Riot Most Uncouth

by Daniel Friedman

  “The ordinary course of action would be to host a series of balls or formal events on one’s estate to introduce one’s daughters to eligible men.”

  She nodded. “And we attempted this. But my father had little standing among the social set he hoped to marry me into. His invitations were politely declined, or impolitely ignored. And Felicity’s father had his money problems.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Lord Whippleby could hardly be expected to throw a ball to find a husband for his second daughter. He was probably far too busy shuttering wings of his country house and letting go of servants he could no longer afford to keep.”

  She allowed herself a bitter laugh at this. I was making progress.

  “What do you know of Leif Sedgewyck?” I asked.

  “He’s quite nice,” Olivia said. “Good manners. Soft hands. His family’s money would have rescued Felicity’s father from his difficulties.”

  “Did he love her?”

  “I don’t think love was a prerequisite for their arrangement.” A flicker of genuine contempt flickered across her face, and she started to say something further. But then she caught herself. “I really think I’ve told you too much about this. It feels wrong to speak ill of the dead, and it’s wrong for you to be here at all. I really think you ought to go.”

  I tried to ask another question, but she shut her door in my face, and did not respond to my subsequent knocks. I was shocked by her abruptness; she did not even kiss me good-bye.

  Chapter 11

  The dew of the morning

  Sunk chill on my brow—

  It felt like the warning

  Of what I feel now.

  Thy vows are all broken,

  And light is thy fame:

  I hear thy name spoken,

  And share in its shame.

  —Lord Byron, “When We Two Parted”

  When a man finds himself in low spirits and at the mercy of his enemies, it is natural that he will seek the most readily available source of comfort. So, stung by my failure to learn anything of use at the murder scene, or in my subsequent interrogation of Olivia Wright, I called upon Mrs. Jerome Tower.

  Violet was a matronly twenty-eight years of age, but she was slight in the places a woman ought to be slight and ample in all the places a woman ought to be ample. Her husband was a Fellow at Trinity, and an instructor in literature. He’d given me poor marks in a class my first year, complaining that my writing was self-centered and lacking in worldly knowledge. I took his criticism to heart; seeking to expand my experience and better myself, I obtained knowledge of the gentleman’s wife by the end of that week. It was indeed a rewarding pursuit, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I subsequently continued to follow Professor Tower’s advice and advanced my education at every opportunity.

  Seducing maidens is a fraught and challenging enterprise; they’re overly concerned with their marriage prospects. I was largely able to avoid becoming a target of anyone’s matrimonial designs, due to rumors about my financial circumstances and my well-earned reputation for promiscuity, but my endeavors were substantially harmed by the belief among girls that involvement with me diminished their chance to ensnare other desirable men. I had, thusly, begun to direct my seductive efforts toward married women; they had already realized whatever value their virtue might have had, and were free to engage in philandering, a favorite sport of England’s idle classes, second only to foxhunting.

  I found Violet in her home, with only her children, which she locked in a back room upon my arrival. We stripped and fell into her bed, saving the conversation until our lust was spent.

  “You taste strange,” she said, panting, as we lay tangled in the sheets.

  “Perhaps it’s because I had food this afternoon. But I expect I taste mostly of wine and whisky; on miserable days like this, I must rely upon the nourishing and medicinal qualities of those edifying tonics.”

  “I’m glad you’re eating again,” she said. “I was growing concerned for your health.”

  I’d recently completed a three-week weight-loss regimen during which I had engaged in regular, violent exercise and subsisted on bread alone, with nothing to drink but brine and strong spirits. This diet caused frequent vomiting, but liberal allowances of laudanum dulled the pain and buoyed my mood. I’d come through it with a fashionable paleness of skin and I cut a rather svelte silhouette.

  “I’m down to twelve stone, a loss of twenty-seven pounds in the last few months,” I said.

  “Your bouts of asceticism seem to conflict with your hedonistic tendencies.”

  “If the hedonist fails to care for his body, it will serve him but poorly in his future hedonistic endeavors.”

  “Well, given your tendencies toward self-annihilation, I am pleased to hear that you’re considering the future at all. You’ve certainly been neglecting your studies. My husband said all the Fellows at the College have been gossiping about your meeting today with the senior faculty. Were you expelled?”

  “Would I be here with you now if I had been?” I asked.

  “I really don’t know,” she said. “It’s hard to discern, these days, why you do the things you do. I like to think I know you better than most, but lately, I find you opaque. Your behavior is not driven by motivations I can understand.”

  “And yet, despite the inadequacies of your own faculties of reason, your utmost concern is my educational standing,” I said.

  “I can’t tell if you’re trying to be clever, or if you’re evading the question.”

  “No, Violet, I was not expelled. When one is possessed of my potent charm and noble birth, one gets a lot of second chances.”

  “Not so many chances as you might think. The Fellows are concerned about you. Your manner has become steadily more erratic since Edleston left, and since those poor reviews came in for Hours of Idleness.”

