 3 that she was an English Duke who had married one Rosina Pepita a dancer and had had by her three sons which sons now declaring that their father was deceased claimed that all his property descended to them Such grave charges as these would of course take time and money to dispose of All her estates were put in Chancery and her titles pronounced in abeyance while the suits were under litigation Thus it was in a highly ambiguous condition uncertain whether she was alive or dead man or woman Duke or nonentity that she posted down to her country seat where pending the legal judgment she had the Laws permission to reside in a state of incognito or incognita as the case might turn out to be
It was a fine evening in December when she arrived and the snow was falling and the violet shadows were slanting much as she had seen them from the hilltop at Broussa The great house lay more like a town than a house brown and blue rose and purple in the snow with all its chimneys smoking busily as if inspired with a life of their own She could not restrain a cry as she saw it there tranquil and massive couched upon the meadows As the yellow coach entered the park and came bowling along the drive between the trees the red deer raised their heads as if expectantly and it was observed that instead of showing the timidity natural to their kind they followed the coach and stood about the courtyard when it drew up Some tossed their antlers others pawed the ground as the step was let down and Orlando alighted One it is said actually knelt in the snow before her She had not time to reach her hand towards the knocker before both wings of the great door were flung open and there with lights and torches held above their heads were Mrs Grimsditch Mr Dupper and a whole retinue of servants come to greet her But the orderly procession was interrupted first by the impetuosity of Canute the elkhound who threw himself with such ardour upon his mistress that he almost knocked her to the ground next by the agitation of Mrs Grimsditch who making as if to curtsey was overcome with emotion and could do no more than gasp Milord Milady Milady Milord until Orlando comforted her with a hearty kiss upon both her cheeks After that Mr Dupper began to read from a parchment but the dogs barking the huntsmen winding their horns and the stags who had come into the courtyard in the confusion baying the moon not much progress was made and the company dispersed within after crowding about their Mistress and testifying in every way to their great joy at her return
No one showed an instants suspicion that Orlando was not the Orlando they had known If any doubt there was in the human mind the action of the deer and the dogs would have been enough to dispel it for the dumb creatures as is well known are far better judges both of identity and character than we are Moreover said Mrs Grimsditch over her dish of china tea to Mr Dupper that night if her Lord was a Lady now she had never seen a lovelier one nor was there a penny piece to choose between them one was as wellfavoured as the other they were as like as two peaches on one branch which said Mrs Grimsditch becoming confidential she had always had her suspicions here she nodded her head very mysteriously which it was no surprise to her here she nodded her head very knowingly and for her part a very great comfort for what with the towels wanting mending and the curtains in the chaplains parlour being motheaten round the fringes it was time they had a Mistress among them
And some little masters and mistresses to come after her Mr Dupper added being privileged by virtue of his holy office to speak his mind on such delicate matters as these
So while the old servants gossiped in the servants hall Orlando took a silver candle in her hand and roamed once more through the halls the galleries the courts the bedrooms saw loom down at her again the dark visage of this Lord Keeper that Lord Chamberlain among her ancestors sat now in this chair of state now reclined on that canopy of delight observed the arras how it swayed watched the huntsmen riding and Daphne flying bathed her hand as she had loved to do as a child in the yellow pool of light which the moonlight made falling through the heraldic Leopard in the window slid along the polished planks of the gallery the other side of which was rough timber touched this silk that satin fancied the carved dolphins swam brushed her hair with King James silver brush buried her face in the potpourri which was made as the Conqueror had taught them many hundred years ago and from the same roses looked at the garden and imagined the sleeping crocuses the dormant dahlias saw the frail nymphs gleaming white in the snow and the great yew hedges thick as a house black behind them saw the orangeries and the giant medlarsall this she saw and each sight and sound rudely as we write it down filled her heart with such a lust and balm of joy that at length tired out she entered the Chapel and sank into the old red armchair in which her ancestors used to hear service There she lit a cheroot twas a habit she had brought back from the East and opened the Prayer Book
It was a little book bound in velvet stitched with gold which had been held by Mary Queen of Scots on the scaffold and the eye of faith could detect a brownish stain said to be made of a drop of the Royal blood But what pious thoughts it roused in Orlando what evil passions it soothed asleep who dare say seeing that of all communions this with the deity is the most inscrutable Novelist poet historian all falter with their hand on that door nor does the believer himself enlighten us for is he more ready to die than other people or more eager to share his goods Does he not keep as many maids and carriage horses as the rest and yet with it all holds a faith he says which should make goods a vanity and death desirable In the Queens prayerbook along with the bloodstain was also a lock of hair and a crumb of pastry Orlando now added to these keepsakes a flake of tobacco and so reading and smoking was moved by the humane jumble of them allthe hair the pastry the bloodstain the tobaccoto such a mood of contemplation as gave her a reverent air suitable in the circumstances though she had it is said no traffic with the usual God Nothing however can be more arrogant though nothing is commoner than to assume that of Gods there is only one and of religions none but the speakers Orlando it seemed had a faith of her own With all the religious ardour in the world she now reflected upon her sins and the imperfections that had crept into her spiritual state The letter S she reflected is the serpent in the poets Eden Do what she would there were still too many of these sinful reptiles in the first stanzas of The Oak Tree But S was nothing in her opinion compared with the termination ing The present participle is the Devil himself she thought now that we are in the place for believing in Devils To evade such temptations is the first duty of the poet she concluded for as the ear is the antechamber to the soul poetry can adulterate and destroy more surely than lust or gunpowder The poets then is the highest office of all she continued His words reach where others fall short A silly song of Shakespeares has done more for the poor and the wicked than all the preachers and philanthropists in the world No time no devotion can be too great therefore which makes the vehicle of our message less distorting We must shape our words till they are the thinnest integument for our thoughts. Thoughts are divine etc Thus it is obvious that she was back in the confines of her own religion which time had only strengthened in her absence and was rapidly acquiring the intolerance of belief.
I am growing up she thought taking her taper at last I am losing some illusions she said shutting Queen Marys book perhaps to acquire others and she descended among the tombs where the bones of her ancestors lay
But even the bones of her ancestors Sir Miles Sir Gervase and the rest had lost something of their sanctity since Rustum el Sadi had waved his hand that night in the Asian mountains Somehow the fact that only three or four hundred years ago these skeletons had been men with their way to make in the world like any modern upstart and that they had made it by acquiring houses and offices garters and ribbands as any other upstart does while poets perhaps and men of great mind and breeding had preferred the quietude of the country for which choice they paid the penalty by extreme poverty and now hawked broadsheets in the Strand or herded sheep in the fields filled her with remorse She thought of the Egyptian pyramids and what bones lie beneath them as she stood in the crypt and the vast empty hills which lie above the Sea of Marmara seemed for the moment a finer dwellingplace than this manyroomed mansion in which no bed lacked its quilt and no silver dish its silver cover
I am growing up she thought taking her taper I am losing my illusions perhaps to acquire new ones and she paced down the long gallery to her bedroom It was a disagreeable process and a troublesome But it was interesting amazingly she thought stretching her legs out to her log fire for no sailor was present and she reviewed as if it were an avenue of great edifices the progress of her own self along her own past
How she had loved sound when she was a boy and thought the volley of tumultuous syllables from the lips the finest of all poetry Thenit was the effect of Sasha and her disillusionment perhapsinto this high frenzy was let fall some black drop which turned her rhapsody into sluggishness Slowly there had opened within her something intricate and manychambered which one must take a torch to explore in prose not verse and she remembered how passionately she had studied that doctor at Norwich Browne whose book was at her hand there She had formed here in solitude after her affair with Greene or tried to form for Heaven knows these growths are agelong in coming a spirit capable of resistance I will write she had said what I enjoy writing and so had scratched out twentysix volumes Yet still for all her travels and adventures and profound thinkings and turnings this way and that she was only in process of fabrication What the future might bring Heaven only knew Change was incessant and change perhaps would never cease High battlements of thought habits that had seemed durable as stone went down like shadows at the touch of another mind and left a naked sky and fresh stars twinkling in it Here she went to the window and in spite of the cold could not help unlatching it She leant out into the damp night air She heard a fox bark in the woods and the clutter of a pheasant trailing through the branches She heard the snow slither and flop from the roof to the ground By my life she exclaimed this is a thousand times better than Turkey Rustum she cried as if she were arguing with the gipsy and in this new power of bearing an argument in mind and continuing it with someone who was not there to contradict she showed again the development of her soul you were wrong This is better than Turkey Hair pastry tobaccoof what odds and ends are we compounded she said thinking of Queen Marys prayerbook What a phantasmagoria the mind is and meetingplace of dissemblables At one moment we deplore our birth and state and aspire to an ascetic exaltation the next we are overcome by the smell of some old garden path and weep to hear the thrushes sing And so bewildered as usual by the multitude of things which call for explanation and imprint their message without leaving any hint as to their meaning she threw her cheroot out of the window and went to bed
Next morning in pursuance of these thoughts she had out her pen and paper and started afresh upon The Oak Tree for to have ink and paper in plenty when one has made do with berries and margins is a delight not to be conceived Thus she was now striking out a phrase in the depths of despair now in the heights of ecstasy writing one in when a shadow darkened the page She hastily hid her manuscript
As her window gave on to the most central of the courts as she had given orders that she would see no one as she knew no one and was herself legally unknown she was first surprised at the shadow then indignant at it then when she looked up and saw what caused it overcome with merriment For it was a familiar shadow a grotesque shadow the shadow of no less a personage than the Archduchess Harriet Griselda of FinsterAarhorn and ScandopBoom in the Roumanian territory She was loping across the court in her old black ridinghabit and mantle as before Not a hair of her head was changed This then was the woman who had chased her from England This was the eyrie of that obscene vulturethis the fatal fowl herself At the thought that she had fled all the way to Turkey to avoid her seductions now become excessively flat Orlando laughed aloud There was something inexpressibly comic in the sight She resembled as Orlando had thought before nothing so much as a monstrous hare She had the staring eyes the lank cheeks the high headdress of that animal She stopped now much as a hare sits erect in the corn when thinking itself unobserved and stared at Orlando who stared back at her from the window After they had stared like this for a certain time there was nothing for it but to ask her in and soon the two ladies were exchanging compliments while the Archduchess struck the snow from her mantle
A plague on women said Orlando to herself going to the cupboard to fetch a glass of wine they never leave one a moments peace A more ferreting inquisiting busybodying set of people dont exist It was to escape this Maypole that I left England and nowhere she turned to present the Archduchess with the salver and beholdin her place stood a tall gentleman in black A heap of clothes lay in the fender She was alone with a man
Recalled thus suddenly to a consciousness of her sex which she had completely forgotten and of his which was now remote enough to be equally upsetting Orlando felt seized with faintness
La she cried putting her hand to her side how you frighten me
Gentle creature cried the Archduchess falling on one knee and at the same time pressing a cordial to Orlandos lips forgive me for the deceit I have practised on you
Orlando sipped the wine and the Archduke knelt and kissed her hand
In short they acted the parts of man and woman for ten minutes with great vigour and then fell into natural discourse The Archduchess but she must in future be known as the Archduke told his storythat he was a man and always had been one that he had seen a portrait of Orlando and fallen hopelessly in love with him that to compass his ends he had dressed as a woman and lodged at the Bakers shop that he was desolated when he fled to Turkey that he had heard of her change and hastened to offer his services here he teed and heed intolerably For to him said the Archduke Harry she was and would ever be the Pink the Pearl the Perfection of her sex The three ps would have been more persuasive if they had not been interspersed with teehees and hawhaws of the strangest kind If this is love said Orlando to herself looking at the Archduke on the other side of the fender and now from the womans point of view there is something highly ridiculous about it
Falling on his knees the Archduke Harry made the most passionate declaration of his suit He told her that he had something like twenty million ducats in a strong box at his castle He had more acres than any nobleman in England The shooting was excellent he could promise her a mixed bag of ptarmigan and grouse such as no English moor or Scotch either could rival True the pheasants had suffered from the gape in his absence and the does had slipped their young but that could be put right and would be with her help when they lived in Roumania together
As he spoke enormous tears formed in his rather prominent eyes and ran down the sandy tracts of his long and lanky cheeks
That men cry as frequently and as unreasonably as women Orlando knew from her own experience as a man but she was beginning to be aware that women should be shocked when men display emotion in their presence and so shocked she was
The Archduke apologized He commanded himself sufficiently to say that he would leave her now but would return on the following day for his answer
That was a Tuesday He came on Wednesday he came on Thursday he came on Friday and he came on Saturday It is true that each visit began continued or concluded with a declaration of love but in between there was much room for silence They sat on either side of the fireplace and sometimes the Archduke knocked over the fireirons and Orlando picked them up again Then the Archduke would bethink him how he had shot an elk in Sweden and Orlando would ask was it a very big elk and the Archduke would say that it was not as big as the reindeer which he shot in Norway and Orlando would ask had he ever shot a tiger and the Archduke would say he had shot an albatross and Orlando would say half hiding her yawn was an albatross as big as an elephant and the Archduke would saysomething very sensible no doubt but Orlando heard it not for she was looking at her writingtable out of the window at the door Upon which the Archduke would say I adore you at the very same moment that Orlando said Look its beginning to rain at which they were both much embarrassed and blushed scarlet and could neither of them think what to say next Indeed Orlando was at her wits end what to talk about and had she not bethought her of a game called Fly Loo at which great sums of money can be lost with very little expense of spirit she would have had to marry him she supposed for how else to get rid of him she knew not By this device however and it was a simple one needing only three lumps of sugar and a sufficiency of flies the embarrassment of conversation was overcome and the necessity of marriage avoided For now the Archduke would bet her five hundred pounds to a tester that a fly would settle on this lump and not on that Thus they would have occupation for a whole morning watching the flies who were naturally sluggish at this season and often spent an hour or so circling round the ceiling until at length some fine bluebottle made his choice and the match was won Many hundreds of pounds changed hands between them at this game which the Archduke who was a born gambler swore was every bit as good as horse racing and vowed he could play at for ever But Orlando soon began to weary
Whats the good of being a fine young woman in the prime of life she asked if I have to pass all my mornings watching bluebottles with an Archduke
She began to detest the sight of sugar flies made her dizzy Some way out of the difficulty there must be she supposed but she was still awkward in the arts of her sex and as she could no longer knock a man over the head or run him through the body with a rapier she could think of no better method than this She caught a bluebottle gently pressed the life out of it it was half dead already or her kindness for the dumb creatures would not have permitted it and secured it by a drop of gum arabic to a lump of sugar While the Archduke was gazing at the ceiling she deftly substituted this lump for the one she had laid her money on and crying Loo Loo declared that she had won her bet Her reckoning was that the Archduke with all his knowledge of sport and horseracing would detect the fraud and as to cheat at Loo is the most heinous of crimes and men have been banished from the society of mankind to that of apes in the tropics for ever because of it she calculated that he would be manly enough to refuse to have anything further to do with her But she misjudged the simplicity of the amiable nobleman He was no nice judge of flies A dead fly looked to him much the same as a living one She played the trick twenty times on him and he paid her over 17250 pounds which is about 40885 pounds 6 shillings and 8 pence of our own money before Orlando cheated so grossly that even he could be deceived no longer When he realized the truth at last a painful scene ensued The Archduke rose to his full height He coloured scarlet Tears rolled down his cheeks one by one That she had won a fortune from him was nothingshe was welcome to it that she had deceived him was somethingit hurt him to think her capable of it but that she had cheated at Loo was everything To love a woman who cheated at play was he said impossible Here he broke down completely Happily he said recovering slightly there were no witnesses She was after all only a woman he said In short he was preparing in the chivalry of his heart to forgive her and had bent to ask her pardon for the violence of his language when she cut the matter short as he stooped his proud head by dropping a small toad between his skin and his shirt
In justice to her it must be said that she would infinitely have preferred a rapier Toads are clammy things to conceal about ones person a whole morning But if rapiers are forbidden one must have recourse to toads Moreover toads and laughter between them sometimes do what cold steel cannot She laughed The Archduke blushed She laughed The Archduke cursed She laughed The Archduke slammed the door
Heaven be praised cried Orlando still laughing She heard the sound of chariot wheels driven at a furious pace down the courtyard She heard them rattle along the road Fainter and fainter the sound became Now it faded away altogether
I am alone said Orlando aloud since there was no one to hear
That silence is more profound after noise still wants the confirmation of science. But that loneliness is more apparent directly after one has been made love to many women would take their oath As the sound of the Archdukes chariot wheels died away Orlando felt drawing further from her and further from her an Archduke she did not mind that a fortune she did not mind that a title she did not mind that the safety and circumstance of married life she did not mind that but life she heard going from her and a lover Life and a lover she murmured and going to her writingtable she dipped her pen in the ink and wrote
Life and a lovera line which did not scan and made no sense with what went beforesomething about the proper way of dipping sheep to avoid the scab Reading it over she blushed and repeated
Life and a lover Then laying her pen aside she went into her bedroom stood in front of her mirror and arranged her pearls about her neck Then since pearls do not show to advantage against a morning gown of sprigged cotton she changed to a dove grey taffeta thence to one of peach bloom thence to a winecoloured brocade Perhaps a dash of powder was needed and if her hair were disposedsoabout her brow it might become her Then she slipped her feet into pointed slippers and drew an emerald ring upon her finger Now she said when all was ready and lit the silver sconces on either side of the mirror What woman would not have kindled to see what Orlando saw then burning in the snowfor all about the lookingglass were snowy lawns and she was like a fire a burning bush and the candle flames about her head were silver leaves or again the glass was green water and she a mermaid slung with pearls a siren in a cave singing so that oarsmen leant from their boats and fell down down to embrace her so dark so bright so hard so soft was she so astonishingly seductive that it was a thousand pities that there was no one there to put it in plain English and say outright Damn it Madam you are loveliness incarnate which was the truth Even Orlando who had no conceit of her person knew it for she smiled the involuntary smile which women smile when their own beauty which seems not their own forms like a drop falling or a fountain rising and confronts them all of a sudden in the glassthis smile she smiled and then she listened for a moment and heard only the leaves blowing and the sparrows twittering and then she sighed Life a lover and then she turned on her heel with extraordinary rapidity whipped her pearls from her neck stripped the satins from her back stood erect in the neat black silk knickerbockers of an ordinary nobleman and rang the bell When the servant came she told him to order a coach and six to be in readiness instantly She was summoned by urgent affairs to London Within an hour of the Archdukes departure off she drove
And as she drove we may seize the opportunity since the landscape was of a simple English kind which needs no description to draw the readers attention more particularly than we could at the moment to one or two remarks which have slipped in here and there in the course of the narrative For example, it may have been observed that Orlando hid her manuscripts when interrupted Next that she looked long and intently in the glass and now as she drove to London one might notice her starting and suppressing a cry when the horses galloped faster than she liked Her modesty as to her writing her vanity as to her person her fears for her safety all seems to hint that what was said a short time ago about there being no change in Orlando the man and Orlando the woman was ceasing to be altogether true She was becoming a little more modest as women are of her brains and a little more vain as women are of her person Certain susceptibilities were asserting themselves and others were diminishing The change of clothes had some philosophers will say much to do with it Vain trifles as they seem clothes have they say more important offices than merely to keep us warm They change our view of the world and the worlds view of us For example, when Captain Bartolus saw Orlandos skirt he had an awning stretched for her immediately pressed her to take another slice of beef and invited her to go ashore with him in the longboat These compliments would certainly not have been paid her had her skirts instead of flowing been cut tight to her legs in the fashion of breeches And when we are paid compliments it behoves us to make some return Orlando curtseyed she complied she flattered the good mans humours as she would not have done had his neat breeches been a womans skirts and his braided coat a womans satin bodice Thus there is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not we them we may make them take the mould of arm or breast but they mould our hearts our brains our tongues to their liking So having now worn skirts for a considerable time a certain change was visible in Orlando which is to be found if the reader will look at above even in her face If we compare the picture of Orlando as a man with that of Orlando as a woman we shall see that though both are undoubtedly one and the same person there are certain changes The man has his hand free to seize his sword the woman must use hers to keep the satins from slipping from her shoulders The man looks the world full in the face as if it were made for his uses and fashioned to his liking The woman takes a sidelong glance at it full of subtlety even of suspicion Had they both worn the same clothes it is possible that their outlook might have been the same
