Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land

by John Crowley

  ‘Cribb,’ whispered the Honourable to Ali, ‘once reply’d to a certain Youth who asked him—myself being by—what was the best Posture of Defence, by saying, “Why, to keep a civil tongue in your head!”’

  ‘I admit to you,’ said the opponent of Science to his friend, ‘I would not quickly challenge, nor taunt a Jew again, for he might have taken lessons from Mendoza, and make me answer for it.’

  ‘Jackson when he beat Mendoza did it by taking hold of his hair, as it were Samson’s, and buffeting him unmercifully. When Mendoza complained to the Umpires, he was told there was no rule against it, “And that’s a d—n shame, is it not?”’

  ‘Cribb too is a taker-hold of hair, and indeed there ain’t no rule against.’

  ‘No rule against! A fine argument! Tom Molyneaux, a Negro of America, nearly beat Cribb—Cribb won only because the Ref would not call Time! on him, when he was fallen, and could not come to scratch—for a half an hour by the clock!’

  ‘I’ll pummel you my self, if you say England’s champion could not fairly beat America’s blackamoor!’ cried his friend—having no regard, seemingly, for Cribb’s own advice—and it was all that friends around them could do to keep the two belligerents from demanding satisfaction then and there.

  The match having been concluded, and the Honourable having collected his winnings from the Bankers, as the crowd unravelled into the darkness of eve, Ali saw at a distance one who turned to look upon him, from amid others who obscured his person—but then, observing more closely, Ali saw that it was not (as he had supposed) a dark man in a furred coat—but a bear—who looked, and held his regard. The Bear-ward too—a bent man smaller than his Beast—sought Ali’s eye as well, and then both were gone, as though they had not been! Ali fought his way through the uncaring crowd, which was made pugnacious by absorption of the exhibitions they had witnessed—but he caught no further glimpse of the Beast, nor of his Ward. Closely he questioned Mr Piper, who just then took his arm—had he not seen this show, for a show it had surely been—a catchpenny show—a mangy animal, and a beggar to make him dance? But the Honourable and his companions had seen nothing. Nothing! Once again he seemed to himself to be seated in the examining room of the German Doctor, denying thrice, like Peter, that he had ever or could ever see that which was not there, or do that which he knew not.

  ‘Come, my Lord!’ said his Companions, ‘all pleasure here is fled—do not stare so upon the Scene—we return to Town, do come!’ So he departed with them for the Clubs, laughing as they laughed, tho’ a cold wonder had entered his breast, that neither Brandy nor Punch could wholly wash away. Think when thou see’st me again—had not the dream of his Father’s bear promised him so?—that thy time is come, and a different journey is to go on. Foolish! Mad! Was there but one bear in the Universe? And had it not been but in a meaningless dream that he had been thus spoken to? He called for further drink—and sought a place at the Table, and cards to play. A different journey to go on! Well, so he would—he had embark’d already! Seeing, by the fever’d light in Ali’s eye, his eagerness to burn away the night, his friends, as surprized as they were amused, willingly indulged him—the cost being borne by him.

  NOTES FOR THE 9TH CHAPTER

  ennui: Lucky is the human spirit immune to the excitements of Chance. There is no exaltation that is like the certainty that a perfect system of betting exists, at the race-course or the card-table, and that it is in hand, and needs only the refinement that comes with actual play. The exaltation is itself as fixating as the result, and the proof positive that one’s system is in fact sound would, in my own opinion, be a gratification beyond any sum of money won at Newcastle or the St-Leger. The costs to be paid for failure being, concomitantly, twice as bitter as mere money lost.

  Weeks’s museum: Decades later the silver lady here described came into the possession of Charles Babbage, who would make it dance and nod, beckon and gesture, for guests who came to his house, that house so full of wonders, mechanical and intellectual. He had fallen in love with the lady when he was a little boy and she was shewn at Merlin’s museum, of which Weeks’s was the successor. Yet I remember that she was disassembled when he bought her, a box of parts long stored in Weeks’s attic, and it was left to him (like Pygmalion) to bring her back to life—she had never danced in public since 1803, when Merlin’s closed. How then did Ld. B. see her? Or did he invent her, tho’ she existed before his invention? It is quite mysterious.

