According to Queeney

by Beryl Bainbridge

  ‘But I saw the child,’ protested Henry. ‘I saw the auburn curls above its rags.’

  ‘He snipped off her curls before they buried her,’ said Johnson, ‘and stuck them into a turnip head.’

  Mrs Thrale felt a warm indignation. Though the original incident was dreadful, she could scarcely be expected to feel pity for a madman who dropped sacks of mud from windows and caused bystanders to grow faint.

  ‘The money,’ she said, ‘I had thought it was to pay for a decent burial, and now I suppose it will be spent on drink.’

  ‘Would that drink could drown such misery,’ Johnson retorted. ‘Besides, I will repay every penny,’ which put Mrs Thrale in the wrong and made her appear uncharitable.

  Henry Thrale held tight to Queeney’s hand. His grip was fierce, but she endured it; she sensed Papa wanted to keep her safe.

  To Miss Laetitia Hawkins,

  2 Sion Row,

  Twickenham

  March 8th, 1809

  Dear Miss Hawkins,

  You will forgive my tardiness in replying to your numerous letters, but I have been staying in Dumbartonshire with my husband Admiral Keith and have only recently returned. I am somewhat surprised that you are still engaged on your reminiscences of Dr Johnson and friends. Such drawn-out labour must be wearisome indeed.

  I am afraid I can give no very satisfactory estimation of the character of Mr Langton, for he was so very tall and I so short that we did not often look one another ‘in the eye’. That he and Mr Topham Beauclerk were both good friends of the Doctor I know to be true, though there was one occasion – I think at Bolt Court – when Mr Langton, bemoaning the serious illness of his mother, was savagely rebuked by Dr Johnson for not going at once to wait on her. My mother considered it hypocritical of him to speak so harshly as he himself did not see his mother for nigh on twenty years, not even when Miss Porter wrote to say that she was dying. Nor did he go to her funeral.

  Mr Beauclerk was interested in the Sciences, as was Dr Johnson; the latter tried to persuade my father to set up a laboratory for chemical experiments, but, following a near explosion in the school-room at Streatham Park, the idea was abandoned.

  Dr Johnson was a prodigious swimmer. I often bathed with him in the sea at Brighton. Indeed, he was so strong in the action and such was the quantity of water he disturbed, that it was advisable to keep one’s distance for fear of being submerged.

  Mr Perkins, the chief clerk, was killed at Brighton races by Lord Bolingbroke’s horse, Highflyer. Agitated by some insect at the moment Perkins was passing, the animal lashed out and kicked the unfortunate clerk in the head. His widow, whom I remember for her habit of humming under her breath, lived at one time near my mother, though I do not know if she and the ‘bee’ kept up their acquaintance.

  I do not care to comment on my mother’s relationship with Dr Johnson; sufficient to say she needed an audience and he a home.

  As to my own relationship with him, I cannot in all honesty say that I loved him – he was too large, too variable in mood, too insistent on the attention of my mother. His was a melancholy disposition, an affliction shared by his younger brother, who, it is believed, perished by his own hand. Still, I was fond sometimes, for he exhibited a remarkable understanding of children and their needs, a quality singularly lacking in my mother.

  His preoccupation with orange peel was due to persistent indigestion, a malady brought on by his irregular eating habits; he either fasted or gorged himself. I believe he ground the peel and dissolved it in a spoonful of hot port wine. Though he drank heavily in his younger days he was abstemious after, or nearly so.

  I remain,

  Sincerely yours,

  H. M. Keith

  I remember little of my visit to Paris in ’75, save for suffering the unwelcome attentions of a dancing master who treated me with untoward familiarity, an outrage my mother refused to acknowledge. That, and the amount of letters Dr Johnson wrote – two to Mrs Desmoulins and one each to Mr Boswell, Dr Levet and Francis Barber. I recollect the letters because he told me that Mr Boswell was languishing under the onset of melancholy, and that before leaving England Mrs Williams had fallen out with Mrs Desmoulins, and Dr Levet with both of them – on account of the last disturbing the household following an encounter with a pothole. ‘I must endeavour’, Dr Johnson said, ‘to heal differences and allay fear.’

