The Lambs of London

by Peter Ackroyd

  She enjoyed her role. As a child she had helped her mother on a fruit stall in Whitefriars Market, and had enthusiastically joined the cacophony of voices that accompanied each day’s trading. She had shouted “Pippins” till she was hoarse. In fact she guarded the bookshop and its exhibits with exemplary care. She knew every tread on the wooden boards; she could tell if someone attempted to climb the stairs, or to wander behind the counter. If a visitor so much as breathed on the glass, she turned her head sharply and glared at the offender. She had no interest in, or curiosity about, Shakespeare as such; but she was pleased that William was advancing the family’s fortunes in such an unexpected manner.

  That they were a family she had no doubt. She was in fact secretly married to Samuel Ireland. They had been joined, without ceremony, by a naval chaplain in Greenwich; it was only on this condition that she had moved into Holborn Passage. William’s mother had died in childbirth and the infant had been taken by the midwife to the midwife’s sister in Godalming, in which family he remained until he was three years old. William remembered nothing of this, and his father did not enlighten him. He was returned to Holborn Passage soon after his third birthday, when he was greeted by Rosa with arms outstretched. The small boy had looked away, and cried. He seemed pleased by the surroundings of the shop, however, and, as Rosa put it to her husband, “took more kindly to the books than to the people.” Rosa was in fact hurt and perplexed by him. He met all her attempts at affection with brusque inattention. She would question him about the small events of the day, as he grew older, but he would reply only very briefly—sometimes with no more than a nod or a shake of the head. He never began a conversation with her and, on the infrequent occasions when they were alone together, he would take up a book or walk over to the window. And, over the years, nothing had changed.

  “You might think,” she had said to Samuel Ireland, at the breakfast table a month after “The Shakespeare Museum” had opened, “—pass me the damson—you might think that he did not really live here at all.”

  “He has immortal longings, Rosa.”

  “What does that mean when it’s at home?”

  “Shakespeare has got into his head. Nothing will ever satisfy him now.”

  “Speak sense, Sammy.”

  “He does not believe that he belongs here. With us. He is on a higher level.”

  “With Mary Lamb, I suppose. You know she has come here twice this week? To see the Shakespeare, or so she says.”

  “She is a lady, Rosa.”

  “And I am not?”

  “She is a young lady.”

  “And a very plain one, if you ask my opinion.”

  “I know it. But William is not your usual young man. He sees into her soul.”

  “I would like to know what spectacles he uses.”

  “He has set her apart. He thinks of her as his salvation.”

  “From what?”

  “From us. Listen. He has come back.”

  Samuel heard the lock turn in the bookshop beneath.

  OVER RECENT DAYS Samuel had become sensitive to his son’s exits and entrances. The morning before, he had left the shop immediately after William. He had watched him turn the corner of Holborn Passage and then swiftly followed. He surmised that he was on his way to the house of his patron, where the Shakespearian papers had been preserved. Samuel was only too eager to track down his son’s benefactor and to question her. William was walking south, down one of the narrow lanes that led directly into the Strand; he had a quick, determined step and knew his way among the stalls, the street-traders and the carts that always clustered in the vicinity of Drury Lane. Samuel found it difficult to keep him in view, as he weaved among the itinerant population of the neighbourhood, skirting the piles of rubbish and manure, manoeuvring around the children playing in the street, dodging the baskets and barrels being carried in every direction. Then he caught sight of William crossing the Strand, and took advantage of a crush of carriages halted in the road to decrease the distance between them. William entered Essex Street, on the way down to the Thames, but then he turned left and disappeared.

  Samuel followed him as quickly as he could; for such a stout man he was surprisingly swift and nimble, partly the consequence of many lessons in Russell Square with a French dancing master who had taught him the cotillion and the polonaise. William had walked the length of Devereux Court by the time his father had reached the corner of Essex Street; he peered around the brickwork just as his son pushed open the great wooden door that granted access to the Middle Temple. There was a large open court beyond this door. Could he risk being seen there by his son? He was hardly inconspicuous. Yet he could not turn back now. It was even possible that the Shakespearian treasures were being hoarded in chambers of the Middle Temple itself. He pushed open the door and looked around it. His son was standing by a fountain, his back turned to him, and Samuel scuttled over to an adjacent doorway where he could shelter without being seen. He could hear the spray of water falling into the basin, and the sound of the pigeons gathered around it. He did not wait long for William’s presence there to be explained. A woman in a shawl and bonnet passed him, without looking up, and he knew that it was Mary Lamb. So this was their trysting-place.

  He looked out from his refuge. They were standing beside the fountain, and William was pointing towards Middle Temple Hall. This was the place where Twelfth Night had been performed soon after Shakespeare had written it. They walked around the base of the fountain, talking quietly. Samuel Ireland decided to leave them here. He had seen enough to realise that his son was not about to visit his patron but was engaged in a more private pursuit. Some prompting of delicacy or conscience persuaded him to abandon the chase. He did not wish to watch his son in courtship or dalliance.

