Merivel: A Man of His Time

by Rose Tremain

  ‘Ah, wigs. Now there is a vanity I am not fond of, begging your pardon, Merivel, for indeed yours is very nice and clean. But the thought of this ton of mouldering Curls on me … there is something in me which rebels at it.’

  At this moment one of the sparrows flew down from the Hazelnut bush onto the grass, where it began to peck about. I watched it for a moment, envying the birds their absence of sartorial choice, and in the next second the bird was gone. A great grey Sparrowhawk had cascaded out of the air and carried it away in its claws.

  We three stared at the patch of grass where the little bird had been. Its mate left the Hazelnut and landed among the fallen leaves and looked about, hopping this way and that. We watched in sorrow. It flew back to the topmost twig of the bush and balanced there, trying to see where its lost companion had gone. Then, it began a desperate calling: ‘Sip-sip, sip-sip …’

  This call was unlike the merry chirruping we had heard earlier. It was the sound of grief. And we were silent, listening to it, and Constanza began a plaintive whining.

  Stroking the dog’s ears to calm her, the Baron said: ‘Who shall any longer say, when they witness this and hear the bird’s lament, that Creatures have no souls? Does not Aristotle say in his De anima, that “voice is the sound characteristic of what the soul has in it”? Will you tell me there is no soul to inform that cry?’

  ‘I shall not tell you so,’ said I.

  ‘And I shall tell you that we do not know,’ said Louise.

  *

  We dined and went to bed, and I undressed and washed myself and put on a clean nightshirt. I lay in my linen sheets, listening to the owls in the firs and to the sound of the lake far off.

  My head boiled with thoughts. Although I have, over the past year and a half, continued to set down my own Story, and this writing has often calmed and assuaged my melancholy, and sometimes brought me mirth, I do also see that my own life, for all its Singularity, has not sufficient significance to imbue this task with any real merit.

  What I would fain discover is some Subject – such as Sir James Prideaux’s Treatise upon the Poor of England – which might absorb all my attention and lead to a Work of Proper Distinction, sufficient to get me some marvellous hearing at the Royal Society, whose Fellows incite in me both admiration and envy in equal measure.

  These were no banal speculations, but considerations of the most audacious kind, leading to a momentous question. ‘Why,’ said I to myself, ‘should it not be I, Robert Merivel, who brings the full power of his mind to this subject of the Souls of Animals and tries to explore it further?’

  Why not, indeed? Why not?

  I knew that many men had speculated upon the question, and that I could not proceed in ignorance, without first perusing these speculations. But I also assumed that many of them might be found in Baron de Saint Maurice’s admirable Library, and thus be accessible to me in the coming days and weeks.

  My lack of any formulated opinion on the question troubled me a little. I had, as yet, no coherent Hypothesis, let alone a Theory. But I remembered how Pearce had often said to me, on the subject of Anatomy (at which I excelled and he did not), that understanding is, of necessity, a slow journey and that, at the outset of this journey, one should proceed with humility. ‘One cannot,’ he said, with a flourish of complicated Pearcean logic, ‘know in advance the infinite number of things which one does not know.’

  What I knew I had – which many other men did not – was a great Affinity with God’s Creatures, from a Starling I had first dissected as a child, to the Badgers I longed to find in the Vauxhall woods, from the great deception attending the gift of my Indian Nightingale and my attempts to save its life, to the sweet dog, Minette, who had been my companion through months of adversity. And so onwards unto Clarendon, my poor Bear, who cost me the price of a priceless ring, and whose soul I seemed to hear talking unto mine and asking to be set free.

  Might it not be the case, I reasoned, that this Affinity – though I knew myself to be no scholar – would enable me to arrive at perceptions hidden from drier and colder men? And from what did this Affinity arise? Surely, from my own animal nature, to which my entire existence had been such a fearful slave? And thus, would not my attempt at this Treatise teach me not a little more only about birds or bears and their place in the world, but also about my own place and my own soul, thus enabling me to conduct the last years of my life with greater dignity than heretofore?