  I remarked that to quarrel was a ‘bad thing’, to which, rocking back and forth at the table, he replied, ‘Not so, Miss, for the less we quarrel the more we hate.’

  As a child I scarcely understood the perception of this observation, but in adult years have found it to be true.

  No, I do not remember your presence at Streatham Park that Christmas, and for good reason – my mother’s tenth offspring, named after an earlier infant, having died some two weeks before the festivities.

  1776–7

  DISASTER n.f. (diſaſtre, French)

  1 Misfortune; grief, miſhap; miſery; calamity

  This day black omens threat the brighteſtfair

  That e’er deſerved a watchful ſpirit’s care,

  Some dire diſaſter, or by force or flight;

  But what, or where, the fates have wrapt in night.

  Pope

  On March 20th – it was a Wednesday – Mrs Thrale went to fetch her daughter Susannah from Mrs Cumyns’s boarding school in Kensington. She took Queeney with her and on the way they quarrelled; it was a trivial matter of the child’s amber necklace hanging in a lopsided manner about her neck. Mrs Thrale reached forward to pull it straight, whereupon Queeney impudently struck her hand away.

  On the return journey, in spite of young Susan whining a good deal and Queeney remaining sullen, Mrs Thrale managed to control her temper. Heart quickening in anticipation, she thought of dear Count Manucci, who had travelled to England earlier in the week and was expected at Southwark in the morning.

  Arriving at the Brewery, she had scarcely stepped down from the carriage before Harry ran up and said he had seen an advertisement for Arthur Murphy’s play, The Way to Keep Him, and that he must be taken to see it that very night. On being told he could not go, he seized her dress and twirled her round with such vigour that she all but lost her balance. Pestered thus, she gave in, and made arrangements for one of the clerks to accompany him to Drury Lane that evening.

  Henry took issue with her for having agreed to such an outing. Guests were expected for dinner and he was anxious to show off his son. Mrs Thrale would have answered in kind but for further thoughts of the Count.

  The dinner party consisted of Sir John Hawkins and his daughter Laetitia, Baretti, Lady Lade, sister to Henry, and Perkins and his wife. At first the talk was exclusively concerned with the visit the Thrales intended to make to Italy later in the year. The excursion to France having proved such a success, and Johnson more than willing to be included, Henry Thrale was content to leave all the arrangements for such a trip in the hands of Baretti. The Italian, puffed up with excitement at the prospect of showing his country to his friends, monopolised the conversation to such an extent that Mrs Thrale grew weary. Finding his tone proprietary and overbearing, she said loudly, ‘We have had enough of Italy, and of Italian opinions.’

  The table fell silent, until, eyeing a dish in the middle of the table with a seated cherub on the lid, Mrs Perkins remarked that the china embellishment must surely be cast in the image of Susannah. ‘Such a little angel,’ she cooed, looking from the dish to the child. A general murmur of agreement arose, to which Mrs Thrale responded as a mother should. First she smiled in appreciation, then she jumped up and kissed the little angel on both cheeks, a showy demonstration which was copied by each of the guests in turn. Susannah, flustered, covered her face with her hands.

  Seated again and still smiling, Mrs Thrale suddenly stiffened in her chair. Without warning, a picture of the statue in the church at Lille, of the angel bearing a boy in its arms, swam before her eyes. She immediately left the table and went to enq
uire if Harry had yet come home. Returning, she made the excuse that she thought she had heard the cries of an infant.

  ‘There are no infants in the house,’ Queeney said. ‘They are all dead.’

  ‘A mother’s ears’, retorted Mrs Thrale, ‘are so governed by the heart that echoes are ever present.’

  At this Baretti gave a snort of derision, so loud and unrestrained that Mrs Perkins began to hum, a habit she resorted to when in the grip of embarrassment.

  Within half an hour Mrs Thrale again quit the table; this time Henry greeted her return with a frown. It was a mild enough rebuke, yet she burst into tears. Comforted by Lady Lade, she confided that she was sure something monstrous had befallen Harry.

  ‘The clerk has abandoned him,’ she wailed. ‘At this moment he is wandering about Covent Garden … prey to every ruffian in sight.’

