by Glyn Maxwell
Tennyson! (I thought – then heard my voice say it aloud) I mean are you close at all to Tennyson?
‘Face to face,’ he said, no more than that.’
Elizabeth heard this from the other end and broke off what she was saying to the women with a gasp of amusement, ‘Robert, he spent two days with us! Dined with us, smoked with us, opened his heart to us (and the second bottle of port) – going away at halfpast two in the morning – read Maud through from end to end, stopping every now and then,’ and she put on a lordly, laureately voice, ‘There’s a wonderful touch! How beautiful that is!’ –
Uproarious laughter at that, and even Robert cracked a smile, caught out being discreet. Elizabeths chuckling turned to coughing, wasn’t made to – live in England,’ she uttered hoarsely, but before Robert could address this in any helpful way, she had downed her water, waved him off, restored herself, and Lily was touching Robert’s elbow:
‘So Robert, in like Last Duchess right, when you say you gave commands, though it’s not you giving commands I know, but the guy, whatever, the Duke right? when he says that, I gave commands, does he mean like he had her wasted?’
Browning looked at her, seemed about to respond, then sought safety in his beer, which he lifted and drained. I began to offer another but he indicated no. I felt he was uncomfortable, would be trying to cut this short soon,
‘It’s a brilliant poem!’ Lily nonetheless proclaimed, Ollie harmonizing: a superb dramatic monologue,’
Browning sat there, doubtful, the empty glass in his hand. Then he grinned and told her mildly, ‘I meant that the commands were that she should be put to death,’
‘ Yesss!’ Lily cried but he went on, undecided,
‘Or he might have had her shut up in a convent?’
Lily stopped, mouth open. Briefly she ran this by in her mind, then firmly rejected it, ‘Nah, nah, he definitely offed her,’ she concluded, which phrasing – along with her certainty – puzzled the poet away from the subject. So he rose, a shade nonplussed, gazing over at his Ba, who was back in lively chat with the girls at the far end. She glanced up of course – her eyes knew his were looking – but she wrinkled her nose at him and with her fingerless-gloved right hand gently shooed him away, to the delight of her new friends.
Then that excellent gentleman offered to buy a round. Ollie wrote our various orders down on a napkin, and off they went to the bar.
*
‘Robert has a sort of mania about shops,’ shes saying loudly, this is later, and he’s listening politely to the students at his end, but clearly she hopes he might overhear her charming indiscretions. He obviously can, you can see his straight face trying not to grin, and he doesn’t seem to mind as she sings on: ‘He won’t buy his own gloves! He bought a pair of boots the other day – because I went down on my knees to ask him, and the water was running in through the soles – and he won’t soon get over it. . . he’d rather leap down among the lions after your glove – as the knight of old – than walk into a shop for you!’
‘Yeah that’s like me,’ Molly notes for the record, and meanwhile Mimi, catching my eye as she mimics Bella’s posh voice – though Bella’s out of earshot – enquires of Robert ‘perchance d’ye know Lord Byron?’
The poet sipped at his third, fourth beer,
‘Leigh Hunt tells a story he had from Byron. A Jew who was surprised by a thunderstorm, while he’s dining on bacon... tried to eat, but the flashes were – pertinacious! At last he pushed his plate away, remarking with a shrug, All this fuss about a piece of pork!’
People got that or they didn’t, but everyone laughed. Our tipsy company had clearly formed a consensus that the Brownings would only stay as long as Robert was enjoying himself. Elizabeth, at her end, seemed delighted with it all, whether it was Blanche or Bella probing for gossip, or Kornelia or Caroline putting their solemn questions. Caroline asked her one that had them all quite still, flickering, clustered to the lady’s flame.
‘While my poems are full of faults, they’ve my heart and life in them. Poetry’s been as serious a thing to me as life itself – life’s been a very serious thing – there’s been no playing at skittles for me in either.’
*
When I go with Mimi to get more wine for their end of the table, she biffs my sleeve with her fist.
