‘Why not?’
‘Peculiar woman, Mrs Barry. A femme fatale if ever there was one. Think of Rochester and poor Otway. . . .’ He checked himself, as if reining in garrulous enthusiasm. There was a silence while he studied me with detached interest, as if I were a rare insect on a window pane. Finally he said: ‘Do you intend to buy my book or do you merely want to grope it lovingly?’ Parsons had a gentlemanly way of staying just this side of rudeness by maintaining a bantering tone. Ignoring him I turned to the title page opposite which was an engraving of the author Mr Ovenstone. Beneath a luxuriant periwig could be seen one of those characteristic late seventeenth-century faces: slightly puffy with a pouting lower lip and heavy-lidded, protuberant eyes that brooded over you from beyond the grave.
‘Who was Henry Ovenstone?’
‘Illegitimate son of a nobleman, or so they said. Made a brilliant start. Wrote superb Latin verses at Cambridge, that sort of thing. When he came to London he found a patron in Lord Selgrave. Ovenstone wrote this play. He and Selgrave fell out, then Ovenstone died.’
‘How did Ovenstone die? And why did they fall out?’
‘All this information I’m giving you, I ought to be charging you extra.’
‘I thought you already were.’
I am no good at haggling, so I gave Parsons what he asked, and left him to his hoard of literature and information.
To be brief, The Constant Rake lived up to its opening scene. As a Restoration comedy it belonged to the boisterous, farcical end of the spectrum. It had none of the refinement of Congreve, or the elegance of Dryden, let alone the sentiment of Addison or Steele, but it was not without wit. It reminded me most of Shadwell, Ravenscroft and Aphra Behn. One scene in particular seems to prefigure one in Aphra Behn’s The Lucky Chance of 1686. In it Sir Lascivious has been tricked into a false marriage to Lady Lavish with Townley acting as the bogus parson. The ancient Sir Lascivious is eager to bed his bride but is being constantly put off by Lady Lavish with ever more elaborate and absurd excuses. Meanwhile, she is dallying with her lover Bellcourt on the other side of the bedroom door. Eventually Lady Lavish agrees to submit to the old rake’s embraces but only if he is fully fit for the ordeal. To this end he must enter the Rejuvenating Cabinet invented by a Dr Crankum. Dr Crankum is, of course, her friend Careless in disguise, and he, like Townley has been promised, but hitherto denied, her favours. Sir Lascivious is inveigled into the cabinet which is then heaved into the Thames. This incident is, of course reminiscent of The Merry Wives of Windsor but has a much crueller edge. Sir Lascivious emerges half dead from his immersion, though how he manages to escape from the cabinet under water is not explained. The play ends with the arrival of a deus ex machina in the form of Sir Prosperous Fairacres who claims the penitent Lady Lavish as his bride and carries her off to the country.
Apart from this slightly tame ending—and one feels that Ovenstone’s heart was not in it—the play is vicious amoral fun, fast-moving, full of a kind of ebullient rage at the follies of high society. Ovenstone spares none of his characters: even the one unequivocally upright person in the play, Sir Prosperous Fairacres, is obviously a booby. But the author’s fury is particularly reserved for the Rake, Sir Lascivious. By the end of the play his humiliation is complete and abject, and no shred of dignity remains to him as he is dragged off to prison for debt, having spent the last of his fortune on the appalling Lady Lavish.
I laughed a good deal at the play, but my laughter was tinged with guilt. It was like watching the school bully cleverly humiliate an unpopular victim. Of course Ovenstone tries to dress it all up with a high moral tone at the end. The concluding couplet of the Epilogue (‘spoken by Mrs Barry’) reads—
Take heed, ye Gallants, learn from this our Rake
For we have drubbed him solely for your Sake!
—but I doubt if anyone was fooled.
The printed play was supplied with an ‘Epistle Dedicatory to the Right Honourable James, Earl of Selgrave’ and also some dedicatory verses to the same:
Selgrave! Thou monarch’s Counsellor and Friend;
Now to thy Servant deign to condescend.
