A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters Page 15

  b) Delacroix in 1855 recalled his reactions nearly forty years earlier to his first sight of the emerging Medusa: ‘The impression it gave me was so strong that as I left the studio I broke into a run, and kept running like a madman all the way back to the rue de la Planche, where I then lived, at the far end of the faubourg Saint-Germain.’

  c) Géricault, on his death-bed, in reply to someone who mentioned the painting: ‘Bah, une vignette!’

  And there we have it – the moment of supreme agony on the raft, taken up, transformed, justified by art, turned into a sprung and weighted image, then varnished, framed, glazed, hung in a famous art gallery to illuminate our human condition, fixed, final, always there. Is that what we have? Well, no. People die; rafts rot; and works of art are not exempt. The emotional structure of Géricault’s work, the oscillation between hope and despair, is reinforced by the pigment: the raft contains areas of bright illumination violently contrasted with patches of the deepest darkness. To make the shadow as black as possible, Géricault used quantities of bitumen to give him the shimmeringly gloomy black he sought. Bitumen, however, is chemically unstable, and from the moment Louis XVIII examined the work a slow, irreparable decay of the paint surface was inevitable ‘No sooner do we come into this world,’ said Flaubert, ‘than bits of us start to fall off.’ The masterpiece, once completed, does not stop: it continues in motion, downhill. Our leading expert on Géricault confirms that the painting is ‘now in part a ruin’. And no doubt if they examine the frame they will discover woodworm living there.

  6

  THE MOUNTAIN

  Tick, tick, tick, tick. Tock. Tick, tick, tick, tick. Tock. It sounded like a clock gently misfiring, time entering a delirium. This might have been appropriate, the Colonel reflected, but it wasn’t the case. It was important to stick to what you knew, right to the end, especially at the end. He knew it wasn’t the case. It wasn’t time, it wasn’t even a distant clock.

  Colonel Fergusson lay in the cold square bedroom of his cold square house three miles outside Dublin and listened to the clicking overhead. It was one o’clock in the morning on a windless November night of 1837. His daughter Amanda sat at his bedside in stiff, pout-lipped profile, reading some piece of religious mumbo-jumbo. At her elbow the candle burned with a steady flame, which was more than that perspiring fool of a doctor with letters after his name had been able to say about the Colonel’s heart.

  It was a provocation, that’s what it was, thought the Colonel. Here he was on his deathbed, preparing for oblivion, and she sits over there reading Parson Noah’s latest pamphlet. Actively disagreeing right to the end. Colonel Fergusson had long since given up trying to understand the business. How could the child he loved most have failed to inherit either his instincts or the opinions he had with such difficulty acquired? It was vexing. If he hadn’t adored her he would have treated her as a credulous imbecile. And still, despite it all, despite this living, fleshly rebuttal, he believed in the world’s ability to progress, in man’s ascent, in the defeat of superstition. It was all finally very puzzling.

  Tick, tick, tick, tick. Tock. The clicking continued overhead. Four, five loud ticks, a silence, then a fainter echo. The Colonel could tell that the noise was distracting Amanda from her pamphlet, though she gave no outward sign. It was simply that he could judge such things after living so closely with her for however many years. He could tell she hadn’t really got her nose in the Reverend Abraham. And it was her fault that he could tell, that he knew her so thoroughly. He’d told her to go off and get married when that lieutenant whose name he could never recall had asked her. She’d argued about that, too. She’d said she loved her father more than her uniformed claimant. He’d replied that this wasn’t a sound reason, and anyway he’d only die on her. She’d wept and said he wasn’t to talk like that. But he’d been right, hadn’t he? He was bound to be, wasn’t he?

  Amanda Fergusson now rested her book on her lap and looked at the ceiling in alarm. The beetle was a harbinger. Everyone knew that its sound portended the death of someone in the house within the year. It was the wisdom of ages. She looked across to see if her father was still awake. Colonel Fergusson had his eyes closed and was breathing out through his nose in long smooth puffs like a bellows. But Amanda knew him well enough to suspect that he might be bluffing. It would be just like him. He had always played tricks on her.

