Nothing Like the Sun - Anthony Burgess

by Burgess, Anthony

  ‘You are nothing but a dirty Jew.’

  ‘Oh, a clean Jew,’ smiled WS. ‘See, I am new-washed all over.’

  ‘Ah, what bed is he visiting?’

  He was visiting no bed, no bed at all. He was done with women. Women were a deflection; he must push on to his goal. Meantime he pushed on with his poem:

  And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare,

  Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles,

  How he outruns the wind, and with what care

  He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles.

  The many musits through the which he goes

  Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.

  It brought much back from those early country days. It was not just a toy, a bauble of flashy stones on an old string of myth, of the pretty and laborious order of Scilla’s Metamorphosis by Lodge, nor was it a wanton lyric gale like that unfinished Hero and Leander of Marlowe. In a double figure it presented both a country poet set upon by a love-mad older woman and a pampered godling of an English earl nagged to leave his sports and marry (marry; it is thy duty to beget heirs; here is this fine girl Lady Elizabeth crying for thy love). In this image two men, stripped of their clothes and rank, became one. Coldly for a moment he saw that if there was to be love it must be love with advantage. He had suffered enough.

  It was in early April that he penned the last lines. He trembled with hopelessness and relief and fear. He read through the whole poem and was filled with such disgust at his own ineptitude that he was fain to tear it and scatter the fragments on the river (the swans would come, thinking it food). And then he grew calmer and thought: It is not good, but it is as good as many. I cannot waste my whole life in longing for this man’s art and that man’s scope. If I am not made, why then I am not made; I return to my craft of glove-puppetry humbled. And then he walked the streets composing his epistle to the noble lord. It was far harder than any poem.

  ‘I know not how I shall offend …’ Spring waking in London, crude crosses still on the doors, but the wind blowing in the smell of grass and the ram-bell’s tinkle. Piemen and flower-sellers cried. ‘… in dedicating my lines, no, my unpolished lines, to your lordship …’ From a barber-shop came the tuning of a lute and then the aching sweetness of treble song. ‘… nor how the world will rebuke, no, censure me for choosing so strong a prop …’ There were manacled corpses in the Thames, that three tides had washed. ‘… to support so weak a burden …’ A kite overhead dropped a gobbet of human flesh. ‘… only, if your honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised …’ In a smoky tavern a bawdy catch was flung at the foul air. ‘… and vow to take advantage of all idle hours …’ Pickpurses strolled among the gawping country cousins. ‘… till I have honoured you with some grave labour …’ A limping child with a pig’s head leered out from an alleyway. ‘… But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed …’ A couple of Paul’s men swaggered by, going haw haw haw. ‘… I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather …’ Stale herrings smelled to heaven in a fishman’s basket. ‘… and never after ear so barren a land …’ A cart lurched, rounding a corner; wood splintered against stone. ‘… for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest …’ The sun, in sudden great glory, illumined white towers. ‘… I leave it to your honourable survey …’ A thin girl in rags begged, whining. ‘… and your honour to your heart’s content …’ An old soldier with one eye munched bread in a dark passage. ‘… which I wish may always answer your own wish …’ Skulls on Temple Bar. ‘… and the world’s hopeful expectation.’ A distant consort of brass — cornets and sackbuts. ‘Your honour’s in all duty …’ A drayhorse farted. ‘… WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.’

  ‘STRATFORD, then, has made this book entire,’ said Dick Field. He spoke still with the Warwickshire burr, standing there, grave and bulky in his apron, a smear of ink on his fat cheek. A man was busy at the press, quietly whistling; at a corner table a boy was learning how to bind. Field had done well; he had married the widow of his master, the Frenchman Vautrollier, and taken the business over. But he deserved to succeed by virtue of his own skill in the craft: that translation of Orlando Furioso (Harington’s, was it not?) was a beautiful book to handle. All questions of local patriotism aside, WS had done well to bring his poem here. He took the volume reverently from Field, handling it with a proper mingling of pride, humility, wonder, fear, smelling fresh ink and new paper in a sort of small vertigo. A book, his book. There was no doubt of it: a poem in print was somehow a different work from the warm, fingered, crossed-out, pored-on, loved and hated sheets that held one’s own nature in every line (one’s hand was indeed one’s hand, part of oneself). Here it was, Venus and Adonis, cast on the waters: ‘TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE HENRY WRIOTHESLY, Earl of Southampton and Baron of Tichfield …’ There was no going back now; the ship sailed. This book, this exterior thing, must take its buffets from a world as indifferent as the sea, knowing and caring nothing of the author, making no allowances; no actor could mediate to exalt with his own music or diminish (earning all blame) with stumbling memory or false accent. Here was WS in naked confrontation with the reader, with, above all, one particular reader.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘Stratford poet and Stratford printer. We will show London together what Stratford can do.’