  craniologist: The phrenology of the last generation, which so took the imaginations of many—among them Lady Byron—seems now inadequate to the unequalled complexity of that organ, and moreover its principles are based on no particular experimental result, but only on supposition. I have my hopes, & very distinct ones too, of one day recording cerebral phenomena such that I can put them into mathematical equations; in short a law or laws for the mutual action of the molecules of the brain, equivalent to the law of gravitation for the planetary and sidereal world—a Calculus of the Nervous System. The great difficulty, which was not present to the Phrenologists, and vitiated their system, is in the design of practical experiments. I must become a most skilful practical manipulator in experimental tests & that, on materials difficult to deal with, viz., the brain, blood and nerves of animals. In time I will do all I dare say I hope & so may bequeath to future generations by application industry attention a system wch

  Much pain this week Dependent upon my drops more than in former days All this needs to be corrected & will be if I am able But no more this night

  4. a dark-eyed young Lord: Here Lord Byron permits himself an appearance in his own tale, and is seen cutting a rather foolish figure. He did indeed, it appears, undergo a phrenological examination by Dr Jacob Spurzheim, a famous German practitioner, who reached exactly the conclusion the fictional Lord here pronounces.

  I think it is a point of the greatest importance—though it seem insignificant—that Lord Byron was one who could see himself as at times comical, and laugh at himself—at his adventures, his ambitions, his character even—whereas Lady Byron was forever on guard as to how she would be seen, and understood, by others. Her watchfulness seemed to her then, I am sure, to be natural, and universal—she was likely indeed to have been wholly unconscious of it—and so she thought that Lord Byron’s self-ridicule and exaggerated expression of his own shortcomings, which were but a line meant to amuse, were admissions of the gravest weaknesses and even sins. There would be no reconciling such opposing natures.

  5. Colonel Cheyney Culpeper: The tale is told in Mr Isaac Disraeli’s ‘Curiosities of Literature’, though if Ld. B. learned it there or elsewhere I know not I came upon it by chance if chance it can be termed when a name of no importance whatever but to oneself occurs in two unconnected places in the course of a week.

  6. ‘the Fancy’: The barbaric sport here described has vanished with bear-baiting and other villainous indulgences of our grandparents. It is reported by Moore that Ld. B. indeed took lessons in boxing from ‘Gentleman’ Jackson, and proved an able pupil. I am told by certain sporting males whom I consulted that all the names herein mentioned are actual Boxers of the time, or just before, yet here seen to be already (in Ld. B.’s account) figures of the past—which, for him when he wrote this, they were.

  • TEN •

  Of Shows and Pantomimes—and of a Fate both strange & dire

  TRUE IT WAS THAT Mrs Enoch Whitehead came not often to town. Corydon Hall was hers, her duty and her delight, and it was a world to her—and within it, a still littler world, yet the largest too—a Nursery, wherein there reigned the heir of both families, and a Despot he was—though with all his Mother’s beauty. There was, besides, her own Mother, still smiling but now partly absent from the world, as though she had already joined the Angels whom she had always resembled, and was closing her earthly books—and there were her Brothers, growing straight and tall and grave, so unlike yet so like their departed elder that Susanna sometimes knew not if she would laugh or weep to s
ee them at the Butts, or at leap-frog.

  Mr Whitehead, on the contrary, was not often at home—which, it must be said, did not much diminish his wife’s liking to remain there. For a time after he became Master and Proprietor of Corydon’s manors, he tried country pleasures one after another—got himself pinks, and fox-hounds; shot pheasants; planned a Park—but soon enough he forgot why he should have adopted these pursuits, and increasingly returned to the less ambiguous pleasures he had formerly enjoy’d—though (odd as it may seem) his conversation when in Town turned frequently upon his Estates, and the Crops grown upon them, and the Improvements he intended.

  In one season, though, his wife too was eager for Town, and that was the time when new plays were opened at the Theatres. How could it be that such a plain and honest heart as Susanna’s could so love artifice, and the sight and sound of bewigged and rouged ladies and gentlemen speaking verse, and the undoing of tangled plots by the sword-stroke of authorial contrivance, merely to bring his ‘two hours’ traffic’ to an end? It cannot be explained, except perhaps by a bump on her shapely head. Her husband, still contrariwise, got little pleasure there—he could not hear much that was said, understood but half of that, and approved less. Having brought his wife to his box, and sat through the curtain-raiser, he often slipt away, to other parts of Town, and other scenes. Thus Susanna sat often alone—or with a Companion half-asleep after a good dinner—and looked and listened, and criticised too, comparing this year’s Greeks and Romans, Barons and Friars, Harlequins and Clowns, with last year’s. And now and again she was lost—and wept—or laughed—was touched, and absent.

