by A. N. Wilson
—Batani, sir.
—You are right, sir. Batani. You’re a good sailor, Marra. Sailed in both the English and the Dutch Service.
—Yes, sir.
The atmosphere had suddenly sobered, and those who heard it knew that this conversation could end with the Captain arraigning Marra for desertion, an offence for which he could be hanged.
—You tried to desert at Deptford before you came aboard the Resolution?
—Ay, ay . . .
—And now you think I’ve been interrupting your anthropological researches by asking you to perform the tasks of a common sailor . . . Speak, man – is that what you’ve been saying?
—Anthrop – well, sir, I . . .
—Soon I’m going to ask a lot of these men, Mr Marra. As much as I’ve ever asked of any man. I don’t want to force any man to serve against his will. Now it’s His Majesty’s birthday and in His Majesty’s name I give you leave. Go with Odiddy. Look after the boy. Find your pretty wife.
Marra’s mouth moved but words did not come – until Nally threw his straw hat into the air and cried —God save His Majesty! God save our Captain – and a cheer went up, which was repeated when the crew, by the light of late afternoon, waved goodbye to Odiddy, Noona and Marra the gunner’s mate, as they clambered into a native canoe and paddled towards the Raiatean shore.
George did not see Rai again, though the dream of doing so wove ineffectually out of the onanistic miasma in which he passed those southern winter months. Islands came towards the ship, and drifted away again. His pocket knife, with automatic precision, sharpened his diminishing pencil collection – sketch-books were filled with ever more competent likenesses of reeds, birds, seals, fish. The sun rose on turquoise waters. The moon threw shimmering confetti on purple murmuring waters. Brown faces smiled as the Captain performed his courtly routines of bowing to feathered chieftains, and accepting indigestible dispensations served on leaves or nutshells. The ship pursued its brave course, through choppy waters, grey as the North, through gales, through salty cataracts of sea-rage, through azure brightnesses. The sun beat on scorched heads when they became becalmed. Rain came as blessing after such days, as curse when it pelted and stung the face. Mr Wales and the Captain peered through their instruments, calculated distances, measured coasts, descried the starry firmament. Midshipmen kept up their interminably tedious banter. Nally was always at George’s side except when washing or pressing his clothes, and preparing favourite dishes. Reinhold continued his alternative narration of the experiences, noting new species and marine phenomena, mostly with keen observation, sometimes with wild inaccuracy, punctuating his observations with complaints about damp and rheumaticks. But all these phenomena were experienced as if through a hot tropical mist of George’s own inner preoccupations. For hardly a moment, even when asleep, did he cease to be painfully conscious of his skin, which had never recovered from the attack of scurvy. Though the disease had cleared, through the consumption of fruit on Easter Island, the skin had not, and to the pits and rashes of scurvy itself were added fresh onsets of acne so that for some days, it seemed as if his whole head had been blotched and covered with shining red blemishes. Half his teeth had gone. His gums were soft and his breath smelt. When Nally spoke gently to him, or the Captain praised his drawings, he sometimes responded with a curtness like anger, because he could not imagine there was disinterest in their kind words: they were patronizing him, trying to compensate for the fact that he had become a thing accursed.
Reading the Psalms with his father, he felt that Reinhold had wilfully selected the self-hating passage – Meine Wunden stinken und eitern vor meiner Thorheit. Ich gehe krumm und sehr gebücket; den ganzen Tag gehe ich traurig.
Moreover, the Devil had George firmly in his talons, and though, day and night, he knelt with earthly Father and prayed to the Heavenly, the overpowering temptation would not go away. The little ‘o’s for Onanie were written guiltily in his pocket-calendar, day after day, sometimes – o, o, O! rising to a four- or five-fold cry for release from carnal compulsion.
And so the brave little ship went on, and, as Reinhold liked to repeat (Aeneid III. 548) —we pointed the horns of our sail-clad yarns . . . We mount up to heaven on the arched billow and again, with the receding wave, sink down to the depths of hell. . . . And new lands were found – Palmerston Island in June, New Caledonia at the very beginning of September. As they all peered at the coastline of this terra incognita, they saw what at first appeared to be tall stone pillars.