  Like that time he’d taken her to Dublin, one blustery day in February of 1821. Amanda was seventeen, and everywhere carried with her a sketching book as she now carried her religious pamphlets. She had lately been excited by reports of the exhibition at Bullock’s Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London, of Monsieur Jerricault’s Great Picture, 24 feet long by 18 feet high, representing the Surviving Crew of the Medusa French Frigate on the Raft. Admission is, Description 6d, and 50,000 spectators had paid to see this new masterpiece of foreign art, shown alongside such permanent displays as Mr Bullock’s magnificent collection of 25,000 fossils and his Pantherion of stuffed wild beasts. Now the canvas had come to Dublin, where it was put on view at the Rotunda: Admission is 8d, Description 5d.

  Amanda had been chosen above her five siblings by reason of her precocity with water-colour – at least, this was Colonel Fergusson’s official excuse for indulging his natural preference once again. Except that they did not go, as promised, to the Rotunda, but went instead to a rival attraction advertised in Saunder’s News-Letter & Daily Advertiser, one, indeed, which ensured that Monsieur Jerricault’s Great Picture did not triumph in Dublin as it had done in London. Colonel Fergusson took his daughter to the Pavilion, where they witnessed Messrs Marshall’s Marine Peristrephic Panorama of the Wreck of the Medusa French Frigate and the Fatal Raft: Admission front seats is 8d, back seats 10d, children in the front seats at half price. ‘The Pavilion is always rendered perfectly comfortable by patent stoves’.

  Whereas the Rotunda displayed a mere twenty-four feet by eighteen of stationary pigment, here they were offered some 10,000 square feet of mobile canvas. Before their eyes an immense picture, or series of pictures, gradually unwound: not just one scene, but the entire history of the shipwreck passed before them. Episode succeeded episode, while coloured lights played upon the unreeling fabric, and an orchestra emphasized the drama of events. The audience was constantly moved to applause by the spectacle, and Colonel Fergusson would nudge his daughter heavily at some particularly felicitous aspect of the display. In the sixth scene those poor French wretches on the raft were represented in very much the same posture as that in which they had been first delineated by Monsieur Jerricault. But how much grander, Colonel Fergusson observed, to picture their tragic plight with movement and coloured lights, accompanied by music which he identified quite unnecessarily to his daughter as ‘Vive Henrico!’

  ‘That is the way forward,’ remarked the Colonel with enthusiasm as they left the Pavilion. ‘Those painters will have to look to their brushes.’

  Amanda did not reply, but the following week she returned to Dublin with one of her five siblings and this time visited the Rotunda. There she greatly admired Monsieur Jerricault’s canvas, which though static contained for her much motion and lighting and, in its own way, music – indeed, in some fashion it contained more of these things than did the vulgar Panorama. Upon her return she told her father as much.

  Colonel Fergusson nodded indulgently at such pertness and obstinacy, but held his peace. On the 5th of March, however, he jauntily indicated to his favourite daughter a fresh advertisement in Saunder’s News-Letter announcing that Mr Bullock had reduced – had clearly been obliged to reduce, the Colonel interpreted – the price of admission into his immobile spectacle to a mere ten pence. At the end of that month Colonel Fergusson imparted the news that the Frenchy picture at the Rotunda had closed for lack of spectators, whereas Messrs Marshall’s Peristrephic Panorama was still being shown three times a day to audiences rendered perfectly comfortable by patent stoves.

  ‘It is the way forward,’ the Colonel
repeated in June of that year, after attending by himself the farewell performance at the Pavilion.

  ‘Mere novelty is no proof of value,’ his daughter had replied, sounding a little too smug for one so young.

  Tick, tick, tick, tick. Tock. Colonel Fergusson’s faked sleep became more choleric. God damn it, he was thinking, this dying business is difficult. They just won’t let you get on with it, not on your own terms, anyway. You have to die on other people’s terms, and that’s a bore, love them as you might. He opened his eyes and prepared to correct his daughter for the several hundredth occasion in their lives together.

