The Lambs of London (13 page)

“A remarkable old gentleman,” Samuel Ireland said. “A character.”

Just as Mary was helping her father out of the hall, Thomas de Quincey came up to William. “May I shake your hand, sir?”

“Of course.”

“The hand that has touched Shakespeare’s papers.”

“It was very good of you to come.”

“I have had an interest in Shakespeare ever since I was a child. I grew up in Manchester where, as you may imagine, I was alone in my taste.”

De Quincey seemed eager to talk, but it was not the moment for William to listen. He mentioned to him the address of the bookshop and hurried after Mary, who was vainly trying to hail a carriage at the corner of Milk Street and Cheapside.

“I was delighted to see you and your father, Mary. Thank you for coming.”

“I would not have missed it. And I like to take Father into the world. It cheers him.”

Mr. Lamb was staring up at the sky, turning on his heels.

“May I call on you next week?”

“By all means. I long to hear news of the play.”

“You are quite recovered?”

“I am in rude health, William, I am glad to say.”

T
HREE NIGHTS PREVIOUSLY
Charles Lamb had found his sister sitting in the kitchen. She was in her nightdress, and had placed all the cutlery of the household on the table where she was busily arranging it according to length. He had called to her softly, “Mary, Mary, whatever are you doing?”

She looked in his direction, but stared through him. He recognised at once that she was walking in her sleep. She stood up and went over to the window. She sighed deeply and raised her arms high in the air, muttering, “Not done yet. Not done yet.” Then she turned and, passing her brother without a sign, went upstairs to her attic room. He put the cutlery back in the drawers, and returned to his own bed.

H
E HAD NOT SEEN
her that next day. She had kept to her room, pleading tiredness. But the following day, Sunday, had been set aside for further rehearsals of the mechanicals from
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. Charles wondered if she would absent herself, but she was at the breakfast table with a copy of the script beside her. “Tom Coates makes a good Snug,” she said as Charles joined her. “But I am not sure of Mr. Milton as Quince.” She was very brisk.

“He will come round, Mary. He will fill the part. How are you feeling?”

“Feeling?”

“You took to your bed yesterday.”

“I had not slept well. That was all.”

“But you are rested now?”

“Of course. Do you know your lines by heart, Charles? Bottom is very important.”

“Not by heart, dear. By head. Far more satisfactory.”

“It is the same thing.” For some reason she hesitated, before pouring the tea. “Ma and Pa have gone to chapel. There is no point in waiting for them.”

Over the next hour Tom Coates, Benjamin Milton and the others arrived at the house. They were ushered into the garden immediately by Tizzy, who did not want their “nasty boots” on her clean floors. It was a bright day, and they sat contentedly enough beneath the decaying pagoda.

“It is all a question of staging,” Benjamin was saying to Tom. “Snug is portrayed as having a very high voice. And what do you play?”

“The lion.”

“Precisely. Nothing but roaring. Have you ever heard of a lion with a treble roar?”

“And what of Bottom?”

Selwyn Onions could not resist adding a fact. “He is a weaver, is he not? Did you know that the bottom is the porcelain core the yarn was wound around?”

“So Shakespeare did not mean bottom?” Benjamin was incredulous. “His nether end?”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“Ridiculous, Selwyn. What about his line ‘
I will move storms’
? That is the cue for a fart if ever there was one.”

Mary came up to them. “You are all very serious.”

“We have been discussing our parts, Miss Lamb.” Benjamin was a little afraid of Charles’s sister.

“Oh, they must be bold. They must be animated.”

“That is just what I have been telling them. They must stride the blast.”

“Well put, Mr. Milton. We are about to rehearse the wall scene, gentlemen. Will you take your places?”

Selwyn Onions, playing Snout the tinker, who played the Wall, stood at the back of the garden with his hands wide apart. “Make sure,” Mary told him, “that we can see through your fingers. There must be a chink. Charles will be one side of you, and Mr. Drinkwater on the other.”

“They are having a tryst, Miss Lamb?”

