Merivel: A Man of His Time

by Rose Tremain

  ‘But who will write these “new Enquiries”?’ said Louise. ‘For do we not all secretly agree with Descartes, even if we do not like to use the word automata, so that we can trample scorpions to death, and slaughter sheep, and feel no blame?’

  At this mention of Sheep and Blame, Clarendon came swiftly into my mind – Clarendon as dead meat. I thought of Patchett and his friends carving him up and boiling his bones and gobbling him down.

  ‘I give you scorpions and sheep,’ I said, ‘but I do not give you Bears. You were with me when we first saw him in his cage, Louise. Will you tell me that the piteous looks he gave us were not speaking to us for his salvation?’

  ‘Yet he could not speak, Merivel.’

  ‘He spoke to me.’

  ‘In a language I could not hear?’

  ‘In no language. He spoke to me soul-to-soul.’

  The Baron nodded his pink-and-white head vigorously at this and began writing in the little Book he kept at his elbow through the meal.

  ‘Soul-to-soul,’ he said. ‘This is well put, Sir Robert. I sometimes think this is how Constanza speaks to me.’

  Constanza was Guy de Saint Maurice’s dog, a grey Lurcher puppy, with long, soft limbs that reminded me of willow branches furred with lichen. This dog had lain quietly at our feet during the supper, but now, hearing her name, her trembling nose appeared from beneath the tablecloth. The Baron stroked her head.

  ‘Yes, Constanza,’ he said, ‘and what do I ever refuse you? You plead so eloquently for walks and attention that I almost always consent, even when I do not really want to go for a walk. You speak to me.’

  ‘Montaigne said something very similar about one of his dogs, Baron. He said he was not afraid to admit that his Nature was so “childish” that he could not refuse the play this dog offered him, even though it might interrupt his work.’

  ‘Ah! Well, I am one with him. And always, as no doubt he found, I am gladdened by the walk with Constanza. My head clears. My whole conception of the world alters in its favour.’

  Louise smiled tenderly at her father. She said: ‘Papa’s conception of the world is already admirably favourable, n’est-ce pas, Papa? Tell Sir Robert why you keep a Notebook always at your side.’

  The Baron laughed. He picked up his book and waved it about. ‘I am afraid to miss wonders, that is all! At my age memory is weak, but all around me the world grows more and more interesting. So I note everything down.’

  ‘Papa keeps a pen and an Inkhorn in the head of his cane, so that he has the means to write at all times.’

  ‘A lot of what I put in is futile, Sir Robert. Absolutely futile. But there are wonders, too. That is the point. Among all the dross are always the shining bits of gold.’

  I expressed my admiration for this habit of Notation. And then, because my heart felt at peace (and because I had drunk several glasses of the Baron’s excellent wine) I admitted to Louise and her Father what I had never admitted to anybody except Will Gates – that, long ago, I had attempted to write the story of my life.

  ‘Oh, tell us more, Sir Robert!’ said the Baron. ‘Was it not arduous to set down?’

  ‘No,’ said I, ‘for it amused me to try – as Montaigne says we must – to explore my own Nature. Louise knows that I am a man of impulsive appetites and haunted by the terrifying prospect that life will pay me no attention. But I am also very melancholy and prone to self-indulgent weeping – particularly at my own mistakes. And so it amused me to see how these differing sides of myself formed themselves into a Story.’

  ‘I like this excellently,’ said the Baron. ‘And where is that Story now? I mean, where is the Book?’

  I told them that the Book had lain under my mattress for sixteen years, gathering the excreta of bedbugs as it lay, ‘and who am I to say whether even these minute creatures did not have souls?’

  ‘Indeed! But might you not ask that it be dug out from the mattress and then you could send for it, and Louise and I could sweep away the dust of the bedbugs and read it?’

  ‘Well,’ said I, ‘I think it is locked in the drawer of an Escritoire now, and indeed my servant, Will, could send it. But what it charts are all the follies of those times, all my venal habits and my neglect. The picture you would take of me from it would not endear me to you.’