—They will be found, Reinhold was already excitedly saying, to be structures erected in celebration of a great victory – as in Rome with the pillar of Trajan. Ja, ja, this is something of which I mean to write when we return to England, the kinship, so to say, between the primitive world and that depicted in the heroic verses of antiquity, it will be found.
Loyalty, and the adolescent miasma, made George keep silent, even though his younger eyes could see evergreen foliage sprouting from the height of these ‘pillars’.
Taking one more squint through his spyglass, Captain Cook said,
—They are trees, sir.
—You are right, said Mr Wales, who had reached the stage of his relations with Reinhold where he would have said anything to contradict him.
—Sure, they’ll turn out to be pillars, sir, you’ll see, no doubt at all of it, said Nally, in Reinhold’s cabin, bringing in to Reinhold’s cabin some of the whitest, best-pressed shirts ever seen, and his brown breeches all but invisibly darned and mended.
Even as he uttered these brave words, however, a landing party had identified a hitherto undiscovered species – Araucaria columnaris – Cook’s Pine.
—Just think of the masts they’d make! exclaimed the Captain.
Reinhold, not thinking, with Mr Wales beside him, it was the moment to admit directly to error, quoted:
to equal which the tallest Pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the Mast
Of some great Ammiral, were but a wand . . .
And Cook, magnanimous in victory, said,
—Quite so, sir, quite so! ignoring Wales’s churlish
—He didn’t even think they were trees this morning!
From New Caledonia they continued to sail southerly. On 10th October another undiscovered island, named by Cook as Norfolk Island, came into view. It was uninhabited. Hodges did a beautiful oil painting of it in the few days of fine weather before the choppy seas became stormy and storm turned to gale. Cook was heading for the familiar waters of Queen Charlotte Sound.
—There to refresh my people and to put the ship in a condition to cross this great ocean in a high latitude once more . . .
Elliott, one of the midshipmen, wrote in his diary —every way we stood for an Hour, the Roaring of Breakers was heard . . . a most anxious perilous Night . . . at last Daylight appeared.
Steering the sloop into Queen Charlotte Sound in very strong westerly gales and cloudy weather was no easy task. Hauling round Point Jackson, Cook privately believed – as he later admitted – that the Resolution might actually capsize. The next day, however, the very high winds continuing, he managed to steer them into Ship Cove, and moored a cable. Everyone was hungry but it was not fishing weather and the best they could offer the men were scrawny old shags which two of the Lieutenants managed to shoot as they came towards shore. In foul weather they struck and unrigged the fore and mainmasts. It was a miracle that one of the masts at least had not snapped in two during the storm. Brave boys rowed ashore and set up tents in driving rain, and beneath the sodden canvas there began the work of repairing the rigging and, more importantly, cooking some wholesome food. Even the most hardened carnivores among the Resolutions eagerly devoured what Pattinson prepared – vegetable and oatmeal soup for breakfast and peas and vegetables for dinner. After two days during which the rain pelted unceasingly, the wind turned to southerly. They woke, on Sunday 23rd October, to light air and pleasant sunshine. All, even the papists, joined the Captain in
his hearty prayers of Thanksgiving, after which, most unusually for him, Cook declared a day of total rest. He put his large brown hand round George’s shoulder and squeezed him. George thought —My father has never hugged me.
—Bathe in the sea, lad. Run about in the sunshine. It’ll do thee good.
All, in that moment, felt New Zealand to be their refuge, their saving place, their second home.
II
1793
THERESE DID NOT BREAK HIS HEART BY LEAVING HIM. His grief at her departure, his wrenching anguish at the loss of the children all fuelled the anger he had felt with her, the uncontrollable anger, which had been part of their relationship from the beginning. And anger, as warriors know, is an antidote to heart-break. It was Caroline who broke his heart, by her kindness.
