Lord Byron's Novel

by John Crowley

  ‘Villain!’

  ‘He said that, in his anguish at my death, by mischance as he claimed, he had set out to wander the Earth—that the years had been cruel to him—in a duel he had lost at a sword-stroke all further power of generation—that only then, and in desperation, had he sought you out, poor substitute for the true son he had lost—myself.’

  ‘Villain! Damned villain!’

  ‘You were but a straw he clutched at,’ said Ængus. ‘I have no doubt he would have slain me, or given me over to the Law, if I had for a moment acceded to any of his evasions. No—he truly admitted nothing but what was to his advantage—sought that alone—and (I have fought enough men to the death in my time to see it) there was in him a readiness to spring upon me, if he could—to catch me in a moment of inattention—to die fighting at the least—indeed, every species of animal Vigour—but of shame and remorse, no hint! But at last my creature entered the watchtower, summoned by my call—he had waited in the darkness beyond, unmoving as a stone, all this while—and then upon my father’s face I saw the dawning of a certainty of defeat—yet it was not the same as if such an emotion were to enter your mind, and features, or mine:—No! Rather it was a sudden rise, a readiness superb and calm, as though a vast success were his at last. He smiled.’

  ‘I can see it!’ said Ali. For indeed he had seen his father thus, and it would never depart from his memory.

  ‘Then began the final act. You know the old saw, that revenge is a dish best served cold—yet it seemed to me that now, when ’twas grown cold, I had no taste for it—I forgot, almost, why I had given my life to it, or why I thought it would heal me—to warm me, for it was I in truth was cold!’

  ‘Did you not think then to forebear—not forgive, perhaps—but consider your Object possess’d—or impossible to have?’

  ‘No! That he resisted was fuel to me—that he fought to the last was all that pressed me to my task! I did what I had come to do—I only failed to understand that to defeat and destroy him, I had myself become him—as cold, as heartless. I live now with him in me always—not only as a father lives in a son—but in a more dreadful sense.’

  ‘He had no mark upon him, that I saw,’ said Ali. ‘No wound from pistol nor from sword.’

  ‘Ah! He was strangled, like Antæus,’ said Ængus. ‘’Twas not I did this, nor I who suspended the corse—yet it was I. And I alone it was who took from his finger the seal-ring, with his sign upon it.’

  ‘I saw that not,’ Ali said, in wonderment. ‘That his ring was gone from his hand! And what then became of your Negro?’

  ‘What care you?’

  ‘He saved me from prison—and worse. I would know his fate.’

  ‘I gave him the quietus soon afterward. It was all he would have wished for, if he could have wished for aught. Ask not for further facts. I know not what possessed you, that you went up the way to that Tower, on that night of all nights.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ said Ali—and yet across his shoulders then there moved a great Shudder—not started by the cold sea-wind, nor by any wind of the world’s quarters. ‘Tell me now,’ he said then, ‘why you conceived it in your interest—if so you did—to rescue me, after I was discovered in the Tower, and charged with the crime you had committed. Your every object was then achieved—your enemy dead—his only heir (besides yourself ) taken by the Law on a presumption of murder, against which he could scarcely defend himself—’

  ‘’Twas none of my doing.’

  ‘Yet it fell out so—just as you might have desired it!’

  ‘Chance is the great God of this world. Some times he may smile upon us, for no reason.’

  ‘And thereupon, at great risk to yourself, you contrived to free me, and—as I suppose—to consign me to the Smugglers, whose ship—am I not right?—was the very one you had sailed from America, and sold to them!’

  ‘They were indeed associates of mine, of old; there were obligations, upon both sides.’

  ‘But why?’ cried Ali in bafflement. ‘Why do this, for one you thought your enemy?’

  ‘Would it have been just, or honourable in me, to let you hang? You do not suppose I should offer myself in your place—that would be honour too nice, I think, and it did not tempt me.’

