The Warlow Experiment Read online

  ‘It were sorrow.’ Young frogs fall down the shaft. Smell water. Struggle through the grating to the cistern. He knows there’ve been others.

  On grown by the si stern  I did fine owd frog   skil skilin   frog boans.

  Stops writing. Done enough. Wipes inky fingers on his breeches, warms his arse before the fire.

  * * *

  —

  A STREAM RAN through the garden of Moreham House. Powyss’s father, realising that fashion required him to improve his grounds, had begun discussion with a well-known and dogmatic landscape gardener. But old Powyss had died after only a ha-ha and a rustic cott were constructed. To the astonishment of neighbouring landowners, his son paid off the grand gardener, filled in the ha-ha, cut a track for carts, let out the furthest land for grazing and took off the door of the cott up on Yarston bank so that sheep could take shelter in it. He threw away the plans to make the stream even more serpentine than it already was, to construct zig-zag walks ending in obelisks and vistas thrilling the eye with a distant statue of Hercules. He enjoyed watching the sketch for an absurd Ruinous Bridge curl to ashes in the library fireplace.

  Benjamin Fox had joyfully accused his correspondent of puritanism and Powyss acknowledged some truth in it. He hated Gothic effusion in gardening just as much as in writing and architecture. But nor would he tolerate classical pretension, which, together with Gothicising, his father had seen as a necessary badge of social arrival. A doric temple on one hill, a ‘ruined’ tower on the next would have made old Powyss happy. The obligatory Grand Tour, urged on and paid for by his father, had not been so inspiring that he might need to glimpse, daily, a temple of Venus on a half-distant mount. Nor did he want to impress his neighbours. He didn’t much like his neighbours, avoided contact with them.

  The two largest estates abutting his land belonged to Sir Frederick Champney Baugh, Bt, and Valentine Tharpe. Baugh, older than anyone knew, seemed to have slept through the century, his house and land unchanged for decades, he himself reluctant to abandon his heavy wig that smelt of flour powder and old sweat, unaware how much material benefit his servants gained from his somnolence.

  Tharpe took seriously his position as magistrate and patron of a London orphanage, but envied Powyss his collection of curiosities and suffered a scold for a wife who failed to hide an obscure displeasure. Other neighbours had known Powyss’s father, so were best avoided for that very reason.

  For all his study, his detachment, Powyss had a practical vein, shown in his designs for the hothouse, the mechanical lift, his copper-pipe listening device. It enabled him to fulfil his ambition to acquire new plants and trees. So much was being brought in nowadays from over the seas: America, Africa, New Zealand, China. Plants and trees carefully packed about with peat, seeds kept safe in stoppered bottles, beeswax or barrels. He’d once explained to Fox:

  I desire that my garden display flowers each season, including winter, and in particular what has newly arrived on these shores from distant places. So I try out new strains as they arrive in the nurseries, discover which acclimatise well to the Moreham soil, the Marches climate. Of course I take pleasure in an ordered landscape through my windows, but my notion of order, of what is natural in a garden and beyond is only partly dictated by Claude. And Mr Gilpin is quite wrong. Even had I rocks and gorges I would not desecrate them with grottos and rustic knick-knacks and sham ruins. Sapientia prima stultitia caruisse. I have got rid of folly, though whether I have really begun to be wise is yet to be seen.

  My horticultural experiments include trees, for there is a parcel of land to the west well suited and another with a warm wall which makes a perfect orchard. Vegetables, too, to which end I have my glasshouses, hothouse, hotbeds and a sizable kitchen garden. Pringle of the Royal Society said ‘no vegetable grows in vain’, I was pleased to read.

  And who shall eat it all, you ask, for you know how I hate to entertain, being a convinced solitary. The servants and gardeners take produce back to their cottages and most likely sell it in the village. Do not mistake this for Christian charity. I do not grow fruit and salad to feed the poor. I grow it for my own studies in horticulture and send out the residue only so that it does not go to waste. Perhaps they are the only villagers in England to eat melon. The best is boxed and sent to you where, despite your proximity to market gardens, you make use of it for your social gatherings.

