Babel Tower (92 page)
Authors: A.S. Byatt
It is at this point that the first fleck of white foam, or crust, appears in the corner of Jude’s mouth. He pokes at it nervously, with the tip of his tongue.
Oliphant.
Well, you may dislike the emphases. But you did read Fourier, you say yourself, and you do maintain that
Babbletower
has a serious moral point, do you not?
Jude.
Does art ever have a “serious moral point”? It moves, it appals, it makes you chuckle, it delights, it despairs. All right, you don’t like my answers. You are right not to. I am behaving stupidly. I can’t help myself. But my book is not a stupid book, it is a good book, and is meant to enlighten and to move, not to harm and disgust. Those who cannot see that can’t read properly.
For several more repetitive minutes, Jude and his Counsel joust around the ostensible “purpose” of
Babbletower.
Oliphant is patient with his client’s natural tendency to contradict, for rhetorical effect, points that are designed to help him. Jude is got to agree that his vision of human nature is “dark” and “pessimistic,” but not “perverted,” not “twisted.” He complains briefly about meaningless adjectives and is brought again to the point. He says that like Nietzsche he desires a “strong” pessimism, a “gay” despair. He asks if he may quote Nietzsche and is told to go ahead.
Jude.
He says: “Whenever anyone speaks, without bitterness, rather innocuously, of man as a belly with two needs and a head with one; whenever anyone sees, seeks and
wants
to see only hunger, sexual desire and vanity, as though these were the actual and sole motives of human actions; in brief, whenever anyone speaks
‘badly’
of man—but does not speak ill of him—the lover of knowledge should listen carefully and with diligence, and he should in general lend an ear whenever anyone speaks without indignation. For the indignant man, and whoever is constantly tearing and rending himself with his teeth (or instead of himself, the world, or God, or Society), may indeed morally
speaking stand higher than the laughing and self-satisfied satyr, but in every other sense he is the more commonplace, less interesting, less instructive case. And no one
lies
so much as the indignant man.”
May I say, my lord, that the “English vice” is not what it is always said to be, but precisely
indignation.
We get furiously upset about everything—the price of stamps, the state of public lavatories, the behaviour of schoolboys and politicians, the weather, books that are written with the heart’s blood and fuelled by real passion. It is
indignation
that has put my book on trial, seeing things that are not there, making hypotheses about its effect that are
quite unjustified.
My book thinks badly of man, but so do quite a lot of other writers, including Saint Augustine.
Indignation
is prurient and suspect, my lord, it is unworthy to be heard. Do not hear it.
Judge.
You should perhaps have read for the Bar, Mr. Mason, instead of devoting your time to Fourier and Sade.
Godfrey Hefferson-Brough, perhaps wisely, asks the defendant very few questions about
Babbletower.
He returns almost compulsively to the state of affairs at Swineburn School in the late 1940s. Later, the Press is to remark that just as it began to appear that Lady Chatterley herself was on trial for adultery in the trial of Penguin Books, so it seems, from time to time, in the
Babbletower
case, that the real defendants are the masters and boys of Swineburn, the Erstwhile Hogs and the erstwhile Swineherds. One journalist, asking why Hefferson-Brough returned so compulsively to the charge, to the school, when the advantage to his client was, to put it nicely, dubious, will conclude that he was compelled to do so by some unresolved business of his own. “Everything in England,” this journalist writes, “comes back to the inextricable links between our educational system, privilege, or lack of it, and sex. De Sade was abused by the Jesuits, but Fourier was sublimely innocent of the snares and puerile disasters of the Public School dorm.”
Q. You say, Mr. Mason, that you were taught by Dr. Grisman Gould.
A. That is so.
Q. He was a good teacher?
A. In his way, sublime.
Q. So I believe. He had favourites?
A. Not
obviously.
But yes. He singled out particular boys. He gave them an extra-curricular literary education. He disabused their innocence, you might say.
Q. Were you one of his favourites?
A. For a time. Later, I was not. That was a normal pattern. First he loved you. Then you “disappointed” him. Then he began to find fault. Then he destroyed you.
Q. That’s a strong word. “Destroyed.”
A. Most of his favourites came to grief. There were scandals. They were said to have cheated. Or were caught in the lats with little boys. Or got drunk. Or killed himself, one. They were going to be wonders and something always happened.
Q. Were you yourself involved in any scandal?
Judge.
Where is this line of questioning leading, Mr. Hefferson-Brough?
Hefferson-Brough.
It is all to do with the realism of the subject-matter of this apparent fantasy, my lord.
Judge.
It is hard to see how.
Jude.
I don’t mind answering. I am telling everything, today.
Judge.
That is for me to decide. Continue, Mr. Hefferson-Brough.
Hefferson-Brough.
Does the question stand, my lord?
Judge.
I think not. I think Mr. Mason need not answer that question.
