Sophie and the Sibyl Page 3

  ‘Of course! You covered me with oily water from your father’s fountain and I had to change my braces and my shirt!’

  Sophie von Hahn, sixteen years old at the time, but still running, like a young hound, with the pack of smaller children. The Count’s midsummer birthday party, here at the Jagdschloss, huge red Chinese lanterns in the gardens, the children unfettered with excitement, too much alcohol in the fruit cup, everyone screaming, so that you could hardly hear the musicians, and the stone seats by the lake still warm from the sun, long after dark. Sophie von Hahn, who had taken a shine to Max and his uniform, insisted on playing find me, chase me, catch me, in the formal gardens. Finding the hidden person was not enough, you then had to catch them. Darting in and out of the pointed ornamental yews, a gaggle of children in party clothes thundering after him, Max almost pinned Sophie up against the belly of a stone Amazon, who stood guard before the fountain. But she darted underneath his outstretched arms, blue ribbons flying, and leaped on to the basin’s rim. Now she was above the children clutching at her shoes, and away she went, scampering sure-footed through the spray, faster and faster.

  ‘Sophie! Come down!’

  Max grabbed one ankle and arrested her flight. But she neither stopped, nor fell. Instead she squirmed away, revealing a white-stockinged leg, a bandaged knee and a shimmer of thigh, reached into the rippling pond with cupped hands and covered Max in water. The children shrieked, jubilant, as he let her go, shaking the drops from his forehead and moustache. The spectacle of Max, drenched, proved too temptingly wonderful to behold. Sophie did it again. And now his white shirt stuck to his chest.

  ‘You can’t catch me! You can’t catch me!’ Sophie danced in the fountain’s spray, her arms flung wide.

  Now the shared memory of that gaudy night united them in a delightful conspiracy.

  ‘You remember that!’ Sophie grinned in triumph, her adolescent victory flooded back.

  ‘You wore white lace and blue ribbons.’

  She frowned; clearly that dress, last year’s fashion, had long been discarded. He gazed at her corn-gold plaits and the black Japanese comb, the high collar and the tiny sunburnt freckles spattered across her nose and cheeks. She stood quite still, alert, tense as a deer hearing a footstep in the forest. Max watched the extraordinary rising curve of her breasts. Surely the girl he had dragged from the fountain’s rim, damp and screaming, had been no more than a scrawny, flat-chested child.

  But here was the Count again, his little wife scuttling beside him.

  ‘Max my dear, come in, come in. Sophie, what are you thinking of? Leaving your father’s publisher standing on the doorstep.’

  Sophie von Hahn acknowledged his importance with a perfect rush of good manners. She snatched his hat and cane, held out her hand for an instant, and then whirled round, flinging open the coat cupboard door, which was all but concealed in the panelling. The Count stroked his whiskers and collected Max’s arm while Sophie bounced beside him. Her youth and energy streamed from every limb; she appeared to walk on springs. Max found her bounding stride adorable. She was barely half a head shorter than he; the black Japanese comb, he noticed, was covered in writing.

  ‘Has Wolfgang told you?’ boomed the Count. ‘A third edition!’

  And so they all headed for the drawing room where the younger children were banging out ‘Frère Jacques’ on the grand piano.

  Jellies for dessert! But would the trembling mix actually set in the heat? The von Hahn family had captured an English butler on one of their frequent shopping expeditions to London and he had the marvellous idea of transporting the tray of scarlet jellies to the ice house, an igloo of stone just inside the forest, filled with blocks of ice in sacking, where they set solid within half an hour. All the French windows stood open to the late-afternoon air and the long muslin drapes, which kept marauding insects from the lake at bay, stirred in the draught. Max and the Count, left alone at the table to talk business and finish their sweet wine – lovely flavour, don’t you think? Imported from Portugal! – could still hear the children shouting from the lawn’s edge, as they tried to launch the little rowing boat on the dark water. The Count talked about his extended third edition of Erinnerungen und Erlebnisse: Lebensweg eines Liberalen, now also described as his ‘testimony’, and at one point as his ‘legacy’. Max realised that he was merely required to nod, agree, look grave and smirk depending on the Count’s mood, but to become unflinchingly direct if money was discussed. He was quite unprepared when the Count suddenly changed the subject.

