Nothing Like the Sun - Anthony Burgess

by Burgess, Anthony

  MAY 30TH

  HE WILL HAVE HER, he says, for her newness, for her unicornity. He asks not; he doth take. She is ready to be taken. Take too, I say, what I have writ for her, by her unread. Add them to the odorous fellowship of that spicy chest. Take this sonnet also, of the perils of lust (hark to the dog’s panting: had, having, and in quest to have). I am aware of a manner of glee in all this, the glee of the wronged man; it is a sort of cuckolding. The trick is to be glad and noble and to smile; better far, it is to wish this loss and conceive it as the child of mine own will. He will tire of her, and I must force in myself a willingness to take her back. And then I see myself as ageing, bald, rheumy, three teeth but newly drawn, a man who should think it foul shame to drivel and froth so in youth’s lust. And more than mine ageing I catch a picture in sun and dust of the squalor whereto I, and all men in me, am condemned by reason of time and flesh and indolence: a louse I but now caught in the grey hairs of my chest, the Fleet’s stink, a boil on my thigh, the wretched mound of rotting shit that lies to fester in the sun, the diseases that heave and bubble in pustular quietness all over the city and the world. It is time then to rise all above the body and live in a making soul.

  JUNE 2ND

  MY LOVE, my love. I dream I see them pointing and laughing at poor Will the creaking player. Play thou all old men, for that is most suited to thee. I dream of an old man cast off, owing a thousand pound, by a youthful prince that but played with him. Have I not great expectations, my lord? Aye, expect me to come and take thy black doxy away from thee.

  JUNE 5TH

  I SEE IN THE CITY RIOTS the riot in mine own soul configured. I have walked by the brawlers with staves. It is but a matter of the price of merchandise and they glow in a ferment of high principle and the shaking of souls. Teeth are broken and young bones sorely belaboured.

  JUNE 13TH

  THE PRENTICES handle the buttersellers roughly for that they sell their butter at 2d the lb too much. The whole city grows harsh and unlovely over this business. Jack has kicked in the head of Tom and left him to lie in street-filth, I found what appeared to be bloody brains staining the stones by Billingsgate, an old woman, torn and limping, went groaning home, her butterbasket abandoned. The Knight Marshal’s Men are in their element, they have run a blubbery young prentice through with their swords, five sword-thrusts for one poor boy’s body. Dead are A. Orme, H. Nininger, T. Neale, C. Knickerbocker, L. Gann, R. Garlick, C. Fox, C. Cousland, Ed. Crabb, G. Brace, Will Biggs, J. Seymour, M. Sewell, N. Wishart, Martin Winsett and others. Torched prentices street-marching by night, cracking glass, crying for the blood now of Jew tailors, equivocators, Dansker beershopmen, Flemish weavers, for aught I know W. Shakespeare. Ah yes, and in Clerkenwell they have beaten the negro trulls, stripping one and scrubbing her to clean off her black before using her foully. She at least, she she will be safe in Holborn or wherever he has removed her for his secret pleasure. There will be martial law soon. They have arrested five prentices and there is talk of hanging and quartering them on the scene where riot first started. All this is for 2d a lb on butter. Well, what was the agitation in the city of mine own soul but that? A finger-dip into butter-smooth pleasure and the armies and rioters trample through my veins, crying Kill kill.

  Buttered blood, the town is spread with it. And now the price has risen to 7d a lb, which is 4d above what is usual. Eggs will not be thrown now, as they are 1d.

  JUNE 26TH

  IT WAS TO BE EXPECTED, though there have been few enough brawling prentices at the Theatre. The playhouses are today closed by the Council’s order. The term is two months, which brings us to plague weather, the gentry and nobility out of town, the mobled Queen (she is aware, for all her mirrors dim or painted with the reflection of a face twenty years gone, of her broken teeth) on progress. Shall I go home or not?

  I can hardly move, sick not in my body but only in my soul, centre of my sinful earth. I lie on my unmade bed listening to time’s ruin, threats of Antichrist, new galleons on the sea, the Queen’s grand climacteric, portents in the heavens, a horse eating its foal, ghosts gliding as on a buttered pavement. Were I some great prince I could lie thus for ever, my body washed for me, a little sustenance brought, cut off from the need to act. But there are plays to be written, images of order and beauty to be coaxed out of wrack, filth, sin, chaos. I take my pen, sighing, and sit to my work. But work I cannot.

