Sir William (2 page)

From our vantage today, just as many years have passed since Stacton’s untimely death as he enjoyed of life. It is a moment, surely, for a reappraisal that is worthy of the size, scope and attainment of his work. I asked the American novelist, poet and translator David Slavitt – an avowed admirer of Stacton’s – how he would evaluate the legacy, and he wrote to me with the following:

Richard T. Kelly

Editor, Faber Finds

May 2014

This introduction was prepared with kind assistance from Robert Brown, archivist at Faber and Faber, from Robert Nedelkoff, who has done more than anyone to encourage a renewed appreciation of Stacton, and from David R. Slavitt. It was much aided by reference to a biographical article written about Stacton by Joy Martin, his first cousin.

I
T IS A COLD
DAY
in January, 1782. There is an echo in the air, as though the invisible had snapped its fingers; and the street musicians find their strings drawn taut, so that their fiddles sound an octave higher, with a shrill, emasculate,
castrato
sound not unlike the tone of a glass harmonica. London is white. There is a foundation of dirty snow, reticulated by sleet, upon which stands a burned-out edifice of trees. The sky, a half-formed cataract, shows here and there the blind blue of vision, hardened and rimed over. In Covent Garden the horses blow steam over the vegetables. Down near Blackfriars Bridge, the shores of the Thames are a similitude of asbestos and isinglass, cracked to the edges of water which looks a glossy black.

In Portman Square, Mr. Greville does not mind any of this. Being interested in little except appearances (it is why he has bought the house), Mr. Greville does not mind much of anything except being snubbed. Lacking other qualities, he has made a virtue of
vertu,
which has no need of heat, and is himself an object of
vertu,
so he seldom feels the cold—in the weather, in the world, or in anything. Mr. Greville is pettifogging, pusillanimous, pretentious and pink, but he is also the younger son of the Earl of Warwick (and thus the Honorable Charles Greville), so somehow he hangs on. He is an amateur, a
dilettante, a
kleinigkeitskrämer
, a
pococurante.
Call him what you will, he has made the Grand Tour, he is much the same in all languages. He is not ill-favored, despite the affronted eyes of the perpetual diner-out: his mouth is shapely, his voice a sonorous squeak; his manner is adroit; he does have a heart, small, well-regulated, but sufficient to keep his cheeks aglow. If it fits in with his plans, he contrives to be kind; and so he takes in everyone except his betters. And Emily is not among his betters, as he himself would be the first to state.

He is reading a letter, an excellent example of the papermaker’s art, since he has provided the paper himself, but the writing, though legible, is a servant’s copperplate, too genteel to be correct, too emotive for gentility. He catches a word here and there:

He is delighted. Things have worked out to plan. He will afford her some comfort, if not much. Though he feels ambition to be vulgar, and no doubt he is right, Greville does have plans. This time they have been successful. At the cost of handing the girl a bundle of franked covers, he is now in a position to have her on the cheap. He is pleased, for though knocking up tuppence tarts in Green Park does well enough for a commoner, it is not prudent; it is not comfortable; it is not sedate; it does not satisfy. And besides, there is always the Peril to Health. So he can afford to be generous. Not only is the girl prepared to be discreet, but her mother will make an excellent
gouvernante
of small economies.

“My dear Emily,” he writes, and considers he is being kind, as indeed, for him, he is, and tells her she has been imprudent (she has: she is with child), and extravagant (Sir H. allowed her the use of a carriage). It is best, in emotional matters, to establish the business arrangements
in writing. He says he will look after the child. He has no love of children, being one himself—he has no love of rivalry in anything, for there is the risk of failure, the no less embarrassing possibility of success—but these things are sometimes important to women, and besides (
noblesse
oblige
) the child may
just
be his. He would not dream of acknowledging it, but he cannot bring himself entirely to reject it, either. He is like this in many things, which no doubt explains why he has just lost his seat in Parliament.

He has not kept his seat, but he wishes to keep Emily. Therefore he encloses money—with an adjuration not to spend it—seals the letter, and settles back to wait. He is content to wait. Indeed, poor man, he will wait his life away, patient, sly, cunning, bland, adroit, not entirely deficient in charm, but doomed always to sit at the wrong mouseholes, for the right ones have been taken up already by larger, quicker, more aggressive cats. Still, in his small way he does know how to manage a catnip mouse, and how is he to know that this time he has a catamount by the tail instead? She scarcely knows it herself.