  ‘Well, young man, what about Sophie? Do you think she might fit the bill? I’m prepared to do something very handsome so far as her settlement is concerned. And she has her grandfather’s fortune, provided that she keeps her title and her own name. He’s always hoped for a grandson, you see, so that the family name continued in the direct line of succession. I never minded my little flood of girls. But that’s not something you’d bother about, is it? We’ll have to get a special dispensation, but I’ll do all the paperwork. I mean, the estate is surely the most important consideration, and were you to be blessed with a son then the names of Duncker and von Hahn could be combined. I was very fond of your father and I think he would have approved the match. He held Sophie in his arms when she was a baby, you know. And there you were, still in short trousers. Five or six at the time. And when he asked if you’d like to hold her, you said, “No thank you, Papa. I would rather not!”’

  The Count let out a huge guffaw and sliced up one of his own apples with a blunt fruit knife. Max blushed, completely at a loss.

  ‘I’m sure that I would answer quite differently now, sir.’ He offered this as an apology, then realised that the lady in question was a rather different proposition from a babe in arms. But the Count did not appear to remark his indiscretion.

  ‘Of course you would. Well, no hurry. Come and see us more often. Get to know her. She’s a clever child. Full of English ideas. She’ll be eighteen in November. Right sort of age. I married her mother when she was eighteen. Quite lovely, she was.’ The Count handed Max part of the battered apple and they sauntered out on to the lawns.

  The warm late-summer smell of sunshine on damp grass dominated the gardens near the house, but as the party approached the forest paths, a darker smell brushed the air, dead leaves, turned earth, cut meadows. The hay was all in, the distant stubble burned off, the cool of longer nights lingering among the trees. Shall we walk round the lake, following the edge of the forest? Yes, I’m going on ahead. And away the children bolted, their bright colours reflected in the dark lake and against the darker green.

  ‘Not too fast! Mind the roots! Don’t fall in! Konstantin, stay back from the edge!’ The Countess tumbled after the younger children, her white cap slightly askew.

  ‘No cigarettes, mind,’ warned the Count, ‘the woods are far too dry.’

  Max found himself once more with Sophie on one side, plucking a pine cone, and the Count on the other. He felt under arrest.

  ‘Father says he saw you at Mrs. Lewes’s salon last Sunday afternoon.’ Sophie’s thrilled tone revealed her passionate adulation of the Sibyl, one of the unconditional disciples. ‘She must be very frightening to meet. She is so wise and clever. Is she really as ugly as everyone says?’

  Max did not mishear the premature rebuke in her tone. Beauty should not count in any palace where Genius had already taken up residence. Max rose to the occasion.

  ‘Well, she is rather startling when you see her for the first time. She has a long face and a massive head. But very beautiful grey-blue eyes. And when she speaks she leans towards you so as not to miss a single word. That’s very flattering. But a bit disconcerting. Especially if you have nothing very interesting or original to say.’

  Max hesitated; it had just occurred to him that the Sibyl’s habit of leaning forward and peering at her guests might indicate deafness and myopia. Sophie fixed him with a delighted mischievous grin.

  ‘Then it’s not fair that you sh
ould be one of the company and not me. I should have so much to say to her. About Dinah. And Maggie Tulliver. And why must she make Dorothea so stupid as to marry an old man who sucks his soup.’ The Sibyl’s characters walked beside them, utterly real and closely known. ‘I think she is not on the women’s side. Her blonde women are vapid, egotistical and silly. They are never as clever as the dark ones.’

  Sophie shook her blonde plaits so vigorously the Japanese comb slipped sideways, almost completely dislodged. The Count gently pushed it back into place.

  ‘But I weep over her books,’ Sophie continued, almost talking to herself, ‘and so does Maman. No one ever makes us cry as much as Mrs. Lewes does. Not even Mr. Dickens.’

  ‘For which I am very grateful, my dear,’ cried the Count. ‘Imagine if you did. Masterly and eloquent as our author is, the floodgates are opened indeed whenever we reach an affecting climax. I can hear you in my study. You’d think we had suffered a bereavement, or that one of the horses had colic.’