‘There’s something,’ she says, something weird like, between them,’
I dunno (I didn’t) – you mean love? maybe that’s what it looks like,
‘What are you Max some expert,’
No, but – no, what do you mean between them?
‘It’s like – they’re – not in the same place.’
Not in the same place? don’t get it,
‘Like they’re, I dunno, shot with different film-stock. The way he looks at her. Makes her read poems, makes her take questions, doesn’t say much, I dunno, forget it, pour the wine, it’s your freakin party, we just live here,’
Can I cry if I want to?
‘Your circus,’
My monkeys,
As we get back to the women there’s a peal of laughter, and Elizabeth cries joyfully, ‘Women adore him! Far too much for decency!’
I saw Robert turn his polite puzzled face to the clamour, and tried to see what Mimi meant: some distance in his eyes, maybe sadness, maybe something recollected? Maybe they somehow -weren’t together? But he went back to listening to whatever urgent monologue Lily was slurring at him from the arm of his chair.
Now spiritualism had come up with Elizabeth’s women.
‘We did a seance in our halls of residence,’ Bella was saying, ‘we totally felt something didn’t we Blanche,’
‘Investigation is all I desire,’ Elizabeth said, ‘Robert’s heart softens to the point of letting me have the Spiritual Magazine. Edwin Landseer’s received the faith.’
Landseer the painter? (quoth I, at the outer rim of the conversation)
‘Did everything possible to get Dickens to investigate. Dickens refused. . . ’
‘Dickens the writer?’ quoth Mimi, taking the piss.
Bella was dazzled: ‘Omigod they know Dickens. . .’
Elizabeth nodded, saying of Dickens: ‘Afraid of the truth, of course, having deeply committed himself to negatives. Dickens! So fond of ghost-stories, as long as they’re impossible. . .’
‘Yeah that’s Charlie for ya,’ went Mimi, whom I tried to kick but missed.
Kornelia, who’s religious, didn’t want to hear about spiritualism:
‘Mrs Browning,’
‘Elizabeth,’
‘Elizabeth! was it difficult being a woman to write your poems?’
She clasped her little hands together.
‘Grumbling’s a vile thing. . .’
‘But?’ said Blanche, coaxing her to say more,
‘You’d smile,’ said she, ‘the – the persecution I’ve been subjected to by the people who call themselves The Faculty. . . ’
TELL ME ABOUT IT! (I roared but no one got it so I straightened up quickly) you mean what, medical people?
She sipped her wine and nodded.
‘I had a doctor once who thought he’d done everything because he’d carried the inkstand out of the room – the inkstand! Now, he said, you’ll have a pulse tomorrow. He thought poetry a sort of disease – a sort of fungus of the brain! – for women it was a mortal malady!’ – now she was having to top all the shrieks of the gleefully aghast – ‘He’d never known a system approaching mine in, in, in – excitability!’
She rode the crescendo, and their five glasses clinked with the toast:
‘To EXCITABILITY!’
‘I’m really very quiet!’ she giggled, ‘and not difficult!’
Poor Robert at the far end glanced over, his face all worry, and yet went on being polite because Lily was explaining something. He saw his Ba shooing him away again with her bright eyes glistening, as Caroline chose this moment to ask her what were her favourite novels.
‘Villette’s a strong b
ook,’ she said, over the sound of the other women still chuckling at that idiot doctor, ‘Balzac,’
‘What about Austen?’ Caroline wanted to know, ever keen to meet a new Sister-in-Jane. Elizabeth shrugged.
‘Miss Austen. . . her people struck me as wanting souls,’ – that shut them up – ‘the novels are perfect as far as they go, but they don’t go far, I think.’ She put her hand on astonished Caroline’s, allowing ‘it may be my fault. . .’
There were other surprises before the time was done. Robert noticed an old neglected piano in the corner, the lost twin of the one in the village hall:
‘If it won’t disturb you,’ he announced, ‘I’ll play.’
