Like Professor Ian Balfour, our paper suspects that D.M. Lawson never conversed with Mr Darwin. With the permission of the Edinburgh Review, a respected publication based in Edinburgh, we have acquired the rights to publish information about the regrettable hoax, including quotations extracted from the original article.
At the Anchor
I
Tonight we will discuss Holme Lee’s new novel, which you no doubt found as enjoyable as the last one, Eileen Faine says.
Sarah Hamilton says: I do not understand why Thomas Davies foisted himself on to a newspaper. He is merely a gardener. It is horrifying how he talked of his children, quite as if he were speaking of kittens he intends to drown. Mr Darwin is naturally in the newspapers because he is famous, and maybe he is rich, too. The bathroom in his house has an appliance that sprays warm water. It’s called a doosh.
Mary Kenny says: Above all, a book should have a message. Perhaps Mr Darwin’s books, too, have a message. But you also have to have a good plot and interesting characters.
Martha Bailey says: Why would Davies appear in print if he didn’t have connections we don’t know about? Perhaps he is in league with Mr Lewis.
Eileen Faine thinks: I’d like to rub the smug expression off Miss Sarah’s face. I would rub till I got down to the bone. She’s constantly whinging that she’s too fat, and keeps squeezing in her waist, but it’s her brain that’s podgy.
Mary Kenny says: I intend to write a book. I have already begun, though I haven’t thought of a title. Or rather, I’ve thought of too many titles. I cannot decide which is the best, the one that will go to the printing press. I would not be able to write in a beautiful hand in a stagecoach, as Mr Trollope could.
(The congregation’s Literary Circle applauds.)
Eileen Faine says: Women must strengthen their brains and not just their calves.
Martha Bailey says: I believe Thomas is mad. He walks alone like a madman and waves his arms about. He does not talk to anyone, not since Gwyneth died. Gwyneth was a good woman, though quiet. I should not be surprised if one day we found the whole lot dead, father and children, if the father gets it into his head…
More tea? Eileen Faine says.
Church wine, Hannah Hamilton says. Innes the vicar once said that gods may do what cattle may not, a highly pertinent saying from the ancients. The vicar was not talking about Thomas Davies, but the saying is applicable to him. He thinks he can issue statements as if he were Mr Darwin, although he is a gardener and a hired hand who says nothing to his master beyond good day and goodbye, Sarah Hamilton says.
I have decided that the cover of the book should not be too dark and the front page will have a simple gravure. The typeface must be discreet so that the book does not scream at you. It should look elegant and appeal to intelligent persons, not women who buy cheap little booklets, Mary Kenny says.
What do you think of Miss Lee’s novel? Eileen Faine asks.
(We haven’t had time to read the book.)
Mary Kenny says: My reader is certain to be an educated woman. She won’t put the book down just because the author’s name is still unknown. No, she will leaf through the pages, taking care not to bend them. I am going to demand a proper binding, so that people can read the book in bed comfortably. On the other hand, if my reader were to start reading at night, perhaps she would not be able to stop and go to sleep. I will begin writing really quite soon.
Martha Bailey says: I hope and pray that Grace will not singe the collars and manchettes when she does the ironing, and also that she irons the plackets properly. But look now, there is a pale brown stain on this manchette.
Lucy Wilkes thinks: Oh well, if the matrons and the young lady were to be snatched up to heaven at this moment, they would be quite ready: well groomed apart from a small brown spot. But Mary shan’t even get to dip her pen in ink by the time I write a poem:
Here a crust
Here a rest
Rest in peace
Bread and cheese
Faithful wife
Hidden strife
Man I wed
Die in bed!
One elephant after another. Henry Faine moves the smallest elephant to the end of the queue.
Women’s talk has nothing to do with me, only men’s. I shall go to the pub this evening. Eileen is truly a do-gooder, even when it comes to literature.
Seven white marble elephants, lucky animals from India. The stone’s veins show on the surface. Here a brass, multi-limbed Shiva, there a chubby bronze Buddha. A grimacing, multicoloured wooden mask from Indonesia, a long-stemmed ear-cleaning spoon, a tinkling bracelet made of tiny silver rings and semi-precious stones; where it’s from, I can’t recall.
Souvenirs are tiresome, since I do not actually want to remember. I spent three years travelling in India and Asia on business for Eileen’s father. This bric-a-brac is left over. I remember sweltering, sun-scorched bureaux that smelt of dust and paper. Big, fat, unbearable flies buzzed at the windows. Ochre-coloured sand dimmed the light. Necks slumped under the weight of sticky bureaucracy, politeness, avarice, dawdling, calculation, mistrust and fawning. The taste of thick, sugary orange juice rises in my mouth when I remember it. Did I go to Agra? Did I see the Taj Mahal? I do not remember, therefore it does not matter whether I went or not.
When I returned to England, and the village, I jumped off the carriage. I ran along the gravel path to the door, the shutters of my heart wide open. I had missed home so much. The front door of the Hall was locked.