Jude.
I don’t mind.
Judge.
You must speak when you are asked to.
Jude.
How can I explain, if I may not speak?
Judge.
You are not here to explain your life, but to defend your book. Mr. Hefferson-Brough.
Q. Did Dr. Grisman Gould ever interfere with you, Mr. Mason?
A. I wouldn’t call it
interfering.
That is quite the wrong verb. He was a person of infinite subtlety and charm. Oh dear, yes.
Q. Are you aware of the Erstwhile Hogs’ Round Robin, Mr. Mason?
A. No. Tell me. I should like to know what that was.
Q. Do you know what became of Dr. Grisman Gould?
A. I think he is dead. I am not sorry if he is.
Q. He committed suicide in 1952, Mr. Mason. He was dismissed from the school, dishonourably, after the composition of the Round Robin.
A. How?
Q. How?
A. How did he kill himself?
Q. He slit his wrists in a hot bath.
Judge.
I do not think you can pursue this topic further, Mr. Hefferson-Brough. The witness has said he knows nothing of these facts.
Hefferson-Brough.
Certainly, my lord. I would like to ask Mr. Mason if he believes that Dr. Grisman Gould was a corrupter of youth, the centre of a circle of corruption and perversion at Swineburn in the 1940s and early ’50s.
A. Not a circle. It was never more than one at once I think. That’s how he kept going. Each one thought he was the first and only. And his successor thought the predecessor was a
disappointment,
as Dr. Gould said he was. He looked like the Archangel Michael, you know. Austere, pure, golden. I suppose you knew him, too. I don’t like to think of him bleeding in a bath. Ugly. Better than a bullet in the brain, but ugly.
Q. Mr. Mason, is it from Dr. Grisman Gould that you first learned of the—the sado-masochistic practices described in
Babbletower
?
A. It may well be. He gave me Rousseau’s
Confessions.
Rousseau couldn’t reach orgasm without being whipped. The things in
my book happen everywhere. Dr. Grisman Gould’s speciality was
confession
afterwards. Verbal recapitulation.
Q. Indeed. Are we to recognise the model for your Projector, Culvert, in Dr. Grisman Gould?
A. Not
culvert,
Mr. Hefferson-Brough, as in the English
drainage system.
Cul-vert, as in French, green or verdant cul or—orifice. Hmm. Do you know, I had never thought about whether Culvert was Dr. Grisman Gould. He is so many, Prince Charming, the Scarlet Pimpernel, Rousseau, Charles II, James I, Fourier, myself—I think he may also be Dr. Grisman Gould. Dr. Gould might have acknowledged him as Prospero acknowledged Caliban, to whom he taught language. “This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.” I could have confessed
for hours,
having invented Culvert. You distress me. I did not invent Culvert to propitiate Dr. Grisman Gould.
It can be seen that the defendant is trembling. The crumb of white in the corner of his mouth is extending into a fine white crust that runs along his lips. From this point on in his evidence his words are accompanied by the sound of a fluttering or beating, which is his knees knocking gently and rapidly against the wooden box, which is his hands playing on the bar before him. It is like a wing-beat, or a heart-beat, not quite regular, but persistent. His answers, written down, may seem jaunty, foolhardy, but to those in the Court the plangent voice had also a fixed, raucous note which is disturbing and irritating.
Sir Augustine Weighall rises to cross-examine. He rearranges his gown with care. His face is grave, concerned and almost friendly.
Q. You have told my learned friend that you were christened Julian Guy Monckton-Pardew. Did you give up that name as a rejection of your parents, or as a rejection of the connotations of the name itself?
A. Both.
Q. What do you dislike about the name?
A. Every aspect of it. The pretentious double-barrel. The romanticism in Guy is all crusaders and Old England (or Old Norman
Conquest) and Julian is a name no pretty boy should be asked to bear. Also, I have to tell you, my parents made it up. He was Monckton, and she was Pardew; it comes from the French, Pardieu, I suppose. It’s a burdensome sort of name. Like a plaster imitation of an effigy in a church.
Q. That is a very articulate rebuttal. And the name you chose has its own romantic poetry, too, in opposition, I take it. Would I be wrong in suggesting that you chose Jude as a tribute to Thomas Hardy’s hero Jude the Obscure?
A. You would not be wrong. I meant to be obscure. I am obscure.
Q. Hardy’s Jude was an auto-didact, a workman, an intellectual excluded from the inner circle of university life?
A. He was. It seemed appropriate. Romantic, as you say. There’s nothing wrong in romanticism.
Q. Indeed there is not. Hardy’s Jude was called Jude Fawley, as I recall. But you chose the name Mason. Hardy’s Jude was a mason, a stonemason by trade, I believe.
A. He was. He was an honest craftsman, and he saw the poetry in stones. I believe art is craft first. I meant always to be an artist. “Mason” seemed a good place to start.