  ‘No! But why after freeing me, did you then pursue me—torment me—seek to destroy me, to divide me from what I held dear—drive me mad? What gain for you, what—’

  ‘Demand me nothing,’ said Ængus, arising from his seat on the sand, in a voice so like another’s in its cold timbre that Ali fell silent. ‘What I have done, I have done. You know something—not all—of what Injuries I have done you. You know nothing of what I have done on your behalf—nor shall you.’

  ‘And what gain had you in it?’

  ‘Amusement. Life must be occupied. I am my father’s son. Go down to Hell and inquire of him why he did as he did in life—his reply shall serve for me as well. Ask me no more.’

  ‘Twice you have saved my life,’ Ali said, ‘and to no purpose, for it is of no use to me, and I want not the remainder.’

  ‘We are brothers in that, at the least,’ said Ængus, who now wrapt himself in his Mantle, and turned to the horse that cropped the sea-grass nearby. ‘Let us be gone, for day is full, and pursuit may now discover us.’

  ‘Tell me but this,’ Ali said, ‘and then we shall part. Are you the father of my child?’

  ‘If your bride came to your Marriage-bed untouch’d by you,’ said Ængus even as he mounted, ‘and—which I should suppose—she never before knew any man but the one who summoned her to that rendez-vous, then I am indeed he.”

  ‘You diverted to her a letter meant for another.’

  ‘Your letter! Your chosen go-between was a foolish woman, and easily suborned. When she showed me the letter, I promised to deliver it myself—and so I did.’

  ‘Then I have no daughter?’

  ‘She was yours in more respects than she was mine. All our line terminates in that child. Would you had been more careful to protect her. And now, Brother, farewell!’

  ‘Begone,’ said Ali. ‘I will never see thee more.’

  ‘Say not so,’ Ængus said—but the wind snatched his words away.

  NOTES FOR THE 13TH CHAPTER

  unlicked bear cub: Spoken by the vengeful hunchbacked Duke of Gloucester in the Third Part of Shake-speare’s Henry VI. The reference is to the old tale that bear cubs are born as formless lumps, and ‘licked into shape’ by their mothers. How Byron’s character, who has lived wholly in a Lowland cot, upon the sea, and in the most degrading of trades, has come to collect various sayings out of Shake-speare, is unanswered in the text—presumably the appositeness of the quote makes up for its unlikelihood.

  old fierce prophets: Ld. B. throughout his life contested against the Religion of the Northern Calvinists he had at first been raised in; he proved over and over to himself the absurdity of their doctrines, and in his acts shewed his disregard for their strictures. Yet no number of repetitions could expunge from his heart the claims made upon him in his earliest youth. To those not engaged in it, such a struggle may seem a painful waste of mental energy. He wrestled with a Jehovah he did not believe in; better to have let Him pass, like the cruel gods of the Assyrians, with whom (as it seems to me) He was at first born. I for one will not contest. Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: if not that, then nothing.

  Science of life & death: See the Note at the first appearance of the zombi in the 5th Chapter. Here it may be of interest to note that (as far as I am aware) there are no supernatural or ghostly occurrences in the works of Lord Byron. Those dramas such as Manfred and Cain which may seem to contradict this statement may be, indeed ought to be, viewed as philosophical rather than supernatural. Of tales that picture realistically our common life or historical experience, into which are intruded ghosts, prophecies, revenants, angels, &c., &c., there are I believe none. This zombi is the supposed product of a mysterious and yet natural science, whose likeli
hood may be questioned, but which is not cast beyond the bounds of Nature.

  Antæus: As a child I saw in an album a print of the picture by Pollaiuolo, of Hercules strangling the giant Antæus, whom he has lifted off the ground, grasping him about the breast to squeeze out his breath. It is a terrifying image, and seemed to stop my own breath to look upon it. It must be this that Ld. B. would have us picture here.

  if he could have wished for aught: How strange to think of beings able to do and to suffer, yet not be conscious that they do—a kind of doom—yet a relief too it may be. The zombi, the clockwork dancer, the somnambulist. To do what one must, and yet not to feel the pain of it, or know anything of it at all.

