Lord Byron's Novel

by John Crowley

  • NINE •

  In which Heads are examined, and Souls are bared

  THE HONOURABLE PETER PIPER (upon whom Ali leaned, as Dante upon his Virgil) was, it seemed, welcome not only in the Ball-rooms of great houses, but those as well where entrance was by Ticket, and a different company was to be met. He belonged, he said, to more Clubs than he could always remember, and in them he was famed for a steadiness at table that seemed also to partake of the mechanical, or at least the Scientific, tho’ he himself averred, that in play there was none such, but only much foolishness, and a little Arithmetic. His game was Hazard, and once at table that pleasant gentleman was changed ‘in the twinkling of an eye’, though in truth not every eye could perceive it. A coolness came over his features, an attention in his person; all that had seemed frivolous and careless before, evaporated, or was shuffled invisibly off, though he lost nothing of his natural amiability. The cup went round, the bones fell upon the baize—and while others, inflamed as by fever or drink, were gripped by an excitement that turned not to weariness but only ‘grew by what it fed on’, he seemed rather a man about a nice piece of work—a glassblower, or a clock-maker—and work it was indeed, upon which Mr Piper’s income depended. Still he smiled angelically—he smiled when he won, and when he lost he played again—and ever his busy brain turned over his chances, and did its Arithmetic, while the players about him flew from Heaven to Hell in a throw, and never knew why.

  ‘I think the gambler a happy man, whether he win or lose,’ said Ali to him, as at night’s end they supp’d upon broiled bones, and swallowed Champagne—for the Honourable had been this night triumphant. ‘Dashed down he may be in a moment, and yet redeemed the next—his fortunes always in the balance—there is always life, which is feeling—he is never ennuyé.’

  ‘Well, there is often a certain ennui attendant upon a long residence in debtor’s prison,’ said the Honourable, ‘though I admit the preface may not be lacking in amusement. And are you, dear friend, ennuyé? You seem at the least to be in the grip of a dissatisfaction.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Ali said then, turning aside this inquiry. ‘Do you not know the gentleman just now entering? All my former acquaintance has trooped out of my memory in the last years.’

  ‘He is known to me, and to you,’ said the Honourable. ‘He is the father of a Fellow of our former College, and his name is Enoch Whitehead.’

  ‘Has he a wife?’

  ‘He does.’

  ‘Her name—is it Susanna?’

  ‘I believe it is. She comes not often to town. Speak, my Lord—why, what ails thee?’

  What ailed him he could not name—yet he looked upon the man—his hoary head, his bleared eye, his ruin, his Nose whereon the veins stood blackly amid the red—and he remembered Susanna, as she was—and could no more be! He seemed to hear again the horrid laughter of his father on that night, the last he had spoken her sweet name aloud—the night when Fortune had pitched him headlong out of doors, impotent to aid or save, not her alone but even himself—and now returned too late, too late! ‘Naught,’ said he, ‘naught, naught but that the drink is gone, and none called for! I beg you, my friend’—and here he took Mr Piper’s sleeve, and look’d upon him with an intensity that startled that mild gentleman—‘keep me from yon fellow with the white head, and let me not hail him—I ask as a Boon—do that for me.’

  ‘I will, ’pon my word!’ said the Honourable, and lifted his hand for the waiter, with what in another might almost have seemed an air of urgency. Well might he pledge his word, for when summer dawn was already green upon the East, and Ali, the Honourable, and several friends whom Ali would not afterward remember were attempting to leave that Place—or it may have been a subsequent one—by means of a circular staircase, which (as the Honourable averred) must have been conceived and built before the invention of spirituous Liquors, so impossible was it to navigate in their condition—Ali espied that same gentleman he had before seen, amid his own company. The Honourable felt his young friend start in his grasp—and it was all he could do to draw him away. ‘D’you see that gentleman?’ they all heard Mr Whitehead inquire of his friends. ‘What does he do, to glare upon me so?’ ‘Why, it is Lord Sane,’ said another with him. And Mr Whitehead: ‘I knew his father. Well, blood will out, they say’—which it was fortunate all round that Ali did not hear.

