Imposture, p.9
Imposture, page 9
For once he kept his word and refusing any breakfast himself, hurried Polly and Gordon hungrily out of bed for his sake. B not unkindly explained that he couldn’t bear any longer the rude, titillated stares of his countrymen; and he hoped to escape their prying eyes by stealing a march on them during the feeding hour. ‘The English tourist,’ he quipped, ‘also marches on his stomach.’ Bad jokes were with him always a sign of high spirits. Only Polidori minded; afterwards he blamed the rumblings of his own stomach, and his sleepless head, for feeling so dull, for the long wide absence of inspiration, the waste of the day. Byron, of course, proceeded to make himself as conspicuous as possible, pulled a dark cloak about his ears, muttered audibly to himself; till even the farmers who hadn’t a notion who he was, stopped their horses in harness, and stared.
They reached the Plain of Waterloo at morning twilight; cold narrow lanes of ascending sunshine stretched over the broken fields and broadened into daylight. Spring had returned; spring left no sign of anything but spring. Favourable rains promised a heavy harvest; their horses struggled in the deepening soil. Already the corn, morning-wet, reached to their stirrups. B dismounted, looking for bones, for rusted sabres. Gordon, in hushed tones, confided to Polly (he had instantly adopted the name), ‘That he had never seen his Lordship so pensive and silent, in such a musing mood’. He explained that Byron’s cousin had died at Waterloo, a soldier named Frederic Howard. It upset Byron particularly, as he had once insulted the young man’s father, Lord Carlisle – ‘out of sheer vanity, which made it worse’ – with the quick, sharp tongue of youth. B never regretted anything as much as his own vanity; but his contrition, his sense of wrong-doing, was just as sensitive as his pride. ‘An extraordinary man,’ Gordon concluded; ‘wonderful, how deeply he feels.’ Gordon, as Polidori guessed, was a very good-natured fool: blessed by wealth and mediocrity, and an easy disposition, which saw no reason to alter either of his natural states. Polly dismounted, too; and kicked the ground. He began looking for bones himself, and feverishly beating his brain for rhymes, for feelings. It seemed only an ordinary plain, a spring day; there was nothing to be said, or felt.
By noon, the fields were dotted with curious visitors. Peasants appeared, ambling from party to party, offering, in a rolled up cloth, various broken blades, rusted and earthy; horseshoes, patches of tunic. Byron, high-spirited, had found his tongue; something had shifted within him, aligned his temper. His fresh colour suggested seaside nourishment, briny inhalations. In a benevolent vein, he bought a helmet for too much money; whispered to Polidori, knowingly, that he had seen a farmer run his plough over it earlier in the morning, to lend it verisimilitude. This is what he loved above all, the false authentic – seeing through it, delighting in it, nonetheless. Polidori, revolving verses on his tongue, hardly said a word all day. B had discovered a fox skull stuck in a clump of mud. He carefully brushed away the earth with a handkerchief, till the fragile jaw appeared, parchment-thin, the colour of tobacco stains. He kept looking out for Englishmen. Whenever any approached, he lifted the skull to his eyes and began declaiming, in booming melancholy tones:
Start not – nor deem my spirit fled;
In me behold the only skull,
From which, unlike a living head,
Whatever flows is never dull.
So childish, and absurd; Polly couldn’t help but warm to him. They mounted their horses again and galloped fiercely across the fields, chanting Turkish war-songs together. Polly consoled himself, there hadn’t been the occasion for inspiration; it was rather a holiday from grandeur.
Byron went to bed early and rose late. A wide crust of tallow lay dried against his bedside table when Polidori retired at last. He had been drinking with Pryse Gordon. The next day, after dinner, Gordon took Polidori aside. The horses were being saddled; the coach had been repaired; Byron was eager to carry on. They could hear him from the dining room, instructing the servants, directing the boxes, till all fit snug. He liked playing the general; he suffered from what Polidori wryly characterized as ‘intermittent gusts of practicality, the conviction that he alone could lead them forward’. Pryse ignored the doctor’s attempt to draw him into a criticism of the poet. He carried his wife’s album under his arm, and carefully opened it to the latest page. Byron had copied in a fair hand the following lines:
There have been tears and breaking hearts for
thee,
And mine were nothing had I such to give;
But when I stood beneath the fresh green tree,
Which living waves where thou didst cease to live,
And saw around me the wide field revive
With fruits and fertile promise, and the Spring
Came forth her work of gladness to contrive,
With all her reckless birds upon the wing,
I turn’d from all she brought to those she could
not bring.