  Vision thereupon after opium, that the natural world is all a clockwork, and I had discovered it to be so—the songs of birds and the motion of leaves in the wind, even the fall of dew, all the blind result of gears and springs—break open any thing and you find within monstrously tiny gears and gears within gears. Babbage nearby saying ‘Gears as small as grains of sand’.—Feelings of revulsion, how much mistaken this must be, yet in the dream ’twas so—disgusting—as when an ant’s nest is broken open. No no—the mechanisms are not tiny but infinitesimal, and living—a different order of being, as will be one day discovered.

  Ashfield

  April 15, 2002

  My darling,

  So sweet to hear your voice! I’m sorry I get flustered talking at such long distances—I don’t think I’ve ever got used to it—and then I could faintly hear myself echoed there, like I said, as though I could hear my words shooting off from some coastal station—I just couldn’t talk long. Of course I got the pretty card—it’s on the fridge.

  So well. I’m astonished. I don’t know if I’m more astonished that you went and found him (not so hard, I guess, though I wouldn’t have known how) or because of the reason you needed to. The story’s amazing—about the book, or manuscript. I hope some good, I mean lots of good, will come of it for you, though just what good might come I don’t know. What good from finding Lee, I don’t know either. I remember so well his being caught up in Byron—well maybe that sounds a little, what’s the British word, a little twee. Involved with is more plain and maybe truer too, because he was then already (I thought) in the process of becoming not involved with him any longer.

  Why does it surprise me that you went and looked for him? It certainly shouldn’t. I mean it’s natural enough, inevitable even; what’s surprising is how long it took, given how little interest you ever showed—it came to seem natural that you didn’t care. You know I always meant to explain it to you, as much as I could, when it was time; it was all lying there, waiting to be taken up, and I knew I’d have to someday, when you needed me to—to explain it, and explain him, if I could, and what I did at that time, and didn’t do. I thought I’d recognize the right time when it came. I thought I was good at that, seeing when a moment is right, and since I never did—well this isn’t coming out right, I sound like a dope or a flake, and I don’t really think I am, do you? Anyway then we were living on River Island and you got sick of me, of me and of chopping wood and pumping water and cleaning lamp chimneys and having no phone and no friends. You know I loved River Island—I’d say “with all my heart” but that couldn’t have been so, because you weren’t there and I wanted you to be, and I felt your restlessness like a great sorrow. God so long ago now. Then came the long time when we were apart, when you were at school and then in NY. Anyway (again! “Anyway” always gets you from here to there) when at last I went back to the story—me, for myself—when Jonah was first getting ill—then suddenly it all seemed to have become unimportant, without my having ever noticed that it had, or when it had. It almost seems not to exist, now, so much else has happened. It’s a little like laying away some antique linens because you can’t use them now, and then opening the box years later and finding they’re all rust-spotted and moldered and you don’t care about antique linens anymore anyway. You know we were only together four years. Five. But ask me what you need to know, Alex, and I’ll answer.

  Yes it’s true he wanted to name you Haidée, and I vetoed it. But to be fair, I wanted to name you Owlet. What a beautiful name, it hurts or warms my heart even now to think of it, like a child I loved and never had. He vetoed that. So I named you after my grandmother, and he didn’t say no.

  Alex, I love you. You know that. I hope you and Thea can come back this summer, the place will be so beautiful, we’ve got a lot done since you last saw it. We could talk, all you want. I’m sorry.

  Mom

  PS I don’t mind your giving him the address here, I bet a thousand to one he won’t use it. But I don’t need his email address. I still don’t use email. Marc tells me I’d love the Internet, that as soon as I figured it out I’d never leave it, and I said yes, that’s just why I won’t use it.

  From: lnovak@metrognome.net.au

  To: “Smith”

  Subject: Fin

  Here is the last of it. I finished last night, well early this morning, copying my own handwritten version into the computer for you. You will see where the single page that Ada rescued goes now. I think I am going blind; the glow of this eye-book is so godlike and piercing that staring for hours into it vanquishes my regard (as B. might say) and maybe permanently. It’s okay. Thank you beyond words for saving this. And thank Thea for me, if she’ll take my thanks.