  Yet she was near—Susanna!—she lived—not constrained in the sad vale of a former time, as Ali had before pictured her to himself. She lived, and might be met, and some intercourse with her was possible—and here Ali’s imagination blenched, as it were, and looked away. ‘She comes not often to town’ was not the same as ‘never’—never was never, and ‘not often’ was perhaps tomorrow, or the day after that. Ali found that he perused—as he had not done before—the fashionable papers, wherein the comings and goings of Society were solemnly chronicled, as though they were the catalogue of Ships at Troy, in search of her name, and the name of her husband (a word he did not say, even in the hearing of no-one but himself ). Where ever he went that she might be expected, however faintly, to appear, he thought he saw her, in a blond head or a small foot just disappearing into a coach—and yet it was not she. The Honourable conducted him through the Gardens and the Pleasure-grounds where all were to be met by all—and there Ali was introduced to an Elephant, who abstracted his hat with its nose, and generously presented it to him again. He went as well to see this, and to hear that, and to be astonished by t’other—to Weeks’s museum in Great Windmill Street, to see the automata, which included a great mechanical Tarantula (that rush’d out from its hole, and made the ladies shriek) and a number of small Persons too—amusing it was to see the Honourable, through his quizzing-glass, regard a silver mechanical Dancer as perfect and precious as might be, with graceful limbs and dark inviting eyes, whose breast seemed even to respire—and who might have made him a fine Wife—as he appeared himself to think in wistful wonderment.

  Tho’ Susanna was never where Ali found himself, he chanced more than once in that time to encounter Miss Catherine Delaunay, whose sparkling dark eyes and raven hair he found it easy to look upon—as though he looked upon one of the fine female creatures he had known in his earliest youth—whose mantles had not been of lace, however, and whose hair was not curled with an Iron, in the London fashion, but dress’d with the jingling gold coins of their Dowry—in London the same figure was exhibited more discreetly, in gossip. At a venue of polite entertainment—where the chastest ears were certain to receive no affront—and after further glances, and a small smile—Ali was at last granted (thro’ an intermediary) an interview, which seemed an achievement unequalled, like winning the Golden Fleece, though he found the Lady herself, when at last he took a seat beside her, to be the soul of welcome & warmth. She was unafraid to speak of Intellectual and Philosophical subjects (which her sisters in art are commonly warned to avoid, for fear of startling their unlearn’d Prey), and engaged Ali upon the same.

  ‘I have long been a student of human nature,’ said she to him at supper, ‘and I have arrived at certain general principles.’

  ‘Have you indeed,’ said Ali—‘And have you travelled widely, to make the observations from which you deduce your principles?’

  ‘No, I have not,’ said she gravely, ‘but I have read a great deal, and now have gone about somewhat in Society, and everything I see confirms the principles I have lighted upon.’

  ‘The principles, then, came first, the observations after.’

  ‘I think you mock me,’ she said with a gentle smile, and yet with that about her which suggested she did not well abide mocking. ‘I should tell you that it is my constant habit, when I have known a person for a sufficient period, to write a Character of him or of her, so as to fix my thoughts and impressions.’

  ‘I hope you will make an exception in my case.’

  ‘When I come to know you well enough, I shall perhaps consider it—yet it is my constant habit, and I should be loath to break it. Tell me
please why you would not wish it.’

  ‘You say you wish to fix your impressions,’ said Ali. ‘I know not that I should wish anyone to fix her impressions of me. I know myself to be quite unfixed, and perhaps unfixable.’

  ‘The character of anyone may be described accurately, by a careful observer.’

  ‘And what of those parts that cannot be observed?’

  ‘You speak,’ she said, with something that was not quite reproach, ‘of the Soul, do you not? Yet even that most private thing may be read. Why, even now a scientific practitioner has come to London from Germany—a craniologist, who is able, by careful palpation of the Head, to determine what qualities of the brain beneath are prominent, which deficient.’

  ‘Is the brain then the seat of the Soul?’ asked Ali. ‘Is it not rather the Heart?’

  ‘Aristotle supposed it was the liver—I hope you are not of his opinion!’

