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longer inflict upon one careless of glory, he opened his eyes, which had
been wide open all the time, but had seen only thoughts, and saw, lying in
the hollow beneath him, his house.
There it lay in the early sunshine of spring. It looked a town rather
than a house, but a town built, not hither and thither, as this man wished
or that, but circumspectly, by a single architect with one idea in his head.
Courts and buildings, grey, red, plum colour, lay orderly and symmetrical;
the courts were some of them oblong and some square; in this was a fountain;
in that a statue; the buildings were some of them low, some pointed; here
was a chapel, there a belfry; spaces of the greenest grass lay in between
and clumps of cedar trees and beds of bright flowers; all were clasped - yet
so well set out was it that it seemed that every part had room to spread
itself fittingly - by the roll of a massive wall; while smoke from
innumerable chimneys curled perpetually into the air. This vast, yet ordered
building, which could house a thousand men and perhaps two thousand horses,
was built, Orlando thought, by workmen whose names are unknown. Here have
lived, for more centuries than I can count, the obscure generations of my
own obscure family. Not one of these Richards, Johns, Annes, Elizabeths has
left a token of himself behind him, yet all, working together with their
spades and their needles, their love-making and their child-bearing, have
left this.
Never had the house looked more noble and humane.
Why, then, had he wished to raise himself above them? For it seemed
vain and arrogant in the extreme to try to better that anonymous work of
creation; the labours of those vanished hands. Better was it to go unknown
and leave behind you an arch, a potting shed, a wall where peaches ripen,
than to burn like a meteor and leave no dust. For after all, he said,
kindling as he looked at the great house on the greensward below, the
unknown lords and ladies who lived there never forgot to set aside something
for those who come after; for the roof that will leak; for the tree that
will fall. There was always a warm corner for the old shepherd in the
kitchen; always food for the hungry; always their goblets were polished,
though they lay sick, and their windows were lit though they lay dying.
Lords though they were, they were content to go down into obscurity with the
molecatcher and the stone-mason. Obscure noblemen, forgotten builders - thus
he apostrophized them with a warmth that entirely gainsaid such critics as
called him cold, indifferent, slothful (the truth being that a quality often
lies just on the other side of the wall from where we seek it) - thus he
apostrophized his house and race in terms of the most moving eloquence; but
when it came to the peroration - and what is eloquence that lacks a
peroration? - he fumbled. He would have liked to have ended with a flourish
to the effect that he would follow in their footsteps and add another stone
to their building. Since, however, the building already covered nine acres,
to add even a single stone seemed superfluous. Could one mention furniture
in a peroration? Could one speak of chairs and tables and mats to lie beside
people's beds? For whatever the peroration wanted, that was what the house
stood in need of. Leaving his speech unfinished for the moment, he strode
down hill again resolved henceforward to devote himself to the furnishing of
the mansion. The news - that she was to attend him instantly - brought tears
to the eyes of good old Mrs Grimsditch, now grown somewhat old. Together
they perambulated the house.
The towel horse in the King's bedroom ("and that was King Jamie, my
Lord," she said, hinting that it was many a day since a King had slept under
their roof; but the odious Parliament days were over and there was now a
Crown in England again) lacked a leg; there were no stands to the ewers in
the little closet leading into the waiting room of the Duchess's page; Mr
Greene had made a stain on the carpet with his nasty pipe smoking, which she
and Judy, for all their scrubbing, had never been able to wash out. Indeed,
when Orlando came to reckon up the matter of furnishing with rosewood chairs
and cedar-wood cabinets, with silver basins, china bowls, and Persian
carpets, every one of the three hundred and sixty-five bedrooms which the
house contained, he saw that it would be no light one; and if some thousands
of pounds of his estate remained over, these would do little more than hang
a few galleries with tapestry, set the dining hall with fine, carved chairs
and provide mirrors of solid silver and chairs of the same metal (for which
he had an inordinate passion) for the furnishing of the royal bedchambers.
He now set to work in earnest, as we can prove beyond a doubt if we
look at his ledgers. Let us glance at an inventory of what he bought at this
time, with the expenses totted up in the margin - but these we omit.
"To fifty pairs of Spanish blankets, ditto curtains of crimson and
white taffeta; the valence to them of white satin embroidered with crimson
and white silk...
"To seventy yellow satin chairs and sixty stools, suitable with their
buckram covers to them all...
"To sixty seven walnut tree tables...
"To seventeen dozen boxes containing each dozen five dozen of Venice
glasses...
"To one hundred and two mats, each thirty yards long...
"To ninety seven cushions of crimson damask laid with silver parchment
lace and footstools of cloth of tissue and chairs suitable...
"To fifty branches for a dozen lights apiece..."
Already - it is an effect lists have upon us - we are beginning to
yawn. But if we stop, it is only that the catalogue is tedious, not that it
is finished. There are ninety-nine pages more of it and the total sum
disbursed ran into many thousands - that is to say millions of our money.
And if his day was spent like this, at night again, Lord Orlando might be
found reckoning out what it would cost to level a million molehills, if the
men were paid tenpence an hour; and again, how many hundredweight of nails
at fivepence halfpenny a gill were needed to repair the fence round the
park, which was fifteen miles in circumference. And so on and so on.
The tale, we say, is tedious, for one cupboard is much like another,
and one molehill not much different from a million. Some pleasant journeys
it cost him; and some fine adventures. As, for instance, when he set a whole
city of blind women near Bruges to stitch hangings for a silver canopied
bed; and the story of his adventure with a Moor in Venice of whom he bought
(but only at the sword's point) his lacquered cabinet, might, in other
hands, prove worth the telling. Nor did the work lack variety; for here
would come, drawn by teams from Sussex, great trees, to be sawn across and
laid along the gallery for flooring; and then a chest from Persia, stuffed
with wool and sawdust. from which, at last, he would take a single plate, or
one topaz ring.
At length, however, there was no room in the galleries for another
table; no room on te tables for another cabinet; no room in the cabinet for
another rose-bowl; no room in the bowl for another handful of potpourri;
there was no room for anything anywhere; in short the house was furnished.
In the garden snowdrops, crocuses, hyacinths, magnolias, roses, lilies,
asters, the dahlia in all its varieties, pear trees and apple trees and
cherry trees and mulberry trees, with an enormous quantity of rare and
flowering shrubs, of trees evergreen and perennial, grew so thick on each
other's roots that there was no plot of earth without its bloom, and no
stretch of sward without its shade. In addition, he had imported wild fowl
with gay plumage; and two Malay bears, the surliness of whose manners
concealed, he was certain, trusty hearts.
All now was ready; and when it was evening and the innumerable silver
sconces were lit and the light airs which for ever moved about the galleries
stirred the blue and green arras, so that it looked as if the huntsmen were
riding and Daphne flying; when the silver shone and lacquer glowed and wood
kindled; when the carved chairs held their arms out and dolphins swam upon
the walls with mermaids on their backs; when all this and much more than all
this was complete and to his liking, Orlando walked through the house with
his elk-hounds following and felt content. He had matter now, he thought, to
fill out his peroration. Perhaps it would be well to begin the speech all
over again. Yet, as he paraded the galleries he felt that still something
was lacking. Chairs and tables, however richly gilt and carved, sofas,
resting on lions' paws with swans' necks curving under them, beds even of
the softest swansdown are not by themselves enough. People sitting in them,
people lying in them improve them amazingly. Accordingly Orlando now began a
series of very splendid entertainments to the nobility and gentry of the
neighbourhood. The three hundred and sixty-five bedrooms were full for a
month at a time. Guests jostled each other on the fifty-two staircases.
Three hundred servants bustled about the pantries. Banquets took place
almost nightly. Thus, in a very few years, Orlando had worn the nap off his
velvet, and spent the half of his fortune; but he had earned the good
opinion of his neighbours, held a score of offices in the county, and was
annually presented with perhaps a dozen volumes dedicated to his Lordship in
rather fulsome terms by grateful poets. For though he was careful not to
consort with writers at that time and kept himself always aloof from ladies
of foreign blood, still, he was excessively generous both to women and to
poets, and both adored him.
But when the feasting was at its height and his guests were at their
revels, he was apt to take himself off to his private room alone. There when
the door was shut, and he was certain of privacy, he would have out an old
writing book, stitched together with silk stolen from his mother's workbox,
and labelled in a round schoolboy hand, "The Oak Tree, A Poem". In this he
would write till midnight chimed and long after. But as he scratched out as
many lines as he wrote in, the sum of them was often, at the end of the
year, rather less than at the beginning, and it looked as if in the process
of writing the poem would be completely unwritten. For it is for the
historian of letters to remark that he had changed his style amazingly. His
floridity was chastened; his abundance curbed; the age of prose was
congealing those warm fountains. The very landscape outside was less stuck
about with garlands and the briars themselves were less thorned and
intricate. Perhaps the senses were a little duller and honey and cream less
seductive to the palate. Also that the streets were better drained and the
houses better lit had its effect upon the style, it cannot be doubted.