“Yes. A tryst. Is that not what lovers do?”

“It is a commentary upon the play itself,” Alfred Jowett was telling anyone who would listen. “It is a play within a play. What is real and what is false? If this is an illusion, is the larger play more true? Or are they both merely dreams?”

Mary was reminded of a recent dream. She had been in a herb garden, savouring the sweet air among the shrubs, when someone had come up to her and said, “You would be welcome if you were a nun.”

Alfred Jowett was still talking. “I think Shakespeare knew that his plays were fancies and fictions. He did not confuse them with the true world.”

“He was not trying to impart anything to us, Mr. Jowett?”

“No. His purpose was to amuse.”

Charles Lamb and Siegfried Drinkwater, as Pyramus and Thisbe, had taken up their positions on either side of the Wall. Thisbe wrought her voice to a high pitch.

“Oh Wall, full often hast thou heard my moans,

For parting my fair Pyramus and me!

My cherry lips have often kissed thy stones,

Thy stones with lime and hair knit up in thee.”

“At the time,” Tom whispered to Benjamin, “‘stones’ was the word for testicles.”

“So Shakespeare is making an obscenity?”

“Of course. I kiss thy balls.”

Charles replied on cue.

“I see a voice; now will I to the chink,

To spy, and I can hear my Thisbe’s face.

Thisbe?”

“My love! Thou are my love, I think?”

Mary stepped forward. “Should it not be, Mr. Drinkwater,
My love thou art. My love, I think
? She would recognise her lover’s voice. And, Charles, you are too restrained for a lover. A lover must breathe passion.”

“How would
she
know?” Benjamin asked Tom in a very low voice.

“Have you not heard? She has an admirer.”

“Mary Lamb?”

“Yes. Charles has told me.”

“That is the strangest news.”

“It hasn’t ended yet.”

T
HEY RETURNED TO THE
subject a few hours later when, the rehearsals over, they sat in the Salutation and Cat. Charles and the others were standing at the counter; Tom and Benjamin were huddled in a corner, laughing at the events of the morning. “If Mary Lamb has a lover,” Tom was saying, “he will need to be careful. She bites. Did you hear her berating Charles for clowning? She was very fierce.”

“It was only in play.”

“I am not so sure. As Bottom, he laughed. As Charles, he winced.”

“What’s his name?”

“The admirer is known as William Ireland. According to Charles, he is a bookseller in this neighbourhood.” He paused to fill his jug from a large bottle of stout he kept beside him. “He is a great lover of Shakespeare, apparently. He has made discoveries which all the scholars applaud.”

“I kiss his balls.”

“But the question is, does she?”

“Horribile dictu.”

Charles was leaning against the counter, listening to a desultory conversation between Siegfried and Selwyn on the subject of the Royal Academy, when he saw William Ireland entering the tavern with an eccentrically dressed young man in a green jacket and green beaver-hat.

Ireland saw him at once, and came over to the counter. The young man in the green jacket stood behind him as he greeted Charles. “And this,” he said, “is de Quincey.” The young man took off his hat and bowed. “De Quincey is a visitor.”

“Where are you staying, sir?”

“I lodge in Berners Street.”

“I have a friend in Berners Street,” Charles said. “John Hope. Do you know him?”

“London is very large, sir, and very wild. I know no one in that street.”

“But now you know us. Here is Selwyn. And here is Siegfried.” He slapped both of them on the back. “Over there, in the corner, are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. How did you meet William?”

“I attended his lecture.”

“Lecture? What lecture?”

“Did Mary not tell you?”

“Not as far as I recall.” With anything concerning his sister, Charles had learned to apply caution.

“I gave a lecture on Shakespeare last week. De Quincey was kind enough to attend. He called on me the following day.”

“And you have become fast friends?” Charles was astonished that Mary had attended this lecture without informing him. “Will you sit down with me, gentlemen?” He left Selwyn and Siegfried at the counter discussing the suicide of the pugilist, Fred Jackson, and took a table against the wall of the narrow parlour. “I would like to have heard you,” Charles said.