And he did! He played tunes and he played songs, he played Jeanie With the Light-Brown Hair, he played Beautiful Dreamer and The Rose of Tralee, he played Silent Night and then Skip To My Lou with a grin as folks came and stayed and boozed and roared the bits they knew.
But Elizabeth’s company remained constant. I craned my neck to hear her better, as I sat alone on the edge of the group.
‘I know Florence Nightingale slightly,’ she told them to a ripple of awe, ‘she came to see me in London. I remember her face and her graceful manner, flowers she sent me afterwards.’
But as we lulled ourselves in the vague saintliness of the legend, Elizabeth, catching my eye for the first time – she would have caught me thinking how pretty she was – snapped us out of it:
‘Every man’s on his knees before ladies carrying lint – calling them angelic - whereas if they stir an inch as thinkers and artists from the beaten line – the very same men curse the impudence and stop there. I don’t consider the best use to which we can put a gifted woman is to make her a – hospital nurse.’
As I tried to beam my accord with this, she looked past me towards Robert, who gazed back at her as he played Liebestraum, he played Für Elise, he played freakin Jingle Bells – which I didn’t expect him to know – and he also played this, which I’d forgotten I knew. . .
Who would not happy be
Sailing in sight of thee?
Santa Lucia
Santa Lucia
*
When it was nearly time, and we could see their black horse and carriage out there trembling in the snow – somehow avoiding the worst of the snowball fight that had broken out between the Scribblers and the Thesps - all those who’d been sitting near Robert, or had gathered to his little recital, now descended on Elizabeth, though her quartet of new friends had no intention of giving up their ringside places. I went over to the bar just in time to stop Robert paying for the whisky I now paid for, ordering one myself.
‘Single or double.’
Octuple, Norman.
‘Whats that then, a malt?’
Just a large one, Norman.
It was quiet now, no jukebox, no piano, and most people who were left were clustered round our legendary table in the snug. Lily had barged in loudly with a question about London, so the poet was telling of her trip to the Abbey:
‘We were there at the wrong hour, the service was to begin – I was frightened of the organ! I hurried my companions out of the door! Frightened of the organ. . . you may laugh a little, they did! People can’t help their nerves,’ she smiled, looking out from the group at Robert: ‘I don’t cry easily, either.’
Browning dutifully chinked his glass with mine, didn’t look at me as we drank. Now I looked at him looking at her. I both – saw what Mimi meant, yet was unable to explain it. He looked – far away.
Elizabeth was still talking, her dark eyes flitting from face to face, as she spoke of Poets’ Corner: ‘How grand, how solemn. . . Time itself seemed turned to stone.’ Alarmingly she looked right over at me and I froze – ‘Remember what’s written on Spenser’s monument?’
I beamed as if to say Oh it’s okay we know nothing in our world! so she told us: ‘Here lyeth Edmund Spenser, having given proof of his divine spirit in his poems... something to that effect. It struck me as – earnest, and beautiful, as if the writer believed in him.’ Then she said quietly, to no one in particular, ‘Michael Drayton’s inscription has crept back into the brown heart of the stone. All but the name and a date.’
‘That name being Michael Drayton, ’ a deep voice confirmed from the rear of the group: Barry was in the building.
A whisper at my ear:
Ask him where he lives,’ – Mimi had elbowed up beside me, shiny, soaking, breathless from some fooling out in the snow, what his day’s like, see if he mentions her. It’s like you told me, with the Yorkshire girls.’
And I decided I would – though I wasn’t sure quite why –
What’s your day like, Mr Browning?
This time he did turn, turned the whole way round, his palms flattened on to the bar, his back to all the company. I remember thinking it was the only time he’d let her from his sight. Then he answered my question.
‘Every morning at six I see the sun rise. My bedroom window commands a perfect view. The still, grey lagoon – few seagulls flying – the isle of San Giorgio in deep shadow. . . The clouds in a long purple rack, behind which – a sort of – spirit of rose burns up, till presently all the rims are, are – on fire with gold. . . and last of all the orb sends before it a long – column of its own essence. So my day begins.’
