The French Lieutenant's Woman (42 page)

There pressed on Charles
more than the common human instinct to preserve personal identity;
there lay behind him all those years of thought, speculation,
self-knowledge. His whole past, the best of his past self, seemed the
price he was asked to pay; he could not believe that all he had
wanted to be was worthless, however much he might have failed to
match reality to the dream. He had pursued the meaning of life, more
than that, he believed--poor clown--that at times he had glimpsed it.
Was it his fault that he lacked the talent to communicate those
glimpses to other men? That to an outside observer he seemed a
dilettante, a hopeless amateur? At least he had gamed the knowledge
that the meaning of life was not to be found in Freeman's store.

But underlying all, at
least in Charles, was the doctrine of the survival of the fittest,
and most especially an aspect of it he had discussed--and it had been
a discussion bathed in optimism--with Grogan that night in Lyme: that
a human being cannot but see his power of self-analysis as a very
special privilege in the struggle to adapt. Both men had seen proof
there that man's free will was not in danger. If one had to change to
survive--as even the Freemans conceded--then at least one was granted
a choice of methods. So much for the theory--the practice, it now
flooded in on Charles, was something other.

He was trapped. He could
not be, but he was.

He stood for a moment
against the vast pressures of his age; then felt cold, chilled to his
innermost marrow by an icy rage against Mr. Freeman and Freemanism.

He raised his stick to a
passing hansom. Inside he sank back into the musty leather seat and
closed his eyes; and in his mind there appeared a consoling image.
Hope? Courage? Determination? I am afraid not.

He saw a bowl of milk
punch and a pint of champagne.
 

39

Now, what if I
am a prostitute, what business has society to abuse me? Have I
received any favors at the hands of society? If I am a hideous cancer
in society, are not the causes of the disease to be sought in the
rottenness of the carcass? Am I not its legitimate child; no bastard,
Sir?
--
From
a letter in The Times (February 24th, 1858) *
[*
The substance of this famous and massively sarcastic letter,
allegedly written by a successful prostitute, but more probably by
someone like Henry Mayhew, may be read in Human Documents of the
Victorian Golden Age.]

Milk punch and champagne
may not seem a very profound philosophical conclusion to such
soul-searching; but they had been perennially prescribed at Cambridge
as a solution to all known problems, and though Charles had learned a
good deal more about the problems since leaving the university he had
not bettered the solution. Fortunately his club, like so many English
gentlemen's clubs, was founded on the very simple and profitable
presumption that a man's student days are his best. It had all the
amenities of a rich college without any of its superfluous
irritations (such as dons, deans and examinations). It pandered, in
short, to the adolescent in man. It also provided excellent milk
punch. It so happened that the first two fellow members Charles set
eyes on when he entered the smoking room had also been his fellow
students; one was the younger son of a bishop and a famous disgrace
to his father. The other was what Charles had until recently expected
to be: a baronet. Born with a large lump of Northumberland in his
pocket, Sir Thomas Burgh had proved far too firm a rock for history
to move. The immemorial pursuits of his ancestors had been hunting,
shooting, drinking and whoring; and he still pursued them with a
proper sense of tradition. He had in fact been a leader of the fast
set into which Charles had drifted during his time at Cambridge. His
escapades, of both the Mytton and the Casanova kind, were notorious.
There had been several moves to get him ejected from the club; but
since he provided its coal from one of his mines, and at a rate that
virtually made a present of it, wiser counsels always prevailed.
Besides, there was something honest about his manner of life. He
sinned without shame, but also without hypocrisy. He was generous to
a fault; half the younger members of the club had at one time or
another been in his debt--and his loans were a gentleman's loans,
indefinitely prolongable and without interest. He was always the
first to start a book when there was something to bet on; and in a
way he reminded all but the most irredeemably sober members of their
less sober days. He was stocky, short, perpetually flushed by wine
and weather; and his eyes had that splendid innocence, that opaque
blue candor of the satanically fallen. These eyes crinkled when they
saw Charles enter.

