by D. J. Taylor
There remained only a single task to perform. Dewar’s money was by now nearly expended. Only a shilling and a few pence remained of the five sovereigns that Grace had given him a week and more ago. Yet each of the Yarmouth solicitors had, in addition to the cheque, presented him with a bill for six shillings and eightpence. Further funds would be required to pay his rent in Southtown. Following the advice of the most recent letter from Carter Lane, Dewar resolved to apply to Messrs. Gurney for some portion of the funds lately transmitted to his account from Lothbury. Calculating that half an hour would see him gone from the town, arming himself with the two solicitors’ bills by way of a reference, he stopped a passerby to enquire directions. Gurney’s Bank? Yes indeed, Gurney’s Bank lay in the very next street.
It was by now nearly midday. Knowing that the businesses of Great Yarmouth, such being the case in provincial towns, clung to the habit of a dinner hour and that the doors would soon be barred against him, Dewar made haste. Whether it was the flustered state into which he was thrown by his rapid transit or the general air of light-headedness which had afflicted him for some days past that was responsible for what now befell him is perhaps arguable. Nevertheless, it is certain that on reaching the teller’s desk, the following exchange took place:
“I should like to draw on some funds which I believe have been transferred here by your London agent.”
“What is the name?”
“Dewar.”
He corrected himself in an instant, but the instant was too late. The clerk’s eye was already raised in enquiry. Worse, a senior clerk with a beard and an eyeglass who happened to have overheard the exchange from his own desk to the rear now rose and made his way across the room. Another man might perhaps have brazened it out, made a joke of his absentmindedness, produced incontrovertible proof that he was Mr. Roper, but Dewar was not that man. He merely took to his heels and fled. Making his way wretchedly back to his lodging, he cursed himself for his incompetence while demanding of himself the question: what am I to do? A search of his pockets realised the sum of fifteen pence. There was only one thing that he could do. Reaching the house at Southtown, he made the welcome discovery that his landlady was absent: a moment later and he and his valise were once more out into the street. Sweat pouring from his forehead, looking wildly around him as he went, he walked hurriedly to the station. Four hours later, followed only by a fog that had risen in the Norfolk fields and pursued his train westwards across the flat, he was back in London.
MR. THACKERAY’S TOUR
Norwich—Hingham—Watton
Within, except where the rococo architects have introduced their ornaments, the cathedral is noble. A rich, tender sunshine is stealing in through the windows and gilding the stately edifice with the purest light. The admirable stained glass is not too brilliant in its colours. The organ plays a rich, solemn music. Six lady visitors, each with her guidebook and her attendant gentleman, were parading up and down the nave in the company of a fierce-looking verger whose eloquence was such that I declare I felt ashamed of my ignorance of my ecclesiastical history and slunk away to the gate of the cathedral school hard by. Here half a hundred young gentlemen in tight black jackets and trowsers were playing tag or cockshies or purchasing hardbake off a tart woman’s tray, watched over by a kindly young master in a stuff gown who clearly envied them their relaxations—I know I did.