One day he was adding a line or two with enormous labour to "The Oak
Tree, A Poem", when a shadow crossed the tail of his eye. It was no shadow,
he soon saw, but the figure of a very tall lady in riding hood and mantle
crossing the quadrangle on which his room looked out. As this was the most
private of the courts, and the lady was a stranger to him, Orlando marvelled
how she had got there. Three days later the same apparition appeared again;
and on Wednesday noon appeared once more. This time, Orlando was determined
to follow her, nor apparently was she afraid to be found, for she slackened
her steps as he came up and looked him full in the face. Any other woman
thus caught in a Lord's private grounds would have been afraid; any other
woman with that face, head-dress, and aspect would have thrown her mantilla
across her shoulders to hide it. For this lady resembled nothing so much as
a hare; a hare startled, but obdurate; a hare whose timidity is overcome by
an immense and foolish audacity; a hare that sits upright and glowers at its
pursuer with great, bulging eyes; with ears erect but quivering, with nose
pointed, but twitching. This hare, moreover, was six feet high and wore a
head-dress into the bargain of some antiquated kind which made her look
still taller. Thus confronted, she stared at Orlando with a stare in which
timidity and audacity were most strangely combined.
First, she asked him, with a proper, but somewhat clumsy curtsey, to
forgive her her intrusion. Then, rising to her full height again, which must
have been something over six feet two, she went on to say - but with such a
cackle of nervous laughter, so much tee-heeing and haw-hawing that Orlando
thought she must have escaped from a lunatic asylum - that she was the
Archduchess Harriet Griselda of Finster-Aarhorn and Scand-op-Boom in the
Roumanian territory. She desired above all things to make his acquaintance,
she said. She had taken lodging over a baker's shop at the Park Gates. She
had seen his picture and it was the image of a sister of hers who was - here
she guffawed - long since dead. She was visiting the English court. The
Queen was her Cousin. The King was a very good fellow but seldom went to bed
sober. Here she tee-heed and haw-hawed again. In short, there was nothing
for it but to ask her in and give her a glass of wine.
Indoors, her manners regained the hauteur natural to a Roumanian
Archduchess; and had she not shown a knowledge of wines rare in a lady, and
made some observations upon firearms and the customs of sportsmen in her
country, which were sensible enough, the talk would have lacked spontaneity.
Jumping to her feet at last, she announced that she would call the following
day, swept another prodigious curtsey and departed. The following day,
Orlando rode out. The next, he turned his back; on the third he drew his
curtain. On the fourth it rained, and as he could not keep a lady in the
wet, nor was altogether averse to company, he invited her in and asked her
opinion whether a suit of armour, which belonged to an ancestor of his, was
the work of Jacobi or of Topp. He inclined to Topp. She held another opinion
- it matters very little which. But it is of some importance to the course
of our story that, in illustrating her argument, which had to do with the
working of the tie pieces, the Archduchess Harriet took the golden shin case
and fitted it to Orlando's leg.
That he had a pair of the shapeliest legs that any Nobleman has ever
stood upright upon has already been said.
Perhaps something in the way she fastened the ankle buckle; or her
stooping posture; or Orlando's long seclusion; or the natural sympathy which
is between the sexes; or the Burgundy; or the fire - any of these causes may
have been to blame; for certainly blame there is on one side or another,
when a Nobleman of Orlando's breeding, entertaining a lady in his house, and
she his elder by many years, with a face a yard long and staring eyes,
dressed somewhat ridiculously too, in a mantle and riding cloak though the
season was warm - blame there is when such a Nobleman is so suddenly and
violently overcome by passion of some sort that he has to leave the room.
But what sort of passion, it may well be asked, could this be? And the
answer is double faced as Love herself. For Love - but leaving Love out of
the argument for a moment, the actual event was this:
When the Archduchess Harriet Griselda stooped to fasten the buckle,
Orlando heard, suddenly and unaccountably, far off the beating of Love's
wings. The distant stir of that soft plumage roused in him a thousand
memories of rushing waters, of loveliness in the snow and faithlessness in
the flood; and the sound came nearer; and he blushed and trembled; and he
was moved as he had thought never to be moved again; and he was ready to
raise his hands and let the bird of beauty alight upon his shoulders, when -
horror! - a creaking sound like that the crows make tumbling over the trees
began to reverberate; the air seemed dark with coarse black wings; voices
croaked; bits of straw, twigs, and feathers dropped; and there pitched down
upon his shoulders the heaviest and foulest of the birds; which is the
vulture. Thus he rushed from the room and sent the footman to see the
Archduchess Harriet to her carriage.
For Love, to which we may now return, has two faces; one white, the
other black; two bodies; one smooth, the other hairy. It has two hands, two
feet, two nails, two, indeed, of every member and each one is the exact
opposite of the other. Yet, so strictly are they joined together that you
cannot separate them. In this case, Orlando's love began her flight towards
him with her white face turned, and her smooth and lovely body outwards.
Nearer and nearer she came wafting before her airs of pure delight. All of a
sudden (at the sight of the Archduchess presumably) she wheeled about,
turned the other way round; showed herself black, hairy, brutish; and it was
Lust the vulture, not Love, the Bird of Paradise, that flopped, foully and
disgustingly, upon his shoulders. Hence he ran; hence he fetched the
footman.
But the harpy is not so easily banished as all that. Not only did the
Archduchess continue to lodge at the Baker's, but Orlando was haunted every
day and night by phantoms of the foulest kind. Vainly, it seemed, had he
furnished his house with silver and hung the walls with arras, when at any
moment a dung-bedraggled fowl could settle upon his writing table. There she
was, flopping about among the chairs; he saw her waddling ungracefully
across the galleries. Now, she perched, top heavy upon a fire screen. When
he chased her out, back she came and pecked at the glass till she broke it.
Thus realizing that his home was uninhabitable, and that steps must be
taken to end the matter instantly, he did what any other young man would
have done in his place, and asked King Charles to send him as Ambassador
Extraordinary to Constantinople. The King was walking in Whitehall. Nell
Gwyn was on his arm. She was pelting him with hazel nuts. 'Twas a thousand
pities, that amorous lady sighed, that such a pair of legs should leave the
country.
Howbeit, the Fates were hard; she could do no more than toss one kiss
over her shoulder before Orlando sailed.
It is, indeed, highly unfortunate, and much to be regretted that at
this stage of Orlando's career, when he played a most important part in the
public life of his country, we have least information to go upon. We know
that he discharged his duties to admiration - witness his Bath and his
Dukedom. We know that he had a finger in some of the most delicate
negotiations between King Charles and the Turks - to that, treaties in the
vault of the Record Office bear testimony. But the revolution which broke
out during his period of office, and the fire which followed, have so
damaged or destroyed all those papers from which any trustworthy record
could be drawn, that what we can give is lamentably incomplete. Often the
paper was scorched a deep brown in the middle of the most important
sentence. Just when we thought to elucidate a secret that has puzzled
historians for a hundred years, there was a hole in the manuscript big
enough to put your finger through. We have done our best to piece out a
meagre summary from the charred fragments that remain; but often it has been
necessary to speculate, to surmise, and even to use the imagination.
Orlando's day was passed, it would seem, somewhat in this fashion.
About seven, he would rise, wrap himself in a long Turkish cloak, light a
cheroot, and lean his elbows on the parapet. Thus he would stand, gazing at
the city beneath him, apparently entranced. At this hour the mist would lie
so thick that the domes of Santa Sofia and the rest would seem to be afloat;
gradually the mist would uncover them; the bubbles would be seen to be
firmly fixed; there would be the river; there the Galata Bridge; there the
green-turbaned pilgrims without eyes or noses, begging alms; there the
pariah dogs picking up offal; there the shawled women; there the innumerable
donkeys; there men on horses carrying long poles. Soon, the whole town would
be astir with the cracking of whips, the beating of gongs, cryings to
prayer, lashing of mules, and rattle of brass-bound wheels, while sour
odours, made from bread fermenting and incense, and spice, rose even to the
heights of Pera itself and seemed the very breath of the strident
multi-coloured and barbaric population.
Nothing, he reflected, gazing at the view which was now sparkling in
the sun, could well be less like the counties of Surrey and Kent or the
towns of London and Tunbridge Wells. To the right and left rose in bald and
stony prominence the inhospitable Asian mountains, to which the arid castle
of a robber chief or two might hang; but parsonage there was none, nor manor
house, nor cottage, nor oak, elm, violet, ivy, or wild eglantine. There were
no hedges for ferns to grow on, and no fields for sheep to graze. The houses
were white as egg-shells and as bald. That he, who was English root and
fibre, should yet exult to the depths of his heart in this wild panorama,
and gaze and gaze at those passes and far heights planning journeys there
alone on foot where only the goat and shepherd had gone before; should feel
a passion of affection for the bright, unseasonable flowers, love the
unkempt pariah dogs beyond even his elk hounds at home, and snuff the acrid,
sharp smell of the streets eagerly into his nostrils, surprised him. He
wondered if, in the season of the Crusades, one of his ancestors had taken
up with a Circassian peasant woman; thought it possible; fancied a certain
darkness in his complexion; and, going indoors again, withdrew to his bath.
An hour later, properly scented, curled, and anointed, he would receive
visits from secretaries and other high officials carrying, one after
another, red boxes which yielded only to his own golden key. Within were
papers of the highest importance, of which only fragments, here a flourish,
there a seal firmly attached to a piece of burnt silk, now remain. Of their
contents then, we cannot speak, but can only testify that Orlando was kept
busy, what with his wax and seals, his various coloured ribbons which had to
be diversely attached, his engrossing of titles and making of flourishes
round capital letters, till luncheon came - a splendid meal of perhaps
thirty courses.