  ‘You might be mistaken about that,’ said the Baron. ‘What I have always prized in men is Honesty, above all else and certainly above small human failings. I assume your Book is honest, or else there would be no point to its existence.’

  Silence fell in the grand room. Louise and the Baron stared at me, waiting for my reply. At last I said: ‘When I wrote it, I believed it to be honest. But now I see that it is full of lies and self-delusions.’

  The room I was given in the Château looked out over the forested gardens to the Lake.

  A high wind got up and I lay in a high bed listening to the sighing of the Firs. And it seemed to me that I was standing on some kind of Pinnacle of my life, from which place I could see both before and behind.

  I slept in perfect peace and had a dream of Pearce. He stood before me, while I, with admirable flourish and attaque, dissected a corpse laid out on a table in the old Anatomy Theatre at Caius College, Cambridge. The body resembled me, but was not me – only somebody I might conceivably have been, or had endeavoured to be.

  As my Demonstration progressed, Pearce took many Notes. He did not once – as was his usual way – question my findings or interrupt me, and when I ceased my Performance, he came to me, put his arm round my shoulder and said: ‘You told me much, Merivel. And you strayed very little into Error. It was altogether admirable. Let us drink to your new competence.’

  Whereon Pearce produced a flask of Sack, and we passed it from hand to hand and slaked a thirst, which was not of the body but of our minds, yearning for Knowledge and for our old friendship. And this was as sweet a dream of Pearce as I had had in many years.

  When I woke in the night, it was to remember that all my Possessions were gone.

  Even now I was encased – as in a linen cocoon – in an enormous Nightshirt that belonged to the Giraffe and on the morrow it would be his stockings that I would have to put on.

  And this wearing of his clothes vexed me not a little, for it reminded me that he, Colonel Jacques-Adolphe de Flamanville of His Majesty’s Swiss Guards, was still and always the husband of the woman I had come here to know and love, and that I was a poor Sir Nobody. I remembered that de Flamanville might arrive any moment to send me packing on a mule.

  But then I began to consider what weapons I had with which to protect myself, and I knew that, already, I had one. And this was the great courtesy shown to me by the Baron de Saint Maurice. This elderly man, with his Notebook and his Inkhorn and his great good humour and wisdom, would, I decided, find some means to keep me from harm.

  On the morrow he had promised to show me his Library, wherein, he said, he had books on every subject – from Botany to Demonology, from Gymnastics to Pharmacology, from the Tides of the Oceans to the Tanning of Leather, from the Art of Cathay to the Study of Superstition in the world, from Marriage to Mythology, from Zephyrs to Zoology …

  And so I imagined all this knowledge, which was now freely available to me, as a shield around me, even as an invisible Curtilage of Enlightenment, keeping me at a little distance from all those who would make an enemy of me and seek to end my life.

  25

  WHAT BLESSED MY first days at the Château was a sweet quietness in the weather.

  After breakfast on my first morning, while Louise went to her Laboratory, the Baron led me on a tour of his Estates and I saw his acres of vines, brimming with near ripeness in the soft sun. He had wide plantations of Poplars, for the marketing of their timber and, in the bright, steep grass meadows, cows led a slow, well-nourished life.

  His orchards were magnificent with ripe plums, apples and pears. There did not seem to be any land that had not been put to bounteous use. Of fallow or wild spaces the
re were none. And the Formal Gardens had been planted with a great quantity of herbs and medicinal plants, which had led Louise to her experiments on salves and potions. The controlling mind that I saw at work here was orderly and averse to waste.

  To this same mind I said: ‘This makes me see that, at Bidnold, I have not been as ingenious in my use of land as I should have been. Much of it is mere Parkland, supporting nothing except my little herd of Red Deer.’

  ‘Well,’ said the Baron, ‘Switzerland is a small country, half of it pushing up towards the sky in peaks and crags. We must be resourceful here or die.’

  After which remark he was silent for a space, then he turned to me and said: ‘Sir Robert, we must now enter upon a delicate conversation.’

  ‘Ah,’ said I. ‘Well in matters of delicacy I prefer to be addressed as Merivel and not “Sir Robert”.’