  I swore so loudly that Violet recoiled a bit. I needed no reminder that my emergence into the pantheon of great Western poets had been met with less than universal acclaim. The Edinburgh Review, a periodical unfit for use as arse-wipe, had published a vicious attack upon my person disguised as a criticism of my poetry. They had dismissed my precocity by noting that it was unsurprising and unimpressive “that very poor verses were written by a youth,” and suggested that I “forthwith abandon poetry, and turn [my] talents … to better account.”

  “My poetry has elevated me to literary celebrity, to immortality, despite the barbed quips and puerile protests of that syphilitic crowd of ewe-fuckers who call themselves the critical establishment,” I said. “They’ll get theirs soon enough; I’m working on an answer, a satire. I will eviscerate them.”

  “Do you really think you should be talking about eviscerating people in light of recent local events?” she asked. Everyone in town had heard about the murder by now.

  Instead of responding, I crossed my arms and sank into the pillows.

  She reached for me and caressed my neck. “I worry about you. You’ve become so thin, and you appear frail and sickly to me sometimes.”

  “And yet I find that few women complain.”

  She sighed and rolled onto her back. Even with my carnal needs thoroughly sated, I couldn’t help staring at her breasts or, indeed, at any breasts available to be gazed upon at any time, ever. “It vexes me that I must share you with others,” she said.

  “And, I suspect, if you asked your husband, he’d express similar sentiments.”

  “You’re suddenly a moralist as well as an ascetic, Byron. I am not sure your charms benefit from your embrace of puritanical impulses.”

  For some reason, I decided then to tell her about my visit to the women’s rooming house, and what I’d seen there. I told her about the smell of the ripening corpse, and about how the fingers of the girl’s bloodless hands had been slightly curled, on account of their tendons drying and tightening.

  As I spoke, Violet drew herself up from her post-coital sprawl and gathered the sheets around her body.

  “I’d al
ways thought your preoccupation with the macabre was a hobby or some kind of affectation,” she said. “You drink your opiates and write your poems, and you collect those grotesque trinkets, and you traipse about in monk’s robes in that grand, ruined church you own. I’ve come to enjoy the way your postures become your identity. But you’re taking this too far. To walk into that room with that corpse is a choice I cannot comprehend. This is a family’s very real tragedy. It’s not a story for you to tell about yourself. Darling, I fear you are descending into madness.”

  “Murderers ought to be punished for their crimes.”

  “But they are punished routinely, all over Europe, without your participation. Why does this demand your involvement? What is at stake for you here?”

  “How can you ask what is at stake?”

  “I have heard that the body was drained of its blood. Is that what drew your interest? You can’t seriously believe that this crime is somehow connected to those vampires you’re always talking about?”

  That was exactly what I believed, but I was ashamed to admit it. I said: “I believe a woman is dead and a killer is loose. I cannot tolerate the idea that something like this can happen arbitrarily and that it might not be set right. How can we believe anything has meaning in a world so disordered that fathers leave their sons and never return, and girls are slaughtered for whimsy and sick pleasure? How can anyone bear to witness such injustice?”

  “That’s an interesting question to ask while you lie with a married woman in another man’s bed.”

  “I commit no injustice; I’m merely a fornicator. You, however, are an adulteress.”

  If she was piqued by the insult, she didn’t show it. Her voice remained even. “But our sins violate society’s order and flout its strictures, just as the murder does. And we sin arbitrarily, for no reason, and against an undeserving victim.”

  “Who says your husband is undeserving? He made the mortal error of marrying you. I would not have.” I thought this was funny, but I suppose I should not have been surprised that she didn’t share my amusement.

  “You like to hide behind your quips when your delicate vanity is wounded, and you try to use your humor to lighten the weight of the wrongs you commit,” she said. “But you know better, and so do I. My husband is quite affectionate. He adores me. He cares for his students and he dotes upon his children. He is a fine man. We commit acts that would surely harm him, were they discovered. Our conduct is in no way justified. And why do we do it? Fleeting pleasure. There’s no man alive better suited than you to carrying the banner for selfishness and indifference, for social disorder. I’d think you’d tear the world down to sate your own appetites.”

  “I don’t need to hear these things. This is not why I come here. This is not what I need from you.”

  “I care about you, Byron, and I am concerned. Your personality has grown inconsistent and erratic.” Perhaps she cared, but she didn’t know me. My personality had always been inconsistent and erratic; it was one of the few ways in which I resembled my mother.

  “If what happened to Felicity Whippleby was arbitrary, then the things that happen to me are likely arbitrary as well,” I said. “That is an unacceptable premise, and one I cannot abide. Events must be animated by purpose. There must be a reason why I spent my childhood in poverty. There must be a reason my mother sank into despondency and failed to protect me. There must be a reason my father left me alone. There must be a reason for this.” I pulled the sheets off my naked, shriveled leg, and then, ashamed of the way it looked, I covered it again. “Either the indignities of my past were preparing me for the special destiny I’ve always believed I was meant for, or they are just a bunch of things that happened.”

  Violet crawled across the bed to touch my shoulder. “Byron, I don’t know what to say.”

  “That’s all right,” I told her. “I didn’t come here to listen to you talk.” Then, because my lust and vigor had returned, I flipped her over and took her from behind.