Q. Your name is indeed precisely crafted. I believe
Jude the Obscure
was received with considerable criticism when it first appeared?
A. With vituperation. It was burned by a bishop. Hardy said the general idea was “We Britons hate ideas, and we are going to live up to that privilege of our native country. Your picture may not show the untrue, or the uncommon, or even be contrary to the canons of art; but it is not the view of life that we who thrive on conventions can permit to be painted.”
Q. You have that by heart. It obviously means a great deal to you. How long have you had that by heart?
A. Since my schooldays.
Q. So you chose your name, long before the writing of
Babbletower,
for its associations with an obscure auto-didact and an unconventional, rejected book?
A. That is so. There is nothing wrong with that.
Q. Was it Dr. Grisman Gould who drew your attention to
Jude the Obscure
?
A. Indeed it was not. I found it quite by myself. Quite by myself. He did not like Hardy. He found him heavy-handed and improbable. His tastes ran to poetry.
Q. Can you tell us which poetry?
A. Shakespeare. The sonnets. The early poems.
Venus and Adonis. The Rape of Lucrece.
He was very subtle on lacerated skin. He had his little games with rosy cheeks and threads of blood. We knew all about the dirty Dark Lady and the fair young man. He was good on paintings of martyrs, too. Crawshaw. Oscar Wilde, by extension.
The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
“Each man kills the thing he loves.” He knew about that. When you knew him very well, he would read you Bosie’s sonnets about Shame.
“I am Shame
That walks with Love, I am most wise and turn
Cold lips and limbs to fire …”
“I am the Love that dare not speak its name.” Bosie was a dreadful poet. Dreadful. I nearly gave Grisman Gould up when he started on that stuff.
Q. Bosie was Lord Alfred Douglas?
A. Yes.
Q. To whom Oscar Wilde addressed passionate letters?
A. Yes. They were silly letters, badly written.
Q. You admire Wilde?
A. As a writer, in moderation. As a man, no. He was a fool. A snob. He made a fool of himself over worse fools.
Q. Dr. Grisman Gould admired Oscar Wilde?
A. In moderation, too. Why are you going on about Oscar Wilde? Are you trying to draw an analogy?
Q. Do you accept an analogy?
Samuel Oliphant objects and his objection is sustained. Sir Augustine turns to another line of questioning.
Q. How do you make your living, Mr. Mason?
A. With great difficulty. I expose my body in public places. I achieve sempiternity in charcoal, in acrylic paint, in oils. In short, I model in art colleges. It is an honest trade, and humbling.
Frederica can hear this roll off Jude’s tongue: it is his practised party piece.
Q. And did you pursue this trade in Paris?
A. No. I did not know how to set about it. I did not think of it.
Q. So how did you live?
A. I made myself useful to various people. I was a
protégé,
from time to time. People took an interest in my career, in my mind, in my future.
Q. Where did you live?
A. In many places. Backstage. Under bars.
Q. With the kindly protectors?
A. No. As a matter of fact, no. If you mean, was I a kept boy, no.
I was not.
Never again. No.
Q. Never again?
A. I sleep by myself. I live by myself. I am a private person. I do not see how this is relevant to your enquiries, or whatever the phrase is,
but I have no sex life.
It is over-valued. Sex is better in the head,
pace
D. H. Lawrence, who knew a lot less than he thought he did about a lot of things.
Q. Are you saying, Mr. Mason, that after your schooldays you have lived chastely and written vivid sexual fantasies, for choice?
A. Not always, and not entirely. But that has been the general idea, the ideal state of affairs, yes. Nietzsche said philosophers were always “irritable and rancorous” towards their senses. He said sex was very damaging to spiritual and artistic preparation. “Those with the greatest powers do not need to learn this from experience, from unfortunate experience.” He was right.
Q. Let us turn to your writing, Mr. Mason, now we understand a little better what you believe in. Despite your admiration for Nietzsche, you were a little unhappy with Professor Smith’s definition of your book as a philosophical exploration of freedom and restraint?
A. She was
so dry. So logical.
A book is a passionate thing, it is made of experience, it is lived as it is written, it is more immediate than reality.
Q. More immediate than reality.
A. I think if most people were honest, they would admit that imaginary experiences are more real than actual ones. It is like the smell of coffee—the thing itself is never so good, it is always a bit musty. I began to write to avoid life as it is lived, and found I had found it more abundantly.
Q. Life. You are quoting the Bible there, Mr. Mason, as you are no doubt well aware. But the life
you
offer your readers is not a very usual life—it is, as has already
abundantly
appeared in evidence, a life of manacles and ingenious tortures, pederasty, orgies, coprophilia, flagellation and slow murder for pleasure. What do you wish to do to your readers, Mr. Mason? Do you wish to make them take pleasure in the images of these horrors? To make them shun them? To incite them to copy them?
