Merivel A Man of His Time (10 page)

‘The house is large,’ said Madame de Flamanville, as the coach entered a circular driveway and I saw smartly clad servants standing in line to greet us, ‘so of course you will stay here, Sir Robert.’

I did not argue. One thing I had learned, on the very agreeable journey from Versailles, was that Madame de Flamanville, whose Given Name was Louise, (putting me rather deliciously in mind of the King’s mistress, ‘Fubbsy’, also Christened Louise) was a woman well used to getting her own way. From this I surmised that she may have been the child of a Doting Father (such as Margaret is) or that Colonel de Flamanville was likewise a Doting Husband, or else a weak man – or, indeed, both of these things.

But I saw, too, that Madame de Flamanville wanted her way because her mind was infinitely lively and interested itself in everything around her. Her education, mainly got in Switzerland where she was born, had been what she called ‘sufficient’, but it struck me, as the journey progressed, as having been far superior to that.

She spoke four languages, including Latin. She composed music. She knew the Scriptures ‘well enough to hold up my head in a Convent, if that Fate ever fell upon me’. Like Margaret, she was set aflame by the Geography of the world. But she told me that the thing which gave her the greatest satisfaction was the study of Medicinal Plants
and
their properties, and in the
hôtel
in the Faubourg Saint-Victor she had furnished for herself ‘a small Laboratory – with wide-opening windows in case of explosions! – in which I practise an amateurish kind of Chemistry’.

You may imagine the delight this admission gave to me. It allowed me to speak of my intimate knowledge of King Charles’s Laboratory at Whitehall and my own interest, as a physician, in Nature’s cures – even so far as to mention my departed friend, John Pearce, and his Buttercup Root Prophylactic against the Plague and the use that I made of it, which saved me from Death in 1666. And, just as I hoped, these revelations of our shared interest and our shared knowledge created a bond between us such as I declare I had never felt with any woman before.

In all the long miles to Paris, with a cold December rain making mournful the flat countryside around us, we kept up a most bracing Discourse, so that by the time we arrived, I was aware that my cheeks were fiercely overheated and my heart beating to a galloping rhythm.

In the
hôtel
I was shown into a large and comfortable Bedchamber with, behind a curtain, its own commodious close-stool. The sight of this object, no less than the appearance in my room of a large jug of hot water, almost brought tears of gratitude to my eyes.

The same servant who brought the water then informed me supper would be taken at seven o’clock. And this too – the delicious imaginings of a meal that did not consist of Peas and Jam – brought a constriction to my throat, so that I almost burst into one of those fits of Blubbing that so discommoded Will Gates and which had worn out innumerable handkerchiefs over the swiftly passing years.

When I had cleaned myself and chosen the Suit I would wear for supper, and washed and shaken and scolded and brushed my wig until it had miraculously resumed something of its former liveliness and sheen, I sat down at a little Cherrywood table and began the following letter:

To: Miss Margaret Merivel
,

In the Care of Sir James Prideaux, Baronet
,

Mevagissey
,

Cornwall

My dear Margaret
,

Your Neglectful Papa sends you his fondest love and greetings, and apologises for the absence of any Letter since his arrival at Dieppe
.

His sojourn at the Court of Versailles has been somewhat Difficult, owing to the great Press of People there and I have not yet had any Success in obtaining a Position among the King’s Doctors
.

But fear nothing on my account. I have, of late, been very fortunate to meet some enchanting Friends, Colonel and Madame de Flamanville, and I am now arrived in Paris as their Guest
.

All that I can see of the City is most Orderly and Beautiful, with, laid out at my feet as it were, the
allées
and parterres of the
Jardin du Roi,
where I hope to walk tomorrow and where, I have been told, there is a captive Bear, waiting for Transportation to the King’s Menagerie at Versailles
.

So you see, I am among Wonders. The Melancholy, from which I suffered recently and which so distressed you, my dear Margaret, is, I believe, quite gone. I only wish that you were with me and that we might go together to visit the Bear, and I could hold your hand in mine
.

Meanwhile, I think of you and Mary and the others taking your Scented Paths to the Sea and making for yourselves little Collections of Cowrie Shells, as sweet as babies’ fingers
…

I had imagined that at supper Madame de Flamanville and I would be alone together, to continue our animated conversations, but this was not to be and I had a moment’s difficulty stifling my disappointment.

