The Black Prince

by Iris Murdoch

  Christian Hartbourne

  Postscript by Francis

  It is my pleasure and privilege to add a critical epilogue to this unusual ‘autobiography’. I do so gladly as homage to my old friend, still languishing in ‘durance vile’, and I do so dutifully as a service to the cause of science. This remarkable piece of self – analysis from a talented pen deserves a thoroughly detailed commentary, for which, the publisher tells me, there is unfortunately no space in this volume. I intend however to publish in due course a lengthy book, upon which I have now been at work for some time, about the case of Bradley Pearson, and in this work the ‘autobiography’, a prime piece of evidence in this cause cé/èbre, will of course be fully treated. What follows here is merely a digest of a few concise points.

  Not to skirt the obvious Bradley Pearson presents, I need hardly say, the classical symptoms of the Oedipus complex. To say so is perhaps banal. Most men love their mothers and hate their fathers. Many men, because this is so, hate and fear all women in adult life. (Adored mama is never alas forgiven for going to bed with detested papa!) Such was the case with Bradley. What a vocabulary of physical disgust he uses to conjure up ‘the ladies’ of his tale! Many men, often without consciousness thereof, see women as unclean. The idea of menstruation is sickening and appalling. Women smell. The female principle is what is messy, smelly, and soft. The male principle is what is clear, clean, and hard. So with our Bradley. We find him gloating (I fear there is no other word) over the physical discomfiture, the uncleanliness, the ailments of his women. In the case of his sister his sense of disgust at her symptoms of age and mental decay led him to thrust her out of his sight in an unkind and unseemly way, while at the same time protesting his duty to her and even his affection. There is no doubt that she had the misfortune to represent to him also the shop, that stale interior, symbolic of the rejected womb of a socially inferior mother. Alas how readily these symbols assemble themselves in this our human life, forming great daisy chains of cause and effect from which we escape never! The physical, moreover, figures the moral. Women are liars, traitors, cowards. In contrast Bradley himself appears as a self – confessed puritan, an ascetic, a tall thin man, a sort of human Post Office Tower, erect and steely. By this means, without the necessity of actual sexual prowess, our hero can see himself as ‘an imaginary Don Juan’. (A touching give – away this!)

  It is also of course clear from the most casual scrutiny that our subject is homosexual. He has the typical narcissism of the breed. (Consider his description of himself at the beginning of the tale.) His masochism (of which more below), his eager professions of virility, his confessed lack of identity, his attitude (already mentioned) to women, the evidence of his parental relationship patterns, all these point in the same direction. And indeed his rather surprising ‘unconvincingness’ at the trial may be laid at the same door. He did not believe in himself and so could hardly expect the judge and jury to lend him credence. Bradley Pearson connected this absence of any sense of self with his mode of existence as an artist. But here, as so many of the uninstructed, he mistook cause and symptom. Most artists are homosexual. This tender appreciative tribe, bereft of sturdy self – assertion as either man or woman, is best enabled thus to body forth the world and give it houseroom in their souls.

  That ‘Bradley Pearson’s story’ is the tale of a man in love with a woman need cause little embarrassment to our theory. Bradley himself gives us all the clues that we are in need of. When he first (in the story) catches sight of his young lady he mistakes her for a boy. He falls in love with her when he imagines her as a man. He achieves sexual intercourse with her when she has dressed up as a prince. (And who incidentally is Bradley Pearson’s favourite author? The greatest homosexual of them all. What sends Bradley Pearson’s fantasy soaring as high as the Post Office Tower? The idea of boys pretending to be girls pretending to be boys!) Further: who in reality is this girl? (Father – fixated of course and taking Bradley as a father – substitute, no mystery there.) The daughter of Bradley’s protégé, rival, idol, gadfly, friend, enemy, alter ego, Arnold Baffin. Science proclaims that this cannot be the work of accident. And science is right.