Polidori had a sudden image of the fox skull; Byron, with his thumb on the joint, tenderly manipulating its jaw. It might have been an image of Polidori himself. Out of his own head only dullness flowed. It was as if he were hardly alive, as if he lacked the sense to perceive life, as if nothing that mattered, no feelings of significance, not even lamentation, could touch him. He was untouchable. What difference between them, in their clay, in their spiritual soil, produced on the one hand such a harvest, and in his own heart, only dust? The force of impossible comparisons. Gordon took him lightly by the elbow, and said, companionably moved, ‘Sweet sentiments, are they not?’ Polidori had been weeping. He replied bitterly, ‘I believe his lordship hardly knew the young man; much less liked him.’
Small wonder he hadn’t spent his observations on Lord B. He needed to breathe! after all; he needed to make a space for himself. His journals had been a steady source of consolation. In them, he insisted on precedence. Shortly after, Polidori began to feel a physical constriction: a tightness in his temples, spots of blindness, wretched nausea. He was hardly well enough to travel; the worst of it was, the patience and forbearance he inspired in Lord B. On top of everything else, to suffer his kindness! Later, on one of their interminable coach journeys, Byron confessed to Polidori that he wrote that little memorial ‘as much out of guilt as any sweeter sympathy’. The young man, who, ‘to do him justice, died gallantly’, was a kind of cousin to him and every kind of fool. His lordship had once, by a tremendous effort of will, resisted making love to his wife. Or had almost resisted, it hardly mattered; in any case, all Byron could remember was the effort. ‘False grief, then?’ Polidori, stung by a curious jealousy, wanted Byron to acknowledge his hypocrisy. But the poet seemed hardly to have heard him. ‘It is my curse,’ he said, looking out at the tidy cheerfulness of Flemish fields, ‘that whatever I love dies young.’ No, no, no, no, Polidori wanted to shout; you did not love him, you did not suffer for his death. He almost shouted it now, in the gloom of the public house: no, no, no, no. You did not suffer; I suffered, I suffered more.
Colburn returned to find both glasses of porter untouched on the table. ‘I’m looking forward to this evening,’ the publisher said. ‘I’m glad I ran into that fellow; Harding, by name. An actor. He gave me an appetite for the performance tonight. A bit of gossip. I’ll tell you on the way.’ Polly hadn’t stirred; Colburn stared at him. ‘Drink up,’ he said.
They decided to walk from Audley Street. It was a fine spring night, just cold enough, as Colburn said, ‘to make the stars look sharp’. Polidori attempted to interest him in his sequel to The Vampyre, ‘a . . . a kind of comic inversion, to be called The Physician: the tale of a living man who feeds off the dead.’ But he was tired of petitioning on his own behalf; he was tired of most kinds of dressing up. Playing the eager author seemed the worst disguise of all. Colburn nodded absently. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said, ‘very interesting. It all depends, of course, on how you carry it off. A tricky business, I suspect.’ In the middle of Piccadilly he took the young doctor by the arm. ‘I’ll strike a deal with you, John. Start from scratch. Put Byron this time where he belongs: at the heart of it. What he looked like, said; the girls he took to bed. Whatever you can’t recall, don’t be shy of inventing. Show me what you’ve got in a month; I’ll cast my eye on it. If I like what I see, there’s a hundred pounds on the spot, and four hundred to come. Don’t beat your brains over it; we don’t want anything clever. Simply remember who your hero is, and you won’t go wrong.’
Polly said he would attempt it; he would do his best. ‘Good man.’