  I have all I desire, Fox:

  modus agri non ita magnus,

  Hortus ubi et tecto vicinus iugis aquae fons

  Et paulum silvae super his foret.

  A little land, a garden, a stream and a bit of wood.

  Of course that that was all he desired was no longer entirely true, for the Investigation now took his ambition beyond the confines of his estate. Recognition by the scientists and philosophers of the Royal Society was what he wanted.

  The fields that he refused to turn into false Grecian landscape or even a ridiculous ferme ornée were rented out to Kempton and, in the lower reaches of the hills to an obscure man called Bloor whose shepherd, Aaron, roamed the hills with his flocks. Bloor would insist on setting the stubble on fire each spring, the better to encourage fresh greenery for his cattle. Punishment for such burning, which often spread, destroying nearby woods and coppices, was whipping or confinement, and so Powyss, who had a loathing of corporal punishment, had persuaded the magistrates to inflict a short confinement. Then sent Jenkins to Bloor with a bribe to desist from burning the next year.

  He preferred not to surround himself with journeymen and apprentices, just as he kept his house servants to a minimum. The housemaids doubled as kitchen maids; the cook had housekeeping duties; Samuel the footman must turn his hand to all manner of tasks. Servants, like the expensive whores in Jermyn Street, were a disagreeable necessity. The country itself couldn’t be run without labourers in fields, factories, unloading ships. You made sure there was bread, that there were poor rates. Then you thought about something else.

  He employed two labourers and Price, a master gardener. Price trained the labourers to dig, hoe and weed with care. He was a Welshman, skilled, knowledgeable but surly. Or was it that surliness and discontent were becoming common, were spreading like ineradicable mildew in warm, damp weather?

  * * *

  —

  A NOTE comes down with the clean pisspot.

  Send up your Linin

  Linin? His clothes are woollen. Hasn’t taken them off, hasn’t wanted to. Except the coat in bed. He’s seen shirts in a drawer in the bedroom. Linen. Not worn them.

  It’s summer. At the grating he smells warm air, warm rain, warm earth. Hears wood pigeons, the rasp of young crows. If he listens long enough he hears squeaking of fledgling sparrows and houseswifts. Wheelbarrows scrape along gravel for Powyss’s garden – whiff of manure.

  Corn’ll be growing now, too tall to weed. Sheep’s been sheared. Lambs taken from ewes.

  Time lags between meals. He keeps the fire in. Drops crumbs into the cistern.

  He’s touched everything, handled, opened, closed, pulled, pushed, screwed, unscrewed, picked up, put down. Poked, patted, pressed, peered at, sniffed. Knows every damned infernold thing here. Sits in the high-backed armchair, watches the candle burn till the flame dances inside his closed lids. Candlesticks, snuffer, oil lamp on the round table, cask of oil. He’s never used an oil lamp before. When he fiddles with it it flares, melts his eyebrow or singes overhanging hair. He curses soundly. Talks to himself often.

  Looks at his legs stretched out. Toes hurt. Nails’ve grown through stockings. Needs bigger clogs. Turkey carpet’s all patterns this way and that. He follows the lines. One goes all round the edge. Then there’s pathways inside; he follows them up, along, down, round, back to where he started. Round again. There’s shapes like stiff birds, trees, teeth, candlesticks. Eyes. He stares at an eye. It stares at him.
<
br />   He glances at tongs, poker, shovel, brush, shelf of books, press with blankets, folded linen. Ah linen! In the bed. Why didn’t them write beddin?

  His eyes travel round the walls. Pictures of trees and lakes, people at a well: Bible story, can’t remember it. Another with men in long dresses, bare arms. He goes over to the mirror. Holds up a candle. Sees a great big beard. Long, wide, black. Face recognisable only when he mouths at it.

  ‘Me. It is me. John. John Warlow. Fifty pound a year.’

  He feels the beard, hair at the back of his neck, shoulders. Thinks what he said to Powyss: he’d be glad to be shut of human faces.

  ‘For seven years, Warlow? See nobody for seven years?’

  ‘Yes.’ Yes. Yes. Had no doubts.

