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According to Queeney
Beryl Bainbridge
To Andrew and Margaret Hewson,
with affection and gratitude
Contents
PROLOGUE 1784
CRISIS 1765
REÍNTEGRATE 1766
SWEETING 1772–3
YESTERDAY 1774
REVOLUTION 1775
DISASTER 1776–7
DISSOLUTION 1780–4
EPILOGUE 1784
A Biography of Dame Beryl Bainbridge
1784
PROLOGUE
On the morning of December 15th, 1784, a day of bleak skies heralding snow, a box-cart rattled into Bolt Court and drew up outside Number 8. Three men entered the house and presently emerged carrying a roll of threadbare carpet as though it were a battering ram.
Mrs Desmoulins, shawl tight against her, remained on the steps of the house and forced tears from her eyes. Though she felt grief, she was too old, too used to death, to weep without an effort. She stood alone, save for a black and white cat busy washing itself. A number of neighbours came out and waited with bowed heads until the cart had gone from sight. From the open window of Number 6 could be heard the jangling of a spinet. It was not known whether Mr Kranach, a man who summer and winter wore a coat lined with the fur of a white wolf, was serenading the departed or merely about his daily practice.
The conveyance turning into Fleet Street, a gaggle of urchins ran in pursuit and leapt for the tail-board, at which the driver flicked backwards with his whip. Francis Barber, walking behind, accompanied his master as far as the church of St Clement Danes in the Strand; then, the bitter cold of the early hour getting to his living bones, he ducked away and sought refuge in a tavern.
Arriving in Windmill Street, the cart trundled into the yard of William Hunter’s School of Anatomy. The carpet was carried to the top floor and laid on a dissecting table. A fire roared in the grate and the air was filled with an aroma of herbs, that of mint being the most pervasive. In the corner of the cosy room, a dog, half-flayed, hung from a hook in the ceiling; above, the grey heavens nudged the skylight.
Present that morning were the physicians Heberden, Brocklesby, Butter, Wilson and Cruikshank. Also in attendance were Mr Wilson’s son, Arthur, and a Mr White, neither of whom was as yet qualified in the practice of medicine.
Mr White unrolled the carpet and removed the winding sheet. Arthur Wilson made the first incision, cutting downwards from the thorax. A quantity of water spilled from the cavity of the chest and dripped on to the floor. Mr White was told to throw more herbs upon the fire to disperse the stink of dissolution.
Dr Heberden made the second incision, this time across the stomach. He was troubled with a cough, and once, bending over his departed patient, the force of his breath fluttered the dead man’s eyelashes, at which Mr White turned pale and swayed where he stood. Mr Cruikshank, noticing his pallor, ordered him to swallow a measure of brandy.
Later, under the instruction of his father, Arthur Wilson wrote the following report:
Opened the chest. Lungs did not collapse as they usually do, as though power of contraction lost.
Heart exceedingly strong and large.
Abdomen appeared to have incipient peritoneal inflammation and ascites.
Liver and spleen firm and hard.
A gall stone size of a pigeon’s egg removed from bladder.
Pancreas enlarged.
One kidney (left) quite good. That of the right entirely destroyed.
Left testicle sound in structure but with a number of hydatides (cysts) on surface. Right testicle likewise. Spermatic vein leading to it exceedingly enlarged and varicose.
Body, large in life, now somewhat shrunken, save for left leg swollen from the dropsy. Right leg recently stitched following self-inflicted wound.
Left lung removed for perusal of John Hunter, also slice of scrotum and gall stone. Specimens transferred to jars. Mr White pricked his middle finger when sewing up body. The following day had red lines running up arm and was laid low with slight fever.
Afterwards, the fire dying and the candles lighted, Mr Hoskins of St Martin’s Lane, sent to Windmill Street at the request of Sir Joshua Reynolds, mounted the stairs to undertake a death mask. When the wax had cooled and he pulled away the cast, the eyelids were dragged open; he was too engrossed in scrutinising the imprint of the face to notice the staring aspect of the original.