Approaching the theatre, they began to fight the traffic in the streets: women of the lowest class, respectable tradesmen, a few drunk soldiers spoiling for a fight. Colburn, a bull of a man, led with his shoulder, and Polidori followed gratefully in his wake. A handful of gallants were beating a path for the ladies. Polly overheard one of them boasting, ‘These pit-boys instinctively respect the force of a gentleman’, but the voice, and the people behind him, were lost in the throng. Some men had climbed up to the first-floor balconies on either side of Bridges Street; they now passed a rope between them, and then slipped the hook of a lit lantern along the rope. ‘There’ll be trouble soon,’ Colburn said. ‘People want entertaining, and they can’t afford it.’ The men began to swing the rope back and forth over the heads of the crowds. A picturesque effect: the loop of light trailed shuddering black smoke and briefly illuminated, here or there, a dirty face fevered in the glow. Someone started a song, which was generally taken up, in great, if rather violent, good humour. Polidori felt the heat of the lantern hurrying by his ear and struggled to make out the words:
We’ve burned it down before
And we’ll burn it down again
The cheapest show at the Theatre Royal
Is a fire in Drury Lane.
Oh, we’ve burned it down before . . .
Settled at last in their box, Colburn said to Polidori, ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Munden’s acting against Kean for the first time. I hope we can see it out to the end.’ He launched into a history of the two actors. Munden was the grand old man of English comedy; Kean, its enfant terrible. They despised each other: it was a perfect contest of age and youth. A new way to pay old debts indeed! Munden’s gentle manner against Kean’s ferocity. Colburn’s friend at The Nose Bag had witnessed Munden rehearsing. The old pro was in a perfect terror; he hardly dared set foot on stage. He had prepared, as always, meticulously, down to the last nicety of dress, of manner, of speech. But Kean had such natural force, it couldn’t be countered by style at all, it was the death of style.
Polidori looked around briefly for Eliza Esmond; recognized her at last by her long throat, bound by a line of red velvet. For an instant, he considered her in the fine sympathy of indifference. She sat a little aside from her party. A few feet away, some old dame (Lady Walmsley, he supposed) rested a flirtatious hand on the shoulder of a slender upright man in a large-buttoned coat. Polly admired the cold white beauty of Mrs Webster; her face, at that distance, had something of Byron’s look, his trembling hauteur. He remembered the pains the poet took over his appearance, the bled pallor of his countenance, which suggested nothing so much as the exhaustion produced by vanity, by the perfect stillness it required. He imagined first the lady, then his lordship, undressing in the cool silver lake of a mirror: their spell-bound self-regard.
The cream of Eliza’s frock did not suit her brown complexion. She had the touching appearance of a wild child prisoned in formal clothes, playing grown-up. Poor thing. Her shoulders so high and narrow, she seemed, like a fractious girl, to be held up from above by two hands under her arms. Why had he come? simply to tease her? Because he hoped to make love to her, and relieve, for a moment, the squalor of his life by her silly misapprehension? And for the first time, he guessed another reason – he wanted to see how far he could play Byron’s hand, whether he could carry it off, whether he had it in him. She caught his eye and held it: he saw the electric shock of pleasure in her, her answered hope. And felt a jolt of it himself, transmitted along the wire of their gaze. He had never before known the pleasure of giving pleasure, and remembered one of Lord B’s confessions: ‘I am weak enough to love,’ he used to say, ‘anything on earth that appears to wish it.’ Still, he could hardly approach her there, then, amidst such company. The gap between them, which equalled almost exactly the distance between who he was and who she took him to be, seemed impassable. For the first time, he considered the consequences of being found out. A woman such as Lady Walmsley, with an interest in the girl, could hardly be expected to take his imposture quietly.