After luncheon, lackeys announced that his coach and six was at the
door, and he went, preceded by purple Janissaries running on foot and waving
great ostrich feather fans above their heads, to call upon the other
ambassadors and dignitaries of state. The ceremony was always the same. On
reaching the courtyard, the Janissaries struck with their fans upon the main
portal, which immediately flew open revealing a large chamber, splendidly
furnished. Here were seated two figures, generally of the opposite sexes.
Profound bows and curtseys were exchanged. In the first room, it was
permissible only to mention the weather. Having said that it was fine or
wet, hot or cold, the Ambassador then passed on to the next chamber, where
again, two figures rose to greet him. Here it was only permissible to
compare Constantinople as a place of residence with London; and the
Ambassador naturally said that he preferred Constantinople, and his hosts
naturally said, though they had not seen it, that they preferred London. In
the next chamber, King Charles's and the Sultan's healths had to be
discussed at some length. In the next were discussed the Ambassador's health
and that of his host's wife, but more briefly. In the next the Ambassador
complimented his host upon his furniture, and the host complimented the
Ambassador upon his dress. In the next, sweet meats were offered, the host
deploring their badness, the Ambassador extolling their goodness. The
ceremony ended at length with the smoking of a hookah and the drinking of a
glass of coffee; but though the motions of smoking and drinking were gone
through punctiliously there was neither tobacco in the pipe nor coffee in
the glass, as, had either smoke or drink been real, the human frame would
have sunk beneath the surfeit. For, no sooner had the Ambassador despatched
one such visit, than another had to be undertaken. The same ceremonies were
gone through in precisely the same order six or seven times over at the
houses of the other great officials, so that it was often late at night
before the Ambassador reached home. Though Orlando performed these tasks to
admiration and never denied that they are, perhaps, the most important part
of a diplomatist's duties, he was undoubtedly fatigued by them, and often
depressed to such a pitch of gloom that he preferred to take his dinner
alone with his dogs. To them, indeed, he might be heard talking in his own
tongue. And sometimes, it is said, he would pass out of his own gates late
at night so disguised that the sentries did not know him. Then he would
mingle with the crowd on the Galata Bridge; or stroll through the bazaars;
or throw aside his shoes and join the worshippers in the Mosques. Once, when
it was given out that he was ill of a fever, shepherds, bringing their goats
to market, reported that they had met an English Lord on the mountain top
and heard him praying to his God. This was thought to be Orlando himself,
and his prayer was, no doubt, a poem said aloud, for it was known that he
still carried about with him, in the bosom of his cloak, a much scored
manuscript; and servants, listening at the door, heard the Ambassador
chanting something in an odd, sing-song voice when he was alone.
It is with fragments such as these that we must do our best to make up
a picture of Orlando's life and character at this time. There exist, even to
this day, rumours, legends, anecdotes of a floating and unauthenticated kind
about Orlando's life in Constantinople (we have quoted but a few of them)
which go to prove that he possessed, now that he was in the prime of life,
the power to stir the fancy and rivet the eye which will keep a memory green
long after all that more durable qualities can do to preserve it is
forgotten. The power is a mysterious one compounded of beauty, birth, and
some rarer gift, which we may call glamour and have done with it. "A million
candles", as Sasha had said, burnt in him without his being at the trouble
of lighting a single one. He moved like a stag, without any need to think
about his legs. He spoke in his ordinary voice and echo beat a silver gong.
Hence rumours gathered round him. He became the adored of many women and
some men. It was not necessary that they should speak to him or even that
they should see him; they conjured up before them especially when the
scenery was romantic, or the sun was setting, the figure of a noble
gentleman in silk stockings. Upon the poor and uneducated, he had the same
power as upon the rich. Shepherds, gipsies, donkey drivers, still sing songs
about the English Lord "who dropped his emeralds in the well", which
undoubtedly refer to Orlando, who once, it seems, tore his jewels from him
in a moment of rage or intoxication and flung them in a fountain; whence
they were fished by a page boy. But this romantic power, it is well known,
is often associated with a nature of extreme reserve. Orlando seems to have
made no friends. As far as is known, he formed no attachments. A certain
great lady came all the way from England in order to be near him, and
pestered him with her attentions, but he continued to discharge his duties
so indefatigably that he had not been Ambassador at the Horn for more than
two years and a half before King Charles signified his intention of raising
him to the highest rank in the peerage. The envious said that this was Nell
Gwyn's tribute to the memory of a leg. But, as she had seen him once only,
and was then busily engaged in pelting her royal master with nutshells, it
is likely that it was his merits that won him his Dukedom, not his calves.
Here we must pause, for we have reached a moment of great significance
in his career. For the conferring of the Dukedom was the occasion of a very
famous, and indeed, much disputed incident, which we must now describe,
picking our way among burnt papers and little bits of tape as best we may.
It was at the end of the great fast of Ramadan that the Order of the Bath
and the patent of nobility arrived in a frigate commanded by Sir Adrian
Scrope; and Orlando made this the occasion for an entertainment more
splendid than any that has been known before or since in Constantinople. The
night was fine; the crowd immense, and the windows of the Embassy
brilliantly illuminated. Again, details are lacking, for the fire had its
way with all such records, and has left only tantalizing fragments which
leave the most important points obscure. From the diary of John Fenner
Brigge, however, an English naval officer, who was among the guests, we
gather that people of all nationalities "were packed like herrings in a
barrel" in the courtyard. The crowd pressed so unpleasantly close that
Brigge soon climbed into a Judas tree, the better to observe the
proceedings. The rumour had got about among the natives (and here is
additional proof of Orlando's mysterious power over the imagination) that
some kind of miracle was to be performed. "Thus," writes Brigge (but his
manuscript is full of burns and holes, some sentences being quite
illegible), "when the rockets began to soar into the air, there was
considerable uneasiness among us lest the native population should be
seized...fraught with unpleasant consequences to all...English ladies in the
company, I own that my hand went to my cutlass. Happily," he continues in
his somewhat long-winded style, "these fears seemed, for the moment,
groundless and, observing the demeanour of the natives...I came to the
conclusion that this demonstration of our skill in the art of pyrotechny was
valuable, if only because it impressed upon them...the superiority of the
British...Indeed, the sight was one of indescribable magnificence. I found
myself alternately praising the Lord that he had permitted...and wishing
that my poor, dear mother...By the Ambassador's orders, the long windows,
which are so imposing a feature of Eastern architecture, for though ignorant
in many ways...were thrown wide; and within, we could see a tableau vivant
or theatrical display in which English ladies and gentlemen...represented a
masque the work of one...The words were inaudible, but the sight of so many
of our countrymen and women, dressed with the highest elegance and
distinction...moved me to emotions of which I am certainly not ashamed,
though unable...I was intent upon observing the astonishing conduct of Lady
- which was of a nature to fasten the eyes of all upon her, and to bring
discredit upon her sex and country, when" - unfortunately a branch of the
Judas tree broke, Lieutenant Brigge fell to the ground, and the rest of the
entry records only his gratitude to Providence (who plays a very large part
in the diary) and the exact nature of his injuries.
Happily, Miss Penelope Hartopp, daughter of the General of that name,
saw the scene from inside and carries on the tale in a letter, much defaced
too, which ultimately reached a female friend at Tunbridge Wells. Miss
Penelope was no less lavish in her enthusiasm than the gallant officer.
"Ravishing," she exclaims ten times on one page, "wondrous...utterly beyond
description...gold plate...candelabras...negroes in plush breeches...
pyramids of ice...fountains of negus...jellies made to represent His
Majesty's ships...swans made to represent water lilies...birds in golden
cages...gentlemen in slashed crimson velvet...Ladies' headdresses AT LEAST
six foot high...musical boxes....Mr Peregrine said I looked QUITE lovely
which I only repeat to you, my dearest, because I know...Oh! how I longed
for you all!...surpassing anything we have seen at the Pantiles...oceans to
drink...some gentlemen overcome...Lady Betty ravishing....Poor Lady Bonham
made the unfortunate mistake of sitting down without a chair beneath
her...Gentlemen all very gallant...wished a thousand times for you and
dearest Betsy...But the sight of all others, the cynosure of all eyes...as
all admitted, for none could be so vile as to deny it, was the Ambassador
himself. Such a leg! Such a countenance!! Such princely manners!!! To see
him come into the room! To see him go out again! And something INTERESTING
in the expression, which makes one feel, one scarcely knows why, that he has
SUFFERED! They say a lady was the cause of it. The heartless monster!!! How
can one of our REPUTED TENDER SEX have had the effrontery!!! He is
unmarried, and half the ladies in the place are wild for love of him...A
thousand, thousand kisses to Tom, Gerry, Peter, and dearest Mew" [presumably
her cat].
From the Gazette of the time, we gather that "as the clock struck
twelve, the Ambassador appeared on the centre Balcony which was hung with
priceless rugs. Six Turks of the Imperial Body Guard, each over six foot in
height, held torches to his right and left. Rockets rose into the air at his
appearance, and a great shout went up from the people, which the Ambassador
acknowledged, bowing deeply, and speaking a few words of thanks in the
Turkish language, which it was one of his accomplishments to speak with
fluency. Next, Sir Adrian Scrope, in the full dress of a British Admiral,
advanced; the Ambassador knelt on one knee; the Admiral placed the Collar of
the Most Noble Order of the Bath round his neck, then pinned the Star to his
breast; after which another gentleman of the diplomatic corps advancing in a
stately manner placed on his shoulders the ducal robes, and handed him on a
crimson cushion, the ducal coronet."