“Oh. You missed nothing. I am not an actor.”

“Are you not?”

“That is the gift required. To speak with certainty—enthusiasm. I cannot do it.”

“But you have those virtues, William.”

“Easy to have. Difficult to impart.”

Charles did not know whether to mention the play of
Vortigern:
Mary might have lent it to him in confidence. William seemed almost to divine his thoughts. “How is Mary? She seemed a little tired at the lecture. After her fall—”

“Quite recovered. Blooming.” Charles still could not guess the extent of William’s affection for his sister. “You have given her a new interest.”

“Oh yes?”

“In Shakespeare.”

“She was half in love with him already.”

“My sister is never half in love. She is always at extremes.”

“I understand that.” Ireland turned to his companion. “Well, de Quincey, you are in good company. Charles is a writer, too.”

De Quincey looked at Charles with interest. “Have you published?”

“Only small things. Essays in
Westminster Words.
Nothing more.”

“That is a great deal.”

“De Quincey writes essays, too, Charles. But he has yet to find a publisher. He is waiting to be born.”

“I scarcely think about it.” De Quincey blushed, and drank quickly from his glass. “I hold out no great hopes.”

They drank into the evening, growing louder and more animated by the jugful. The others had gone, but the three of them remained. Charles had informed William of the mechanicals’ play, forgetting that Mary had warned him to avoid the subject. He had also told him that he wished to resign from East India House and become a novelist. Or a poet. Anything but what he was.

“I am disgusted,” de Quincey was saying, “that each of us has such a small centre of being. Me. My thoughts. My pleasures. My acts. Only me. It is a prison. The world is made up of entirely selfish people. Nothing else matters a damn.” He drank some more. “I would like to get beyond myself.”

“Shakespeare became other beings,” Ireland said. “He is the exception. He inhabited their souls. He looked out of their eyes. He spoke from their mouths.”

Charles was now so drunk that he could not follow the conversation. “Do you believe it to be Shakespeare? It. Mary has shown it to me.”

“
Vortigern
? The play is his. There can be no doubt about it.”

“It cannot be, dear.”

“Why not?” Ireland looked at him defiantly. “It is his style, is it not? His cadence?”

“I cannot believe—”

“Can you not? Who else might have written it? Name him.” Charles was silent, and drank from his glass with great deliberation. “No one, you see. You can think of no one.”

“You must be careful with my sister.”

“Careful?”

“Mary is very strange. Very strange. She is attached to you.”

“As I am to her. But there is no—no interest—between us. I have no reason to be careful.”

“So you will give me your word as a gentleman that you have no design upon her.” He stood up, swaying slightly.

“Design upon her? Whatever do you mean by that?”

Charles was not sure what he meant. “No purpose.”

“What right have you to question me?” Ireland was also very drunk. “I have no designs or purposes whatsoever.”

“So you give me your word.”

“I will give you nothing of the kind. I resent it. I refute it.” He stood up, to face Charles directly. “I cannot consider you my friend. I pity your sister. Having such a brother.”

“You pity her, do you? So do I.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean what I choose to mean.” He waved his hand, and accidentally knocked his bottle on to the floor. “I love my sister, and I pity her.”

“The play
is
Shakespeare’s,” de Quincey said.

chapter ten

T
WO DAYS LATER
Richard Brinsley Sheridan entered the bookshop in Holborn Passage.

Samuel Ireland, having been alerted by a scrawled message an hour before, was waiting to greet him. “My dear sir. An honour.” Sheridan bowed. “We are all immensely proud.”

“Where is the young man of the hour?” Sheridan was a large figure, and he found it difficult to turn as William descended the staircase. “Is it you?”

“I am William Ireland, sir.”

“May I shake your hand, sir? You have served a great purpose.” Sheridan announced each word as if he were addressing others unseen. “It was Mr. Dryden, I believe, who recommended Vortigern as a great subject for a drama.”