  All of this thinking put me into a state of great optimism and excitation. The sweet sound of the lake, the calling of the owls, the sighing of the wind in the firs, seemed to set up the perfect orchestration to this agitation of my mind. I knew myself to be furiously happy. Almost, I desired to go down to the Library now and begin my search for books. I longed to tell Margaret that at last I had found a subject perfectly suited to me and that I would throw myself into my great Work with all the enthusiasm of which she knew me to be capable.

  Though sleep seemed to be far off, as the night advanced and the Moon went down, I felt a beautiful calm steal upon me. I had my Plan and I saw that it was good. I felt like God surveying Creation and congratulating Himself on His excellent work.

  And so I fell into a deep and soundless repose, and it was only when I woke with the sunrise that I remembered what I was meant to be doing in the night and had not done. I was meant to be making to love to Louise.

  The time was six o’clock. I went quietly along the stone corridor to her room, concealing with my night robe a beautifully erect member. It was as though all my exquisite mental Excitation – compounded by my vision of myself holding forth to the Learned Fellows in the sacred chambers of the Royal Society – had primed me for its physical counterpart.

  I went into the room and stole into Louise’s bed. She woke and turned to me and I kissed her. When she felt the hardness that I pressed against her, she laughed with joy.

  26

  NOW, FOR SOME long while, as the Autumn colours, shining through the lake mists, slowly browned and faded and the first chill of Winter came to our surprised attention, I can truly say that I was happy and at peace.

  My days followed a sweet uniformity. After breakfast I would go with Louise to her Laboratory, so that she could share with me the progress of her experiments. I sat beside her, observing the measuring, mixing, heating, and sifting of herbs and compounds. Six different preparations were being tried as a Repellent for flies, but she could not come to any success here, for those that appeared efficacious burned the skin and those that did not burn it seemed rather to attract insects to land upon the Baron’s pate.

  Yet Louise did not give up. One of the many things I came to admire in her was her Quiet in relation to Failure. And when I commented upon this she said: ‘I am merely trying to emulate, in a small way, your sublime Newton. He has demonstrated that on the route to scientific truth, Catastrophe and Error must be continually overcome. What is the purpose of becoming cross?’

  After an hour or so, I would leave her to her labours and go to the Baron’s Library. Here, in the scented quiet of this room, I had embarked upon Aristotle’s De anima and begun to ponder long upon his conclusions about the soul, which he divides into three Elements. These he describes as follows: the Nutritive Soul, possessed by Man and Vegetables; the Sensitive Soul, possessed by Man and Animals; and the Rational Soul, which is unique to man.

  Though it may prove very difficult to question his reasoning that only man possesses an intellective Soul, capable of Memory and will, I tried not to let myself and my would-be Treatise stumble upon this early obstacle. I reminded myself that Aristotle might be in Error when he assigned souls to potatoes and vegetable marrows. And if this was the case, why then he might also be mistaken in believing that animals could not reason or exert their will when called upon to do so.

  Instances of animal behaviour, in which the will appears to be exerted, I already knew to be many. In the work of the naturalist, Henry More, I had read to my amazement of a ‘Parliam
ent of rooks’, which sat upon the high roosts and acted as one to hound from their number those birds that had exhibited ‘delinquent conduct’.

  Pliny, I recalled, speaks of a troupe of Elephants who, being taught to dance by a cruel Master, were seen to be ‘practising in secret’, so that they would not be chastised at the next dancing lesson.

  And was it not plain to see, thought I, that horses, such as my beloved Danseuse, and dogs, such as Bunting, came very clearly to comprehend the elaborate system of rewards and punishments meted out by their owners, thus arguing for a process of reasoning going on in their heads?

  More than this, I had observed in these animals, no less than in Clarendon, a detestation of oppression and a spark of recognition of Justice. For had it not been true that, on the day when I led Clarendon out of his cage, so that his poor limbs, clamped in by the snow and ice, might be freed and exercised, he had followed me very meekly, as though understanding very perfectly my benign intentions towards him?

  He could have massacred me for leaving him so long pent up in the cage, but he did not. It was as though he perceived my sorrow at what had happened in that time of the great snows, and understood that I was doing my best to make some amends to him.