  When thus caught up in the imaginary doings below, she would now and again lean out from her box, her white hand upon the velvet lip—and thus it was that Ali saw her, from his own seat. For so long had his eye roamed without hope over every Crowd, so often had it been tricked by the sight of those who were not her, that at first it (that Organ, I mean, our proudest sense, and most easily deceived) passed over her—then returned—and as it were grew telescopic, filled with nothing but her, as with a new Planet. As soon as he might, he left his own box and sought hers—entered one that was not, and withdrew with apologies—and then hit upon the right place. Parting the curtain in the greatest trepidation he had yet felt, he saw her form lit by the stage below—saw that she was alone save for that sleeping Argus—and he slipt in. Still for a long moment he made not his presence known—she turned not, absorbed in the sights and sounds, the waves of Laughter, the clash of Instruments, all which made his approach unnoticed. Looking upon her—she all unaware of him, her soft lips parted, her eyes sparkling in the hundred lights—he wished to stay forever, so she changed not—or contrariwise, that having drunk his fill, he might slip away, without awaking her notice at all—but he found his thirst was not to be allayed—and at last the Animal Magnetism (if such thing there be) exuded from him caused her to turn, and find him there.

  ‘Ali!’—‘Susanna!’—What more? For a moment, only confusion—then both together spoke, each with an Account to make, each eager to forgive what the other must consider unforgivable, and at the same time to speak not of it, to deny all that had occupied their thoughts so long. ‘All that befell—’Twas I—I,’ Ali insists, and before he can say what he was, Susanna cries low, ‘No no, the fault was not thine—never think so—but I ’——All this conducted in a whisper, and yet—as a sudden silence may wake us, as well as a sudden sound—her Companion rouses, though she had slept like the dead through the orchestra’s tootling and the roars of the crowd. Now Ali must be introduced—he is a close friend of Susanna’s departed Brother’s, and wished but to pay his respects to that dear Memory—the Lady Companion is most interested, and desires further information, which the two supply, tumbling upon each other’s words. Fans are opened then, and manipulated. The show, which meantime continues upon the stage below—though they two, while looking down upon it steadily, perceive little of it—is the new Pantomime (as new as any Pantomime may be, where the same things always happen in the same way). Just now they see Dame Venus conclude the ‘Transformation Scene’, wherein the young lovers are turned into Harlequin and Columbine, the old jealous father into Pantaloon, and the sleepy duenna into Clown.

  ‘I have been for a time abroad,’ says Ali then stiffly, at which Susanna cannot help but laugh—for she knew his history, as did all the world.

  ‘Your mother and brothers?’ asks he of Susanna. He sits behind her, where he may not himself be seen by the spectators without.

  ‘Well,’ says she. ‘All well.’

  So they remain—their talk, when they talk, is of the kind called ‘small’—yet somehow pregnant, nonetheless, with matters larger—He hopes he may call upon her—She avers that her husband does not often entertain—Yet she notes he has taken a House in Town—She would have him note the performances—the Clown’s no Grimaldi—and in all this Ali knew not if he advanced, or retreated—nor to what, nor from what!

  Now the gloomy Chords strike up, and the curtains part upon the ‘Dark Scene’, as the players call it—the Grave-yard, Ruins, Tombs or Cavern, wherein poor Harlequin must suffer, and be tested, before Dame Venus in her kind wisdom restores all to what it was at first—the scene of Life—the same we act in every day. But before this, and while Bats and Ghosts on wires still pester poor Harlequin, and all’s still to be resolved, Susanna sighs—and says Mr Whitehead soon will arrive, as is his wont, for the final Scene—and Ali (though for a moment he does not catch her drift) takes his leave, with a mumbled Farewell, to her—and another to the sharp-eyed Friend—who (though he knows it not) will become his friend, as well, in the fullness of time. And then he’s gone.