  MARY AND WILLIAM turned into Pump Court, where they stopped to admire the antique sundial with its stone emblem of “All Devouring Time.” “I am sure,” William was saying, “that Shakespeare had no wish to resemble his father. He loved him, but he did not want to be like him.”

  “Of course he did not wish to be a butcher.”

  “No. I mean that he fled from failure. A merry failure, but a failure none the less. He hated debt. He hated the pity of others.” They walked through the court, with the Round Church of the Templars by the side of them. “He was clearheaded. Determined. Full of energy.”

  “Ambitious?”

  “Of course. How could he have accomplished so much? Look at the gargoyle above that doorway.”

  “Charles says that this church is like the background for some pantomime.”

  “Your brother is fond of fanciful comparisons. Shall we go in?” They entered the cool space of the circular nave, with the figures of the knights lying upon their backs in a circle around them.

  Mary was intrigued by these images of old time. She walked over to each one, in turn, and looked down upon the visages of stone. She found it easy to imagine ancient halls and flickering fires. There would have been smoke, and dogs, and minstrels. When she looked up, William had gone. He was waiting for her in Pump Court. “It is easy to feel devout in such an atmosphere,” he said. “But I hate a fugitive and cloistered virtue. These knights belonged in the open air. In the world.”

  “I am sure you cannot blame them for lying down.” She realised how little she knew him. “They must be tired after their adventures.”

  They walked out into King’s Bench Walk.

  “And what will we have accomplished?” he asked her. “How will we be remembered?”

  “Surely you know by now that your name will be linked with that of Shakespeare?”

  He laughed at this. “Is that enough? Do you think that anyone could be satisfied with that?”

  “Very many.”

  “You don’t understand me as yet, Mary. The papers are merely a beginning. I grant you they were a piece of good fortune. It is a great honour to find—what I have found. But once I have acquired a name, then I must use it. I must prove my worth.”<
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  “Charles predicts a great career for you. He believes you to have a singular talent.”

  “For what, exactly?”

  “For composition. He admires your essays in Westminster Words.”

  “One or two merely. Mr. Law has asked me to write about Bankside. As it was.”

  Although Mary had lived in London all her life, she was unclear about any area beyond her immediate neighbourhood. In this she was not so different from her neighbours themselves. “I am not sure what you mean,” she said.

  “Southwark. South of the river. Over there. Where the Globe once stood. And the Bear Garden. He wishes me to paint a picture of the scene in Tudor times in contrast to the modern. Do you know that, in Shakespeare, modern means ordinary or trivial?”

  “May I come with you?”

  “Is that not significant, Mary? To be modern is for him to be commonplace. Uninteresting. We think of the Elizabethans as colourful and richly tapestried, but he preferred to look back at Lear and Caesar. What was that you just said?”

  “May I come with you to Southwark? I have never been.”

  “By all means. It is rough, Mary. And dirty.”

  “That does not concern me. It is where Shakespeare lived and acted?”

  “So it is said.”

  “Then I must see it.”

  From King’s Bench Walk they went down to the river.

  “My father has been watching us,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I was followed by him.” He laughed, a little uneasily.

  “But there is nothing—”

  “Nothing between us? I know. But that was not why he pursued me. He wanted Shakespeare.” Mary did not reply. She was subdued, perhaps, by his open acknowledgement that there was “nothing” attached to their friendship. “He wants to track that river to its source. He doesn’t trust me.”

  “Not trust you? Your own father?”

  “He has a strange disposition. Where money is concerned, he becomes fierce.” They walked on in silence for a few moments. “He wishes to know where the papers are kept. He considers them to be some hoard of gold concealed in a merchant’s cave, like something from a fairy story.”

  “And you are the prince who holds the lamp.” She found the allusion oddly satisfying. “You command the genie.”

  “Hey presto. And the golden coins are heaped about me. So he follows me, to find the cave.”

  “But how can he not trust you?”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “Of course. I would proclaim your honour here, if you wish. I would swear your truth anywhere!”

  “Don’t go to the stake for it.” He seemed surprised by her vehemence. “You might get burned.”

  On the side of the walk a young woman with bare feet was playing a violin. Her pale lips seemed to move in time to the tune of “This Blessed Isle.” She had come up from the riverside in search of halfpennies or farthings. The right side of her face was disfigured by some growth or goitre. Mary looked at her with an expression of wonder and then, without the least hesitation, took her purse from her work-bag and laid it at the woman’s bare feet.

  When she came back, the tears were running down her cheeks. “It is the absence of love,” she said. They walked a little further, and passed the ruined foundations of the Templar gate. “But, then, what does that mean to these stones?” She peered at them, as if they were a thousand fathoms deep.

