A Maggot - John Fowles (23 page)

I asked then if subsequent upon this first visit his
Lordship had spoken to Lord B. of her, and in what terms. He said
that he had, and that very next day, and seemed much pleased; and to
Lord B.'s recollection said that were he seeking a wench for his
private use and satisfaction, yet with whom he need form no closer
attachment, then this was such a one; that on some further occasion
Lord B. had of speaking with his Lordship, to his best memory some
six or seven days later, his Lordship now broached the matter of
bribing the woman away from Claiborne's to amuse him during his stay
in Paris, and how it might be managed, and at what cost, et coetera;
that he (Lord B.) had declared he thought it could be done, but his
Lordship must not delay his departure for France, as Claiborne might
cry scandal and make trouble if she knew her whore still in London.

Furthermore that (it might be three or four days
later still) his Lordship had called on Lord B. and told him a
difficulty lay with the whore, who was not unwilling to suit, but
greatly feared her mistress's anger if she were discovered, which
fear neither the money his Lordship offered to procure her running
away nor assurances of his protection would stifle; that Claiborne
kept too close a watch and was notorious cruel on any that dared quit
her service in such manner, and in fine that if his Lordship could
hire her away, openly with Claiborne, upon a pretext (some other than
to accompany him to France, which she would never allow), she would
come, but otherwise feared it was more than her life was worth to
accede to his Lordship's wishes.

Lord B. said he thereupon advised his Lordship, if
his mind was set on having her, to proceed as the girl advised,
though it might seem the more expensive way; because that there lay
some justice behind her fear for herself, since it is common
knowledge no pandaress may afford to let one of her whores escape
unpunished, lest the others should follow her example; and that the
arrangement had this to be said for it that if, the time elapsed, his
Lordship had grown tired of the wench, then he had but to send her
back, and no one the wiser as to what was first intended.

Upon my closer questioning Lord B. admitted that he
had helped devise the pretext his lordship employed to deceive
Claiborne, and had done as the creature accuses as to the
substantiation of it, when called upon; but considered it no sin to
practise upon such as she, who live by evil practice.

I am confident Your Grace knows sufficient of Lord
B.'s character to know what worth to set upon his unsworn evidence,
but will permit me to add that I took no suspicion in our interview
of matters being hid, tho' it is sadly plain the noble lord played no
noble part in all that transpired.

I thought finally to ask Lord B. whether his Lordship
had declared his private feelings to him, as regards the severity,
eminently just and merited though it was, that he had provoked in his
most noble father. I pray Yr Grace will remember, in what 1 repeat of
what Lord B. replied, that it was his command that 1 should attempt
to ascertain this. Lord B. said that though he had heard, before they
met anew, that his Lordship was most angry with his parent, he was at
first surprised to find him seemingly the rather resigned to his fate
than determined not to submit to it. Yet that on a later and more
intimate occasion his Lordship stated that he did not believe himself
Yr Grace's son, for he could not countenance such a person as his
father; and did say he would rather lose the strawberry leaves than
believe Yr Grace was so. Lord B. said he then made use of other most
opprobrious epithets, the more so for being uttered not when he was
inebriated or in a rage, but in his apparent senses, and most icy
cold in manner, as if Yr Grace were some Turkish bashaw or other
Oriental despot into whose cruel hands he had fallen. Lord B. said
further that he did conclude his Lordship's new will to play the rake
might be placed upon this malevolent resentment in him for so sacred
a figure as a father should be; but added in some small extenuation
of his Lordship that these things were said to him alone (on an
occasion when they strolled apart together in the Mall) and he never
heard his Lordship to express himself thus in more public company;
and in extenuation of himself that he had suggested to his Lordship
(as Yr Grace will know, Lord B. was on ill terms with his own father,
before that noble gentleman's late decease) that in his experience it
was best to stifle one's resentments and to leave time as arbiter,
that must in the nature of things be upon a son's side; and that
after all, Heaven agreeing, his Lordship and he should one day
themselves be fathers also. To that his Lordship appeared to
acquiesce, and no more was said on the matter.

