by Steve Moore
SOMNIUM
A Fantastic Romance
STEVE MOORE
Afterword by
ALAN MOORE
For certain ladies of my acquaintance. And, of course, for Selene.
Steve Moore
Always, O Moon, you hold my heart in thrall:
Delightful at the full, all golden light,
Or silver-sickled new, in early night;
Red-faced and grim, eclipsed, when witches call
And down from out the sky they cause your fall,
Belaboured into shedding foam, so white,
Lest they destroy you with their sorc’rous might.
Each phase that differs: same my love for all.
Since time began, the Moon was more than this.
Exquisite Goddess, sparkle-eyed with love,
Latmos called, and so you swift descended:
Endymion received your doting kiss.
Now once again you come down from above,
Endless joy to bring, so long portended.
Christopher Morley, 1803
Contents
Dedication
Somnium
Afterword: An architecture of dreams
About the Authors
Praise
Copyright
For sweet Elizabeth and the radiant Moon, my lovely Muses both.
Wednesday, 19th September 1803
So all the world is changed, and here I am alone. I’m not sure I can bear it.
I wrote the dedication here above, and how my hand it shook; I’d thought to start my journal with those words since just before I left old London, but when the time had come to write them I could hardly see for tears. One Muse I have and always will, who’s now a silver crescent in the sky; the other is not with me.
Oh, Liz, this is so hard.
Thursday, 20th September 1803
Last night, I could not write for thinking; neither could I sleep. I do not know if what I’ve done is right; some part of me it says it is, another that it’s not. I tossed and turned for several hours while my two selves played cudgels in my brain. I suppose I must have dozed at last, for my remembered dreams were much the same as usual: great marble palaces glinting ’neath the scattered stars, and lovely large-eyed ladies; then on the sudden I woke up and found that it was daylight. I wondered where I was. I knew it was not home; the seconds raced before I could remember.
This morning, let me gather up my thoughts; for I had promised Lizzie and myself that I would keep a journal. And I would break a thousand oaths before a promise to my sister.
I miss my dear Elizabeth (so sweet to write her name in full, I hardly like to shorten it); a whole day’s passed since last I held her in my arms and kissed her fond farewell. I wish I’d never done it. I miss the family home as well, so close to Oxford Street, and all its dear-loved memories: the attic playroom with its wooden steed (to me the Trojan Horse, to her the Princess Liz’s much-loved pony); the staircase where I fell, and how she kissed my bruises better; the little garden where, in years gone by, we played at catch-me-if-you-can. It’s strange that, now I’m gone, my thoughts run back to innocent childhood days. The apple tree she was too short to reach, and how I teased her for it; how big-eyed she was when at the last I let her eat the fruit. Or how an apple and a twig became the orb and sceptre, the garden seat a throne; and she was Gloriana, I the Earl of Leicester. Or Ralegh on another time, or Essex; but she was always Virgin Queen. Elizabeth, who made me knight with but a stick, and such a charming giggle; and me so earnest in acceptance, nine years old and all my honour and my heart enchained to her forever. And so my thoughts grow maudlin once again.
Yet here I am in Kent. It’s true that back in London, I was quite reclusive; I simply had no cause or wish for mingling with others. Here I am surrounded all about with unfamiliar faces; and so I realise I never did quite learn the art of charming strangers, too busy was I with my books. How I wish that Liz was with me; for if she has no greater social graces, at least I know she loves me. What other people think of me, I simply cannot tell.
I know I could not stay in London; yet leaving, it seems such a great mistake.
I left; it was so painful. And yet I did not leave her all alone. Old Mistress Jones will see to all her comforts, her virtue and her safety; and there are all the other maids and servants too. I know if I’d remained behind, I’d never write a word; and I just want to write for her, to show her all my dreams made real. She wants to see me famous; all her admiration of me is so sweet. And yet I know her eyes will never see my faults; and any words I write, I know she’ll love them. If others, all unknown, can love my words the way she loves my person; why then I’ll know I’ve written something well, and worthy of my Liz. I hope the Moon will help me do it.
And there’s another reason too, to flee. Sometimes I fear we act out ancient myths; and one or two of them perhaps may be quite central to our lives entire, while other times we take on lesser roles. And if with that celestial Muse I like to think I might aspire (with all the Gods a-willing) to be her own Endymion, with her below… I hardly dare to write it here… I would I were not Caunus, but rather fear I am; for oft I think of her as Byblis. And so as Caunus fled, then so did I; and neither he nor I, I know, would wish to.
But see? My Liz she has me in her thrall, though nine miles or more they intervene. She laughed aloud when first I told her she had witchcraft, thought I jested; joked of warty noses, bended backs and chins that reached down to her knees. I told her olden witches had no power; young sweet sorceresses never could be quite escaped. She laughed again and said I was so silly. I told her in return that she was lovely; and so we lapsed then into silence. I remember how she looked that night, all dressed in white and laced with gold beneath a beaming gibbous Moon. I thought she looked a Goddess or a Star-nymph; told her that as well. I swore she was an ideal form, dropped down from Plato’s higher worlds; and that I’d never have a sweetheart less the fair than she. She blushed so sweet, right down below the shoulders; she was too pretty not to kiss. Oh, the heaven I descended from, when once I thought to leave.
Yet yesterday at 12 o’clock I kissed her, hugged her, wiped away my tears. Her chestnut tresses tumbling down; the silk-sewn jasmine flowers, so white and richly scented, tucked above her little ears; her pale throat slightly trembling. I told her that I loved her, promised I would write; it was so melancholy sweet to hear her say the same. And after that my arms would hardly let her go.
My trunk already loaded, I climbed into the coach and cursed it roundly ’neath my breath; prayed for sickly horses or for broken wheels. Alas, the Gods would give me neither. Although my arm would hardly move, I thumped my cane against the roof, and then we were away. I looked back out the window, waved a weakened hand; my Liz she raised an arm and started forward uncontrolled, and next I thought she wiped away a tear. We rattled round a corner then; and how I cursed that wall for cutting off my sight. I felt that she might never yet be seen again. Five minutes passed before I could look round me; till then my eyes were simply shut upon the horrors of the world.
An ancient bald-pate parson, face all full of pox-pits, and a florid snoring man obese enough to terrify a child or horse, they were my only companions; I have to think the both of them quite drunk because they slept throughout the journey’s long entirety. And so they did not see me weep.
Crossing over London Bridge, I thought of Shakespeare, Marlowe and The Globe; of cock-fights, bear-bait pits and raucous pleasure-grounds; and tawdry old Elizabethan stews purveying painful clap and pox to both the highest and the low. All gone now, of course (except perhaps disease), though whether Southwark of the present age is any way the better, I doubt me very much. Then out onto the New Cross Turnpike which, I’m told, improves so greatly on the ancient road,
one never would believe it; I have to say I didn’t. Or rather, if I did, the former road was quite beyond my comprehension. Past Marlowe’s Deptford then; another day I would have paused to pay him my respects, for an olden family tradition told me by my ancient uncle has it that we Morleys share collateral descent with long-gone Kentish Marlowes. I like to think we did (for after all, to have the author of The Tragical History of Dr Faustus in the family-line would be felicity beyond compare). Then up the hill at hardly more than walking pace to blood-soaked old Blackheath, the scene, some centuries gone, of battles I forget (and yet, ere that, I know, no lesser person than the Emperor of the Byzantines pitched his tents all hereabouts, for talks with English kings; so high our sovereigns then to draw such embassies, so far indeed from glorious Constantinople of the massy walls and Golden Horn, ere it fell unto the cursed turbaned Turk).
With change of horse at The Old Green Man, our driver Philips cocked his pistols and then applied the whip. The thievish wander even here, though less oft by the day; although I knew the hill ahead more dangerous yet by far. My companions snored; I hated the both of them quite equally: the one who loved a god I long abhorred, the other’s god was nothing but his belly (I will not give the Christian god the honour of a capital, though gladly would I enlarge on Goddess; the latter is the All to me, the former I despise). We passed a hundred minor tomb-mounds on the heath; I thought the happy long-dead blessed that they had never lived to see the wretched 19th century. My sister and myself I would preserve; the rest can rot alive in hell. There must be other worlds than this, and finer too by far; and if we cannot find our way to them, perhaps we can create them in our dreams.
A way across the heath we turned onto the Roman road; I knew it straight away, for now the coach no longer lurched on curves. We rattled on through rolling fields of dark green furze and made good time, despite the road’s quite execrable state; the recent rains, they told me when I was arrived, had washed out pot-holes everywhere, and some of them quite deep. The bouncing and the jouncing were hardly to be borne.
And so, approaching Shooters Hill, I knew that hereabouts three centuries since plain Anne of Cleves encamped, in hope forlorn of Henry’s love. But most of all, I felt the Legions march beside me; felt them stamp and saw them red and silver; heard their raucous songs of buggered Caesar and lewd Bithynian kings. And loved them for their loud and pagan laughter. Though how a Latin laugh might sound, I merely could conjecture.
They nowise would have laughed at how their road was now decayed. I could not ever say what a great relief it was to dismount at the foot of the hill when at the last we were arrived; the road being both so steep and now so muddy that a fully laden coach would have had the greatest difficulty to ascend.
Shooters Hill, it seems, is all of inns: The Fox Under the Hill (though picturesquely named, a hovelish beer-shop and little more than that) at its western foot; The Red Lion halfway up; The Golden Lion down a lane from there; The Bull upon its crest, replacing now The Catherine Wheel; and round its base, on other sides, I gather many more.
The inns were quite apparent; the highwaymen that give the hill its ill-repute were fortunately out of view. I found myself rather disquieted, however, to discover that in recent months these many inns have instituted a system of hiring out armed guards for the journeys made between them, coaches being most vulnerable upon the intervening slopes. I fear to say I have a rather strong impression that these same armed guards, a scarred and surly bunch and quite unwashed, if not hired for the purpose, might well turn out to be the very same depredatious villains that they would otherwise be ‘protecting us’ from. But such is the way of the world, and as I would be staying hereabouts, I paid my contribution willingly enough, and with a gratuity besides. I laughed to see the priestly and the grossly fat awoken too for similar exactions. The latter paid the more besides, in order not to walk. For all I know, the climb it would have killed him.
The hill is steep, the walk was hard; yet at the last I was arrived, in daylight and with time to spare for supper (a most excellent oyster and kidney pudding). A vast palatial place, The Bull, almost too big to comprehend on first inspection. The sinking sun was flashing on the thick glass panes and so, a moment, then, I thought the building all of silver-golden mirrors. My trunk got down (none too gently) from the coach, I stood a moment looking up toward the tower rising high above the entrance door, its lantern-windows designed quite plainly for the sight-seeing; and knew I wanted that room entirely for myself. All else: the dance hall (or ‘Assembly Room’ as I later discovered it actually so called), the tap-house, the stables and coach-houses and I know not what, they seem to sprawl in all directions, one, two and three storeys tall, all hardly more than 50 years old, though as I gather The Bull may not have been the first building on the site, some parts might yet be older. Perhaps a greater age would add somewhat to the atmosphere, but I confess the modern amenities are more than welcome. There’s much here that I’ve still to explore; an entire pleasure ground stands, I gather, out behind the inn; there was no daylight left to see it.
I had, of course, written beforehand to reserve a room, though as it seems there are no other long-term guests (or right now even short-term ones, as far as I can see) this was perhaps a little less than necessary. I somehow think the new century treats The Bull unkind; that perhaps its glory-days already lie behind it, and now there’s naught ahead but slow decline, from florid, gay jeunesse to stiffened, grey morbidité (I must remember not to speak French in public while I’m here, the situation being as it is). My suspicion falls upon the current landlord, recently arrived it seems: if ever there was a man suited to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs, he seems the one to me. I hardly like to mention him here at all; but then again, it gives me opportunity to relieve myself of all my spleen and vituperation.
And so…
My host Jude Brown’s a balding, surly wretch who dresses most in colours like his name, and that, I do suspect, because they do not show the dirt; I thought him old before his time and, frankly, wish him in his grave. ‘Morley the writer,’ he sneered when I announced my arrival, with all that bristling resentment that only the ignorant can show. I have not cared to enquire how he takes his pleasure; I can only imagine that it somehow involves the torture of small and helpless squealing animals. I thought him oafish and, showing my contempt, I paid him for my room and board a full month in advance, and gave him guineas when he asked for pounds. He became servile. Upon the instant then I knew: I hate him. It pleases me to think ahead and hope I’ll hear him screaming as he roasts in hell eternal.
More than this, when I enquired of the tower-room, he bluntly did refuse me. I offered him a guinea more than all I’d paid already. He refused me still, but oh, the torments of cupidity that racked his base and miserable soul; I think I’ve never felt such deep contempt. He is a worm, as spineless as he’s avaricious; and yet, I think, he’s poison.
Yet Mistress Brown, his wife, is quite another matter. If dearest Liz was half as old again, they would not look too different: brown eyes so bright, her auburn hair so long, an easy smile, and full of charm. The latest fashions, too, she wears: a long and thin white high-waist dress that almost falls from off her shoulders, and all that fairest flesh exposed above her bosom offset by a chain of garnets. I thought so much of Lizzie then, who wears a dress so like it back at home; but Mistress Brown she fills it rather better than my slim young sister. She showed me to my room and whispered in my ear (charming this, I thought, there being no one near to hear) how Jude Brown charged a penny for admission to the tower room, to those who wished to take the view. I asked her if she thought, late autumn as it was, 250 people would ascend the tower in the month or so I’d stay there; she gave me such a lopside look I almost slipped her the guinea anyway. I cannot think (no, more than that, I refuse to think) of she and he abed; she is too fair, he is too foul; I think she could not bear it either, and thus they have no children. But why a woman so vivacious should marry such a boor, I
simply cannot fathom.
Before supper, I slapped a penny in Brown’s grasping hand and had him show me up the tower (in truth, it must be said, it was not furnished up for occupation as I’d hoped), so I could look back, sad, to London. I wished that there were telescopes so powerful that I could see my Liz; instead I saw that monstrous heap of Wren’s St Paul’s. It squats there on the landscape like an awful giant candle-snuff, a crushing weight of that foul Christian church that damns all men to hell with sin.
In Roman times, there was a temple of Diana there.
The views, it must be said, they truly are magnificent, and I could not help but think mayhap that Julius Caesar himself had come this way and, near a century later, Claudius besides, Vespasian, perhaps, commander in his army; indeed, that all of them might once have stood (perhaps a little lower) upon the very same spot as I and looked, whether at barely-founded London, or Troya Nova, or whatever existed then or didn’t, across the same broad landscape as I myself did in the fading light, all stretched out there as far as distant Harrow-on-the-Hill (though barely seen for choked and rising smoke of myriad household chimneys in between). And if New Troy was but a fantasy of olden Welshman Geoffrey, how much the more appealing than the sprawl we have today.
Perhaps to me, though, far more important than the sight of London that I have from here is that I am not in it, cannot hear its noise, or smell its stinks, nor feel the claustrophobic oppression of its thronging masses. For all I love my sister and the family home, I do not have that robust nature necessary for London; I know that if I had stayed much longer there, I would have gone quite mad. Here, where the hill rises high above that press, and babble and smoke, and all the war-talk and the cursing of the French; and worse, the unclean streets and crush of carriages; then here at last, I might be able to think. And thinking, then, be able to write my thoughts all down. My chief regret, of course, is that my dearest Liz is not here with me now; but I know that if she was, I would not think of writing down a word.