  Field coughed. ‘They say you have left Stratford for ever. I heard talk of this at my father’s funeral. I met your father at the inventory-taking. He said you had promised a twice-yearly visit.’

  ‘A man must work where the work is. I cannot always be taking holidays. I send money home.’

  ‘Aye, they said that too.’ He coughed again. ‘You have not thought, then, of setting up house here in London?’

  ‘When I buy a house,’ said WS, ‘it will be in Stratford. London is for work. There will be time enough for sitting by the fire, telling my children stories.’ He spoke somewhat sharply.

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Field. ‘It is none of my affair. Well, may things prosper for you. May your book prosper.’

  ‘It is your book too.’ WS smiled. ‘Even if the matter were all nonsense, it would still be a beautiful book.’

  It was launched, it rode the waters. It provoked ecstasy among the young exquisites. It was in the mode — wanton and yet coyly standing back from wantonness, all in language that was pure candy with honey sauce. WS sat in a tavern with grumbling Henslowe; he heard a gallant whisper that that was sweet Mr Shakespeare. Oh, the commodious conceits, the facility, the facetiousness. And all the time he waited to hear word of what one particular reader thought. The book had been entered on April 18th; May came in and he still heard nothing. Alleyn said:

  ‘There is no use in our further waiting.’

  ‘Waiting? Waiting for what?’

  ‘Calmly, softly. Your mind has ceased to be on the craft. When will Richard be finished?’

  ‘Richard? Oh, Richard. Richard can wait.’

  ‘But we cannot. The Rose will not open this year. We have this licence from the Privy Council to play anywhere seven miles out of London. It is to keep us in trim for playing before the Queen next winter.’ He put on, something ineptly, a hayseed voice: ‘Aye, Hodge, they be not harlotry players but a sort of royal officers. We must go see them in manner of a bounden duty.’ In his normal voice he said: ‘It is but a small company — Will Kemp and George Brian and his little holiness Tom Pope and Jack Heminges. There will be little baggage to take. Will you make one?’

  ‘No, no, I must stay here.’

  ‘Well, then, we will have a good drinking night before we part.’

  And then, on a day of bad news, he had a visit. It was news buzzed among the pamphleteers and petty playwrights. The Privy Council was heresy-hunting, special men termed Commissioners were searching in the lodgings of writing hacks for seditious papers. In the rooms of Thomas Kyd (and was he not a sort of god, had he not written The Spanish Tragedy?) they had found terrible words in black ink, something about Jesus Christ being not divine.
Kyd, in a sweat of fear, had said Marlowe had written them. The end was coming at last for Marlowe; the end might be coming for all who had lived by the pen. We had best burn all, papers, notes, letters. Anything can be twisted to heresy and treason by those who wish it. Kyd is already in Bridewell; some say he was put to the torture, six fingers broken, sweating and screaming.

  To the lodgings of WS came a man in black. WS did not at first recognise him; he prepared for interrogation (what heresy, then, might be lurking in Venus and Adonis?). Then he remembered that January day, the Lord’s room at the Rose. This man, who looked so gravely and coldly on WS, was called Florio, subtle Italian, translator of Montaigne. He said:

  ‘May I sit?’

  ‘I have here a little wine. If you would care——’

  Florio waved the wine away. ‘I read your book before he did,’ he said directly. ‘It was too sweet for my taste, like a very sweet wine.’ He looked sourly on the flask he had been offered. ‘He could not at first be persuaded to read it. It was my lord of Essex who burst in, almost at dawn, to shout about its virtues, to tell him that it was he who was honoured and not yourself. My lord of Essex can move him to anything. So now he has read it at last.’ He paused, sitting in gloom.

