by Edward Cline
At length, Tobius said, “You have revealed to us a new Olympus, Muir. It is distant, and its peak is shrouded in clouds. How long would it take us to reach it, and how should we scale it?”
Muir looked around at his companions, and smiled. “You are my closest friends, and one of you will solve the problem some day, and tell me the answers.” His glance swept the gathering, and stopped on Hugh’s attentive face, but did not linger on it.
* * *
“You are capable of fresh breezes yourself,” said Hugh later. “I cannot recall a meeting when so few questions were asked of the speaker.”
They were strolling together along the lamp-lit Strand. Music, singing, and laughter came from the numerous taverns and coffeehouses they passed on this spring night. Watchmen cried out the hour—eleven of the clock—and coaches and gentlemen on horseback paraded up and down the street.
Glorious Swain chuckled. “Thank you, sir.” He paused. “I did not wish to call attention to it at the meeting, but I believe that you will be the one to give me and the others maps to Olympus.” Hugh turned to face him, but Swain held up a hand. “No protestations, sir! You have two advantages over the rest of us: your youth, and my certainty that you alone among us are not burdened with a conscience, and never will be.”
Hugh said, “Thank you, Mr. Swain.” But then he shook his head. “What you say is true, but it is not my ambition to become a philosopher.”
“Perhaps not. But you will become one. I believe it is the only matter in your life in which you have never had a choice.”
Again Hugh shook his head. “I choose to think, sir. There is nothing mechanical or predestined in that.”
“That is why I say what I say.”
They walked in silence until they came to Charing Cross, the Y-shaped junction of the Strand, Whitehall, and Cockspur Street. In its center, facing Whitehall beyond, was the bronze equestrian statue of Charles I by Hubert le Sueur, poised atop a tall, narrow, rococo-ornamented stone pedestal enclosed by a circular iron railing. The steed seemed to have more majesty than its rider, for while Charles’s left hand suggested tightly held reins, his right hand was raised as though he were holding a sword, or more likely a baton of state. But, whether sword or baton, that hand was significantly empty. The statue had been saved and hidden by Royalists during the Commonwealth, and restored to Charing Cross after the fall of its successor, the Protectorate. A symbol of the country’s more recent history, it would survive into the next century. Charles was beheaded in 1649 by ancestors of the Whigs and Tories, and when kings were welcomed back, they came without the baton of absolute power. That had been appropriated by Parliament.
Around powerless Charles jostled the nightlife of London: coaches, sedan chairs, carriages, strollers, and parties of revelers. On this crossroads were taverns and coffeehouses that exhibited freaks and “oddities” such as centaurs and mermaids for a price of a few shillings; respectable establishments hosted by well-bred ladies and gracious gentlemen, such as the Red Lion Tavern and the British Coffee House; night-cellars, or brothels, and private gaming clubs of all kinds; several coach inns for travelers from beyond London; linen drapers’ and lacemen’s shops; silversmiths, saddlers, victuallers, hosiers, and haberdashers. Pickpockets and confidence tricksters preyed on country folk and foreigners. Beggars plied their trade, prostitutes accosted passing men, and ladies of rank and their escorts slummed behind domino masks.
In front of the statue was an elevated pillory, where convicted felons were put on display for public view and public punishment. Besides being pelted with stones and dung by the crowds, prisoners were often subjected to the branding of their hands for theft—depending on the assessed value of the stolen objects—or to the removal of their ears or the slitting of their noses, if they had been found guilty of forgery. Other prisoners, men and women, charged with crimes such as perjury and extortion, would be chained to the tail of a cart and publicly whipped on their bare backs as they were led past or around the statue. No criminals were ever hanged at Charing Cross; but, like Tyburn Tree, and later Newgate, the place became the venue for a circus-like exhibition of what passed for justice.
There were other pillories in the city—in Southwark, at the Haymarket, outside of Westminster Hall, or wherever great throngs of Londoners passed through in the course of their business—but none was so appropriate as Charing Cross. Here many terrible crimes were committed, and here many awful punishments were carried out, presided over by a great criminal. No one could say whether the statue honored Charles, or served as an example of what lay in store for living a life of crime. The solemn, dignified face of Charles gazed above and beyond this “full tide of human existence”—as Samuel Johnson years later was to characterize Charing Cross—his lofty countenance insensible to the ironies of his own effigy and of the justice exacted beneath the hooves of his steed.