The candles extinguished and the door locked, the dead man and the dead dog waited in darkness, gazing upwards to where snowflakes, star shaped, now fell upon the skylight.
1765
CRISIS n.f. ()
The point of time at which any affair comes to its height
This hour’s the very criſis of your fate;
Your good or ill; your infamy or fame,
And all the colour of your life depends
On this important now.
Dryden’s Spaniſh Friar
Solitary nights were to be feared, for when darkness fell, the mind, like the eye, saw things less clearly than by day and confusions and perversions of the brain manufactured black thoughts. Which is why he contrived to stay out into the small hours, to shrink the time left until the light came back.
He was fortunate in that he had acquaintances who were willing to sit up with him, some of whom considered it a privilege to do so. He knew this to be the truth, not vanity. His introduction to the Thrale household had been made a year before, in gloomy January, through the offices of his old friend, the Irishman Arthur Murphy. ‘They keep high company,’ Murphy had said, by way of inducement, ‘and an excellent table.’
He had known nothing of his host beyond he was a prosperous owner of a brewery in Deadman’s Place, Southwark, and but recently married. There was also a mansion in Streatham with hothouses and chickens.
Murphy thought he had caught him by mentioning the expected attendance of the poetical shoemaker, James Woodhouse, the literary sensation of the moment, but, truth to tell, it was the promise of a fine dinner that led him to accept.
On his return home he had found Mrs Williams waiting up for him, the kettle on the boil. She led, of necessity, a reclusive life and was eager to hear his impressions of the wider world.
‘Was it engaging?’ she had asked. ‘Was it worth the effort?’
‘At least we were spared musical entertainment,’ he replied and then, in spite of himself, blurted out, ‘Mrs Thrale is an unusual woman.’
‘How so?’ countered Mrs Williams. ‘In looks or in intellect?’
Had he thrown aside caution and spoken the words in his head, he would have confided that Mrs Thrale had sparkling eyes, narrow shoulders, penetrating wit, scholarship of the female kind, a favourable interest in himself and a leakage of milk from her right breast.
Instead he said, ‘James Woodhouse has an impediment of speech, which is all to the good, as what he has to say is of little importance. Though a poor versifier, it is probable he’s a competent maker of shoes.’
‘How many at table?’ probed Mrs Williams. ‘What order of placement?’
‘From an upper window,’ he said, ‘Mrs Thrale pointed out the site of Shakespeare’s theatre. She maintains there are several timbers still standing.’
‘And you saw them?’ cried Mrs Williams.
‘I saw nothing,’ he said. ‘The night was too black.’
After no more than a quarter of an hour, fearful of betraying himself, he had feigned tiredness and announced he was for his bed. A disappointed droop to her mouth, Mrs Williams preceded him up the stairs; their
s was an example of the blind leading the half-blind.
Now, the new year well advanced, his visits to the Thrales’ house in the Borough had become regular, namely every Thursday in the month. Since last September a coach had been sent to fetch him, and as the light waned and the weather worsened he had half a dozen times been persuaded to stop the night. Mrs Thrale had even marked for his particular use a room above the counting house, and had shelves built to accommodate his books, should he wish to bring them.
He was not a fool. He knew full well his presence drew others to Southwark, and if the circumstances had proved different he might have absented himself, in spite of the fine dinners. The satisfaction, however, was not all on one side, for the Thrales had a child, a daughter not much above twelve months old. One afternoon, coming face to face with his boots on the bend of the stairs, she had neither screamed nor scrambled past, simply stared gravely up at him. She wore a bonnet, askew, from which a tuft of hair, the colour of damp sand, stuck out above her ear.
‘Sweeting,’ he had said, and bowed.
‘Da-da,’ she had crowed and crawled onwards on hands and knees.
Until that auspicious moment he had always thought of himself as a member of clubs; now he was inclined to believe he was part of a family.