We were joined by the Colonel’s unmarried sister, Mademoiselle Corinne de Flamanville, who lived permanently in the house, under the care of her brother, and who, it transpired, did not like to move from Paris ‘owing to my great fear of becoming lost’.

She was a very thin woman of about my age, dressed all in black and having no teeth whatsoever, so that to eat a meal in her company was a dangerous pastime, with food flying from her mouth in
wondrously
far directions and her conversation all but impossible to follow. (My own table manners, about which my wife used to complain very strenuously, appeared, I must believe, impeccably co-ordinated by comparison.)

I wished to try to make myself agreeable to Mademoiselle, nevertheless. Spinster Women create in my heart a kind of terrible anguish, for I know that their lives are bitter. They are the possessors of nothing but their own souls.

Not really knowing on what kind of topic to begin, I told her I was most interested in her agitation about losing her bearings, for that I sometimes suffered the very same thing and had found Versailles, for instance, to be a confusing place.

Mademoiselle Corinne stared at me in stupefaction. ‘What did he say?’ she enquired of Madame de Flamanville. ‘What language is he speaking?’

I could not restrain a burst of mirth from breaking from me at this. I was unable to look at Mademoiselle Corinne, from whose pendulous bottom lip a morsel of soft Parsnip was dangling like a worm, but I looked over at Louise (for such I will call her from now on) and saw that she was laughing too.

‘I apologise,’ I managed to say to Mademoiselle Corinne, suppressing, as best I could, the Riot inside me, ‘for my horrible French. I know it is most inelegant. Would you prefer me to speak English? I have been very impressed by how many of your countrymen understand the English tongue.’

‘I have absolutely no idea,’ said Corinne, ‘what he is talking about. Is he Flemish? Has he got a Flemish name? The Flemish are always impossible to comprehend.’

‘He was only enquiring about your reluctance to leave Paris,’ said Louise. ‘He sympathises with your fears. He says that there are many places in which one may feel lost.’

‘Many places in which one may feel lost? But what a stupid thing to say! I told him, I don’t
go
to those places. I stay in the Faubourg Saint-Victor. What city is he from?’

‘He is from England,’ said Louise. ‘He is a Doctor of Medicine, residing in England.’

‘Doctor? Did you say Doctor? He doesn’t look like a Doctor.’

‘Ah, that is very interesting,’ I ventured to interject. ‘How do you imagine a Doctor to look?’

Mademoiselle Corinne wiped her mouth, at last removing from our sight the parsnip worm, which fell into her lap, took up her Lorgnette and looked me up and down through its pearly lenses. ‘Thinner,’ she said.

At this I felt another attack of mirth coming on, which I was unable to supress. Reluctantly I rested my knife and fork from their exertions with an admirable roast Grouse, and buried my face in my table napkin and my helpless gurgling filled the air of the
Salle à Manger
. And, alas for Mademoiselle Corinne de Flamanville, my laughter was such a wondrously contagious thing, it followed that Louise was soon enough overcome with hectic and unstoppable mirth of the kind that almost unseated us from our chairs.

Mademoiselle Corinne stared at us, looking from one to the other in pure dismay. To the Maître d’hôtel, standing by Louise’s chair, she snapped: ‘It is the wine, Bertrand. The wine has turned them into Hyenas. Do not serve them another
drop
!’

The wine, perhaps, no less than the stimulating journey and the excellent Grouse and the sight of a clean bed, had all contrived, by nightfall, to exhaust me. I had intended to finish my letter to Margaret, but had no will to do anything more than put on my night attire, climb between the linen sheets and surrender myself to the sweet sleep I felt approaching. As I closed my eyes, I reflected that I had not felt as happy as I was at this moment for many years.

All night long, I had a very marvellous Epicureanism of Rest and, when I woke at some time after eight o’clock, found my heart filled with an instantaneous joy.

After breakfast Louise asked me whether I would like to visit her Laboratory and I willingly agreed.