At noon we left the city by its western approach, passing the great house of Earlham, seat of Mr. Gurney, and the pretty village of Colney before emerging once more onto the hard Norfolk road. This is, I believe, a charming country, where the river winds through water meadows and osier beds, with little neat churches rising here and there among tufts of trees and pastures that are wonderfully green, and yet the whole curiously empty and forlorn. Where the people had gone, unless it were to help with the harvest, I do not know. At any rate, I saw none, except a solitary boy playing by the roadside at Wymondham, who enquired, “Would your honour like to see a big pig?” “Titmarsh,” I said to myself, following him into a sad little maze of allotments and yards of scuffed-up earth, “you shall observe the agricultural delights of the county and be a farmer yet,” but I must confess that the animal, found staring complacently from its sty, seemed a very unremarkable specimen. Still, it was a pleasure to hear the rascal prattle of the thirty shillings his mother would get for the carcass and the plate of pig’s fry he would have on slaughtering day and I confess quite reconciled me to the twopence which constituted our fee for the viewing…
Beyond Hingham—a neat town with a fine mere rippling at the wood’s edge—the land turned morose and dreary. A cart rattled by bearing half a dozen old men and women with shabby luggage piled up at their feet and not a tooth between them—paupers, said my friend, who knows the county well, bound for the workhouse at Watton. A brewer’s dray passed us, drawn by two great stamping horses, and I thought of its journey’s end: mine host in a white apron standing at his door, the barrels rolled down into the dim, cool cellar, the pretty barmaid drawing the drayman’s tankard. No such welcome, alas, awaited the old paupers. Towards Watton we came to a big house half hidden by trees with its boundaries fenced off by a high flint wall. This I was interested to see, being the abode of Mr. Dixey the celebrated naturalist. A smart lodge lay at the gate, with white ducks and stockings hung up to dry on the currant bushes, but there was no sign of life. The gates themselves were locked and barred, and it seemed to me that Mr. Dixey, however strong his ardour for butterflies, does not care much for visitors.
Indeed this part of the country has a desolate aspect: tall trees shading the roadside, a horrid old ruined house that could have been the setting for one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances, and always the great brooding flat stretching on into the distance. A wind had got up and came soughing through the reed beds in the most melancholy way. Passing a gap in Mr. Dixey’s wall, where the stone had crumbled, I could not resist taking a peep into his parkland, but there was nothing except a pack of hounds chained up in an enclosure and a woman’s figure fluttering silently in the meadow before the house…
And so at length to Watton, a wide old marketplace with ostlers attending to their beasts at the rails and the George Inn, with its fragrant beds and the liveliest parlourmaid I ever saw, and an imperious old housekeeper to whom I would only say, “Madam, my chop would have been sweeter still had the serving girl’s thumbprint not stared up at me from the plate.”
—W. M. THACKERAY,
“A LITTLE TOUR THROUGH THE COUNTIES OF EAST ANGLIA,”
Cornhill Magazine, 1862
XI
ISABEL
Whenever I think of the life I led before I came here, it is always Papa to whom my thoughts return. Indeed, I sometimes imagine that of all the things I have seen & all the people I have known, it is only Papa that is real, that all the others are mere ghosts tapping at a door through which they shall never be admitted.
Papa has beautiful white hands with pink knuckles & long nails. His eyes are soft & large. His voice is slow & gentle. He holds down his cheek to kiss & he presses my forehead.
I can see him passing his hand through his hair laughing at the children pouring out his tea.
I can see him swinging his arms as he walks. I can see him looking out over the ship’s side & replacing his spectacles that are always slipping.
When Papa wrote his stories, he would draw the pictures for them as he worked: gentlemen on horseback, fine ladies conversing, all upon the margins of his manuscript book. Once when we were at tea, there came a tap at the window & looking out we saw Mr. Hannay, that Papa knew, waiting on the step. “That is the man I need,” Papa cried & set to work at once with his pen. And that is how the face in Papa’s Cromwell is not Cromwell’s at all but Mr. Hannay’s as he stood on our doorstep.
When I was one-and-twenty, Papa gave me a birthday dinner at Richmond. Such a bad dinner, Papa said, but we liked it so much, the two of us. When the things were cleared away, Papa called a little carria
ge & we drove home past the river through clouds & clouds of mist, & came through Barnes & over the bridge, & all the people were out in the street at Kensington, & I was so very happy.
All this is very vivid to me, very particular in its dimensions, as if the years that followed had never been. And yet I know that had I foreseen them then, I would have wished them gone.
“When I am an old man,” Papa used to say, “you shall be married to a grand gentleman, & living in a fine house with company calling in carriages & footmen in powdered wigs, but perhaps I shall be allowed to sit & drink my glass of claret & watch my grandchildren grow.”
But now Papa is gone, there is no grand gentleman & no fine house, no company calling in carriages or footmen in powdered wigs, & the claret is all drunk up.