Let Muses congregate to swell thy Fame
And add fresh Lustre to a Noble Name . . .
—and so on: engine-turned verse in the usual flowery, vapid style.
I scanned and transcribed The Constant Rake onto disc which allowed me to adjust some spellings and obscurities as well as to suggest cuts. Restoration dramatists (like Shaw) always need cutting, but, unlike Shaw, they have an excuse. Lights were on during the performances, intrigues were being conducted, oranges and other even more tangible commodities were being sold. Intelligent padding was required to compensate for the wayward attention of the audience. Having prepared the text, I sent it to Tom Travers at the Rose Tree.
The night on which I completed my work for Tom I dreamed I was standing on the edge of a stretch of water, still, silent, illimitable. Not the faintest shadow of land could be seen on the horizon. The sky above was an unyielding monochromatic white, the water below it the colour of slate. The shore on which I stood was of grey grit against which the water lapped in infinitesimally small waves. The quality of the dream was unusual in that it presented to my half conscious state a steady and almost motionless image accompanied, as so often in dreams, by a powerful mood. That mood is not easily defined except by the image which represented in it, but I felt isolation, heaviness, despair. As I looked at the water I began to notice that in parts something lurked beneath the surface, almost at times emerging above it. It looked like a weed, slightly variegated in tone from iron to steel grey, and it stretched beneath the water in long, curling tendrils. Then one of these heavy corkscrew curls began to extend itself and rise above the water. It waved slightly as if groping blindly for somewhere to attach itself. Then it seemed to sense my presence and move in my direction. I woke, damp and cold from chilled sweat.
**
Anyone familiar with the academic world will know about the importance of publication. I had produced nothing since my seminal work The Colonial Experience in 19th Century Drama, and that was five years ago. Admittedly events, such as my wife leaving me for a fellow academic, had intervened; but who cares about that? In this world one must publish or be damned. So it seemed to me that a study of Ovenstone, obviously an interesting figure if not a significant one, would be just the thing to restore my reputation and I began my research.
Secondary sources quickly gave me ‘the shilling life’. The salient facts are these. Ovenstone acquired the patronage of the Earl of Selgrave, wrote complimentary odes, dedicated a verse translation of Statius to him and so on. He then decided to try his luck in the theatre at a time when relations with his patron appeared to be cooling. He wrote The Constant Rake and in doing so came into contact with Mrs Barry, one of the leading actresses of the day. She proved to be his nemesis, as she had for so many others. He fell hopelessly in love and, in the course of his affair with Mrs Barry—perhaps to impress her—he introduced her to his patron Selgrave. She, ever on the lookout for a more lucrative and influential lover, very rapidly became Selgrave’s mistress, and abandoned Ovenstone. At this, by all accounts, Ovenstone became quite unhinged. He began abusing Selgrave all over town, writing lampoons, openly declaring—though ‘’twas known already’—that Selgrave was the model for Sir Lascivious Overspend in his play. Poverty, disgrace and death were the inevitable outcome of this and they came in 1685. The diarist, the Rev. Robert Higgs, vicar of St Mary Axe, a city church, wrote in his entry for September 14th of that year: ‘It was in the Dogge and Bitch by London Bridge that Mr Ovenstone met his unhappy end. Some say that overcome by much wine he fell into the water from a window of the Inne, others that he had hurled himself thence in a most damnable and ungodly fit of despaire, others still that My Lord’s [presumably Selgrave’s] men came, for he had offended His Lordship grievously, and made away with him. His body was discover’d next day on the strand. ’Twas curious, but his p
eriwig was still on him, yet all dabbled with blood and filthe.’
Further research led me to the library of Clare College, Cambridge where Ovenstone had been a Commoner. What papers he left on his death in 1685, had been bequeathed to the college. When I asked to see them the librarian had expressed mild surprise because someone else had only recently made the same request. It seems strange to me now that I did not question him further about it.