And then, on the Wednesday evening of the third week in April, climbing to his bed in Johnson’s Court, he became aware of the Black Dog crouching on the landing, the shadow of its lolling tongue lapping the staircase wall. The stench of its hateful breath seeped into his chamber. He wrenched up the window to let in the night air, but still the rank odour swilled about the room; he propped himself upright and dozed with his hand clamped over his nostrils.
The following morning he woke out of sorts. He would have stayed where he was and distracted himself with arithmetic if Mrs Desmoulins hadn’t clamoured for his attention; yet again she had fallen out with Mrs Williams. His head ached and he had difficulty in breathing, but he calmed himself and spoke rationally.
That afternoon Thrale’s coach waited for him in the alleyway. Twice he went out of his front door and came back. The third time, Frank Barber, spying him hovering on the top step, his books spilled from under his arm, took him by the elbow and forcibly thrust him into his seat. Dog-tired, he would have clambered out again, but already the carriage was bowling into Fleet Street; besides, his belly was growling.
He arrived and regretted it, for he did not acquit himself well. When Thrale’s mother-in-law began her tiresome and habitual questioning, this time pestering him to give an opinion on the riots in Spitalfields occasioned by the imports of French silk, he’d lost his temper and answered harshly. Though in the right of it, he felt vexed at his lack of restraint; he’d brought himself down.
Midnight having passed, Mrs Thrale urged him to stop until morning. She mentioned the new hangings, green in colour, she had bought for his bed. ‘Dark green rather than bright,’ she elaborated, ‘with an elegant display of tassels.’
He refused to stay with more vigour than was necessary.
‘You do not look well,’ she persisted.
‘Madam,’ he countered, ‘I have not been well these last fifty years.’ When he went out into the dark, he heard the child crying in an upper room above the courtyard.
In spite of the hour, his household was still at war when he let himself in. It appeared Mrs Williams had taken a tumble and hurt her knee, a mishap caused, so she said, by Mr Levet leaving his bag of medical instruments at the foot of the stairs. Frank Barber swore that Levet couldn’t be the culprit, on account of his coming in by the cellar door past one o’clock and falling face down on the scullery table.
‘I am not given to untruths,’ huffed Mrs Williams, fierce as a bantam cock.
‘He is there now,’ Frank persisted. ‘Bag at feet, head on arms.’
Then Mrs Desmoulins had put her oar in, crying out that such recriminations served no purpose, that it was beholden upon them all to be kind to one another … in a general pursuit of happiness.
At which he had lost his composure still further and thundered, ‘Enough, Madam,’ and given them all a piece of his mind before stomping off to bed.
Alone in his room his rage subsided, to be replaced by an all too familiar lethargy of spirit in which his thoughts drifted like feathers caught in a draught. This near somnolent state – he was staring fixedly at the coarse hairs of his wig flung down in the window recess – was shortly followed by physical stirrings of an unmistakable nature.
By a supreme effort of will he fought off his torpor, striking his forehead repeatedly with his fist to beat away a loathsome descent into sensuality. Sufficiently recovered, he occupied himself in mending his coal box, which was split; in this he was not successful and succeeded only in splintering it further.
The following Thursday he sent a note to the Brewery by Frank Barber, pleading a prior engagement. It was a lie, but then, had the truth of his indisposition been spelt out, he might have been thought deserving of pity. He had been an object of that detestable sentiment throughout his childhood and shrank from the recollection.
It was unfortunate that Mrs Desmoulins let in Dr Adams that afternoon, for he was no longer able to control his agitation of mind. He was aware of Adams regarding him as he walked restlessly back and forth, but remembered nothing of their conversation beyond his own assertion that he would consent to an amputation of a limb if it would lead to a restoration of spirits. As from a distance, he heard himself groaning, weeping.
When Dr Adams had gone he placed half a grain of opium on a spoon and, holding it against the rim of a cup filled with cold tea, carried it down. He thought of dear, dead Tetty and how he had berated her for the same indulgent practice.