Not in Easter Island only did the souls of the ancestors, and the statues which contained them, topple. The huge equestrian statue of Louis XV in what was now the Place de la Révolution in Paris was pulled down to make place for that human instrument of punishment, the guillotine. On a cold January day in 1793, with his hair cropped, Louis XVI was led out and decapitated in the presence of eighty thousand armed men who cheered. People ran forward to dip pieces of paper and handkerchiefs in the blood. Some even dipped their fingers and licked, with the quip —Il est bougrement salé – it is well salted.
A letter came to Mainz from Brand to say that he had abandoned his Grand Tour and was heading back to England. Some feared England would now declare war on France. Others, said Brand, feared an English Revolution. He told George that he would always be welcome in England – that if he came to London, Brand would see him right. The news about Therese came as a postscript. —You will have heard that your wife and children have gone to Switzerland.
George, in Mainz, had burnt his boats. He knew that. By consenting to be a Deputé in General Custine’s Provisional Revolutionary Government in Mainz he had nailed his colours to the mast. Surely, he thought, on the days when optimism prevailed in his heart, the Revolution will settle. Having won Liberty, men and women will live at Peace. On pessimistic days, however, he was less sure. The ‘revolutionaries’ of Mainz consisted of, at most, a few hundred people. Some were disgruntled peasants; most were intellectuals like himself. The population at large – the lawyers, the merchants, the shopkeepers, the clergy – were sullen and grudgingly accepting of the Occupation – for they could not fight. They in no sense endorsed the Revolution. Most of George’s administrative work – and that of Lux, who presided over the small French staff – consisted in fielding complaints: that French troops had stolen wine, committed acts of indecency, occupied buildings which the citizens of Mainz believed to be their own. You could not, George reflected sadly, force people to accept Liberty in such circumstances.
Custine seemed to like George. He asked him, inevitably, about Captain Cook, about New Zealand and its landscape, about the Forsters’ view of Bougainville.
For the most part, the General tolerated the fact that George was doing very little work, and spent most of his time in his apartment with Frau Böhmer. He even helped George with his servant problem, supplying one of the batmen from the officers’ mess to cook and valet – Martin Dupin – who had a gift for finding food in the increasingly scanty market and who converted the few bits of sausage available into a more than palatable cassoulet.
Those winter days, while the world was absorbing the news of the French King’s death, were the days of George’s deepest intimacy with Caroline. As so often happens to lovers, the place turned into a mere backdrop to their drama. The Baroque terraces of the former monastery gardens of St Alban became ‘their’ garden. Walking beside the riverbank and gazing at the great cold confluence of the Main and the Rhine became ‘their’ view. Flecks of snow dotted pearly grey skies behind cathedral towers and church spires.
Indoors, no matter the time of day, they continued what seemed an unstoppable, deep conversation, in which it would have been impossible to know whether the talk punctuated the love-making or the other way round. Kind, peachy-bottomed, quick-witted, thick-tressed, chestnut-haired, Hellenophile, erotomane, Kant-and-Herder-read, large-breasted, poetic, bright-eyed, hilarious, rubber-nippled, conversational, aesthetic, intuitive, good, generous-thighed woman, Caroline Böhmer, born Michaelis, was George’s saviour. In her arms his strange bony pock-marked body became gloriously beautiful, an instrument which made her writhe, gasp, gyrate, cry out. On her soft bosom he could lay his toothless spotty face and speak of the whole past, as he had never spoken before. She told of her girlhood, her dull marriage to Böhmer, her long, complicated friendship with his Therese. Largely, however, she let him talk for what seemed like a month – of his mother and father, of Reinhold’s escape from an unhappy marriage into friendship with the boy, of their journey down the Volga, their times in Warrington, of Mr Priestley’s chemical experiments, of London and its galaxy of scientific excellence. He spoke of Therese – not bitterly – at last, not bitterly – but with absolute candour – of their lack of spiritual sympathy, of the sexual incompatibility, of their pointless, self-protective need to differ about even the most trivial matters, of their joint ability to find cause for dispute in absolutely every area of life.
—We even quarrelled about The Sorrows of Young Werther but then . . .
There was a long silence, as she wound some of his hair round the fingers of her left hand and stroked his naked stomach with the other.