  The ‘Herr Doktor’’s recent arrival from Germany had, indeed, created much stir among the ton, and his celebrity far eclipsed Ali’s, which was already on the wane. Ladies and gentlemen all the day long presented themselves at the Doctor’s chambers, to subject their crania to his long and sensitive fingers—some younger maidens (and some older) were certain they felt their deepest natures drawn forth from the chamber’d Nautilus of their skulls, to be analysed as to their Amativeness—oh, very marked!—and their Acquisitiveness—more marked still!—until they nearly swooned from excess of self-knowledge. Miss Delaunay closed her small white hands decidedly before her, and declared to Ali that she herself had been examined—and her smile showed she was sufficiently gratified by what she had been told. ‘I beseech you, my Friend—for so I may call you, may I not?—that you, too, submit to the Doctor’s examination—so that you may compare what I have discern’d of your character, to what Science may determine.’

  ‘If I should,’ Ali said, ‘I am certain that your own discernment will be found to be the greater. I am as glass before your gaze.’

  ‘Now you do mock me.’

  ‘If I do not,’ Ali said, and laughed, ‘then I shall have to take you seriously—and acknowledge my faults, if not my sins—the which I should not wish any so gentle as yourself to hear of.’

  At this, the lady lowered her eyes, and lifted her fan—but not before Ali saw the red upon her cheek changed for white—and then changed again.

  It was not Miss Delaunay alone who urged Ali upon the Craniologist—everywhere he went now, he heard how altered by revelation were the lives of his acquaintances—some having, upon the Doctor’s advisement, forsworn Gaming, or strong drink, or certain Company, as too well suited to their inclinations—for a week and a day at least. Still Ali resisted the wise man’s omnipresence, his omniscience too—for a presentiment that he would learn what he did not chuse to know, was cancelled by a near certainty that he would learn nothing at all.—‘But then what harm?’ exclaimed the Honourable, who if he could would gladly have lifted the lid of his dear friend’s temples and taken a peek within. ‘Come! I have set the day, and the hour—it will occasion you no inconvenience—painless—modern—unlimited in instruction—and the cost is negligible,’ at which he named a figure hardly small.

  ‘So many pounds,’ said Ali, ‘for a head so little.’

  ‘Not pounds, my Lord,’ replied the Honourable, nothing discomfited. ‘Guineas.’

  As the two friends loitered in the ante-room of the Doctor’s chambers on the appointed day, examining charts and porcelain heads whereon the areas governing all human passions were boldly marked, there came forth from the examining-room or surgery, ushered by the Doctor himself, a dark-eyed young Lord of whom all the literary world then chattered (though he too is nigh forgotten now). He touched, somewhat cautiously, the head beneath his hyacinthine curls, with an inward look, half wonder, half amusement.

  ‘My Lord, you have been examined,’ remarked the Honourable—who knew the man, as he knew everyone.

  ‘Why so I have,’ remarked the young Lord, ‘and been told remarkable things.’ Here the great Doctor beside him modestly inclined his head—which was large and lovely, seemingly carved in generous strokes from pink-veined marble. ‘I am told that every quality indicated on this skull of mine has its opposite developed in equal force. If this good man is to be credited, good & evil will be in perpetual war within me.’

  ‘Pray Heaven they come to a truce,’ exclaimed the Honourable.

  ‘Or the last don’t come off victorious, at the least!’ Here for a moment a sort of doom dimmed his Lordship’s visage, but like a cloud it passed.

  ‘Shall we not see you this evening then, my Lord, in your usual haunts?’ asked the Honourable—‘Given the Skirmishing that might there ensue, between the good and its opposite?’

  ‘Ah well,’ said that Lord, as with gracious nods he took his leave, ‘Ah well, we shall see—oh, dear, yes, we shall see!’

  Then Ali and his friend were brought within, and Ali was seated upon a stool, the better for the Doctor’s examining—which examination continued long without a word spoken by the man of Science, save for a variety of hems and haws such as Ali had not before heard, and a German grunt or two, whose significance was lost upon him.

  When the fingerwork was done, the great-headed Doctor sat down before Ali, and with chin in hand studied him long without speaking. ‘What!’ exclaimed Ali at last. ‘Do you perceive that which alarms you, Doctor? Am I a divided man, like that young Lord just here?’