You live there (I said, and then I said) you live there?
Robert looked at me. I noticed Mimi had drifted away and was sitting at the table, at the edge of the company, she was sitting right next to Barry. But Barry was trying to peer past her at us, looked like he needed badly to join us at the bar – if it weren’t for Mimi being playful, dodging her maddening face into his eyeline, flirting, poking, stopping him from rising –
So there was time enough –
Robert seemed to beckon me in close, so we were both stooped together at the bar, aged aged men, but I could also see over his shoulder his thrilled, enchanting, graceful, hopeful young Miss Elizabeth Barrett in her glory, lit green and blue and gold, surrounded by the friends she’d made of strangers, in the precious last moments of an evening to treasure.
‘She suffered very little,’ Robert said suddenly, and love held its course. ‘Had no – presentiment. Assuring me she was better – comfortable – if I’d come to bed. To within a few minutes of the last. Slept heavily, brokenly – that was the bad sign – then she’d sit up, take her medicine, say unrepeatable things to me! and sleep again. Face like a girl’s,’ – the man was saying what I could plainly see from here – ‘smiling, happy, in my arms, head on my cheek. Her last word – ’
And Barry was in agony trying to ease himself past Mimi – you’re too nice to be an angel, mate, I’d tell him one day – and though he finally shouldered his way to my side he couldn’t stop me hearing — 4 – was when I asked – How do you feel?’
‘You lads!’ Barry cried as he reached us, you renegades you!’
‘Beautiful,’ said Robert, turning away.
*
Term-time, autumn-time, Michaelmas, fall, term. . . things that sound absurd make perfect sense near the end of term.
What made little sense in October, in a meadow, when Father Hopkins had said it of the Northern Lights, did seem to make some now, so much so that it came back to me and I told it to my friend big Barry Wilby, as the wine-dark staggering last of us watched the Brownings’ carriage, lit by lanterns, clip-clopping away northward from our still white wonderland:
A strain of time not reckoned by our days and years, Barry. But simpler, correcting the preoccupation of the world.
And ‘That’s as may be,’ he answered with a sigh, one arm round Mimi Bevan and the other arm round me.
* * *
Week Twelve – December 12th
So, we’ll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the so
ul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.
*
I sit up and it’s late.
There’s a moon on dark blue heaven, hence the music, lonely music, I’m wide, wide awake in the sky. . .
*
I sit up and the moon has moved. I’m going to start my packing. No I’ve done my packing, I must have done it last thing last night, I even zipped the suitcase, and look an empty gesturing shirt and moonlit jeans are draped on top of it, new clothes for my victim chalked on the floor, or my self before I’m there? they do know I’ll be back, they’re saying, I turn, I’ve time, I’ve time to turn, rejoin them in the dream. . .
*
I sit up and it’s early.
Night has gone and it’s morning, time lost, time still to lose, clouds in motion over the blue, the helpless brightness rising and falling. There’s the daylight moon look, faint, somehow you wandered over there. . .
O you, the moon, the reader, you’re gone, you’re there, you’re unlit, lit, what are you to this world? The loved one by the bedside as on drags my coma? The spotlight being adjusted for eleventh-hour surgery? Porthole, portal, eye? The beaming, mourning star of the next of kin? I won’t hear you if you judge me, but I’ll love by your light.
As I reach the slanting windows, encumbered beast in my tartan blankets, I see still snow upon the village. Between the nearest lamps on my lane are some tattered chains of lights, a couple of Christmas trees flash weakly at bedroom windows, all-of-them, some-of-them, these-ones, those-ones, tinsel flutters from a porch. People walking on that distant inch of lane I see, too distant to know whom, I realize at last it’s that little cobbled short-cut to the village green, it leads there from the Coach House. I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. I open the window wide to the precious cold, and off towards the heart of town can hear a brass band playing carols. Soon an amateurish choir joins in, and I wedge the window open.
