The French Lieutenant's Woman (37 page)

And then, when he had
finally come, just before eleven, and while she sat primly waiting in
the back parlor, he had had the unkindness to speak at length in the
hall to Aunt Tranter, and inaudibly, which was the worst of all. Thus
she inwardly seethed.

Perhaps not the least of
her resentments was that she had taken especial pains with her toilet
that morning, and he had not paid her any compliment on it. She wore
a rosepink "breakfast" dress with bishop sleeves--tight at
the delicate armpit, then pleating voluminously in a froth of gauze
to the constricted wrist. It set off her fragility very prettily; and
the white ribbons in her smooth hair and a delicately pervasive
fragrance of lavender water played their part. She was a sugar
Aphrodite, though with faintly bruised eyes, risen from a bed of
white linen. Charles might have found it rather easy to be cruel. But
he managed a smile and sitting beside her, took one of her hands, and
patted it.

"My dearest, I must
ask forgiveness. I am not myself. And I fear I've decided I must go
to London."

"Oh Charles!"

"I wish it weren't
so. But this new turn of events makes it imperative I see Montague at
once." Montague was the solicitor, in those days before
accountants, who looked after Charles's affairs.

"Can you not wait
till I return? It is only ten more days."

"I shall return to
bring you back."

"But cannot Mr.
Montague come here?"

"Alas no, there are
so many papers. Besides, that is not my only purpose. I must inform
your father of what has happened."

She removed her hand
from his arm.

"But what is it to
do with him?"

"My dear child, it
has everything to do with him. He has entrusted you to my care. Such
a grave alteration in my prospects--"

"But you have still
your own income!"

"Well ... of
course, yes, I shall always be comfortably off. But there are other
things. The title ..."

"I had forgotten
that. Of course. It's quite impossible that I should marry a mere
commoner." She glanced back at him with an appropriately
sarcastic firmness.

"My sweet, be
patient. These things have to be said--you bring a great sum of money
with you. Of course our private affections are the paramount
consideration. However, there is a ... well, a legal and contractual
side to matrimony which--"

"Fiddlesticks!"

"My dearest Tina
..."

"You know perfectly
well they would allow me to marry a Hottentot if I wanted."

"That may be so.
But even the most doting parents prefer to be informed--"

"How many rooms has
the Belgravia house?" "I have no idea." He hesitated,
then added, "Twenty, I daresay."

"And you mentioned
one day that you had two and a half thousand a year. To which my
dowry will bring--"

"Whether our
changed circumstances are still sufficient for comfort is not at
issue."

"Very well. Suppose
Papa tells you you cannot have my hand. What then?"

"You choose to
misunderstand. I know my duty. One cannot be too scrupulous at such a
juncture."

This exchange has taken
place without their daring to look at each other's faces. She dropped
her head, in a very plain and mutinous disagreement. He rose and
stood behind her.

"It is no more than
a formality. But such formalities matter."

She stared obstinately
down.

"I am weary of
Lyme. I see you less here than in town."

He smiled. "That is
absurd."

"It seems less."

A sullen little line had
set about her mouth. She would not be mollified. He went and stood in
front of the fireplace, his arm on the mantelpiece, smiling down at
her; but it was a smile without humor, a mask. He did not like her
when she was willful; it contrasted too strongly with her elaborate
clothes, all designed to show a total inadequacy outside the domestic
interior. The thin end of the sensible clothes wedge had been
inserted in society by the disgraceful Mrs. Bloomer a decade and a
half before the year of which I write; but that early attempt at the
trouser suit had been comprehensively defeated by the crinoline--a
small fact of considerable significance in our understanding of the
Victorians. They were offered sense; and chose a six-foot folly
unparalleled in the most folly-ridden of minor arts.

However, in the silence
that followed Charles was not meditating on the idiocy of high
fashion, but on how to leave without more to-do. Fortunately for him
Tina had at the same time been reflecting on her position: it was
after all rather maidservantish (Aunt Tranter had explained why Mary
was not able to answer the waking bell) to make such a fuss about a
brief absence. Besides, male vanity lay in being obeyed; female, in
using obedience to have the ultimate victory. A time would come when
Charles should be made to pay for his cruelty. Her little smile up at
him was repentant.

"You will write
every day?"

He reached down and
touched her cheek. "I promise."

"And return as soon
as you can?"

"Just as soon as I
can expedite matters with Montague."

"I shall write to
Papa with strict orders to send you straight back."

Charles seized his
opportunity. "And I shall bear the letter, if you write it at
once. I leave in an hour." She stood then and held out her
hands. She wished to be kissed. He could not bring himself to kiss
her on the mouth. So he grasped her shoulders and lightly embraced
her on both temples. He then made to go. But for some odd reason he
stopped. Ernestina stared demurely and meekly in front of her--at his
dark blue cravat with its pearl pin. Why Charles could not get away
was not immediately apparent; in fact two hands were hooded firmly in
his lower waistcoat pockets. He understood the price of his release,
and paid it. No worlds fell, no inner roar, no darkness shrouded eyes
and ears, as he stood pressing his lips upon hers for several
seconds. But Ernestina was very prettily dressed; a vision, perhaps
more a tactile impression, of a tender little white body entered
Charles's mind. Her head turned against his shoulder, she nestled
against him; and as he patted and stroked and murmured a few foolish
words, he found himself most suddenly embarrassed. There was a
distinct stir in his loins. There had always been Ernestina's humor,
her odd little piques and whims of emotion, a promise of certain
buried wildnesses ... a willingness to learn perversity, one day to
bite timidly but deliciously on forbidden fruit. What Charles
unconsciously felt was perhaps no more than the ageless attraction of
shallow-minded women: that one may make of them what one wants. What
he felt consciously was a sense of pollution: to feel carnal desire
now, when he had touched another woman's lips that morning!