“I was not aware of that, sir.”

“Why should you be? His prefaces are not generally known.”

“Alas not.”

“Clearly our bard had anticipated him.” With a flourish Sheridan produced the manuscript from the pocket of his top-coat. “Your father sent it by hackney last Tuesday. Much obliged.” Sheridan had a keen glance. “There are bold ideas, sir, even if some are crude and undigested.”

“Sir?” William appeared to be genuinely puzzled.

“Shakespeare must have been a very young man when he wrote this. There is one line—” He put his hand to his forehead, as if playing Memory. “‘
Under the convex of the wandering heavens, I beg forgiveness of my errant father.
’ ‘Wandering’ and ‘errant’ are too closely laid together. Yet a wandering convex is striking.” William looked at him without saying anything. “Well I am not a critic, Mr. Ireland. I am a man of the theatre. This will fill Drury Lane. A new play by William Shakespeare. Found in the most mysterious circumstances. It will create a sensation.”

“Will you stage it?”

“Drury Lane has read it. Drury Lane esteems it. Drury Lane accepts it.”

“Wonderful news, Father!”

“I see Mr. Kemble as Vortigern,” Sheridan continued. “Such a massive figure on our stage. So imposing. So heavy. And Mrs. Siddons as Edmunda? All lightness and grace. What a delicious creature she is.”

“May I suggest Mrs. Jordan as Suetonia?” William had caught Sheridan’s mood. “I saw her last week in
The Perjured Bride.
She overwhelmed me, Mr. Sheridan.”

“You have the soul of an artist, Mr. Ireland. You understand us. When I close my eyes, I see Mrs. Jordan exactly as Suetonia.” Sheridan did indeed close his eyes. “And what of Harcourt as Wortimerus? If you had known him in
The Ragged Veil,
he would have frightened you to death. He was tremendous. But do you think”—he hesitated, and looked around at Samuel Ireland—“do you think we should describe it as ‘attributed to Shakespeare’? In case of doubt?”

Samuel Ireland took a step backwards, and seemed to stand more upright. “What possible doubt could there be, Mr. Sheridan?”

“A minuscule doubt. A few discrepancies in cadence. A few minor errors in rhyme. A tiny, tiny doubt.”

“There is no doubt at all.”

“If we doubt,” William said, “then we put out the light.”

“A good image, sir. You have a touch of the bard about you, if I may say so.”

“I have no pretensions as a dramatist, Mr. Sheridan.”

“But Shakespeare was probably your age when he wrote this.”

“I cannot say.” William was smiling. “I do not know.”

“Of course. Nobody knows.” Sheridan turned back to Samuel Ireland. “My clerk, Mr. Dignum, has transcribed the parts. It would be a great honour if you and your son witnessed my
Pizarro
tomorrow night. You must gain some idea of our scale.”

S
O THE IRELANDS
entered Drury Lane the following evening. In the glare of the Argand oil-lamps they mounted the marble steps into the great vestibule with its ceiling covered with the images of Euterpe, the muse of music, Melpomene, the muse of tragedy, and Terpsichore, the muse of dance. Terpsichore herself, painted ten years before by Sir John Hammond, was seen tripping a measure with various cherubs and shepherds.

“Guests of Mr. Sheridan!” Samuel Ireland announced his arrival to the usher, dressed in Drury Lane green, who was not at all inclined to notice him. “Guests of the manager, Mr. Sheridan!”

The usher scratched his wig, silver and powdered, and took the slip of paper. He checked it against a written list pasted upon one of the gilt pillars of the vestibule, and then bowed. “’Amlet Box,” he said. “Follow me.” He led father and son up the carpet of a staircase resplendent in ebony and gold, and along the first-floor corridor where engravings of Garrick, Betty, Abingdon and others adorned the crimson flock-papered walls.