That is the view of some philosophers and wise ones but on the whole we incline to another The difference between the sexes is happily one of great profundity Clothes are but a symbol of something hid deep beneath It was a change in Orlando herself that dictated her choice of a womans dress and of a womans sex And perhaps in this she was only expressing rather more openly than usualopenness indeed was the soul of her naturesomething that happens to most people without being thus plainly expressed For here again we come to a dilemma Different though the sexes are they intermix In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what it is above Of the complications and confusions which thus result everyone has had experience; but here we leave the general question and note only the odd effect it had in the particular case of Orlando herself
For it was this mixture in her of man and woman one being uppermost and then the other that often gave her conduct an unexpected turn The curious of her own sex would argue for example, if Orlando was a woman how did she never take more than ten minutes to dress And were not her clothes chosen rather at random and sometimes worn rather shabby And then they would say still she has none of the formality of a man or a mans love of power She is excessively tenderhearted She could not endure to see a donkey beaten or a kitten drowned Yet again they noted she detested household matters was up at dawn and out among the fields in summer before the sun had risen No farmer knew more about the crops than she did She could drink with the best and liked games of hazard She rode well and drove six horses at a gallop over London Bridge Yet again though bold and active as a man it was remarked that the sight of another in danger brought on the most womanly palpitations She would burst into tears on slight provocation She was unversed in geography found mathematics intolerable and held some caprices which are more common among women than men as for instance that to travel south is to travel downhill Whether then Orlando was most man or woman it is difficult to say and cannot now be decided For her coach was now rattling on the cobbles She had reached her home in the city The steps were being let down the iron gates were being opened She was entering her fathers house at Blackfriars which though fashion was fast deserting that end of the town was still a pleasant roomy mansion with gardens running down to the river and a pleasant grove of nut trees to walk in
Here she took up her lodging and began instantly to look about her for what she had come in search ofthat is to say life and a lover About the first there might be some doubt the second she found without the least difficulty two days after her arrival It was a Tuesday that she came to town On Thursday she went for a walk in the Mall as was then the habit of persons of quality She had not made more than a turn or two of the avenue before she was observed by a little knot of vulgar people who go there to spy upon their betters As she came past them a common woman carrying a child at her breast stepped forward peered familiarly into Orlandos face and cried out Lawk upon us if it aint the Lady Orlando Her companions came crowding round and Orlando found herself in a moment the centre of a mob of staring citizens and tradesmens wives all eager to gaze upon the heroine of the celebrated lawsuit Such was the interest that the case excited in the minds of the common people She might indeed have found herself gravely discommoded by the pressure of the crowdshe had forgotten that ladies are not supposed to walk in public places alonehad not a tall gentleman at once stepped forward and offered her the protection of his arm It was the Archduke She was overcome with distress and yet with some amusement at the sight Not only had this magnanimous nobleman forgiven her but in order to show that he took her levity with the toad in good part he had procured a jewel made in the shape of that reptile which he pressed upon her with a repetition of his suit as he handed her to her coach
What with the crowd what with the Duke what with the jewel she drove home in the vilest temper imaginable Was it impossible then to go for a walk without being halfsuffocated presented with a toad set in emeralds and asked in marriage by an Archduke She took a kinder view of the case next day when she found on her breakfast table half a dozen billets from some of the greatest ladies in the landLady Suffolk Lady Salisbury Lady Chesterfield Lady Tavistock and others who reminded her in the politest manner of old alliances between their families and her own and desired the honour of her acquaintance Next day which was a Saturday many of these great ladies waited on her in person On Tuesday about noon their footmen brought cards of invitation to various routs dinners and assemblies in the near future so that Orlando was launched without delay and with some splash and foam at that upon the waters of London society
To give a truthful account of London society at that or indeed at any other time is beyond the powers of the biographer or the historian Only those who have little need of the truth and no respect for itthe poets and the novelistscan be trusted to do it for this is one of the cases where the truth does not exist. Nothing exists The whole thing is a miasmaa mirage To make our meaning plainOrlando could come home from one of these routs at three or four in the morning with cheeks like a Christmas tree and eyes like stars She would untie a lace pace the room a score of times untie another lace stop and pace the room again Often the sun would be blazing over Southwark chimneys before she could persuade herself to get into bed and there she would lie pitching and tossing laughing and sighing for an hour or longer before she slept at last And what was all this stir about Society And what had society said or done to throw a reasonable lady into such an excitement In plain language nothing Rack her memory as she would next day Orlando could never remember a single word to magnify into the name something Lord O had been gallant Lord A polite The Marquis of C charming Mr M amusing But when she tried to recollect in what their gallantry politeness charm or wit had consisted she was bound to suppose her memory at fault for she could not name a thing It was the same always Nothing remained over the next day yet the excitement of the moment was intense Thus we are forced to conclude that society is one of those brews such as skilled housekeepers serve hot about Christmas time whose flavour depends upon the proper mixing and stirring of a dozen different ingredients Take one out and it is in itself insipid Take away Lord O Lord A Lord C or Mr M and separately each is nothing Stir them all together and they combine to give off the most intoxicating of flavours the most seductive of scents Yet this intoxication this seductiveness entirely evade our analysis At one and the same time therefore society is everything and society is nothing Society is the most powerful concoction in the world and society has no existence whatsoever Such monsters the poets and the novelists alone can deal with with such somethingnothings their works are stuffed out to prodigious size and to them with the best will in the world we are content to leave it
Following the example of our predecessors therefore we will only say that society in the reign of Queen Anne was of unparalleled brilliance To have the entry there was the aim of every wellbred person The graces were supreme Fathers instructed their sons mothers their daughters No education was complete for either sex which did not include the science of deportment the art of bowing and curtseying the management of the sword and the fan the care of the teeth the conduct of the leg the flexibility of the knee the proper methods of entering and leaving the room with a thousand etceteras such as will immediately suggest themselves to anybody who has himself been in society Since Orlando had won the praise of Queen Elizabeth for the way she handed a bowl of rose water as a boy it must be supposed that she was sufficiently expert to pass muster Yet it is true that there was an absentmindedness about her which sometimes made her clumsy she was apt to think of poetry when she should have been thinking of taffeta her walk was a little too much of a stride for a woman perhaps and her gestures being abrupt might endanger a cup of tea on occasion
Whether this slight disability was enough to counterbalance the splendour of her bearing or whether she inherited a drop too much of that black humour which ran in the veins of all her race certain it is that she had not been in the world more than a score of times before she might have been heard to ask herself had there been anybody but her spaniel Pippin to hear her What the devil is the matter with me The occasion was Tuesday the 16th of June 1712 she had just returned from a great ball at Arlington House the dawn was in the sky and she was pulling off her stockings I dont care if I never meet another soul as long as I live cried Orlando bursting into tears Lovers she had in plenty but life which is after all of some importance in its way escaped her Is this she askedbut there was none to answer is this she finished her sentence all the same what people call life The spaniel raised her forepaw in token of sympathy The spaniel licked Orlando with her tongue Orlando stroked the spaniel with her hand Orlando kissed the spaniel with her lips In short there was the truest sympathy between them that can be between a dog and its mistress and yet it cannot be denied that the dumbness of animals is a great impediment to the refinements of intercourse They wag their tails they bow the front part of the body and elevate the hind they roll they jump they paw they whine they bark they slobber they have all sorts of ceremonies and artifices of their own but the whole thing is of no avail since speak they cannot Such was her quarrel she thought setting the dog gently on to the floor with the great people at Arlington House They too wag their tails bow roll jump paw and slobber but talk they cannot All these months that Ive been out in the world said Orlando pitching one stocking across the room Ive heard nothing but what Pippin might have said Im cold Im happy Im hungry Ive caught a mouse Ive buried a bone Please kiss my nose And it was not enough
How in so short a time she had passed from intoxication to disgust we will only seek to explain by supposing that this mysterious composition which we call society is nothing absolutely good or bad in itself, but has a spirit in it volatile but potent which either makes you drunk when you think it as Orlando thought it delightful or gives you a headache when you think it as Orlando thought it repulsive That the faculty of speech has much to do with it either way we take leave to doubt Often a dumb hour is the most ravishing of all brilliant wit can be tedious beyond description But to the poets we leave it and so on with our story
Orlando threw the second stocking after the first and went to bed dismally enough determined that she would forswear society for ever But again as it turned out she was too hasty in coming to her conclusions For the very next morning she woke to find among the usual cards of invitation upon her table one from a certain great Lady the Countess of R Having determined overnight that she would never go into society again we can only explain Orlandos behaviourshe sent a messenger hotfoot to R House to say that she would attend her Ladyship with all the pleasure in the worldby the fact that she was still suffering from the effect of three honeyed words dropped into her ear on the deck of the Enamoured Lady by Captain Nicholas Benedict Bartolus as they sailed down the Thames Addison Dryden Pope he had said pointing to the Cocoa Tree and Addison Dryden Pope had chimed in her head like an incantation ever since Who can credit such folly but so it was All her experience with Nick Greene had taught her nothing Such names still exercised over her the most powerful fascination Something perhaps we must believe in and as Orlando we have said had no belief in the usual divinities she bestowed her credulity upon great menyet with a distinction Admirals soldiers statesmen moved her not at all But the very thought of a great writer stirred her to such a pitch of belief that she almost believed him to be invisible Her instinct was a sound one One can only believe entirely perhaps in what one cannot see The little glimpse she had of these great men from the deck of the ship was of the nature of a vision That the cup was china or the gazette paper she doubted When Lord O said one day that he had dined with Dryden the night before she flatly disbelieved him Now the Lady Rs reception room had the reputation of being the antechamber to the presence room of genius it was the place where men and women met to swing censers and chant hymns to the bust of genius in a niche in the wall Sometimes the God himself vouchsafed his presence for a moment Intellect alone admitted the suppliant and nothing so the report ran was said inside that was not witty
It was thus with great trepidation that Orlando entered the room She found a company already assembled in a semicircle round the fire Lady R an oldish lady of dark complexion with a black lace mantilla on her head was seated in a great armchair in the centre Thus being somewhat deaf she could control the conversation on both sides of her On both sides of her sat men and women of the highest distinction Every man it was said had been a Prime Minister and every woman it was whispered had been the mistress of a king Certain it is that all were brilliant and all were famous Orlando took her seat with a deep reverence in silenceAfter three hours she curtseyed profoundly and left
But what the reader may ask with some exasperation happened in between In three hours such a company must have said the wittiest the profoundest the most interesting things in the world So it would seem indeed But the fact appears to be that they said nothing It is a curious characteristic which they share with all the most brilliant societies that the world has seen Old Madame du Deffand and her friends talked for fifty years without stopping And of it all what remains Perhaps three witty sayings So that we are at liberty to suppose either that nothing was said or that nothing witty was said or that the fraction of three witty sayings lasted eighteen thousand two hundred and fifty nights which does not leave a liberal allowance of wit for any one of them
The truth would seem to beif we dare use such a word in such a connectionthat all these groups of people lie under an enchantment The hostess is our modern Sibyl She is a witch who lays her guests under a spell In this house they think themselves happy in that witty in a third profound It is all an illusion which is nothing against it for illusions are the most valuable and necessary of all things and she who can create one is among the worlds greatest benefactors but as it is notorious that illusions are shattered by conflict with reality so no real happiness no real wit no real profundity are tolerated where the illusion prevails This serves to explain why Madame du Deffand said no more than three witty things in the course of fifty years Had she said more her circle would have been destroyed The witticism as it left her lips bowled over the current conversation as a cannon ball lays low the violets and the daisies When she made her famous mot de Saint Denis the very grass was singed Disillusionment and desolation followed Not a word was uttered Spare us another such for Heavens sake Madame her friends cried with one accord And she obeyed For almost seventeen years she said nothing memorable and all went well The beautiful counterpane of illusion lay unbroken on her circle as it lay unbroken on the circle of Lady R The guests thought that they were happy thought that they were witty thought that they were profound and as they thought this other people thought it still more strongly and so it got about that nothing was more delightful than one of Lady Rs assemblies everyone envied those who were admitted those who were admitted envied themselves because other people envied them and so there seemed no end to itexcept that which we have now to relate
For about the third time Orlando went there a certain incident occurred She was still under the illusion that she was listening to the most brilliant epigrams in the world though as a matter of fact, old General C was only saying at some length how the gout had left his left leg and gone to his right while Mr L interrupted when any proper name was mentioned R Oh I know Billy R as well as I know myself S My dearest friend T Stayed with him a fortnight in Yorkshirewhich such is the force of illusion sounded like the wittiest repartee the most searching comment upon human life and kept the company in a roar when the door opened and a little gentleman entered whose name Orlando did not catch Soon a curiously disagreeable sensation came over her To judge from their faces the rest began to feel it as well One gentleman said there was a draught The Marchioness of C feared a cat must be under the sofa It was as if their eyes were being slowly opened after a pleasant dream and nothing met them but a cheap washstand and a dirty counterpane It was as if the fumes of some delicious wine were slowly leaving them Still the General talked and still Mr L remembered But it became more and more apparent how red the Generals neck was how bald Mr Ls head was As for what they saidnothing more tedious and trivial could be imagined Everybody fidgeted and those who had fans yawned behind them At last Lady R rapped with hers upon the arm of her great chair Both gentlemen stopped talking
Then the little gentleman said
He said next
He said finally These sayings are too well known to require repetition
and besides they are all to be found in his published works
Here it cannot be denied was true wit true wisdom true profundity The company was thrown into complete dismay One such saying was bad enough but three one after another on the same evening No society could survive it
Mr Pope said old Lady R in a voice trembling with sarcastic fury you are pleased to be witty Mr Pope flushed red Nobody spoke a word They sat in dead silence some twenty minutes Then one by one they rose and slunk from the room That they would ever come back after such an experience was doubtful Linkboys could be heard calling their coaches all down South Audley Street Doors were slammed and carriages drove off Orlando found herself near Mr Pope on the staircase His lean and misshapen frame was shaken by a variety of emotions Darts of malice rage triumph wit and terror he was shaking like a leaf shot from his eyes He looked like some squat reptile set with a burning topaz in its forehead At the same time the strangest tempest of emotion seized now upon the luckless Orlando A disillusionment so complete as that inflicted not an hour ago leaves the mind rocking from side to side Everything appears ten times more bare and stark than before It is a moment fraught with the highest danger for the human spirit Women turn nuns and men priests in such moments In such moments rich men sign away their wealth and happy men cut their throats with carving knives Orlando would have done all willingly but there was a rasher thing still for her to do and this she did She invited Mr Pope to come home with her
For if it is rash to walk into a lions den unarmed rash to navigate the Atlantic in a rowing boat rash to stand on one foot on the top of St Pauls it is still more rash to go home alone with a poet A poet is Atlantic and lion in one While one drowns us the other gnaws us If we survive the teeth we succumb to the waves A man who can destroy illusions is both beast and flood Illusions are to the soul what atmosphere is to the earth Roll up that tender air and the plant dies the colour fades The earth we walk on is a parched cinder It is marl we tread and fiery cobbles scorch our feet By the truth we are undone Life is a dream Tis waking that kills us He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our lifeand so on for six pages if you will but the style is tedious and may well be dropped
On this showing however Orlando should have been a heap of cinders by the time the chariot drew up at her house in Blackfriars That she was still flesh and blood though certainly exhausted is entirely due to a fact to which we drew attention earlier in the narrative The less we see the more we believe Now the streets that lie between Mayfair and Blackfriars were at that time very imperfectly lit True the lighting was a great improvement upon that of the Elizabethan age Then the benighted traveller had to trust to the stars or the red flame of some night watchman to save him from the gravel pits at Park Lane or the oak woods where swine rootled in the Tottenham Court Road But even so it wanted much of our modern efficiency Lampposts lit with oillamps occurred every two hundred yards or so but between lay a considerable stretch of pitch darkness Thus for ten minutes Orlando and Mr Pope would be in blackness and then for about half a minute again in the light A very strange state of mind was thus bred in Orlando As the light faded she began to feel steal over her the most delicious balm This is indeed a very great honour for a young woman to be driving with Mr Pope she began to think looking at the outline of his nose I am the most blessed of my sex Half an inch from meindeed I feel the knot of his knee ribbons pressing against my thighis the greatest wit in Her Majestys dominions Future ages will think of us with curiosity and envy me with fury Here came the lamppost again What a foolish wretch I am she thought There is no such thing as fame and glory Ages to come will never cast a thought on me or on Mr Pope either Whats an age indeed What are we and their progress through Berkeley Square seemed the groping of two blind ants momentarily thrown together without interest or concern in common across a blackened desert She shivered But here again was darkness Her illusion revived How noble his brow is she thought mistaking a hump on a cushion for Mr Popes forehead in the darkness What a weight of genius lives in it What wit wisdom and truthwhat a wealth of all those jewels indeed for which people are ready to barter their lives Yours is the only light that burns for ever But for you the human pilgrimage would be performed in utter darkness here the coach gave a great lurch as it fell into a rut in Park Lane without genius we should be upset and undone Most august most lucid of beamsthus she was apostrophizing the hump on the cushion when they drove beneath one of the street lamps in Berkeley Square and she realized her mistake Mr Pope had a forehead no bigger than another mans Wretched man she thought how you have deceived me I took that hump for your forehead When one sees you plain how ignoble how despicable you are Deformed and weakly there is nothing to venerate in you much to pity most to despise
Again they were in darkness and her anger became modified directly she could see nothing but the poets knees
But it is I that am a wretch she reflected once they were in complete obscurity again for base as you may be am I not still baser It is you who nourish and protect me you who scare the wild beast frighten the savage make me clothes of the silkworms wool and carpets of the sheeps If I want to worship have you not provided me with an image of yourself and set it in the sky Are not evidences of your care everywhere How humble how grateful how docile should I not be therefore Let it be all my joy to serve honour and obey you
Here they reached the big lamppost at the corner of what is now Piccadilly Circus The light blazed in her eyes and she saw besides some degraded creatures of her own sex two wretched pigmies on a stark desert land Both were naked solitary and defenceless The one was powerless to help the other Each had enough to do to look after itself Looking Mr Pope full in the face It is equally vain she thought for you to think you can protect me or for me to think I can worship you The light of truth beats upon us without shadow and the light of truth is damnably unbecoming to us both
All this time of course they went on talking agreeably as people of birth and education use about the Queens temper and the Prime Ministers gout while the coach went from light to darkness down the Haymarket along the Strand up Fleet Street and reached at length her house in Blackfriars For some time the dark spaces between the lamps had been becoming brighter and the lamps themselves less brightthat is to say the sun was rising and it was in the equable but confused light of a summers morning in which everything is seen but nothing is seen distinctly that they alighted Mr Pope handing Orlando from her carriage and Orlando curtseying Mr Pope to precede her into her mansion with the most scrupulous attention to the rites of the Graces
From the foregoing passage however it must not be supposed that genius but the disease is now stamped out in the British Isles the late Lord Tennyson it is said being the last person to suffer from it is constantly alight for then we should see everything plain and perhaps should be scorched to death in the process. Rather it resembles the lighthouse in its working which sends one ray and then no more for a time save that genius is much more capricious in its manifestations and may flash six or seven beams in quick succession as Mr Pope did that night and then lapse into darkness for a year or for ever To steer by its beams is therefore impossible and when the dark spell is on them men of genius are it is said much like other people