  ‘And,’ gulped WS, ‘what says he?’

  ‘Oh, he is on fire,’ said Florio unfierily. ‘He has sent me at once to summon you. Or rather I offered to come; he wished to send merely his coach and a footman with a letter. I offered to come because I wished to talk with you.’

  WS frowned in puzzlement.

  ‘I see your surprise. You are thinking that I am nothing more than a servant myself, a secretary and so somewhat intimate, but still no more than a paid man. In one sense that is true, in another not.’ He crossed one thin black leg over the other. ‘I am Italian-born, a stranger, an outlander. It is for this reason, perhaps, that I see the English so clearly. I have travelled, but I have not met anywhere the like of your English nobles. They are a kind of being that God would seem to have made for His own special pleasure.’ WS settled, as to hear a sermon. ‘If English nobles take pleasure in fine horses, God may be thought of as taking pleasure in such as my lord. Wealth and beauty and high birth, also a little learning, as much as he needs, also a quickness, a quivering as of a purebred horse starting at a fly or a feather——’

  ‘You have certainly read my poem,’ said WS, smiling.

  ‘I remember your verses about the horse. You will then know my figure and my meaning. If you understand a horse you will understand what I am saying about my lord. He is all fire and air and water. He can hurt and he can be hurt. If you are to be a friend——’

  ‘I would not dare to presume,’ stammered WS. ‘Who am I to ask that——’

  ‘You are a poet,’ said Florio calmly. ‘There is perhaps something of the horse in you, though you are only a humble man from a village.’

  ‘Stratford is a borough.’

  ‘A borough? Well then, a borough. That is not to our purpose. What is to our purpose is that I will not have him hurt. My lord of Essex is too much the soldier, the courtier, the man of ambition to harm him greatly. I saw in your eyes that day of our first meeting what you might do.’

  ‘This is nonsense,’ said WS, smiling uneasily. ‘Might I not be more easily hurt? There is power, there is beauty, youth. I am, as you say, but a village man.’

  ‘Borough.’

  ‘If he calls me, then I must go, and gladly, humbly. But I know of the fickleness of the great.’

  ‘Let me tell you about my lord,’ said Florio. And then, as though he had just then taken in the words of WS, ‘Yes yes, you will have read about fickleness in your story-books. Now, his father was not fickle but suffered for his faith in the Tower there, the faith that was my own before I read Maître Montaigne and learned to say “Que sais-je?” He died young, and my lord, at eight years only, had to become a court ward. My lord Burghley was his guardian, is still. Like a horse, my lord kicks at control. My lord Burghley, his own mother and grandfather, urge him to marry. If he wishes to follow my lord Essex into battle, it may be that he will be killed and leave no heir. Thus a great house will die. There is a bride waiting ready for him, the granddaughter of my lord Burghley — a beautiful girl with that cold-seeming English beauty that masks terrible fire. He will have none of her. He will have none of any woman. I think your poem may harm him.’

  ‘But there, surely, it is but an old Greek story——’

  ‘Oh, already he talks of himself as Adonis. Poets have more power than they think. I think,’ said Florio slowly, ‘that he ought to marry. Not only for the sake of the house, but for his own sake. There are corruptive forces at court, there are hot hands eager to lay themselves on his beauty. I think you, more than any man, might persuade him to think of marriage.’

  ‘Come now,’ smiled WS. ‘If his own mother cannot——’

  ‘His mother urges advantage and duty. You might urge advantage and duty also, but with you they would be different. They would, in that alchemy of poetry, seem a kind of vice, and vice attracts young men. He sees himself as Adonis, and that makes him also Narcissus. You might play on that.’

  ‘You mean,’ said WS, ‘that I should write verses to him on this theme of marriage?’

  ‘It can be made a commission. His mother would be glad to throw gold at you.’ Florio stood up. ‘I must take you now. He is very eager. I would esteem it a favour if you would say nothing of our words together. A secretary’s office is to write letters.’

  ‘And so then,’ breathed WS, ‘he likes the poem.’