At length, with a gesture of extraordinary majesty and grace, first
bowing profoundly, then raising himself proudly erect, Orlando took the
golden circlet of strawberry leaves and placed it, with a gesture which none
that saw it ever forgot, upon his brows. It was at this point that the first
disturbance began. Either the people had expected a miracle - some say a
shower of gold was prophesied to fall from the skies - which did not happen,
or this was the signal chosen for the attack to begin; nobody seems to know;
but as the coronet settled on Orlando's brows a great uproar rose. Bells
began ringing; the harsh cries of the prophets were heard above the shouts
of the people; many Turks fell flat to the ground and touched the earth with
their foreheads. A door burst open. The natives pressed into the banqueting
rooms. Women shrieked. A certain lady, who was said to be dying for love of
Orlando, seized a candelabra and dashed it to the ground. What might not
have happened, had it not been for the presence of Sir Adrian Scrope and a
squad of British blue-jackets, nobody can say. But the Admiral ordered the
bugles to be sounded; a hundred blue-jackets stood instantly at attention;
the disorder was quelled, and quiet, at least for the time being, fell upon
the scene.
So far, we are on the firm, if rather narrow, ground of ascertained
truth. But nobody has ever known exactly what took place later that night.
The testimony of the sentries and others seems, however, to prove that the
Embassy was empty of company, and shut up for the night in the usual way by
two A.M. The Ambassador was seen to go to his room, still wearing the
insignia of his rank, and shut the door. Some say he locked it, which was
against his custom. Others maintain that they heard music of a rustic kind,
such as shepherds play, later that night in the courtyard under the
Ambassador's window. A washer-woman, who was kept awake by toothache, said
that she saw a man's figure, wrapped in a cloak or dressing gown, come out
upon the balcony. Then, she said, a woman, much muffled, but apparently of
the peasant class, was drawn up by means of a rope which the man let down to
her on to the balcony. There, the washer-woman said, they embraced
passionately "like lovers", and went into the room together, drawing the
curtains so that no more could be seen.
Next morning, the Duke, as we must now call him, was found by his
secretaries sunk in profound slumber amid bed clothes that were much
tumbled. The room was in some disorder, his coronet having rolled on the
floor, and his cloak and garter being flung all of a heap on a chair. The
table was littered with papers. No suspicion was felt at first, as the
fatigues of the night had been great. But when afternoon came and he still
slept, a doctor was summoned. He applied remedies which had been used on the
previous occasion, plasters, nettles, emetics, etc., but without success.
Orlando slept on. His secretaries then thought it their duty to examine the
papers on the table. Many were scribbled over with poetry, in which frequent
mention was made of an oak tree. There were also various state papers and
others of a private nature concerning the management of his estates in
England. But at length they came upon a document of far greater
significance. It was nothing less, indeed, than a deed of marriage, drawn
up, signed, and witnessed between his Lordship, Orlando, Knight of the
Garter, etc., etc., etc., and Rosina Pepita, a dancer, father unknown, but
reputed a gipsy, mother also unknown but reputed a seller of old iron in the
market-place over against the Galata Bridge. The secretaries looked at each
other in dismay. And still Orlando slept. Morning and evening they watched
him, but, save that his breathing was regular and his cheeks still flushed
their habitual deep rose, he gave no sign of life. Whatever science or
ingenuity could do to waken him they did. But still he slept.
On the seventh day of his trance (Thursday, May the 10th) the first
shot was fired of that terrible and bloody insurrection of which Lieutenant
Brigge had detected the first symptoms. The Turks rose against the Sultan,
set fire to the town, and put every foreigner they could find, either to the
sword or to the bastinado. A few English managed to escape; but, as might
have been expected, the gentlemen of the British Embassy preferred to die in
defence of their red boxes, or, in extreme cases, to swallow bunches of keys
rather than let them fall into the hands of the Infidel. The rioters broke
into Orlando's room, but seeing him stretched to all appearances dead they
left him untouched, and only robbed him of his coronet and the robes of the
Garter.
And now again obscurity descends, and would indeed that it were deeper!
Would, we almost have it in our hearts to exclaim, that it were so deep that
we could see nothing whatever through its opacity! Would that we might here
take the pen and write Finis to our work! Would that we might spare the
reader what is to come and say to him in so many words, Orlando died and was
buried. But here, alas, Truth, Candour, and Honesty, the austere Gods who
keep watch and ward by the inkpot of the biographer, cry No! Putting their
silver trumpets to their lips they demand in one blast, Truth! And again
they cry Truth! and sounding yet a third time in concert they peal forth,
The Truth and nothing but the Truth!
At which - Heaven be praised! for it affords us a breathing space - the
doors gently open, as if a breath of the gentlest and holiest zephyr had
wafted them apart, and three figures enter. First, comes our Lady of Purity;
whose brows are bound with fillets of the whitest lamb's wool; whose hair is
as an avalanche of the driven snow; and in whose hand reposes the white
quill of a virgin goose. Following her, but with a statelier step, comes our
Lady of Chastity; on whose brow is set like a turret of burning but
unwasting fire a diadem of icicles; her eyes are pure stars, and her
fingers, if they touch you, freeze you to the bone. Close behind her,
sheltering indeed in the shadow of her more stately sisters, comes our Lady
of Modesty, frailest and fairest of the three; whose face is only shown as
the young moon shows when it is thin and sickle shaped and half hidden among
clouds. Each advances towards the centre of the room where Orlando still
lies sleeping; and with gestures at once appealing and commanding, OUR LADY
OF PURITY speaks first:
"I am the guardian of the sleeping fawn; the snow is dear to me; and
the moon rising; and the silver sea. With my robes I cover the speckled
hen's eggs and the brindled sea shell; I cover vice and poverty. On all
things frail or dark or doubtful, my veil descends. Wherefore, speak not,
reveal not. Spare, O spare!"
Here the trumpets peal forth.
"Purity Avaunt! Begone Purity!"
Then OUR LADY OF CHASTITY speaks:
"I am she whose touch freezes and whose glance turns to stone. I have
stayed the star in its dancing, and the wave as it falls. The highest Alps
are my dwelling place; and when I walk, the lightnings flash in my hair;
where my eyes fall, they kill. Rather than let Orlando wake, I will freeze
him to the bone. Spare, O spare!"
Here the trumpets peal forth.
"Chastity Avaunt! Begone Chastity!"
Then OUR LADY OF MODESTY speaks, so low that one can hardly hear:
"I am she that men call Modesty. Virgin I am and ever shall be. Not for
me the fruitful fields and the fertile vineyard. Increase is odious to me;
and when the apples burgeon or the flocks breed, I run, I run; I let my
mantle fall. My hair covers my eyes. I do not see. Spare, O spare!"
Again the trumpets peal forth:
"Modesty Avaunt! Begone Modesty!?"
With gestures of grief and lamentation the three sisters now join hands
and dance slowly, tossing their veils and singing as they go:
"Truth come not out from your horrid den. Hide deeper, fearful Truth.
For you flaunt in the brutal gaze of the sun things that were better unknown
and undone; you unveil the shameful; the dark you make clear, Hide! Hide!
Hide!"
Here they make as if to cover Orlando with their draperies. The
trumpets, meanwhile, still blare forth,
"The Truth and nothing but the Truth."
At this the Sisters try to cast their veils over the mouths of the
trumpets so as to muffle them, but in vain, for now all the trumpets blare
forth together,
"Horrid Sisters, go!"
The sisters become distracted and wail in unison, still circling and
flinging their veils up and down.
"It has not always been so! But men want us no longer; the women detest
us. We go; we go. I (PURITY SAYS THIS) to the hen roost. I (CHASTITY SAYS
THIS) to the still unravished heights of Surrey. I (MODESTY SAYS THIS) to
any cosy nook where there are ivy and curtains in plenty."
"For there, not here (all speak together joining hands and making
gestures of farewell and despair towards the bed where Orlando lies
sleeping) dwell still in nest and boudoir, office and lawcourt those who
love us; those who honour us, virgins and city men; lawyers and doctors;
those who prohibit; those who deny; those who reverence without knowing why;
those who praise without understanding; the still very numerous (Heaven be
praised) tribe of the respectable; who prefer to see not; desire to know
not; love the darkness; those still worship us, and with reason; for we have
given them Wealth, Prosperity, Comfort, Ease. To them we go, you we leave.
Come, Sisters, come! This is no place for us here."
They retire in haste, waving their draperies over their heads, as if to
shut out something that they dare not look upon and close the door behind
them.
We are, therefore, now left entirely alone in the room with the
sleeping Orlando and the trumpeters. The trumpeters, ranging themselves side
by side in order, blow one terrific blast:
"THE TRUTH!"
at which Orlando woke.
He stretched himself. He rose. He stood upright in complete nakedness
before us, and while the trumpets pealed Truth! Truth! Truth! we have no
choice left but confess - he was a woman.