  VII

  (Preached, ladies and gentlemen — softe let me drinke before I go anie further — in the dark church of SS Somnus and Oneiros any night before his most despicable Lowness.)

  THAT LUST AND FILTHY FORNICATION and sodomy and buggery roam this realm, beating their lewd wings and raising a coughing and stinking and blinding dust to lead reason astray, you may be well assured, aware too of God’s wrath in the dread portents of the times. Is not a new Antichrist Armada bristling about our shores? Yet will men not see their fault. Is there not fresh dissension between the French and the English? Yet will men not see their fault. Is not the Queen’s Majesty entered a good way into the climacterical year of her age, seven by nine which is sixty-three and the grand climacteric when, as my lord Bishop of St David’s saith, the senses begin to fail, the strength to diminish, yea, all the powers of the body daily to decay? Yet will men not see how little time there is to repent of their fault.

  You may take one man’s sinfulness to be the type and pattern of all. There he lieth, tossing in the guilt of his lewdness, the primal lecher, neglectful of his duties to a fair wife but all too ready to plunge his sizzling steel into the slaking black mud of a base Indian. Well, he hath lost her now; there is leisure left for penitence, but penitence may be all too late, for if the occasion of that sin were to return would he shun it? He would not. There are examples enough of other poets and players who sought, when their powers failed for the enactment of sin, to whine to Almighty God of their deep and profound repentance. Yet call time back and they would be staggering anew in their drunkenness and grunting in beastly thrusting at their ragg’d and spotted drabs. There was dirty Greene and Godless Merlin or Marlin (no matter what his name; it is burnt with his atheistical writings and consumed in eternal fiery nothingness). I have news for thee, snorer. There is one, a God-fearing true Christian named F. Lawson Gent., who has been vouchsafed, by God’s holy grace, a vision of these poets screaming in hell, the which he has set down in a treatise called A Watchword against Wickedness and the Lewd Trumperies of Poetified Sneerers, wherein he recounteth the horror of their deathless punishment in hellfire (as seen by him in his vision), a burning stinking brewis of venomed maggots and toothed worms that do gnaw to the very pia mater. Thou dost well to stir and sweat in thine unwholesome sleep.

  God is almighty and all-just. Yet, in his all-mercifulness, he will oft chastise and castigate and chasten the sinner in this life as a warning of what is to come if he leave not off. This poor play thou writest of King John — it is no more than a quincunx of botched nonsense, creaking stuff. Account that to thy sin. Are not the personages therein still-born, ditch-delivered by a drab of a whining muse, even the Bastard a roaring emptiness of meaningless rant? Are not thy best lines, such as they are, filched from pamphleteers that write on the present troubles? ‘Naught shall make us rue, if England to itself do rest but true.’ Has not Master Covell written: ‘England cannot perish but by Englishmen’? Did not C.G. of Cambridge say: ‘If we be true within ourselves, we need not care or fear the enemy’? A manner of thieving. From one sin many may come.

  Thou didst flaunt thy pride in the possession of a noble patron and companion. ‘To me, fair friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I eyed’ (oh, vile!) ‘Such seems your beauty still.’ What response to that? None. He is gone to Dover with my lord Essex that they may take Calais, though Her Majesty will send him flea-eared courtward again. But, in any event, he says thou art as he formerly thought, namely an upstart, vulgar and over-familiar. Thou covetest thine old place as His Own Poet, but there
be others now who are in his affections. Thou enviest Master Chapman his special new nearness to his lordship, as also his Blind Beggar of Alexandria at the Rose, taking the town by storm, this being accounted by many to be far better than aught WS can do. (Never fear, thou wilt steal for Dick Burbage what Ned Alleyn doth so well.) Anger comes. Good, tear thy bedsheets, throw thy water-jug out the window, rail at the little boy who brings thy penny dinner and halfpenny bread from the ordinary. And then slop into it, eating fast and beastly, sending out for more, fancying goose-breast richly sauced baked in a fat coffin of brown and flaky paste, herrings pickled in spicy eisel, a cheesy flawn with cloves and borage, nut-and-honey cake topped with cinnamon cream. Ugh, glutton. Then to thy bed, belching in sloth, to lie there, paper unwritten on save by random sprawling greasy greedy fingers, ale-drop jottings, dust settling on the pile. Aye, lie, conjuring images of lost Her, in postures of abandon before thee, moaning in nasty lust.