  While understanding that the road leading to my Treatise (which I tentatively entitled Meditations Upon the Animal Soul by Sir R. Merivel) would be very long, I permitted myself to scribble down some first Notes upon it, and this feeling of a true Beginning gladdened my heart so intensely that I could not refrain from taking up my pen again and writing to Margaret, to tell her how precious to me her advice had proved and that I was now embarked on a new field of study, ‘which does indeed quiet my mind and has shaken me from all Melancholy’.

  I did not tell my daughter that my other ‘field of study’ was teaching myself how to be a very marvellous Lover to Louise. But these études did indeed occupy much of each and every night, and she, being a woman of independent spirit, did not hesitate to instruct me and place parts of my body exactly where she wished them to be, and liked to keep up an erotic commentary upon our every Exertion.

  These nights, while bringing me repeated sexual satisfaction, exhausted me somewhat, but Louise appeared to thrive. What I detected in her, as the autumn passed, was a blazing out of good health, despite so much loss of sleep, so that she appeared to look younger than when I had first met her at Versailles.

  We did not speak of love. I did not feel able to pronounce the word. Yet I knew that this was what Louise longed to hear from me – that I loved her. And it is true that, in some measure, I did love her. But what I loved more was that new Sense of Myself, as a man of seriousness embarking upon a Great Work. For I saw that, for the first time in my life, I was attempting something that would find favour with the two men I had striven so long to please: Pearce and the King.

  I pictured Pearce reading my Meditations, holding the Treatise close to his face, hour after hour, then laying it down at last and saying: ‘Admirably far-reaching, Merivel. You have given me much to reflect upon. For once you have concentrated upon a subject worthy of your time.’

  And as for King Charles, I saw him bursting out into affectionate laughter and slapping his thigh and saying: ‘Animal souls! What a marvellous idea. Upon my word, my dear Fool, I see from this masterful Work that you have joined the ranks of the Wise and must be elected Fellow of the Royal Society forthwith! Let us have a jug of Mead.’

  These imaginary scenes brought me unimaginable joy.

  *

  If the afternoons were fine, Louise and I would walk down through the winding paths of the estate to the Lake, and watch the sailboats skimming over it, and the waterbirds wading at its edge or bobbing in the water. And this panorama of the Lake, with the soft hills behind it sloping to a rim of firs, and neat houses of wood dotted here and there, with blue plumes of smoke issuing from their chimneys, soon became as pleasing to me as any landscape I had beheld, so graceful was it in its quietness and calm.

  Only once, when Louise and I were alone there, on an afternoon that had started fine but had now shadowed to grey, was this calm disturbed.

  We were standing, hand in hand, near the water’s edge, and a large boat came towards us and tied up at the nearby jetty. From the boat emerged a group of Soldiers – more than eight or ten of them, all in their uniforms and buckling on their swords as they disembarked. I had no idea which Regiment they belonged to, but the dark blue of their coats put me in mind of the Swiss Guards.

  At any moment, thought I, Colonel Jacques-Adolphe will appear among them, and he will come storming to me and attempt to gouge out my eyes with a Billiard spoon, and all will be at an end.

  The soldiers went past us and no tall Giraffe came into view. But I had begun to shiver in the sudden afternoon chill and I said to Louise: ‘We are living as though your husband is dead and will not come to take you back to Paris. But he will come one day.’

  Louise was quiet. She touched my cheek, which no doubt had gone pale. ‘For as long as his infatuation with Petrov endures, he will not come.’

  ‘And when that is over?’

  ‘He believes that it will never be over.’

  ‘Will he not come at Christmastide?’

  ‘No. That season is inimical to him. He cannot abide to imagine any nativity.’

  In the evenings, after an always excellent dinner cooked by one of the Baron’s two chefs (both neat-mannered men, unlike my poor Cattlebury), we would often repair to the grand salon and listen to Louise performing for us on the Harpsichord.

  She played very finely and could sing well. And, listening to her voice, I could not but be put in mind of those evenings at Bidnold, long ago, when Celia sang for me and the delusion that I was in love with her stole so catastrophically upon me.