  When I say that Bradley Pearson was in love with Arnold Baffin I would not be understood to be making any crude statement. We are dealing with the psychology of a complicated and refined person. Bradley’s more simple, more human, affection bore perhaps upon another object. But Arnold symbolized the focus of passion and the goal of love to this unfortunate self – darkened victim. It was Arnold whom he loved and Arnold whom he hated, Arnold his own distorted image in the stream over which Narcissus leans eternally anxious, eternally enraptured. He admits, significant word, that there is something ‘demonic’ in Arnold and also in himself. The ‘character’ of Arnold is in a literary sense markedly ‘weak’, as any critic would point out. Why indeed is the whole story oddly ‘unconvincing’ as if it were somehow hollow? Why do we feel that something is missing from it? Because Bradley does not ‘come clean’. He often says that he is attached to Arnold or that he is envious of Arnold or that he is obsessed by Arnold, but he does not, he dare not, body these feelings forth in the narrative. And because of this omission the tale, which should feel very hot, feels in fact very cold.

  This classical misplacement is not however the chief item of interest. The case is interesting mainly because Bradley Pearson is an artist and because, before our very eyes, he is ingeniously (and often disingenuously) reflecting about his art. As he says, the psyche desperate for its survival invents deep things. That he often does not realize the significance of his reflections can make his work, with suitable expert exposition, yet more fascinating and instructive to us. That Bradley is a masochist is here a banality of criticism. (That all artists are is a further truism.) How readily recognizable to the expert eye is obsession in literature! Even the greatest cannot cover their tracks, conceal their little vices, altogether moderate the note of glee! For this the artist labours, to get this scene in, to savour this secret symbol of his secret love. But let him be never so cunning, he cannot evade the eye of science. (This is one reason why artists always fear and denigrate scientists.) Bradley is cunning, particularly in his misleading celebration of a simple heterosexual subject, but how can we not notice that what he really enjoys is being discomfited by Arnold Baffin?

  Of course Arnold Baffin is a father – figure. Why is it a writer on whom Bradley fixes his love and his hate? And why is it a writer that he himself so obsessively dreams of being? The choice of the art is itself significant. Bradley tells us in so many words that his parents kept a paper shop. (Paper: papa.) The ‘crime’ of soiling paper (defaecation) is a natural image of the revolt against the father. It is here that we must seek the source of that paranoia whose symptoms Bradley, with characteristic unawareness, so clearly exhibits in his story. (Consider his ‘interpretation’ of his lady – love’s letter!) Why does Bradley gloatingly idolize ‘grand’ stationers’ shops? Father never got this far! The ubiquitous gilt snuff box makes the same point. This is a ‘gift’ far beyond the humble resources of the original shop. (And of course gilt: guilt.) On this comparatively simple aspect of the case see my paper shortly to be published, Further to Freud’s Experience on the Acropolis.

  Of greater interest, as psychology if not as literature, is Bradley’s more poetic and more conscious embroidery upon his own theme. The mysterious title of the book, ambiguous in I cannot readily say how many senses, is, though somewhat obscurely, ‘explained’ for us by its author. Bradley speaks of ‘the black Eros’. He also mentions some yet more arcane source of inspiration. What he means, taken at its face value, may be highly significant or may be pretentious rubbish. There can be no doubt however of the psychological ‘weight’ of such a conception. It is surely more natural for a man to picture the force of love as a woman, and for a woman to picture it as a man. (It is true that both Eros and Aphrodite are the invention of men, but it is important that the former is the child of th
e latter.) Yet Bradley shamelessly delights in the conception of the huge black bully (like an enormous blackamoor) who has, as he conceives it, come to discipline his life, as artist and as man. Moreover (and what do we need more to complete our theory?) should we wish to inquire further concerning the identity of this monster we have only to consider the two initial letters of his name. (Black Prince. Bradley Pearson.) As for the alleged Mr Loxias, he too is soon seen to be our friend in a thin disguise. There is even a marked similarity of literary style. The narcissism of the deviant eats up all other characters and will tolerate only one: himself. Bradley invents Mr Loxias so as to present himself to the world with a flourish of alleged objectivity. He says of P. Loxias ‘I could have invented him’. In fact he did!

