by Forrest Leo
I resolve to write a poem. I have found it impossible for six months, but I am not yet so broken that I shall go down without a fight. I search for a subject and recall my exchange with the priest. If ever there were matter suited to a poem, it is that. I have a queer fondness for tales of morality, and the public always embraces narratives with theological undertones. I begin.
‘Without the Devil, we’d both be out of a job,’ I say to myself. (I frequently compose aloud.) I attempt to render it into blank verse, alternating unstressed and stressed syllables into a pleasing configuration.
I could here bore you with a lengthy digression on iambic pentameter, but I will not. I trust you are familiar with it, and if not you need only consider the name. It is a poetic metre which consists of five iambs. An iamb is a pair of syllables, the first of which is unstressed and the second of which is stressed. It is the poetic metre which most closely replicates the rhythms of English speech, and has been the mode of poetic expression favoured by English poets for half a millennium. It is a beautiful thing, and one upon which I could discourse at great length, but I will not. I will only mention that it stirs within me great feeling. It provides structure and form for the greatest thoughts ever expressed in our language, and without it ours should be a meagre sort of poetry. There are of course some persons who choose not to utilise it—even I have at times succumbed to the enticements of other metres—but by and large if you say to yourself, ‘I am going to write a poem which will endure for a thousand years,’ you do not then sit down and attempt to write it in anything other than iambic pentameter.* Even Pendergast is not such a fool as to forsake it. It is a very beautiful thing.
And so I begin to compose. I speak in a singsong manner, hitting the stresses of the lines with exaggerated emphasis. ‘With-OUT the DEV-il WE’D both— Damn it.’ You observe that I am off the metre. Blank verse (which is of course unrhymed iambic pentameter) at its finest fits its words like a glove. Take, for instance, ‘To FOL-low KNOWL-edge LIKE a SINK-ing STAR / Be-YOND the UT-most BOUND of HU-man THOUGHT.’ It seems effortless. It becomes effortless—when I am consistently poetical for a stretch, I find that I begin to think in iambic pentameter. (i FIND that I be-GIN to THINK . . .) Alas, I have not been poetical / For such a long long while that I begin / To wonder if I ever shall again. I take a breath and reconfigure some words. ‘We’d BOTH be OUT of A . . . job.’ It’s awful. Drivel. Worse than drivel. I call for Simmons, who enters with impossible promptitude—was he listening at the door? I sometimes think he must be for the speed of his entrances, but I know that eavesdropping is not in his nature.
He is wearing a turban and a mask. He is doubtless required by my wife to wear them at her absurd party. I am gratified to note that his butler’s weeds are otherwise unaltered.
‘Simmons,’ I ask, ‘how many syllables in “Devil”?’
‘I believe there are two, sir,’ says he, confirming my worst fears.
‘Can there be just one?’ For some unnameable reason I am feeling desperate about it. It is as though if ‘Devil’ could be considered a single syllable, my poem could move forward and then so too could my life.
Simmons thinks for a moment, and tries pronouncing it several different ways. ‘Dev-ill. Devl. Dev-il-ish. Dev-lish. Dev-il-ry. Dev-lry. Devl.’ He sighs, and at length says, ‘I’m not sure, sir.’
An idea occurs to me. It is an excellent one. I am all at once prodigiously excited. ‘If I write D-E-V apostrophe L, will people understand what I mean?’
He moves his head from side to side in equivocation. ‘What’s the context, sir?’
I answer him in iambs: ‘With-OUT the DEV’L we’d BOTH be OUT of-a JOB.’ I elide ‘of’ and ‘a’ to fit the verse, but I believe it sounds quite well.
‘I don’t know that it scans, sir.’
‘No, no, it does! That’s why I made it one syllable.’
Simmons frowns, and says, ‘But you just said “Devil.”’
‘No,’ say I, a little annoyed, ‘I said “Dev’l.”’
‘Forgive me, sir, I heard “Devil.”’
‘Well damn it, it doesn’t matter what you heard: it’ll be written “Dev’l.”’
‘I thought you were going to make it one syllable.’
‘THAT WAS ONE SYLLABLE.’