  Let England die. Let the Spaniards come to ravish our wives and daughters, egged on thereto by the traitorous French (Papists all). Thou hast done thine own poor duty in a dull pro-patria play. Let Master Doleman write his book about the next Succession to the Crown of England, dedicating it foolishly to my lord of Essex, loosing rumbling grumblings and privy fears. Thou dost snore. The men are pressed to march coastward against the threat of invasion. Thou dost snore. Calais is feared lost and the levies are dismissed. Thou dost snore. The bells clang in a glorious Easter Day, the churches are locked on the communicants that they may be pressed once more for Doverward shogging. Thou didst and dost snore. Wretch, cause of a country’s decay. ‘The imminent decay of wrested pomp’ (stolen from Chapman).

  Wake to a great shaking.

  SO WAS IT. WS blinked back to the painful world on a hot morning, openmouthed at the strong mid-morning sunray infested with motes, wondering who this shaker could be. His mouth was sour, his head ached. On the table by his bed lay the greasy remains of his supper. He wished to retch. First, though, this shaker must be identified. He recognised the hand, stubby, ingrained with ink, a dyer’s hand, a printer’s hand. It was Dick Field’s face that looked down on him, gravely urgent. But Dick Field was in Stratford, entrusted with money for Anne, a letter, presents for——

  ‘Yes,’ said WS. ‘Yes yes.’ He smelt, he knew, rancid, sitting up now in a dirty shirt, rubbing his creased face awake.

  ‘Can you understand me? I am come back early at their request, at your wife’s request I would say. It is the boy. There is a letter.’ WS took the folded note, opened it unhandily, squinted against the mote-loaded shaft of sun, reading:

  ‘… He has been given what are called apozemes and electuaries but naught seems to shift it. He vomits all up that he takes and grows very thin. In his sleep sometimes he screams of devils. He talks of his father that he has not seen for so long …’

  ‘Yes yes, I see,’ said WS stupidly, sitting up in bed, reading and re-reading the trembling letter. It was, in its coldness and sheer fact, like the letter of some very distant relative. ‘It has not been possible to go. I have sent money home. I thank you for taking the money. You saw the boy?’

  ‘He cannot eat. They say it is a fever out of Spain.’

  ‘I will be too late, will I not? He will be dead, will he?’

  Field, in his rider’s cloak and boots, looked sweating and awkward standing there. But suddenly he cried out: ‘It is your own son, man. Your own flesh and blood.’

  ‘Aye,’ said WS, still in bed, scratching his baldness, examining the furfur in his fingernails. ‘You have always said that a man should live with his wife and family. I had my plan of retiring to Stratford, a justice of the peace, a fair house, a competence.’

  ‘You seem not to understand,’ said Field, sweating more. ‘This is your son Hamnet. Dying.’

  ‘Hamnet.’ It was the name that cut suddenly through the drug of sleep and indolence. ‘My son.’ The building for the future, the making of a gentleman that should come into his estates, range his deer-park, be dubbed knight. ‘Sir Hamnet Shakespeare,’ said WS. ‘A proud name. He will talk of his father, who had built his fortune for him in the playhouse. Well, it is no more ignoble than the printer’s trade. Would you not say so?’

  ‘Where,’ said Field, ‘are your riding boots? You must take horse at once. The roads are full of soldiers. The expedition from Cadiz is coming back.’

  ‘Cadiz. In Spain. And you say it is called a Spanish fever?’ Then the news thrust properly in, burst the membrana, and flooded its meaning through him. ‘Oh, God,’ he said. And he was out of bed, clumsily searching his chamber for clean linen, moaning in double pain.

  ‘It is not for me to say,’ said Field primly. ‘I have often thought that—— It is full of distractions, London.’

  ‘I thank you, I thank you. A man should be with his family, you have said so already.’ He saw himself in the small mirror, ill, old, dirty. He splashed himself in stale cold water, towelling himself till he was covered with bee-stings. It might be good for him, he thought, a swift ride through country summer.