I am asked to convey to Yr Grace Lord B.'s
profoundest regrets that matters have taken this unforeseen turn and
his assurances that he remains as ignorant as Yr Grace's self as to
his Lordship's real intentions and present whereabouts; and
respectfully to suggest to Yr Grace that bearing in mind the
notorious risk of infection from French whores and seeing that his
Lordship's mind seemed fixed on its course of pleasure, he could not
advise against what he was led (falsely) to believe were his plans,
but on the contrary saw good reasons for seconding them; that he had
given his Lordship his word that he would keep the matter entirely
secret and also that he would find means to silence Claiborne's
resentment if need arose, which he has done and will continue to do;
and finally begs to insist that if he can be of any further
assistance to Yr Grace in the affair, Your Grace will not hesitate to
call upon him.

Yr Grace's ever most humble and obedient servant,

Henry Ayscough

* * *

Lincoln's Inn, The 8th of September

Your Grace

I write late and in great haste, so as not to delay
the news my clerk Tudor has this minute brought. Jones is found, with
an ease I had scarce hoped, and brought to London. They arrived but
two hours since, and he is safe lodged. I shall begin upon the rogue
tomorrow morning.

He was found by the greatest fortune at Cardiff, as
they passed for Swansea; for my man says Jones was drinking in the
very inn where they chanced to lodge; and that they might most easily
not have remarked him, had not another spake his name, that they
heard; and then watched close and listened, and so knew their good
fortune. At first he would deny, but my clerk soon had him well
sifted; then would run off, but to no avail; then cried he was false
arrested, but changed his tune most swiftly when he was offered by my
clerk to be brought before the justices of Cardiff to plead his
innocence. They have since kept silence with him, nor let him speak
as he would, and my man says he is much dejected and alarmed-in his
words, well hung for the roasting, the which Yr Grace will believe me
he shall have.

Yr Grace will, I pray, permit me at this present not
to re, mark upon the justly outraged paternal sentiments he deigned
to vouchsafe in his last letter. I am persuaded he knows that they
are most respectfully shared. Like Yr Grace, I am confounded in all
my understandings and expectations, as regards his L'dship. Quantum
mutatus ab itlo! Nothing shall be undone that may cast light upon
this most unhappy affair.

Yr Grace's most humble and diligent servant,

Henry Ayscough

I adjoin a copy of the letter that I have received of
Mr Saunderson of Cambridge, that Yr Grace may see how his younger
son's talents was esteemed by academy. Of Mr Whiston Yr Grace knows,
d doubt not; he is quarrelsome dissenter and dangerousmouthed,
ter-veneficus that did lose him the position at Cambridge that Mr
Saunderson now fills, these twenty-five years past; and is grown more
poisonous violent and turbulent since, for I hear now he waits upon
that gentleman's decease, that he may once more put forward and take
again the place he so deservedly was ejected from. H.A.

the 8 of her, Christ's College, Cambridge.

Sir,

I am in sad receipt of your letter of the 27 August,
to which I hasten to reply, albeit deficiency doth oblige me to
dictate to an amanuensis. I fear, sir, I can be of no assistance in
the most pressing of what you request. I have not had the pleasure of
meeting his Lordship in these two years past; I had last that
pleasure at the time of the election, that is, in the April Of '34.
His Lordship then did me the honour of visiting me here, when he was
in this town. Some letters we have exchanged since that meeting; all
have been confined to matters mathematick and algebraical. The last
such I received was of the 24th March last, that wished me well of
the coming year, and did announce that his Lordship intended soon to
be in town, and designed a summer tour to France and Italy; yet hoped
before he left, when the weather was more clement, that he might make
an excursion to Cambridge to call upon me, for he sought my advice on
whom he might visit during his tour. Alas, since then I have had no
further letter nor other news of him, and had presumed him gone. I am
as perplexed as I am dismayed by this news of a disappearance. The
letter of March contained naught, beyond the above-mentioned, of more
personal import.