This morning Mr. Conolly comes. He is brought to my room by the butler, who waits outside until he is done.
I am sure that I saw Mr. Conolly before. But there is so much that is gone from my mind that however long I dwell on those old pictures I cannot find his face within their frames. Papa & Mr. Hannay, & Mr. Smith that was Papa’s publisher coming up to see him in a cab, but not Mr. Conolly. Who is a white-haired, civil, old, thin-legged gentleman of a kind I do not like. Who presses my hand and looks very searchingly into my eyes as he speaks.
I would that Mr. Conolly’s eyes looked elsewhere. At the butler waiting in the doorway, or the water jug & the teacups (they do not allow me a drinking glass, tho’ I have often asked for one). Anywhere but at me.
How do I find myself? Mr. Conolly begins by asking.
“I am perfectly well, sir, I believe,” I tell him.
You will excuse me, madam, he next says, if I ask you a question or two.
“If I can answer you, sir, I shall.”
I do not mean to answer Mr. Conolly. Who still presses my hand as he looks into my eye. Who is very impertinent.
“How long has the Queen reigned?”
“A dozen years. A hundred. I am sure the Queen would know, if there is a doubt.”
“If I wished to journey from London to Bristol, through which counties would I pass?”
“Indeed, sir, I should travel by air balloon. It is said to be most agreeable.”
I am surer now than ever that I saw Mr. Conolly before. Who proceeds in this manner for some time. Who finally takes his eyes, and his soft hand, and his thin little legs away from me and shuts the door behind him. Whose carriage, shortly afterwards, can be heard grinding up the gravel in the drive.
I am Isabel Ireland.
I am twenty-seven years old.
The Queen has reigned twenty-eight years.
If I wished to journey from London to Bristol I should pass through Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
The number of states of the American Confederacy is thirteen.
The Prince Consort is four years dead.
How do I find myself? Alas, I am altogether lost.
A conversation with my guardian, Mr. Dixey.
“Have you diversion enough, madam? Is there anything that can be got for you?”
“I should much like to read Miss Brontë’s novel Agnes Grey,” I say to test him.
“I believe we have it in the library. Randall shall bring it up to you. But something other than a book?”
“Indeed, sir,” I tell him, “I should like to see company.”
To this he says nothing. The book comes with my supper. I fall on it as hungrily as the food.
Papa hated to see me idle. If he found me in the drawing room with my feet among the sofa cushions, he would say, “Come, miss, let us take a walk around the gardens” or bid me to fetch a block from the study floor (it was on these that Papa did his drawings before they were taken away to the engraver). So I am always careful to occupy myself. I read my book. I mend my clothes—that is, when they are in need of mending. I study my situation. A man should make an inventory of any new place in which he finds himself, Papa used to say, and this I have accomplished. Thus:
I have two rooms for my private use: the one a sitting room, the other a bedroom.
The dimensions of the sitting room are twenty-four feet by eighteen feet; the dimensions of the bedroom fourteen feet by nine feet.
The dimensions of my sofa are six feet by two feet; of my desk four feet by three feet; of my table the same.
I am brought my breakfast at eight, my luncheon at one, my supper at seven.
I read my book. I mend my clothes. I study my situation.
Papa and I often talked of the man I should marry.
He will be an archdeacon living in the country, Papa would say, & you will have ten children, & write his charges, & make puddings, & be very severe on the dissenters.
Nonsense, I would say in return, he will be a navy captain with only one leg, & a great telescope fixed to his eye, whom I shall see but once a year when his ship is in harbour & who will shock me with his oaths.
Nonsense again, Papa would say. He will be Professor of Greek at Oxford & you will turn bluestocking & have solemn parties for the undergraduates & be very down on ladies who have not read Homer.
I think that Papa joked in this way because he feared that I should leave him, & that I joked with him because I feared it too. “Alas,” he would say, whenever a young lady’s banns were read in church, “another old gentleman turning his face to the wall and wondering who shall bring in his slippers.”