"Charley! Now what
the devil are you doing out of the matrimonial lock up?"

Charles smiled, not
without a certain sense of wan foolishness. "Good evening, Tom.
Nathaniel, how are you?" Eternal cigar in mouth, the thorn in
the unlucky bishop's side raised a languid hand. Charles turned back
to the baronet. "On parole, you know. The dear girl's down in
Dorset taking the waters."

Tom winked. "While
you take spirit--and spirits, eh? But I hear she's the rose of the
season. Nat says. He's green, y'know. Demmed Charley, he says. Best
girl and best match-- ain't fair, is it, Nat?" The bishop's son
was notoriously short of money and Charles guessed it was not
Ernestina's looks he was envied. Nine times out of ten he would at
this point have moved on to the newspapers or joined some less
iniquitous acquaintance. But today he stayed where he was. Would they
"discuss" a punch and bubbly? They would. And so he sat
with them.

"And how's the
esteemed uncle, Charles?" Sir Tom winked again, but in a way so
endemic to his nature that it was impossible to take offense. Charles
murmured that he was in the best of health.

"How goes he for
hounds? Ask him if he needs a brace of the best Northumberland. Real
angels, though I says it wot bred 'em. Tornado--you recall Tornado?
His grandpups." Tornado had spent a clandestine term in Sir
Tom's rooms one summer at Cambridge.

"I recall him. So
do my ankles."

Sir Tom grinned broadly.
"Aye, he took a fancy to you. Always bit what he loved. Dear old
Tornado--God rest his soul." And he downed his tumbler of punch
with a sadness that made his two companions laugh. Which was cruel,
since the sadness was perfectly genuine.

In such talk did two
hours pass--and two more bottles of champagne, and another bowl of
punch, and sundry chops and kidneys (the three gentlemen moved on to
the dining room) which required a copious washing-down of claret,
which in turn needed purging by a decanter or two of port.

Sir Tom and the bishop's
son were professional drinkers and took more than Charles. Outwardly
they seemed by the end of the second decanter more drunk than he. But
in fact his facade was sobriety, while theirs was drunkenness,
exactly the reverse of the true comparative state, as became clear
when they wandered out of the dining room for what Sir Tom called
vaguely "a little drive round town." Charles was the one
who was unsteady on his feet. He was not too far gone not to feel
embarrassed; somehow he saw Mr. Freeman's gray assessing eyes on him,
though no one as closely connected with trade as Mr. Freeman would
ever have been
allowed
in that club.

He was helped into his
cape and handed his hat, gloves, and cane; and then he found himself
in the keen outside air--the promised fog had not materialized,
though the mist remained--staring with an intense concentration at
the coat of arms on the door of Sir Tom's town brougham. Winsyatt
meanly stabbed him again, but then the coat of arms swayed towards
him. His arms were taken, and a moment later he found himself sitting
beside Sir Tom and facing the bishop's son. He was not too drunk to
note an exchanged wink between his two friends; but too drunk to ask
what it meant. He told himself he did not care. He was glad he was
drunk, that everything swam a little, that everything past and to
come was profoundly unimportant. He had a great desire to tell them
both about Mrs. Bella Tomkins and Winsyatt; but he was not drunk
enough for that, either. A gentleman remains a gentleman, even in his
cups. He turned to Tom.

"Tom ... Tom, dear
old fellow, you're a damn' lucky fellow."

"So are you, my
Charley boy. We're all damn lucky fellows."

"Where we going?"

"Where damn lucky
fellows always go of a jolly night. Eh, Nat, ain't that so?"

There was a silence
then, as Charles tried dimly to make out in which direction they were
heading. This time he did not see the second wink exchanged. The key
words in Sir Tom's last sentence slowly registered. He turned
solemnly.

"Jolly night?"

"We're going to old
Ma Terpsichore's, Charles. Worship at the muses' shrine, don't
y'know?"

Charles stared at the
smiling face of the bishop's son.

"Shrine?"