  And I asked myself, between the sound of one woman’s voice and another’s, sixteen years later, what had I truly achieved in the world? And all that I could answer was that I had persevered. This perseverance had brought me here, to a fine château in Switzerland and to the bed of a clever woman. And this seemed to me to be fortune enough.

  Louise not only played the Harpsichord, she also composed music. Her arrowy spirit flew straight to the mathematical heart of composition, without appearing to encounter difficulty. Her musical notations were deft and flowing. What melodies she heard in her mind, she could quickly underscore with moving harmonies. Certain bass Chords of hers – in their brilliance and surprise – brought even the most inattentive listeners back into the fold of Wonder.

  Some of these listeners were men and women with far more musical knowledge than I possessed. The Baron liked to entertain at a Friday evening soirée, and so it was that I came to meet some of the Society of Neuchâtel, which included in their number Artists and Singers.

  To this last category of people I found myself irresistibly drawn. Their great Largeness, whether of chest or bosom, together with the echoey timbre of their voices I experienced as a strange, sexual provocation. That the men, no less than the women, were in the habit of embracing each other created in me a longing to be so embraced. And a Swiss Baritone, by the name of Marc-André Broussel, as though reading my mind, did, at our second encounter, hold me against his massive girth for a full ten seconds, then pressed a sensual kiss on my lips.

  This singer spoke five languages and knew London, and had sung for the Duke of York. Upon learning that I was a Confidant of the King, he wished to hear every detail of my life. And, liking his attention and the musky scent of him, I recounted to him the story of how the King had rewarded me with lands and titles in return for becoming a Professional Cuckold, and how I had broken my pact with him. ‘Alas,’ I told Broussel, ‘I did the one thing forbidden to me. I attempted to make love to my wife. And so I was cast into the wilderness.’

  ‘What wilderness? Where?’ said Broussel, clutching at my sleeve.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘only the Quakers, in England, believe themselves to live beyond the Great Shadow cast by Whiteha
ll. So I went to them, to work in a Quaker Bedlam with my only friend in the world, John Pearce. But John Pearce was a dying man …’

  ‘Mon dieu, mon dieu, mon cher homme,’ said Broussel, encircling me in his arms, ‘how I love this story! Ah, I would like to compose an opera around it. Will you not write it down for me? I am always searching for stories and finding none as good as this.’

  So susceptible am I to the kind of flattery that puts me at the centre of a thing, and so seduced was I by this Marc-André Broussel, with his Largeness and his wild black hair and his scent of cloves and rose oil, that I heard myself agree, with alacrity, to do this.

  He then cried out, for all to hear: ‘Listen every one of you! Sir Robert Merivel is going to write down a story for me – his own story! – and I am going to write an opera about him. I shall play him! I shall embody him in music!’

  The company’s attention was greatly attracted by this and, soon enough, all pressed me to tell ‘my story’. But I quickly saw that it was one thing to tell it in confidence to the great Singer and quite another to relate it to the Baron’s assembled guests. There is, I know, some pathos in the tale, yet it also risks to make me appear lecherous and foolish, and although I have never been averse to ridicule, I did not want to court it here – not least because I did not want to embarrass Louise.

  Seeing me hesitate, Broussel stood up and with a dramatic flourish of his arm said: ‘I shall tell it, if Sir Robert will not. It is the story of a man who is given Paradise. Paradise, you see – like Adam. But again, like Adam, he breaks the one rule that he must not break. And so loses again all that had been so recently granted to him. But as to detail, you will have to wait until I have written my opera!’

  There was a great Outcry at this and somebody called out: ‘How does the story end?’

  At which Louise said quickly: ‘We do not know. None of us knows how our stories are to end.’

  Work upon my Meditations proceeded slowly. I had at last opened Fabricius’s De brutorum loquela and found there a very tender passage about mother hens and the hatching of their chicks, which, if my Latin translation was accurate, indicated to me the Master’s acknowledgement that love might be present in the hearts of birds, as indeed I had presumed from watching the Sparrow on the lawn, mourning the loss of its mate. I copied out Fabricius, thus: