Sir William

by David Stacton

  “God’s masterpiece, a silly woman,” he muttered indistinctly, the end of a thought he could no longer trace back to its source.

  “He knows me. He lives!” shouted Emma. “Sir William lives!” Taken up by the echoes, the cry went around the corridors and down the stairs. He lived.

  It is reliably reported that goslings fix their affections upon the first object they see that moves. Sir William opened his eyes and smiled at Emma. As why not? She had nursed him. Whatever else she was, that astounded him. In the polite world, when we fall ill, we lie alone upstairs until either we are fit again to receive those visitors, our friends, or have been removed in a wicker basket by the back door. At the very most, those who are courageous enough to risk contagion leave their cards downstairs. For the rest, the elephant must find his own way to the boneyard, or stop inconveniencing the world and get well, for one more canceled dinner at short notice and he will be dropped. Illness is in the worst of taste.

  Nonetheless, they seemed delighted to have him back. The King gratulated him upon his recovery. The Queen sent word that she was pleased. Graffer, though begrudging each one of them, as is a gardener’s way, sent eight perfect roses.

  Sir William was once more, now that Horace Mann was dead, the oldest living continuous Minister, and so a rarity worth visiting, though true, he had put many people to the cost of black silk, who must now store it away against the next occasion.

  “The fundamental trouble was a liver complaint, long threatening,” explained Emma. Like Sir William, she, too, had fallen into the convention of writing to Greville as to a friend.

  *

  Sir William, alienated by illness, looked around him, with the curiosity of a poor cousin, at the possessions of that now defunct personage, his recent self. He had never before seen them as a stranger would. Here they were, the rational possessions of a gentleman of limited though extensive means who had lived in this house for twenty-eight years. Not the richest tomb in Roman Nola contained so much. If I cannot be buried with it, I can be buried from it, he thought, so in that sense it comes under the head of funeral furniture.

  The most finished of these possessions was of course—as it had always been—the view, the bay, the city, and Vesuvius beyond. That, too, must be left behind, but not yet.

  “I wonder if all of us who could not bear to leave the world behind are not somehow still here,” said Sir William aloud, and began to cheer up; foolish fancies always cheered him up. On the desk was a Roman phallic flute on which he found he could still lip a note or two. The notes sounded dusty and faraway. He put the flute down.

  A bust of Marcus Aurelius, vulgar but sumptuous, the tunic porphyry, the neck and face white marble, stared at him with inlaid eyes. He preaches resignation in his works, but in person looks buffeted, assured and smug. If a little learning is a dangerous thing, what then are we to say of too much?

  He picked up a theatre mask from Herculaneum and held it to his face. Peering through the eyeholes, he was in truth a noble ancient Roman, his only view, to look out through the eyes, his only air, two breathing holes, and the whole thing musty. He laid it down. It was a tragic mask. It did not suit him. Though we all come to it in time, who would choose to see the world with dead men’s eyes? Yet he did agree with Lady Holland, a woman experienced in the emotions in every way and so an authority upon this subject, in wishing that it were sometimes possible to indulge in a serious mood.

  Nor had he realized before (it was all he had been able to see through the mask) how cluttered up these walls had grown with Emma. She was everywhere: by Reynolds, consonant with the best interiors, so that did no harm; by Romney, all innocence and bad drawing, so that was no harm either; by Beechey; by Angelica Kauffmann (in a spindrift huddle against a wall); by Masquerier, a portrait d’apparat, since, though Sir William was not shown, Vesuvius in the background hinted at his existence; by Westall, R.A. (looking rather cross), as St. Cecilia; as an analphabetic but obliging sibyl by Vigée-Lebrun; by W. Bennet (pénible); and dancing, by Lock (rather fetching). All in all it was too much Emma, and more to come, since he had commissioned Rethberg to pencil the Attitudes. And never the same look twice, although among so many—if one could be sure of none of them—one could at least choose the mien that one preferred.

  He was too old. From now on she must be his youth. He could observe youth by observing her, and that way perhaps somehow enjoy it.

  Looking out the window at Vesuvius, he was himself again. “I shall climb you once more,” he said. “Then twice. Then a hundred times.” It would be good to feel solid, if smoking, ground beneath one’s feet again. The old man is not, after all, so very old.

  Rather civilly, Vesuvius erupted in his favor, like a playful captive whale that spouts, or a prize child, performing for the Board of Governors. They were old friends, he and she, and she had been dormant for too long. He felt restored. Like his friend Walpole (who also found it impossible to indulge in a serious mood), he had a partiality for professed nonsense.

  Meanwhile, there was the mail to read.

  “The French National Assembly,” he said, “has declared war against Bohemia, Hungary and Sardinia. It is a large island, somewhat to the north of here.”

  Emma looked distressed.

  “There is no need for alarm. We have ships. And so, for the matter of that, have they,” he said, looking out at the harbor, where some rotten Neapolitan brigantines were soaking at anchor.

  “The Queen is back from Austria,” reported Emma, “and has asked us to a ball.”

  Sir William had rather thought she might.

  *

  The chief architectural felicity of the palace at Naples was a double staircase—which is to say one flight poured suavely down from one end, the other from the other—meeting a few feet apart in a landing elevated a few steps above the marble flooring. One led to the King’s apartments, the other, to the Queen’s. Not only did they maintain separate establishments, they maintained separate doors. Though they lived with pomp, neither one of them was precisely formal.

  The stair hall itself was vast and drafty and never lit with candles enough. What candles there were had flames which blew all one way, like willis in a ballet. The wall opposite the stairs was mirrored.

  “And did Your Highness enjoy your stay in Vienna?” Emma asked the Queen.

  “It was heavenly. I made two marriages.”

  The doors were opened, not an inch too soon, by a most dilatory footman who had misgauged the royal trajectory.

  “I am struck by your tournure,” said the Queen, without flinching.

  “Oh, do you admire it?”

  “I admire what there is of it,” said the Queen, who was apt, having bad shoulders, to be a prude; though having good arms, never a puritan. Out onto the piano nòbile landing they went.

  The King appeared on the other one, with Hamilton and Acton.

  “It is a considerable source of pleasure to me,” said Acton, “as Prime Minister, to discover that as Minister for War, I had improved the troops, and that as Minister of the Marine, constructed a navy against just such an emergency as—as Prime Minister—I found myself confronted with. But of what use are the Army and the Fleet, you have seen for yourself. And though Admiral Caraccioli, my successor, is an excellent man, it does not seem to me that he has the knowledge to continue those reforms which, as his predecessor, I could always count on myself, so to speak, to push through.”

  “Most certainly,” said Sir William, who had been confused not so much by the multiplicity of office, as by the rapidity of succession to it.

  “… an enormous boar, five feet six in length, confronting me,” said the King, “ambushed behind a rather large statue of Ptolemaeus IV Philopater, which my curator had relegated to that remote spot, hoping to weather it into some semblance of antiquity, for it had been an injudicious purchase …”

  “To think,” said Lady Dunmore, surveying in the far distance Emma and the Queen across the gulf that separated them, “
that I knew her when she was a mere nobody.”

  “Nonsense,” snapped Lady Webster, who was not Lady Holland yet, and did not know her either, “you knew her when you thought she was a mere nobody. She herself has never had any illusions of any kind.”

  “My husband feels,” said the Queen smoothly, “that we might best send our fleet to blockade the French at Toulon,” and looked down at the roses on her dress, which were made of pink satin and were full-blown. She had achieved maturity. It was a time of national crisis. It was too late for rosebuds now.

  “… charged, with gleaming tusks,” said the King. “Leaning toward my musket, which stood in a prepared position, I pulled the trigger which my gamekeeper had cocked for me—my heavens, there’s a pretty creature.”

  It was only Lady Plymouth, seen from behind.

  “Lady Hamilton seems to have been taken up recently by the Queen,” said Lady Plymouth. “I wonder why.”

  “That is an assumption which I can only regard as deriving from defective observation,” said Sir William. He and Acton were now discussing the new Guido Reni in the Cathedral.

  “And what, Sire, was the outcome?”

  “The outcome?” asked Ferdinand suspiciously. “Why, the same as usual, a little butchery and an excellent dinner. Pray, sir, do you fish?” It was always his second topic with a stranger. If they did not hunt, they must surely fish, otherwise what else was there to do in life?

  “We will now,” said the Queen, in her easy German way, “turn to lighter things.” It was an order.

  There was wenching, of course.

  Lady Plymouth drew herself up rather sharply, but then—remembering that these were troublous times, that royalty had its problems like the rest of us, and that any incident, no matter how trivial (The War of Jenkins’s Ear was in her mind: she seemed to remember that Jenkins had been a Fowey boy), might lead to serious consequences—patriotically ignored the pinch and continued down the stairs.

  The company reached the ground floor and processed to the ballroom, which was the theatre refurbished.

  “There is no precedence observed here,” said Lady Anne Miller, disapprovingly. She had complained too soon, for the Queen, who these days left no Englishman unturned, for the aid that might be under him, made for her at once.

  The musicians were seated in a pyramid, with the kettledrummer on top, riding out the noise like King Mausolus in his chariot, or more appropriately (he was a German) Thor, thumping away on the Last Day of His Wrath. Since it was suppertime, there were no tables. Royalty is supposed to dine alone at table—it is an unbearable rule of etiquette—so the Queen, who hated to eat alone, had solved her dilemma by removing the tables. Food was lapped.

  Lady Anne, who had dished herself a saucer of tay, found it difficult to rise at the Queen’s approach without spilling her tay as she did so.

  “Pray sit down,” said the Queen benevolently. Down went Lady Anne again, saucer aquiver.

  The Queen, a woman of intellectual capacity, seeing the tay about to spill, with her usual resource pretended to avert her glance until Lady Anne was once more safely seated. Could our own dear Queen have managed the matter more graciously? Lady Anne became a partisan.

  “Ferdinand,” said the Queen. “I think the time has come to display approval of the English garden.”

  The King, whose only motion was to allow himself to be pushed by contraries, had taken it up as soon as she had dropped it.

  “We have approved,” he said, “daily.”

  “The times are bad. It is necessary to make a show of force. We will approve together,” she told him. “Tomorrow.”

  Inspired by a second marriage, and at last uninhibited, Graffer had done well. Some Botany Bay plants, despite the stubbornness of Captain Bligh, had beached here and shot up to forty feet, mangling the culverts with tenacious roots. In summer, the camphor tree spread over the groves a most colonial fragrance. No horticultural cliché had been neglected. Green lawns constructed the sloping scene and guided the sparkling rill. The trees were tufted; some lofty towers were imbosomed; the roof of the cottage ornée was covered over with weeds. No gaudy flowers were permitted to bloom around the artificial cave, and the adjacent waters had a pearly gleam. Not only was Graffer well-read, he had a large, roomy and extensive budget. It was not merely a garden; it was a green anthology.

  Unfortunately, to enjoy an English garden requires some previous education, and no one can be sensible of the beauties of Homer when coming to them direct from a reading of Tom Thumb and Jack the Giant Killer.

  “Where is the English garden?” asked the King.

  He was in it.

  “Lord,” he said, “there is nothing here but grass, and trees that bear no fruit.”

  “Send our compliments to Sir Joseph Banks,” the Queen said graciously to Graffer, who was a hireling, nothing more, whereas Sir Joseph had patronized the piece. “And tell him we will reward his efforts suitably, though not, I fear, soon. We are not,” she explained, “immediately pleased.”

  What he got, during a lull in life’s incipient battles, boxed, crated and sent the long way around, to avoid Napoleon, was a set of Capodimonte dinnerware, a most suitable gift; as she pointed out, even a philosopher must dine.

  *

  Sir William had had some of Emma’s portraits taken down. At first she did not notice. She was a narcist: mirrors were what she used. But then at last she did.

  “I’m gone,” she said, dismayed.

  “Only for restretching,” said Sir William uneasily. “And who could miss them in the presence of their bright original? They were but cold copies.” “The Ambassadress,” by Romney, he had left in a tactfully obvious position. It was the one she would have preferred, he thought. It showed her now.

  He was wrong. “Even George’s other Cassandra?” she asked.

  “Cassandra is not, perhaps, tactful to the times.”

  “But that was such a happy day,” she wailed obscurely.

  He restored the Cassandra. It was a Cassandra young and doubly burdened with a gift of tongues. Emma spoke Italian better after five years than he did after twenty.

  She could think of only one reason for her banishment.

  “Is the war going that badly?” she asked. “Must we pack so soon?”

  “It is not going well,” said Sir William, and went off to fish in troubled waters.

  It had not occurred to him before that a mistress may have charms anterior to those of a wife—a state of affairs not only unique, but in this case, it seemed, unavoidable.

  *

  Aware, though not consciously, of a certain coolth in the air, Emma, in order to share her pleasures with Sir William, went to the trouble of having her songs arranged for viola and piano, so that they might be musical together. A flute would have been too like in tone to her voice, and the viola was his only other instrument.

  Sometimes she sang duets with the King. “It was but bad,” she said, “as he sings like a King.”

  Her newly gained assurance, or the show of it, was too recent as yet for her to be as unaware of it as Sir William was of a good suit of clothes.

  *

  “She cannot be totally indifferent to the facts of life,” said the Queen, exasperated, “for from all accounts she seems to have lived one.” And went graciously in to visit Emma.

  “Do you and Sir William never discuss politics?” she asked cooingly.

  “He prefers not.”

  “A pity. It is the proper vocation of princes,” said the Queen, “but sometimes an expert opinion does no harm.”

  “It is the very thing he says himself!” cried Emma, radiant with compliance. “I will speak to him.”

  “Pray,” said Maria Carolina, and took the creature’s paw in a jeweled hand, “do. You will gratify thereby”—and here she attempted to totter, but alas, her iron stays were too rigid; no matter how she tried, they kept her upright—“an old woman’s whim [she was a healthy, bouncy forty-three] and do yourself no harm
.”

  “Send me some news,” Emma wrote Greville, scarcely-daring to disturb Sir William with her prattle, “political and private, for against my will, owing to my situation here I am got into politics and wish to have news for our dear much-loved Queen.”

  “You neglect your handwriting rather too much, but as what you write is good sense, everybody will forgive the scrawl,” said Sir William approvingly, over her shoulder.

  “Since we have formed an alliance with Great Britain,” said Lord Acton, “I see no reason why we should not now recognize the French Republic, promulgate the British alliance, and receive thereby a somewhat smaller contingent of the French Fleet for a shorter period than we had expected to do.”

  “Never!” shouted Maria Carolina.

  Being the son of an émigré, Acton had developed a most Italian shrug of the shoulders. “Oh well,” he said, “perhaps for a little while. First we entertain them, then we let the English chase them away.”

  *

  But the French ships were already in the bay.

  “They have come to overawe Us,” said Maria Carolina, quivering. “We are not overawed.”

  “We are your friends, good people,” shouted the French. “We are your friends. Destroy your King and Queen. Turn out your priests, listen to our legate, and accept liberty.” They spoke in French, for they had been given to understand that tongue was everywhere understood, as it must be, for it had always been the language spoken anywhere they had been.

  “Long live the King!” shouted the oppressed populace.

  The French Legate, Citizen Hugou de Bassville, though the Queen refused to receive him, was not discouraged. He had the escutcheon on the French Embassy repainted. What he had in mind was a beauteous Minerva with a lance in one hand and a cap of liberty in the other. No, the cap of liberty should be upon her head, for Liberty should have at least one hand free.