As we went past the portraits we had discussed and up into the other drawing-room, where the carpet was less fragile, I felt as if we were carrying a coffin, which held not a body, but the ghosts of the past, of those who had so often walked in this passage, of my grandfather who for fun had chased us here with horsewhips, of my grandmother who in the room where we brought our mystical load, had sat writing cheques for her numerous relatives, of Aunt Mildred who, while her parents were in England, had learned here to speak in that flat-vowelled nasal whine which ruined her hopes of marriage, and here too twenty years later, she would stop me if I were eating an apple, and cry with great archness : ‘Apples again!’ trying in her loneliness to establish, through the repetition of this senseless exclamation, an intimate relationship with a boy of six. Some ancient peoples had a rite, performed in the spring, of ‘carrying out death’ from their houses. Dominic may have had something of the same
idea. The things which he had put out in the stables and the laundry were all those which had to do with the past, particularly the past of our family. He may have been trying, in a desperate, negative and superstitious way, to find new life. He may have been pouring contempt on all his pride. I felt, a little uneasily, that Julian and I were putting the process in reverse.
We dumped the uniform case by the fireplace. I swept off the dust and cobwebs with the hearth-brush, and then opened it. Julian was attracted by the long red leather box, stamped with gold cyphers, from the Heralds’ College. He took out the parchment backed with red silk, and unrolled it. It was about twelve feet long and at the bottom was emblazoned the family shield.
‘There it is,’ I said, ‘
per pale
argent and sable, divided straight down the middle, white and black, and the black on the left, the sinister, the gauche side, and over it all a cross counter-change. We couldn’t have a more suitable or symbolic coat.’
‘It looks very mediaeval,’ said Julian, ‘but it’s all too long ago. Are these the diaries?’ He lifted out a handful of the books in varying dark shades of Russian leather.
‘Yes, but we can’t begin to read them now. We might go on till dawn. If it’s raining we’ll go through them in the morning. I’ll play you something to soothe your mind, so that you won’t lie awake consumed by curiosity.’ I took a record from a book and put it on the gramophone. It was the marvellous Palestrina ‘Improperia’, the introit to a requiem, sung by the Sistine choir. It startled Julian. He had never heard any music of this kind before. He stared at the
gramophone for a moment, and then sat back with his head bowed. I felt that there had been suddenly revealed to him in a different medium, the ancient sorrow of mankind, which he tries to express in his painting. I thought that if Dominic could have heard this music, which actually he may have heard, but not after the age of five, he might have been stirred by the same recognition, and have been helped to resolve his conflict. He might not have thrown out the past, but have interpreted it.
It was odd the effect these sounds had on Dudley. He lay on the floor as if dead, as if he could not bear them, but wished that they might pass above his prostrate body, yet when I played more cheerful and innocent music he would lie on his back with his four legs stretched upwards in delight.
I too was affected. I had brought these records out, like some of the old furniture in this room, to console myself in those moments, when, although this house was my home, I might feel myself in a country that was less my home, not only than England, but than France or Italy. The inevitable click of the gramophone stopping itself brought us all back from Rome to Westhill. Julian wanted to hear some more, but I said I was going to bed and I took him to his room, where as I had expected Mrs Briar had put out his pyjamas before I came home. I said goodnight and went to my own room. Dudley, his patience at last rewarded, flattened out his hindquarters, and with one last wave of his glorious tail, squeezed himself under the bed.
Although it was so late, I could not sleep, and after about half an hour of punching the pillows, and rearranging the sheet round my neck, I sat up in disgust and switched on
the light. I thought if I went out and heated myself some milk I might be able to sleep. Instead I went to the drawing-room, collected half a dozen of the diaries, and put them on my bedside table. I imagined they would be fairly soporific.
I moved the lamp and took up the diary for 1892, the year before I was born. My parents and grandparents were then living at Waterpark, our old family home in Somerset. In my grandmother’s angular Victorian writing were accounts of the usual mild country activities, with occasional visits to London to buy clothes or to see a play. On 28 March there is an entry:
‘Went to the gallery to see Mr Whistler’s pictures. They looked very strange at first, but the more I looked at them, the more I liked them.’
On 25 January they went to a meet at Boyton Manor. ‘Austin had his horse taken by the groom and drove with Laura, Bobby and me.’ There was some writing in French on this page, but it was rather small and I did not bother to read it.
On 5 May: ‘Steven and George practising archery. I tried but the bows are too strong. The children picking cowslips. Bobby gave his bunch to me. Austin, Laura and I drove to Warminster in the wagonette. Saw some lime-burners at work on the downs. The smoke very pretty.’
