by W. G. Sebald
The story of Charlotte Ives is only a minute fragment of the several thousand pages of the Vicomte de Chateaubriand's memoirs. It was in Rome in 1806 that he first felt the desire to search the depths of his soul. In 1811, Chateaubriand began this undertaking in earnest, and from that time onwards he devoted himself to his recollections whenever the circumstances of his at once glorious and painful life permitted. His personal feelings and thoughts unfolded against the background of the momentous upheavals of those years: the Revolution, the Reign of Terror, his own exile, the rise and fall of Napoleon, the Restoration and the July Monarchy all were part of this interminable play performed upon the world's stage, a play which took its toll on the privileged observer no less than on the nameless masses. The scene was constantly changing. We see the coast of Virginia from on board a ship, visit the naval arsenal in greenwich, marvel at his description of the great fire of Moscow, stroll through the parks of Bohemian spas and witness the bombardment of Thionville. Burning torches illuminate the city battlements, which are swarming with thousands of soldiers; the fiery trajectories of cannonballs criss-cross the dark air; and before each report from the guns, a dazzling glare lights up the towering clouds in the sky right up to the blue zenith. At times the noise of the battle dies down for a few seconds, and then one can hear the beating of drums, brass fanfares, and orders bellowed out by voices strained to breaking point. Sentinelles, prenez garde à vous! Within the overall context of the task of remembering, such colourful accounts of military spectacles and large-scale operations form what might be called the highlights of history which staggers blindly from one disaster to the next. The chronicler, who was present at these events and is once more recalling what he witnessed, inscribes his experiences, in an act of self-mutilation, onto his own body. In the writing, he becomes the martyred paradigm of the fate Providence has in store for us, and, though still alive, is already in the tomb that his memoirs represent. From the very outset, recapitulating the past can have only one end, the hour of deliverance, which in the case of Chateaubriand came on the 4th of June 1848, the day on which death took the pen from his hand in a rez-de-chaussée in the Rue du Bac. Combourg, Rennes, Brest, St Mal, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Brussels, the island of Jersey, London, Beccles and Bungay, Milan, Verona, Venice, Rome, Naples, Vienna, Berlin, Potsdam, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Neuchâtel, Lausanne, Basle, Ulm, Waldmünchen, Teplitz, Karlsbad, Prague and Pilsen, Bamber, Würzburg and Kaiserslautern, and time and again, Versailles, Chantilly, Fontainebleau, Rambouillet, Vichy and Paris—these were just a few of the stations along a journey which had now reached its end. At the beginning was a childhood in Combourg, the account of which became indelibly imprinted on my mind the very first time I read it. François-René was the youngest of ten children, the first four of whom lived for no more than few months. The others were christened Jean-Baptiste, Marie-Anne, Bénigne, Julie and Lucile. All four girls were of a rare beauty, especially Julie and Lucile, both of whom were to die in the turmoil of the Revolution. The Chateaubriand family lived in total seclusion, with a number of servants, in the manor house at Combourg, where the halls and passages were so vast and endless that an army of crusaders might lose their way in them. Apart from a few neighbouring noblemen such as the Marquis de Monlouet or Count Goyon-Beaufort, no one ever visited the castle. Particularly in winter, Chateaubriand writes, entire months would pass without any travellers or strangers knocking on the gate of our fortress. Far greater than the sadness that hung over the surrounding heath was the sadness that pervaded this lonely house. Those who walked beneath its vaults felt much as one might when entering a Carthusian monastery. The bell for dinner always rang at eight. After dinner, we would sit for a few hours by the fire. The wind would be moaning in the chimney, mother sighed on the sofa, and father, whom I never saw seated except at table, paced up and down the enormous dining hall until it was time for bed. He always wore a white woollen shaggy robe, and a cap of the same material. Once he was at a certain distance from the centre of the hall, which was lit only by the flickering fire in the hearth and a solitary candle, he would begin to disappear into the shadows, and, when he was completely immersed in the darkness, all one would hear was his footfall until he came back like a ghost, in his peculiar attire. During the summer months, we would sit outside on the steps in front of the house as it was getting dark. Father would fire his shotguns at owls, and we children and mother would look across at the black tree tops of the forest and up at the heavens where the stars come out one by one. At the age of seventeen, Chateaubriand writes, I left Combourg. One day my father pronounced that I would have to make my own way henceforth. He had determined that I would join the Régiment de Navarre and leave on the following day to travel to Cambrai via Rennes. Here, he said, are a hundred Louis d'or. Do not squander them and never dishonour your name. At the time of my departure he was already suffering from the progressive paralysis which was finally to send him to his grave. His left arm twitched constantly, and he had to keep it still with his right hand. And that was how, after he had given me his old rapier, he stood with me beside the cabriolet that was already waiting in the green courtyard. We drove up the lane by the fishponds, and one more time I beheld the mill stream shining and the swallows swooping across the reeds. Then I looked ahead, at the broad terrain that was now opening up in front of me.
It took another hour to walk from Ilketshall St Margaret to Bungay, and a further hour from Bungay over the marshes of the Waveney valley to the far side of Ditchingham. Visible from a distance, nestling at the foot of the ridge which drops down quite steeply to the watermeadows, was Ditchingham Lodge, the isolated house where Charlotte Ives lived for many years after her marriage to Admiral Sutton. As I approached, I could see the window panes glinting in the sunlight. A woman in a white apron—what an unusual sight, I thought—came out underneath the portico roof which was supported by two columns, calling a black dog that was running about in the garden. Apart from her there was not a soul in sight. I climbed the slope to the main road and then walked across the stubble fields to Ditchingham churchyard, some way outside the village, where the elder of Charlotte's two sons, who went to seek his fortune in Bombay, is buried. The inscription on the stone sarcophagus reads: At Rest Beneath, 3rd February 1850, Samuel Ives Sutton, Eldest Son of Rear Admiral Sutton, Late Captain 1st Battalion 60th Rifles, Major by Brevét and Staff Officer of Pentioners. Next to Samuel Sutton's grave stands another even more imposing monument, also built of slabs of heavy stone and crowned by an urn. What struck me about this tomb were the round holes on the upper edges of the four sides. They reminded me somehow of the air-holes we used to make as children in the lids of the boxes in which we kept the cockchafers we caught, with some leaves for food. It was possible, I thought to myself, that the bereaved had had these holes bored into the stone in the eventuality that the dear departed in her sepulchre should wish once more