The Hamlet Box smelled of damp straw and liquorice cordial and cherries. It was the smell of a London theatre. William relished it, just as he relished the odours of perfume and pomade rising in waves from the restless and animated audience. It was the second night of
Pizarro,
a musical drama set in Peru at the time of the Spanish assault against the Incas. When the overture began, its melody bound the audience in the common expectation of enchantment; William felt himself to be dissolved in the haze of light and sound that hung over the auditorium. The drop-curtain was raised to reveal a river, a forest, and a range of mountains topped with snow. The river seemed naturally to flow, and the trees rustled in a breeze that passed over the stage. For William this was more beautiful—more intense, more brightly coloured—than the material world itself. And then the Spanish army marched on stage with pikes and muskets. In his enthusiasm William clapped his hands and leaned over the side of the box to catch a glimpse of Charles Kemble as Pizarro, the Spanish general. The audience was in a state of excitement as the actor walked to the centre of the stage, its cheers and hurrahs heightened by the sudden firing of the muskets by the soldiers.

Kemble gestured with his hands for silence.
“‘We have come to subjugate a proud and alien race—’”

“This is splendid,” Samuel Ireland whispered to his son. “Surpasses everything.”

William watched Kemble with fascination. The man had become a Spanish general—not just in appearance and in manner, but in his being. Had he become Pizarro, or had Pizarro become him? The breath of both had become one. William experienced a moment of elation. Here was proof that you might flee the prison of the self. De Quincey had been wrong.

Mrs. Siddons now emerged as the Inca princess, Elvira, to prolonged applause. She spoke directly to the audience as if they were her fellow-actors.
“‘The faith we follow teaches us to live in bonds of charity with all mankind, and die with hope of bliss beyond the grave.’”
She recited her lines in a high chant, her hands across her breast in an attitude of spotless rectitude.
“‘Tell your commanders this and tell them, too, we seek no change. Least of all, such change as you would bring upon us.’”

This was the meaning of the theatre, as William now understood it. It allowed the spectators to rise out of their own selves in an act of communion. Why had he not considered this before? Just as the actors performed this ritual of transformation, becoming more than mere men and women, so the audience attained some higher state of existence and awareness.

An Inca ritual was taking place on stage. Mrs. Jordan had emerged, clad in plumes and panther-skins, and was engaged in a dance with Mr. Clive Harcourt as Coro. The music of the orchestra came only from the violins; their melody filled Drury Lane with pathos and wonder. William sat back, astonished at the spectacle, and noticed an engraving of Garrick on the side-wall of the box; it was of the actor as Hamlet, contemplating the skull.

Father and son left the theatre elated. They had glimpsed the possibilities for
Vortigern
. “I see ruins,” Samuel told William. “I see forests stretching to the horizon.”

“Mr. Kemble is very powerful.”

“He has a remarkable voice.”

“Massive feeling. He will make Vortigern great.”

“And a very striking deportment. He quite overwhelmed me.” They were walking north, past Macklin Street and Smart’s Gardens. “You
must
introduce me to your patron, William. I
must
thank her for permitting you—for granting you—”

“The manuscripts were her gift to me. I have told you, Father. She does not wish to be known to the public in any way.”

“But surely to a father—”

“No, sir. Not even to you.”

“I have been considering this very carefully, William. What if some critic—some thankless creature—were to claim that it was not Shakespeare’s work?”

“I would deny it.”

“But she would prove your case.”

“Case? There is no case, Father. It will not arise. Anyone who enters Drury Lane, and sees the play, will know it to be Shakespeare’s. There will be no doubt about it.”

S
AMUEL IRELAND WAS NOT
entirely convinced. He and Rosa Ponting had often discussed his son’s unpredictable behaviour. There were occasions when William would keep to his room for hours at a time without offering any explanation; and, as Rosa discovered, his door was always locked. He would often seem to be awake, and active, all night. She suspected a woman, but could find no evidence of female presence. Since William never permitted either of them to enter his room, it remained a suspicion. When she mentioned it to Samuel, he laughed. “How could he smuggle her past us, Rosa? Think of it. He cannot be seeing or keeping a woman. Consider the noise. The creaking.” It was true that every sound in William’s chamber could be heard in the dining-room below: all they ever heard was the incessant tread of his feet.