  ‘It’s love,’ he said suddenly. ‘That’s all it is.’ Amanda’s gaze was surprised from the ceiling, and she looked across with brimming eyes. ‘It’s the love-call of xestobium rufo-villosum, for God’s sake, girl. Simple as that. Put one of the little fellows in a box and tap on the table with a pencil and he behaves in exactly the same way. Thinks you’re a female and butts his head against the box trying to get to you. Speaking of which, why didn’t you marry that lieutenant when I told you to? Sheer damn insubordination.’ He reached across and took her hand.

  But his daughter didn’t reply, her eyes continued to overflow, the ticking carried on overhead, and Colonel Fergusson was duly buried before the year’s end. On this prediction the doctor and the death-watch beetle had managed to agree.

  Amanda’s grief for her father was compounded by anxiety over his ontological status. Did his obstinate refusal to acknowledge the divine plan – and his careless use of the Almighty’s name even on his deathbed – mean that he was now consigned to outer darkness, to some chilly region unheated by patent stoves? Miss Fergusson knew the Lord to be just, yet merciful. Those who accepted his commandments were to be judged in punctilious accordance with the law, whereas the ignorant savage in the darkened jungle who could not possibly have known the light would be treated with gentleness and given a second chance. But did the category of ignorant savage extend to occupants of cold square houses outside Dublin? Was the pain which unbelievers bore all their lives at the prospect of oblivion to be extended into further pain inflicted for having denied the Lord? Miss Fergusson feared that it might be.

  How could her father have failed to recognize God, His eternal design, and its essential goodness? The proof of this plan and of this benevolence lay manifest in Nature, which was provided by God for Man’s enjoyment. This did not mean, as some had assumed, that Man might recklessly pillage Nature for what he sought; indeed, Nature was deserving of the more respect because it was a divine creation. But God had created both Man and Nature, placing Man into that Nature as a hand is placed into a glove. Amanda frequently reflected upon the fruits of the field, how various they were, and yet how perfectly each was adapted for Man’s enjoyment. For instance, trees bearing edible fruits were made easy to climb, being much lower than forest trees. Fruits which were soft when ripe, such as the apricot, the fig or the mulberry, which might be bruised by falling, presented themselves at a small distance from the ground; whereas hard fruit, which ran no risk of sustaining an injury by a fall, like the cocoa, the walnut or the chestnut, presented themselves at a considerable height. Some fruit – like the cherry and the plum – were moulded for the mouth; others – the apple and the pear – for the hand; others still, like the melon, were made larger, so as to be divided among the family circle. Yet others, like the pumpkin, were made of a size to be shared amongst the whole neighbourhood, and many of these larger fruits were marked on their outer rind with vertical divisions, so as to make apportionment the easier.

  Where Amanda discovered in the world divine intent, benevolent order and rigorous justice, her father had seen only chaos, hazard and malice. Yet they were both examining the same world. In the course of their many arguments, Amanda once asked him to consider the domestic condition of the Fergusson family, who lived together with strong bonds of affection, and declare whether they too were the consequence of chaos, hazard and malice. Colonel Fergusson, who could not quite bear to inform his daughter that the human family sprang from the same impulse which animated a beetle striking its head against the walls of its box, replied that in his view the Fergussons were a happy accident. His daughter replied that there were too many happy accidents in the world for them to be accidental.

  In part, Amanda reflected, it was a matter of how you perceived things. Her father saw in a vulgar simulacrum of coloured lights and trilling music a true portrayal of a great maritime tragedy; whereas for her the reality was best conveyed by a simple, static canvas adorned with pigment. Mainly, however, it was a question of faith. A few weeks after their visit to the Peristrephic Panorama, her father was rowing her slowly across the serpentine lake on the neighbouring estate of Lord F—–. Some connection having been made in his mind, he began to rebuke her for a belief in the reality of Noah’s Ark, which he referred to sarcastically as the Myth of the Deluge. Amanda was not discountenanced by the accusation. She replied by asking her father if he believed in the reality of Mr Bullock’s Pantherion of stuffed wild beasts at his Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London. The Colonel, taken aback, responded that naturally he did; whereupon his daughter exhibited a humorous astonishment. She believed in the reality of something ordained by God and described in a book of Holy Scripture read and remembered for thousands of years; whereas he believed in the reality of something described in the pages of Saunder’s News-Letter & Daily Advertiser, which people were unlikely to remember the very next morning. Which of them, she insisted upon knowing, with a continuing and unnecessary mockery in her eye, was the more credulous?