  It were the money. Fifty pounds won’t make him rich as damned infernold Kempton. But every year for the rest of his life! That were it. It’ll keep the lot of them. He won’t work. Will he? Or if he do, he’ll keep his wages to himself. Drink as long as he wants. All night. All day. That’s Liberty. That’s the word them do say in the Dog, isn’t it? Or is it Freedom?

  ‘For the rest of your life.’ For the rest of my life.

  The others were envious he could see. Though them said him were a fool.

  But it’s the truth about the faces. He’d rather look a horse in the face than see old Elias day after day. Thick grey dewlaps shakin every time him takes a swig. Dick grinnin. Grinnin whatever you say. Should’ve won a prize for it. Pound of tobacco.

  ‘Dick, your dog’s drownded.’ Grins.

  ‘Dick, your house’s on fire.’ Grins.

  Wind blew, his mouth stuck. Suckin soaked crusts between his gums. Suck. Suck.

  Perhaps them’ve gone for soldiers. Shootin French. No. Too old to fight.

  ‘No woman for seven year,’ them said.

  He’ll get by. Sure to. No cheer in Hannah. Niver were. Keeps out of his way. Often don’t go to bed at all. In the mornin noddin by the ashes. Her do coddle the childer, them’s always about her. Says her do love her childer every one, livin or buried. But her don’t want him. Niver did. Thinks herself better nor him. All for her mother were a lady’s maid! Thin as a skeleton, hates that in a woman. He could kill her easy rollin on top. Her gaspin for breath. The last time he hit her her arm broke. Hasn’t done it since the girl were born.

  Polly. He’ll miss her. Her’s got a sweet little face. But the rest. Good for nothin. Fightin, hungry all the time, have to knock ’em about. Like father. Knocked us about. Growls. Can’t tell one from the next. Sometimes he mixes up names with the dead ones. Dick says childer is God’s punishment.

  * * *

  —

  JULY, AND A LETTER FROM FOX ARRIVED. One of Fox’s many friends, a bookseller, Henry Clarke, had just been imprisoned for four years for selling Paine’s Rights of Man. He was concerned about Clarke’s wife and children. He wrote:

  The whole city is infected by a disorder of the nerves. Everyone listens for treason, pounces like kites upon the tiniest mouse-squeak of sedition. No coffee house, no tavern is safe from spies and fools. There’s an attorney just yesterday sent to Newgate for 6 months and an hour’s pillory, all for speaking up for equality in the Percy Coffee House. I pray God the crowd takes pity on the man; too many have been killed in the pillory.

  How protected from the world you are in your hills with your endless supply of mutton! You might scarcely know we’ve been at war with France since February.

  Fox had sent Powyss a copy of Paine’s book a while ago, but Powyss hadn’t even cut the pages, let alone read it. And now Fox was urging him to make sure he improved the lives of Mrs Warlow and her children, rather than just ‘cultivating your own garden’ as he put it. This double allusion to Candide and to Powyss’s horticulture was typical of the man.

  His immediate reaction to any suggestion of Fox’s was always negative. It was an old habit begun and developed in childhood against his father’s orders and his mother’s demands. With Fox there was often a second round, however, after the contents sank into his thoughts. Of course Powyss actually cultivated his garden, but the experiment was not equivalent to cultivating his garden in Voltaire’s sense. He was doing it for mankind, as he’d told Fox, firmly. But Fox had a point: everything centred on Warlow. The idea of Mrs Warlow and her children as an offshoot to the experiment, a small, contained section, that might even merit a paper of its own, seemed attractive.

  He took a bound notebook from his store and inscribed it: Account of Lateral Effects of Investigation into the Resilience of the Human Mind: Mrs Hannah Warlow and her Children.

  He found that he was looking forward to Monday. He washed and shaved. Samuel had laid out clean undergarments, hose, white shirt, his breeches, waistcoat and coat all of black. Momentarily he admired his right calf as he pulled on the stockings, fastened the garters.

  Usually he went out either into the garden and the orchard or to the greenhouses and hothouse after breakfast, but now, on Mondays, he delayed that until after Mrs Warlow’s visit.

  She barely replied to his greeting just inside the door, waiting to walk the length up to his desk by the window, past the shelves and glass cases.