The sound of the trumpets died away and Orlando stood stark naked. No
human being, since the world began, has ever looked more ravishing. His form
been wide open all the time, but had seen only thoughts, and saw, lying in
the hollow beneath him, his house.
There it lay in the early sunshine of spring. It looked a town rather
than a house, but a town built, not hither and thither, as this man wished
or that, but circumspectly, by a single architect with one idea in his head.
Courts and buildings, grey, red, plum colour, lay orderly and symmetrical;
the courts were some of them oblong and some square; in this was a fountain;
in that a statue; the buildings were some of them low, some pointed; here
was a chapel, there a belfry; spaces of the greenest grass lay in between
and clumps of cedar trees and beds of bright flowers; all were clasped - yet
so well set out was it that it seemed that every part had room to spread
itself fittingly - by the roll of a massive wall; while smoke from
innumerable chimneys curled perpetually into the air. This vast, yet ordered
building, which could house a thousand men and perhaps two thousand horses,
was built, Orlando thought, by workmen whose names are unknown. Here have
lived, for more centuries than I can count, the obscure generations of my
own obscure family. Not one of these Richards, Johns, Annes, Elizabeths has
left a token of himself behind him, yet all, working together with their
spades and their needles, their love-making and their child-bearing, have
left this.
Never had the house looked more noble and humane.
Why, then, had he wished to raise himself above them? For it seemed
vain and arrogant in the extreme to try to better that anonymous work of
creation; the labours of those vanished hands. Better was it to go unknown
and leave behind you an arch, a potting shed, a wall where peaches ripen,
than to burn like a meteor and leave no dust. For after all, he said,
kindling as he looked at the great house on the greensward below, the
unknown lords and ladies who lived there never forgot to set aside something
for those who come after; for the roof that will leak; for the tree that
will fall. There was always a warm corner for the old shepherd in the
kitchen; always food for the hungry; always their goblets were polished,
though they lay sick, and their windows were lit though they lay dying.
Lords though they were, they were content to go down into obscurity with the
molecatcher and the stone-mason. Obscure noblemen, forgotten builders - thus
he apostrophized them with a warmth that entirely gainsaid such critics as
called him cold, indifferent, slothful (the truth being that a quality often
lies just on the other side of the wall from where we seek it) - thus he
apostrophized his house and race in terms of the most moving eloquence; but
when it came to the peroration - and what is eloquence that lacks a
peroration? - he fumbled. He would have liked to have ended with a flourish
to the effect that he would follow in their footsteps and add another stone
to their building. Since, however, the building already covered nine acres,
to add even a single stone seemed superfluous. Could one mention furniture
in a peroration? Could one speak of chairs and tables and mats to lie beside
people's beds? For whatever the peroration wanted, that was what the house
stood in need of. Leaving his speech unfinished for the moment, he strode
down hill again resolved henceforward to devote himself to the furnishing of
the mansion. The news - that she was to attend him instantly - brought tears
to the eyes of good old Mrs Grimsditch, now grown somewhat old. Together
they perambulated the house.
The towel horse in the King's bedroom ("and that was King Jamie, my
Lord," she said, hinting that it was many a day since a King had slept under
their roof; but the odious Parliament days were over and there was now a
Crown in England again) lacked a leg; there were no stands to the ewers in
the little closet leading into the waiting room of the Duchess's page; Mr
Greene had made a stain on the carpet with his nasty pipe smoking, which she
and Judy, for all their scrubbing, had never been able to wash out. Indeed,
when Orlando came to reckon up the matter of furnishing with rosewood chairs
and cedar-wood cabinets, with silver basins, china bowls, and Persian
carpets, every one of the three hundred and sixty-five bedrooms which the
house contained, he saw that it would be no light one; and if some thousands
of pounds of his estate remained over, these would do little more than hang
a few galleries with tapestry, set the dining hall with fine, carved chairs
and provide mirrors of solid silver and chairs of the same metal (for which
he had an inordinate passion) for the furnishing of the royal bedchambers.
He now set to work in earnest, as we can prove beyond a doubt if we
look at his ledgers. Let us glance at an inventory of what he bought at this
time, with the expenses totted up in the margin - but these we omit.
"To fifty pairs of Spanish blankets, ditto curtains of crimson and
white taffeta; the valence to them of white satin embroidered with crimson
and white silk...
"To seventy yellow satin chairs and sixty stools, suitable with their
buckram covers to them all...
"To sixty seven walnut tree tables...
"To seventeen dozen boxes containing each dozen five dozen of Venice
glasses...
"To one hundred and two mats, each thirty yards long...
"To ninety seven cushions of crimson damask laid with silver parchment
lace and footstools of cloth of tissue and chairs suitable...
"To fifty branches for a dozen lights apiece..."
Already - it is an effect lists have upon us - we are beginning to
yawn. But if we stop, it is only that the catalogue is tedious, not that it
is finished. There are ninety-nine pages more of it and the total sum
disbursed ran into many thousands - that is to say millions of our money.
And if his day was spent like this, at night again, Lord Orlando might be
found reckoning out what it would cost to level a million molehills, if the
men were paid tenpence an hour; and again, how many hundredweight of nails
at fivepence halfpenny a gill were needed to repair the fence round the
park, which was fifteen miles in circumference. And so on and so on.
The tale, we say, is tedious, for one cupboard is much like another,
and one molehill not much different from a million. Some pleasant journeys
it cost him; and some fine adventures. As, for instance, when he set a whole
city of blind women near Bruges to stitch hangings for a silver canopied
bed; and the story of his adventure with a Moor in Venice of whom he bought
(but only at the sword's point) his lacquered cabinet, might, in other
hands, prove worth the telling. Nor did the work lack variety; for here
would come, drawn by teams from Sussex, great trees, to be sawn across and
laid along the gallery for flooring; and then a chest from Persia, stuffed
with wool and sawdust. from which, at last, he would take a single plate, or
one topaz ring.
At length, however, there was no room in the galleries for another
table; no room on te tables for another cabinet; no room in the cabinet for
another rose-bowl; no room in the bowl for another handful of potpourri;
there was no room for anything anywhere; in short the house was furnished.
In the garden snowdrops, crocuses, hyacinths, magnolias, roses, lilies,
asters, the dahlia in all its varieties, pear trees and apple trees and
cherry trees and mulberry trees, with an enormous quantity of rare and
flowering shrubs, of trees evergreen and perennial, grew so thick on each
other's roots that there was no plot of earth without its bloom, and no
stretch of sward without its shade. In addition, he had imported wild fowl
with gay plumage; and two Malay bears, the surliness of whose manners
concealed, he was certain, trusty hearts.
All now was ready; and when it was evening and the innumerable silver
sconces were lit and the light airs which for ever moved about the galleries
stirred the blue and green arras, so that it looked as if the huntsmen were
riding and Daphne flying; when the silver shone and lacquer glowed and wood
kindled; when the carved chairs held their arms out and dolphins swam upon
the walls with mermaids on their backs; when all this and much more than all
this was complete and to his liking, Orlando walked through the house with
his elk-hounds following and felt content. He had matter now, he thought, to
fill out his peroration. Perhaps it would be well to begin the speech all
over again. Yet, as he paraded the galleries he felt that still something
was lacking. Chairs and tables, however richly gilt and carved, sofas,
resting on lions' paws with swans' necks curving under them, beds even of
the softest swansdown are not by themselves enough. People sitting in them,
people lying in them improve them amazingly. Accordingly Orlando now began a
series of very splendid entertainments to the nobility and gentry of the
neighbourhood. The three hundred and sixty-five bedrooms were full for a
month at a time. Guests jostled each other on the fifty-two staircases.
Three hundred servants bustled about the pantries. Banquets took place
almost nightly. Thus, in a very few years, Orlando had worn the nap off his
velvet, and spent the half of his fortune; but he had earned the good
opinion of his neighbours, held a score of offices in the county, and was
annually presented with perhaps a dozen volumes dedicated to his Lordship in
rather fulsome terms by grateful poets. For though he was careful not to
consort with writers at that time and kept himself always aloof from ladies
of foreign blood, still, he was excessively generous both to women and to
poets, and both adored him.
But when the feasting was at its height and his guests were at their
revels, he was apt to take himself off to his private room alone. There when
the door was shut, and he was certain of privacy, he would have out an old
writing book, stitched together with silk stolen from his mother's workbox,
and labelled in a round schoolboy hand, "The Oak Tree, A Poem". In this he
would write till midnight chimed and long after. But as he scratched out as
many lines as he wrote in, the sum of them was often, at the end of the
year, rather less than at the beginning, and it looked as if in the process
of writing the poem would be completely unwritten. For it is for the
historian of letters to remark that he had changed his style amazingly. His
floridity was chastened; his abundance curbed; the age of prose was
congealing those warm fountains. The very landscape outside was less stuck
about with garlands and the briars themselves were less thorned and
intricate. Perhaps the senses were a little duller and honey and cream less
seductive to the palate. Also that the streets were better drained and the
houses better lit had its effect upon the style, it cannot be doubted.