*

She is disconsolate in Wales, where she is about to receive his letter; or rather, since it is better in this world to put all pain behind us, and since the only way to do this is to modulate present events to the past tense, endure, and hope for pleasure presently, Wales was where she was.

Indiscretion had brought her there. It was not her fault. In a world which preferred the huffy distinction of immobility, a trait imported from the imagined French, she had had the vulgarity to be born vivacious. As the country daughter of a village blacksmith, and hence trite, she could not help but be. The world was alive to her, not merely a charade, for she had seen it in color; and after you have seen the world in color, the gray ground of the English water-color school does not suffice.

Wales, however, was damned cold. The Reverend Gilpin in his works upon the Picturesque, admired that countryside
but spent his winters in a comfortable parsonage, whereas Emily was imbedded in what could scarcely be called a crofter’s cot. Icicles bayoneted the eaves, and the thatch was slimy with hoarfrost, which gave it the mucous glitter of elvers in a pail. The chimney smoked. Indeed, it had smoked the owners, so that Granny Morgan looked like some
Frisian
curiosity, freshly extracted from a
Danish
bog.

Had it been any other season, Emily could have gone for pensive strolls in the ivied ruins of the nearby abbey, to be caught up and rescued by a passing nobleman; but paper shoes, which were what she had fled in, cannot withstand the snow. Therefore she had no choice but to sit indoors and wonder which answer she would get to her letter, yes or no; for if one were bad, the other would be worse. Why this misfortune had befallen her, she did not know, for she had meant no harm. She never did.

*

She had only tried to better her situation, first by taking one with the family of a fat-faced physician named Dr. Budd, and then in other ways. Dr. Budd’s house was near Blackfriars Bridge, and Emily had not been happy there, and what was worse, it was the time of the Gordon Riots, which had frightened her.

“Nonsense, my girl, so long as you stay indoors you’ll not come to harm,” said the cook; but a rock came through one pane of the kitchen window, smash, and something very like a gunny sack smacked into the areaway, but was human, and had its bones cracked, and bled and died.

There was nowhere to run but up to the attics to hide. There is nothing for anyone of common sense to do but that, in any age, with the devil right behind you; but still, if you can get to the top first, by the time he gets up he’s winded himself—he’s just like you are—so he has to behave himself after that. He hasn’t the breath for his original intentions. He can only marvel that he made it to the top at all.

If anything, the Budds were worse than the riots, what with the starched-cambric rustle of intrigue belowstairs,
and such sounds as she overheard of the same thing going on with a silken swoop above, among the quality. So what with the giggles and buckteeth of the second parlormaid, a most superior person, and the gravelly eyes of Dr. Budd’s lady, who always had a plump arm to interfere—and Lord, how the wicked man did pinch—Emily soon came to regard herself, without complacence, as a pretty creature, though not, though never, with him.

With, as it happened—but she could not quite remember this clearly—a real officer, a lieutenant in the Navy, who had sworn eternal devotion; but unfortunately he had had to sail away, as they so often do, so down she went with a bump again, and how was she to rise? What she had done immediately after that, except that there had been a great deal of it, she neither could nor would remember.

“My child,” said an old crone, in cheap night lodgings, “why are you here? You are too young and pretty. You do not belong here for another fifteen years at least.” And she peered about the slumside dormitory, where ugly women crept drunkenly from cot to cot, the youngest of them thirty-five.

Since no one had spoken kindly to her for several days, Emily tumbled her story out, among these dank and greasy shadows, and begged for sympathy.

“I saw no harm in it,” she said (indeed she had enjoyed herself). “But then the Budds turned me out, so I want employment.”

“The harm is in the getting caught,” said the old crone. “And as for employment, we women have but one, but in the future you must mind your wage.”

Emily was indignant. “I could not go with any man I did not like,” she said.

“No woman ever does, but grant, the rich are always likable,” said the old crone. “If nothing else, ’tis money makes them so. But never spend your earnings, for as you can see about you, that is a fair cruel thing for any woman to do. And if you are seriously minded to reform, perhaps I can assist you, for I have among my acquaintance a Dr. Graham, a most philanthropic man.” And she
gave a lopsided, well-intended, but dissembling leer.