The Laboratory was set out on marble-topped tables, along two sides of a narrow room. Above the tables were stacked, on neat wooden shelving, a great quantity of small Apothecaries’ Jars, carefully labelled and containing, I instantly saw, properties as strong and precarious as Arsenic, Calomel and Ceruse.

‘My word!’ I said. ‘You have poisons here a-plenty. Does your knowledge match their exigencies?’

‘By no means,’ said Louise at once. ‘But I am learning. I am allowed, sometimes, to watch the experiments done in the Laboratory of the
Jardin du Roi
, on our very doorstep, beyond the gates there. At first the Chemists did not wish me to come there because I am a woman. But I said to them: “Women are kept from all Experimentation in the World. Even our
feelings
are supposed to follow a Pattern Ordained and never altering. But why should I not at least bear witness to
your
Experiments? What danger is there in that – only that my admiration for you shall increase!”

‘And though some grumbled that to observe what they did could be “bad for my mind” and one said he thought it might “turn me into a Witch like the infamous La Voisin”, they did not in the end deny me, provided only that I made no comments and never attempted to participate in anything. But they could not prevent me from hastening back here and setting down Notes on what I had witnessed. And so I have begun to learn …’

As she spoke, Louise’s hands were passing tenderly, yet restlessly, along the table, examining jars and Alembics and baskets of herbs set to dry, and a glass tank crawling with snails. I watched her with great attention, reflecting that I had surely never met any woman like her, who was so delightfully compounded of Wit and Seriousness. And I realised that every moment spent in her company had become enthralling to me.

‘Now,’ she said, pausing at the end of one of the tables where a cluster of identical jars were arranged in a little pyramid. ‘Let me show you my only small success.’

She uncorked one of the jars and held it out to me. I pressed it to my nose and the smell reminded me, on the instant, of that muddled time in my Former Life, when I tried my hand as an artist, before giving up in despair.

‘A Salve for sores,’ said Louise. ‘Efficacious also for burns. My chef burned his hand and my Salve restored it within two days!’

‘Bravo,’ I said. ‘I must take some home to England for my cook, Cattlebury, who is so covered in burns, it is as though he had only just escaped a roasting at the stake.’

Louise smiled and went on: ‘I had some difficulty, for a long while, with the proportions of the Ingredients, but they are correct now. Sheep’s tallow, Beeswax, Oil of Turpentine, Plantain leaves boiled for one hour on a soft fire of coals until you have the Reduction you desire. The wax melted very slowly and the Reduction and the Oil stirred in over a very timid heat. The difficulty seemed to lie in getting a Salve that was soft enough to apply, once it cools. But it is soft now. Put your finger in.’

I sampled the Salve and rubbed a little of it onto the back of my hand.

‘What d’you think?’ she asked. ‘You as a Doctor know, many Salves smell rancid, but this does not, does it?’

‘No. It smells very fresh. The Turpentine …’

‘Yes. That I added almost as a perfume. The cure is in the wax and the Plantain, but to me the scent of things is important. Let me make you a present of this jar.’

Offering my thanks, I looked up at Louise, with all my admiration for her surely evident upon my face, for though she held my gaze for a second, she quickly looked away. A woman like Louise de Flamanville, I thought, surely acts like a Salve on a man’s life. By slow degrees, life inflicts its wounds upon him and she heals them.

She showed me other preparations on which she was at work. These included a Lotion ‘to mask or reduce the Stench of the Armpit’.

‘Ah,’ said I, ‘that is much needed at Versailles!’

‘Quite so, Sir Robert. You know, by the way, that Madame de Montespan had a terrible Stink to her person?’

‘No, I did not.’

‘Perhaps my lotion would have prevented her from falling out of favour. There is a thought. But I have not got it right yet. I am using white wine, Rose-water and seed of wild Rocket. I boiled them first in a glass Alembic, so that I could observe their clarity or their cloudiness, but my fire was too hot and my Alembic exploded, and I was cut with shards of burning glass!’

‘
Oh, mon dieu!
’ I said. ‘It might have blinded you.’

‘Yes, it might, but it did not. And, strangely, I did not really suffer at all. Indeed, I rather enjoyed myself. For I was struck by the thought that this is what
real Chemists
undergo, these Shocks and Reversals, and that I could now count myself among their number.’