  In vain did Mr Perkins seek to reassure her that the clerk in question was a responsible fellow, that he would entrust his own children to his care without a qualm. Mrs Thrale would have none of it. Harry was now being carried off into some dark alleyway to be beaten and stripped of his clothing. The servant having recently served the damson pudding, she looked down at the crimson mess on her plate and shrieked so loudly that Queeney spilt her lemonade on to Laetitia Hawkins’s lap, and now she too began to cry.

  At midnight Harry came home, sound of limb and half mad with delight at the events of the evening. Mrs Barraclough had performed well, if inaudibly, until, the occupants of the pit creating a rumpus, she had opened her mouth wide and bellowed like a bull. The second act had been interrupted by a fight breaking out between two players in minor roles. The catcalls growing in volume, Arthur Murphy had clambered on to the stage and ordered the curtains to be lowered, whereupon both actors had set about him with their fists. Little had been seen of the resulting disturbance save for a savage billowing of the cloths accompanied by the sound of muffled shouts and curses.

  According to Harry, this had greatly added to the enjoyment of the evening, though Mr Crick, the clerk, had been all for leaving at once. Mr Crick had said he would never again take on the task of escorting him anywhere, let alone Drury Lane, but when Mr Murphy came up and expressed himself delighted to make his acquaintance, he turned pink and lost his bluster. Mr Murphy had a cut lip and the beginnings of a purple shadow under his left eye.

  This reminded Sir John of how the actor Charles Macklin had murdered Thomas Hallam in the Green Room of Drury Lane. ‘It was over a wig’, he said, ‘borrowed without permission. When Macklin demanded an explanation Hallam called him a clodhopper and a buffoon and threw the wig in his face. Enraged, Macklin lunged at him with his stick and pierced him through the eye. He lived but three hours.’

  Not to be outdone, Thrale recalled that Quin had killed no less than two of his fellow thespians, though not at the same time – one in a duel at Hampstead and a second by bribing a fly-man to drop a weight on his adversary in the middle of Coriolanus.

  ‘Peckham,’ corrected Mr Perkins. ‘The duel took place in the meadows of Peckham.’

  ‘Poor Quin,’ said Mrs Thrale. ‘He lost his teeth while denouncing Desdemona.’

  ‘Poor fly-man,’ argued Perkins, ‘for it was he, I recall, who went to the scaffold. Neither Quin nor Macklin suffered punishment.’

  ‘In mitigation,’ Sir John said, ‘it has to be taken into account that all actors are volatile. It is a disposition natural to the profession.’

  The resulting discussion raged for some time. Mrs Thrale drank freely and went so far as to apologise to Baretti for having been short with him earlier. Now that Harry was safe most things could be forgiven.

  The next morning Queeney woke with a pain in her head. She kept it from her mother lest she was left at home when the others went into the City to visit the Tower. Mrs Thrale remarked on her flushed cheeks at breakfast, but was too agitated at the arrival of Count Manucci to pay exact attention. She was wearing a gown made from material bought in Paris; whenever the Count looked at her she laughed, high and shrill, like Susannah did when tickled.

  While Thrale and Baretti were showing the visitor the complexities of the Brewhouse, Harry ran in with the news that one of the ships in the river was on fire. It had been bound for Boston with a cargo of Papa’s beer. Mr Baretti hastened off to see for himself and returned elated. The flames had not yet been doused, he said, and there was a pall of smoke billowing across the gardens. Just then the chief clerk came up and assured Thrale that matters were under control. ‘You can see our porter is good, Mr Perkins,’ shouted Harry, ‘for it burns special well.’

  By the time they left Southwark for London Queeney felt herself better, if drowsy. Sometimes, when spoken to, the words seemed to come from a distance, as though there was cloth in her ears. All the same, she watched her mother closely, observing in her movements a giddy extravagance of gesture and in her voice an unnatural note of deference. She did not doubt this play-acting was for the benefit of Count Manucci, who, equally false, hovered about her like a fly above a jampot.

  As they passed through the western gate of the Tower, Harry began to recite passages of history he had learnt by heart. ‘The White Tower’, he babbled, ‘was built by William the Conqueror … and then Henry II turned it into a fortress.’

  ‘Henry III,’ interrupted Queeney, at which her mother tapped her hard on the shoulder.