It was happy for Orlando though at first disappointing that this should be so for she now began to live much in the company of men of genius Nor were they so different from the rest of us as one might have supposed Addison Pope Swift proved she found to be fond of tea They liked arbours They collected little bits of coloured glass They adored grottos Rank was not distasteful to them Praise was delightful They wore plumcoloured suits one day and grey another Mr Swift had a fine malacca cane Mr Addison scented his handkerchiefs Mr Pope suffered with his head A piece of gossip did not come amiss Nor were they without their jealousies We are jotting down a few reflections that came to Orlando higgledypiggledy At first she was annoyed with herself for noticing such trifles and kept a book in which to write down their memorable sayings but the page remained empty All the same her spirits revived and she took to tearing up her cards of invitation to great parties kept her evenings free began to look forward to Mr Popes visit to Mr Addisons to Mr Swiftsand so on and so on If the reader will here refer to the Rape of the Lock to the Spectator to Gullivers Travels he will understand precisely what these mysterious words may mean Indeed biographers and critics might save themselves all their labours if readers would only take this advice For when we read
Whether the Nymph shall break Dianas Law
Or some frail China Jar receive a Flaw
Or stain her Honour or her new Brocade
Forget her Prayrs or miss a Masquerade
Or lose her Heart or Necklace at a Ball
we know as if we heard him how Mr Popes tongue flickered like a lizards how his eyes flashed how his hand trembled how he loved how he lied how he suffered In short every secret of a writers soul every experience of his life every quality of his mind is written large in his works yet we require critics to explain the one and biographers to expound the other That time hangs heavy on peoples hands is the only explanation of the monstrous growth
So now that we have read a page or two of the Rape of the Lock we know exactly why Orlando was so much amused and so much frightened and so very brightcheeked and brighteyed that afternoon
Mrs Nelly then knocked at the door to say that Mr Addison waited on her Ladyship At this Mr Pope got up with a wry smile made his congee and limped off In came Mr Addison Let us as he takes his seat read the following passage from the Spectator
I consider woman as a beautiful romantic animal that may be adorned with furs and feathers pearls and diamonds ores and silks The lynx shall cast its skin at her feet to make her a tippet the peacock parrot and swan shall pay contributions to her muff the sea shall be searched for shells and the rocks for gems and every part of nature furnish out its share towards the embellishment of a creature that is the most consummate work of it All this I shall indulge them in but as for the petticoat I have been speaking of I neither can nor will allow it
We hold that gentleman cocked hat and all in the hollow of our hands Look once more into the crystal Is he not clear to the very wrinkle in his stocking Does not every ripple and curve of his wit lie exposed before us and his benignity and his timidity and his urbanity and the fact that he would marry a Countess and die very respectably in the end All is clear And when Mr Addison has said his say there is a terrific rap at the door and Mr Swift who had these arbitrary ways with him walks in unannounced One moment where is Gullivers Travels Here it is Let us read a passage from the voyage to the Houyhnhnms
I enjoyed perfect Health of Body and Tranquillity of Mind I did not find the Treachery or Inconstancy of a Friend nor the Injuries of a secret or open Enemy I had no occasion of bribing flattering or pimping to procure the Favour of any great Man or of his Minion I wanted no Fence against Fraud or Oppression Here was neither Physician to destroy my Body nor Lawyer to ruin my Fortune No Informer to watch my Words and Actions or forge Accusations against me for Hire Here were no Gibers Censurers Backbiters Pickpockets Highwaymen Housebreakers Attorneys Bawds Buffoons Gamesters Politicians Wits splenetick tedious Talkers
But stop stop your iron pelt of words lest you flay us all alive and yourself too Nothing can be plainer than that violent man He is so coarse and yet so clean so brutal yet so kind scorns the whole world yet talks baby language to a girl and will die can we doubt it in a madhouse
So Orlando poured out tea for them all and sometimes when the weather was fine she carried them down to the country with her and feasted them royally in the Round Parlour which she had hung with their pictures all in a circle so that Mr Pope could not say that Mr Addison came before him or the other way about They were very witty too but their wit is all in their books and taught her the most important part of style which is the natural run of the voice in speakinga quality which none that has not heard it can imitate not Greene even with all his skill for it is born of the air and breaks like a wave on the furniture and rolls and fades away and is never to be recaptured least of all by those who prick up their ears half a century later and try They taught her this merely by the cadence of their voices in speech so that her style changed somewhat and she wrote some very pleasant witty verses and characters in prose And so she lavished her wine on them and put banknotes which they took very kindly beneath their plates at dinner and accepted their dedications and thought herself highly honoured by the exchange
Thus time ran on and Orlando could often be heard saying to herself with an emphasis which might perhaps make the hearer a little suspicious Upon my soul what a life this is For she was still in search of that commodity But circumstances soon forced her to consider the matter more narrowly
One day she was pouring out tea for Mr Pope while as anyone can tell from the verses quoted above he sat very brighteyed observant and all crumpled up in a chair by her side
Lord she thought as she raised the sugar tongs how women in ages to come will envy me And yet she paused for Mr Pope needed her attention And yetlet us finish her thought for herwhen anybody says How future ages will envy me it is safe to say that they are extremely uneasy at the present moment Was this life quite so exciting quite so flattering quite so glorious as it sounds when the memoir writer has done his work upon it For one thing Orlando had a positive hatred of tea for another the intellect divine as it is and allworshipful has a habit of lodging in the most seedy of carcases and often alas acts the cannibal among the other faculties so that often where the Mind is biggest the Heart the Senses, Magnanimity Charity Tolerance Kindliness and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe Then the high opinion poets have of themselves then the low one they have of others then the enmities injuries envies and repartees in which they are constantly engaged then the volubility with which they impart them then the rapacity with which they demand sympathy for them all this one may whisper lest the wits may overhear us makes pouring out tea a more precarious and indeed arduous occupation than is generally allowed Added to which we whisper again lest the women may overhear us there is a little secret which men share among them Lord Chesterfield whispered it to his son with strict injunctions to secrecy Women are but children of a larger growthA man of sense only trifles with them plays with them humours and flatters them which since children always hear what they are not meant to and sometimes even grow up may have somehow leaked out so that the whole ceremony of pouring out tea is a curious one A woman knows very well that though a wit sends her his poems praises her judgment solicits her criticism and drinks her tea this by no means signifies that he respects her opinions admires her understanding or will refuse though the rapier is denied him to run her through the body with his pen All this we say, whisper it as low as we can may have leaked out by now so that even with the cream jug suspended and the sugar tongs distended the ladies may fidget a little look out of the window a little yawn a little and so let the sugar fall with a great plopas Orlando did nowinto Mr Popes tea Never was any mortal so ready to suspect an insult or so quick to avenge one as Mr Pope He turned to Orlando and presented her instantly with the rough draught of a certain famous line in the Characters of Women Much polish was afterwards bestowed on it but even in the original it was striking enough Orlando received it with a curtsey Mr Pope left her with a bow Orlando to cool her cheeks for really she felt as if the little man had struck her strolled in the nut grove at the bottom of the garden Soon the cool breezes did their work To her amazement she found that she was hugely relieved to find herself alone She watched the merry boatloads rowing up the river No doubt the sight put her in mind of one or two incidents in her past life She sat herself down in profound meditation beneath a fine willow tree There she sat till the stars were in the sky Then she rose turned and went into the house where she sought her bedroom and locked the door Now she opened a cupboard in which hung still many of the clothes she had worn as a young man of fashion and from among them she chose a black velvet suit richly trimmed with Venetian lace It was a little out of fashion indeed but it fitted her to perfection and dressed in it she looked the very figure of a noble Lord She took a turn or two before the mirror to make sure that her petticoats had not lost her the freedom of her legs and then let herself secretly out of doors
It was a fine night early in April A myriad stars mingling with the light of a sickle moon which again was enforced by the street lamps made a light infinitely becoming to the human countenance and to the architecture of Mr Wren Everything appeared in its tenderest form yet just as it seemed on the point of dissolution some drop of silver sharpened it to animation Thus it was that talk should be thought Orlando indulging in foolish reverie that society should be that friendship should be that love should be For Heaven knows why just as we have lost faith in human intercourse some random collocation of barns and trees or a haystack and a waggon presents us with so perfect a symbol of what is unattainable that we begin the search again
She entered Leicester Square as she made these observations The buildings had an airy yet formal symmetry not theirs by day The canopy of the sky seemed most dexterously washed in to fill up the outline of roof and chimney A young woman who sat dejectedly with one arm drooping by her side the other reposing in her lap on a seat beneath a plane tree in the middle of the square seemed the very figure of grace simplicity and desolation Orlando swept her hat off to her in the manner of a gallant paying his addresses to a lady of fashion in a public place The young woman raised her head It was of the most exquisite shapeliness The young woman raised her eyes Orlando saw them to be of a lustre such as is sometimes seen on teapots but rarely in a human face Through this silver glaze the young woman looked up at him for a man he was to her appealing hoping trembling fearing She rose she accepted his arm Forneed we stress the pointshe was of the tribe which nightly burnishes their wares and sets them in order on the common counter to wait the highest bidder She led Orlando to the room in Gerrard Street which was her lodging To feel her hanging lightly yet like a suppliant on her arm roused in Orlando all the feelings which become a man She looked she felt she talked like one Yet having been so lately a woman herself she suspected that the girls timidity and her hesitating answers and the very fumbling with the key in the latch and the fold of her cloak and the droop of her wrist were all put on to gratify her masculinity Upstairs they went and the pains which the poor creature had been at to decorate her room and hide the fact that she had no other deceived Orlando not a moment The deception roused her scorn the truth roused her pity One thing showing through the other bred the oddest assortment of feeling so that she did not know whether to laugh or to cry Meanwhile Nell as the girl called herself unbuttoned her gloves carefully concealed the lefthand thumb which wanted mending then drew behind a screen where perhaps she rouged her cheeks arranged her clothes fixed a new kerchief round her neckall the time prattling as women do to amuse her lover though Orlando could have sworn from the tone of her voice that her thoughts were elsewhere When all was ready out she came preparedbut here Orlando could stand it no longer In the strangest torment of anger merriment and pity she flung off all disguise and admitted herself a woman
At this Nell burst into such a roar of laughter as might have been heard across the way
Well my dear she said when she had somewhat recovered Im by no means sorry to hear it For the plain Dunstable of the matter is and it was remarkable how soon on discovering that they were of the same sex her manner changed and she dropped her plaintive appealing ways the plain Dunstable of the matter is that Im not in the mood for the society of the other sex tonight Indeed Im in the devil of a fix Whereupon drawing up the fire and stirring a bowl of punch she told Orlando the whole story of her life Since it is Orlandos life that engages us at present we need not relate the adventures of the other lady but it is certain that Orlando had never known the hours speed faster or more merrily though Mistress Nell had not a particle of wit about her and when the name of Mr Pope came up in talk asked innocently if he were connected with the perruque maker of that name in Jermyn Street Yet to Orlando such is the charm of ease and the seduction of beauty this poor girls talk larded though it was with the commonest expressions of the street corners tasted like wine after the fine phrases she had been used to and she was forced to the conclusion that there was something in the sneer of Mr Pope in the condescension of Mr Addison and in the secret of Lord Chesterfield which took away her relish for the society of wits deeply though she must continue to respect their works
These poor creatures she ascertained for Nell brought Prue and Prue Kitty and Kitty Rose had a society of their own of which they now elected her a member Each would tell the story of the adventures which had landed her in her present way of life Several were the natural daughters of earls and one was a good deal nearer than she should have been to the Kings person None was too wretched or too poor but to have some ring or handkerchief in her pocket which stood her in lieu of pedigree So they would draw round the punchbowl which Orlando made it her business to furnish generously and many were the fine tales they told and many the amusing observations they made for it cannot be denied that when women get togetherbut histthey are always careful to see that the doors are shut and that not a word of it gets into print All they desire isbut hist againis that not a mans step on the stair All they desire we were about to say when the gentleman took the very words out of our mouths Women have no desires says this gentleman coming into Nells parlour only affectations Without desires she has served him and he is gone their conversation cannot be of the slightest interest to anyone It is well known says Mr S W that when they lack the stimulus of the other sex women can find nothing to say to each other When they are alone they do not talk they scratch And since they cannot talk together and scratching cannot continue without interruption and it is well known Mr T R has proved it that women are incapable of any feeling of affection for their own sex and hold each other in the greatest aversion what can we suppose that women do when they seek out each others society
As that is not a question that can engage the attention of a sensible man let us who enjoy the immunity of all biographers and historians from any sex whatever pass it over and merely state that Orlando professed great enjoyment in the society of her own sex and leave it to the gentlemen to prove as they are very fond of doing that this is impossible
But to give an exact and particular account of Orlandos life at this time becomes more and more out of the question As we peer and grope in the illlit illpaved illventilated courtyards that lay about Gerrard Street and Drury Lane at that time we seem now to catch sight of her and then again to lose it The task is made still more difficult by the fact that she found it convenient at this time to change frequently from one set of clothes to another Thus she often occurs in contemporary memoirs as Lord Soandso who was in fact her cousin her bounty is ascribed to him and it is he who is said to have written the poems that were really hers She had it seems no difficulty in sustaining the different parts for her sex changed far more frequently than those who have worn only one set of clothing can conceive nor can there be any doubt that she reaped a twofold harvest by this device the pleasures of life were increased and its experiences multiplied For the probity of breeches she exchanged the seductiveness of petticoats and enjoyed the love of both sexes equally
So then one may sketch her spending her morning in a China robe of ambiguous gender among her books then receiving a client or two for she had many scores of suppliants in the same garment then she would take a turn in the garden and clip the nut treesfor which kneebreeches were convenient then she would change into a flowered taffeta which best suited a drive to Richmond and a proposal of marriage from some great nobleman and so back again to town where she would don a snuffcoloured gown like a lawyers and visit the courts to hear how her cases were doingfor her fortune was wasting hourly and the suits seemed no nearer consummation than they had been a hundred years ago and so finally when night came she would more often than not become a nobleman complete from head to toe and walk the streets in search of adventure
Returning from some of these junketingsof which there were many stories told at the time as that she fought a duel served on one of the Kings ships as a captain was seen to dance naked on a balcony and fled with a certain lady to the Low Countries where the ladys husband followed thembut of the truth or otherwise of these stories we express no opinionreturning from whatever her occupation may have been she made a point sometimes of passing beneath the windows of a coffee house where she could see the wits without being seen and thus could fancy from their gestures what wise witty or spiteful things they were saying without hearing a word of them which was perhaps an advantage and once she stood half an hour watching three shadows on the blind drinking tea together in a house in Bolt Court
Never was any play so absorbing She wanted to cry out Bravo Bravo For to be sure what a fine drama it waswhat a page torn from the thickest volume of human life There was the little shadow with the pouting lips fidgeting this way and that on his chair uneasy petulant officious there was the bent female shadow crooking a finger in the cup to feel how deep the tea was for she was blind and there was the Romanlooking rolling shadow in the big armchairhe who twisted his fingers so oddly and jerked his head from side to side and swallowed down the tea in such vast gulps Dr Johnson Mr Boswell and Mrs Williamsthose were the shadows names So absorbed was she in the sight that she forgot to think how other ages would have envied her though it seems probable that on this occasion they would She was content to gaze and gaze At length Mr Boswell rose He saluted the old woman with tart asperity But with what humility did he not abase himself before the great Roman shadow who now rose to its full height and rocking somewhat as he stood there rolled out the most magnificent phrases that ever left human lips so Orlando thought them though she never heard a word that any of the three shadows said as they sat there drinking tea
At length she came home one night after one of these saunterings and mounted to her bedroom She took off her laced coat and stood there in shirt and breeches looking out of the window There was something stirring in the air which forbade her to go to bed A white haze lay over the town for it was a frosty night in midwinter and a magnificent vista lay all round her She could see St Pauls the Tower Westminster Abbey with all the spires and domes of the city churches the smooth bulk of its banks the opulent and ample curves of its halls and meetingplaces On the north rose the smooth shorn heights of Hampstead and in the west the streets and squares of Mayfair shone out in one clear radiance Upon this serene and orderly prospect the stars looked down glittering positive hard from a cloudless sky In the extreme clearness of the atmosphere the line of every roof the cowl of every chimney was perceptible even the cobbles in the streets showed distinct one from another and Orlando could not help comparing this orderly scene with the irregular and huddled purlieus which had been the city of London in the reign of Queen Elizabeth Then she remembered the city if such one could call it lay crowded a mere huddle and conglomeration of houses under her windows at Blackfriars The stars reflected themselves in deep pits of stagnant water which lay in the middle of the streets A black shadow at the corner where the wine shop used to stand was as likely as not the corpse of a murdered man She could remember the cries of many a one wounded in such night brawlings when she was a little boy held to the diamondpaned window in her nurses arms Troops of ruffians men and women unspeakably interlaced lurched down the streets trolling out wild songs with jewels flashing in their ears and knives gleaming in their fists On such a night as this the impermeable tangle of the forests on Highgate and Hampstead would be outlined writhing in contorted intricacy against the sky Here and there on one of the hills which rose above London was a stark gallows tree with a corpse nailed to rot or parch on its cross for danger and insecurity lust and violence poetry and filth swarmed over the tortuous Elizabethan highways and buzzed and stankOrlando could remember even now the smell of them on a hot nightin the little rooms and narrow pathways of the city Nowshe leant out of her windowall was light order and serenity There was the faint rattle of a coach on the cobbles She heard the faraway cry of the night watchmanJust twelve oclock on a frosty morning No sooner had the words left his lips than the first stroke of midnight sounded Orlando then for the first time noticed a small cloud gathered behind the dome of St Pauls As the strokes sounded the cloud increased and she saw it darken and spread with extraordinary speed At the same time a light breeze rose and by the time the sixth stroke of midnight had struck the whole of the eastern sky was covered with an irregular moving darkness though the sky to the west and north stayed clear as ever Then the cloud spread north Height upon height above the city was engulfed by it Only Mayfair with all its lights shining burnt more brilliantly than ever by contrast With the eighth stroke some hurrying tatters of cloud sprawled over Piccadilly They seemed to mass themselves and to advance with extraordinary rapidity towards the west end As the ninth tenth and eleventh strokes struck a huge blackness sprawled over the whole of London With the twelfth stroke of midnight the darkness was complete A turbulent welter of cloud covered the city All was darkness all was doubt all was confusion The Eighteenth century was over the Nineteenth century had begun
CHAPTER 5
The great cloud which hung not only over London but over the whole of the British Isles on the first day of the nineteenth century stayed or rather did not stay for it was buffeted about constantly by blustering gales long enough to have extraordinary consequences upon those who lived beneath its shadow A change seemed to have come over the climate of England Rain fell frequently but only in fitful gusts which were no sooner over than they began again The sun shone of course but it was so girt about with clouds and the air was so saturated with water that its beams were discoloured and purples oranges and reds of a dull sort took the place of the more positive landscapes of the eighteenth century Under this bruised and sullen canopy the green of the cabbages was less intense and the white of the snow was muddied But what was worse damp now began to make its way into every housedamp which is the most insidious of all enemies for while the sun can be shut out by blinds and the frost roasted by a hot fire damp steals in while we sleep damp is silent imperceptible ubiquitous Damp swells the wood furs the kettle rusts the iron rots the stone So gradual is the process, that it is not until we pick up some chest of drawers or coal scuttle and the whole thing drops to pieces in our hands that we suspect even that the disease is at work
Thus stealthily and imperceptibly none marking the exact day or hour of the change the constitution of England was altered and nobody knew it Everywhere the effects were felt The hardy country gentleman who had sat down gladly to a meal of ale and beef in a room designed perhaps by the brothers Adam with classic dignity now felt chilly Rugs appeared beards were grown trousers were fastened tight under the instep The chill which he felt in his legs the country gentleman soon transferred to his house furniture was muffled walls and tables were covered nothing was left bare Then a change of diet became essential The muffin was invented and the crumpet Coffee supplanted the afterdinner port and as coffee led to a drawingroom in which to drink it and a drawingroom to glass cases and glass cases to artificial flowers and artificial flowers to mantelpieces and mantelpieces to pianofortes and pianofortes to drawingroom ballads and drawingroom ballads skipping a stage or two to innumerable little dogs mats and china ornaments the homewhich had become extremely importantwas completely altered