One day he was adding a line or two with enormous labour to "The Oak
Tree, A Poem", when a shadow crossed the tail of his eye. It was no shadow,
he soon saw, but the figure of a very tall lady in riding hood and mantle
crossing the quadrangle on which his room looked out. As this was the most
private of the courts, and the lady was a stranger to him, Orlando marvelled
how she had got there. Three days later the same apparition appeared again;
and on Wednesday noon appeared once more. This time, Orlando was determined
to follow her, nor apparently was she afraid to be found, for she slackened
her steps as he came up and looked him full in the face. Any other woman
thus caught in a Lord's private grounds would have been afraid; any other
woman with that face, head-dress, and aspect would have thrown her mantilla
across her shoulders to hide it. For this lady resembled nothing so much as
a hare; a hare startled, but obdurate; a hare whose timidity is overcome by
an immense and foolish audacity; a hare that sits upright and glowers at its
pursuer with great, bulging eyes; with ears erect but quivering, with nose
pointed, but twitching. This hare, moreover, was six feet high and wore a
head-dress into the bargain of some antiquated kind which made her look
still taller. Thus confronted, she stared at Orlando with a stare in which
timidity and audacity were most strangely combined.
First, she asked him, with a proper, but somewhat clumsy curtsey, to
forgive her her intrusion. Then, rising to her full height again, which must
have been something over six feet two, she went on to say - but with such a
cackle of nervous laughter, so much tee-heeing and haw-hawing that Orlando
thought she must have escaped from a lunatic asylum - that she was the
Archduchess Harriet Griselda of Finster-Aarhorn and Scand-op-Boom in the
Roumanian territory. She desired above all things to make his acquaintance,
she said. She had taken lodging over a baker's shop at the Park Gates. She
had seen his picture and it was the image of a sister of hers who was - here
she guffawed - long since dead. She was visiting the English court. The
Queen was her Cousin. The King was a very good fellow but seldom went to bed
sober. Here she tee-heed and haw-hawed again. In short, there was nothing
for it but to ask her in and give her a glass of wine.
Indoors, her manners regained the hauteur natural to a Roumanian
Archduchess; and had she not shown a knowledge of wines rare in a lady, and
made some observations upon firearms and the customs of sportsmen in her
country, which were sensible enough, the talk would have lacked spontaneity.
Jumping to her feet at last, she announced that she would call the following
day, swept another prodigious curtsey and departed. The following day,
Orlando rode out. The next, he turned his back; on the third he drew his
curtain. On the fourth it rained, and as he could not keep a lady in the
wet, nor was altogether averse to company, he invited her in and asked her
opinion whether a suit of armour, which belonged to an ancestor of his, was
the work of Jacobi or of Topp. He inclined to Topp. She held another opinion
- it matters very little which. But it is of some importance to the course
of our story that, in illustrating her argument, which had to do with the
working of the tie pieces, the Archduchess Harriet took the golden shin case
and fitted it to Orlando's leg.
That he had a pair of the shapeliest legs that any Nobleman has ever
stood upright upon has already been said.
Perhaps something in the way she fastened the ankle buckle; or her
stooping posture; or Orlando's long seclusion; or the natural sympathy which
is between the sexes; or the Burgundy; or the fire - any of these causes may
have been to blame; for certainly blame there is on one side or another,
when a Nobleman of Orlando's breeding, entertaining a lady in his house, and
she his elder by many years, with a face a yard long and staring eyes,
dressed somewhat ridiculously too, in a mantle and riding cloak though the
season was warm - blame there is when such a Nobleman is so suddenly and
violently overcome by passion of some sort that he has to leave the room.
But what sort of passion, it may well be asked, could this be? And the
answer is double faced as Love herself. For Love - but leaving Love out of
the argument for a moment, the actual event was this:
When the Archduchess Harriet Griselda stooped to fasten the buckle,
Orlando heard, suddenly and unaccountably, far off the beating of Love's
wings. The distant stir of that soft plumage roused in him a thousand
memories of rushing waters, of loveliness in the snow and faithlessness in
the flood; and the sound came nearer; and he blushed and trembled; and he
was moved as he had thought never to be moved again; and he was ready to
raise his hands and let the bird of beauty alight upon his shoulders, when -
horror! - a creaking sound like that the crows make tumbling over the trees
began to reverberate; the air seemed dark with coarse black wings; voices
croaked; bits of straw, twigs, and feathers dropped; and there pitched down
upon his shoulders the heaviest and foulest of the birds; which is the
vulture. Thus he rushed from the room and sent the footman to see the
Archduchess Harriet to her carriage.
For Love, to which we may now return, has two faces; one white, the
other black; two bodies; one smooth, the other hairy. It has two hands, two
feet, two nails, two, indeed, of every member and each one is the exact
opposite of the other. Yet, so strictly are they joined together that you
cannot separate them. In this case, Orlando's love began her flight towards
him with her white face turned, and her smooth and lovely body outwards.
Nearer and nearer she came wafting before her airs of pure delight. All of a
sudden (at the sight of the Archduchess presumably) she wheeled about,
turned the other way round; showed herself black, hairy, brutish; and it was
Lust the vulture, not Love, the Bird of Paradise, that flopped, foully and
disgustingly, upon his shoulders. Hence he ran; hence he fetched the
footman.
But the harpy is not so easily banished as all that. Not only did the
Archduchess continue to lodge at the Baker's, but Orlando was haunted every
day and night by phantoms of the foulest kind. Vainly, it seemed, had he
furnished his house with silver and hung the walls with arras, when at any
moment a dung-bedraggled fowl could settle upon his writing table. There she
was, flopping about among the chairs; he saw her waddling ungracefully
across the galleries. Now, she perched, top heavy upon a fire screen. When
he chased her out, back she came and pecked at the glass till she broke it.
Thus realizing that his home was uninhabitable, and that steps must be
taken to end the matter instantly, he did what any other young man would
have done in his place, and asked King Charles to send him as Ambassador
Extraordinary to Constantinople. The King was walking in Whitehall. Nell
Gwyn was on his arm. She was pelting him with hazel nuts. 'Twas a thousand
pities, that amorous lady sighed, that such a pair of legs should leave the
country.
Howbeit, the Fates were hard; she could do no more than toss one kiss
over her shoulder before Orlando sailed.
It is, indeed, highly unfortunate, and much to be regretted that at
this stage of Orlando's career, when he played a most important part in the
public life of his country, we have least information to go upon. We know
that he discharged his duties to admiration - witness his Bath and his
Dukedom. We know that he had a finger in some of the most delicate
negotiations between King Charles and the Turks - to that, treaties in the
vault of the Record Office bear testimony. But the revolution which broke
out during his period of office, and the fire which followed, have so
damaged or destroyed all those papers from which any trustworthy record
could be drawn, that what we can give is lamentably incomplete. Often the
paper was scorched a deep brown in the middle of the most important
sentence. Just when we thought to elucidate a secret that has puzzled
historians for a hundred years, there was a hole in the manuscript big
enough to put your finger through. We have done our best to piece out a
meagre summary from the charred fragments that remain; but often it has been
necessary to speculate, to surmise, and even to use the imagination.
Orlando's day was passed, it would seem, somewhat in this fashion.
About seven, he would rise, wrap himself in a long Turkish cloak, light a
cheroot, and lean his elbows on the parapet. Thus he would stand, gazing at
the city beneath him, apparently entranced. At this hour the mist would lie
so thick that the domes of Santa Sofia and the rest would seem to be afloat;
gradually the mist would uncover them; the bubbles would be seen to be
firmly fixed; there would be the river; there the Galata Bridge; there the
green-turbaned pilgrims without eyes or noses, begging alms; there the
pariah dogs picking up offal; there the shawled women; there the innumerable
donkeys; there men on horses carrying long poles. Soon, the whole town would
be astir with the cracking of whips, the beating of gongs, cryings to
prayer, lashing of mules, and rattle of brass-bound wheels, while sour
odours, made from bread fermenting and incense, and spice, rose even to the
heights of Pera itself and seemed the very breath of the strident
multi-coloured and barbaric population.
Nothing, he reflected, gazing at the view which was now sparkling in
the sun, could well be less like the counties of Surrey and Kent or the
towns of London and Tunbridge Wells. To the right and left rose in bald and
stony prominence the inhospitable Asian mountains, to which the arid castle
of a robber chief or two might hang; but parsonage there was none, nor manor
house, nor cottage, nor oak, elm, violet, ivy, or wild eglantine. There were
no hedges for ferns to grow on, and no fields for sheep to graze. The houses
were white as egg-shells and as bald. That he, who was English root and
fibre, should yet exult to the depths of his heart in this wild panorama,
and gaze and gaze at those passes and far heights planning journeys there
alone on foot where only the goat and shepherd had gone before; should feel
a passion of affection for the bright, unseasonable flowers, love the
unkempt pariah dogs beyond even his elk hounds at home, and snuff the acrid,
sharp smell of the streets eagerly into his nostrils, surprised him. He
wondered if, in the season of the Crusades, one of his ancestors had taken
up with a Circassian peasant woman; thought it possible; fancied a certain
darkness in his complexion; and, going indoors again, withdrew to his bath.
An hour later, properly scented, curled, and anointed, he would receive
visits from secretaries and other high officials carrying, one after
another, red boxes which yielded only to his own golden key. Within were
papers of the highest importance, of which only fragments, here a flourish,
there a seal firmly attached to a piece of burnt silk, now remain. Of their
contents then, we cannot speak, but can only testify that Orlando was kept
busy, what with his wax and seals, his various coloured ribbons which had to
be diversely attached, his engrossing of titles and making of flourishes
round capital letters, till luncheon came - a splendid meal of perhaps
thirty courses.