  ‘Oh, there are some passages that I have by heart,’ sighed Sophie, ‘they are so beautiful. And it is dreadful to wait for the next book. I cannot imagine how Middlemarch will end. Or how she will contrive the marriage between Lydgate and Dorothea. Perhaps the fair Rosamond will have an apopleptic seizure brought on by her own selfishness or by seeing her aristocratic cousin riding away, then turn purple and die upon the sofa. Or maybe she’ll be carried off in childbirth and Dorothea will comfort him.’

  Sophie clearly shared the Sibyl’s taste for melodrama. She flung the plucked pine cone into the lake where it floated in the shallows before vanishing into the reeds. Max decided not to reveal his utter ignorance of the plot of Middlemarch. The Sibyl’s creation that had moved him most was not one of her rural English dramas, but the austere historical tale of Romola, the scholar’s daughter and her dangerous mentor, the megalomaniac monk Savonarola. He had passed five blissful days, mesmerised by the careless villainy of Tito Melema and the gorgeous fiery beauty of his betrayed beloved. Max had not in fact read anything else other than this great Italian fresco and Adam Bede, the first novel translated and published by Duncker und Duncker. If a novel was not written by Sir Walter Scott he had great difficulty picking it up again, once he had laid it aside. He had even argued with his brother on the need for ‘une histoire vraie’. He didn’t care if characters that had never existed were declared bankrupt, sucked their soup or married women far too young for the match to be suitable. Neither pathos nor intrigue accompanied their fictive destinies. But Savonarola really had governed republican Florence in the 1490s, had indeed fallen from power and walked to his flaming death. This was history; these were the stories that mattered. Max never investigated the veracity of Ivanhoe. There must have been knights and jousting during the Middle Ages and festive events with flags and tents, just as Scott described them. And Old Mortality, he remained convinced of this, recorded the persecution of the righteous dissenters in the Highlands with documentary rigour and offered a true description, not only of a savage and glamorous landscape, but of a just war. History readily translated itself into myth; but this did not mean that these fabulous tales were therefore less accurate or revealing. Max often argued that if the archaeological explorers dug where Homer said they should, they would happen upon the ancient walls of Troy.

  But at his side tramped Sophie, anxious that at least one fair heroine should triumph over misadventure and innate stupidity. He glanced at the petulant shudder in her shoulders and the graceful ease of her stride. A maiden huntress, a virgin deity! But could she ever learn to love him enough to make marriage a matter of genial companionship rather than a chilly set of formal daily meetings? And could he make her happy? Max seldom gave himself up to reflection on sexual matters, he had no reason to doubt his power to charm and to seduce. But something untamed shimmered in the figure of Sophie von Hahn, who now swung round to face him, her hand on his arm, her face all passionate importunity.

  ‘Would you introduce me? You could. You’re her publisher. Well, in a way you are. I would give anything to see her and to shake her hand. Just once.’

  The old Countess appeared behind her daughter. Her dapper little figure skirting a muddy patch, where a tiny stream crossed the path.

  ‘Now, my dear, we’ve been over all this. When you are married you can call on Mrs. Lewes every morning.’ She looked significantly at Max. ‘But until then you must be a little more cautious and listen to your parents.’

  ‘Oh Maman!’ Sophie stamped one boot down in the dry leaves, turned on her heel, lifted her skirts and pounded off down the path after the children.

  The Countess took Max’s arm.

  ‘I have the very highest opinion of Mrs. Lewes. Her work will live for ever. She is one of the immortals, but her entourage, well, August tells me that you never know who you might meet. And at this stage Sophie should be a little sheltered. Innocence is so fragile, don’t you think?’

  Max could see nothing fragile whatsoever about the beat of Sophie’s boots upon the path. Her pale slenderness and the loosened plaits vanished into the pine trees.

  END OF CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  in which the Story pauses a little.

  What is the role of a Sibyl? She is ageless, immortal, suspended in a cage, over the smoking Delphic gulf. She is also the prophetess of catastrophe and change. And so this particular Sibyl proved to be. She unravelled our common past and foresaw the dark century to come. She also transformed the shape and nature of prose fiction in the nineteenth century and altered our understanding of the novel, its role, scope and possibilities, for generations of writers and readers still unborn. The Sibyl’s extraordinary manifesto in defence of realism, which appears in the famous Chapter 17 of Adam Bede, that chapter ‘in which the story pauses a little’, seems to me to be exceedingly revealing. She equates realism not only with accuracy, but honesty. Her fiction mirrors a world without perfection. Her characters speak and act, as we do, not as heroes in ideal worlds. They make alarming mistakes, with evil, lasting consequences. She creates figures overflowing with human flaws, forgiven at the last by their author, given her complete understanding of all their circumstances, and her benign compassion. Her much quoted epigram, ‘Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult,’ gives me pause. Why should the truth be difficult to write or to speak? The truth is often cruel and unforgiving, unless we cloak reality in a sentimental humanitarian patina, which the Sibyl certainly seemed inclined to do. The truth is only difficult when it results in exposure, humiliation and pain, and neither the author nor her characters have the guts to face it.

