Appleby And Honeybath (18 page)

‘Yes,’ Honeybath said. ‘He well might.’

‘Naturally, sir, being of what may be termed a historical turn of mind myself, I deprecate such an attitude. It would be a great satisfaction to me, you see, to achieve an unpretending monograph on the history of the family.’

‘An excellent project, Mr Burrow.’ It was with unflawed respect that Honeybath now regarded this unusual menial. ‘But you find difficulties in your way?’

‘Very much so, I am sorry to have to report. Mr Grinton does not care for any kind of investigation in the library. Every few years he has in a professional firm to do a clear up. If any scribbled rubbish – as Mr Grinton expresses it – gets in the way of their vacuum cleaners, they have instructions to chuck it in the wastepaper baskets.’

‘Dear me! I would not willingly criticize a host, Mr Burrow, but it does seem a regrettable attitude.’

‘Indeed, yes, Mr Honeybath. And I ought to say at once that Mr Grinton has on several occasions been very indulgent to my own interests. But less so, perhaps, of recent months. Formerly, I did move about the library from time to time, and even ventured to make a number of transcripts of documents that appeared to be of particular interest in relation to that brief history of the family – a mere dream though I fear it to be.’

‘I hope, Mr Burrow, that it won’t turn out to be only that. Of course you have had a predecessor in the clergyman who compiled the
Reliquiae Grintonianae
. He records a good deal of family eccentricity, if the term isn’t disparaging, but he doesn’t come down much beyond Ambrose Grinton, who is certainly worth commemorating. What about Jonathan, for instance, the friend of Alexander Pope: have you come on any records of him?’

‘Ah, Mr Jonathan!’ For the first time during this peculiar interview, Burrow hesitated to proceed. He even bore the appearance of a sorely tempted man. ‘I don’t know that Mr Jonathan can be said to have been – or at least to have remained – exactly a friend of Pope’s. And to fall out with Pope was injudicious, to say the least.’

‘So I understand, Mr Burrow.’ Honeybath ventured to lapse into silence after making this brief comment, and rely upon a glance of bold expectation that more excitement was to come. And come it did.

‘Mr Jonathan Grinton kept a journal from time to time, all of which I am afraid has since gone into one of those wastepaper baskets. But of certain passages I ventured to make transcripts a good many years ago – but sparingly, since I knew that Mr Terence Grinton would consider it a very idle employment. Some of these passages chronicle Alexander Pope’s sojourn at Grinton. Or perhaps I should rather say his departure. The visit cannot be said to have gone well.’

‘Is that so? I believe it to be notorious that Pope was a difficult man.’

‘And a dangerous one, Mr Honeybath. It is within my recollection that one of the critics has described him as a metrical death-adder.’

‘A phrase perhaps a little on the picturesque side – don’t you think, Mr Burrow? But I remember enough of Pope’s invective powers to understand what is meant. Did he fall to satirizing this Jonathan Grinton?’

‘It would appear that he did. But Mr Jonathan may be said to have fallen to satirizing him in turn. He recorded in his journal – and this is among the excerpts I ventured to make – a somewhat ludicrous character of his departed guest.’ For the second time Burrow distinguishably hesitated. But the scholar’s vanity took control. ‘I wonder, Mr Honeybath, whether you would care to cast an eye over it? I believe my transcript to be of very tolerable accuracy. Such operations, like the decanting of wine, require to be undertaken with the greatest care.’

‘I’d like to see it very much,’ Honeybath said. But he was in fact a little doubtful about what was being suggested. Nothing if not a punctilious man, he reflected that it was in a sense Terence Grinton’s property that was concerned: Burrow’s transcript but – as it might be expressed – Terence’s copyright. It wasn’t quite proper – decidedly it wasn’t quite proper – to come by this backstairs view of the ancestral Jonathan. But to his credit as a person of good sense, Honeybath brushed these misgivings aside. ‘If it isn’t inconvenient,’ he said.

But Burrow already had a key in his hand. It proved to be the key not of some unremarkable drawer but of the capacious old-fashioned iron safe in which he no doubt locked up nightly the greater part of the Grinton family silver. The safe itself contained drawers, and from one of these Burrow drew a leather-bound notebook of substantial bulk. He opened it with care, turned with due deliberation to the appropriate entry, and gravely handed it to his visitor.