—I did not tell her the truth.
—About Werther?
She let out a bright laugh.
—What is the truth about Werther?
—I told her I’d read it in Percy Street.
—Was that not true?
—No, no, that was true. I told her the love interest in the book left me cold – that I could not imagine feeling what Werther feels for Lotte, and of course that made Therese angry. But then everything I said made her angry.
—And what was the real truth?
After a silence, George said,
—It was true I had not felt . . . I never had felt . . . until now, I . . .
—Sh, sh, sh.
She disentangled her finger from his hair and touched his lips.
—We are too old for pretty speeches, she said.
—I’m not.
—Go on about Werther.
—When she began talking about it, that was when I knew she could never be my friend, still less my life-companion and only love. I could not share with her my memory of poor Nally.
—And you can . . . with me?
He turned, rose on one elbow, and kissed her lips.
—I loved reading Werther. I was just the right age for it. The first half, I read in a single afternoon, and I remember putting it in my pocket and walking up to Hampstead, and finishing it as I sat on a little hill looking down on London. I suppose we’d been back in London about a month.
—From the voyage?
—From the voyage. We were all living in the house in Percy Street – all my brothers and sisters – my mother, who was an absolute stranger to me, Vati, who was out much of the time – as I now see, he was both attempting to further his career, and managing to damn himself with every blunder. So, there was the Family Forster – and a couple of maids who slept in boxes in the scullery – and there was Nally.
—He’d followed you from the ship.
—Vati told him we could not afford to pay him, but he had asked if he could come to live with us as a servant until he found another position. What of his position at sea? Vati had asked. But this was not a question Nally addressed. Mother liked him – was in positive raptures about the condition of everyone’s clothes after Nally had been through the wardrobes. Lace was white, and neatly pressed, for the first time in years. Sheets were crisp and spotless; shirts odourless, or rather smelling gently of what seemed like meadow flowers. The few pieces of family silver shone. Books were not only dusted but their leather spines gleamed – he had somehow polished them. Everyone�
��s shoes were as bright as the ebony on the fortepiano. When we were at sea, Nally had needed to hide his cleverness. From the other sailors. I mean – living with us – he could sit in the scullery in Percy Street reading a little volume of Alexander Pope. His favourite was ‘Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady’.
—Oh my poor darling. You are weeping.
She pressed his face to her bosom. Then he continued,
—I should have seen it all – seen it all, all. He used to quote these lines:
Is there no bright reversion in the sky,
For those who greatly think or bravely die?
And then he’d whistle gently to himself as he was polishing a shoe or a candlestick. Oh, Caroline.
—Are you saying you . . . you loved Nally?
—Of course I was devoted to him – but no, it was the other way round, and I never saw it. Vati came home one day. Perhaps he knew. Perhaps he knew and decided it must stop. Or perhaps he was just being quite casually and unthinkingly brutal, as when he got Pattinson to cook my dog Sobachka . . . he came home one day and told Nally that there was no room for him in the house, that they could not afford him, that he must go . . . ‘But . . . but Dr Forster. Where am I to go?’ ‘I will write a good character for you. There should be no difficulty about finding a position. Or – surely you could go back to sea?’
This conversation happened at the bottom of the stairs in the little hallway. My father and Nally stood opposite one another beside the hall table. I overheard them because I was halfway down the stairs. I was coming down to report to Vati, as soon as he came home, about my progress with the day’s writing. I had got the Resolution as far as the Cape. Nally’s face altered. There was normally something inscrutable and humorous about his features but now his mouth formed a long oval; he might have been about to scream. His eyes were those of a man facing a torturer or an executioner. —No – no – NO! he said. George – stop him – don’t make him do this – George. I beg you. —How many times must I insist you call my son Mister George? I am sorry I must ask you to pack your belongings and leave. Leave this house. —And where am I to go? —Vati, surely he does not have to leave today? Surely he can stay with us until he finds a position? —Ja, ja, very well. But a week. I do not think it is unreasonable to suggest, Nally, that you are gone in a week?