Outside the houseit was another effect of the dampivy grew in unparalleled profusion Houses that had been of bare stone were smothered in greenery No garden however formal its original design lacked a shrubbery a wilderness a maze What light penetrated to the bedrooms where children were born was naturally of an obfusc green and what light penetrated to the drawingrooms where grown men and women lived came through curtains of brown and purple plush But the change did not stop at outward things The damp struck within Men felt the chill in their hearts the damp in their minds In a desperate effort to snuggle their feelings into some sort of warmth one subterfuge was tried after another Love birth and death were all swaddled in a variety of fine phrases The sexes drew further and further apart No open conversation was tolerated Evasions and concealments were sedulously practised on both sides And just as the ivy and the evergreen rioted in the damp earth outside so did the same fertility show itself within The life of the average woman was a succession of childbirths She married at nineteen and had fifteen or eighteen children by the time she was thirty for twins abounded Thus the British Empire came into existence; and thusfor there is no stopping damp it gets into the inkpot as it gets into the woodworksentences swelled adjectives multiplied lyrics became epics and little trifles that had been essays a column long were now encyclopaedias in ten or twenty volumes But Eusebius Chubb shall be our witness to the effect this all had upon the mind of a sensitive man who could do nothing to stop it There is a passage towards the end of his memoirs where he describes how after writing thirtyfive folio pages one morning all about nothing he screwed the lid of his inkpot and went for a turn in his garden Soon he found himself involved in the shrubbery Innumerable leaves creaked and glistened above his head He seemed to himself to crush the mould of a million more under his feet Thick smoke exuded from a damp bonfire at the end of the garden He reflected that no fire on earth could ever hope to consume that vast vegetable encumbrance Wherever he looked vegetation was rampant Cucumbers came scrolloping across the grass to his feet Giant cauliflowers towered deck above deck till they rivalled to his disordered imagination the elm trees themselves Hens laid incessantly eggs of no special tint Then remembering with a sigh his own fecundity and his poor wife Jane now in the throes of her fifteenth confinement indoors how he asked himself could he blame the fowls He looked upwards into the sky Did not heaven itself, or that great frontispiece of heaven which is the sky indicate the assent indeed the instigation of the heavenly hierarchy For there winter or summer year in year out the clouds turned and tumbled like whales he pondered or elephants rather but no there was no escaping the simile which was pressed upon him from a thousand airy acres the whole sky itself as it spread wide above the British Isles was nothing but a vast feather bed and the undistinguished fecundity of the garden the bedroom and the henroost was copied there He went indoors wrote the passage quoted above laid his head in a gas oven and when they found him later he was past revival
While this went on in every part of England it was all very well for Orlando to mew herself in her house at Blackfriars and pretend that the climate was the same that one could still say what one liked and wear kneebreeches or skirts as the fancy took one Even she at length was forced to acknowledge that times were changed One afternoon in the early part of the century she was driving through St Jamess Park in her old panelled coach when one of those sunbeams which occasionally though not often managed to come to earth struggled through marbling the clouds with strange prismatic colours as it passed Such a sight was sufficiently strange after the clear and uniform skies of the eighteenth century to cause her to pull the window down and look at it The puce and flamingo clouds made her think with a pleasurable anguish which proves that she was insensibly afflicted with the damp already of dolphins dying in Ionian seas But what was her surprise when as it struck the earth the sunbeam seemed to call forth or to light up a pyramid hecatomb or trophy for it had something of a banquettable aira conglomeration at any rate of the most heterogeneous and illassorted objects piled higgledypiggledy in a vast mound where the statue of Queen Victoria now stands Draped about a vast cross of fretted and floriated gold were widows weeds and bridal veils hooked on to other excrescences were crystal palaces bassinettes military helmets memorial wreaths trousers whiskers wedding cakes cannon Christmas trees telescopes extinct monsters globes maps elephants and mathematical instrumentsthe whole supported like a gigantic coat of arms on the right side by a female figure clothed in flowing white on the left by a portly gentleman wearing a frockcoat and spongebag trousers The incongruity of the objects, the association of the fully clothed and the partly draped the garishness of the different colours and their plaidlike juxtapositions afflicted Orlando with the most profound dismay She had never in all her life seen anything at once so indecent so hideous and so monumental It might and indeed it must be the effect of the sun on the waterlogged air it would vanish with the first breeze that blew but for all that it looked as she drove past as if it were destined to endure for ever Nothing she felt sinking back into the corner of her coach no wind rain sun or thunder could ever demolish that garish erection Only the noses would mottle and the trumpets would rust but there they would remain pointing east west south and north eternally She looked back as her coach swept up Constitution Hill Yes there it was still beaming placidly in a light whichshe pulled her watch out of her fobwas of course the light of twelve oclock midday None other could be so prosaic so matterof-fact, so impervious to any hint of dawn or sunset so seemingly calculated to last for ever She was determined not to look again Already she felt the tides of her blood run sluggishly But what was more peculiar a blush vivid and singular overspread her cheeks as she passed Buckingham Palace and her eyes seemed forced by a superior power down upon her knees Suddenly she saw with a start that she was wearing black breeches She never ceased blushing till she had reached her country house which considering the time it takes four horses to trot thirty miles will be taken we hope as a signal proof of her chastity
Once there she followed what had now become the most imperious need of her nature and wrapped herself as well as she could in a damask quilt which she snatched from her bed She explained to the Widow Bartholomew who had succeeded good old Grimsditch as housekeeper that she felt chilly
So do we all mlady said the Widow heaving a profound sigh The walls is sweating she said with a curious lugubrious complacency and sure enough she had only to lay her hand on the oak panels for the fingerprints to be marked there The ivy had grown so profusely that many windows were now sealed up The kitchen was so dark that they could scarcely tell a kettle from a cullender A poor black cat had been mistaken for coals and shovelled on the fire Most of the maids were already wearing three or four redflannel petticoats though the month was August
But is it true mlady the good woman asked hugging herself while the golden crucifix heaved on her bosom that the Queen bless her is wearing a what dyou call it a the good woman hesitated and blushed
A crinoline Orlando helped her out with it for the word had reached Blackfriars Mrs Bartholomew nodded The tears were already running down her cheeks but as she wept she smiled For it was pleasant to weep Were they not all of them weak women wearing crinolines the better to conceal the fact the great fact the only fact but nevertheless the deplorable fact which every modest woman did her best to deny until denial was impossible the fact that she was about to bear a child to bear fifteen or twenty children indeed so that most of a modest womans life was spent after all in denying what on one day at least of every year was made obvious
The muffins is keepin ot said Mrs Bartholomew mopping up her tears in the liberry
And wrapped in a damask bed quilt to a dish of muffins Orlando now sat down
The muffins is keepin ot in the liberryOrlando minced out the horrid cockney phrase in Mrs Bartholomews refined cockney accents as she drankbut no she detested the mild fluidher tea It was in this very room she remembered that Queen Elizabeth had stood astride the fireplace with a flagon of beer in her hand which she suddenly dashed on the table when Lord Burghley tactlessly used the imperative instead of the subjunctive Little man little manOrlando could hear her sayis must a word to be addressed to princes And down came the flagon on the table there was the mark of it still
But when Orlando leapt to her feet as the mere thought of that great Queen commanded the bed quilt tripped her up and she fell back in her armchair with a curse Tomorrow she would have to buy twenty yards or more of black bombazine she supposed to make a skirt And then here she blushed she would have to buy a crinoline and then here she blushed a bassinette and then another crinoline and so onThe blushes came and went with the most exquisite iteration of modesty and shame imaginable One might see the spirit of the age blowing now hot now cold upon her cheeks And if the spirit of the age blew a little unequally the crinoline being blushed for before the husband her ambiguous position must excuse her even her sex was still in dispute and the irregular life she had lived before
At length the colour on her cheeks resumed its stability and it seemed as if the spirit of the ageif such indeed it werelay dormant for a time Then Orlando felt in the bosom of her shirt as if for some locket or relic of lost affection and drew out no such thing but a roll of paper seastained bloodstained travelstainedthe manuscript of her poem The Oak Tree She had carried this about with her for so many years now and in such hazardous circumstances that many of the pages were stained some were torn while the straits she had been in for writing paper when with the gipsies had forced her to overscore the margins and cross the lines till the manuscript looked like a piece of darning most conscientiously carried out She turned back to the first page and read the date 1586 written in her own boyish hand She had been working at it for close three hundred years now It was time to make an end Meanwhile she began turning and dipping and reading and skipping and thinking as she read how very little she had changed all these years She had been a gloomy boy in love with death as boys are and then she had been amorous and florid and then she had been sprightly and satirical and sometimes she had tried prose and sometimes she had tried drama Yet through all these changes she had remained she reflected fundamentally the same She had the same brooding meditative temper the same love of animals and nature the same passion for the country and the seasons
After all she thought getting up and going to the window nothing has changed The house the garden are precisely as they were Not a chair has been moved not a trinket sold There are the same walks the same lawns the same trees and the same pool which I dare say has the same carp in it True Queen Victoria is on the throne and not Queen Elizabeth but what difference
No sooner had the thought taken shape than as if to rebuke it the door was flung wide and in marched Basket the butler followed by Bartholomew the housekeeper to clear away tea Orlando who had just dipped her pen in the ink and was about to indite some reflection upon the eternity of all things was much annoyed to be impeded by a blot which spread and meandered round her pen It was some infirmity of the quill she supposed it was split or dirty She dipped it again The blot increased She tried to go on with what she was saying no words came Next she began to decorate the blot with wings and whiskers till it became a roundheaded monster something between a bat and a wombat But as for writing poetry with Basket and Bartholomew in the room it was impossible No sooner had she said Impossible than to her astonishment and alarm the pen began to curve and caracole with the smoothest possible fluency Her page was written in the neatest sloping Italian hand with the most insipid verse she had ever read in her life
I am myself but a vile link
Amid lifes weary chain
But I have spoken hallowd words
Oh do not say in vain
Will the young maiden when her tears
Alone in moonlight shine
Tears for the absent and the loved
Murmur
she wrote without a stop as Bartholomew and Basket grunted and groaned about the room mending the fire picking up the muffins
Again she dipped her pen and off it went
She was so changed the soft carnation cloud
Once mantling oer her cheek like that which eve
Hangs oer the sky glowing with roseate hue
Had faded into paleness broken by
Bright burning blushes torches of the tomb
but here by an abrupt movement she spilt the ink ever the page and blotted it from human sight she hoped for ever She was all of a quiver all of a stew Nothing more repulsive could be imagined than to feel the ink flowing thus in cascades of involuntary inspiration What had happened to her Was it the damp was it Bartholomew was it Basket what was it she demanded But the room was empty No one answered her unless the dripping of the rain in the ivy could be taken for an answer
Meanwhile she became conscious as she stood at the window of an extraordinary tingling and vibration all over her as if she were made of a thousand wires upon which some breeze or errant fingers were playing scales Now her toes tingled now her marrow She had the queerest sensations about the thigh bones Her hairs seemed to erect themselves Her arms sang and twanged as the telegraph wires would be singing and twanging in twenty years or so But all this agitation seemed at length to concentrate in her hands and then in one hand and then in one finger of that hand and then finally to contract itself so that it made a ring of quivering sensibility about the second finger of the left hand And when she raised it to see what caused this agitation she saw nothingnothing but the vast solitary emerald which Queen Elizabeth had given her And was that not enough she asked It was of the finest water It was worth ten thousand pounds at least The vibration seemed in the oddest way but remember we are dealing with some of the darkest manifestations of the human soul to say No that is not enough and further to assume a note of interrogation as though it were asking what did it mean this hiatus this strange oversight till poor Orlando felt positively ashamed of the second finger of her left hand without in the least knowing why At this moment Bartholomew came in to ask which dress she should lay out for dinner and Orlando whose senses were much quickened instantly glanced at Bartholomews left hand and instantly perceived what she had never noticed beforea thick ring of rather jaundiced yellow circling the third finger where her own was bare
Let me look at your ring Bartholomew she said stretching her hand to take it
At this Bartholomew made as if she had been struck in the breast by a rogue She started back a pace or two clenched her hand and flung it away from her with a gesture that was noble in the extreme No she said with resolute dignity her Ladyship might look if she pleased but as for taking off her wedding ring not the Archbishop nor the Pope nor Queen Victoria on her throne could force her to do that Her Thomas had put it on her finger twentyfive years six months three weeks ago she had slept in it worked in it washed in it prayed in it and proposed to be buried in it In fact Orlando understood her to say but her voice was much broken with emotion that it was by the gleam on her wedding ring that she would be assigned her station among the angels and its lustre would be tarnished for ever if she let it out of her keeping for a second
Heaven help us said Orlando standing at the window and watching the pigeons at their pranks what a world we live in What a world to be sure Its complexities amazed her It now seemed to her that the whole world was ringed with gold She went in to dinner Wedding rings abounded She went to church Wedding rings were everywhere She drove out Gold or pinchbeck thin thick plain smooth they glowed dully on every hand Rings filled the jewellers shops not the flashing pastes and diamonds of Orlandos recollection but simple bands without a stone in them At the same time she began to notice a new habit among the town people In the old days one would meet a boy trifling with a girl under a hawthorn hedge frequently enough Orlando had flicked many a couple with the tip of her whip and laughed and passed on Now all that was changed Couples trudged and plodded in the middle of the road indissolubly linked together The womans right hand was invariably passed through the mans left and her fingers were firmly gripped by his Often it was not till the horses noses were on them that they budged and then though they moved it was all in one piece heavily to the side of the road Orlando could only suppose that some new discovery had been made about the race that they were somehow stuck together couple after couple but who had made it and when she could not guess It did not seem to be Nature She looked at the doves and the rabbits and the elkhounds and she could not see that Nature had changed her ways or mended them since the time of Elizabeth at least There was no indissoluble alliance among the brutes that she could see Could it be Queen Victoria then or Lord Melbourne Was it from them that the great discovery of marriage proceeded Yet the Queen she pondered was said to be fond of dogs and Lord Melbourne she had heard was said to be fond of women It was strangeit was distasteful indeed there was something in this indissolubility of bodies which was repugnant to her sense of decency and sanitation Her ruminations however were accompanied by such a tingling and twanging of the afflicted finger that she could scarcely keep her ideas in order They were languishing and ogling like a housemaids fancies They made her blush There was nothing for it but to buy one of those ugly bands and wear it like the rest This she did slipping it overcome with shame upon her finger in the shadow of a curtain but without avail The tingling persisted more violently more indignantly than ever She did not sleep a wink that night Next morning when she took up the pen to write either she could think of nothing and the pen made one large lachrymose blot after another or it ambled off more alarmingly still into mellifluous fluencies about early death and corruption which were worse than no thinking at all For it would seemher case proved itthat we write not with the fingers but with the whole person The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being threads the heart pierces the liver Though the seat of her trouble seemed to be the left hand she could feel herself poisoned through and through and was forced at length to consider the most desperate of remedies which was to yield completely and submissively to the spirit of the age and take a husband
That this was much against her natural temperament has been sufficiently made plain When the sound of the Archdukes chariot wheels died away the cry that rose to her lips was Life A Lover not Life A Husband and it was in pursuit of this aim that she had gone to town and run about the world as has been shown in the previous chapter Such is the indomitable nature of the spirit of the age however that it batters down anyone who tries to make stand against it far more effectually than those who bend its own way Orlando had inclined herself naturally to the Elizabethan spirit to the Restoration spirit to the spirit of the eighteenth century and had in consequence scarcely been aware of the change from one age to the other But the spirit of the nineteenth century was antipathetic to her in the extreme and thus it took her and broke her and she was aware of her defeat at its hands as she had never been before For it is probable that the human spirit has its place in time assigned to it some are born of this age some of that and now that Orlando was grown a woman a year or two past thirty indeed the lines of her character were fixed and to bend them the wrong way was intolerable
So she stood mournfully at the drawingroom window Bartholomew had so christened the library dragged down by the weight of the crinoline which she had submissively adopted It was heavier and more drab than any dress she had yet worn None had ever so impeded her movements No longer could she stride through the garden with her dogs or run lightly to the high mound and fling herself beneath the oak tree Her skirts collected damp leaves and straw The plumed hat tossed on the breeze The thin shoes were quickly soaked and mudcaked Her muscles had lost their pliancy She became nervous lest there should be robbers behind the wainscot and afraid for the first time in her life of ghosts in the corridors All these things inclined her step by step to submit to the new discovery whether Queen Victorias or anothers that each man and each woman has another allotted to it for life whom it supports by whom it is supported till death them do part It would be a comfort she felt to lean to sit down yes to lie down never never never to get up again Thus did the spirit work upon her for all her past pride and as she came sloping down the scale of emotion to this lowly and unaccustomed lodgingplace those twangings and tinglings which had been so captious and so interrogative modulated into the sweetest melodies till it seemed as if angels were plucking harpstrings with white fingers and her whole being was pervaded by a seraphic harmony
But whom could she lean upon She asked that question of the wild autumn winds For it was now October and wet as usual Not the Archduke he had married a very great lady and had hunted hares in Roumania these many years now nor Mr M he was become a Catholic nor the Marquis of C he made sacks in Botany Bay nor the Lord O he had long been food for fishes One way or another all her old cronies were gone now and the Nells and the Kits of Drury Lane much though she favoured them scarcely did to lean upon
Whom she asked casting her eyes upon the revolving clouds clasping her hands as she knelt on the windowsill and looking the very image of appealing womanhood as she did so can I lean upon Her words formed themselves her hands clasped themselves involuntarily just as her pen had written of its own accord It was not Orlando who spoke but the spirit of the age But whichever it was nobody answered it The rooks were tumbling pellmell among the violet clouds of autumn The rain had stopped at last and there was an iridescence in the sky which tempted her to put on her plumed hat and her little stringed shoes and stroll out before dinner
Everyone is mated except myself she mused as she trailed disconsolately across the courtyard There were the rooks Canute and Pippin eventransitory as their alliances were still each this evening seemed to have a partner Whereas I who am mistress of it all Orlando thought glancing as she passed at the innumerable emblazoned windows of the hall am single am mateless am alone
Such thoughts had never entered her head before Now they bore her down unescapably Instead of thrusting the gate open she tapped with a gloved hand for the porter to unfasten it for her One must lean on someone she thought if it is only on a porter and half wished to stay behind and help him to grill his chop on a bucket of fiery coals but was too timid to ask it So she strayed out into the park alone faltering at first and apprehensive lest there might be poachers or gamekeepers or even errandboys to marvel that a great lady should walk alone
At every step she glanced nervously lest some male form should be hiding behind a furze bush or some savage cow be lowering its horns to toss her But there were only the rooks flaunting in the sky A steelblue plume from one of them fell among the heather She loved wild birds feathers She had used to collect them as a boy She picked it up and stuck it in her hat The air blew upon her spirit somewhat and revived it As the rooks went whirling and wheeling above her head and feather after feather fell gleaming through the purplish air she followed them her long cloak floating behind her over the moor up the hill She had not walked so far for years Six feathers had she picked from the grass and drawn between her fingers and pressed to her lips to feel their smooth glinting plumage when she saw gleaming on the hillside a silver pool mysterious as the lake into which Sir Bedivere flung the sword of Arthur A single feather quivered in the air and fell into the middle of it Then some strange ecstasy came over her Some wild notion she had of following the birds to the rim of the world and flinging herself on the spongy turf and there drinking forgetfulness while the rooks hoarse laughter sounded over her She quickened her pace she ran she tripped the tough heather roots flung her to the ground Her ankle was broken She could not rise But there she lay content The scent of the bog myrtle and the meadowsweet was in her nostrils The rooks hoarse laughter was in her ears I have found my mate she murmured It is the moor I am natures bride she whispered giving herself in rapture to the cold embraces of the grass as she lay folded in her cloak in the hollow by the pool Here will I lie A feather fell upon her brow I have found a greener laurel than the bay My forehead will be cool always These are wild birds feathersthe owls the nightjars I shall dream wild dreams My hands shall wear no wedding ring she continued slipping it from her finger The roots shall twine about them Ah she sighed pressing her head luxuriously on its spongy pillow I have sought happiness through many ages and not found it fame and missed it love and not known it lifeand behold death is better I have known many men and many women she continued none have I understood It is better that I should lie at peace here with only the sky above meas the gipsy told me years ago That was in Turkey And she looked straight up into the marvellous golden foam into which the clouds had churned themselves and saw next moment a track in it and camels passing in single file through the rocky desert among clouds of red dust and then when the camels had passed there were only mountains very high and full of clefts and with pinnacles of rock and she fancied she heard goat bells ringing in their passes and in their folds were fields of irises and gentian So the sky changed and her eyes slowly lowered themselves down and down till they came to the raindarkened earth and saw the great hump of the South Downs flowing in one wave along the coast and where the land parted there was the sea the sea with ships passing and she fancied she heard a gun far out at sea and thought at first Thats the Armada and then thought No its Nelson and then remembered how those wars were over and the ships were busy merchant ships and the sails on the winding river were those of pleasure boats She saw too cattle sprinkled on the dark fields sheep and cows and she saw the lights coming here and there in farmhouse windows and lanterns moving among the cattle as the shepherd went his rounds and the cowman and then the lights went out and the stars rose and tangled themselves about the sky Indeed she was falling asleep with the wet feathers on her face and her ear pressed to the ground when she heard deep within some hammer on an anvil or was it a heart beating Ticktock ticktock so it hammered so it beat the anvil or the heart in the middle of the earth until as she listened she thought it changed to the trot of a horses hoofs one two three four she counted then she heard a stumble then as it came nearer and nearer she could hear the crack of a twig and the suck of the wet bog in its hoofs The horse was almost on her She sat upright Towering dark against the yellowslashed sky of dawn with the plovers rising and falling about him she saw a man on horseback He started The horse stopped