He kissed Ernestina
rather hastily on the crown of her head, gently disengaged her
ringers from their holds, kissed them in turn, then left.

He still had an ordeal,
since Mary was standing by the door with his hat and gloves. Her eyes
were down, but her cheeks were red. He glanced back at the closed
door of the room he had left as he drew on his gloves.

"Sam has explained
the circumstances of this morning?"

"Yes, sir."

"You ...
understand?"

"Yes, sir."

He took off a glove
again and felt in his waistcoat pocket. Mary did not take a step
back, though she lowered her head still further.

"Oh sir, I doan'
want that."

But she already had it.
A moment later she had closed the door on Charles. Very slowly she
opened her small--and I'm afraid, rather red--hand and stared at the
small golden coin in its palm. Then she put it between her white
teeth and bit it, as she had always seen her father do, to make sure
it was not brass; not that she could tell one from the other by bite,
but biting somehow proved it was gold; just as being on the
Undercliff proved it was sin.

What can an innocent
country virgin know of sin? The question requires an answer.
Meanwhile, Charles can get up to London on his own.
 

35

In you resides
my single power.
Of
sweet continuance here.
--
Hardy,
"Her Immortality"

At the
infirmary many girls of 14 years of age, and even girls of 13, up to
17 years of age, have been brought in pregnant to be confined here.
The girls have acknowledged that their ruin has taken place ... in
going or returning from their (agricultural) work. Girls and boys of
this age go five, six, or seven miles to work, walking in droves
along the roads and by-lanes. I have myself witnessed gross
indecencies between boys and girls of 14 to 16 years of age. I saw
once a young girl insulted by some five or six boys on the roadside.
Other older persons were about 20 or 30 yards off, but they took no
notice. The girl was calling out, which caused me to stop. I have
also seen boys bathing in the brooks, and girls between 13 and 19
looking on from the bank.
--
Children's
Employment Commission Report (1867)

What are we faced with
in the nineteenth century? An age where woman was sacred; and where
you could buy a thirteen-year-old girl for a few pounds--a few
shillings, if you wanted her for only an hour or two. Where more
churches were built than in the whole previous history of the
country; and where one in sixty houses in London was a brothel (the
modern ratio would be nearer one in six thousand). Where the sanctity
of marriage (and chastity before marriage) was proclaimed from every
pulpit, in every newspaper editorial and public utterance; and where
never--or hardly ever-- have so many great public figures, from the
future king down, led scandalous private lives. Where the penal
system was progressively humanized; and flagellation so rife that a
Frenchman set out quite seriously to prove that the Marquis de Sade
must have had English ancestry. Where the female body had never been
so hidden from view; and where every sculptor was judged by his
ability to carve naked women. Where there is not a single novel, play
or poem of literary distinction that ever goes beyond the sensuality
of a kiss, where Dr. Bowdler (the date of whose death, 1825, reminds
us that the Victorian ethos was in being long before the strict
threshold of the age) was widely considered a public benefactor; and
where the output of pornography has never been exceeded. Where the
excretory functions were never referred to; and where the sanitation
remained--the flushing lavatory came late in the age and remained a
luxury well up to 1900--so primitive that there can have been few
houses, and few streets, where one was not constantly reminded of
them. Where it was universally maintained that women do not have
orgasms; and yet every prostitute was taught to simulate them. Where
there was an enormous progress and liberation in every
other field of human
activity; and nothing but tyranny in the most personal and
fundamental.

At first sight the
answer seems clear--it is the business of sublimation. The Victorians
poured their libido into those other fields; as if some genie of
evolution, feeling lazy, said to himself: We need some progress, so
let us dam and divert this one great canal and see what happens.

While conceding a
partial truth to the theory of sublimation, I sometimes wonder if
this does not lead us into the error of supposing the Victorians were
not in fact highly sexed. But they were quite as highly sexed as our
own century--and, in spite of the fact that we have sex thrown at us
night and day (as the Victorians had religion), far more preoccupied
with it than we really are. They were certainly preoccupied by love,
and devoted far more of their arts to it than we do ours. Nor can
Malthus and the lack of birth-control appliances* quite account for
the fact that they bred like rabbits and worshiped fertility far more
ardently than we do. Nor does our century fall behind in the matter
of progress and liberalization; and yet we can hardly maintain that
that is because we have so much sublimated energy to spare. I have
seen the Naughty Nineties represented as a reaction to many decades
of abstinence; I believe it was merely the publication of what had
hitherto been private, and I suspect we are in reality dealing with a
human constant: the difference is a vocabulary, a degree of metaphor.

[* The first sheaths (of
sausage skin) were on sale in the late eighteenth century. Malthus,
of all people, condemned birth-control techniques as "improper,"
but agitation for their use began in the 1820s. The first approach to
a modern "sex manual" was Dr. George Drysdale's somewhat
obliquely entitled The Elements of Social Science; or Physical,
Sexual and Natural Religion, An Exposition of the true Cause and only
Cure of
the
Three Primary Evils: Poverty, Prostitution and Celibacy. It appeared
in 1854, and was widely read and translated. Here is Drysdale's
practical advice, with its telltale final parenthesis: "Impregnation
is avoided either by the withdrawal of the penis immediately before
ejaculation takes place (which is very frequently practiced by
married and unmarried men); by the use of the sheath (which is also
very frequent, but more so on the Continent than in this country); by
the introduction of a piece of sponge into the vagina . . . ; or by
the injection of tepid water into the vagina immediately after
coition. "The first of these modes is physically injurious, and
is apt to produce nervous disorder and sexual enfeeblement and
congestion . . . The second, namely the sheath, dulls the enjoyment,
and frequently produces impotence in the man and disgust in both
parties, so that it also is injurious.