  Powyss stood.

  ‘Come in, Mrs Warlow. I was looking out of my window, as I do each day. Come and see for yourself.’

  She came, stood apart.

  ‘This window faces south and so the sun has not yet reached it. But it is my favourite view. I can see my flower garden, some of my best trees, the fields, sheep, cattle, the hills. And today the clouds racing from the west. Is it not a beautiful sight?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Sit down please.’ The day was promising, the experiment going to plan; he was pleased with himself. It was clear that Mrs Warlow was improving, though hard to say in what way.

  He looked at her and she, refusing to acknowledge his glance, looked past him at the hastening clouds.

  ‘Are the children getting any fatter?’ He laughed, but it was misplaced. He spoke so rarely to the poor that he didn’t know how to and resorted to jocularity.

  ‘Fatter?’

  ‘I mean are they eating more?’

  ‘I do buy a bit o’ meat.’

  ‘Good. That’s good. And have you stopped working for Mr Kempton now?’

  ‘I did a bit o’ cardin.’

  ‘But there’s no need, Mrs Warlow. You have enough to do as it is.’

  ‘I agreed before. I keeps my word.’

  ‘I see. I’d like it if your children would cease working, too, and attend school instead, the village school in Moreham.’

  ‘Mr Kempton must find other boys, then.’

  ‘Yes, he can surely do that.’ Kempton, a swaggering bully of a man, illiterate but sharp, who’d made himself rich mopping up small parcels of land on which tenants’ dwellings rotted and in which widows cowered from his importunities. Even Powyss knew of Kempton’s reputation.

  ‘Jack do like his pennies.’

  ‘Mrs Warlow. May I call you Hannah?’

  ‘Sir.’ She pursed her lips. It was another mistake, but he persisted.

  ‘Hannah. Can you read?’

  ‘Father did teach me.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I were a help to him. He did have but one leg; were a soldier.’

  ‘You didn’t go to school, then?’

  ‘No. He did teach me reading and names of birds and creatures.’

  ‘I see. But let me tell you, this experiment with your husband is one thing. I have realised, in correspondence with an old friend, that it also enables me to be particularly helpful to the whole Warlow family. If I give you enough money it will be unnecessary for Jack or any of your children to earn pennies. Or you.’

  ‘We all do weed for Mr Kempton. More now he don’t have John to work. We all do join at har
vestide for Mr Pulverbatch.’

  ‘Please take my point, Hannah. Kempton, Pulverbatch and Bloor will each find others to employ. Your children have the opportunity for education.’

  He felt her hostility. Apart from an occasional mild dispute with the cook, Mrs Rentfree, he wasn’t used to opposition from a woman. He wanted to shake her, make her agree. Instead, he rang for Jenkins; she took her money and left.

  It was only several hours later, after pinching out in the greenhouses, then checking for early leaf drop in the orchard, that his annoyance dissipated.

  Find clean Bedlinin in Press. Send up Bathlinin.

     Send up linin Cloaths like Undershirt and Draws.

  Draws? Bathlinen? Not had a bath. Water too cold. No dirt, no mud on him. Washes his hands, face sometimes. Beard is so big, there’s not much face to wash.

  Them’ve sent down an undershirt, a shirt and drawers all of linen; woollen stockings. Pair of boots, not clogs.

  He stands by the fire, slowly takes off his clothes. Took off their clothes when them were boys, to swim in the river. When a day were hot. Only ever a Sunday. Never done it since. Naked, he scratches his stomach, itchy groin. Shivers, hugs himself, rubs his upper arms. Sees long toenails like buzzard feet.

  Pulls on underclothes and they’re cold. Stockings warm him. The shirt cheers him.

  ‘Now I’m a gentleman,’ says to himself in the looking glass. Stands on a chair to see his lower half.

  He stuffs his old clothes into the waiter thing, rings the bell, pulls the cord. Never sees them again.

  Gentleman’s food. Gentleman’s clothes. He will write in the journal.

  Orgst

  i do smell it is summe it will bee har vist

  i hev new

  Seeks out the note that came.

  Cloths shirt Un d shirt draws

  i do hev but 1 frog now hee do best lik bred crums