The Sacred Combe (19 page)

‘You are coming for Easter?' called M'Synder, as the elegant apparition climbed into her unseemly carriage and wound the window halfway down.

‘If invited,' she replied, waving, and the car lurched away through the puddles.

13

‘What was the ingenious bet at Cambridge?'

‘Ah-ha! I hoped you would ask.'

The chestnut roast was the doctor's own recipe of sweet winter vegetables from the combe's garden and chestnuts gathered from the meadow and stored on racks in the cavernous larder. We drank wine from squat little tumblers instead of the tall, ringing glasses we had used before, and the doctor had abandoned his tweeds and tie in favour of a thick Aran jumper — he looked quite different.

‘Hartley had been discussing the subject of religious doubt with the earnest young Earl of Fakenham,' he said, ‘and asserted that such doubts were characteristic of every thinking man, themselves included. To the earl's vehement protests he replied, “Does not the sun have phases, just like the moon? And yet they are hard to see because of that body's greater brilliance. So it is with your doubts, perhaps.” When the bemused earl summoned his friends to hear this absurd analogy, Hartley stuck to his story and said he would prove it the next morning if the noble lord would kindly meet him in the quad with a piece of smoked glass. He sealed the bet in suitably precise terms.'

‘And?'

‘The next morning happened to be the twenty-sixth day of October, seventeen fifty-three, on which a total eclipse of the sun was visible over north Africa and Spain, and seen from Cambridge as a partial eclipse in the early hours of the morning, magnitude seventy-three percent.'

‘A crescent sun,' I murmured. ‘Lucky it wasn't cloudy.' The doctor smiled and nodded.

‘There speaks a true British astronomer,' he said. ‘But Hartley seems to have had plenty of that kind of luck — an imbalance that was amply corrected elsewhere.'

‘What did he do after Cambridge?' I asked.

‘He disliked exams but was nevertheless named Third Wrangler (or Wangler, as he wrote in his diary — a very early use of the word if it was not a mistake) in the tripos of seventeen fifty-six. Later that year he sailed for France — ignoring the recent declaration of war — to begin his own impulsive interpretation of the Grand Tour. In Rome, where he lived for a year, he met both Robert Adam and his tutor Piranesi, whose books you so enjoyed. In Greece his money ran out, but by a persuasive series of letters — and with the earnest earl as referee — he arranged a scholarship from the Society of Dilettanti, and so continued to Egypt and the Levant. From Alexandria he travelled inland as far as the pyramids at Giza with the help of a map sent to him by the Danish explorer Frederic Norden, but after nearly succumbing to starvation and dehydration he returned to the more populated coasts. He landed at both Ephesus and Halicarnassus and searched in vain for their lost wonders, and he even appears to have glimpsed the ruins of Knidos almost half a century before they were publicly documented — but was driven off first by a storm and later by hostile Ottoman patrols.'

The doctor told the story at a leisurely pace, between mouthfuls and slow-drawn sips of wine, but produced the details without any visible effort of recollection, almost as though he were telling the story of his own life.

‘It was around this time,' he continued, ‘that our intrepid young Hartley reflected on those
paths not yet passed by
. His correspondence with friends shows an increasing interest in politics, in particular the question of Britain's responsibilities to its rapidly expanding empire. When he finally returned to England — after six years abroad — it was to help a clandestine campaign of influence on behalf of the American colonies.

‘He lived in London and wrote articles under many pseudonyms supporting various radical causes. One of his co-conspirators, the nephew of a wealthy Bostonian merchant, had a pretty but rather silent younger sister called Sarah. She and Hartley were married a few years after his return, at a church in Edinburgh with three guests attending — almost exactly two centuries before my own wedding. There was then a reconciliation between Hartley and his father (Hester had died while he was abroad), but soon afterwards the old man was beaten by pneumonia — who can blame him, in this house! So the young couple found themselves owners of one dilapidated combe, on condition that they pay off the family debts. Arnold had ignored the advice reported by St Matthew and spent virtually nothing during his last years, since he had nothing left, and now a small loan from the Bostonian uncle was sufficient to secure the estate.'