  ‘Merivel? Well, yes, certainly, if you wish it. Names are important. So now I must tell you, Merivel, that my daughter endures that most fearful thing, an unhappy marriage …’

  ‘I know something of this …’

  ‘I blame myself for having agreed to it, yet de Flamanville courted her with great courtesy and discretion, and we did not know then that he has never loved women. But it has been a true Torture, because he is a cruel man, and there seems to be no end to it – or, at least, no end with any Honour in it. So I have hoped for some time that Louise might discover love elsewhere. Your visit will make her happy, I am certain of it.’

  We were passing through an apple orchard and the Baron plucked a fine red Délice and gave it to me. I stared at it in my hand. Its perfection, shining in the sun’s even light, was so striking, it was as if Saint Maurice had given me a jewel.

  ‘I have been much alone in recent years,’ I said. ‘But when I met Louise, I felt life returning to me. She is exceptional among women. Let me assure you I have the greatest respect for her, Baron, most particularly for her gifts as a Botanist …’

  ‘Her gifts, yes. They are considerable. You shall shortly hear her compositions upon the Harpsichord, which are very fine.’

  ‘I shall be honoured to be among her audience.’

  ‘But – please forgive me if this does not regard me – I thought you were lovers? She told me you had become lovers.’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘She is forty-five, Sir Robert. And like mine, her nature is very passionate.’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘She should not grow old unloved.’

  ‘No, I do not intend—’

  ‘She told me you did not go to her last night.’

  ‘No, I did not.’

  ‘So I do not quite understand …’

  ‘Well, I was not sure how I should conduct myself in your house …’

  ‘I see. Let me ask you how you think your King Charles would have conducted himself?’

  I turned the Délice in my hand, feeling the cool of it, imagining its firm flesh. ‘He would not have hesitated,’ I said. ‘He would have made love to your daughter.’

  The Baron and I had walked a long way in the warm sunshine and were returning rather slowly along the drive, when we heard behind us the clip-clop of a horse.

  Into my mind immediately came a vision of Colonel de Flamanville, astride a formidable stallion, with his sword held in readiness to slay me with one stroke as a prelude to dragging Louise back to Paris or Versailles.

  Glancing round, however, I discovered the horse to be a mule – indeed, the very same mule that had thrown me off its back into the gravel, and on her back the goat boy who had loaned her to me.

  The mule was reined in and skittered to an inelegant stop. Then I saw that slung onto the creature’s rump was my lost Valise.

  ‘My word!’ said I, ‘but this is an Honest place, Baron.’

  ‘Well,’ said the Baron. ‘The air is clear here. Everything can be seen and nothing hid. And so we tend towards honesty. Is that very dull?’

  After the walk I went to my room, opened my Valise and took out the things I had brought with me, which were not many, but did include Pearce’s Nosebag with De brutorum loquela inside it, and now I was glad, given the supposed vastness of the Baron’s Library, that I would be seen to possess at least one book. I took De brutorum out of the Nosebag and laid it upon my Night Table.

  ‘Pearce,’ I said. ‘Do you see me? I think you would be proud of me now. I have come to a fine place of learning.’

  I had packed, too, the coat I had had made in Paris, complete with its cascade of Shoulder-Ribbons. And I decided, as I hung this up, that for Louise’s sake I must also attempt some learning in regard to my Appearance, striving always for elegance and decorum, so that I did not embarrass her in front of her father and his aristocratic Acquaintance.

  I was sitting on my bed, surrounded by pairs of underdrawers and a quantity of crumpled shirts, when Louise entered my room.

  I endeavoured to rise but she said: ‘No, no, Merivel, do not move.’

  She carried a glass on a pewter salver and set this down by me, saying: ‘I brought you a Cordial. Father says you are quite fatigued from the great tour he has taken you on. Why do you not make yourself more comfortable, then take a sip of this, which is made of Elderberry and Rose Hips, and will strengthen you in a very short time.’

  I did as she proposed and lay back on my pillows, with my lingerie heaped around me. And she came and sat near me and held the glass to my lips, very tenderly, as though I might have been a child.