  When they turned back the young woman was still playing the violin. As they passed her Mary clutched William’s arm, as if she feared some kind of retribution. They walked on into Pump Court and, as soon as they had gone from view, the young woman stopped playing and picked up the purse. Then, very nimbly, she unfixed the goitre from the side of her face and slipped it into her pocket.

  chapter eight

  THAT WILL ASK SOME tears in the performance of it. If I do it, let the audience look to their eyes. I will move storms.’” Charles Lamb was playing Bottom in the garden of his house in Laystall Street, with the rest of the company around him. Tom Coates was Snug and Benjamin Milton took the part of Quince; they had persuaded their two colleagues, Siegfried Drinkwater and Selwyn Onions, to take on Flute and Snout. And they had enlisted Alfred Jowett, a friend of Siegfried and clerk in the Excise Department, for the role of Starveling. On this Sunday morning they sat together, rehearsing their lines, in the small pagoda that Mr. Lamb had set up in the garden ten years before. It had fallen into a state of some disrepair, its paint flaked and its metal rusting, but it provided shelter from the light summer shower that was falling as they delivered the lines under the direction of Mary Lamb. “Intone, Bottom,” she told her brother. “Give it depth.”

  “‘Yet my chief humour is for a tyrant. I could play Hercules rarely, or a part to tear a cat in, to make all split.’ Then there comes the verse. Do I need to say it, Mary?”

  “Of course, dear.”

  Tom Coates and Benjamin Milton were whispering together. When she called her brother “dear” they were suddenly convulsed with silent laughter. Benjamin put a handkerchief up to his mouth, and seemed to be in agony. Charles ignored them but Mary glared at them before enquiring, very casually, “What is so funny, gentlemen?”

  “Isn’t this meant to be a comedy?” Tom could barely speak.

  “You make a very good Bottom, dear,” Benjamin whispered before collapsing again in suppressed laughter.

  Siegfried Drinkwater was waiting to appear in this scene, and was already growing impatient. “Could we rehearse Flute now, please? Otherwise I shall forget my lines. I know I shall.”

  “They are only short lines,” Alfred Jowett told him. “They are hardly there at all.”

  “I promise you I will forget them, Fred.”

  Siegfried Drinkwater was an impulsive young man who dreamed perpetually of the past glories of his family. He announced to the world that he was seventh in line to the throne of Guernsey, and was not at all embarrassed by the fact that such throne no longer existed. His friendship with Alfred Jowett puzzled the others, however, since Jowett was practical, hard-headed and a little mercenary. He divided his salary by the length of the working year, and had calculated that he earned five pence and three farthings every working hour. He had a written table inside his desk and, whenever he managed to idle away one of those hours, he added that sum to his running profit. He and Siegfried would often visit the minor theatres after their day’s business was concluded. Siegfried would watch the small stage with unaffected delight, and would frequently shed tears at some unfortunate turn in the drama, while Alfred would stare placidly at the actresses and the female “extras.”

  “I cannot see the point of doing this comedy,” Mary said, “if there is to be giggling all the time.”

  “In Barrow’s sermons,” Selwyn Onions told her, “giggling is known as wagging the lungs. It is called a hum.”

  This was too much for Tom Coates, who bent double in his chair. Selwyn was well known for his helpful explanations. Yet he was also known for being almost always wrong, in matters of fact and detail. “Selwyn says…” had become a phrase in East India House, implying that complete nonsense was about to be uttered.

  They had reached that part of the scene where Siegfried, as Flute, first appears at Peter Quince’s call of “Francis Flute, the bellows-mender?”

  “Am I a bellows-mender? I thought I had something to do with flutes. The name suggests it.”

  “No, Siegfried.” Benjamin Milton momentarily left his part as Quince. “It has to do with the quality of your voice. It must be flautine.”

  “Which is?”

  “Light. Reedy.”

  “Not tripping or musical?”

  “That is not mentioned in the text. Elizabethan flutes were known for their reediness. They were weak.”

  “I beg your pardon. No Drinkwater has ever been weak. Ask the people of Guernsey.”

  “Just raise it a little higher, Mr. Drinkwater.”

  “What was that, Miss
Lamb?”

  “Let your voice ascend a scale. Say the line again, Mr. Milton.”

  “‘Francis Flute, the bellows-mender?’”

  “‘Here, Peter Quince.’”

  “‘Flute, you must take Thisbe on you.’”

  “‘What is Thisbe, a wandering knight?’”

  “‘It is the lady that Pyramus must love.’”

  “‘Nay, faith, let me not play a woman.’ I will not play a female.” Siegfried was very indignant. “You told me, Charles, I played an honest workman.”

  “And so you do.”

  “I will not put on a dress.”

  Selwyn Onions was once more ready to intervene. “You need only wear a smock or pinafore.”

  “I beg your pardon? Did I hear you correctly? A pinafore? That is not a word a Drinkwater knows.”

  Benjamin Milton and Tom Coates were listening to this conversation with undisguised pleasure. Benjamin took out a hip-flask of porter, and managed a surreptitious draught. He handed it to Tom, who turned his back to drink from it. Alfred Jowett leaned over to them. “What a thing to be doing on a Sunday morning. Are they at church?” He gestured towards the Lambs’ house.

  “I don’t believe so,” Tom said. “But Mrs. Lamb is a devout person. Or so I am told.”

  “I hear that Daddy is a hatter.”

  “What?”

  “As mad as.” He put his finger up to his head. “It runs in the family.”

  Mary Lamb was repeating the next line for Siegfried. “‘Nay, faith, let me not play a woman: I have a beard coming.’ You see that you are a man, Mr. Drinkwater. There is no doubt about it.”