The papers were in considerable disorder, which led me to believe that whoever had asked to see them had not yet done so. I won’t list them all, except to say that there was a manuscript poem of inordinate length in rhyming couplets entitled A Satiricall Epistle Upon Patronage. It is unnecessary to quote from it as the title is an adequate indication of its contents, which are full of bile and pall very quickly, as bile does. A proper name, represented by a capital S followed by a long dash, occurs frequently in the text. Reference to the meter shows it to be a two-syllable name, which together with the abuse heaped upon it would confirm that Selgrave is intended.
Two documents will suffice to portray Ovenstone towards the end of his life. The first is a letter. It is undated but someone, not Ovenstone, has written on its reverse: ‘To Mrs Barry. Sent back unopen’d.’ The contents in Ovenstone’s own hand read as follows:
Three o’clock in the morning
Madam,
Anger, spleen, revenge and shame are not yet so powerful with me as to make me disown this great truth, that I love you above all things in the world. ’Tis impossible for me to curse you, but give me leave to pity myself, which is more than ever you will do for me. That you have bestowed your heart on that [something heavily crossed out here] person is more disgusting to me than to believe that you have no heart at all. Which, if this is so, and I have good reason to credit it, yet still in my folly and to my own destruction I would humbly beg leave to subscribe myself
Ever your most loving and obedient servant unto Death
H.O.
The other was the manuscript of a play, a tragedy in heroic verse entitled Zelmira, or the Empress of the Indies. It was unrevised and clearly had never been produced. Even by the standard of the time it is a confused affair, set in a fantastical kingdom, supposedly in what we now call South America. It looks like a last mad attempt by Ovenstone to re-establish himself on the stage. The action is full of poisonings, stabbing, cannibalism, intrigue of all sorts, at the centre of which is the ambitious, cruel and rapacious Zelmira. It seems probable that the actress for whom this leading role was undoubtedly intended was also its model and inspiration: Elizabeth Barry.
Her death scene would have called for more than even the considerable resources of stage machinery at the time could have coped with. Having set out with her entire fleet to invade the neighbouring nation of Bell-Imperia, Zelmira finds herself caught in a storm. The final scene takes place on the deck of a sinking ship. Her dying speech is crazed and far too long, but its last lines—and the accompanying stage direction—are worth recording:
My braine is burst, I see the storm has won!
Shatter the stars and put out ev’ry Sunne!
We’ll walk a darkling pathway to the grave
Where fishes glide beneath the glassy wave.
Neptune, our Monarch now, with Coral crowned,
Shall guide to Pluto legions of the drowned.
Lethe awaits, with drafts of liquid Peace;
Though Joyes may falter, all our Sorrowes cease!
—stabs herself, then casts herself into the waves.
The insistent images of drowning throughout the play were disturbing and made me incline towards the suicide theory of his death. But Selgrave’s last years were troubled too, perhaps by his conscience. He certainly never shook off the whispers about his involvement in Ovenstone’s end. Mrs Barry outlived all her lovers and died in 1713, appropriately enough from the bite of a rabid lapdog.
My work on Ovenstone had gone on for some months when I suddenly had a call from Tom Travers at the Rose Tree. Tom is like that. You may hear nothing from him for months, even years, then suddenly, when you least expect it, he rings up, full of enthusiasm for a play you once sent him. Tom was fascinated by The Constant Rake and was seriously interested in a production at the Rose Tree. As we discussed the play I could tell that Tom was both intrigued and a little disturbed by the harsher aspects of the play.
Tom said: ‘He’s quite vicious about old Selgrave, isn’t he?’
‘In the play you mean?’
‘No. In the dedicatory verses. You sent them to me with the prologue and the epilogue.’
I was baffled. ‘I don’t remember them being particularly offensive. Respectful to the point of obsequiousness, I would have said.’
‘Good God, no! Go back and have a look at them.’
I didn’t argue, but I was very puzzled. There must have been some mistake because I remember the opening lines of the dedicatory verses very well:
Selgrave! Thou Monarch’s Counsellor and Friend
Now to thy Servant deign to condescend . . . and so on.
As soon as Tom had rung off I went to look in the printed text. There under the familiar superscription, Verses Dedicated to the Right Honourable James, Earl of Selgrave was the following:
Selgrave! Thou Monarch’s Pandar and False Friend
Let all the Plagues of Hell on thee descend.