Colburn said, ‘I know that woman. Lady Walmsley. With young Hansen; I published his pamphlet on Ireland last year. They’ll expect us to call on them, no doubt. Come, I’ll introduce you. They may be able to do you a bit of good.’ He tipped his hat at the old lady, and bowed. Polidori felt suddenly the moisture between his pressed palms and began to think up excuses. He couldn’t be certain his lie wasn’t criminal, the game he was playing, however inadvertently. But perhaps these nerves, these ridiculous sweats, were only the fever of another kind of anticipation, the sour foretaste in the mouth brought on by desire. He imagined his teeth in her brown neck and softly raised a single finger to his lips. Eliza nodded, and looked down. There was something sensual, he had often felt it, in the idea of the vampyre: it had, perhaps, to do with the submission of the girl, her quiet, selfless offering of life, of blood. ‘Why don’t you marry?’ Colburn continued. ‘You’re not ill-looking. The daughter-in-law is pretty enough, I believe; and quite stupidly rich.’
Almost in spite of himself, Polidori was drawn into the action of the play. A young, dishonoured man, at the mercy of his debts, attempts to woo a rich and beautiful widow, if only to show the world that he’s in favour again. Kean played the part of Giles Overreach, a ‘cruel extortioner’, the young man’s creditor. Rubbing his hands, he asks one of his servants if the bankrupt has finally hanged himself? ‘No, sir, he lives,’ the vassal replies, ‘Lives once more to be made a prey to you, a greater prey than ever.’ Kean digs deep in his throat, crying, ‘Art thou in thy wits? If thou art, reveal this miracle, and briefly.’
‘A lady, sir,’ the man says, ‘is fallen in love with him.’
Was it so easy then? Perhaps what he needed was only the sanction of the world bestowed by marriage; a woman’s touch. When the curtain fell at intermission, Colburn said, ‘Come, I’ll introduce you.’ Polly was tempted for a minute to confess – his silly imposture, unintended. What had he come for, after all? Make an end of it, a source of laughter, momentary confusion and disappointment, soon made up. But he wasn’t yet quite willing to give up the charade; so he hung back. Polidori said, ‘If you please, I’d rather not.’ And then, with false weight, ‘I believe I’ve run into the girl in white before. Best not to mention my name.’ He guessed, rightly, that this was just the kind of hint at confession Colburn instinctively trusted; confessions, after all, inspired belief by appearing to pay for it. Colburn answered, dismissively, ‘As you like. But take my advice next time, and brazen it out. One can’t always skulk.’
Afterwards, he saw Colburn sitting down beside the powder-haired woman. The girl with the narrow throat turned her sad face towards Polidori and gave him an understanding look. It seemed almost as if they had true grounds for separation, crossed stars, unlucky fates, etc. Her expression had the tenderness of parting in it, of unwilling retreat, across the sea of bare heads below them. For the first time it occurred to him how much they might properly have in common. Both of them were touched by fantasies. He saw, as bright almost as a halo, the spell these seemed to cast around her: the circle it made was the shape of loneliness. She sat, in the midst of her party, silently staring out at him. Only when the long-necked old man touched her by the elbow did she turn away. But conversation put her in a different light. Her speaking face had an agreeable animation; her hands, too, seemed quick and lively. When she rested one briefly on her companion’s lapels, Polidori felt, to his surprise, a pang of jealousy. What an awful fool she must be, he thought to console himself. Then: what a contemptible one he knew he was.
He remembered once, after Byron had gone out riding – this on Lake Leman, where his Lordship had taken a house for the summer – quietly stealing into the master’s bedroom. Shortly after breakfast; Polidori was somewhat recovered from the journey, his terrible headaches and stretched nerves. He looked at himself in B’s mirror; tried on his master’s hat, his Albanian short-coat; postured at a graceful angle, leaning on his lordship’s sword-stick; adjusted the muscles of his face, practising more poetical expressions. The balcony windows, overlooking the water, had been left open; and the air off them, still cool with early summer, reminded him how much of the bright season still lay ahead, its long days. A long life. Thus absorbed, he did not hear Byron returning on foot. The horse had come up limping on a loose cobble, and B could never bear any cruelty to his animals. He found his young doctor, costumed in his clothes, staring at his own reflection. Polidori was too embarrassed to move or speak. Byron approached him, and stood at his side, the pair of them doubled in each other, in the mirror. ‘They become you,’ he said. Polidori quietly undressed.
