The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles (42 page)

But underlying all, at least
in Charles, was the doctrine of the survival of the fittest, and most especially
an aspect of it he had discussed--and it had been a discussion bathed in
optimism--with Grogan that night in Lyme: that a human being cannot but
see his power of self-analysis as a very special privilege in the struggle
to adapt. Both men had seen proof there that man's free will was not in
danger. If one had to change to survive--as even the Freemans conceded--then
at least one was granted a choice of methods. So much for the theory--the
practice, it now flooded in on Charles, was something other.

He was trapped. He could
not be, but he was.

He stood for a moment against
the vast pressures of his age; then felt cold, chilled to his innermost
marrow by an icy rage against Mr. Freeman and Freemanism.

He raised his stick to a
passing hansom. Inside he sank back into the musty leather seat and closed
his eyes; and in his mind there appeared a consoling image. Hope? Courage?
Determination? I am afraid not.

He saw a bowl of milk punch
and a pint of champagne.
 
 

Now, what if I am
a prostitute, what business has society to abuse me? Have I received any
favors at the hands of society? If I am a hideous cancer in society, are
not the causes of the disease to be sought in the rottenness of the carcass?
Am I not its legitimate child; no bastard, Sir?
--
From a letter in The Times
(February 24th, 1858) *
[* The substance of this
famous and massively sarcastic letter, allegedly written by a successful
prostitute, but more probably by someone like Henry Mayhew, may be read
in Human Documents of the Victorian Golden Age.]

"Charley! Now what the devil
are you doing out of the matrimonial lock up?"

Charles smiled, not without
a certain sense of wan foolishness. "Good evening, Tom. Nathaniel, how
are you?" Eternal cigar in mouth, the thorn in the unlucky bishop's side
raised a languid hand. Charles turned back to the baronet. "On parole,
you know. The dear girl's down in Dorset taking the waters."

Tom winked. "While you take
spirit--and spirits, eh? But I hear she's the rose of the season. Nat says.
He's green, y'know. Demmed Charley, he says. Best girl and best match--
ain't fair, is it, Nat?" The bishop's son was notoriously short of money
and Charles guessed it was not Ernestina's looks he was envied. Nine times
out of ten he would at this point have moved on to the newspapers or joined
some less iniquitous acquaintance. But today he stayed where he was. Would
they "discuss" a punch and bubbly? They would. And so he sat with them.

"And how's the esteemed uncle,
Charles?" Sir Tom winked again, but in a way so endemic to his nature that
it was impossible to take offense. Charles murmured that he was in the
best of health.

"How goes he for hounds?
Ask him if he needs a brace of the best Northumberland. Real angels, though
I says it wot bred 'em. Tornado--you recall Tornado? His grandpups." Tornado
had spent a clandestine term in Sir Tom's rooms one summer at Cambridge.

"I recall him. So do my ankles."

Sir Tom grinned broadly.
"Aye, he took a fancy to you. Always bit what he loved. Dear old Tornado--God
rest his soul." And he downed his tumbler of punch with a sadness that
made his two companions laugh. Which was cruel, since the sadness was perfectly
genuine.

In such talk did two hours
pass--and two more bottles of champagne, and another bowl of punch, and
sundry chops and kidneys (the three gentlemen moved on to the dining room)
which required a copious washing-down of claret, which in turn needed purging
by a decanter or two of port.

Sir Tom and the bishop's
son were professional drinkers and took more than Charles. Outwardly they
seemed by the end of the second decanter more drunk than he. But in fact
his facade was sobriety, while theirs was drunkenness, exactly the reverse
of the true comparative state, as became clear when they wandered out of
the dining room for what Sir Tom called vaguely "a little drive round town."
Charles was the one who was unsteady on his feet. He was not too far gone
not to feel embarrassed; somehow he saw Mr. Freeman's gray assessing eyes
on him, though no one as closely connected with trade as Mr. Freeman would
ever have been allowed in that club.

He was helped into his cape
and handed his hat, gloves, and cane; and then he found himself in the
keen outside air--the promised fog had not materialized, though the mist
remained--staring with an intense concentration at the coat of arms on
the door of Sir Tom's town brougham. Winsyatt meanly stabbed him again,
but then the coat of arms swayed towards him. His arms were taken, and
a moment later he found himself sitting beside Sir Tom and facing the bishop's
son. He was not too drunk to note an exchanged wink between his two friends;
but too drunk to ask what it meant. He told himself he did not care. He
was glad he was drunk, that everything swam a little, that everything past
and to come was profoundly unimportant. He had a great desire to tell them
both about Mrs. Bella Tomkins and Winsyatt; but he was not drunk enough
for that, either. A gentleman remains a gentleman, even in his cups. He
turned to Tom.

"Tom ... Tom, dear old fellow,
you're a damn' lucky fellow."

"So are you, my Charley boy.
We're all damn lucky fellows."

