Merivel: A Man of His Time

by Rose Tremain

  A Wedge to hold fast the corners of the bedstead.

  I will freely admit, this last utterance of Will’s does make me smile. My smile turns quickly to laughter, at which Will looks mightily relieved. I suppose it is not very agreeable to work for a Master who is so frequently overcome by Melancholy and childish tears, and I know that I must devise some way to become more buoyant in my existence. For the moment, however, I am at a loss to know how to go about this task.

  I send Will away. I once again open the Book (which I shall henceforth refer to as The Wedge) and begin to read.

  I read so long that the November Darkness begins to fall. No servant appears in the Library to light a lamp, so that the room becomes very blue with shadows.

  And one darker shadow creeps out of the Story and seems to stand in silence beside me. I fancy I can smell the fustian of his clothes and see his white hands folded round an object I know to be a blue-and-white china soup ladle. His name is John Pearce.

  2

  I CANNOT THINK about John Pearce without a feeling, almost, of Suffocation coming into me. For this reason I endeavour not to think about him at all. But I am not always successful.

  He was once my friend and fellow student of medicine at Cambridge. All his life he held to the Quaker religion, about which I used to tease him very frequently, hoping to engrave on the sombre map of his features the small indentation of a Smile, or even to hear his laughter, which was a singular croaking sound, like the mutterings of a bullfrog.

  Though Pearce showed me much kindness, I know now that the Person I am, with all my uncontainable appetites, my mockery of the World and my failure to overcome my abiding Melancholy, was never truly loved by him.

  When he visited me here at Bidnold, he looked about him at all my scarlet and gold Furnishings, at my gilded mirrors, my tapestries and marble statuettes and collections of pewter, and told me that Luxury was ‘snuffing out my Vital Flame’. And when – after his being struck down with fever – Will and I kept Vigil at Pearce’s bedside for thirty-seven hours, he gave neither of us any thanks whatsoever.

  It was to Pearce that I went, however, when the King saw fit to cast me out of the Paradise into which he had put me.

  I strove to be of use in the Quaker Bedlam at Whittlesea where Pearce and his Friends offered care to some of those who had collapsed into madness beneath the burden of the world. But the follies I committed there were very great and, as if in sorrow at all that I was capable of by way of Debauchery and Stupidity, Pearce’s frail body brewed up a very violent Consumption, from which he died.

  We laid branches of pear blossom in his coffin. Into his hands I placed the blue-and-white china soup ladle, to which he had been passionately attached, for it was the only Thing he possessed from his Mother. The dark Fenland earth was heaped upon him.

  From time to time I return to Pearce’s grave. When she was nine or ten years old, I took my beloved daughter, Margaret, with me, so that I might present her to the Quaker Friends who had been so kind to me. (She is and always was a very beautiful child, with soft white skin and an abundance of fiery curls, and a dimpled smile of great sweetness.) I am immoderately proud of her.

  When we came to the causeway known as Earls Bride, leading to the place where the Bedlam Hospital once stood, I saw at once that the buildings were deserted and the land about them overgrown, and that not one soul remained there. As we dismounted from the coach, a freezing wind howled round about us. I took Margaret’s hand and led her forward into the first of the Houses, where, still, some straw sleeping pallets lay, and I saw her eyes very wide with wonder and confusion, and she said to me: ‘Oh, Papa, where are all the people? Are they drowned?’

  ‘Margaret,’ said I, ‘I do not know. But it seems certain that they are gone.’

  And then I found myself in a Quandary. I had planned to leave Margaret in the care of the Quaker Keepers for a little moment, in order to walk out and stand beside Pearce’s grave. I did not wish her to look upon his sad mound, (for so far Death had not made any imprint upon her innocent mind) and yet, having made this long journey, I was reluctant to drive away without standing for a moment under the sky, to commune with my dead friend.

  Margaret and I stumbled together about the place, where weeds grew tall and rank, and I showed her the gnarled and twisted oak tree in the courtyard, where once I played my oboe and my young friend Daniel played his fiddle and we – the Keepers and the mad people all together – danced a Tarantella – but I did not tell her that her Mother was one among the mad.

  ‘What is a Tarantella?’ said Margaret.