It was thus that Charles Honeybath acquainted himself with an excerpt from the private papers of Jonathan Grinton.

Sept. 11. 1718.

Departed from
Grinton
this Day my good friend
Matt. Prior
,
lepidissimus poeta
, for his late-purchased Seat of
Down Hall
in Essex, come to him (as he confided to me) in part through the Munificence of my lord of Oxford. No Daughter of Mnemosyne is other than a costly Mistress, and no Man more wretched than the Poet of the Proverb with his
empty
purse
. Alas! when I see an ingenious Man set up for a
meer poet
, and steer his Course through Life without the Rudder of at least a few
paternal acres
to his name, I give him up as one
prick’d down by Fate, for misery and misfortune
. ’Tis something unaccountable, but one wou’d incline to think there’s some indispensible Law, whereby Poverty and Disappointment are entail’d upon Poets. Our own
Cowley
, if I mistake not the Story, despite a small Competency provided for him by the Earl of St. Albans and Duke of Buckingham, cou’d not purchase himself so much as a little House with a small Garden to it, when he made his
retreat from the world
. I wou’d not alledge all this to disswade any noble
Genius
to pursue this
Art
as a little pretty Divertisment, but where ’tis made the very
trade of life
, I am pretty positive the Man’s in the wrong Box.

And heer I am put in Mind of
Alex
.
Pope
the Linen Draper’s Son, a poor misshapen Creature by me entertained at
Grinton
not many Years’ past, and a most precocious Master (be it admitted) of the new
heroical verse
perfected by
Sir Jn Denham
and
Edmund Waller
of Beaconsfield Bucks Esquire. How unlike his Departure from this House to that of honest
Matt
. today! Discovering in the young Man’s Pate a most
megalomaniacal
maggot
, to wit the Translating the entire Works of
Homer
by the said
Pope
though Subscription of all the Nobility and Gentry of this Kingdom, I judged it my Duty, since myself a Person of Consideration and in His Majesty’s Commission, to endeavour admonishing the Lad and teaching him
the twitch of his tether
. And he not caring for this Correction, and evidencing the same with no proper Sense of his
due station
but rather with Expressions of no little Insolence, I was constrained to say to him,
Ne sutor ultra crepidam
, which Utterance the Wretch taking to reflect upon the mechanick Employment of his Progenitor, presently flew into a Rage, withdrew into his own Chamber, and there sulk’d for two Days and Nights entire. From thence he emerged to hand me a Paper, or rather several Quires of such, full of
abominable libel and scurrility
concerning myself and all belonging to me. With the Restraint proper to a Gentleman I read the first hundred Verses of this
odious composure
before crumpling up the same and casting it from me in a Passion. Whereupon, regarding me with
insolent malice
, he declared that
if ever he were minded to celebrate his residence at
Grinton
in publick prints it would be in some such form as that that he had given me a sight of.

I did no more, upon this
vast
impertinence
, than summon my Steward and bid a Conveyance be prepar’d, saying that Mr
Pope
was minded to leave
Grinton
forthwith. No further Word past between us. The upstart Fellow’s ingrate Scribblings I was prompted to consign to the Flames forthwith. But I reflected that, were he similarly to misconduct himself in other Houses, and thus become in very Truth a
publick pest
, they might serve as Evidence of
habitual knavery
if presented in a Court of Law. So I lock’d them up, and heer in this new-built Library where I compose these brief Memorials from Time to Time they somewhere reside. I have (need I say) small List to a further Perusal of them.

It was by no means in utter bewilderment that Charles Honeybath handed this curious document back to its transcriber. It was rather with a sense (if the phrase be possible) of cloudy illumination. Light had broken, in fact – although he didn’t quite see on what. Dimly he felt the presence in this mysterious affair of some highly academic person. Burrow himself was almost that – although distinctly of amateur status. Honeybath recalled Appleby talking (with an ill-judged facetiousness, as he had felt it at the time) of a pernoctating and professor-like individual as lurking in the hinterland of the affair of the disappearing corpse.
A substantial and hitherto unknown early satire by Alexander Pope
: that surely among the learned would be quite something. Unearthed in holograph, it would also, without doubt, be of high pecuniary value. A man might even commit murder in order to possess himself of it.