*

So Emily went to work for Dr. Graham’s Temple of Health, an establishment in Adelphi Terrace much patronized by the voyeur; and as for the old crone, she spoke privately with the learned proprietor, pocketed her 2/6, and was never seen again.

Two gentlemen at the Temple of Health attracted Emily’s attention, the first because he stared at her so, the second because she could not help it; he reminded her of her naval gentleman. They came day after day, to watch her while she impersonated the Goddess of Health and gave old gentlemen their mud baths. She had several weeks to gather her impressions.

Greville had the eyes of an affronted pig, though in actuality pigs have vivacious eyes; and though she liked him well enough, she did not like him very much. She thought him stuck up. “I am not,” he seemed to say, “as other men. Tinsel goods are all very well for your present situation, but when you wish quality, as no doubt in time you will, you may have me.” What girl of spirit would accept so grand a proposal made upon a scale so small?

The other gentleman, Sir Harry Featherstonehaugh, had eyes of a warmer, softer quality, like soaked raisins. He was handsome, sleek, boisterous and seductive. He knew how to put you at your ease. He made jokes (Greville never made jokes); he never gave lectures (Greville had with him always an invisible podium); he asked her to go to the country with him. He did not seem disappointed when she said, “Not likely.” Instead he gave her things, sweetmeats, a shawl, a good dinner or something silly. Then, if she liked it, he asked her again. He was hearty and never vulgar, he knew how to treat you properly, and they became friends.

So what was the harm in it?

What fort would not capitulate upon such terms, in short, everything, and a truce with life. She had been besieged too often. In time one comes to dread manning the same defenses every day, just as many a wary bitch
has allowed herself to be taken during the season, merely to litter and have done with it.

Besides, he took her to Up Park, and she had never seen a country house before, let alone driven sensuously between its gates, around the bend so accurately calculated by Capability Brown, and there was the house, an enlarged toybox upon an eminence, and all the retainers out to receive them, cap in hand, except for the housekeeper, who had the prim look of a Presbyterian gratified, but not amazed, by still more evidence of sin.

“Never mind,” said Emily, who didn’t, not just then, “I am the image of a lady; I would confound Beau Nash,” and leaped down tomboy hoyden instead of waiting to be handed out, and went indoors to drawing rooms hung with yellow silk, and everything so fine.

Over the wall of the local grange in Cheshire, where she was born, she had seen big fat blooms of white lilac as a child, and jumped to catch them, but they were too high, and there was no way in. Whereas here there were lilac trees everywhere, though the season was over and they would not bloom again until next year. She would stay.

So for the next six months she lapped luxury not only with appetite but aptitude, the way a child tucks into gooseberry fool; for the decorum of an occasional bonbon may satisfy effete minds, but gooseberry fool is the epitome of porridge, and who can have enough of that? It is only the adult who makes choices. A child or a dog merely goes from dish to dish, whiffling down whatever’s there, without comparisons.

It was the same with everything. There were horses, so she rode them, and rode them uncommonly well. There were pier glasses, so she peered into them and never saw any image but her own in them again. But then, women are seldom spontaneous; at most they consent to a plastic pose. Show me as I am, they cry, but what they mean is, give me back that first revelation at the mirror.

She danced; she drank; she gambled. There were amateur theatricals. So, since she had a natural talent
for the histrionic, she was the Empress in Kotzebue’s
The
Mother,
and so felt real emotions for the first time.

In short, she had all but two of the attributes of a courtesan. She lacked passion (but would have liked such things if they occurred at the right time, which they never did. Either she wished to enjoy the comfort of freshly ironed linen and a feather bolster all to herself or to examine her fingernails—and there was Sir Harry instead. Men never understand these things. It is useless to explain. So one must put up with it, though few people look their best with their hair out of place, or unshaven in the morning. He did not seem to realize that). The realization, one morning while he snored, that he was an animal, despite his good manners and bad taste, revolted her. For that was her other limitation: she liked things to be nice. It is part of the secret women hand around among themselves at teatime, like the head of St. John the Baptist on a plate; when all is said and done, they are merely animals. Whereas we, of course, are not.