  ‘Oh,’ said I, ‘it is a wild whirling jig, like this …’ And I held her, two hands and began to prance about with her and she hopped and skipped with joy, and her laughter was like a cluster of bells, shaken under the vast, vaulting sky. And then I lifted her up and carried her to the coach and said to her: ‘Rest here a moment, while I make one last tour of the houses, to be certain no one has been left behind, and I shall be back in a trice.’

  I had brought with us a bag of dried currants and I gave her a handful of these, and she began to eat them obediently as I told the Coachman to wait for me, and I strode away towards the place where Pearce lies.

  The grave, marked by a plain wooden cross (for that everything, with the Quakers, has to be Plain) was very choked with Elder and rough Briars, and I could not help myself from trying to get these away. And so, tearing the skin of my hands in my haste, I heard in my mind Pearce’s disdain for what I was doing, saying to me: ‘Merivel, tell me what purpose your actions serve. For, in all truth, I see none.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘None at all. Except that these things Offend me.’ And then I burst out with a cry, saying: ‘Where has everybody gone, Pearce? Tell me where they have gone!’

  But of course there was no answer from beneath the neglected mound. I cleared all the weeds away and bound my hand with a handkerchief, and touched the black clay with my fingers.

  ‘John Pearce,’ I said, ‘you are with me always.’

  Margaret has now reached the age of seventeen. She has lived here with me at Bidnold all her life and I have striven to be both Father and Mother to her, and, to my joy and relief, I observe – without any boasting or paternal Blindness – that she is a most beautiful, chaste and affectionate young girl, with a trusting nature not unlike my own, but miraculously devoid of her father’s Silliness.

  She loves me, I know, as much as any father could ask of a child, but as she has grown up, she has become more and more fond of spending time in the House of my near Neighbour in Norfolk, Sir James Prideaux, Baronet, who is a man most venerated and learned in the Law and who presides at the Sessions House in Norwich three times a week.

  This house of Prideaux’s, Shottesbrooke Hall, is a very lively place, on account of the presence of his admirable wife, Arabella, and their four daughters, Jane, Mary, Virginia and Penelope. And I do see that Margaret has more to make her joyful there than here at Bidnold with me.

  That Prideaux has no son must be, to a man of his stature and ambition, a disappointment, but he never speaks of it. To his girls he shows nothing but affectionate kindness, endeavouring to get for them all that they could possibly want. Music masters, dancing teachers, young professors of Mathematics and Geography, no less than Pattern-makers, Seamstresses and Haberdashers (such as my dear parents once were), come and go from Shottesbrooke, and the Prideaux girls demonstrate, each one, a fine curiosity about the world.

  Towards Margaret, who is the same age as Mary, all the family shows a most touching care – just as though she might be a true part of the household. They recognise that although I, too, have taken some pains with Margaret’s education – to the end that she plays the harpsichord admirably well and can speak French quite fluently, and dances like a beautiful Sprite of the Woods – she must often find her days with me a little dull. She is now studying Geography with Mary and over this is in rhapsodies, saying to me: ‘Oh, Papa, never until now did I see
that the world was so wide and vast. And never did I know that Great Rivers began as little Springs in the bosom of the mountains, and did you know that there are more than two hundred languages spoken on the Earth?’

  ‘No,’ say I, ‘God be praised that I did not. The mastery of French is quite difficult enough for me.’

  Margaret is staying at Shottesbrooke Hall now, in this grey November, when The Wedge has suddenly come into my possession.

  I note that when I first set down my Story, I speculated that there may have been more than one Beginning to it. I suggested indeed Five Beginnings. For I understood then that no life begins only when it begins, but has many additional inceptions, and each of these determines the course of what is to come.

  And I now see with equal clarity that a man’s life may have more than one Ending. But alas, the endings I may have earned present themselves to me, each and every one, in a sombre light. If there are five, as there were Five Beginnings, then these must surely be they.

  An Ending through Loneliness. I cling to Margaret. She it is who stands between Myself and a very paramount feeling of the Void round about me. Whatever is good or noble in me, I see only in her. But I know that Margaret must soon enough marry. She will leave Bidnold for some other (and better) life.