With this final alarming thought in his mind, Honeybath glanced cautiously at Burrow. Burrow was replacing his document in its drawer, and closing and locking the safe again. Just what thoughts were in the fellow’s head? Had he ever himself hunted for the missing poem, so confidently asserted by Jonathan (although nearly three centuries ago) to ‘reside’ in this library still?
Had he even found it?

On second thoughts, this last speculation was of course wholly implausible. Were the thing in Burrow’s possession now, or had he long ago possessed himself of it and quietly parted with it to considerable advantage, he would certainly not have produced that transcript for a stray guest’s entertainment or edification. But this didn’t mean that he was not possessed of more information, or substantially grounded conjecture, than he had admitted to. Perhaps he could be judiciously sounded out. And a little further conversation, after all, seemed proper and even essential as a sequel to what Honeybath had just been shown.

‘That is certainly a most interesting and amusing document, Mr Burrow. But surely I am not the only person you have shown it to? What about Mr Grinton himself?’

‘I have never brought it to his attention, sir. It is Mr Grinton’s foible to hold in very poor esteem such of his ancestors as interested themselves in anything other than field sports. It may be said of him that he is cast in an antique mould; that one might find him, in a manner of speaking, in the pages of the novelist Henry Fielding.’

‘I suppose that’s so.’ Honeybath found himself disconcerted by this further disclosure of the reach of Burrow’s literary interests. ‘But he must know about Jonathan, and about Pope having been here, and similar episodes of the same kind, at least in a general way.’

‘Very true, sir. I believe Mr Grinton has indeed heard of Pope. But he will not, I judge, have been tempted to look into him.’

‘I can well believe it. But about that document – that transcription of yours. You must have shown it at one time or another to somebody else as well as myself?’

‘To the best of my recollection, Mr Honeybath, only to Professor Hagberg.’

Honeybath, although prompted to demand, ‘And who the devil is Professor Hagberg?’ contented himself by repeating ‘Hagberg?’ on a note of mild inquiry. But Burrow was clearly disappointed in him.

‘The eminent American scholar, sir. He called – I suspect without introduction – on Mr Grinton some months ago, and was clearly one of those university people who express an interest from time to time in the sporadic literary or artistic connections of certain of the Grintons. Mr Grinton dislikes them on sight, I need hardly say.’ For the first time in this remarkable conversation, Burrow allowed himself a certain dryness of manner as he said this. ‘The meeting went badly. I regret to say it, but Mr Grinton was downright rude to the man. I endeavoured to do what I could.’

‘And just what was that?’

‘I ventured to enter a little into conversation with him while helping him into his overcoat. Most affable and conversable, the Professor was. The name of Pope came up.’

‘Did it, indeed?’

‘Since I was already aware, sir, of Professor Hagberg’s main field of research.’

‘So one thing led to another?’

‘Just so, sir. The Professor was kind enough to join me in this pantry, and before he left I showed him the document you have just seen yourself. He returned the next day.’

‘This Hagberg did?’

‘Yes, Mr Honeybath. At first Mr Grinton blankly refused to see him again. I ventured to suggest that some slight token of civility might be in order, in the interest of international relations. So I got the Professor into Mr Grinton’s business room, and they were quite a time together. When they parted, it was cordially – very cordially indeed. Almost a puzzling thing.’

‘Decidedly a puzzling thing.’

‘And that, Mr Honeybath, was, as I have said, some months ago. I haven’t seen Professor Hagberg since.’

While Appleby was talking to Miss Arne, and Honeybath to Burrow, Judith Appleby and Dolly Grinton were together making their way to the local post office. Each had discovered a need to buy stamps, and although either might have bought them for both, it had seemed companionable to make a joint expedition. The February morning was chilly, and they moved at a brisk pace. But this didn’t extend to any inhibiting of conversation. Judith found Dolly sufficiently odd to be entertaining, and Dolly was disposed to admire Judith as one not exactly trendy (which was what she tended to be herself) but at least well up in metropolitan movements in literature and the arts. Dolly read all the books that won prizes and all the theatrical notices that raved about all the new plays. Moreover there had been a Me
š
trovi
č
exhibition at the Tate, with sundry exhibits brought from Zagreb and Belgrade, and as Judith was professionally equipped to pronounce upon these, a satisfactory dialogue ensued. But then suddenly – and it was of a piece with her oddity – Dolly flew off at a most unexpected tangent.