As they threaded their way through the crowds and dodged carriages and sedan chairs, Swain glanced up at the statue, which was silhouetted against the night sky and barely visible in the light of the street lamps, flambeaux, and torches of the linkboys. He asked, without immediately knowing the reason, “Can you ever forgive your uncle?”
Hugh’s father had asked him the same question. Hugh repeated his answer. “No. There can be no reprieve for his crime. He assaulted my mind.”
Hugh had since made inquiries, but could not locate Hulton or even learn which army regiment he had enlisted in. He continued to scour bookshops and second-hand stalls throughout the city, but could not find another copy of Hyperborea. Swain had offered to loan him his copy, but Hugh cordially refused. “I could not guarantee its safety.” He had reached an agreement with Nathan Rickerby—to whom he had revealed his true identity, but made take an oath of secrecy—and could rent the room on Cutter Lane for a year. With his father and Benjamin Worley he had attended the opening for business of a new bank, Formby, Swire and Pursehouse; his father surprised him and made an interest-bearing deposit in his name. “Why?” he had asked. Garnet Kenrick merely answered: “Every man of good character should have an account.” But his father’s eyes had said: “For having had the courage to call my brother a liar.” Hugh continued to excel in his studies at Dr. Comyn’s School; he had reached a point where he brought more to his studies than his instructors gave him.
Swain smiled, and said, “My friend, when I am with the Pippins, I am among my preferred company. When I am in your company alone, I feel that I am near a new Olympus.”
“I had thought you disapproved of my not forgiving my uncle.”
“I did, at first. Perhaps it was because I was jealous of you. I have no family to forgive for anything. But the logic of your justice is not to be impeached. It takes time to accustom oneself to Olympus.”
They stood at the side of the pillory for a while to watch the parade of nightlife and make their observations on it. Then they shook hands and parted, Hugh back to Windridge Court, and Swain to his room in a house that stood in an unlit alley deep in the bowels of London.
Chapter 26: The Critics
IN EARLY APRIL, HUGH RECEIVED AN EXCITED LETTER FROM REVERDY BRUNE announcing her planned visit to London in July with her mother and older brother, James. It was the wrong season to visit the city; the warm weather, together with the odors subdued in the cold months but released by the heat, drove much of London’s wealthy society to country homes.
But James Brune had business to conduct. He was acting for his father, Squire Robert Brune, now infirm and unable to travel, who wanted to establish an arrangement with McLeod & McDougal, a firm of Scottish agents and traders. The firm had branches in Bristol and Glasgow, correspondents in St. Petersburg and Copenhagen, and partners in New York and Jamaica. McLeod & McDougal had a warehouse near the Lawful Keys, but did most of its business in the Virginia and Maryland Coffeehouse in Cornhill. The Brunes had wool to export and have factored, mutton to sell, and money to invest. Insurance looked attractive to both father and son, despite the war,
as did consols, or consolidated annuities. The elder Brune had had his eye on McLeod & McDougal for a long while, as well as on other trading firms, and the firm’s cautious approach and constant solvency finally moved him to make an overture. McLeod & McDougal expected James Brune, and would welcome him; it had markets for wool, Scotland to feed, and opportunities to exploit.
Hugh glowed with happiness that he would see Reverdy again, and her anticipated visit caused his mind to buzz with plans. She had been to London only one other time in her life, when she was five. He thought of her visit in terms of displaying his domain to a future queen. Glorious Swain noticed the special exhilaration in his manner over supper in a tavern one evening, and asked him about it. Hugh confided in him. “Where are you staying now?” asked Swain.
“Windridge Court,” answered Hugh. “My uncle won’t return until perhaps September next. He had planned to lease the house for the summer to another country earl, but my father talked him out of it. But I often stay overnight in my room on Cutter Lane. It’s closer to the school, and to so many bookshops. I saw Dr. Johnson in one of them last week, browsing through titles. I wouldn’t have known it if the proprietor hadn’t greeted him. He’s a very strange-looking person. I seem to recall encountering him somewhere, even speaking to him.”