‘Oh,’ he says dubiously, ‘I see.’
It isn’t much of a concession, but I don’t need much of one right now. Even a little one will do. I take it as tacit encouragement and feel a surge of elation. I haven’t been excited about a project in months, and I plunge forward in explanation.
‘I’ve decided to write a defence of the Devil,’ I tell him. ‘It’s a dialogue. A man is walking down a road and sees a priest—’
‘Who has tripped over a cobblestone and is cursing the Devil and the man defends the Devil?’
I hate when Simmons finishes my sentences. It makes me feel unoriginal. But I acknowledge that, yes, such is in fact what I was going to say. I ask him what he thinks.
He surprises me by replying, ‘I think it’s very good, sir,’ and then surprises me not at all by going on: ‘I’ve heard that when one runs out of inspiration, it can be very helpful to whore out one’s own experiences.’
When my parents died, which happened in a manner at once absurd and poetic, Simmons took over the rearing of Lizzie and me. It was not strictly speaking usual, but then nothing in our family has ever been so. We are eccentrics. Simmons is, you will have already apprehended, not a butler in the usual sense. He frequently does unbutlerly tasks, but when I point it out to him he simply sniffs and says that he prefers to know the work is sound. I admire him greatly for it. (I am at heart a revolutionary.) I mention all this only to make clear that though I am furious with Simmons, the thought of dismissing him is quite inconceivable. I do however consider striking him—but refrain, as I have never in my life hit a man, and it seems a foolish thing to begin upon my septuagenarian butler.
Instead, I mumble, ‘I wish you hadn’t said that, Simmons.’
‘Yes, sir.’ There is no contrition in his voice. I believe he is cross with me, but I am not certain why. I am behaving in quite the manner I always do. His attitude, however, seems quite changed. In fact, as I reflect upon it, he has seemed rather off since my wedding. I wonder if perhaps he finds Vivien as upsetting as I do. It is not a thought which has occurred to me before. I realise for the first time that in a sense when I married her he did also—not of course in the physical sense, but in the sense that she is now a constant presence in his life and has complete authority to make his existence miserable—and he was not even consulted upon it.*
‘By the bye, sir,’ he says, ‘your wife is asking for you.’
That is how I know Simmons is displeased with me: he is acting as her messenger. I refuse to submit. ‘Tell her I’m working.’
‘Very good, sir.’
Simmons turns on his heel and begins to leave. I know that he is sulking and I feel slightly ashamed of myself. I do not like it when Simmons and I are at odds. It seems elitist and wrong. I search for something to say which will allow us to part on better terms.
‘Are there many people out there?’ It is not all that could be desired, but as an overture of peace it will serve.
‘There are, sir,’ he replies, and I can tell that he is not so angry at me as he may have been a moment ago. There is forgiveness in his voice and manner, even if no one but myself could discern it. I have that gift—faces and demeanours are to me an open book. I know of no man more adept at reading other people. ‘We’re nearly out of champagne,’ he adds.
I sigh. He is waiting for me to say something, and I know what it is. It is what he would call my duty. At length, I say as cheerfully as I am able, ‘I suppose I should go out and make sure no one’s stealing anything.’ It is the last thing in the world that I would like to do, but there comes a time in a man’s life when he mu
st stare a bullet in the eye, and if this is mine then I shall not shrink from it.
I expect Simmons to be mollified by my courage, but he is not. He says, ‘Do you have a mask, sir?’
I am taken aback. ‘Excuse me?’
‘No one is allowed at the party without a mask. It’s strictly enforced.’
‘It’s my own home,’ I cry with indignation. Does he want me to do my duty or not?
‘All the same, sir.’
He is being contrary on purpose, and it annoys me greatly. I have striven to make myself agreeable even in the depths of my foulest of moods, and all he can tell me is that I cannot leave my own study without a mask! ‘Lend me yours,’ I say coolly.
‘I’m afraid I can’t, sir. It would baffle the guests.’
‘Well damn it, then go and find me one, Simmons!’
‘Very good, sir,’ he says, and begins to leave.