  ‘Oh, he is, as they say, altogether ravished by it. He swoons at its rich conceits, again as they say. And all this in a single May morning.’

  WAS there not already the scent of decay, of delicate corruption, in that boy’s greeting? WS pushed, as it were, through the sumptuous wrappings that hid this jewel in the very core of the great house. Truly a Stratford bumpkin, he gaped at the profusion of concealing silks and brocades, a whole Ovid in the hangings, the carpets that muffled his feet like snow. Wryly grinning, but his eyes saturnine, Florio handed over this raw poet to the hierarchy of house-servants (gold chains, glittering livery, finally an ebony staff, silk-tasselled) that led him by the formal degrees of ceremony to a great bedchamber. It was a bedchamber that WS found overwhelming but curiously familiar; he remembered his boyhood’s vision, the gold goddess, the arms that implored. But here was no goddess; that premonition had been false. In a bed of gold that seemed to float like a ship on a carpet that was all tritons and nereids, Master WH lay on satin cushions. He was resting, he tired easily these days. To WS he said:

  ‘Come! Come here! I have no words, thou hast taken them all.’ (‘Thou’: he said ‘thou’.)

  ‘My lord, I humbly——’

  ‘Not humbly, never humbly anything. Come, sit here beside me. Be proud, but let me be prouder. I have a poet as friend.’

  ‘Dear my lord——’

  III

  ‘DEAR MY LORD——’

  ‘I will be called by my name.’

  ‘It is not seemly that I——’

  ‘Oh, it is for me to say what is and is not seemly. And I will say that it is not seemly for you to go moping about with this long puling face on so bright a June day. I keep my poet for my ape, not for my memento mori.’

  WS looked at him with bitter love. The death of a poet was nothing to this lord who was as careless with his poets as with his gold (Pay thou this reckoning, Will; I have spent all I had with me. — But, my lord, I doubt that I have enough in my purse. — Aye, I forget that thou’rt but a poor crust-eating sonnet-monger.)

  ‘I cannot be unmoved, my lord (Harry I would say), when I hear that my friend was stabbed with his own dagger and died in torment. His own dagger, straight through the eye, imagine. He screamed, they say, that all Deptford could hear it. The agony of suffering Christ could not be worse.’ That news had come to WS late, cushioned as he was from the real world of ale and plays and
lice by sumptuous satins and giddy perfumes. He had heard first the elation of the pious at the death of Antichrist; then the coroner’s droning that Frizer had slain Marlowe in the defence and saving of his own life; last he had put together the ghastly scene in the room at Deptford Strand — Frizer, Skeres, Poley standing about, laughter then sudden rage from the poet lying on the bed, the flash of the dagger, the flash of the enemy hand snatching the dagger, and then — That line would not leave his mind, that scream of damned Faustus: ‘See where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament.’

  ‘You may exult now, friend or no friend,’ said his lordship Mr WH, Harry, ‘that you are without peer. Now my poet is the only poet.’ He was shrewd in some things, pretty pouting boy as he was. ‘You may gladly lose a friend to know that.’

  ‘He was not so close a friend. But there was no poet like him.’ That was true. Still, he had seen his successor burst like a new sun in the very days of his daily summoning to the Council’s inquisition about souls on the top of a pole and run God, run devil, have it who will (did you say this?), his own masterpiece unfinished.

  ‘I should hope he was no close friend. Well, this may mean one more nail in the coffin of his upstart protector the tobacco-man. Sir Walter Stink. I cannot abide the oaf, what with his Brownists and atheists and wenching at court. You must write a play mocking him and all his black circle.’

  Why this enmity? Had Essex been squirting poison in? Oh, the intrigues, the ambages, the labyrinthine plottings. As for the School of Night, WS kept his own counsel. This was a new life, post-Marlovian (a pretty coinage), dedicated to love and advancement and poetry. ‘I have here,’ said WS, smiling, ‘a new sonnet.’ And he took it from his breast, the black ink that had flowed so confidently scarce dry. (‘… Thy love is better than high birth to me, Richer than wealth, prouder than garments’ cost, Of more delight than hawks or horses be …’ Was it not perhaps over-forward, after but a few weeks of friendship, this harping on love? But Mr WH, Harry, had said it first.)