  ‘Ach, nein,’ said the great man, ‘or ja, but in a different kind.’ In the deep orbits of his eyes, the hooded pupils glittered cunningly. ‘The faculties of our brains may be in conflict with one another—we may be divided. But there are other brains wherein the faculties are not opposed but so contradictory that we are in effect doubled. Most men are one, and despite their alterations from day to day, they know themselves to be one. But there are some few who may be one person in the main, but another at intervals—and the one may not know of the other’s existence—when the one sleeps, the other wakes.’

  ‘I do not believe that to be possible,’ said Ali quickly.

  ‘Tell me this, my Lord,’ said the German. ‘Has it ever happened to you, that in a dream you have walked abroad, thinking you were in one place—doing one task, or office—and awakened to find yourself in a different place, and doing what you did not intend?’

  ‘No,’ said Ali shortly. ‘Never have I been subject to such illusions—I cannot conceive of them, in respect of myself.’

  ‘The condition is rare indeed, yet not unknown. You are perhaps familiar with the history of Colonel Culpeper, an English officer.’

  ‘Indeed I am not,’ said Ali, and made to rise.

  ‘Colonel Cheyney Culpeper one day shot a Guardsman, and killed him. He shot the man’s horse, as well. Yet all that time he was asleep, and being apprehended, could not remember the deed, nor account for it—he was deeply mortified—he had no ill-will toward the man he had murdered, indeed hardly knew him—and certainly none toward the beast.’

  The Honourable now anxiously took Ali’s arm—his friend had gone quite white, and a tremble appeared upon his lip. ‘That is dreadful,’ Ali whispered. ‘Dreadful! I would you had not told me of it.’

  ‘It was a hundred years and more ago,’ said the Doctor calmly, and yet regarding Ali’s countenance and posture closely. ‘The man received a Royal pardon. He was unconscious of the crime, and therefore blameless.’

  ‘And yet the crime was done,’ said Ali. ‘The crime was done! Excuse me, Sir, I am in need of air. Your science is remarkable indeed, and I hope to have further conversation upon these topics—good day—good day!’

  THERE WAS THEN a doom upon him—a judgement, that no human Court could make—a guilt that not even he could prove upon himself! Ever and again Ali found himself staring in surmise upon his own hands—as though they were two enemies, inveigled somehow in among his friends, and were even then contemplating mischief he would know nothing of. His couch he forb
ore, till Sleep could no longer be resisted—or he measured out a dose of Oblivion, in Kendals drops, to assure his body would not stray when his soul slept—and indeed when he woke his limbs felt to him as though forged by a Smith, of heaviest Iron!

  Now—in fear of himself—he sought those realms where he was sure he would not find Susanna, circles infernal where the Honourable drew him. One such was ‘the Fancy’, wherein huge fellows with heads large and hard as cannonballs battered one another to insensibility, while others admired their style and laid bets against the outcome. There Ali at first saw nothing but that abominable and operose cruelty it was ever his study to avoid—but in time he came to see it as an Art, and a source of beauty and interest, tho’ carried on as it was in quarters reeking of blood, sweat, and fear, clouded with tobacco-smoke and loud with the cries of the spectators and bettors, winners and losers alike. ‘I have studied the Art myself,’ the Honourable informed him as they stood one day by Ring-side, ‘and taken lessons with Jackson, though to be sure I always insisted he wear the muffers, so that my beauty might not be marred.’

  The match that day had gone for twenty rounds without either pugilist failing to come ‘up to scratch’ again after falling, roused it may be by the profane urgings of the phans, who crowded so close as to be spattered occasionally with the Claret exuded by the combatants.

  ‘Art!’ cried one among the company. ‘I will take Force over Art any day.’

  ‘I,’ said another, ‘have seen Daniel Mendoza, the wonderful Jew, a fighter of great art and delicacy, defeat Martin the Bath Butcher in twenty rounds—or it might have been fewer—and by his Science throw down any number of your Bulldogs.’

  ‘Well,’ said the first devotee, ‘I saw the great Gentleman Jackson, who for delicacy is unexampled, pummeled almost to death, and certainly to defeat, by the beast Cribb—so delicacy don’t always answer—nor Science neither—so say I.’

  ‘Cribb,’ whispered the Honourable to Ali, ‘once reply’d to a certain Youth who asked him—myself being by—what was the best Posture of Defence, by saying, “Why, to keep a civil tongue in your head!”’