  Undeterred, Harry told of kings and queens being imprisoned in the dungeons and of how the young sons of Edward V had been murdered while they slept. ‘They were but a year or two older than myself,’ he said cheerfully.

  ‘They never put royalty in the dungeons,’ contradicted Queeney, stepping out of reach of her mother, ‘and the princes were the sons of Edward IV.’

  Descending the steps to the Menagerie, Count Manucci went ahead of Mrs Thrale and led her by the hand, at which she oohed and aahed in an absurd manner, as though adrift on a mountainside and in mortal danger of slipping. When she reached the bottom she thanked him with such simpering regard that Queeney felt quite queasy; her head began to throb again. She thought of Mr Johnson’s dictum that it was advisable to acknowledge at an early age that life was a masquerade, and that to mistake an impression for reality was to court madness. It did not help much, and some minutes later it appeared to her that the ground beneath her feet was not fixed.

  She remembered little of what she saw that afternoon, save for the lions padding back and forth and the flame of the lanthorn flickering in the opaque eyes of the brown bear sat in a pool of its own piss. That, and the blackened appearance of Harry as he whooped up and down before a cage of wolves, face, hands, white stockings, blue coat smeared with gunpowder.

  Something miraculous happened as the carriage crossed Blackfriars Bridge. She was peering out at the Thames when suddenly the smoke-laden clouds shifted, and for an instant the rays of the sun shimmered in a glittering stairway from water to sky. She had only to put one foot on to the lowest step—

  Mrs Thrale screamed when the door opened and Queeney lurched forward. Had Manucci not interposed his body between the child and the drop, the outcome would have been tragic indeed. The door secured and Queeney restrained in her mother’s arms, the carriage rolled on to Southwark, where, following the administration of an emetic, Mrs Thrale put the girl to bed and sent Old Nurse to fetch Mr Lawrence, the family doctor. He, God forgive him, never arrived.

  She spent that night in Queeney’s room, rising frequently to see whether the child still breathed. At four in the morning, the tears coursing down her cheeks, she knelt at the bedside and addressing God begged that her firstborn should not die in punishment for her own iniquities. ‘Take me,’ she cried. ‘Spare Queeney and take me.’

  Pacing beside the chamber window – a half-moon battled through tumbling cloud – she talked to the absent Johnson; he alone was capable of understanding her fears. She confessed she had not always treated her daughter in a fair and gentle manner, not least when dealing with the child’s stron
g affection for Henry, but this was on account of the adoration she had felt for her own papa, the dead John Salusbury. She had not wanted Queeney to suffer the same disappointment. To love a daddy to excess was to render inadequate him who must one day take a father’s place.

  At the fifth hour – Mrs Thrale counted the chimes of the clock sounding from the wall of the mill house – Queeney raised herself from the pillow and complained of hunger. On devouring a slice of cold mutton, she vomited and fell back insensible.

  Baretti had not accompanied the Thrales back to Southwark, being expected for supper that evening at the house of General Paoli. The next day he called on Sir Joshua Reynolds, and it was there, some time in the afternoon, that Manucci’s servant sought him out and requested that he return immediately to the Brewery.

  He was let into the house by a weeping maidservant and shown into the nursery, where he saw Thrale, hands in the pockets of his waistcoat, seated on a child’s chair, so stiffly erect and with such a ghastly smile on his face that all who looked upon him shrank back in horror. Close by stood a spotted rocking horse with a missing tail. Count Manucci and Old Nurse, both pale as ashes and panting for breath, were attending to Mrs Thrale, who, when she was not sinking to the floor in one swoon after another, threw herself about like a madwoman.

  Presently Thrale put his hand on the nose of the horse and began to rock it up and down. It made a creaking sound, like the squeal of a child at play.

  The news reached Johnson some three days later in Lichfield, when he and James Boswell were taking breakfast with Miss Porter. It being March, the monthly anniversary of Tetty’s death, he was already gloomy. When he had read the letter – it was from Perkins – he sat for some time in silence, crumbling his breakfast roll. At last, sighing heavily, he said, ‘One of the most dreadful things that has happened in my time,’ and called for pen and ink to compose a reply. He wept as he wrote.