  ‘I mean no harm,’ said Field. ‘For people of our kind there are things that can do little good. We are, so to say, in the suburbs of that world, we can never go into the centre. They have but newly read your Venus poem in Stratford, at least your father has. I was constrained to agree with him that it is——’

  ‘That it is not the poem that a Stratford glover should write. Nor a Stratford printer print. It is altogether too pagan, it is not a dirge of Brownist godliness.’ WS was fumbling himself into his jerkin. ‘So a good Stratford tradesman is corrupted by wicked London and his son starts to die.’

  ‘Oh, your father is no longer inclined that way,’ said Field. ‘He talks now of saints and candles. As for your mother, she will not look at your poems, nor will your wife. They are become great readers of tracts.’ WS stared at him. ‘Very ill-printed. But it is not perhaps stuff that good printers would wish to print.’

  WS grinned wearily. ‘Poor Dick Field. We are all caught, are we not, between two worlds? Our sin and our sickness is not to choose one and turn our backs on the other but to hanker after both. Well, I am ready.’

  ‘I hope that a miracle may have happened by the time you arrive. They are praying every hour.’

  ‘Some to a God of tracts, others to a God of candles. And I cannot pray to either.’

  It was difficult riding out of London, what with discharged soldiers drinking in the streets, their doxies clinging to them, all, in their victory revelry, unwilling that any should pass through on his own business. The slobbering and shouting heroes, unbuttoned for the intense heat, invited gentlemen to dismount and quaff from this spilling tankard, see, come, let us drink to the Queen and to the final ruination of King Pip and all his saints and candles. They clawed at flanks and harness; some fell in their drunkenness and were near trampled; some were whipped out of the way. The captains were little more decorous than the men, swaggering and singing, stroking their great Essex beards. Well, it was news worth celebrating: Cadiz surrendered; the Spanish fleet burnt, save for two galleons brought home; a heavy ransom taken. The impending death of a boy in Stratford meant nothing, his cries were muffled by the clanging of the Te Deum bells.

  As he rode north-west he remembered that former accession of insight (that time he had been riding back, not to) into the meaning and horror of fatherhood, the responsibility too great for any to bear. Eleven years old, that boy was dying now. Into what was he dying? Either into fire (for it was certain that God, if God existed, was unjust) or nothingness, and the road to both a road of pain. Better not to have been born, better not to bring to birth. Out of the gush of water came fire that could not be tamed to humble, sufficient processes; a thrust of opal drops in animal ecstasy unleashed a universe — stars, sun, gods, hell and all. It was unjust, and yet a man was condemned to the injustice.

  But what he had somehow dimly previsioned in his son was the poem he himself could not make with words. He
saw a young man, handsome, rich-suited, languid on horseback, falcon on fist, living out his own life surrounded by parkland. He would not marry, knowing that no woman could be trusted; he had once given his heart, though in the full knowledge that it would be belted into the rough like an old tennis-ball; he had recovered in gentle melancholy, his speech was full of sharp sad wit against the sex. He drank his wine in moderation, both pale hands (a single great opal on the left) about the dull-glowing goblet, talking with dim-faced friends, none of whom he trusted, about philosophy, half-lying and half-sitting in his throne-chair, loosely graceful. In him was fulfilled the true human aim of stoic awareness. Caught between the past and the future, he had no faith in either. He could not act, but he had no need to act: no violent assumption of commitment could ever come to disturb his sad calm. He read Montaigne after feeding his peafowls; he read Seneca in his bedchamber of an autumn night with the owls mousing; the intrigues of Machiavel or pseudo-Machiavel belonged to a world transmuted by art to a pearled emblem of all he rejected. This was a son who himself would be no father. But what of the name and its transmission to the far future?

  He then saw that he was willing into this image his own desire for a sort of sterility. The son was the father. What, in a sense, he had also been willing was that son-father’s annihilation. This death was something that he, not fever, was encompassing. As for the perpetuation of a name, it seemed to lie elsewhere. Nor was it really the name that was important; it was the blood, it was the spirit. But he did not yet fully understand. By Maidenhead it burst out of him, the fabulous agonised cry of all bereaved fathers. But he could not pray that his son be spared; he could only pray that whatever hellfire, awarded by an unjust God, awaited that boy after death, he himself should embrace it on his son’s behalf. If he could not die for his son, let him at least be doubly damned for him. He rode on hopelessly. At Oxford he went down for two days with a fever of his own. The hostess of the Crown in the Cornmarket nursed him well. By the time he reached Stratford the other fever had been resolved.