I read on, but this was all I could find. It made a pleasant enough picture, a rather thin watercolour, but was hardly material for a novel. There was one skeleton of which I knew. I had heard of it from Uncle Arthur who had painted the portrait in the lobby, but I doubted that it would be referred to in these pages, where there seemed to be nothing more
than a little tepid local colour of the period. I certainly did not want to write a book in which the women were only dummies to hang with crinolines, their feet only something to rest on beadwork stools, and it appeared that poor Grannie could provide nothing more robust.
I picked up the diary for 1893 to read about the day I was born, but the only thing of interest was the fact that my mother ate for luncheon some fish which had been caught by a Russian. This again, no more than Mr Whistler’s exhibition, or the meet at Boyton, or the lime-burners’ pretty smoke, was the subject for a novel.
I glanced idly through the rest of the book, thinking that now I would be able to go to sleep, when I found that for a whole fortnight in October it was written in French, some of it in very small writing. I took the trouble to read a page or two, and then I could not stop. There were references to events twenty years earlier, and I went back to the uniform case for the diaries of the early eighteen-seventies. At the same time I fetched a magnifying glass, possibly the same one which my grandmother had used for this minute writing, as I had known it from infancy, and like so many of my possessions here, had seen it also on the other side of the world.
In the morning I told Julian that I would try to write the book he wanted.
*
La Prisonnière
by Marcel Proust, trans. by C. K. Scott-Moncrieff.
It is said that all mankind looks back to the golden age of Saturn; to most of us the golden age is not so remote. It is more likely to be our own childhood. Perhaps my own was here at Westhill, before at the age of thirteen I was taken to England. And yet the other night when with Julian I walked up the dark passage, carrying the uniform case, it did not seem only to contain the ghosts of the dead from whom we spring, but also the ghost of the living, of the child I was, equal bestower of treasures and calamities. Here I had been brought dripping and covered with leeches after I had bathed in the dam. Here I had suffered measles and chicken pox and had shed my first teeth. Here I had endured at the age
of eleven, the pangs of apparently unrequited love for a governess. Here the body of my eldest brother had been carried and laid on his grandmother’s bed.
I think then, that the golden age for me must have been before this, the earliest days of the country in which I then lived, Australia, the only place I had known since I left the cradle. There is no country where it is easier to imagine some lost pattern of life, a mythology of vanished gods, than in this, the most ancient of all lands, where the skeletons of trees extend their bleached arms in the sun, and giant lizards cling to their trunks. But my imagination only went back as far as the first European settlers in Victoria. They provided my mythology and I was as closely connected with them as the heroes of Homer with the gods from whom they claimed descent. The gods, too, were my grandparents. I saw them as living always in one of those Australian mornings of the early spring, the mornings of the golden age. Then the leaves of the gum trees hang in the air, so still and pure and fresh that their beauty is completely revealed, without any veil of atmosphere or confusion of movement. In this crystal air the shouts and laughter of the children are as liquid as the falling notes of the magpies in the field. The still morning absorbs all the sounds and turns them into music. The sun is not scorching but sparkles softly on the bridles of the ponies. The mountain ranges are of a blue so peaceful and mysterious that they are an invitation to adventure, and against this sunlit land one would not be surprised to see a frieze of naked Spartans. However, in this scene the first human being I visualise is not a Spartan boy, but the small black figure of Cousin Hetty.
It is not on a spring morning that I see her, but on a winter afternoon in the schoolroom of the deanery, that grey gabled house, something like Kilawly, with the little pseudo-romanesque cathedral, of which her father was dean, on the other side of the garden. It was too wet to go out and the Mayhew children, with their cousins the Langtons and their friend Alice Verso were amusing themselves with historical charades. At the moment Hetty was standing with her back to the fireplace, holding a cardboard crown, and shouting defiantly: ‘If I can’t be queen, I’ll burn the crown.’
This created so much commotion that Mrs Mayhew came up to see what was the matter. All the children explained at once: ‘Hetty wants to be queen again.’ ‘She’s been Eleanor with the burghers already.’ ‘Now she wants to be Queen Elizabeth.’ ‘It’s just because Austin’s to be Sir Walter Raleigh.’ ‘It’s Alice’s turn to be queen.’
Alice, the only one who was not a relative, stood apart with a faint embarrassed smile.
‘You must play some other game,’ said Mrs Mayhew. ‘There’s far too much noise. Hetty, you mayn’t have any jam for tea. I’ll tell Miss Tripp.’