“The old gentleman,” I would say, to twit him, “should bring in his slippers himself.”
All that was five years since. And now all those that I loved are gone from me, & there is no power on earth that shall bring them back.
I have been very ill. That is what they tell me, & I daresay it must be true, for there is so much that has vanished from my mind that only sickness could have dragged it from me. It is not for want of thinking—oh no, not that! Once, indeed, I tried to set down on a sheet of paper all that has passed since Papa’s death, yet found myself altogether defeated. The essentials were there in my head, I knew, but it seemed to me that I could not grasp at them & that they drifted through banks of vapour whose depths I could never penetrate.
I remember Papa dying, and the silence in the bedroom above our heads, and the servant rushing in crying, “Oh he is dead, miss!” and myself running to fetch Dr. Collins from his breakfast.
I remember the motion of a boat upon the water & Henry’s face—very white and grave—next to mine, & a ribbon fastened about my waist that, try as I might, I could not undo.
And—much later it seems to me—a woman’s voice saying, not unkindly, “Now put on your bonnet,” and I, very meekly, putting on my bonnet & stepping out into darkness & a jolting cab, tho’ where it took me I could not say.
For I can be good—oh so very good—when I wish it.
When I was a child, I had scarlatina. It was in Italy, with Papa, who was unwell too, & the two of us lay on our backs in adjoining rooms overlooking the sea with our arrowroots & our lemonades & were, I think, very comfortable together. Now I lie on a sofa with a view of Mr. Dixey’s wild garden, & my treatment is this:
I have a draught of medicine, brought to me morning & night, which I am bidden to swallow.
I have Mr. Conolly to press my hand & ask me how I find myself.
I have the door locked behind me, for fear that I should injure myself.
I am glad that the door is locked behind me, for I should not wish to cause inconvenience.
Not to myself or to anyone else.
As for Mr. Dixey’s establishment, seeing that I have never been permitted to explore it, I have scarce an idea of its design. There may be a dozen rooms or a hundred; I have no means of knowing. And yet I have a vision of myself stealing about the place at night, a candle in my hand, opening doors that should not be opened, prying into chambers where Mr. Dixey would not have me go. No doubt it is very wicked of me to think these thoughts. But they have crept into my head unbidden, while there are other thoughts I would have kept t
here that have stolen away.
Yet though I may not turn keys & steal down staircases, I have eyes & ears, & there are things that I may deduce within the confines of a locked room. Thus, I calculate with certainty, there are nine of us in this house.
Mr. Randall, the butler, brings me my meals. He does not speak, except to ask if the food is to my liking (it is not!). Once, indeed, he pressed upon me a small book, saying that I should do well to take its contents to heart. When he had gone, I looked & saw that it was a tract, Some Paths for the Craven Spirit, of the kind that Aunt Charlotte Parker favoured. And which, knowing it to be dull, I did not read.
William, the footman, Mr. Randall’s viceroy, says not a word. Indeed, he lays down my tray and refills my water jug, scurries to the door and scrabbles with the key in such hot haste that I believe he fancies me to be a young sorceress ripe to turn him into a toad.
Mrs. Finnie, the housekeeper, attends on me each morning at eleven, there being certain feminine wants that a butler and a footman cannot between them be expected to supply.
Who is a sour old woman with hair of such a blackness of jet that it cannot be her own.
Who declines to be drawn by the most amiable pleasantry.
“It is a fine morning, Mrs. Finnie.”
“Indeed, ma’am.”
“But not so fine, I think, as it was yesterday.”
“Perhaps not, ma’am.”
There is no conversation to be got from Mrs. Finnie.
Then there is a cook, Mrs. Wates, on whom I never set eyes, & three maids, whose voices I hear about the house & whose figures I have glimpsed at a distance in the grounds. I confess that I should like to speak to them, to sit in a parlour with them, even, & listen to them as they talk. Yet such are the ways of this house that I know they would not wish to speak to me.