  Already, I am colluding with this Future, conferring with Prideaux and other Norfolk acquaintances about the suitability of certain young sons of the County Squires – or even of the Aristocracy – as husband to the daughter of a Knight of the Garter and Close Confidant of the King.

  Hugo Mulholland, the son and heir of Sir Gerald Mulholland, a handsome youth, but with a strange stuttering speech, has called upon Margaret more than once. I can tell that she thinks Nothing of him and, when he is gone, laughs at his stutter and imitates it to perfection.

  The last time this poor Hugo called, when he was safely in his Departing Carriage, Margaret folds her arms round my neck and says: ‘Papa, do not cast me off to some stammering husband, I beg you!’ And I kiss her hair and reassure her that she will only marry when she herself desires it and that, as far as it concerns myself, I would keep her with me at Bidnold to the end of time. But I know that I must not do this. Margaret will marry one day and that is that.

  An Ending through Poverty. Though I am still practising Medicine, attending to the sores and sufferings of my neighbours in Norfolk as best I can, I seem to be one of those individuals to whom others prefer to become Indebted, rather than to pay him what they have contracted to pay.

  From time to time I make up Accounts of what is owed to me and these sums are always large, and for a short time I endeavour to pursue my creditors with Firmness and Resolution. Some have the goodness to settle my bills, but little by little, in the absence of the rest of the money appearing, my Firmness and Resolution in regard to it die away, and I weary absolutely of my pursuit, as though it might be of some Unicorn, lost in the forests of Legend, which I am never going to find.

  Thus, in time, my income may fall to almost nothing, and – unless the King keeps up the very generous Stipend or loyer that he allotted me when he returned my house to me in 1668, to ensure that I would always be ready at any moment in Time to receive him at Bidnold Manor – I may pass into a State of Destitution for which there will be no remedy. Without the loyer I would certainly be a discomfited man.

  An Ending from Poisoning. My cook, Cattlebury – as already mentioned – is not so far behind Will in human Muddle that he can any longer be trusted to perform his culinary tasks with any real skill or competence. Last week, Cattlebury sugared a meat pie and fried a herring in molasses. When I returned these concoctions to the kitchen, Cattlebury appeared like an Ogre in my Dining Room, all awash with sweat and steam and holding in his hands not a cudgel, but a wooden Colander, through the holes of which his brains seemed to have slithered away, and asked me why, when he has taken so much trouble to Invent new dishes for me, I was so scornful of them.

  ‘Cattlebury,’ said I, ‘if these are Inventions, pray return to what has already been invented.’

  Will stood at his side, half bent in two and looking mournful. ‘He did not mean any harm, Sir Robert,’ said Will.

  ‘He may have meant no harm,’ said I, ‘but harm there was, nevertheless. A good herring and a quantity of beef have been wasted.’

  ‘He did not mean it,’ repeated Will.

  ‘If he did not mean it,’ said I, ‘then he did it through inattention or confusion, neither of which Commodity do I wish to find in abundance in a kitchen.’

  The two men appeared at a Loss, the one leaning at a rightangle to himself, the other looking as though he had been boiled in a vat of broth, and I looked at them and thought, you will be the Death of me. I shall not survive the Chaos that you bring.

  An Ending from Suicide. I learn from Sir James Prideaux, who has attended many an Execution at the scaffold on Mouse Hill, behind Norwich, that among all the robbers, counterfeiters, pickpockets, debtors, pirates and murderers who pass along the thronged way to their Ends, few go there without what he calls ‘some element of Pride’. It seems that the Condemned Man sees his last journey on this earth as a veritable Moment of Glory, as though he were raised, suddenly, to be celebrated for his wondrous deeds, instead of hanged for his knavery and deceit.

  He will wear the best coat that he has, and his wig, if he has one, will be powdered, and the buckles of his shoes polished, and upon his face – so says Prideaux – resides invariably a beatific smile. Then he waves, even like a Royal Prince, to the crowds, and when the moment comes for him to mount the scaffold he swaggers up there, still waving and showing off the dirty lace at his cuff or the bedraggled plume of his hat.