Of his Lordship I may most sincerely state that I
have had few pupils to equal him, and none to surpass. You may know,
sir, that I am fourth Lucasian professor at this university, and have
been so since the year 1711; and thus in commending him so highly I
lack not grounds for comparison. Did not his rank preclude him, I
consider his talents such as would have most usefully adorned this
University; I cannot say the like of many others, far his inferior,
that have been elected fellows this last twenty years.

I am alas the more accustomed, with young gentlemen
of his rank, to find that whatever interest and assiduity in study
they may show when here is swift to disappear when they go out upon
the world. It has not been so with his Lordship; he has most
pertinaciously continued his studies in the mathematick science and
in all to which it pertains. I have found him always well read, and a
most excellent practiser. For this it is not only I who vouch; this
has been also the opinion of my eminent predecessor, Mr Whiston,
whose religious views one may deplore, but not his mathematick
ability, and of a far greater still, my most illuminate
ante-predecessor in cathedra Lucasiana, Sir Isaac Newton. To the
attention of both have I-more than once brought propositions or
solutions advanced by his Lordship; and though they did, before Sir
Isaac's lamented death, fall out with each other, in this they
concurred: that here was a young philosopher worthy their attention.

I would not bore you, sir, yet I may add that I have
myself these several years been engaged upon a method by board for
the easier computation of great numbers; that in this design I have
several times discussed with his Lordship the problems of method that
I have encountered; and that I have found him by no means the least
skilled in assisting me to surmount them. His talents here are not
common ones; for the common mind in such matters will attempt to
solve by small refinement and improvement of the proposed method;
whereas his Lordship did proceed by the most close examination of the
principles of the method; and more than once he hath hit upon a
better and more advantageous one. I count myself fortunate to have
had such a noble coadjutor.

If I am to find fault in him, it is that he was
sometimes seized by beliefs or theories of this physical world that I
must term more phantasies than probable or experimental truths. The
one that you require me to explain is such; in my view. The series of
numbers to which you allude appears first in the Liber Abaci of one
Leonardo da Pisa, a learned Italian. He did devise it, but, upon his
own admission, for no more than to calculate the multiplication of
conies in a warren. Yet his Lordship would find this rate of
proportion (which doth stay the same however superfetatiously its
parts be increased) everywhere in nature besides, indeed even
discernible in the motions of the planets and the arrangement of
stars in the heavens; and saw it likewise in all plants, in the
disposition of their leaves, for which ordering he would make a name,
that is, from the Greek, phyllotaxis. And he did believe also that
this same most elementary sequence might be traced in the history of
this world, both past and to come; and thus that were it fully
understood, the chronology of the future might be mathematically
prophesied as well that of the past explained.

There, sir, I believe he put far too much upon some
trifling coincidences in the base phenomena of physical nature; and
must believe also that in this he did suffer, though through no fault
of his own, from his aristocratic place in society, viz., that he
lacked the daily commerce of a world of common learning and
discussion upon it; and thus suffered from what may be called a
dementia in exsilio, if you will forgive me. Or as it is said here,
In delitescentia non est scientia, those who lie hidden, or live far,
from knowledge, may never fully have it.

Now, sir, in matters of my science I am accustomed to
speak my mind; and when his Lordship did first put his notions on
this matter before me, I was somewhat strict upon them, and found
them ill-grounded. This happened some five years ago, and did at the
first occasion a coldness between his Lordship and myself, that I did
venture to criticize many of the too extravagant deductions he would
make upon his premisses. Yet am I happy to say we have made truce
since then, upon terms proposed by his Lordship himself: that he
valued his relation with me far too highly to lose it for a dispute
over a matter that he conceded he could not prove (this was in
allusion to his chimerical notion that a chronology of the future
might be established from the aforesaid sequence). He proposed then
that we should, as amici amicitiae (so he put it), ban this bone of
contention from our conversation. And so since has it been, sir; and
I had believed it no longer his study, for he has been good to his
word in all our subsequent meetings and in all correspondence.