“What of Miss Lamb, Sammy? Is that nothing?”

“Miss Lamb is a trusted friend. A customer.”

“Why did he have a fire in the middle of the summer?” They had seen the white smoke coming out of the middle chimney.

Her question did not seem to follow any particular line of thought, and he had no ready answer. “Really, Rosa, I cannot answer for my son.”

“He is doing something.”

“And what precisely would that be?”

“How am I supposed to know?” She adopted an air of nonchalance. “It is no concern of mine how your son is occupied.” At that moment William walked upstairs from the bookshop, and their conversation was at an end.

T
HREE DAYS AFTER
the performance of
Pizarro,
the Irelands attended a rehearsal of
Vortigern
in the empty auditorium of Drury Lane. They sat upon stools at the side as Charles Kemble and Clive Harcourt paced upon the stage. Harcourt, slim and delicate of feature, had been cast as Wortimerus.

“In deep betrayal steeped I come before you,

Father, seeking the mercy of your blessed hand.”

The actor had seemed so slight, so unworthy of attention, that William was amazed how suddenly he came to life; it was as if he had been visited by some unseen power. He actually seemed to grow taller. Kemble, thick-set and orotund, had become Vortigern.

“Time was, alas, I needed not this plea

But here’s a secret and a stinging thorn

That wounds my troubled nerves—O son, O son,

By boldly thrusting on thee dire ambition

If there is aught of malice in the plot

’Twas I who led you to deep-dyed betrayal.”

He stopped, dissatisfied with his rendering. “Should I not suggest, Sheridan, that the son carries more blame than the father?” His voice was still that of Vortigern. “The son murdered his uncle to please his father. That is so. But should the father then blame himself?” He looked towards William, for some assistance in the matter.

“The father urged him on,” William said. “He would not have conceived the plot without his father’s presence.”

“His presence? That is very interesting.” He walked to the front of the stage, and looked out over the darkened auditorium. A few shafts of light came from the lantern of the dome, winking and glimmering with particles of dust. “I must convey my presence, even when I am off the stage?” He turned back to Sheridan. “Is it possible?”

“Anything, for you, is possible.”

“I could be heard laughing. Or singing perhaps. My voice would carry from the wings.”

“Vortigern does not sing, sir.” William ventured his opinion very quietly.

“Surely you could write a song, Mr. Ireland? Some old English ballad will suit.”

“I am not a writer, Mr. Kemble.”

“Oh no? I have seen you in
Westminster Words
.”

William seemed flattered that his essays had been noticed by so great a personage. “I could perhaps invent a verse, if you so—”

“Make it Shakespearian. Stirring. Something to do with the clash of arms and the flight of ravens. You know the sort of thing.”

Mrs. Siddons, taking the role of Edmunda, was growing impatient. “If Mr. Kemble is prepared, we might try a little more of the original.” She was of relatively short stature but, when she spoke, she seemed to William to be a large woman; her voice preceded her, as it were, and warned people that she was coming. “I always think it a mistake to depart from the actual words. Don’t you?”

It was not clear whom she was addressing, but Kemble came up to her. “We are ready for you, Sarah.”

She took up her part, and began to read.

“Enough. You both are judged aright

Of fouling name, and fame, and your dear country.

The sentence will be swift and sudden

Upon so bold and dark a plot.

Never was maze more tortuous.”

“Sarah, dear. You have something in your hair.”

She put her hands up to her head, and a moth fluttered away. Harcourt burst into laughter, went down on one knee, and then rolled upon the stage.

She looked at him with distaste. “For a small man,” she said, “you make a deal of noise.”

The rehearsals continued until late in the afternoon, when Mrs. Siddons declared that she would “drop” without camomile tea. William was still in high spirits, however. The words he had previously seen only in manuscript had taken on the dimensions of the human world. They had become feelings, enlarged or tentative as the actors had judged them.