Soon Rose opened the door and squawked with alarm: Good evening. The whole house was in darkness, more or less. Cook had gone to bed, and Arthur was playing patience in the kitchen. Madam and the young lady were in London, Rose said. Bang bang, the shutters closed. My throat was prickly. The driver and Arthur carried my luggage from the carriage. Rose lit the candles and stoked up a fire in the hearth, she brought bread and ham and wine. The ham came with a hefty amount of shiny, solid fat. I chewed and swallowed; the Bordeaux tasted of ink. My telegram cannot have got here. Eileen and Alice have the wrong day and ship in mind. They are in London buying celebratory delicacies: smoked oysters, French rustic pâté, Italian strawberries, champagne.
I shook the crumbs off my lap and stood up. I found my telegram on the desk of my study: the right date, the right time. They had forgotten, they had gone off for a night, or a week, to buy books and veils and gloves; to go to the theatre and the opera, because there are no amusements in a country village. Eileen is bringing Alice up to be a modern woman whose head is not merely a base for hats. That is right, quite right.
When travelling, you have to remain vigilant. You must beware of thieves and scoundrels, in offices and at street corners. The strangeness of faraway countries, with their tastes and smells, is as nerve-racking as the oleaginous relationships one has with traders and officials. Their smiles twist into grimaces if negotiations are stalled. Once I sat at midnight on Mr Wight’s patio, playing chess. Even at night, it was so hot that sweat poured off me and my eyes stung. Because it was my move, I could not relax. Round-the-clock alertness brought on constipation and headaches.
I decided to get a dog. They say in the village that Mr Darwin’s was beside himself with joy when the master returned from a long journey.
I haven’t got round to buying that dog. I turned the elephants so they walked from east to west.
Alice wakes up.
I was asleep, although it is afternoon or evening. There are women talking downstairs. Soon it will be time to go to bed again. I cannot shake off sleep. I see the grey wallpaper and the dark velvet curtains; in the dusk, the colours have deepened. I get out of bed and look through the window. Still November, a dismal month: like standing beside the road, waiting in vain for a lift.
There was an unknown man in my sleep. I loved him. We walked to the river and got into a narrow boat. I am sad, melancholy. What if I went back to sleep and returned to the same dream? But that never happens. I was wearing the pale-yellow,
rather old-fashioned dress I do not care for. It was summer. Red cranesbill grew in the meadow, and the leaves of water lilies floated on the river. They resembled large footprints. Suddenly, I can no longer remember what the man looked like.
Wake up, wake up! I splash my face with water and brush my hair. Oh, oh, oh, when Sarah Hamilton says souls, I see, in my mind’s eye, wet sheets hanging limp on a clothes line on a day with no breeze.
After the women have gone, Eileen sits down and attempts to formulate an opinion about the novel, but her thoughts drift and she cannot even remember the heroine’s name. Her head is a birdcage filled with canaries and parrots, flapping about, feathers flying. I cannot hold on to anything.
Alice went to her room. Does she not have enough of sleeping?
Annoying. Henry left. The Duke of Argyll’s article lies on his desk. Its conciliatory conclusion marries creationism with Mr Darwin’s doctrine of evolution. That seems reasonable, but something about its cosy compromise is bound to annoy me.
People in future decades and centuries will react to our ideas superciliously, as if we were children playing at thinking. We shall look most amusing in the light of new thoughts and inventions. The great men and military commanders in the history books are a bit ridiculous, in my view. War was waged with bows and arrows and spears, and astronomers believed that the sun circled the earth. Those who hold the present moment in their hands have power. We shall be placed in a bell jar and examined with a microscope.
A white mouse in a laboratory squeaks, but I…
I am thoroughly dead, and therefore I must now make notes.
II
We are talking in the saloon bar of the Anchor. It is as if the village debating society were having a meeting. Free gentlemen are not barred from expressing their opinions, although one always thinks he is wiser than the other. There are scientists and philosophers wiser than us; even an educated man finds it difficult to argue with them.
We know not what produces the numberless slight differences between the individuals of each species, for reversion only carries the problem a few steps backwards, but each peculiarity must have had its efficient cause, Mr Darwin wrote.
‘You don’t believe in God, and you’ve got no time for humans either. You’re a cynical man.’
‘I’m no cynic, but innocence is boring. The very thought makes you want to yawn. It’s like a little girl preening in her white lace and broderie anglaise. Innocence in humans is always pretend; only animals are innocent. You don’t see a bearded sow or a wattle-necked turkey primping.’
‘All right, then, let’s dress up some pigs, chickens and cats in muslin and take them to church. There’d be innocence for you. The only animal I’ve ever seen wearing clothes willingly was Talbot-Ponsonby’s pug. It wore a silk bow in the parlour and went for walks in the park in a raincoat.’
‘A child’s born innocent. Then mothers and aunties and nannies in bonnets go all doe-eyed over innocence. Even a two-year-old realizes he’d better start acting the part.’
‘Man isn’t born innocent; he’s weighed down by original sin.’
‘An infant in its swaddling clothes, and you talk about original sin – it’s as if you were pouring ink all over the child.’