‘No inheritance tax in those days,' I said, smiling. The doctor pursed his lips and fixed his eyes on his glass.

‘It was in Constantinople,' he went on, changing the subject, ‘that Hartley had first eaten opium. The recollection of its effects haunted him — “it is as though my body has its own inexpressible memory,” he wrote, “and yearns for remembered sensation.” In London he soon discovered the early preparations of laudanum then available, but it was not until he and Sarah settled here that his use of the drug became habitual.

‘Money was not a problem: Sarah brought a small income, and Hartley had secured a generous advance for an account of his travels and dashed off frequent articles on the American question. But the combe was a strange harbour at which to end his years of voyages, bustling cities and wide vistas. Perhaps you can imagine how he felt better than I, who have lived here so long now.'

Two of his
young men at liberty
, I thought: Halicarnassus and the Charing Cross Road; curved banks of sails and of computer screens. Shown up again. ‘But he was coming home,' I said. ‘He was born here.'

‘True,' said the doctor, ‘and I think that made it worse. In any case he began to experiment with small doses of laudanum with the idea that it sharpened his recollections of faraway places, and therefore helped his writing. It also gave instant relief to the headaches he had suffered periodically since his prolonged heatstroke and dehydration in Egypt. During the first few years of his marriage, the doses gradually increased and the work faltered — journal deadlines were missed, careful plans became mired in doubts and complexity, friendships and alliances suffered. The house and grounds fell further into disrepair. At his worst he became so lethargic that Sarah had to shave and dress him.'

As the doctor spoke he slowly turned the short, square decanter from which he had poured our wine. ‘This unassuming vessel held the drug,' he murmured casually, and then smiled at my wide eyes. ‘
O just, subtle and mighty opium!
Don't worry — it's been washed out.'

‘It doesn't sound like a happy time for Sarah,' I remarked.

‘No, but although he was certainly neglectful of her in practical terms, his intentions were solicitous almost to the point of obsession — the opium seemed to intensify his dedication to her even as it clouded his perception of how to act on it. And so he spent the long, silent combe days in a helpless trance of remorse, while she did her best to manage their affairs, and wrote stoic letters to friends and family.

‘The story might have ended there. But in the spring of seventeen seventy, something —' he frowned, then flashed the smile ‘—
something
changed. “By what cause,” wrote the reluctant Hartley, “and from what sweet dreg of vitality does an old stump throw a shoot?” For no identifiable reason he found himself able to reduce his dose, and began at last to make plans, receive old friends and restore his fragile health. Sarah persuaded him that they should spend the summer in London, where he could meet people, share ideas and put his renewed energy to good use. Of course she herself was eager to escape the combe, which, though she had loved it at first, had become like a prison to her.'

The doctor finished his meal with slow, precise, sweeps of his fork, and then we rose and cleared away the plates. ‘He used to carry it about the house with him, just like this,' he remarked, casually cradling the neck of the decanter between his fingers as we moved into the library, where we sat beneath Sarah's portrait with the lights very low and her husband's white face gazing out of the shadows.

‘The trip began well,' he resumed, relaxing into his armchair with a long sigh. ‘Hartley was introduced to the Royal Society and gave a short lecture on his astronomical observations. One Fellow recalled hearing the story of the bet, and asked him to explain how he had predicted the magnitude of the eclipse. He also surprised the Dilettanti, who had long given up on him, with an illustrated essay describing his search for the tomb of Mausolus.

‘After these exertions his laudanum doses once more increased, and Sarah struggled to keep him active and reasonable. One June night, as they walked back from the theatre to their rooms near Lincoln's Inn, they passed a scuffle at the door of a tavern and a dishevelled young man, having been ejected forcefully by the landlord, fell against Sarah and almost knocked her down. “Sixpence will be small enough comfort,” he shouted back through the door, dusting himself off, “when thou art dead and damned!” Then turning to Sarah he offered an unexpectedly eloquent apology in his quaint west-country accent.