  I drank the Cordial. Louise watched me with fascinated attention. I asked myself whether she had come to my room in the expectation that I would make love to her now, in the Interlude between my walk with the Baron and the midday dinner.

  I found her presence near me very sweet and comforting, but I realised once more that, since my contemptible behaviour in the Besançon coach, all sexual desire seemed to have left my body. I had often heard whispers at Court about certain fops who, having prodigiously used themselves in a thousand bedrooms, were now quite unable to perform coitus, unless it might be with the stimulation of obscene and unmentionable Orgies at work all around them. And I prayed that this would not be my case – that the Besançon whore had so slain me with illicit excitation that ordinary tender love was no longer possible for me.

  I looked at Louise, remembering our amours in the Jardin du Roi, hoping this might make me a little hard. But all that would come to mind was the extreme winter cold that had enveloped us and how this cold, on the bits of our flesh that were naked to the air, had nipped and stung, and I felt this cold again and shivered.

  ‘Louise …’ I began.

  But, as if anticipating the apology I was about to utter for being at the moment so unlike the lover she had known, she placed her fingers gently on my mouth and said: ‘Hush, Merivel. I think you should close your eyes. Try to sleep a little. I will arrange for food to be brought to you later on, for I know that when one has taken exercise one needs fortification.’

  I slept the day away and only awoke in late afternoon.

  On a table in my room a plate of breaded chicken and pickled cabbage had been placed, and I devoured these with unseemly haste. At least, thought I, hunger has returned to me. I am not dying, therefore! And after eating I went to my close-stool, and shat very copiously and felt much relieved by this, telling myself that I was now cleansed of my all my Foulness.

  I put on a clean shirt and went downstairs, but I could find neither the Baron nor Louise. Assuming them to be out on some further inspection of the vines and the orchards, both now coming to perfect, yet fleeting ripeness and asking to be gathered, I entered the Baron’s Library.

  Gazing at the great quantity of books (far outnumbering the volumes in my Library at Bidnold), smelling them, taking deep draughts of all that they contained, I felt a sudden Great Quiet come upon me. I sat down at the long oak table that ran the length of the room. I did not take any book to read, but only sat and breathed invisible words.

  And what came to my
mind was Margaret’s exhortation to begin upon what she called ‘some enterprise of Writing’, and I knew now that this was what I longed to do. Indeed, thought I to myself, this is perhaps why I have come here, not merely to be Louise’s lover, but to press my mind to some Proper Work, and in this will lie all my Consolation and some proper template for my Future.

  Louise found me, sitting very still, like some Actor in a Tableau, at the Library table. The light at the window was golden, coming towards sunset.

  She led me outside, to a charming terrace, where the Baron was taking his ease with a glass of wine, with Constanza at his feet.

  A Footman poured wine for us. Just beyond the terrace was a coppice of Hazelnut, where a pair of sparrows were fussing and chirruping, and the sound of these birds in the soft evening sunshine was extraordinarily sweet, as though, for as long as this song lasted, nothing could be amiss in our world.

  ‘So, what did you choose to read in the Library?’ asked the Baron. ‘Perhaps your tour took you no further than the A Cataloguing: Aesop’s Fables? Aristotle’s Dialectica? Aubrey’s Lives?’

  ‘No,’ said I, ‘no further than A. Or not even as far. Yet I felt the power of the books very forcibly. That seemed to be enough …’

  ‘Yes? But you know you may treat the Library as though it were your own. Please borrow anything you wish from it.’

  ‘Thank you, Baron.’

  ‘Winter is not very far away. There will be great snows here at the Château. If we all have our Work, we shall endure them with fortitude, n’est-ce pas, Louise?’

  ‘Yes. And I meant to tell you, Father, that I am working on a Preparation to keep the flies from pestering you.’

  The Baron put his hand on his bald dome, above the ragged daisy petals of his white hair. ‘Scourge of my existence, flies. For I sweat in my head and down they come to sup on this moisture.’

  ‘I could lend you a wig, Sir …’ said I.