  I hope that my old friend, when his sapient eye alights upon these pages, will look indulgently (I can imagine him smiling with that familiar self – conscious irony) upon the observations of a mere scientist. They are prompted, let me assure him, not just by a chill love for truth, but by a lively affection for a very lovable human being, to whom the author of this note feels recognition and gratitude. I have hinted earlier that Bradley was blessed with another more mundane and more ‘real’ attachment, another much simpler and less tormenting focus of emotion. I would not, and indeed need not, use his ill – concealed love for me as evidence of his perverted tendencies. (The transparent attempt to belittle the love – object is again typical.) I cannot however close this very miniature monograph without saying this to him: I knew of his feelings and, I trust he will believe me, I valued them highly.

  Francis Marloe

  Psychological Consultant

  A subscription list for my forthcoming work, Bradley Pearson, the Paranoiac from the Paper Shop is now open c/o the publisher. Letters to my consulting rooms will be forwarded from the same address.

  Postscript by Rachel

  I have been asked by a ‘Mar Loxias’ for my comments on a piece of fantastic writing by the murderer of my husband. I was inclined at first simply to ignore the request. I also considered resorting to legal action to prevent publication. However, there has already been, and I am sure not accidentally, a good deal of publicity about the matter, and to stifle this ‘outpouring’ might give it the interest of a secret document without in the end concealing what it said. Frankness is better and compassion is better. For we must, I think, feel or attempt to feel pity and compassion for the author of this fantasy. It is sad that when provided with the ‘seclusion’ which he professes always to have wanted, what Pearson produces is a sort of mad adolescent dream and not the serious work of art of which he imagined himself capable and of which he so incessantly told us.

  I have certainly no wish to be unkind. The revived publicity about this hideous tragedy has caused me great suffering. That my own life has been ‘ruined’ is a fact with which I have to live. I hope and believe that unhappiness has not made me bitter. I do not want to hurt anybody. And I do not believe that my frankness now can possibly hurt Bradley Pearson, who seems to be invincibly wrapped up in his own fantastic conceptions of what happened and of what he himself is like.

  About his account of events there is little to be said. It is in its main outline clearly a ‘dream’ such as might interest a psychologist. And let me say here that I do not and cannot judge Bradley Pearson’s motives in writing it. (Of Mr Loxias’s motives I will speak below.) Perhaps the kindest thing to say is that he wanted to write a novel but found himself incapable of producing anything except his own immediate fantasies. I expect many novelists rewrite their own recent histories ‘nearer to the heart’s desire’, but they have at least the decency to change the names. B.P. (as I shall shorten his name henceforth) alleges that in prison he has found God (or Truth or Religion or something). Perhaps all men in prison think they have found God, and have to in order to survive. I feel no vendetta – like resentment against him now, or any particular desire that he should suffer. His suffering cannot repair my loss. His new ‘creed’ may be sincerely believed in or may be, as the whole story may be, a smoke screen to conceal his unrepentant malice. If his tale is indeed prompted by malice we have to do with a person so wicked that ordinary judgement of him is baffled. If, as is much more likely, B.P. has come to believe or half – believe both in his ‘salvation’ and in his story, then we have to do with one whose mind has given way under continued strain. (He was certainly not insane at the time of the murder.) And then he must be, as I said earlier, an object of pity. This is how I prefer to view him, though really I cannot know, and indeed do not want to know, what is in fact the case. When B. P. went through the gates of the prison I felt as if he had died and I wanted to concern myself with him no more. To think about him, for instance with anger and rage, would have caused too much misery, besides being fruitless and immoral.