‘There’s no original sin in a newborn pig, only mud and excrement. Man’s an animal, too. For better or worse, he acts for the preservation of the species – and you call it original sin.’
‘Aha, words from the almost-horse’s mouth.’
‘My faith may well be futile from a scientific point of view, but it gives me the strength to live in this world. A believer in science denies both himself and God. His heart’s just a bundle of muscles, pumping blood.’
‘I met Thomas Davies on the hill. That hillock is no Golgotha. I asked him: Do you think you’re special, with your grief? The greatest griever ever? After all, everyone has his cross to bear. I asked him how much his grief weighed – a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand pounds? How much does my grief weigh? More or less? Do we weigh bodies or do we weigh souls? He smiled then.’
‘If a man has never truly believed, how is he supposed to know what he’s missing? If a tooth falls out of his jaw, you can point at the gap. The same doesn’t apply to belief.’
‘I want to believe in God, but my reason protests.’
‘Such is the influence of custom, that, where it is strongest, it not only covers our natural ignorance, but even conceals itself, and seems not to take place, merely because it is found in the highest degree,’ David Hume wrote.
‘Man will yet drown in his own wisdom. The world is full of despair, poverty, injustice, sickness and death. We tread water like a frog in a well, secretly hoping that someone will lift the lid.’
‘Man no longer even knows when he’s thirsty or hungry. He eats when he’s thirsty and drinks when he’s hungry. When he drinks enough beer, he forgets both hunger and thirst.’
‘I don’t know if I want to play whist or go between the sheets with the wife.’
‘Knowledge isn’t like a hat you can put on and take off. When I know what I know, it sticks.’
‘Animals have nothing extra in their skulls that makes them stop in the middle of running or flying or crawling. Man is the only animal to wonder where he is going and why. He comes up against a wall and starts asking questions. I think a more cool-headed species like rats will take over.’
‘A simple soul believes with purity, because he is not capable of anything else.’
‘But faith poisoned by knowledge will not be resurrected.’
‘By all means pray, but God won’t get mixed up in conjectures. In worldly terms, matters of faith are a negotiating point between the church and the merchants. The parties have reached a profitable consensus.’
‘Modern measuring devices keep ships on course. When we all stop worshipping totems and bronze idols and all sorts of other gods, mankind will sail under the flag of progress.’
‘The future doesn’t comfort me, history does. The past tells us what wasn’t there to begin with, and what came.’
‘History in books? Nonsense, even a bronze statue of a military man on a horse has more life. It stands there rain or shine, and pigeons shit on its head. Written history is past tense.’
‘You preach science and progress, but what happens when the sacred leaves through the back door? Worldly gods come along and replace the sacred. Soon they’ll start behaving as if they were omnipotent. Those in charge have an unquenchable thirst for power.’
‘I think God disappeared ages ago, when people began to fight each other in His name. He placed the battlefield at men’s disposal.’
‘We still need God’s protection.’
‘Not possible. All the angels have moulted.’
‘I don’t care. A proper plume or just a wisp of feather, I’ll take what I can.’
‘In bad times, despair becomes prayer, because there’s nothing else for it.’
‘Where will the soul go, if the head’s full of knowledge?’
‘There’s enough ignorance to leave space for the soul.’
‘If God didn’t exist, everyone would have to die alone.’
‘True. When I was born, my mother hadn’t seen me for nine months, nor I her, although we’d been nourished from the same source. Two were needed for the conception and two were needed for the birth, but for dying, one’s enough.’
‘…but the fear of death, as a tribute due unto nature, is weak,’ Francis Bacon wrote.
‘Too sophisticated.’
‘It’s not excessive thought that’s the malady of the day, but rather the dearth of thinking.’
‘Did you hear the one about the spinster who used to lie in bed praying that God would save her from the revolting hands of men?’
‘You’ve told it before. One night, a burglar climbed in through the window and groped the maiden in the dark. Now she prays, Lord, do not forsake me!’
‘When a man is dying, and his reason vanishes, still
his flesh cries out for God.’
‘A soldier, badly wounded on a stretcher, shouted: I don’t want to die. I’d rather kill myself.’
III
The Anchor clinks, clanks, seethes, smokes, susurrates.
The gardener has taken on the role of village sage, though as a rule he barely says good morning.
The tongue is a sort of red carpet. One has to watch what hurries out along it.
A gloomy and unhappy man.
It is arrogant to believe that one is like Job, tormented by God. How would God find the time to harass one man? You only imagine yourself to be Job because it is harder to admit your own failing.
I’m drying up here! Pint please, James.
Lewis’s newspaper article was a lie. The man was loitering in Mr Darwin’s garden during the day, not in the evening. The rest is rubbish, too. Haven’t we finished with all this? The article didn’t come out yesterday, you know.
How do you know it wasn’t evening, or night?
Man has only three hidey-holes from life: booze or sleep…
The third is a woman.
I was thinking of death.
A man goes mad if he cannot escape his life for a short while. His head can’t stand life for days on end. Perhaps that’s what troubles Thomas, and he hasn’t yet found the cure.
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