Hetty, without any preliminary protest or whimper just opened her mouth and roared with rage. Mrs Mayhew shrugged her shoulders and left the room. Austin, smiling with half-brutal good-nature, took the crown from Hetty’s hand and jammed it on her head.
‘There, you may have it now,’ he said. ‘It’s torn anyhow.’
This is what Arthur Langton, my grandfather’s younger brother told me, but, although he was present, he was only eight years old at the time. He was a colourful, though never
a very reliable witness, as I shall explain later, but he is almost the only authority I have for these early days, which must therefore remain partly mythological.
Arthur said that when Hetty was seven years old, Austin kissed her under the mistletoe and that she never forgot it. She regarded it as a betrothal and Austin as her private possession. This was understood by everybody all through their childhood and adolescence. The understanding arose simply from Hetty’s own grim determination that it should be so. Austin, a good-natured boy, flattered and amused by her attitude towards him, and regarding her as of a different generation—she was four years younger than himself—acquiesced in it. When her brothers wanted to tease her they called her ‘Mrs Austin,’ but this only provoked an expression of fatuous smugness, like that of a cat which has eaten all the cream. I have seen a daguerrotype of her as a young woman. Her eyes were dark and flashing, her mouth full and voluptuous, and her jaw as square and strong as a sergeant-major’s. Though she was not conventionally pretty, even this faded photograph gives an impression of tremendous vitality. In her old age, though she was not genial, she suggested a Buddha or a Gong. Her massive build seemed an affirmation of willpower rather than a result of good-living.
The Langton and the Mayhew children always played together, but when the Langtons were not there, Hetty would go and sit by herself in a remote corner of the garden, meditating on the subject of Austin, her dark eyes glowing with joy in her square, determined face.
Alice also played with these two families. She had her lessons with the Mayhews, but she learnt more from her aunt
Miss Charlotte Verso, who, like her name-sake and contemporary Charlotte Brontë, had once taught in a school in Brussels. Alice’s father was the younger son of a Lincolnshire vicar. He had come out to Australia to make his fortune. He bought for a few pounds some blocks of land in Bourke Street and Collins Street, and then died, leaving a widow and one daughter, Alice. At first they were very poor, but the land increased rapidly in value. Mrs Verso was married for her money by an engaging and dissipated young adventurer named Drax, who then discovered that the property had all been left to Alice. Miss Charlotte Verso, hearing in her Lincolnshire vicarage of the rackety household in which her little niece was living, came out to rescue her. The Draxes willingly handed her over—Mrs Drax probably for the child’s own sake—and went off to Sydney, where every quarter they squandered Drax’s remittance from England in bars and on the racecourse, and then starved till the next instalment arrived. Miss Verso bought a little house in East Melbourne and settled there with Alice.
Arthur said that when Drax was drunk he used to put his wife, who was, I am afraid, my great-grandmother, across the table, lift up her skirts, and beat her with a broom handle, but that she enjoyed it. Because of rumours of this sort of thing, Miss Verso was anxious that Alice should only form the most respectable associations, and although it was unnecessary, as she was a far more competent governess than Miss Tripp, was glad for her to share the lessons and games of the dean’s children, and through them of the Langtons, whose father was the Chief Justice. She was also careful, as Alice’s income increased, not to make any display of wealth,
so that she should not be classed with those dreadful people who had recently made fortunes at the gold diggings, and now drove in fine carriages about the streets of Melbourne, where a few years earlier they had walked as kitchenmaids and pot-boys. The result was that a large part of that income went back to increase the capital.
The state of affairs between Hetty and Austin, of fierce emotional possession on the one hand and kindly tolerance on the other, lasted until he left for Cambridge. It is possible that Austin felt a little more than tolerance for Hetty, as he always liked people who amused him, and although she was quite humourless, she was often very funny. She could imitate the bishop or a bucking pony with equal virtuosity, and the fact that she did not know how funny she was made the other children shriek with laughter.
Austin was indignant when told he was to go to Cambridge. His father said that he must have a gentleman’s education. Austin said:
‘I’ve been to the Melbourne Grammar School.’
This astonished Sir William, as he had only sent Austin there from necessity, and hardly considered it a real school.
‘You must have what in England will be thought a gentleman’s education,’ he said.
Austin said that he did not live in England—that he was an Australian.
‘What is that?’ exclaimed his father contemptuously. ‘A convict—a gold digger. You were born in England. It is your home and we shall go there when I retire.’ As he looked at Austin, he must have been dismayed to find that although he had been successful, he could not pass on to his son the
fruits of his success, as the conditions which had made it possible also made Austin unable to enjoy them properly. This did not prevent his insisting on his leaving for Cambridge.