‘‘‘What's your name?” asked Hartley, looking him up and down.

‘‘‘I have furnished this fair damoisel with the only redress I have to offer,” returned the man, or boy, with gallant defiance.

‘‘‘I know,” said Hartley, kindly, “but I'm curious to know your name.”

‘He called it out proudly as he walked away, adding, “You will hear it again, perhaps!”

‘In fact Hartley saw him the next day in a coffee house, and they had the first of a series of discussions. The boy was twenty at most but apparently already a prolific journalist, and he claimed to be interested in the recent Boston troubles and the American cause, and a staunch supporter of one of Hartley's old heroes, the radical John Wilkes. Hartley was further intrigued to learn that he wrote plays and poems, some of which, when he was shown them, he thought “entertaining and not without merit”.

‘One poem was very different from the rest — the boy claimed he had not composed but merely
transcribed
it, having found it with many others in a loft in his native town. Hartley didn't believe him, but this only sharpened his curiosity. “This
ballade
,” he wrote, “was at first quite unintelligible. But as I formed the words a music seemed to arise from it, and it was the music that carried the visions, but then there
was
no music. It was a thing as close to magick as I dare to countenance.”

‘He observed in the boy the creative energy that he himself had lost, and determined to help him. He offered to find him commissions in the pro-American press, and wrote to friends who might be inclined to publish the strange poetry. But now the boy's attitude changed — first reluctant to accept help and then openly hostile. “You might spare your sweat for your own works,” he snapped at last, “where it seems to be most wanted.” Hartley returned some harsh words and left him. That ballad, I might add, is still in print today, which is more than can be said for any of my ancestor's writings — although they found success enough in other ways.

‘By early August most clubs and societies had followed Parliament's example and closed for the summer, and many of Hartley's old acquaintances had left town. He and Sarah prepared to return home. “These past few weeks a shadow has fallen between us,” he wrote. “The foreshadow, it may be, of our own future existence, which holds little enough promise for man or wife.”

‘They had been back in the combe for two weeks when Hartley, slumped at a mass of papers in his study — now my study — noticed a familiar hand among the pile of post brought by the maid. It was a letter from the young journalist.'

The doctor drained his glass, set it down gently on the side-table, laced his fingers and smiled at me in the gloom.

‘And that was the letter?' I prompted, impatiently. ‘The one I'm looking for?'

‘Yes.'

‘And — what did it say?' I asked, laughing at his keeping me in suspense.

‘Oh come now,' he said, rising slowly to his feet. ‘You wouldn't want me to spoil it, would you? I'm relying on curiosity to motivate your diligence. In any case, if I knew exactly what it said, I wouldn't have written those advertisements and you would still be a banker.' With that, he led me out to the hall.

‘Answer me one last question,' I said, as he held open the massive door. ‘Was the letter in any way connected to Hartley's establishment of the library, or his building of the temple?'

‘Or the rescue of his health and marriage, or the writing of his most influential works?' added the doctor, quickly. ‘Your memory for dates is admirable, Mr Browne. Good night!' Then I witnessed another demonstration of the mystical properties of doors: he closed it and we were both instantly alone.

14

As we know, there was a telephone in the cottage — half-buried under coats and scarves in the little hallway — and I had used it once to give my parents a brief report of my experiences so far. But my voice carried through the stone-silent cottage though I lowered it almost to a whisper, and I could feel the presence of M'Synder's sharp and expectant ears — so I kept it brief. She, perhaps guessing my predicament, presented me with a writing pad whose cover was yellowed with age, and a rather fine old fountain pen that I had to refuse, being left-handed. The first three handwritten letters of my adult life (not counting that mad reply extracted by Sarah) were composed on her writing-plank in the parlour and addressed to my parents, my brother, and a friend who had consoled me the previous autumn, and contained brief, experimental sketches of the people, places and impressions with which you are now familiar. My father, at least, seemed to appreciate this effort, for he sent a cheery reply by return of post, in the looping black handwriting that I had admired as a child and assumed I would one day acquire, but never did.