Swain nodded. “I’ve seen him. His household has bought tea from under my coat on numerous occasions. Well, St. Peter may guard the gates to heaven, but Dr. Johnson seems to be now the sentry at Helicon’s propylaeum.”
“He would like that compliment,” remarked Hugh, who had read some of Johnson’s essays and reviews in the Literary Magazine, “but I’m reluctant to second it. I do believe that, if he ever came to know the Society better, he might try to have us prosecuted. He is a spokesman for everything that is Tory.”
Swain shook his head. “I don’t agree, my friend. He is a brilliant man, and I don’t believe he would punish rival brilliance, even if he disagreed with it.”
In May, a new book of poetry appeared and enjoyed a brief sensation, Twenty Moral Fables in Rhyme, concerning Good Men and Bad Manners, with a short dissertation on the Art of Fables, by W. Horlick, printed by Taller and Wyshe for a patron and sold for ten shillings. The work was dedicated to that patron, the Marquis of Bilbury. It was favorably mentioned in many periodicals, among them the London Literary Register, which hailed the collection as “worthy of the affection of the most discriminating gourmand of verse.”
So endorsed, sales of the book grew brisk, and soon it went into a second printing. Twenty Fables became a topic of conversation over tea and supper in the best homes; between ladies and their guests during morning levees. Mothers read some of the fables to their children for their moral instruction. Some ministers even adapted the fables and preached them as sermons. One bookshop sold several copies to officers preparing to depart with their regiments for North America. Many gentlemen, who did not usually read verse, purchased copies for their wives or mistresses, and sometimes for both. For a while, Twenty Fables was the bon livre of London.
Elspeth was to have given a lecture to the Society on the premises underlying an older book, John Mason’s An Essay on the Power of Numbers, and the Principles of Harmony in Poetical Composition, coupled with an encomium on Mason’s book distilled from another, shorter book written by Elspeth himself under the non de plume of Sawny Driscoll, though none of his colleagues knew it. But one of the members, before the lecture began after supper in the Fruit Wench, made some derisive comments on Twenty Fables, and noted what he thought was its undeserved popularity. “It’s all I hear now!” bellowed Claude. “I’m either asked if I’ve read it, or assaulted with gentle quotations from it. It grew so tiresome that I bought a copy of it, and found that it is the uninspired ejecta of a mere poetaster!” Twenty Fables, which all the members but Hugh now confessed to have read, became the subject of a lively exchange for the rest of the evening.
“It is but the Decalogue chopped up into twenty dollops of duty, and acted out in masquerade by the most unlikely and inappropriate animals.”
“The ‘Dialogue between Two Diverting Dogs,’ on adultery, was especially egregious.”
“Aesop would not have composed a single one of these fables, even in his most fuddled state!”
“Oh, no, sir. He might have, but we would never have known it, for when he became sober, he would have disowned them, and used the fables for kindling.”
“On the whole, ’tis merely a dog-cart passing for a phaeton.”
“And if you rummage certain of these tales, you may see some snitched Steele and poached Addison!”
“And Cowley, and even Pope!”
“Swift is firmly represented in the fables presented by the cats and mice.”
“I cannot forgive him for his presumption! He pens bad verse, then, in his dissertation, presumes to initiate his reader in the art of emulating it!”
“His muse must have been Morpheus.”
“And your remarks seem to have been inspired by Momus,” ventured Mathius, who was not an active participant in the conversation, and who labored to keep the hurt and acid from his words. He had made some objections to the criticisms that flew back and forth over the table, careful not to reveal his authorship of Twenty Fables. These were ignored. But now he had had enough. “You are being too severe, sirs! The work is not without some merit, surely!”
Tobius said, “Oh, I grant you that, sir. It has the merit of complete sentences, of an occasional amusing though I suspect accidental rhyme, and some fervor in its exposition—though the image of a furabund rabbit orating like Hamlet on the virtues of conjugal moderation was more than I could tolerate. A compulsion to load my fowling piece and blast the creature was fortunately checked by the fear that I should need to explain to my neighbors why I was potting a book!”