  And I do truly marvel at this and think to myself, why, Merivel, if such men do not fear Death, are you so craven before the thought of it? And so I now instruct myself to cast off this terror and steel my cowardly soul to outdistance my own predestined end by running like a Highwayman into the arms of my Maker. My only difficulty is in trying to imagine that Maker. I see him always and only as my poor Father, who died in a fire in 1662, burning with the feathers and ribbons of his humble Haberdasher’s trade.

  An Ending through Meaninglessness. This, I think, is the prospective ending that most dismays me. Despite a most almighty Struggle with God and with my Vocation, endeavouring always (as once exhorted by the King) to discover my own Usefulness and Purpose, I arrive very frequently at the suspicion that my life is a trifling thing, ill-lived, full of Misjudgement, Indulgence and Sloth, leading me only deeper and deeper into an abyss of Confusion and Emptiness, in which I no longer recall why I am alive. And a man who has lost this particular recall must surely be destined soon to Ultimate Oblivion.

  *

  Today, Margaret is returning to Bidnold.

  Fittingly, a pathway discovers itself among the clouds, and in my park the sun shines copper and golden on the beeches and oaks. I take a turn about the gardens, where I have recently established an alley of pleached Hornbeams, with which I am mightily pleased, and watch the Deer contentedly grazing, untroubled by the winds of November, flicking their tails in the pretty light. And I note, as I have noted a hundred times before, what beauty is here.

  When the carriage containing Margaret begins to make its way down the drive, I hasten back to the house, where I find Will already trying to assemble himself to greet his young Mistress. Margaret’s maid, Tabitha, comes out also, and smooths her apron and pats her hair to rearrange what the wind has disturbed, and I see on both these faces expressions of great gladness.

  Margaret steps down, wearing a new brown Cape, which I think must be a gift from Lady Prideaux, and I hasten to her and fold my arms about her and tell her how glad is all of Bidnold to see her. Though she is my own child, I am struck afresh, each time I see her, by the Glory that she brings with her. She is like a rainbow, or like some dazzle of light, where before there was none.

  At supper Margaret says to me: ‘Papa, I have some news to tell you: Sir Jame
s and his family are going to his mother’s estates in the County of Cornwall for all of December and onwards past Twelfth Night. And they have invited me to go with them.’

  We are eating a Carbonado, which is one of the few dishes seldom adulterated or burned by Cattlebury. I had been enjoying its excellence until this moment, but now, at once, I feel my appetite fade.

  ‘Cornwall?’ I say helplessly.

  ‘Yes,’ says Margaret. ‘Mary says there are warm winds in that part of the country that blow all year round, and flowers that bloom at Christmas, and pathways of sand and camomile, leading from the house to the sea …’

  I say nothing. In my mind’s eye I see Margaret descending these scented pathways to the sea, wearing her new brown Cape, and walking onwards and onwards, always further and further away from me, until she is out of sight.

  ‘Papa,’ says Margaret. ‘I hope that you will give me leave to go. There is an island, to which we may sail in a little barque, and on the island are Puffins, and I have never seen a Puffin.’

  ‘Ah,’ say I. ‘Nor have I.’

  I think I have gone pale, for Margaret stares at me and says: ‘Are you well, Father? What’s the matter?’

  ‘Non … nothing …’ I stammer (like Hugo Mulholland). ‘I was merely trying to recall the colours of Puffins and what tail feathers they possess.’

  ‘Their colours are black-and-white, with a yellow or orange bill, according to Penelope, but as to tail feathers, I will, if you let me travel to Cornwall, try to make some drawings or paintings of the birds for you, and then we will both be certain about Puffins.’

  I take a gulp of wine. ‘That will be a Great Relief,’ I say, ‘to have all uncertainty about Puffins cast aside!’

  We laugh and I try to resume my consumption of the Carbonado, while I tell Margaret that of course she must go to Cornwall, which, in all of England, is one of the kindest places. And so it is accepted. Margaret will be away for some two months. And I hear myself promise to give her money for new clothes and a new fur muffler, in case it be a little breezy aboard the barque. But all the while I am thinking, not about Margaret, but about myself and I see come towards me the spectre of my Death through Loneliness, and I cannot help but feel the sadness of it and its slow chill.