  Chapter 12

  And vain was each effort to raise and recall

  The brightness of old to illumine our Hall;

  And vain was the hope to avert our decline,

  And the fate of my fathers had faded to mine.

  And theirs was the wealth and the fulness of Fame,

  And mine to inherit too haughty a name;

  And theirs were the times and the triumphs of yore,

  And mine to regret, but renew them no more.

  And Ruin is fixed on my tower and my wall,

  Too hoary to fade, and too massy to fall;

  It tells not of Time’s or the tempest’s decay,

  But the wreck of the line that have held it in sway.

  —Lord Byron, “Newstead Abbey”

  “This place is like something out of a fairy story,” said my mother. She flexed her fat ankles and then lifted her bulk into a sort of clumsy pirouette. She spread her arms and wiggled her thick fingers, and tried to spin around but stumbled halfway through her rotation.

  “Come dance with me, George!” The sleeves of her dress slid back, so I could see her white, dimpled elbows. The flesh of her arms was like raw bread dough.

  “I am not your little George anymore,” I said. “I’m Lord Byron.” I stretched my back, trying to look taller. I was nine years old.

  “Dance with me, Lord Byron,” said my mother. I had a great, unwieldy iron brace on my leg, and no intention of trying to dance in it, but she lifted me off my feet and twirled me in the air.

  Newstead was a decrepit ruin. The great drawing room had an inch of dirt on the floor, and mold growing up the walls. Shafts of sunlight poked through fissures in the ceiling, for the roof above was mostly blown away. The room was otherwise fairly dark; most of the lamps along the walls were unlit, and many of them were broken.

  “There’s no music, Mother.”

  Most days, Catherine was beset by melancholia and consigned herself to isolation, and she wept ceaselessly for her dead parents and her lost castle at Gight, and for Mad Jack. On such occasions, I was left mostly to my own devices, and to the depredations and abuses of whatever unsavory sorts I encountered. But when my mother was boisterous, she was inescapable.

  “I hear music! The most wonderful music. An elegant chamber quartet; oh, waltz with me, Lord Byron. Do me the honor.”

  In the dark recesses of the great long hall, I saw the stooped figure of Joe Murray appear in a shaded doorway. His pale face seemed to glow in the dim light.

  Joe Murray had come with the house. He’d been a longtime servant of my great-uncle, and funding had been set aside in the old man’s will to provide a salary for him, as long as he wished to serve whoever was Lord Byron. This was more likely a scheme of some sort rather than an act of generosity, for William Byron was always a schemer and never a benefactor. I suspect that Joe Murray would have been a malevolent presence in the house if the Wicked Lord’s hated son had inherited Newstead, as expected. But the old Byron had borne no particular animus toward me, and so Joe Murray was mostly benign; a servile wraith always hovering at the edge of my perception.

  My gaze met his, and he cocked an eyebrow as if to ask if I needed assistance. I waved him off, and he vanished. Catherine never saw him; she was too busy dragging me across the floor, my brace squeaking and scraping through the thick layer of rot and filth caked on the swollen floorboards.

  “I had a castle,” she said. “And I lost it unjustly, and my man went away. And I was left all on my lonesome. I was a pretty, pretty princess, consigned to filthy, squalid exile. But my own, only laddie love turned out to be a secret heir to a magnificent fairy palace, and now we will live happily ever after together and never be lonely.”

  “You know I must go away soon. To school. I cannot stay here.”

  “But today, we dance! And when your father returns, he’ll be so happy to see what we’ve got that he’ll take us both in his arms and never leave again.”

  “Father is dead. Everyone says so.”r />
  “Of course he isn’t. He’s traveling on business. You mustn’t believe every naughty thing you hear.”

  I was willing to cling to whatever hope my mother gave me, though I’d learned of my father’s death, indirectly, from Catherine. While we were still in Aberdeen, she received a black-bordered letter and retreated into her room to weep for weeks. Concerned by this deep and extended fit of hysteria, I crept into her chambers while she slept, and read the bad news. But I didn’t want to believe it, and looked for any excuse not to.

  So my mother and I denied it, and we danced in the dim and cavernous hall of our ruined fairy castle to music only she could hear.

  The next day, she was morose again, and wouldn’t leave her bed, so I took my little shovel and went treasure-hunting in the graveyard. Other than the occasional glimpse of Joe Murray peering at me through one of the dirty windows of the house, no adult interrupted my activities until I returned to the house at nightfall, for supper.

  I was lucky to have had the stern, corrective influence of my lawyer, Mr. Hanson, in those days, or I might have grown up to become some kind of degenerate.

  Chapter 13

  Where once my wit, perchance, hath shone,

  In aid of others’ let me shine;

  And when, alas! our brains are gone,

  What nobler substitute than wine?

  —Lord Byron, “Lines Inscribed upon a Cup Formed from a Skull”

  If I learned one thing from Catherine and her maudlin tendencies, it is this: One must never respond to adversity by retreating into solitude. Others may make untoward imputations; they may think one is ashamed of oneself. Like my father before me, I am proud of my every sin, excess, and abomination, and I respond to rebuke in the only appropriate way: I fling myself headlong into hedonism. It is incumbent upon the unrepentant sinner to flaunt his debauchery.