I am determined to show him that I am not cowed by his belligerence, and so I continue composing immediately. I say, ‘With-OUT the DEV’L we’d BOTH—’ and then break off. I cannot maintain the act in the face of such wretched poetry. ‘It’s not any good, is it?’ I ask his back. There is a part of me which wonders if perhaps it is rather good, and I am simply unaccustomed to good poetry and can no longer recognise it. It is a small part of me, but it is there all the same.
‘Not very, sir,’ he says, sounding pleased. Then he opens the door and plunges out into the swirl of silk and satin and noise.
I sink my head down upon my desk. I reflect that if I had killed myself three hours ago, I should not have had to speak with Lizzie or fight with Simmons or confront my own inferior poetic efforts. If I could go back in time I would surely hurl myself into the Thames without consulting anyone, Froggy children be damned.*
There was a time, and it was not so long ago, when my poetry was respected very widely.* I commanded a large readership, and from book to book I did not let down the expectations of press or public. Admittedly, my work was not Keats. Nor, I suppose, was it Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Milton, Blake, or Shakespeare. And it was certainly not Tennyson. But it was not bad. I was young, agreeable, unpretentious, and wrote prettily and wittily, even if I had not I suppose altogether overmuch to say. I amused myself and I amused my readers, and what else can a man wish for? I do not care for poets who spin solemn stanzas of lost love and theology. Ours is not a solemn age, on the whole, and so it puzzles me that our poetry should by and large be characterised by its solemnity and lack of humour.
Why, given the choice of subjects and voices, would a man choose to write about, say, the moral virtues of chastity? Chastity is not interesting. Moral virtue is interesting sometimes, but only sometimes! It is only interesting when an author or poet notes that it is in general uninteresting, and then works actively to counteract that. For instance, when someone (and it has not yet been done, even by my lord Alfred)* decides to set out and write an epic about King Arthur—not about the exploits of the knights and damsels of his court, but about the man himself—they will have to grapple with what the literary world has been grappling with since Chrétien, which is that Arthur Pendragon himself is by nature boring because he is an exemplar of virtue; whereas Lancelot (or Gawain or Yvain or Tristan or Perceval or Gareth or really anyone else for that matter except perhaps Galahad) is by nature interesting because his is a tale of virtue gone awry. When a great writer tackles Arthur himself directly, something quite interesting may result, if he proves equal to the task—how is virtue made compelling?
Well, I do not know. I am not myself virtuous, so it does not trouble me. I once wanted to be, but that was long ago. I am now a cowardly poet hiding in his study, hoping vainly to escape the slings and arrows of a society party. (Pendergast is here. I can sense it.)
I imagine what will happen when Simmons returns with a mask for me. I believe it will go something like this. He will come into the study and hand it to me without saying a word, because he is a good butler and does not use words unless they are necessary. I will say, ‘Thank you, Simmons,’ though I will not in fact mean it because I do not want to leave this room.
But I will leave it, for though I rail against society I cannot entirely break free of it for the sake of those I hold dear. I will open my door, the only barrier between myself and the horrors of the modern world. I will be caught up in the current of sweaty bodies pretending to be having a better time than they are.
In the hallway I will run into Sir Francis Babington, who has never entirely forgiven me for not marrying his Agnes. He will be wearing a costume of harlequin motley, holding a flute of champagne, and cackling like the Dev’l. He will say, ‘Decided to honour us with your presence, eh Savage?’ and I will know it is him because no one else I know is quite so fat nor half as abrasive.
‘Sir Francis!’ I will exclaim with insincere delight. ‘How did you recognize me beneath my mask?’
‘A mask cannot mask your air of smugness, Savage,’ he will say, and he will dart off after a sylph who is likely Mrs Frazer, though because of her costume (an Egyptian getup which hides her face and not much else) I will not be able to tell for certain.
(I was mistaken before—a self-satisfied chuckle outside my door reminds me that Pendergast is more abrasive than Sir Francis, but only just.)
I will have to avoid Pendergast—who I suppose is here only to spite me, for he does not frequent parties. He spends most evenings following the press. He has an unfortunate predilection toward Contemporary Matters, which makes his poetry even worse than it would be otherwise. I knew a man who once joked that a fellow could dispense with ever reading Pendergast if he could afford the morning paper. I am not similarly enticed by reality.