That night he dreamt an old dream, one in which he crouched beside his mother on her bed in the room above his father’s shop. His infant brother lay sleeping in the crook of her arm. Mother was turning the leaves of a child’s book on the doctrine of universal salvation. She said there were two places where people went after their death, a fine place called Heaven and a sad place called Hell. When she began to read, her finger under each word so as to keep pace, he knew the sense of the letters before she did, but pushed their meaning from his mind. On the opposite page was an engraving of devils toppling small figures into the eternal flames. ‘The Lord hath made all things for Himself,’ Mother read, ‘yea, even the wicked for the day of evil, for the wicked shall know the wrath of God and be punished everlastingly.’
He cried out in terror and woke instantly, his big toe throbbing with heat. It was the gout, yet he shuddered. Then it was that the Black Dog, scenting fear, burst into his chamber and leapt upon his chest.
‘I cannot bear it,’ Mrs Williams said, slopping her breakfast dish of tea down the front of her gown. She was putting it about that she was the most affected by the atmosphere in the house. Both women had risen shortly after dawn, though in the circumstances neither had reason to leave her bed. Mrs Desmoulins, smarting from an earlier encounter, remained silent. The altercation had concerned a half-loaf of bread. ‘You forgot to cover it against the mice,’ Mrs Williams had scolded, sightlessly raking her fingers along the scullery shelf. Crumbs, pretty as snowflakes, sprayed the floor.
Mrs Desmoulins had denied all knowledge and blamed Frank Barber. ‘It was him,’ she blustered, pointing a finger, but he, motionless at the table, had stuck out his pink tongue and stayed mute.
Mrs Williams’s shortness of temper, in evidence at the best of times, had increased tenfold. Even Mr Levet, with whom she often and perversely saw eye to eye, had fallen from favour. Three days ago, coming across him lying in his customary position at the bottom of the scullery stairs, she had kicked him awake. She hadn’t caused him an injury, but it was an indication of her agitated state. He, ignorant soul, had crawled on his knees to the fire and, murmuring the word ‘Mother’, dozed off again with his arms about the coal scuttle. Some minutes later, contrite, Mrs Williams had asked where he was. ‘
Gone,’ Mrs Desmoulins had lied, and embroidered, ‘he was bleeding at the mouth.’
‘I cannot bear it,’ Mrs Williams repeated, but now her voice broke in her throat and her hand shook.
‘You are not the only one bent under a burden,’ Mrs Desmoulins told her. All the same, she reached out to cover those fingers trembling upon the tablecloth. In doing so she was conscious it was Samuel’s influence that guided her; left to herself she might have resorted to spitting.
‘My hearing, at least, is unimpaired,’ snapped Mrs Williams. ‘Your constant wailing and sighing scarcely go unnoticed’; none the less, she allowed her hand to be stilled.
Presently Mrs Desmoulins went out into the little garden beside the house and sat on the bench beneath the sycamore tree. The air was cold, which suited her mood, for anger warmed her blood. From the dwelling next door she could hear Mr Phipps berating his wife. His was a house riven with discord … but then, wasn’t that a condition common to all?
Phipps kept a mistress in Clerkenwell. Once, when Mrs Phipps had been away in the country undergoing the lying in of her sixth infant, he had brought home his flighty woman in broad daylight and escorted her for all to see across the Court. There had been a boy child born between them who had died in his third year, one with the same beady eyes and cleft lip inherited from his father. Sometimes, the child, aided by his legitimate siblings, had been seen in the adjoining yard attempting to spin a top.
Samuel, hearing of the child’s death, had called on Mr Phipps and offered his condolences. Returning, he shed tears. He said Phipps had cared for that lost boy more than all his other offspring put together. Mrs Desmoulins had adopted a serious look. ‘The poor dear man,’ she wailed. Inwardly, she felt exultant, seeing her dead husband had been just such a one as Phipps, and one she hoped still roasted in Hell.
Sitting there, her feet turning to ice, she fretted over how much longer Samuel would stay in his room. His self-imposed confinement had begun five weeks before, on his return from the Thrales’. In the morning he had seemed his usual self. She’d had occasion to speak to him at mid-day owing to Mrs Williams accusing her of extravagance in the matter of candles.
According to Queeney Page 1