"So to speak,
Charles."

"Metonymia. Venus
for puella," put in the bishop's son.

Charles stared at them,
then abruptly smiled. "Excellent idea." But then he resumed
his rather solemn stare out of the window. He felt he ought to stop
the carriage and say good night to them. He remembered, in a brief
flash of proportion, what their reputation was. Then there came out
of nowhere Sarah's face; that face with its closed eyes tended to
his, the kiss ... so much fuss about nothing. He saw what all his
troubles were caused by: he needed a woman, he needed intercourse. He
needed a last debauch, as he sometimes needed a purge. He looked
round at Sir Tom and the bishop's son. The first was sprawled back in
his corner, the second had put his legs up across his seat. The top
hats of both were cocked at flyly dissolute angles. This time the
wink went among all three.

Soon they were in the
press of carriages heading for that area of Victorian London we have
rather mysteriously--since it was central in more ways than
one--dropped from our picture of the age: an area of casinos (meeting
places rather than gaming rooms), assembly cafes, cigar "divans"
in its more public parts (the Haymarket and Regent Street) and very
nearly unrelieved brothel in all the adjoining back streets. They
passed the famous Oyster Shop in the Haymarket ("Lobsters,
Oysters, Pickled and Kippered Salmon") and the no less
celebrated Royal Albert Potato Can, run by the Khan, khan indeed of
the baked-potato sellers of London, behind a great scarlet-and-brass
stand that dominated and proclaimed the vista. They passed (and the
bishop's son took his lorgnette out of its shagreen case) the crowded
daughters of folly, the great whores in their carriages, the lesser
ones in their sidewalk droves ... from
demure
little milky-faced millinery girls to brandy-cheeked viragoes. A
torrent of color --of fashion, for here unimaginable things were
allowed. Women dressed as Parisian bargees, in bowler and trousers,
as sailors, as señoritas, as Sicilian peasant girls; as if the
entire casts of the countless neighboring penny-gaffs had poured out
into the street. Far duller the customers--the numerically equal male
sex, who, stick in hand and "weed" in mouth, eyed the
evening's talent. And Charles, though he wished he had not drunk so
much, and so had to see everything twice over, found it delicious,
gay, animated, and above all, unFreemanish.

Terpsichore, I suspect,
would hardly have bestowed her patronage on the audience of whom our
three in some ten minutes formed part; for they were not alone. Some
six or seven other young men, and a couple of old ones, one of whom
Charles recognized as a pillar of the House of Lords, sat in the
large salon, appointed in the best Parisian taste, and reached
through a narrow and noisome alley off a street some little way from
the top of the Haymarket. At one end of the chandeliered room was a
small stage hidden by deep red curtains, on which were embroidered in
gold two pairs of satyrs and nymphs. One showed himself eminently in
a state to take possession of his shepherdess; and the other had
already been received. In black letters on a gilt cartouche above the
curtains was written Carmina Priapea XLIV: Velle quid hanc dicas,
quamvis sim ligneus, hastam, oscula dat medio si qua puella mihi?
augure non opus est:
"in me," mihi credite, dixit, "utetur veris viribus
hasta rudis."*
[*It
is the god Priapus who speaks: small wooden images of him with erect
phallus, both to frighten away thieves and bring fertility, were
common features of the Roman orchard. "You'd like to know why
the girl kisses this spear of mine, even though I'm made of wood? You
don't need to be clairvoyant to work that one out. 'Let's hope,'
she's thinking, 'that men will use this spear on me--and brutally.'"]

The copulatory theme was
repeated in various folio prints in gilt frames that hung between the
curtained windows. Already a loose-haired girl in Camargo petticoats
was serving the waiting gentlemen with Roederer's champagne. In the
background a much rouged but more seemingly dressed lady of some
fifty years of age cast a quiet eye over her clientèle. In spite of
her very different profession she had very much the mind of Mrs.
Endicott down in Exeter, albeit her assessments were made in guineas
rather than
shillings.