After luncheon, lackeys announced that his coach and six was at the
door, and he went, preceded by purple Janissaries running on foot and waving
great ostrich feather fans above their heads, to call upon the other
ambassadors and dignitaries of state. The ceremony was always the same. On
reaching the courtyard, the Janissaries struck with their fans upon the main
portal, which immediately flew open revealing a large chamber, splendidly
furnished. Here were seated two figures, generally of the opposite sexes.
Profound bows and curtseys were exchanged. In the first room, it was
permissible only to mention the weather. Having said that it was fine or
wet, hot or cold, the Ambassador then passed on to the next chamber, where
again, two figures rose to greet him. Here it was only permissible to
compare Constantinople as a place of residence with London; and the
Ambassador naturally said that he preferred Constantinople, and his hosts
naturally said, though they had not seen it, that they preferred London. In
the next chamber, King Charles's and the Sultan's healths had to be
discussed at some length. In the next were discussed the Ambassador's health
and that of his host's wife, but more briefly. In the next the Ambassador
complimented his host upon his furniture, and the host complimented the
Ambassador upon his dress. In the next, sweet meats were offered, the host
deploring their badness, the Ambassador extolling their goodness. The
ceremony ended at length with the smoking of a hookah and the drinking of a
glass of coffee; but though the motions of smoking and drinking were gone
through punctiliously there was neither tobacco in the pipe nor coffee in
the glass, as, had either smoke or drink been real, the human frame would
have sunk beneath the surfeit. For, no sooner had the Ambassador despatched
one such visit, than another had to be undertaken. The same ceremonies were
gone through in precisely the same order six or seven times over at the
houses of the other great officials, so that it was often late at night
before the Ambassador reached home. Though Orlando performed these tasks to
admiration and never denied that they are, perhaps, the most important part
of a diplomatist's duties, he was undoubtedly fatigued by them, and often
depressed to such a pitch of gloom that he preferred to take his dinner
alone with his dogs. To them, indeed, he might be heard talking in his own
tongue. And sometimes, it is said, he would pass out of his own gates late
at night so disguised that the sentries did not know him. Then he would
mingle with the crowd on the Galata Bridge; or stroll through the bazaars;
or throw aside his shoes and join the worshippers in the Mosques. Once, when
it was given out that he was ill of a fever, shepherds, bringing their goats
to market, reported that they had met an English Lord on the mountain top
and heard him praying to his God. This was thought to be Orlando himself,
and his prayer was, no doubt, a poem said aloud, for it was known that he
still carried about with him, in the bosom of his cloak, a much scored
manuscript; and servants, listening at the door, heard the Ambassador
chanting something in an odd, sing-song voice when he was alone.
It is with fragments such as these that we must do our best to make up
a picture of Orlando's life and character at this time. There exist, even to
this day, rumours, legends, anecdotes of a floating and unauthenticated kind
about Orlando's life in Constantinople (we have quoted but a few of them)
which go to prove that he possessed, now that he was in the prime of life,
the power to stir the fancy and rivet the eye which will keep a memory green
long after all that more durable qualities can do to preserve it is
forgotten. The power is a mysterious one compounded of beauty, birth, and
some rarer gift, which we may call glamour and have done with it. "A million
candles", as Sasha had said, burnt in him without his being at the trouble
of lighting a single one. He moved like a stag, without any need to think
about his legs. He spoke in his ordinary voice and echo beat a silver gong.
Hence rumours gathered round him. He became the adored of many women and
some men. It was not necessary that they should speak to him or even that
they should see him; they conjured up before them especially when the
scenery was romantic, or the sun was setting, the figure of a noble
gentleman in silk stockings. Upon the poor and uneducated, he had the same
power as upon the rich. Shepherds, gipsies, donkey drivers, still sing songs
about the English Lord "who dropped his emeralds in the well", which
undoubtedly refer to Orlando, who once, it seems, tore his jewels from him
in a moment of rage or intoxication and flung them in a fountain; whence
they were fished by a page boy. But this romantic power, it is well known,
is often associated with a nature of extreme reserve. Orlando seems to have
made no friends. As far as is known, he formed no attachments. A certain
great lady came all the way from England in order to be near him, and
pestered him with her attentions, but he continued to discharge his duties
so indefatigably that he had not been Ambassador at the Horn for more than
two years and a half before King Charles signified his intention of raising
him to the highest rank in the peerage. The envious said that this was Nell
Gwyn's tribute to the memory of a leg. But, as she had seen him once only,
and was then busily engaged in pelting her royal master with nutshells, it
is likely that it was his merits that won him his Dukedom, not his calves.
Here we must pause, for we have reached a moment of great significance
in his career. For the conferring of the Dukedom was the occasion of a very
famous, and indeed, much disputed incident, which we must now describe,
picking our way among burnt papers and little bits of tape as best we may.
It was at the end of the great fast of Ramadan that the Order of the Bath
and the patent of nobility arrived in a frigate commanded by Sir Adrian
Scrope; and Orlando made this the occasion for an entertainment more
splendid than any that has been known before or since in Constantinople. The
night was fine; the crowd immense, and the windows of the Embassy
brilliantly illuminated. Again, details are lacking, for the fire had its
way with all such records, and has left only tantalizing fragments which
leave the most important points obscure. From the diary of John Fenner
Brigge, however, an English naval officer, who was among the guests, we
gather that people of all nationalities "were packed like herrings in a
barrel" in the courtyard. The crowd pressed so unpleasantly close that
Brigge soon climbed into a Judas tree, the better to observe the
proceedings. The rumour had got about among the natives (and here is
additional proof of Orlando's mysterious power over the imagination) that
some kind of miracle was to be performed. "Thus," writes Brigge (but his
manuscript is full of burns and holes, some sentences being quite
illegible), "when the rockets began to soar into the air, there was
considerable uneasiness among us lest the native population should be
seized...fraught with unpleasant consequences to all...English ladies in the
company, I own that my hand went to my cutlass. Happily," he continues in
his somewhat long-winded style, "these fears seemed, for the moment,
groundless and, observing the demeanour of the natives...I came to the
conclusion that this demonstration of our skill in the art of pyrotechny was
valuable, if only because it impressed upon them...the superiority of the
British...Indeed, the sight was one of indescribable magnificence. I found
myself alternately praising the Lord that he had permitted...and wishing
that my poor, dear mother...By the Ambassador's orders, the long windows,
which are so imposing a feature of Eastern architecture, for though ignorant
in many ways...were thrown wide; and within, we could see a tableau vivant
or theatrical display in which English ladies and gentlemen...represented a
masque the work of one...The words were inaudible, but the sight of so many
of our countrymen and women, dressed with the highest elegance and
distinction...moved me to emotions of which I am certainly not ashamed,
though unable...I was intent upon observing the astonishing conduct of Lady
- which was of a nature to fasten the eyes of all upon her, and to bring
discredit upon her sex and country, when" - unfortunately a branch of the
Judas tree broke, Lieutenant Brigge fell to the ground, and the rest of the
entry records only his gratitude to Providence (who plays a very large part
in the diary) and the exact nature of his injuries.
Happily, Miss Penelope Hartopp, daughter of the General of that name,
saw the scene from inside and carries on the tale in a letter, much defaced
too, which ultimately reached a female friend at Tunbridge Wells. Miss
Penelope was no less lavish in her enthusiasm than the gallant officer.
"Ravishing," she exclaims ten times on one page, "wondrous...utterly beyond
description...gold plate...candelabras...negroes in plush breeches...
pyramids of ice...fountains of negus...jellies made to represent His
Majesty's ships...swans made to represent water lilies...birds in golden
cages...gentlemen in slashed crimson velvet...Ladies' headdresses AT LEAST
six foot high...musical boxes....Mr Peregrine said I looked QUITE lovely
which I only repeat to you, my dearest, because I know...Oh! how I longed
for you all!...surpassing anything we have seen at the Pantiles...oceans to
drink...some gentlemen overcome...Lady Betty ravishing....Poor Lady Bonham
made the unfortunate mistake of sitting down without a chair beneath
her...Gentlemen all very gallant...wished a thousand times for you and
dearest Betsy...But the sight of all others, the cynosure of all eyes...as
all admitted, for none could be so vile as to deny it, was the Ambassador
himself. Such a leg! Such a countenance!! Such princely manners!!! To see
him come into the room! To see him go out again! And something INTERESTING
in the expression, which makes one feel, one scarcely knows why, that he has
SUFFERED! They say a lady was the cause of it. The heartless monster!!! How
can one of our REPUTED TENDER SEX have had the effrontery!!! He is
unmarried, and half the ladies in the place are wild for love of him...A
thousand, thousand kisses to Tom, Gerry, Peter, and dearest Mew" [presumably
her cat].
From the Gazette of the time, we gather that "as the clock struck
twelve, the Ambassador appeared on the centre Balcony which was hung with
priceless rugs. Six Turks of the Imperial Body Guard, each over six foot in
height, held torches to his right and left. Rockets rose into the air at his
appearance, and a great shout went up from the people, which the Ambassador
acknowledged, bowing deeply, and speaking a few words of thanks in the
Turkish language, which it was one of his accomplishments to speak with
fluency. Next, Sir Adrian Scrope, in the full dress of a British Admiral,
advanced; the Ambassador knelt on one knee; the Admiral placed the Collar of
the Most Noble Order of the Bath round his neck, then pinned the Star to his
breast; after which another gentleman of the diplomatic corps advancing in a
stately manner placed on his shoulders the ducal robes, and handed him on a
crimson cushion, the ducal coronet."