  I remember when I was nine or ten and I read Kidnapped by myself. I had to decode every page, and look things up and then still not understand, and ask my dad for the meanings of words, so that reading was like an agon or a battle, and I finished it, and I won, and so did the book. When I copied out the last words of this I stopped and sat without moving for about fifteen minutes. I felt like I had slain the dragon, or been slain, or both.

  About the title. It puzzles Ada that this should be the title, and she even wonders if its presence at the top of the first page is an error, or if it is there for some other reason than to title what follows; she says it seems to be in different ink from the page it heads, but of course we can’t check that. Whether it was written on that page first or later or last, I think it must be the title he chose, and the fact that its relevance is clear only at the end is deliberate. I think of Stendhal (who loved to brag about his very brief encounter with Byron). Stendhal called his greatest novel The Charterhouse of Parma, even though the Charterhouse—a convent where the hero ends up—doesn’t appear and isn’t mentioned till the last chapter. The title is the ending. So is the title of this.

  Lee

  From: “Lilith”

  To: “Smith”

  Subject: Problem??

  Sweetie—

  Is there some kind of problem? I get no emails anymore from you and now I have a weird query from Georgiana saying that “development” on the site may have to be put off for a while until YOU can once again give all your attention to the “original mission.” She is so careful to say that she loves you and admires you and loves the site etc. etc. and nothing has changed but what the hell is all this? We are trying to decode this email like it was some kind of secret message we can’t understand. Can you give us any help with this?

  Love

  Lilith

  From: “Smith”

  To: “Thea”

  Subject: Mad woman

  GEORGIANA DOESN’T CARE ABOUT THE NOVEL. She’s not interested. She doesn’t even want to read it. She’s heartbroken that the papers turned out not to be a computer program, or a new math theory, or something. She says the world has ENOUGH BYRON AND NOT ENOUGH ADA. Can you believe that? She thinks we should stop trying to transcribe it and edit it and get back to WHAT’S REALLY IMPORTANT. She doesn’t see how important it is that Ada did this: how important it is for knowing about Ada. Her father: that’s important. She thought it was. She was dying and this is what she spent he
r last year doing. That’s not important?

  Lilith is freaked. She thinks Georgiana’s going to refuse to fund the site, and that it’s my fault because I’ve drifted off. What if I get fired? I have to call her and start to explain.

  I might have to seduce Georgiana. I won’t stop. I can’t.

  S

  From: lnovak@metrognome.net.au

  To: “Smith”

  Subject: Letter, and request

  I thought you would like to see this letter I’ve come upon, from Byron to his publisher John Murray. This was written four years after he left England for good. A student at the Library scanned it for me, a thing I’m so far incapable of, and here I insert a part of it:

  Dear Sir/—This day and this hour (one on the Clock) my daughter is six years old. I wonder when I shall see her again or if ever I shall see her at all.——I have remarked a curious coincidence which almost looks like a fatality.——My mother—my wife—my daughter—my half sister—my natural daughter (at least as far as I am concerned) and myself are all only children.—My father by his marriage with Lady Conyers (an only child) had only my sister—and by his marriage with another only child—an only child again. Lady Byron as you know was one also,—and so is my daughter &c.——Is not this rather odd—such a complication of only children? By the way—Send me my daughter Ada’s miniature,—I have only the print—which gives little or no idea of her complexion.—I heard the other day from an English voyager—that her temper is said to be extremely violent.—Is it so?—It is not unlikely considering her parentage.—My temper is what it is—as you may perhaps divine—and my Lady’s was a nice little sullen nucleus of concentrated Savageness to mould my daughter upon,—to say nothing of her two Grandmothers—both of whom to my knowledge were as pretty specimens of the female Spirit—as you might wish to see on a Summer’s day.