Madam the man cried leaping to the ground youre hurt
Im dead sir she replied
A few minutes later they became engaged
The morning after as they sat at breakfast he told her his name It was Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine Esquire
I knew it she said for there was something romantic and chivalrous passionate melancholy yet determined about him which went with the wild darkplumed namea name which had in her mind the steelblue gleam of rooks wings the hoarse laughter of their caws the snakelike twisting descent of their feathers in a silver pool and a thousand other things which will be described presently
Mine is Orlando she said He had guessed it For if you see a ship in full sail coming with the sun on it proudly sweeping across the Mediterranean from the South Seas one says at once Orlando he explained
In fact though their acquaintance had been so short they had guessed as always happens between lovers everything of any importance about each other in two seconds at the utmost and it now remained only to fill in such unimportant details as what they were called where they lived and whether they were beggars or people of substance. He had a castle in the Hebrides but it was ruined he told her Gannets feasted in the banqueting hall He had been a soldier and a sailor and had explored the East He was on his way now to join his brig at Falmouth but the wind had fallen and it was only when the gale blew from the Southwest that he could put out to sea Orlando looked hastily from the breakfastroom window at the gilt leopard on the weather vane Mercifully its tail pointed due east and was steady as a rock Oh Shel dont leave me she cried Im passionately in love with you she said No sooner had the words left her mouth than an awful suspicion rushed into both their minds simultaneously
Youre a woman Shel she cried
Youre a man Orlando he cried
Never was there such a scene of protestation and demonstration as then took place since the world began When it was over and they were seated again she asked him what was this talk of a Southwest gale Where was he bound for
For the Horn he said briefly and blushed For a man had to blush as a woman had only at rather different things It was only by dint of great pressure on her side and the use of much intuition that she gathered that his life was spent in the most desperate and splendid of adventureswhich is to voyage round Cape Horn in the teeth of a gale Masts had been snapped off sails torn to ribbons she had to drag the admission from him Sometimes the ship had sunk and he had been left the only survivor on a raft with a biscuit
Its about all a fellow can do nowadays he said sheepishly and helped himself to great spoonfuls of strawberry jam The vision which she had thereupon of this boy for he was little more sucking peppermints for which he had a passion while the masts snapped and the stars reeled and he roared brief orders to cut this adrift to heave that overboard brought the tears to her eyes tears she noted of a finer flavour than any she had cried before I am a woman she thought a real woman at last She thanked Bonthrop from the bottom of her heart for having given her this rare and unexpected delight Had she not been lame in the left foot she would have sat upon his knee
Shel my darling she began again tell me and so they talked two hours or more perhaps about Cape Horn perhaps not and really it would profit little to write down what they said for they knew each other so well that they could say anything which is tantamount to saying nothing or saying such stupid prosy things as how to cook an omelette or where to buy the best boots in London things which have no lustre taken from their setting yet are positively of amazing beauty within it For it has come about by the wise economy of nature, that our modern spirit can almost dispense with language the commonest expressions do since no expressions do hence the most ordinary conversation is often the most poetic and the most poetic is precisely that which cannot be written down For which reasons we leave a great blank here which must be taken to indicate that the space is filled to repletion
After some days more of this kind of talk
Orlando my dearest Shel was beginning when there was a scuffling outside and Basket the butler entered with the information that there was a couple of Peelers downstairs with a warrant from the Queen
Show em up said Shelmerdine briefly as if on his own quarterdeck taking up by instinct a stand with his hands behind him in front of the fireplace Two officers in bottlegreen uniforms with truncheons at their hips then entered the room and stood at attention Formalities being over they gave into Orlandos own hands as their commission was a legal document of some very impressive sort judging by the blobs of sealing wax the ribbons the oaths and the signatures which were all of the highest importance
Orlando ran her eyes through it and then using the first finger of her right hand as pointer read out the following facts as being most germane to the matter
The lawsuits are settled she read outsome in my favour as for example...others not Turkish marriage annulled I was ambassador in Constantinople Shel she explained Children pronounced illegitimate they said I had three sons by Pepita a Spanish dancer So they dont inherit which is all to the goodSex Ah what about sex My sex she read out with some solemnity is pronounced indisputably and beyond the shadow of a doubt what I was telling you a moment ago Shel female The estates which are now desequestrated in perpetuity descend and are tailed and entailed upon the heirs male of my body or in default of marriagebut here she grew impatient with this legal verbiage and said but there wont be any default of marriage nor of heirs either so the rest can be taken as read Whereupon she appended her own signature beneath Lord Palmerstons and entered from that moment into the undisturbed possession of her titles her house and her estatewhich was now so much shrunk for the cost of the lawsuits had been prodigious that though she was infinitely noble again she was also excessively poor
When the result of the lawsuit was made known and rumour flew much quicker than the telegraph which has supplanted it the whole town was filled with rejoicings
Horses were put into carriages for the sole purpose of being taken out Empty barouches and landaus were trundled up and down the High Street incessantly Addresses were read from the Bull Replies were made from the Stag The town was illuminated Gold caskets were securely sealed in glass cases Coins were well and duly laid under stones Hospitals were founded Rat and Sparrow clubs were inaugurated Turkish women by the dozen were burnt in effigy in the marketplace together with scores of peasant boys with the label I am a base Pretender lolling from their mouths The Queens creamcoloured ponies were soon seen trotting up the avenue with a command to Orlando to dine and sleep at the Castle that very same night Her table as on a previous occasion was snowed under with invitations from the Countess if R Lady Q Lady Palmerston the Marchioness of P Mrs WE Gladstone and others beseeching the pleasure of her company reminding her of ancient alliances between their family and her own etcall of which is properly enclosed in square brackets as above for the good reason that a parenthesis it was without any importance in Orlandos life She skipped it to get on with the text For when the bonfires were blazing in the marketplace she was in the dark woods with Shelmerdine alone So fine was the weather that the trees stretched their branches motionless above them and if a leaf fell it fell spotted red and gold so slowly that one could watch it for half an hour fluttering and falling till it came to rest at last on Orlandos foot
Tell me Mar she would say and here it must be explained that when she called him by the first syllable of his first name she was in a dreamy amorous acquiescent mood domestic languid a little as if spiced logs were burning and it was evening yet not time to dress and a thought wet perhaps outside enough to make the leaves glisten but a nightingale might be singing even so among the azaleas two or three dogs barking at distant farms a cock crowingall of which the reader should imagine in her voiceTell me Mar she would say about Cape Horn Then Shelmerdine would make a little model on the ground of the Cape with twigs and dead leaves and an empty snail shell or two
Heres the north he would say Theres the south The winds coming from hereabouts Now the brig is sailing due west weve just lowered the topboom mizzen and so you seehere where this bit of grass is she enters the current which youll find markedwheres my map and compasses Bosun Ah thanks thatll do where the snail shell is The current catches her on the starboard side so we must rig the jibboom or we shall be carried to the larboard which is where that beech leaf isfor you must understand my dear and so he would go on and she would listen to every word interpreting them rightly so as to see that is to say without his having to tell her the phosphorescence on the waves the icicles clanking in the shrouds how he went to the top of the mast in a gale there reflected on the destiny of man came down again had a whisky and soda went on shore was trapped by a black woman repented reasoned it out read Pascal determined to write philosophy bought a monkey debated the true end of life decided in favour of Cape Horn and so on All this and a thousand other things she understood him to say and so when she replied Yes negresses are seductive arent they he having told her that the supply of biscuits now gave out he was surprised and delighted to find how well she had taken his meaning
Are you positive you arent a man he would ask anxiously and she would echo
Can it be possible youre not a woman and then they must put it to the proof without more ado For each was so surprised at the quickness of the others sympathy and it was to each such a revelation that a woman could be as tolerant and freespoken as a man and a man as strange and subtle as a woman that they had to put the matter to the proof at once
And so they would go on talking or rather understanding which has become the main art of speech in an age when words are growing daily so scanty in comparison with ideas that the biscuits ran out has to stand for kissing a negress in the dark when one has just read Bishop Berkeleys philosophy for the tenth time And from this it follows that only the most profound masters of style can tell the truth and when one meets a simple onesyllable writer one may conclude without any doubt at all that the poor man is lying
So they would talk and then when her feet were fairly covered with spotted autumn leaves Orlando would rise and stroll away into the heart of the woods in solitude leaving Bonthrop sitting there among the snail shells making models of Cape Horn Bonthrop she would say Im off and when she called him by his second name Bonthrop it should signify to the reader that she was in a solitary mood felt them both as specks on a desert was desirous only of meeting death by herself for people die daily die at dinner tables or like this out of doors in the autumn woods and with the bonfires blazing and Lady Palmerston or Lady Derby asking her out every night to dinner the desire for death would overcome her and so saying Bonthrop she said in effect Im dead and pushed her way as a spirit might through the spectrepale beech trees and so oared herself deep into solitude as if the little flicker of noise and movement were over and she were free now to take her wayall of which the reader should hear in her voice when she said Bonthrop and should also add the better to illumine the word that for him too the same word signified mystically separation and isolation and the disembodied pacing the deck of his brig in unfathomable seas
After some hours of death suddenly a jay shrieked Shelmerdine and stooping she picked up one of those autumn crocuses which to some people signify that very word and put it with the jays feather that came tumbling blue through the beech woods in her breast Then she called Shelmerdine and the word went shooting this way and that way through the woods and struck him where he sat making models out of snail shells in the grass He saw her and heard her coming to him with the crocus and the jays feather in her breast and cried Orlando which meant and it must be remembered that when bright colours like blue and yellow mix themselves in our eyes some of it rubs off on our thoughts) first the bowing and swaying of bracken as if something were breaking through which proved to be a ship in full sail heaving and tossing a little dreamily rather as if she had a whole year of summer days to make her voyage in and so the ship bears down heaving this way heaving that way nobly indolently and rides over the crest of this wave and sinks into the hollow of that one and so suddenly stands over you who are in a little cockle shell of a boat looking up at her with all her sails quivering and then behold they drop all of a heap on deckas Orlando dropped now into the grass beside him
Eight or nine days had been spent thus but on the tenth which was the 26th of October Orlando was lying in the bracken while Shelmerdine recited Shelley whose entire works he had by heart when a leaf which had started to fall slowly enough from a treetop whipped briskly across Orlandos foot A second leaf followed and then a third Orlando shivered and turned pale It was the wind Shelmerdinebut it would be more proper now to call him Bonthropleapt to his feet
The wind he cried
Together they ran through the woods the wind plastering them with leaves as they ran to the great court and through it and the little courts frightened servants leaving their brooms and their saucepans to follow after till they reached the Chapel and there a scattering of lights was lit as fast as could be one knocking over this bench another snuffing out that taper Bells were rung People were summoned At length there was Mr Dupper catching at the ends of his white tie and asking where was the prayer book And they thrust Queen Marys prayer book in his hands and he searched hastily fluttering the pages and said Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine and Lady Orlando kneel down and they knelt down and now they were bright and now they were dark as the light and shadow came flying helterskelter through the painted windows and among the banging of innumerable doors and a sound like brass pots beating the organ sounded its growl coming loud and faint alternately and Mr Dupper who was grown a very old man tried now to raise his voice above the uproar and could not be heard and then all was quiet for a moment and one wordit might be the jaws of deathrang out clear while all the estate servants kept pressing in with rakes and whips still in their hands to listen and some sang loud and others prayed and now a bird was dashed against the pane and now there was a clap of thunder so that no one heard the word Obey spoken or saw except as a golden flash the ring pass from hand to hand All was movement and confusion And up they rose with the organ booming and the lightning playing and the rain pouring and the Lady Orlando with her ring on her finger went out into the court in her thin dress and held the swinging stirrup for the horse was bitted and bridled and the foam was still on his flank for her husband to mount which he did with one bound and the horse leapt forward and Orlando standing there cried out Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine and he answered her Orlando and the words went dashing and circling like wild hawks together among the belfries and higher and higher further and further faster and faster they circled till they crashed and fell in a shower of fragments to the ground and she went in
CHAPTER 6
Orlando went indoors It was completely still It was very silent There was the ink pot there was the pen there was the manuscript of her poem broken off in the middle of a tribute to eternity She had been about to say when Basket and Bartholomew interrupted with the tea things nothing changes And then in the space of three seconds and a half everything had changedshe had broken her ankle fallen in love married Shelmerdine
There was the wedding ring on her finger to prove it It was true that she had put it there herself before she met Shelmerdine but that had proved worse than useless She now turned the ring round and round with superstitious reverence taking care lest it should slip past the joint of her finger
The wedding ring has to be put on the third finger of the left hand she said like a child cautiously repeating its lesson for it to be of any use at all
She spoke thus aloud and rather more pompously than was her wont as if she wished someone whose good opinion she desired to overhear her Indeed she had in mind now that she was at last able to collect her thoughts the effect that her behaviour would have had upon the spirit of the age She was extremely anxious to be informed whether the steps she had taken in the matter of getting engaged to Shelmerdine and marrying him met with its approval She was certainly feeling more herself Her finger had not tingled once or nothing to count since that night on the moor Yet she could not deny that she had her doubts She was married true but if ones husband was always sailing round Cape Horn was it marriage If one liked him was it marriage If one liked other people was it marriage And finally if one still wished more than anything in the whole world to write poetry was it marriage She had her doubts
But she would put it to the test She looked at the ring She looked at the ink pot Did she dare No she did not But she must No she could not What should she do then Faint if possible But she had never felt better in her life
Hang it all she cried with a touch of her old spirit Here goes
And she plunged her pen neck deep in the ink To her enormous surprise there was no explosion She drew the nib out It was wet but not dripping She wrote The words were a little long in coming but come they did Ah but did they make sense she wondered a panic coming over her lest the pen might have been at some of its involuntary pranks again She read
And then I came to a field where the springing grass
Was dulled by the hanging cups of fritillaries
Sullen and foreignlooking the snaky flower
Scarfed in dull purple like Egyptian girls
As she wrote she felt some power remember we are dealing with the most obscure manifestations of the human spirit reading over her shoulder and when she had written Egyptian girls the power told her to stop Grass the power seemed to say going back with a ruler such as governesses use to the beginning is all right the hanging cups of fritillariesadmirable the snaky flowera thought strong from a ladys pen perhaps but Wordsworth no doubt sanctions it butgirls Are girls necessary You have a husband at the Cape you say Ah well thatll do
And so the spirit passed on
Orlando now performed in spirit for all this took place in spirit a deep obeisance to the spirit of her age such asto compare great things with smalla traveller conscious that he has a bundle of cigars in the corner of his suit case makes to the customs officer who has obligingly made a scribble of white chalk on the lid For she was extremely doubtful whether if the spirit had examined the contents of her mind carefully it would not have found something highly contraband for which she would have had to pay the full fine She had only escaped by the skin of her teeth She had just managed by some dexterous deference to the spirit of the age by putting on a ring and finding a man on a moor by loving nature and being no satirist cynic or psychologistany one of which goods would have been discovered at onceto pass its examination successfully And she heaved a deep sigh of relief as indeed well she might for the transaction between a writer and the spirit of the age is one of infinite delicacy and upon a nice arrangement between the two the whole fortune of his works depends Orlando had so ordered it that she was in an extremely happy position she need neither fight her age nor submit to it she was of it yet remained herself Now therefore she could write and write she did She wrote She wrote She wrote
It was now November After November comes December Then January February March and April After April comes May June July August follow Next is September Then October and so behold here we are back at November again with a whole year accomplished
This method of writing biography though it has its merits is a little bare perhaps and the reader if we go on with it may complain that he could recite the calendar for himself and so save his pocket whatever sum the Hogarth Press may think proper to charge for this book But what can the biographer do when his subject has put him in the predicament into which Orlando has now put us Life it has been agreed by everyone whose opinion is worth consulting is the only fit subject for novelist or biographer life the same authorities have decided has nothing whatever to do with sitting still in a chair and thinking Thought and life are as the poles asunder Thereforesince sitting in a chair and thinking is precisely what Orlando is doing nowthere is nothing for it but to recite the calendar tell ones beads blow ones nose stir the fire look out of the window until she has done Orlando sat so still that you could have heard a pin drop Would indeed that a pin had dropped That would have been life of a kind Or if a butterfly had fluttered through the window and settled on her chair one could write about that Or suppose she had got up and killed a wasp Then at once we could out with our pens and write For there would be blood shed if only the blood of a wasp Where there is blood there is life And if killing a wasp is the merest trifle compared with killing a man still it is a fitter subject for novelist or biographer than this mere woolgathering this thinking this sitting in a chair day in day out with a cigarette and a sheet of paper and a pen and an ink pot If only subjects we might complain for our patience is wearing thin had more consideration for their biographers What is more irritating than to see ones subject on whom one has lavished so much time and trouble slipping out of ones grasp altogether and indulgingwitness her sighs and gasps her flushing her palings her eyes now bright as lamps now haggard as dawnswhat is more humiliating than to see all this dumb show of emotion and excitement gone through before our eyes when we know that what causes itthought and imaginationare of no importance whatsoever
But Orlando was a womanLord Palmerston had just proved it And when we are writing the life of a woman we may it is agreed waive our demand for action and substitute love instead Love the poet has said is womans whole existence. And if we look for a moment at Orlando writing at her table we must admit that never was there a woman more fitted for that calling Surely since she is a woman and a beautiful woman and a woman in the prime of life she will soon give over this pretence of writing and thinking and begin at least to think of a gamekeeper and as long as she thinks of a man nobody objects to a woman thinking And then she will write him a little note and as long as she writes little notes nobody objects to a woman writing either and make an assignation for Sunday dusk and Sunday dusk will come and the gamekeeper will whistle under the windowall of which is of course the very stuff of life and the only possible subject for fiction Surely Orlando must have done one of these things Alasa thousand times alas Orlando did none of them Must it then be admitted that Orlando was one of those monsters of iniquity who do not love She was kind to dogs faithful to friends generosity itself to a dozen starving poets had a passion for poetry But loveas the male novelists define itand who after all speak with greater authorityhas nothing whatever to do with kindness fidelity generosity or poetry Love is slipping off ones petticoat andBut we all know what love is Did Orlando do that Truth compels us to say no she did not If then the subject of ones biography will neither love nor kill but will only think and imagine we may conclude that he or she is no better than a corpse and so leave her