Elspeth said, “My dear Mathius, think what you may, but the rest of us must agree that these fables could have easily been composed by the Prince of Wales, and patiently emended by Lord Bute!”
“Who would have been obliged to begin by inserting points throughout, in order to knacker a seventy-five-page sentence,” observed Abraham.
Again the table burst out in rollicking laughter. It was no use. Mathius leaned back in his chair and endured it.
“I don’t quite understand the reason why that trash is the ton,” remarked Muir. “So much that is worthy of praise, goes unnoticed.”
“Oh, it’s merely some form of contagion, or a flash of distemper, such as afflicted our cattle a few years ago,” said Steven, shrugging his shoulders. “People will recover their senses by September, and we’ll hear no more of it.”
“The Marquis of Bilbury at times subsidizes the queerest projects,” commented Claude. “I wonder if some contagion possessed him when he put guineas behind this one.”
“Lords are grateful for the slightest gratitude paid them,” observed Tobius, “and often have less practical sense than do their dependents. Look at Lord Chesterfield. If he’d donated even a tenth of Dr. Johnson’s lexicographic expenses, he would have immortalized himself.”
The meeting adjourned without the members ever suspecting that the author of Twenty Fables sat in their midst. Mathius did not know the purpose behind his good fortune, when one day two months ago the son of the Marquis of Bilbury called on him in his room near Fleet Street and claimed to have heard of his talents, and asserted that his father might be willing to underwrite publication of some of his work, if he could see a sample of it. William Horlick did not pause to question the father’s or son’s motives. Horlick had spent wasted days in the anterooms of many prospective patrons, only to be snubbed or turned out without seeing anyone but insouciant servants. He was so desperate for a patron—and for the fame and security one could grant him—that he did not even question the anomaly of a lord deigning to seek him out.
The elder Marquis of Bilbury did not know the motive behind his son’s surprising request that he underwrite the publication of what he frankly consi
dered some indifferent and oft times juvenile verse. But it was the first evidence of his son taking his station in life seriously, and he would not discourage that development.
William Horlick did not know that the younger Marquis had paid one of his footmen to spy on Peter Brompton, the musician who seemed to know Hugh Kenrick, and report on the nature of his association between the commoner and the aristocrat, and that eventually the Marquis had learned of the Society of the Pippin. Brice Blissom had then begun to frequent the Fruit Wench, eavesdropping on the Society’s meetings from the next compartment. He soon grasped the character of the club, and was offended. One evening, after watching the members disperse from the tavern, he had decided on who among them seemed to be the weakest and most open to influence. He had also noticed that the members had secret names, and that minutes of all that they discussed were kept in a great ledger book, which they took turns in maintaining.
That was when the young Marquis had hit upon a way of avenging himself on Hugh Kenrick.
And so it was a wounded, disconsolate Mathius who bid his companions good night and left the Fruit Wench that evening. Brice Blissom, had he chosen to eavesdrop on the Society tonight, would have laughed and counted his blessings, for neither he nor his cat’s paw had ever expected Twenty Fables to be discussed by the club, much less be excoriated by it.
* * *
By July, Twenty Fables had been discarded and nearly forgotten by the literati and reading public, forgotten by the Society of the Pippin, forgotten by Hugh, who had not read it. Out of a sense of fairness, he glanced through a copy of the work in a bookshop a day or two after the Society had trounced it, and understood then why the members had laughed at it. It was truly awful, on a par with the intellectual and literary essays of many of his schoolmates. If the book had been justly ignored, it would never have been praised by the press, and never have caused the satirical guffaws of the Society. He sensed the hand of influence in the book’s brief life: a patron wealthy enough to pay for the work’s production, wealthy enough to purchase the endorsement of a few publications, wealthy enough to get the book talked about in the right social circles. For a reason he could not immediately explain, he recalled something he had read in a second-hand copy of Dr. Johnson’s Rambler he had bought: “All industry must be excited by hope; and as the student often proposes no other reward to himself than praise, he is easily discouraged by contempt and insult.” Contempt and insult, concluded Hugh, were the only rewards that Twenty Fables deserved.