  It was in the autumn of 1839, after long meditation, that Amanda Fergusson proposed to Miss Logan the expedition to Arghuri. Miss Logan was a vigorous and seemingly practical woman some ten years older than Miss Fergusson, and had been fond of the Colonel without any zephyr of indiscretion arising. More to the point, she had travelled to Italy a few years previously while in the employment of Sir Charles B——–.

  ‘I regret that I am unacquainted with the place,’ replied Miss Logan when first interviewed. ‘Is it far beyond Naples?’

  ‘It is on the lower slopes of Mount Ararat,’ Miss Fergusson responded. ‘The name Arghuri is derived from two Armenian words signifying he planted the vine. It is where Noah returned to his agricultural labours after the Flood. An ancient vine stock planted by the Patriarch’s own hands still flourishes.’

  Miss Logan concealed her astonishment at this curious lecture, but felt bound to enquire further. ‘And why might we be going there?’

  ‘To intercede for the soul of my father. There is a monastery upon the mountain.’

  ‘It is a long way to go.’

  ‘I believe it to be appropriate.’

  ‘I see.’ Miss Logan was pensive at first, but then brightened. ‘And shall we drink the wine there?’ She was remembering her travels in Italy.

  ‘It is forbidden,’ replied Miss Fergusson. ‘Tradition forbids it.’

  ‘Tradition?’

  ‘Heaven, then. Heaven has forbidden it, in memory of the fault into which the grapes betrayed the Patriarch.’ Miss Logan, who would complaisantly allow the Bible to be read to her but was not diligent in turning the pages herself, exhibited a momentary confusion. ‘Drunkenness,’ explained Miss Fergusson. ‘Noah’s drunkenness.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The monks of Arghuri are permitted to eat the grapes, but not to ferment them.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘There is also an ancient willow tree, sprung from one of the planks of Noah’s Ark, which grows there.’

  ‘I see.’

  And thus it was agreed. They would depart in the spring, to avoid the malarial menace of the later seasons. Each would require a portable bedstead, an air mattress and a pillow; they would take some Oxley’s essence of ginger, some good opium, quinine and Sedlitz powders; a portable inkstand, a match-box and supply of German tinder; umbrellas against the sun and flannel belts to ward off cramps o
f the stomach during the night. After some discussion they decided not to travel with either a portable bath or a patent coffee-machine. But they counted as necessary a pair of iron-pointed walking sticks, a clasp-knife, stout hunting-whips to beat off the legions of dogs they were prepared to encounter and a policeman’s small lantern, since they had been warned that Turkish paper lanterns were useless in a hurricane. They took mackintoshes and heavy greatcoats, anticipating that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s dream of perennial sunshine was unlikely to be fulfilled for lesser voyagers. Miss Logan understood gunpowder to be the most acceptable offering for the Turkish peasant, and writing-paper for the superior classes. A common box-compass, she had further been advised, would afford pleasure by directing the Mussulman to the point of his prayers; but Miss Fergusson was disinclined to assist the heathen in his false adorations. Finally, the ladies packed two small glass bottles, which they intended to fill with grape juice crushed from the fruit of Noah’s vineyard.

  They travelled by Government steam-packet from Falmouth to Marseilles, thereafter entrusting themselves to the French conveyances. In early May they were received by the British Ambassador in Constantinople. As Miss Fergusson explained the extent and purpose of their journey, the diplomat studied her: a dark-haired woman in early middle age, with protuberant black eyes and rather full, reddish cheeks which pushed her lips forward into a pout. Yet she was in no wise a flirt: her natural expression appeared to mix prudishness with certainty, a combination which left the Ambassador indifferent. He grasped most of what she was saying without ever quite bestowing upon her his full attention.

  ‘Ah,’ he said at the finish, ‘there was a rumour a few years ago that some Russo had managed to get to the top of the mountain.’