  She uses the famous Chapter 17 to deliver a lecture on ‘the secret of deep human sympathy’, in which I, for one, have never believed. And were that all the Sibyl had to offer I might never have returned to her books. But she presents her readers with other lavish gifts, her garnered knowledge and her massive, cunning intelligence; she never abandoned her jolly taste for melodrama, and we love her for it. Yet the Sibyl insisted on maintaining genteel fictions in her life that she seldom countenanced in her novels. She was never really Mrs. Lewes; that respectable identity, as the old Countess well knew, was a sham. She answered to a multitude of names, Mary Ann Evans, Marian Evans Lewes, Polly, Mutter, Madonna, and she wrote under a masculine pseudonym, her most famous name of all. And the one that lasted. No one describes Charlotte Brontë as Currer Bell, unless they are constructing a literary argument in a learned journal. The Sibyl turned out to be a master of pretence. Her fiction championed the honesty she preached, but never practised.

  Realism of course, as a literary mode, has largely degenerated into tired commercial cliché, produced by lazy writers out to make a fast buck and consumed by readers in airports. That high moral purpose, championed by the Sibyl in 1859, doesn’t cut much ice now. And we are swamped by what she so memorably described as ‘silly novels by lady novelists’. The tendency to discipline and punish errant or ignorant characters lasted all through her wr
iting life, and therein she was no different from her contemporaries. But the sexual sins which resulted in grisly deaths for most of the fictitious ladies in male masterpieces – Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary, Lady Dedlock in Bleak House, Tess of the D’Urbervilles – I could go on and on – were by and large excused by the Sibyl, indeed often accommodated and forgiven. Tessa, the chubby little contadina in Romola, never knows that she wasn’t really married to Tito Melema, and the Sibyl’s portrait of Florence in the 1490s is riddled with coded references to sodomy, for which the city appears to have been famous. Take another careful look at Nello the Barber and his coterie, and there you will find the Sibyl’s queer community. Adultery, no, thou shalt not die for adultery, not in her novels. But you will be punished mercilessly for greed, misplaced ambition, hypocrisy, domestic cruelty, and moral betrayal. I am deeply impressed by the sins she refused to forgive. Grandcourt gets away with keeping a mistress and fathering four illegitimate children, but his creator refuses to condone his failure to marry Lydia Glasher when at last he could have done so. The discarded mistress turns all her thwarted rage on the new wife, Gwendolen. And the latter deserves all she gets, because she married him knowing that his wealth was infected with moral corruption. You will have your punishment. I desire it with all my soul. That is Lydia Glasher’s curse, sent with the poisoned diamonds, and I have heard our own author muttering this splendid formula to herself in the bathroom, when she thinks no one is listening.

  The Sibyl entered this world in 1819, a world moving at the slower pace of coaches, a world lit by oil lamps and candles upstairs. The railways had not yet reached her local town; the Channel was traversed under sail and no one had ever heard of the telegraph, the telephone or the bicycle. Lavatory paper had not been invented, and so it fell to her, when their kitchen maid succumbed to a bilious attack, to cut up the gazetteer, and the cattle auction posters into little squares, thread them into a plump and fluttering mass and suspend them from a nail on the inside wall of the jakes. No bathroom ever existed in that house. Everyone managed with enamel chamber pots, or a brisk dash through the walled vegetable garden to the little house above the septic tank. The faint scent of urine, faeces and dark menstrual blood drifted through the rooms in summer, but without central heating, human excrement seldom festers with flies, as it would now. The Sibyl felt the cold; she wrapped herself in shawls, mantles, woollen stockings, fur-lined boots. Thrift is an admirable moral quality, but she adored discomfort for its own sake, and only ordered a fire when the windows threatened to freeze on the inside.