The only resource now left us is to look out of the window There were sparrows there were starlings there were a number of doves and one or two rooks all occupied after their fashion One finds a worm another a snail One flutters to a branch another takes a little run on the turf Then a servant crosses the courtyard wearing a green baize apron Presumably he is engaged on some intrigue with one of the maids in the pantry but as no visible proof is offered us in the courtyard we can but hope for the best and leave it Clouds pass thin or thick with some disturbance of the colour of the grass beneath The sundial registers the hour in its usual cryptic way Ones mind begins tossing up a question or two idly vainly about this same life Life it sings or croons rather like a kettle on a hob Life life what art thou Light or darkness the baize apron of the underfootman or the shadow of the starling on the grass
Let us go then exploring this summer morning when all are adoring the plum blossom and the bee And humming and hawing let us ask of the starling who is a more sociable bird than the lark what he may think on the brink of the dustbin whence he picks among the sticks combings of scullions hair Whats life we ask leaning on the farmyard gate Life Life Life cries the bird as if he had heard and knew precisely what we meant by this bothering prying habit of ours of asking questions indoors and out and peeping and picking at daisies as the way is of writers when they dont know what to say next Then they come here says the bird and ask me what life is Life Life Life
We trudge on then by the moor path to the high brow of the wineblue purpledark hill and fling ourselves down there and dream there and see there a grasshopper carting back to his home in the hollow a straw And he says if sawings like his can be given a name so sacred and tender Lifes labour or so we interpret the whirr of his dustchoked gullet And the ant agrees and the bees but if we lie here long enough to ask the moths when they come at evening stealing among the paler heather bells they will breathe in our ears such wild nonsense as one hears from telegraph wires in snow storms tee hee haw haw Laughter Laughter the moths say
Having asked then of man and of bird and the insects for fish men tell us who have lived in green caves solitary for years to hear them speak never never say and so perhaps know what life ishaving asked them all and grown no wiser but only older and colder for did we not pray once in a way to wrap up in a book something so hard so rare one could swear it was lifes meaning back we must go and say straight out to the reader who waits atiptoe to hear what life isalas we dont know
At this moment but only just in time to save the book from extinction Orlando pushed away her chair stretched her arms dropped her pen came to the window and exclaimed Done
She was almost felled to the ground by the extraordinary sight which now met her eyes There was the garden and some birds The world was going on as usual All the time she was writing the world had continued
And if I were dead it would be just the same she exclaimed
Such was the intensity of her feelings that she could even imagine that she had suffered dissolution and perhaps some faintness actually attacked her For a moment she stood looking at the fair indifferent spectacle with staring eyes At length she was revived in a singular way The manuscript which reposed above her heart began shuffling and beating as if it were a living thing and what was still odder and showed how fine a sympathy was between them Orlando by inclining her head could make out what it was that it was saying It wanted to be read It must be read It would die in her bosom if it were not read For the first time in her life she turned with violence against nature Elkhounds and rose bushes were about her in profusion But elkhounds and rose bushes can none of them read It is a lamentable oversight on the part of Providence which had never struck her before Human beings alone are thus gifted Human beings had become necessary She rang the bell She ordered the carriage to take her to London at once
Theres just time to catch the eleven forty five MLady said Basket Orlando had not yet realized the invention of the steam engine but such was her absorption in the sufferings of a being who though not herself yet entirely depended on her that she saw a railway train for the first time took her seat in a railway carriage and had the rug arranged about her knees without giving a thought to that stupendous invention which had the historians say completely changed the face of Europe in the past twenty years as indeed happens much more frequently than historians suppose She noticed only that it was extremely smutty rattled horribly and the windows stuck Lost in thought she was whirled up to London in something less than an hour and stood on the platform at Charing Cross not knowing where to go
The old house at Blackfriars where she had spent so many pleasant days in the eighteenth century was now sold part to the Salvation Army part to an umbrella factory She had bought another in Mayfair which was sanitary convenient and in the heart of the fashionable world but was it in Mayfair that her poem would be relieved of its desire Pray God she thought remembering the brightness of their ladyships eyes and the symmetry of their lordships legs they havent taken to reading there For that would be a thousand pities Then there was Lady Rs The same sort of talk would be going on there still she had no doubt The gout might have shifted from the Generals left leg to his right perhaps Mr L might have stayed ten days with R instead of T Then Mr Pope would come in Oh but Mr Pope was dead Who were the wits now she wonderedbut that was not a question one could put to a porter and so she moved on Her ears were now distracted by the jingling of innumerable bells on the heads of innumerable horses Fleets of the strangest little boxes on wheels were drawn up by the pavement She walked out into the Strand There the uproar was even worse Vehicles of all sizes drawn by blood horses and by dray horses conveying one solitary dowager or crowded to the top by whiskered men in silk hats were inextricably mixed Carriages carts and omnibuses seemed to her eyes so long used to the look of a plain sheet of foolscap alarmingly at loggerheads and to her ears attuned to a pen scratching the uproar of the street sounded violently and hideously cacophonous Every inch of the pavement was crowded Streams of people threading in and out between their own bodies and the lurching and lumbering traffic with incredible agility poured incessantly east and west Along the edge of the pavement stood men holding out trays of toys and bawled At corners women sat beside great baskets of spring flowers and bawled Boys running in and out of the horses noses holding printed sheets to their bodies bawled too Disaster Disaster At first Orlando supposed that she had arrived at some moment of national crisis but whether it was happy or tragic she could not tell She looked anxiously at peoples faces But that confused her still more Here would come by a man sunk in despair muttering to himself as if he knew some terrible sorrow Past him would nudge a fat jollyfaced fellow shouldering his way along as if it were a festival for all the world Indeed she came to the conclusion that there was neither rhyme nor reason in any of it Each man and each woman was bent on his own affairs And where was she to go
She walked on without thinking up one street and down another by vast windows piled with handbags and mirrors and dressing gowns and flowers and fishing rods and luncheon baskets while stuff of every hue and pattern thickness or thinness was looped and festooned and ballooned across and across Sometimes she passed down avenues of sedate mansions soberly numbered one two three and so on right up to two or three hundred each the copy of the other with two pillars and six steps and a pair of curtains neatly drawn and family luncheons laid on tables and a parrot looking out of one window and a man servant out of another until her mind was dizzied with the monotony Then she came to great open squares with black shiny tightly buttoned statues of fat men in the middle and war horses prancing and columns rising and fountains falling and pigeons fluttering So she walked and walked along pavements between houses until she felt very hungry and something fluttering above her heart rebuked her with having forgotten all about it It was her manuscript The Oak Tree
She was confounded at her own neglect She stopped dead where she stood No coach was in sight The street which was wide and handsome was singularly empty Only one elderly gentleman was approaching There was something vaguely familiar to her in his walk As he came nearer she felt certain that she had met him at some time or other But where Could it be that this gentleman so neat so portly so prosperous with a cane in his hand and a flower in his buttonhole with a pink plump face and combed white moustaches could it be Yes by jove it washer old her very old friend Nick Greene
At the same time he looked at her remembered her recognized her The Lady Orlando he cried sweeping his silk hat almost in the dust
Sir Nicholas she exclaimed For she was made aware intuitively by something in his bearing that the scurrilous pennyaliner who had lampooned her and many another in the time of Queen Elizabeth was now risen in the world and become certainly a Knight and doubtless a dozen other fine things into the bargain
With another bow he acknowledged that her conclusion was correct he was a Knight he was a LittD he was a Professor He was the author of a score of volumes He was in short the most influential critic of the Victorian age
A violent tumult of emotion besieged her at meeting the man who had caused her years ago so much pain Could this be the plaguy restless fellow who had burnt holes in her carpets and toasted cheese in the Italian fireplace and told such merry stories of Marlowe and the rest that they had seen the sun rise nine nights out of ten He was now sprucely dressed in a grey morning suit had a pink flower in his buttonhole and grey suede gloves to match But even as she marvelled he made another bow and asked her whether she would honour him by lunching with him The bow was a thought overdone perhaps but the imitation of fine breeding was creditable She followed him wondering into a superb restaurant all red plush white tablecloths and silver cruets as unlike as could be the old tavern or coffee house with its sanded floor its wooden benches its bowls of punch and chocolate and its broadsheets and spittoons He laid his gloves neatly on the table beside him Still she could hardly believe that he was the same man His nails were clean where they used to be an inch long His chin was shaved where a black beard used to sprout He wore gold sleevelinks where his ragged linen used to dip in the broth It was not indeed until he had ordered the wine which he did with a care that reminded her of his taste in Malmsey long ago that she was convinced he was the same man Ah he said heaving a little sigh which was yet comfortable enough ah my dear lady the great days of literature are over Marlowe Shakespeare Ben Jonsonthose were the giants Dryden Pope Addisonthose were the heroes All all are dead now And whom have they left us Tennyson Browning Carlylehe threw an immense amount of scorn into his voice The truth of it is he said pouring himself a glass of wine that all our young writers are in the pay of the booksellers They turn out any trash that serves to pay their tailors bills It is an age he said helping himself to horsdoeuvres marked by precious conceits and wild experimentsnone of which the Elizabethans would have tolerated for an instant
No my dear lady he continued passing with approval the turbot au gratin which the waiter exhibited for his sanction the great days are over We live in degenerate times We must cherish the past honour those writersthere are still a few left of emwho take antiquity for their model and write not for pay but Here Orlando almost shouted Glawr Indeed she could have sworn that she had heard him say the very same things three hundred years ago The names were different of course but the spirit was the same Nick Greene had not changed for all his knighthood And yet some change there was For while he ran on about taking Addison as ones model it had been Cicero once she thought and lying in bed of a morning which she was proud to think her pension paid quarterly enabled him to do rolling the best works of the best authors round and round on ones tongue for an hour at least before setting pen to paper so that the vulgarity of the present time and the deplorable condition of our native tongue he had lived long in America she believed might be purifiedwhile he ran on in much the same way that Greene had run on three hundred years ago she had time to ask herself how was it then that he had changed He had grown plump but he was a man verging on seventy He had grown sleek literature had been a prosperous pursuit evidently but somehow the old restless uneasy vivacity had gone His stories brilliant as they were were no longer quite so free and easy He mentioned it is true my dear friend Pope or my illustrious friend Addison every other second but he had an air of respectability about him which was depressing and he preferred it seemed to enlighten her about the doings and sayings of her own blood relations rather than tell her as he used to do scandal about the poets
Orlando was unaccountably disappointed She had thought of literature all these years her seclusion her rank her sex must be her excuse as something wild as the wind hot as fire swift as lightning something errant incalculable abrupt and behold literature was an elderly gentleman in a grey suit talking about duchesses The violence of her disillusionment was such that some hook or button fastening the upper part of her dress burst open and out upon the table fell The Oak Tree a poem
A manuscript said Sir Nicholas putting on his gold pincenez How interesting how excessively interesting Permit me to look at it And once more after an interval of some three hundred years Nicholas Greene took Orlandos poem and laying it down among the coffee cups and the liqueur glasses began to read it But now his verdict was very different from what it had been then It reminded him he said as he turned over the pages of Addisons Cato It compared favourably with Thomsons Seasons There was no trace in it he was thankful to say of the modern spirit It was composed with a regard to truth to nature to the dictates of the human heart which was rare indeed in these days of unscrupulous eccentricity It must of course be published instantly
Really Orlando did not know what he meant She had always carried her manuscripts about with her in the bosom of her dress The idea tickled Sir Nicholas considerably
But what about royalties he asked
Orlandos mind flew to Buckingham Palace and some dusky potentates who happened to be staying there
Sir Nicholas was highly diverted He explained that he was alluding to the fact that Messrs here he mentioned a wellknown firm of publishers would be delighted if he wrote them a line to put the book on their list He could probably arrange for a royalty of ten per cent on all copies up to two thousand after that it would be fifteen As for the reviewers he would himself write a line to Mr who was the most influential then a complimentsay a little puff of her own poemsaddressed to the wife of the editor of the never did any harm He would call So he ran on Orlando understood nothing of all this and from old experience did not altogether trust his good nature but there was nothing for it but to submit to what was evidently his wish and the fervent desire of the poem itself So Sir Nicholas made the bloodstained packet into a neat parcel flattened it into his breast pocket lest it should disturb the set of his coat and with many compliments on both sides they parted
Orlando walked up the street Now that the poem was goneand she felt a bare place in her breast where she had been used to carry itshe had nothing to do but reflect upon whatever she likedthe extraordinary chances it might be of the human lot Here she was in St Jamess Street a married woman with a ring on her finger where there had been a coffee house once there was now a restaurant it was about half past three in the afternoon the sun was shining there were three pigeons a mongrel terrier dog two hansom cabs and a barouche landau What then was Life The thought popped into her head violently irrelevantly unless old Greene were somehow the cause of it And it may be taken as a comment adverse or favourable as the reader chooses to consider it upon her relations with her husband who was at the Horn that whenever anything popped violently into her head she went straight to the nearest telegraph office and wired to him There was one as it happened close at hand My God Shel she wired life literature Greene toady here she dropped into a cypher language which they had invented between them so that a whole spiritual state of the utmost complexity might be conveyed in a word or two without the telegraph clerk being any wiser and added the words Rattigan Glumphoboo which summed it up precisely For not only had the events of the morning made a deep impression on her but it cannot have escaped the readers attention that Orlando was growing upwhich is not necessarily growing betterand Rattigan Glumphoboo described a very complicated spiritual statewhich if the reader puts all his intelligence at our service he may discover for himself
There could be no answer to her telegram for some hours indeed it was probable she thought glancing at the sky where the upper clouds raced swiftly past that there was a gale at Cape Horn so that her husband would be at the masthead as likely as not or cutting away some tattered spar or even alone in a boat with a biscuit And so leaving the post office she turned to beguile herself into the next shop which was a shop so common in our day that it needs no description yet to her eyes strange in the extreme a shop where they sold books All her life long Orlando had known manuscripts she had held in her hands the rough brown sheets on which Spenser had written in his little crabbed hand she had seen Shakespeares script and Miltons She owned indeed a fair number of quartos and folios often with a sonnet in her praise in them and sometimes a lock of hair But these innumerable little volumes bright identical ephemeral for they seemed bound in cardboard and printed on tissue paper surprised her infinitely The whole works of Shakespeare cost half a crown and could be put in your pocket One could hardly read them indeed the print was so small but it was a marvel none the less Worksthe works of every writer she had known or heard of and many more stretched from end to end of the long shelves On tables and chairs more works were piled and tumbled and these she saw turning a page or two were often works about other works by Sir Nicholas and a score of others whom in her ignorance she supposed since they were bound and printed to be very great writers too So she gave an astounding order to the bookseller to send her everything of any importance in the shop and left
She turned into Hyde Park which she had known of old beneath that cleft tree she remembered the Duke of Hamilton fell run through the body by Lord Mohun and her lips which are often to blame in the matter began framing the words of her telegram into a senseless singsong life literature Greene toady Rattigan Glumphoboo so that several park keepers looked at her with suspicion and were only brought to a favourable opinion of her sanity by noticing the pearl necklace which she wore She had carried off a sheaf of papers and critical journals from the book shop and at length flinging herself on her elbow beneath a tree she spread these pages round her and did her best to fathom the noble art of prose composition as these masters practised it For still the old credulity was alive in her even the blurred type of a weekly newspaper had some sanctity in her eyes So she read lying on her elbow an article by Sir Nicholas on the collected works of a man she had once knownJohn Donne But she had pitched herself without knowing it not far from the Serpentine The barking of a thousand dogs sounded in her ears Carriage wheels rushed ceaselessly in a circle Leaves sighed overhead Now and again a braided skirt and a pair of tight scarlet trousers crossed the grass within a few steps of her Once a gigantic rubber ball bounced on the newspaper Violets oranges reds and blues broke through the interstices of the leaves and sparkled in the emerald on her finger She read a sentence and looked up at the sky she looked up at the sky and looked down at the newspaper Life Literature One to be made into the other But how monstrously difficult Forhere came by a pair of tight scarlet trousershow would Addison have put that Here came two dogs dancing on their hind legs How would Lamb have described that For reading Sir Nicholas and his friends as she did in the intervals of looking about her she somehow got the impressionhere she rose and walkedthey made one feelit was an extremely uncomfortable feelingone must never never say what one thought She stood on the banks of the Serpentine It was a bronze colour spiderthin boats were skimming from side to side They made one feel she continued that one must always always write like somebody else The tears formed themselves in her eyes For really she thought pushing a little boat off with her toe I dont think I could here the whole of Sir Nicholas article came before her as articles do ten minutes after they are read with the look of his room his head his cat his writingtable and the time of the day thrown in I dont think I could she continued considering the article from this point of view sit in a study no its not a study its a mouldy kind of drawingroom all day long and talk to pretty young men and tell them little anecdotes which they mustnt repeat about what Tupper said about Smiles and then she continued weeping bitterly theyre all so manly and then I do detest Duchesses and I dont like cake and though Im spiteful enough I could never learn to be as spiteful as all that so how can I be a critic and write the best English prose of my time Damn it all she exclaimed launching a penny steamer so vigorously that the poor little boat almost sank in the bronzecoloured waves
Now the truth is that when one has been in a state of mind as nurses call itand the tears still stood in Orlandos eyesthe thing one is looking at becomes not itself, but another thing which is bigger and much more important and yet remains the same thing If one looks at the Serpentine in this state of mind the waves soon become just as big as the waves on the Atlantic the toy boats become indistinguishable from ocean liners So Orlando mistook the toy boat for her husbands brig and the wave she had made with her toe for a mountain of water off Cape Horn and as she watched the toy boat climb the ripple she thought she saw Bonthrops ship climb up and up a glassy wall up and up it went and a white crest with a thousand deaths in it arched over it and through the thousand deaths it went and disappearedIts sunk she cried out in an agonyand then behold there it was again sailing along safe and sound among the ducks on the other side of the Atlantic
Ecstasy she cried Ecstasy Wheres the post office she wondered For I must wire at once to Shel and tell him And repeating A toy boat on the Serpentine and Ecstasy alternately for the thoughts were interchangeable and meant exactly the same thing she hurried towards Park Lane
A toy boat a toy boat a toy boat she repeated thus enforcing upon herself the fact that it is not articles by Nick Greene on John Donne nor eighthour bills nor covenants nor factory acts that matter its something useless sudden violent something that costs a life red blue purple a spirit a splash like those hyacinths she was passing a fine bed of them free from taint dependence soilure of humanity or care for ones kind something rash ridiculous like my hyacinth husband I mean Bonthrop thats what it isa toy boat on the Serpentine ecstasyits ecstasy that matters Thus she spoke aloud waiting for the carriages to pass at Stanhope Gate for the consequence of not living with ones husband except when the wind is sunk is that one talks nonsense aloud in Park Lane It would no doubt have been different had she lived all the year round with him as Queen Victoria recommended As it was the thought of him would come upon her in a flash She found it absolutely necessary to speak to him instantly She did not care in the least what nonsense it might make or what dislocation it might inflict on the narrative Nick Greenes article had plunged her in the depths of despair the toy boat had raised her to the heights of joy So she repeated Ecstasy ecstasy as she stood waiting to cross
But the traffic was heavy that spring afternoon and kept her standing there repeating ecstasy ecstasy or a toy boat on the Serpentine while the wealth and power of England sat as if sculptured in hat and cloak in fourinhand victoria and barouche landau It was as if a golden river had coagulated and massed itself in golden blocks across Park Lane The ladies held cardcases between their fingers the gentlemen balanced goldmounted canes between their knees She stood there gazing admiring awestruck One thought only disturbed her a thought familiar to all who behold great elephants or whales of an incredible magnitude and that is how do these leviathans to whom obviously stress change and activity are repugnant propagate their kind Perhaps Orlando thought looking at the stately still faces their time of propagation is over this is the fruit this is the consummation What she now beheld was the triumph of an age Portly and splendid there they sat But now the policeman let fall his hand the stream became liquid the massive conglomeration of splendid objects moved dispersed and disappeared into Piccadilly
So she crossed Park Lane and went to her house in Curzon Street where when the meadowsweet blew there she could remember curlew calling and one very old man with a gun