  Though Ali had noticed it not, Susanna Whitehead had learned from him, and had remembered, his present Residence—and there, not very long at all after that night, he finds a Letter addressed in her familiar hand—as though it had been summoned by the constancy of his thought upon her, all that time ’twixt that hour and this. Her words within are brief enough—glad, though, and eager to know more of him—and they include instructions as to how he may reply, through an intermediary—that same Friend!—by enclosing his letter to herself within one to that person—but few can need instruction in such methods. ‘Write quick and I will answer’—and his heart lifts as lightly and foolishly as a paper kite—only to fall as quick, when the string tugs—for he knows what first he must write, and yet not how: how it was that he, tho’ all unknowing, had doomed her family to wander without rudder or compass, to a comfortless harbour.

  ‘It was I,’ he wrote, ‘who brought about your brother’s death—make no mistake—I also who contrived it, that you should have no option but to marry one you despised—all this was my doing—for I drew you both into the web of evil in which I was caught—the web I AM—for my own selfish purposes—that I be not alone—you must hate me, you have no other choice, and I shall welcome that hate, as one should, who receives his due.’

  ‘Never believe it to be so,’ came back Susanna’s reply as quick as thought, or at any rate as quick as posted Letter may. ‘What Fate or Chance ordains, is not only foolish but presumptuous to claim for our own doing—it was not yours. Is it not useless to be consumed with Remorse for what no human effort could have prevented, nor may now make right? I fear that what you say may keep you away from me—and that is, of all the regrets I may suffer, the one I most fear today. O my dear Ali—you ask why I never sought you out—never wrote, tho’ knowing you were returned—know you not how I followed the news of you—of your disappearance—your return, & fame—never say I cared not—yet I feared, not you, but myself, if we two met again—I must say no more—I feel like a fortress besieged, and traitors are within my walls—do not write more—O yet do not cease to write, and think of me always—as I shall think of thee—I know not how to sign—except SUSANNA.’

  To this Ali replied, in a kind of fever, his pen chasing after his thought as it spun across the page, his thought chasing in
turn his heart, which was tumbled along between Hope and Despair—for the one he had loved, and thought lost, was not lost, and yet was, absolutely. My young Hero, too gallant in all the ways a hero ought to be, had had too little experience of the world to know that the common contradiction he then found himself in had a common resolution—yet he was on the way to learning it—he had already in place the Postal System whereby his suit might be made, and all that he received in return by the same System, only instructed him further. ‘I inclose as you ask a lock of my hair—I know not for what purpose you desire it—yet puzzling upon that makes me think that a lock of yours wd. give me great comfort. I wish that you wd. set the conditions for our intercourse, otherwise I may overstep and offend—the which I dread more than to be kept in my place—tho’ I dread that sufficiently, for my place may be too far from you! O relieve these anxieties, Susanna! Tell me what I may ask, and what not!’

  Time was, when a billet of the heart was consecrated to privacy, meant for but two other eyes, carried by winged Mercury with finger to his lips. Now every letter of any interest is copied over, as often as not by the Authoress herself (for it is that sex that has, if not the monopoly of that business, at least the majority interest ), to be circulated as wanted, or deserved. The foolish duenna to whom Ali was to send missives intended for Susanna thought it not beyond her duties that, having opened his cover to extract the letter inside and re-cover it with her own, she should first copy it, for her own meditation.

  Odd you may find it—or perhaps not—that, while for many months, amounting to a year and more, Ali and Susanna had never met, it happened now that hardly a week went by—nay, sometimes not a day—that they did not encounter each other, and pass some time together. It is certainly not an Author’s contrivance that makes it so—tho’ his Tale depend upon it—but an instinctual wisdom of the Sex, that will ever astonish the Male, who generally thinks he happens upon the object of his affections by wondrous Chance. Thus it was they found themselves—the English says it plainly—at Billiards, in a splendid room, looked down upon by portraits of Lords and Ladies in armour or in silks. Their conversation was of the blandest—save that, whenever the three spheres their sticks impelled collided, as Newton conceived they must—the angles of their incidence equalling the angles of their reflection—the remarks he made to her, or she to him, of Triumph or Defeat, had each a double meaning, open to no-one else. Meanwhile about them the talk was general, and scraps of this and that remark penetrated even to their ears.