I may encounter Vivien. She will be very beautiful, and very cold. ‘Hello,’ I might say.
‘Hello, Mr Savage,’ she might reply.
‘Quite the party,’ I might say.
‘I looked for you earlier,’ she might say.
‘I was in my study,’ I would reply. ‘Writing.’
‘Ah,’ she’d say to that in a disapproving way. She would almost say something more—perhaps even take a breath to do so. But then she would let it out. She does this often, and I do not know why or about what she is thinking. That done, she would tug at a sequin on her gown (she will be dressed as something fantastical and romantic, I imagine—a princess or something similar) and look vacant. She will have nothing more to say, for she neither appreciates nor understands poetry. We never do have much to say to one another. I will fumble for words and try to think of some complimentary remark about the party, though I have forgotten why she threw it in the first place. I will almost come up with something, but just then she will exclaim, ‘Mr Murray!’ or ‘Lord Eisley!’ or ‘Is that you, Algie dear?’ and she’ll dash off and I will feel wretched.
I will wander about like Dante, but without a guide. I will bump everywhere into lost souls who will clutch at me and try to make me join their ranks. I will deflect conversational attempts as though they are fiery snares which tug at my ankles. I will avoid Pendergast’s nose. Eventually, if I am lucky, I will find Lizzie.
‘Lizzie!’ I will cry, and we will shoulder through the press of bodies and grasp each other by the hands and find a secure corner and retreat to it. She will raise her mask, and wear beneath it a look of horror. I will say, ‘Do you still imagine society parties to be fun?’ And she will apologise with her eyes and say, ‘Nellie, they are hideous! How could I ever have thought otherwise? And how have you managed to stay sane with these travails? You say something of this magnitude happens once every week or so? How dreadful! How frightful! I was quite wrong to doubt you when you said that you were cast down by fate.’
And despite the previous harsh words between us I will accept her contrition readily, because she has now stared the beast in the eye and knows what it is I am burdened with.
We will
begin plotting our escape. Possibly we might make it to a window, which we could hurl ourselves through, landing bloodied and battered but free upon the cobblestones outside. Or we could maybe achieve the roof, and watch the pale disk of the moon, gently obscured by the fog, rising behind the grey dome of St Paul’s. But as we begin to sneak from the room, a man in a mask will grab Lizzie by the waist and whisk her off to dance, and I will be alone again.
I will blunder about some more, adrift amidst the sea of false words and insincerity. It will be awful, and there will be no escape, and I will feel again the crushing sense of doom I have felt since my marriage.
I do not know how it is that I wooed Vivien with so few words passing between us, but I must have done—for it was not until after our wedding that I tried talking to her and realised the mistake I had made. We had, it turned out, nothing to talk about.
I ought to have been tipped off on the day that I proposed to her. It was raining. We were taking a turn about the Park. (I had ulterior motives.) I pretended to trip, and meant to land upon one knee and propose to her in a flash of planned spontaneity. But I was forestalled—Vivien, displaying unexpected reflexes, caught my arm. We stood for a moment, pressed together, not speaking. There was something in her eyes which I could not interpret. I deliberated. I resolved to take the bull by the horns: I knelt down. I tried to speak, but my mouth had suddenly gone dry. I swallowed, but choked upon my own saliva and coughed. I tried again to speak.
‘Vivien,’ I began, but dissolved into a fit of coughing. She looked down at me, saying nothing. ‘Vivien,’ I said again, ‘Vivien, I am—’
On second thought, I am not going to tell you what I was. I had intended to record what I said, but I will not. It is private. Suffice it to say that I went on at some length, chronicling my love for her in the most poetical terms you can imagine. I have never been more poetical than I was in that moment. I wish I could remember my exact words, for they would be canonised as classic words of love. But—and looking back, I cannot believe such a thing happened and did not serve to warn me of the horrors to come—Vivien interrupted me. She looked down at me and laughed—actually laughed at me!—and pulled me to my feet, and said only, ‘Peace! I will stop your mouth.’ Then she kissed me.