She could remember she thought stepping across the threshold of her house how Lord Chesterfield had saidbut her memory was checked Her discreet eighteenthcentury hall where she could see Lord Chesterfield putting his hat down here and his coat down there with an elegance of deportment which it was a pleasure to watch was now completely littered with parcels While she had been sitting in Hyde Park the bookseller had delivered her order and the house was crammedthere were parcels slipping down the staircasewith the whole of Victorian literature done up in grey paper and neatly tied with string She carried as many of these packets as she could to her room ordered footmen to bring the others and rapidly cutting innumerable strings was soon surrounded by innumerable volumes
Accustomed to the little literatures of the sixteenth seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Orlando was appalled by the consequences of her order For of course to the Victorians themselves Victorian literature meant not merely four great names separate and distinct but four great names sunk and embedded in a mass of Alexander Smiths Dixons Blacks Milmans Buckles Taines Paynes Tuppers Jamesonsall vocal clamorous prominent and requiring as much attention as anybody else Orlandos reverence for print had a tough job set before it but drawing her chair to the window to get the benefit of what light might filter between the high houses of Mayfair she tried to come to a conclusion
And now it was clear that there are only two ways of coming to a conclusion upon Victorian literatureone is to write it out in sixty volumes octavo the other is to squeeze it into six lines of the length of this one Of the two courses economy since time runs short leads us to choose the second and so we proceed Orlando then came to the conclusion opening halfadozen books that it was very odd that there was not a single dedication to a nobleman among them next turning over a vast pile of memoirs that several of these writers had family trees half as high as her own next that it would be impolitic in the extreme to wrap a tenpound note round the sugar tongs when Miss Christina Rossetti came to tea next here were halfadozen invitations to celebrate centenaries by dining that literature since it ate all these dinners must be growing very corpulent next she was invited to a score of lectures on the Influence of this upon that the Classical revival the Romantic survival and other titles of the same engaging kind that literature since it listened to all these lectures must be growing very dry next here she attended a reception given by a peeress that literature since it wore all those fur tippets must be growing very respectable next here she visited Carlyles soundproof room at Chelsea that genius since it needed all this coddling must be growing very delicate and so at last she reached her final conclusion which was of the highest importance but which as we have already much overpassed our limit of six lines we must omit
Orlando having come to this conclusion stood looking out of the window for a considerable space of time For when anybody comes to a conclusion it is as if they had tossed the ball over the net and must wait for the unseen antagonist to return it to them What would be sent her next from the colourless sky above Chesterfield House she wondered And with her hands clasped she stood for a considerable space of time wondering Suddenly she startedand here we could only wish that as on a former occasion Purity Chastity and Modesty would push the door ajar and provide at least a breathing space in which we could think how to wrap up what now has to be told delicately as a biographer should But no Having thrown their white garment at the naked Orlando and seen it fall short by several inches these ladies had given up all intercourse with her these many years and were now otherwise engaged Is nothing then going to happen this pale March morning to mitigate to veil to cover to conceal to shroud this undeniable event whatever it may be For after giving that sudden violent start Orlandobut Heaven be praised at this very moment there struck up outside one of these frail reedy fluty jerky oldfashioned barrelorgans which are still sometimes played by Italian organgrinders in back streets Let us accept the intervention humble though it is as if it were the music of the spheres and allow it with all its gasps and groans to fill this page with sound until the moment comes when it is impossible to deny its coming which the footman has seen coming and the maidservant and the reader will have to see too for Orlando herself is clearly unable to ignore it any longerlet the barrelorgan sound and transport us on thought which is no more than a little boat when music sounds tossing on the waves on thought which is of all carriers the most clumsy the most erratic over the roof tops and the back gardens where washing is hanging towhat is this place Do you recognize the Green and in the middle the steeple and the gate with a lion couchant on either side Oh yes it is Kew Well Kew will do So here we are at Kew and I will show you today the second of March under the plum tree a grape hyacinth and a crocus and a bud too on the almond tree so that to walk there is to be thinking of bulbs hairy and red thrust into the earth in October flowering now and to be dreaming of more than can rightly be said and to be taking from its case a cigarette or cigar even and to be flinging a cloak under as the rhyme requires an oak and there to sit waiting the kingfisher which it is said was seen once to cross in the evening from bank to bank
Wait Wait The kingfisher comes the kingfisher comes not
Behold meanwhile the factory chimneys and their smoke behold the city clerks flashing by in their outrigger Behold the old lady taking her dog for a walk and the servant girl wearing her new hat for the first time not at the right angle Behold them all Though Heaven has mercifully decreed that the secrets of all hearts are hidden so that we are lured on for ever to suspect something perhaps that does not exist; still through our cigarette smoke we see blaze up and salute the splendid fulfilment of natural desires for a hat for a boat for a rat in a ditch as once one saw blazingsuch silly hops and skips the mind takes when it slops like this all over the saucer and the barrelorgan playssaw blazing a fire in a field against minarets near Constantinople
Hail natural desire Hail happiness divine happiness and pleasure of all sorts flowers and wine though one fades and the other intoxicates and halfcrown tickets out of London on Sundays and singing in a dark chapel hymns about death and anything anything that interrupts and confounds the tapping of typewriters and filing of letters and forging of links and chains binding the Empire together Hail even the crude red bows on shop girls lips as if Cupid very clumsily dipped his thumb in red ink and scrawled a token in passing Hail happiness kingfisher flashing from bank to bank and all fulfilment of natural desire whether it is what the male novelist says it is or prayer or denial hail in whatever form it comes and may there be more forms and stranger For dark flows the streamwould it were true as the rhyme hints like a dreambut duller and worser than that is our usual lot without dreams but alive smug fluent habitual under trees whose shade of an olive green drowns the blue of the wing of the vanishing bird when he darts of a sudden from bank to bank
Hail happiness then and after happiness hail not those dreams which bloat the sharp image as spotted mirrors do the face in a countryinn parlour dreams which splinter the whole and tear us asunder and wound us and split us apart in the night when we would sleep but sleep sleep so deep that all shapes are ground to dust of infinite softness water of dimness inscrutable and there folded shrouded like a mummy like a moth prone let us lie on the sand at the bottom of sleep
But wait but wait we are not going this time visiting the blind land Blue like a match struck right in the ball of the innermost eye he flies burns bursts the seal of sleep the kingfisher so that now floods back refluent like a tide the red thick stream of life again bubbling dripping and we rise and our eyes for how handy a rhyme is to pass us safe over the awkward transition from death to life fall onhere the barrelorgan stops playing abruptly
Its a very fine boy MLady said Mrs Banting the midwife putting her firstborn child into Orlandos arms In other words Orlando was safely delivered of a son on Thursday March the 20th at three oclock in the morning
Once more Orlando stood at the window but let the reader take courage nothing of the same sort is going to happen today which is not by any means the same day Nofor if we look out of the window as Orlando was doing at the moment we shall see that Park Lane itself has considerably changed Indeed one might stand there ten minutes or more as Orlando stood now without seeing a single barouche landau Look at that she exclaimed some days later when an absurd truncated carriage without any horses began to glide about of its own accord A carriage without any horses indeed She was called away just as she said that but came back again after a time and had another look out of the window It was odd sort of weather nowadays The sky itself she could not help thinking had changed It was no longer so thick so watery so prismatic now that King Edwardsee there he was stepping out of his neat brougham to go and visit a certain lady oppositehad succeeded Queen Victoria The clouds had shrunk to a thin gauze the sky seemed made of metal which in hot weather tarnished verdigris copper colour or orange as metal does in a fog It was a little alarmingthis shrinkage Everything seemed to have shrunk Driving past Buckingham Palace last night there was not a trace of that vast erection which she had thought everlasting top hats widows weeds trumpets telescopes wreaths all had vanished and left not a stain not a puddle even on the pavement But it was nowafter another interval she had come back again to her favourite station in the windownow in the evening that the change was most remarkable Look at the lights in the houses At a touch a whole room was lit hundreds of rooms were lit and one was precisely the same as the other One could see everything in the little squareshaped boxes there was no privacy none of those lingering shadows and odd corners that there used to be none of those women in aprons carrying wobbly lamps which they put down carefully on this table and on that At a touch the whole room was bright And the sky was bright all night long and the pavements were bright everything was bright She came back again at midday How narrow women have grown lately They looked like stalks of corn straight shining identical And mens faces were as bare as the palm of ones hand The dryness of the atmosphere brought out the colour in everything and seemed to stiffen the muscles of the cheeks It was harder to cry now Water was hot in two seconds Ivy had perished or been scraped off houses Vegetables were less fertile families were much smaller Curtains and covers had been frizzled up and the walls were bare so that new brilliantly coloured pictures of real things like streets umbrellas apples were hung in frames or painted upon the wood There was something definite and distinct about the age which reminded her of the eighteenth century except that there was a distraction a desperationas she was thinking this the immensely long tunnel in which she seemed to have been travelling for hundreds of years widened the light poured in her thoughts became mysteriously tightened and strung up as if a piano tuner had put his key in her back and stretched the nerves very taut at the same time her hearing quickened she could hear every whisper and crackle in the room so that the clock ticking on the mantelpiece beat like a hammer And so for some seconds the light went on becoming brighter and brighter and she saw everything more and more clearly and the clock ticked louder and louder until there was a terrific explosion right in her ear Orlando leapt as if she had been violently struck on the head Ten times she was struck In fact it was ten oclock in the morning It was the eleventh of October It was 1928 It was the present moment
No one need wonder that Orlando started pressed her hand to her heart and turned pale For what more terrifying revelation can there be than that it is the present moment That we survive the shock at all is only possible because the past shelters us on one side and the future on another But we have no time now for reflections Orlando was terribly late already She ran downstairs she jumped into her motorcar she pressed the self-starter and was off Vast blue blocks of building rose into the air the red cowls of chimneys were spotted irregularly across the sky the road shone like silverheaded nails omnibuses bore down upon her with sculptured whitefaced drivers she noticed sponges birdcages boxes of green American cloth But she did not allow these sights to sink into her mind even the fraction of an inch as she crossed the narrow plank of the present lest she should fall into the raging torrent beneath Why dont you look where youre going toPut your hand out cant youthat was all she said sharply as if the words were jerked out of her For the streets were immensely crowded people crossed without looking where they were going People buzzed and hummed round the plateglass windows within which one could see a glow of red a blaze of yellow as if they were bees Orlando thoughtbut her thought that they were bees was violently snipped off and she saw regaining perspective with one flick of her eye that they were bodies Why dont you look where youre going she snapped out
At last however she drew up at Marshall Snelgroves and went into the shop Shade and scent enveloped her The present fell from her like drops of scalding water Light swayed up and down like thin stuffs puffed out by a summer breeze She took a list from her bag and began reading in a curious stiff voice at first as if she were holding the wordsboys boots bath salts sardinesunder a tap of manycoloured water She watched them change as the light fell on them Bath and boots became blunt obtuse sardines serrated itself like a saw So she stood in the groundfloor department of Messrs Marshall Snelgrove looked this way and that snuffed this smell and that and thus wasted some seconds Then she got into the lift for the good reason that the door stood open and was shot smoothly upwards The very fabric of life now she thought as she rose is magic In the eighteenth century we knew how everything was done but here I rise through the air I listen to voices in America I see men flyingbut how its done I cant even begin to wonder So my belief in magic returns Now the lift gave a little jerk as it stopped at the first floor and she had a vision of innumerable coloured stuffs flaunting in a breeze from which came distinct strange smells and each time the lift stopped and flung its doors open there was another slice of the world displayed with all the smells of that world clinging to it She was reminded of the river off Wapping in the time of Elizabeth where the treasure ships and the merchant ships used to anchor How richly and curiously they had smelt How well she remembered the feel of rough rubies running through her fingers when she dabbled them in a treasure sack And then lying with Sukeyor whatever her name wasand having Cumberlands lantern flashed on them The Cumberlands had a house in Portland Place now and she had lunched with them the other day and ventured a little joke with the old man about almshouses in the Sheen Road He had winked But here as the lift could go no higher she must get outHeaven knows into what department as they called it She stood still to consult her shopping list but was blessed if she could see as the list bade her bath salts or boys boots anywhere about And indeed she was about to descend again without buying anything but was saved from that outrage by saying aloud automatically the last item on her list which happened to be sheets for a double bed
Sheets for a double bed she said to a man at a counter and by a dispensation of Providence it was sheets that the man at that particular counter happened to sell For Grimsditch no Grimsditch was dead Bartholomew no Bartholomew was dead Louise thenLouise had come to her in a great taking the other day for she had found a hole in the bottom of the sheet in the royal bed Many kings and queens had slept thereElizabeth James Charles George Victoria Edward no wonder the sheet had a hole in it But Louise was positive she knew who had done it It was the Prince Consort
Sale bosch she said for there had been another war this time against the Germans
Sheets for a double bed Orlando repeated dreamily for a double bed with a silver counterpane in a room fitted in a taste which she now thought perhaps a little vulgarall in silver but she had furnished it when she had a passion for that metal While the man went to get sheets for a double bed she took out a little lookingglass and a powder puff Women were not nearly as roundabout in their ways she thought powdering herself with the greatest unconcern as they had been when she herself first turned woman and lay on the deck of the Enamoured Lady She gave her nose the right tint deliberately She never touched her cheeks Honestly though she was now thirtysix she scarcely looked a day older She looked just as pouting as sulky as handsome as rosy like a millioncandled Christmas tree Sasha had said as she had done that day on the ice when the Thames was frozen and they had gone skating
The best Irish linen Maam said the shopman spreading the sheets on the counterand they had met an old woman picking up sticks Here as she was fingering the linen abstractedly one of the swingdoors between the departments opened and let through perhaps from the fancygoods department a whiff of scent waxen tinted as if from pink candles and the scent curved like a shell round a figurewas it a boys or was it a girlsyoung slender seductivea girl by God furred pearled in Russian trousers but faithless faithless
Faithless cried Orlando the man had gone and all the shop seemed to pitch and toss with yellow water and far off she saw the masts of the Russian ship standing out to sea and then miraculously perhaps the door opened again the conch which the scent had made became a platform a dais off which stepped a fat furred woman marvellously well preserved seductive diademed a Grand Dukes mistress she who leaning over the banks of the Volga eating sandwiches had watched men drown and began walking down the shop towards her
Oh Sasha Orlando cried Really she was shocked that she should have come to this she had grown so fat so lethargic and she bowed her head over the linen so that this apparition of a grey woman in fur and a girl in Russian trousers with all these smells of wax candles white flowers and old ships that it brought with it might pass behind her back unseen
Any napkins towels dusters today Maam the shopman persisted And it is enormously to the credit of the shopping list which Orlando now consulted that she was able to reply with every appearance of composure that there was only one thing in the world she wanted and that was bath salts which was in another department
But descending in the lift againso insidious is the repetition of any sceneshe was again sunk far beneath the present moment and thought when the lift bumped on the ground that she heard a pot broken against a river bank As for finding the right department whatever it might be she stood engrossed among the handbags deaf to the suggestions of all the polite black combed sprightly shop assistants who descending as they did equally and some of them perhaps as proudly even from such depths of the past as she did chose to let down the impervious screen of the present so that today they appeared shop assistants in Marshall Snelgroves merely Orlando stood there hesitating Through the great glass doors she could see the traffic in Oxford Street Omnibus seemed to pile itself upon omnibus and then to jerk itself apart So the ice blocks had pitched and tossed that day on the Thames An old noblemanin furred slippers had sat astride one of them There he wentshe could see him nowcalling down maledictions upon the Irish rebels He had sunk there where her car stood
Time has passed over me she thought trying to collect herself this is the oncome of middle age How strange it is Nothing is any longer one thing I take up a handbag and I think of an old bumboat woman frozen in the ice Someone lights a pink candle and I see a girl in Russian trousers When I step out of doorsas I do now here she stepped on to the pavement of Oxford Street what is it that I taste Little herbs I hear goat bells I see mountains Turkey India Persia Her eyes filled with tears
That Orlando had gone a little too far from the present moment will perhaps strike the reader who sees her now preparing to get into her motorcar with her eyes full of tears and visions of Persian mountains And indeed it cannot be denied that the most successful practitioners of the art of life often unknown people by the way somehow contrive to synchronize the sixty or seventy different times which beat simultaneously in every normal human system so that when eleven strikes all the rest chime in unison and the present is neither a violent disruption nor completely forgotten in the past Of them we can justly say that they live precisely the sixtyeight or seventytwo years allotted them on the tombstone Of the rest some we know to be dead though they walk among us some are not yet born though they go through the forms of life others are hundreds of years old though they call themselves thirtysix The true length of a persons life whatever the Dictionary of National Biography may say is always a matter of dispute For it is a difficult businessthis timekeeping nothing more quickly disorders it than contact with any of the arts and it may have been her love of poetry that was to blame for making Orlando lose her shopping list and start home without the sardines the bath salts or the boots Now as she stood with her hand on the door of her motorcar the present again struck her on the head Eleven times she was violently assaulted
Confound it all she cried for it is a great shock to the nervous system hearing a clock strikeso much so that for some time now there is nothing to be said of her save that she frowned slightly changed her gears admirably and cried out as before Look where youre going Dont you know your own mind Why didnt you say so then while the motorcar shot swung squeezed and slid for she was an expert driver down Regent Street down Haymarket down Northumberland Avenue over Westminster Bridge to the left straight on to the right straight on again
The Old Kent Road was very crowded on Thursday the eleventh of October 1928 People spilt off the pavement There were women with shopping bags Children ran out There were sales at drapers shops Streets widened and narrowed Long vistas steadily shrunk together Here was a market Here a funeral Here a procession with banners upon which was written RaUn but what else Meat was very red Butchers stood at the door Women almost had their heels sliced off Amor Vin that was over a porch A woman looked out of a bedroom window profoundly contemplative and very still Applejohn and Applebed Undert Nothing could be seen whole or read from start to finish What was seen begunlike two friends starting to meet each other across the streetwas never seen ended After twenty minutes the body and mind were like scraps of torn paper tumbling from a sack and indeed the process of motoring fast out of London so much resembles the chopping up small of identity which precedes unconsciousness and perhaps death itself that it is an open question in what sense Orlando can be said to have existed at the present moment Indeed we should have given her over for a person entirely disassembled were it not that here at last one green screen was held out on the right against which the little bits of paper fell more slowly and then another was held out on the left so that one could see the separate scraps now turning over by themselves in the air and then green screens were held continuously on either side so that her mind regained the illusion of holding things within itself and she saw a cottage a farmyard and four cows all precisely lifesize
When this happened Orlando heaved a sigh of relief lit a cigarette and puffed for a minute or two in silence Then she called hesitatingly as if the person she wanted might not be there Orlando For if there are at a venture seventysix different times all ticking in the mind at once how many different people are there notHeaven help usall having lodgment at one time or another in the human spirit Some say two thousand and fiftytwo So that it is the most usual thing in the world for a person to call directly they are alone Orlando if that is ones name meaning by that Come come Im sick to death of this particular self I want another Hence the astonishing changes we see in our friends But it is not altogether plain sailing either for though one may say as Orlando said being out in the country and needing another self presumably Orlando still the Orlando she needs may not come these selves of which we are built up one on top of another as plates are piled on a waiters hand have attachments elsewhere sympathies little constitutions and rights of their own call them what you will and for many of these things there is no name so that one will only come if it is raining another in a room with green curtains another when Mrs Jones is not there another if you can promise it a glass of wineand so on for everybody can multiply from his own experience the different terms which his different selves have made with himand some are too wildly ridiculous to be mentioned in print at all
So Orlando at the turn by the barn called Orlando with a note of interrogation in her voice and waited Orlando did not come
All right then Orlando said with the good humour people practise on these occasions and tried another For she had a great variety of selves to call upon far more than we have been able to find room for since a biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves whereas a person may well have as many thousand Choosing then only those selves we have found room for Orlando may now have called on the boy who cut the niggers head down the boy who strung it up again the boy who sat on the hill the boy who saw the poet the boy who handed the Queen the bowl of rose water or she may have called upon the young man who fell in love with Sasha or upon the Courtier or upon the Ambassador or upon the Soldier or upon the Traveller or she may have wanted the woman to come to her the Gipsy the Fine Lady the Hermit the girl in love with life the Patroness of Letters the woman who called Mar meaning hot baths and evening fires or Shelmerdine meaning crocuses in autumn woods or Bonthrop meaning the death we die daily or all three togetherwhich meant more things than we have space to write outall were different and she may have called upon any one of them