Let Rumour hasten to defile thy fame
And add fresh ordure to a Cursed Name
With ev’ry day your morbid Vices swell:
Defiling Heav’n, you merit worse than Hell.
When you are rudely and untimely slain
May Demons taunt thee with perpetual Pain
May your unhappy corse rot in a Tomb
Base as thy Mother’s prostituted Womb
And may your Shade blown by the viewless wind
No tranquil Haven and no solace find,
Wander distracted, vainly search for rest,
Spewed out by sea, by land cast from her breast.
Had I misremembered the bland lines I first read, or invented them? It is a strange thing to be frightened by a few rather undistinguished verses, but I was. It was not the words themselves but my mind that terrified me. I had tricked myself. How? Why? I pored over the pages again and again in case I had simply overlooked those verses, or the pages had previously been stuck together. But no, there was no mistake except what my head had made.
One other thing troubled me. The engraving of Henry Ovenstone seemed to have changed slightly. Its execution appeared more lively and one of the curls of his capacious periwig was trailing over the side of the oval frame in which his portrait had been set. It was a spirited little touch of originality, but it troubled me that I had not noted it before.
These disturbances, aberrations, call them what you will, together with the beginning of a new university term, held up my researches. I did, however, manage to complete a paper on The Constant Rake and send it to the Journal of Theatre Studies.
It came as a shock when the following week my paper was returned with a polite note from the editor to the effect that the Journal was already printing a paper on the subject of Henry Ovenstone. I was astonished, but my astonishment abated slightly when I learned that the author of the paper was Dr Pring.
You will have heard of Dr Daniel Pring of Leeds University. No? But surely you know of his groundbreaking text, Critiques of Patriarchal Hegemony in the Victorian Novel? No again? Well, let me reassure you that whatever made Hermia leave me for him it was not the originality of his intellect, or the quality of his prose.
They say that the offender never forgives. Dan Pring has never quite forgiven me for the fact that I ‘allowed’ him to seduce my wife and then saw to it that he had to leave London University for the less salubrious academic groves of Leeds. It did not require an alpha mind to guess that Pring had somehow got wind of my Ovenstone project and was trying to frustrate me. It was a curiously base thing to do, even by academic standards,
but then Dan Pring’s academic standards had never been of the highest.
I realised that it would be quite useless to arrange an interview. I would have to confront him unexpectedly, beard him, so to speak. Oh, yes! He has a beard. Ginger. Fortunately I knew the Prings’ address in Leeds, so I drove up and presented myself at their door one mild October evening. The door bell was answered by Hermia.
I wondered how I would feel on seeing Hermia again. As it happens, I felt nothing. For her part, surprise but not hostility greeted my unannounced arrival. I asked to see her husband, but unfortunately ‘Dan’ was out at a faculty meeting.
Hermia invited me in. I noticed that she was filling their little house, as she had mine, with imported ethnicity. Batiques and Moroccan rugs adorned the walls; the fashionable colours of the soukh—oatmeal, blood red and ochre—dominated. She still had a taste for those nasty little cushions covered in heavy gold thread with sequin mirrors sewn into the fabric. That made me smile. What finally reconciled me to Hermia’s departure had been the thought that I would never have to have another badly stuffed, scintillating lump of pseudo-primitivism biting into my back as I sat on the sofa watching television.
Hermia is a big woman, not fat, but big. Her features are big too: big nose, big feet, big hair. That hair, which had once been described by a friend of mine as ‘looking like dark diarrhoea’ was now tinged with grey. She still wore it in a great untidy frizz around her long face, a sort of Satanic halo, or periwig. I had never liked frizzy hair, but curiously Hermia’s had been one of the things that had drawn me to her, Eros having a strange habit of reversing the poles of attraction and repulsion. Besides, I had always entertained the quite irrational prejudice that frizzy-haired women were more sexually eager than their lank-locked sisters. In the case of Hermia my prejudice had been fully and rather unpleasantly confirmed.
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