At length, with a gesture of extraordinary majesty and grace, first
bowing profoundly, then raising himself proudly erect, Orlando took the
golden circlet of strawberry leaves and placed it, with a gesture which none
that saw it ever forgot, upon his brows. It was at this point that the first
disturbance began. Either the people had expected a miracle - some say a
shower of gold was prophesied to fall from the skies - which did not happen,
or this was the signal chosen for the attack to begin; nobody seems to know;
but as the coronet settled on Orlando's brows a great uproar rose. Bells
began ringing; the harsh cries of the prophets were heard above the shouts
of the people; many Turks fell flat to the ground and touched the earth with
their foreheads. A door burst open. The natives pressed into the banqueting
rooms. Women shrieked. A certain lady, who was said to be dying for love of
Orlando, seized a candelabra and dashed it to the ground. What might not
have happened, had it not been for the presence of Sir Adrian Scrope and a
squad of British blue-jackets, nobody can say. But the Admiral ordered the
bugles to be sounded; a hundred blue-jackets stood instantly at attention;
the disorder was quelled, and quiet, at least for the time being, fell upon
the scene.
So far, we are on the firm, if rather narrow, ground of ascertained
truth. But nobody has ever known exactly what took place later that night.
The testimony of the sentries and others seems, however, to prove that the
Embassy was empty of company, and shut up for the night in the usual way by
two A.M. The Ambassador was seen to go to his room, still wearing the
insignia of his rank, and shut the door. Some say he locked it, which was
against his custom. Others maintain that they heard music of a rustic kind,
such as shepherds play, later that night in the courtyard under the
Ambassador's window. A washer-woman, who was kept awake by toothache, said
that she saw a man's figure, wrapped in a cloak or dressing gown, come out
upon the balcony. Then, she said, a woman, much muffled, but apparently of
the peasant class, was drawn up by means of a rope which the man let down to
her on to the balcony. There, the washer-woman said, they embraced
passionately "like lovers", and went into the room together, drawing the
curtains so that no more could be seen.
Next morning, the Duke, as we must now call him, was found by his
secretaries sunk in profound slumber amid bed clothes that were much
tumbled. The room was in some disorder, his coronet having rolled on the
floor, and his cloak and garter being flung all of a heap on a chair. The
table was littered with papers. No suspicion was felt at first, as the
fatigues of the night had been great. But when afternoon came and he still
slept, a doctor was summoned. He applied remedies which had been used on the
previous occasion, plasters, nettles, emetics, etc., but without success.
Orlando slept on. His secretaries then thought it their duty to examine the
papers on the table. Many were scribbled over with poetry, in which frequent
mention was made of an oak tree. There were also various state papers and
others of a private nature concerning the management of his estates in
England. But at length they came upon a document of far greater
significance. It was nothing less, indeed, than a deed of marriage, drawn
up, signed, and witnessed between his Lordship, Orlando, Knight of the
Garter, etc., etc., etc., and Rosina Pepita, a dancer, father unknown, but
reputed a gipsy, mother also unknown but reputed a seller of old iron in the
market-place over against the Galata Bridge. The secretaries looked at each
other in dismay. And still Orlando slept. Morning and evening they watched
him, but, save that his breathing was regular and his cheeks still flushed
their habitual deep rose, he gave no sign of life. Whatever science or
ingenuity could do to waken him they did. But still he slept.
On the seventh day of his trance (Thursday, May the 10th) the first
shot was fired of that terrible and bloody insurrection of which Lieutenant
Brigge had detected the first symptoms. The Turks rose against the Sultan,
set fire to the town, and put every foreigner they could find, either to the
sword or to the bastinado. A few English managed to escape; but, as might
have been expected, the gentlemen of the British Embassy preferred to die in
defence of their red boxes, or, in extreme cases, to swallow bunches of keys
rather than let them fall into the hands of the Infidel. The rioters broke
into Orlando's room, but seeing him stretched to all appearances dead they
left him untouched, and only robbed him of his coronet and the robes of the
Garter.
And now again obscurity descends, and would indeed that it were deeper!
Would, we almost have it in our hearts to exclaim, that it were so deep that
we could see nothing whatever through its opacity! Would that we might here
take the pen and write Finis to our work! Would that we might spare the
reader what is to come and say to him in so many words, Orlando died and was
buried. But here, alas, Truth, Candour, and Honesty, the austere Gods who
keep watch and ward by the inkpot of the biographer, cry No! Putting their
silver trumpets to their lips they demand in one blast, Truth! And again
they cry Truth! and sounding yet a third time in concert they peal forth,
The Truth and nothing but the Truth!
At which - Heaven be praised! for it affords us a breathing space - the
doors gently open, as if a breath of the gentlest and holiest zephyr had
wafted them apart, and three figures enter. First, comes our Lady of Purity;
whose brows are bound with fillets of the whitest lamb's wool; whose hair is
as an avalanche of the driven snow; and in whose hand reposes the white
quill of a virgin goose. Following her, but with a statelier step, comes our
Lady of Chastity; on whose brow is set like a turret of burning but
unwasting fire a diadem of icicles; her eyes are pure stars, and her
fingers, if they touch you, freeze you to the bone. Close behind her,
sheltering indeed in the shadow of her more stately sisters, comes our Lady
of Modesty, frailest and fairest of the three; whose face is only shown as
the young moon shows when it is thin and sickle shaped and half hidden among
clouds. Each advances towards the centre of the room where Orlando still
lies sleeping; and with gestures at once appealing and commanding, OUR LADY
OF PURITY speaks first:
"I am the guardian of the sleeping fawn; the snow is dear to me; and
the moon rising; and the silver sea. With my robes I cover the speckled
hen's eggs and the brindled sea shell; I cover vice and poverty. On all
things frail or dark or doubtful, my veil descends. Wherefore, speak not,
reveal not. Spare, O spare!"
Here the trumpets peal forth.
"Purity Avaunt! Begone Purity!"
Then OUR LADY OF CHASTITY speaks:
"I am she whose touch freezes and whose glance turns to stone. I have
stayed the star in its dancing, and the wave as it falls. The highest Alps
are my dwelling place; and when I walk, the lightnings flash in my hair;
where my eyes fall, they kill. Rather than let Orlando wake, I will freeze
him to the bone. Spare, O spare!"
Here the trumpets peal forth.
"Chastity Avaunt! Begone Chastity!"
Then OUR LADY OF MODESTY speaks, so low that one can hardly hear:
"I am she that men call Modesty. Virgin I am and ever shall be. Not for
me the fruitful fields and the fertile vineyard. Increase is odious to me;
and when the apples burgeon or the flocks breed, I run, I run; I let my
mantle fall. My hair covers my eyes. I do not see. Spare, O spare!"
Again the trumpets peal forth:
"Modesty Avaunt! Begone Modesty!?"
With gestures of grief and lamentation the three sisters now join hands
and dance slowly, tossing their veils and singing as they go:
"Truth come not out from your horrid den. Hide deeper, fearful Truth.
For you flaunt in the brutal gaze of the sun things that were better unknown
and undone; you unveil the shameful; the dark you make clear, Hide! Hide!
Hide!"
Here they make as if to cover Orlando with their draperies. The
trumpets, meanwhile, still blare forth,
"The Truth and nothing but the Truth."
At this the Sisters try to cast their veils over the mouths of the
trumpets so as to muffle them, but in vain, for now all the trumpets blare
forth together,
"Horrid Sisters, go!"
The sisters become distracted and wail in unison, still circling and
flinging their veils up and down.
"It has not always been so! But men want us no longer; the women detest
us. We go; we go. I (PURITY SAYS THIS) to the hen roost. I (CHASTITY SAYS
THIS) to the still unravished heights of Surrey. I (MODESTY SAYS THIS) to
any cosy nook where there are ivy and curtains in plenty."
"For there, not here (all speak together joining hands and making
gestures of farewell and despair towards the bed where Orlando lies
sleeping) dwell still in nest and boudoir, office and lawcourt those who
love us; those who honour us, virgins and city men; lawyers and doctors;
those who prohibit; those who deny; those who reverence without knowing why;
those who praise without understanding; the still very numerous (Heaven be
praised) tribe of the respectable; who prefer to see not; desire to know
not; love the darkness; those still worship us, and with reason; for we have
given them Wealth, Prosperity, Comfort, Ease. To them we go, you we leave.
Come, Sisters, come! This is no place for us here."
They retire in haste, waving their draperies over their heads, as if to
shut out something that they dare not look upon and close the door behind
them.
We are, therefore, now left entirely alone in the room with the
sleeping Orlando and the trumpeters. The trumpeters, ranging themselves side
by side in order, blow one terrific blast:
"THE TRUTH!"
at which Orlando woke.
He stretched himself. He rose. He stood upright in complete nakedness
before us, and while the trumpets pealed Truth! Truth! Truth! we have no
choice left but confess - he was a woman.
The sound of the trumpets died away and Orlando stood stark naked. No
human being, since the world began, has ever looked more ravishing. His form