Perhaps but what appeared certain for we are now in the region of perhaps and appears was that the one she needed most kept aloof for she was to hear her talk changing her selves as quickly as she drovethere was a new one at every corneras happens when for some unaccountable reason the conscious self which is the uppermost and has the power to desire wishes to be nothing but one self This is what some people call the true self and it is they say compact of all the selves we have it in us to be commanded and locked up by the Captain self the Key self which amalgamates and controls them all Orlando was certainly seeking this self as the reader can judge from overhearing her talk as she drove and if it is rambling talk disconnected trivial dull and sometimes unintelligible it is the readers fault for listening to a lady talking to herself we only copy her words as she spoke them adding in brackets which self in our opinion is speaking but in this we may well be wrong
What then Who then she said Thirtysix in a motorcar a woman Yes but a million other things as well A snob am I The garter in the hall The leopards My ancestors Proud of them Yes Greedy luxurious vicious Am I here a new self came in Dont care a damn if I am Truthful I think so Generous Oh but that dont count here a new self came in Lying in bed of a morning listening to the pigeons on fine linen silver dishes wine maids footmen Spoilt Perhaps Too many things for nothing Hence my books here she mentioned fifty classical titles which represented so we think the early romantic works that she tore up Facile glib romantic But here another self came in a duffer a fumbler More clumsy I couldnt be Andandhere she hesitated for a word and if we suggest Love we may be wrong but certainly she laughed and blushed and then cried out A toad set in emeralds Harry the Archduke Bluebottles on the ceiling here another self came in But Nell Kit Sasha she was sunk in gloom tears actually shaped themselves and she had long given over crying Trees she said Here another self came in I love trees she was passing a clump growing there a thousand years And barns she passed a tumbledown barn at the edge of the road And sheep dogs here one came trotting across the road She carefully avoided it And the night But people here another self came in People She repeated it as a question I dont know Chattering spiteful always telling lies Here she turned into the High Street of her native town which was crowded for it was market day with farmers and shepherds and old women with hens in baskets I like peasants I understand crops But here another self came skipping over the top of her mind like the beam from a lighthouse Fame She laughed Fame Seven editions A prize Photographs in the evening papers here she alluded to the Oak Tree and The Burdett Coutts Memorial Prize which she had won and we must snatch space to remark how discomposing it is for her biographer that this culmination to which the whole book moved this peroration with which the book was to end should be dashed from us on a laugh casually like this but the truth is that when we write of a woman everything is out of placeculminations and perorations the accent never falls where it does with a man Fame she repeated A poeta charlatan both every morning as regularly as the post comes in To dine to meet to meet to dine famefame She had here to slow down to pass through the crowd of market people But no one noticed her A porpoise in a fishmongers shop attracted far more attention than a lady who had won a prize and might had she chosen have worn three coronets one on top of another on her brow Driving very slowly she now hummed as if it were part of an old song With my guineas Ill buy flowering trees flowering trees flowering trees and walk among my flowering trees and tell my sons what fame is So she hummed and now all her words began to sag here and there like a barbaric necklace of heavy beads And walk among my flowering trees she sang accenting the words strongly and see the moon rise slow the waggons go Here she stopped short and looked ahead of her intently at the bonnet of the car in profound meditation
He sat at Twitchetts table she mused with a dirty ruff onWas it old Mr Baker come to measure the timber Or was it Shpre for when we speak names we deeply reverence to ourselves we never speak them whole She gazed for ten minutes ahead of her letting the car come almost to a standstill
Haunted she cried suddenly pressing the accelerator Haunted ever since I was a child There flies the wild goose It flies past the window out to sea Up I jumped she gripped the steeringwheel tighter and stretched after it But the goose flies too fast Ive seen it heretherethereEngland Persia Italy Always it flies fast out to sea and always I fling after it words like nets here she flung her hand out which shrivel as Ive seen nets shrivel drawn on deck with only seaweed in them and sometimes theres an inch of silversix wordsin the bottom of the net But never the great fish who lives in the coral groves Here she bent her head pondering deeply
And it was at this moment when she had ceased to call Orlando and was deep in thoughts of something else that the Orlando whom she had called came of its own accord as was proved by the change that now came over her she had passed through the lodge gates and was entering the park
The whole of her darkened and settled as when some foil whose addition makes the round and solidity of a surface is added to it and the shallow becomes deep and the near distant and all is contained as water is contained by the sides of a well So she was now darkened stilled and become with the addition of this Orlando what is called rightly or wrongly a single self a real self And she fell silent For it is probable that when people talk aloud the selves of which there may be more than two thousand are conscious of disseverment and are trying to communicate but when communication is established they fall silent
Masterfully swiftly she drove up the curving drive between the elms and oaks through the falling turf of the park whose fall was so gentle that had it been water it would have spread the beach with a smooth green tide Planted here and in solemn groups were beech trees and oak trees The deer stepped among them one white as snow another with its head on one side for some wire netting had caught in its horns All this the trees deer and turf she observed with the greatest satisfaction as if her mind had become a fluid that flowed round things and enclosed them completely Next minute she drew up in the courtyard where for so many hundred years she had come on horseback or in coach and six with men riding before or coming after where plumes had tossed torches flashed and the same flowering trees that let their leaves drop now had shaken their blossoms Now she was alone The autumn leaves were falling The porter opened the great gates Morning James she said therere some things in the car Will you bring em in words of no beauty interest or significance themselves it will be conceded but now so plumped out with meaning that they fell like ripe nuts from a tree and proved that when the shrivelled skin of the ordinary is stuffed out with meaning it satisfies the senses amazingly This was true indeed of every movement and action now usual though they were so that to see Orlando change her skirt for a pair of whipcord breeches and leather jacket which she did in less than three minutes was to be ravished with the beauty of movement as if Madame Lopokova were using her highest art Then she strode into the diningroom where her old friends Dryden Pope Swift Addison regarded her demurely at first as who should say Heres the prize winner but when they reflected that two hundred guineas was in question they nodded their heads approvingly Two hundred guineas they seemed to say two hundred guineas are not to be sniffed at She cut herself a slice of bread and ham clapped the two together and began to eat striding up and down the room thus shedding her company habits in a second without thinking After five or six such turns she tossed off a glass of red Spanish wine and filling another which she carried in her hand strode down the long corridor and through a dozen drawingrooms and so began a perambulation of the house attended by such elkhounds and spaniels as chose to follow her
This too was all in the days routine As soon would she come home and leave her own grandmother without a kiss as come back and leave the house unvisited She fancied that the rooms brightened as she came in stirred opened their eyes as if they had been dozing in her absence She fancied too that hundreds and thousands of times as she had seen them they never looked the same twice as if so long a life as theirs had stored in them a myriad moods which changed with winter and summer bright weather and dark and her own fortunes and the peoples characters who visited them Polite they always were to strangers but a little weary with her they were entirely open and at their ease Why not indeed They had known each other for close on four centuries now They had nothing to conceal She knew their sorrows and joys She knew what age each part of them was and its little secretsa hidden drawer a concealed cupboard or some deficiency perhaps such as a part made up or added later They too knew her in all her moods and changes She had hidden nothing from them had come to them as boy and woman crying and dancing brooding and gay In this windowseat she had written her first verses in that chapel she had been married And she would be buried here she reflected kneeling on the windowsill in the long gallery and sipping her Spanish wine Though she could hardly fancy it the body of the heraldic leopard would be making yellow pools on the floor the day they lowered her to lie among her ancestors She who believed in no immortality could not help feeling that her soul would come and go forever with the reds on the panels and the greens on the sofa For the roomshe had strolled into the Ambassadors bedroomshone like a shell that has lain at the bottom of the sea for centuries and has been crusted over and painted a million tints by the water it was rose and yellow green and sandcoloured It was frail as a shell as iridescent and as empty No Ambassador would ever sleep there again Ah but she knew where the heart of the house still beat Gently opening a door she stood on the threshold so that as she fancied the room could not see her and watched the tapestry rising and falling on the eternal faint breeze which never failed to move it Still the hunter rode still Daphne flew The heart still beat she thought however faintly however far withdrawn the frail indomitable heart of the immense building
Now calling her troop of dogs to her she passed down the gallery whose floor was laid with whole oak trees sawn across Rows of chairs with all their velvets faded stood ranged against the wall holding their arms out for Elizabeth for James for Shakespeare it might be for Cecil who never came The sight made her gloomy She unhooked the rope that fenced them off She sat on the Queens chair she opened a manuscript book lying on Lady Bettys table she stirred her fingers in the aged rose leaves she brushed her short hair with King James silver brushes she bounced up and down upon his bed but no King would ever sleep there again for all Louises new sheets and pressed her cheek against the worn silver counterpane that lay upon it But everywhere were little lavender bags to keep the moth out and printed notices Please do not touch which though she had put them there herself seemed to rebuke her The house was no longer hers entirely she sighed It belonged to time now to history was past the touch and control of the living Never would beer be spilt here any more she thought she was in the bedroom that had been old Nick Greenes or holes burnt in the carpet Never two hundred servants come running and brawling down the corridors with warming pans and great branches for the great fireplaces Never would ale be brewed and candles made and saddles fashioned and stone shaped in the workshops outside the house Hammers and mallets were silent now Chairs and beds were empty tankards of silver and gold were locked in glass cases The great wings of silence beat up and down the empty house
So she sat at the end of the gallery with her dogs couched round her in Queen Elizabeths hard armchair The gallery stretched far away to a point where the light almost failed It was as a tunnel bored deep into the past As her eyes peered down it she could see people laughing and talking the great men she had known Dryden Swift and Pope and statesmen in colloquy and lovers dallying in the windowseats and people eating and drinking at the long tables and the wood smoke curling round their heads and making them sneeze and cough Still further down she saw sets of splendid dancers formed for the quadrille A fluty frail but nevertheless stately music began to play An organ boomed A coffin was borne into the chapel A marriage procession came out of it Armed men with helmets left for the wars They brought banners back from Flodden and Poitiers and stuck them on the wall The long gallery filled itself thus and still peering further she thought she could make out at the very end beyond the Elizabethans and the Tudors some one older further darker a cowled figure monastic severe a monk who went with his hands clasped and a book in them murmuring
Like thunder the stable clock struck four Never did any earthquake so demolish a whole town The gallery and all its occupants fell to powder Her own face that had been dark and sombre as she gazed was lit as by an explosion of gunpowder In this same light everything near her showed with extreme distinctness She saw two flies circling round and noticed the blue sheen on their bodies she saw a knot in the wood where her foot was and her dogs ear twitching At the same time she heard a bough creaking in the garden a sheep coughing in the park a swift screaming past the window Her own body quivered and tingled as if suddenly stood naked in a hard frost Yet she kept as she had not done when the clock struck ten in London complete composure for she was now one and entire and presented it may be a larger surface to the shock of time She rose but without precipitation called her dogs and went firmly but with great alertness of movement down the staircase and out into the garden Here the shadows of the plants were miraculously distinct She noticed the separate grains of earth in the flower beds as if she had a microscope stuck to her eye She saw the intricacy of the twigs of every tree Each blade of grass was distinct and the marking of veins and petals She saw Stubbs the gardener coming along the path and every button on his gaiters was visible she saw Betty and Prince the cart horses and never had she marked so clearly the white star on Bettys forehead and the three long hairs that fell down below the rest on Princes tail Out in the quadrangle the old grey walls of the house looked like a scraped new photograph she heard the loud speaker condensing on the terrace a dance tune that people were listening to in the red velvet opera house at Vienna Braced and strung up by the present moment she was also strangely afraid as if whenever the gulf of time gaped and let a second through some unknown danger might come with it The tension was too relentless and too rigorous to be endured long without discomfort She walked more briskly than she liked as if her legs were moved for her through the garden and out into the park Here she forced herself by a great effort to stop by the carpenters shop and to stand stockstill watching Joe Stubbs fashion a cart wheel She was standing with her eye fixed on his hand when the quarter struck It hurtled through her like a meteor so hot that no fingers can hold it She saw with disgusting vividness that the thumb on Joes right hand was without a finger nail and there was a raised saucer of pink flesh where the nail should have been The sight was so repulsive that she felt faint for a moment but in that moments darkness when her eyelids flickered she was relieved of the pressure of the present There was something strange in the shadow that the flicker of her eyes cast something which as anyone can test for himself by looking now at the sky is always absent from the presentwhence its terror its nondescript charactersomething one trembles to pin through the body with a name and call beauty for it has no body is as a shadow without substance or quality of its own, yet has the power to change whatever it adds itself to This shadow now while she flickered her eye in her faintness in the carpenters shop stole out and attaching itself to the innumerable sights she had been receiving composed them into something tolerable comprehensible Her mind began to toss like the sea Yes she thought heaving a deep sigh of relief as she turned from the carpenters shop to climb the hill I can begin to live again I am by the Serpentine she thought the little boat is climbing through the white arch of a thousand deaths I am about to understand
Those were her words spoken quite distinctly but we cannot conceal the fact that she was now a very indifferent witness to the truth of what was before her and might easily have mistaken a sheep for a cow or an old man called Smith for one who was called Jones and was no relation of his whatever For the shadow of faintness which the thumb without a nail had cast had deepened now at the back of her brain which is the part furthest from sight into a pool where things dwell in darkness so deep that what they are we scarcely know She now looked down into this pool or sea in which everything is reflectedand indeed some say that all our most violent passions and art and religion are the reflections which we see in the dark hollow at the back of the head when the visible world is obscured for the time She looked there now long deeply profoundly and immediately the ferny path up the hill along which she was walking became not entirely a path but partly the Serpentine the hawthorn bushes were partly ladies and gentlemen sitting with cardcases and goldmounted canes the sheep were partly tall Mayfair houses everything was partly something else as if her mind had become a forest with glades branching here and there things came nearer and further and mingled and separated and made the strangest alliances and combinations in an incessant chequer of light and shade Except when Canute the elkhound chased a rabbit and so reminded her that it must be about half past fourit was indeed twentythree minutes to sixshe forgot the time
The ferny path led with many turns and windings higher and higher to the oak tree which stood on the top The tree had grown bigger sturdier and more knotted since she had known it somewhere about the year 1588 but it was still in the prime of life The little sharply frilled leaves were still fluttering thickly on its branches Flinging herself on the ground she felt the bones of the tree running out like ribs from a spine this way and that beneath her She liked to think that she was riding the back of the world She liked to attach herself to something hard As she flung herself down a little square book bound in red cloth fell from the breast of her leather jackether poem The Oak Tree I should have brought a trowel she reflected The earth was so shallow over the roots that it seemed doubtful if she could do as she meant and bury the book here Besides the dogs would dig it up No luck ever attends these symbolical celebrations she thought Perhaps it would be as well then to do without them She had a little speech on the tip of her tongue which she meant to speak over the book as she buried it It was a copy of the first edition signed by author and artist I bury this as a tribute she was going to have said a return to the land of what the land has given me but Lord once one began mouthing words aloud how silly they sounded She was reminded of old Greene getting upon a platform the other day comparing her with Milton save for his blindness and handing her a cheque for two hundred guineas She had thought then of the oak tree here on its hill and what has that got to do with this she had wondered What has praise and fame to do with poetry What has seven editions the book had already gone into no less got to do with the value of it Was not writing poetry a secret transaction a voice answering a voice So that all this chatter and praise and blame and meeting people who admired one and meeting people who did not admire one was as ill suited as could be to the thing itselfa voice answering a voice What could have been more secret she thought more slow and like the intercourse of lovers than the stammering answer she had made all these years to the old crooning song of the woods and the farms and the brown horses standing at the gate neck to neck and the smithy and the kitchen and the fields so laboriously bearing wheat turnips grass and the garden blowing irises and fritillaries
So she let her book lie unburied and dishevelled on the ground and watched the vast view varied like an ocean floor this evening with the sun lightening it and the shadows darkening it There was a village with a church tower among elm trees a grey domed manor house in a park a spark of light burning on some glasshouse a farmyard with yellow corn stacks The fields were marked with black tree clumps and beyond the fields stretched long woodlands and there was the gleam of a river and then hills again In the far distance Snowdons crags broke white among the clouds she saw the far Scottish hills and the wild tides that swirl about the Hebrides She listened for the sound of gunfiring out at sea Noonly the wind blew There was no war today Drake had gone Nelson had gone And there she thought letting her eyes which had been looking at these far distances drop once more to the land beneath her was my land once that Castle between the downs was mine and all that moor running almost to the sea was mine Here the landscape it must have been some trick of the fading light shook itself heaped itself let all this encumbrance of houses castles and woods slide off its tentshaped sides The bare mountains of Turkey were before her It was blazing noon She looked straight at the baked hillside Goats cropped the sandy tufts at her feet An eagle soared above The raucous voice of old Rustum the gipsy croaked in her ears What is your antiquity and your race and your possessions compared with this What do you need with four hundred bedrooms and silver lids on all your dishes and housemaids dusting
At this moment some church clock chimed in the valley The tentlike landscape collapsed and fell The present showered down upon her head once more but now that the light was fading gentlier than before calling into view nothing detailed nothing small but only misty fields cottages with lamps in them the slumbering bulk of a wood and a fanshaped light pushing the darkness before it along some lane Whether it had struck nine ten or eleven she could not say Night had comenight that she loved of all times night in which the reflections in the dark pool of the mind shine more clearly than by day It was not necessary to faint now in order to look deep into the darkness where things shape themselves and to see in the pool of the mind now Shakespeare now a girl in Russian trousers now a toy boat on the Serpentine and then the Atlantic itself where it storms in great waves past Cape Horn She looked into the darkness There was her husbands brig rising to the top of the wave Up it went and up and up The white arch of a thousand deaths rose before it Oh rash oh ridiculous man always sailing so uselessly round Cape Horn in the teeth of a gale But the brig was through the arch and out on the other side it was safe at last
Ecstasy she cried ecstasy And then the wind sank the waters grew calm and she saw the waves rippling peacefully in the moonlight
Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine she cried standing by the oak tree
The beautiful glittering name fell out of the sky like a steelblue feather She watched it fall turning and twisting like a slowfalling arrow that cleaves the deep air beautifully He was coming as he always came in moments of dead calm when the wave rippled and the spotted leaves fell slowly over her foot in the autumn woods when the leopard was still the moon was on the waters and nothing moved in between sky and sea Then he came
All was still now It was near midnight The moon rose slowly over the weald Its light raised a phantom castle upon earth There stood the great house with all its windows robed in silver Of wall or substance there was none All was phantom All was still All was lit as for the coming of a dead Queen Gazing below her Orlando saw dark plumes tossing in the courtyard and torches flickering and shadows kneeling A Queen once more stepped from her chariot
The house is at your service Maam she cried curtseying deeply Nothing has been changed The dead Lord my father shall lead you in
As she spoke the first stroke of midnight sounded The cold breeze of the present brushed her face with its little breath of fear She looked anxiously into the sky It was dark with clouds now The wind roared in her ears But in the roar of the wind she heard the roar of an aeroplane coming nearer and nearer
Here Shel here she cried baring her breast to the moon which now showed bright so that her pearls glowedlike the eggs of some vast moonspider The aeroplane rushed out of the clouds and stood over her head It hovered above her Her pearls burnt like a phosphorescent flare in the darkness
And as Shelmerdine now grown a fine sea captain hale freshcoloured and alert leapt to the ground there sprang up over his head a single wild bird
It is the goose Orlando cried The wild goose
And the twelfth stroke of midnight sounded the twelfth stroke of midnight Thursday the eleventh of October Nineteen hundred and Twenty Eight