Before Austin left, his mother gave a farewell party for him. He must have been very upset at the prospect of leaving every friend he had, to go among strangers, even if some of them were relatives, on the other side of the world. Because of this his brothers and cousins would all have been especially dear to him on the night of this party, and perhaps because Hetty made it more obvious than anyone else how much she would miss him, their association was less one-sided than before, and he told her, half as a joke, much in the same tone as he had told her she could have the cardboard crown: ‘I’m going to marry you when I come back.’
She was then fourteen and the next morning he had already forgotten that he had said it.
All the relatives went to see him off at the ship. At the last terrible moment of farewell he went round kissing them. When he kissed his mother, Hetty was standing beside her, the tears streaming from her eyes down into the corners of her grimly closed mouth. It was the only time that he had seen her cry without roaring with rage. He was so surprised and touched that he bent and kissed her too. She was the last person he kissed and she gave this enormous significance.
It was nearly four years before Austin returned. I have little idea of what the lives of the Langtons and Mayhews were like during that time. It would be possible to reconstruct it from the accessories, crinolines and beadwork and croquet, but that would not tell us what Hetty and Alice were feeling.
When an English mail ship had arrived, the Langtons and Mayhews would foregather to compare news from home. If Mrs Mayhew went to the Langtons, Hetty managed to go with her. There was not always a letter from Austin as he was not a good correspondent. He did not once in the four years write to Hetty, but twice he sent her a message, and as she was the only Mayhew he mentioned by name, again she gave this great importance.
When Austin returned, his parents were living at Bishopscourt, the blue stone building still standing in East Melbourne, which they had rented for a year, until Sir William went home on leave, after which he thought of retiring, as his health was poor. Because of this he had taken advantage of a good offer to sell his house. Only Austin’s father and brothers had gone to meet him at the ship. The rest of the clan were gathered in the Bishopscourt drawing-room. Austin, a little shy at the change in his own physique, but full of boisterous affection, in the midst of his general greetings, catching sight of her exclaimed: ‘Hetty!’ and kissed her again after a four years interval. She entered this as another item on her small but solid credit balance with him.
A few days later his mother gave an evening party with dancing to welcome him home. Hetty had known for months beforehand of this dance, at which she had arranged to make her debut. She had also formed in her mind for this evening other intentions that were unrelated to any probability. She would dance more dances with Austin than was conventionally permissible. People would begin to talk about them, saying they were too much together. She would be indifferent to this, would flaunt her daring behaviour, and then at the end
of the evening their engagement would be announced, and she would be triumphant, the queen of the party. She had a new dress, folds and folds of white muslin. She wore a crown of white roses on her glossy hair, and an expression of determination on her square glowing face, of which the only beauty was in its vitality, in the texture of her skin, and in her rather too magnificent eyes.
The Mayhews arrived early, and in the role she had designed for herself, Hetty stood beside Lady Langton and Austin at the drawing-room door, where they were greeting their guests. Lady Langton suggested that she joined the other young people, and Mrs Mayhew tried to lead her away, but without success, feeling herself blackmailed by the threat of a scene.
Then Alice was announced. She was a girl of fourteen, reserved and not very noticeable when Austin left. Now she was a young woman and a very pretty one. She was far more agreeable to look at than Hetty. She had not Hetty’s splendid Savonarola eyes, which were a rather frightening asset, but neither had she her massive figure nor her grim jaw. Her eyes were grey and level, her hair fair and shining, and her nose straight. The curves of her mouth made charming a face which otherwise might have been a little stern. It was as if Jupiter, who had given her wealth, had bestowed with it other Jovian qualities, a bearing and a look in the eye which would make any liberties dangerous.
Austin always liked the best of everything and naturally assumed that he should have it. It was inevitable that as soon as Alice came into the room, he should have eyes for no one else. Everything about her attracted him, he liked being
surprised and she was a great surprise. Her clothes were very good, being made for her in London. He always noticed things like clothes, the harness of horses and carriages. He danced with her as much as possible, and ignorant of the grotesque anticipation seething in Hetty’s head, he forced on Alice the role which his cousin had designed for herself.
It is from Arthur that I learnt what I know about this period and it must contain a good deal of conjecture and mythology, but I remember him at the age of seventy or more, standing in a Toorak ballroom, in that brief decade when it was my turn to be a young man, and shrugging his contemptuous shoulders at the jazz and the dancing of 1913, while he described to me this very evening at Bishopscourt, at which he had been present.