"Where we going?"

"Where damn lucky fellows
always go of a jolly night. Eh, Nat, ain't that so?"

There was a silence then,
as Charles tried dimly to make out in which direction they were heading.
This time he did not see the second wink exchanged. The key words in Sir
Tom's last sentence slowly registered. He turned solemnly.

"Jolly night?"

"We're going to old Ma Terpsichore's,
Charles. Worship at the muses' shrine, don't y'know?"

Charles stared at the smiling
face of the bishop's son.

"Shrine?"

"So to speak, Charles."

"Metonymia. Venus for puella,"
put in the bishop's son.

Charles stared at them, then
abruptly smiled. "Excellent idea." But then he resumed his rather solemn
stare out of the window. He felt he ought to stop the carriage and say
good night to them. He remembered, in a brief flash of proportion, what
their reputation was. Then there came out of nowhere Sarah's face; that
face with its closed eyes tended to his, the kiss ... so much fuss about
nothing. He saw what all his troubles were caused by: he needed a woman,
he needed intercourse. He needed a last debauch, as he sometimes needed
a purge. He looked round at Sir Tom and the bishop's son. The first was
sprawled back in his corner, the second had put his legs up across his
seat. The top hats of both were cocked at flyly dissolute angles. This
time the wink went among all three.

Soon they were in the press
of carriages heading for that area of Victorian London we have rather mysteriously--since
it was central in more ways than one--dropped from our picture of the age:
an area of casinos (meeting places rather than gaming rooms), assembly
cafes, cigar "divans" in its more public parts (the Haymarket and Regent
Street) and very nearly unrelieved brothel in all the adjoining back streets.
They passed the famous Oyster Shop in the Haymarket ("Lobsters, Oysters,
Pickled and Kippered Salmon") and the no less celebrated Royal Albert Potato
Can, run by the Khan, khan indeed of the baked-potato sellers of London,
behind a great scarlet-and-brass stand that dominated and proclaimed the
vista. They passed (and the bishop's son took his lorgnette out of its
shagreen case) the crowded daughters of folly, the great whores in their
carriages, the lesser ones in their sidewalk droves ... fromdemure little
milky-faced millinery girls to brandy-cheeked viragoes. A torrent of color
--of fashion, for here unimaginable things were allowed. Women dressed
as Parisian bargees, in bowler and trousers, as sailors, as señoritas,
as Sicilian peasant girls; as if the entire casts of the countless neighboring
penny-gaffs had poured out into the street. Far duller the customers--the
numerically equal male sex, who, stick in hand and "weed" in mouth, eyed
the evening's talent. And Charles, though he wished he had not drunk so
much, and so had to see everything twice over, found it delicious, gay,
animated, and above all, unFreemanish.

Terpsichore, I suspect, would
hardly have bestowed her patronage on the audience of whom our three in
some ten minutes formed part; for they were not alone. Some six or seven
other young men, and a couple of old ones, one of whom Charles recognized
as a pillar of the House of Lords, sat in the large salon, appointed in
the best Parisian taste, and reached through a narrow and noisome alley
off a street some little way from the top of the Haymarket. At one end
of the chandeliered room was a small stage hidden by deep red curtains,
on which were embroidered in gold two pairs of satyrs and nymphs. One showed
himself eminently in a state to take possession of his shepherdess; and
the other had already been received. In black letters on a gilt cartouche
above the curtains was written Carmina Priapea XLIV:

Velle quid hanc
dicas, quamvis sim ligneus, hastam,
  oscula dat medio
si qua puella mihi?
augure non opus est: "in
me," mihi credite, dixit,
  "utetur veris viribus
hasta rudis."*

The copulatory theme was
repeated in various folio prints in gilt frames that hung between the curtained
windows. Already a loose-haired girl in Camargo petticoats was serving
the waiting gentlemen with Roederer's champagne. In the background a much
rouged but more seemingly dressed lady of some fifty years of age cast
a quiet eye over her clientèle. In spite of her very different profession
she had very much the mind of Mrs. Endicott down in Exeter, albeit her
assessments were made in guineas rather than
shillings.

Such scenes as that which
followed have probably changed less in the course of history than those
of any other human activity; what was done before Charles that night was
done in the same way before Heliogabalus--and no doubt before Agamemnon
as well; and is done today in countless Soho dives. What particularly pleases
me about the unchangingness of this ancient and time-honored form of entertainment
is that it allows one to borrow from someone else's imagination. I was
nosing recently round the best kind of secondhand bookseller's--a careless
one. Set quietly under "Medicine," between an Introduction to Hepatology
and a Diseases of the Bronchial System, was the even duller title The History
of the Human Heart. It is in fact the very far from dull history of a lively
human penis. It was originally published in 1749, the same year as Cleland's
masterpiece in the genre, Fanny Hill. The author lacks his skill, but he
will do.