DUKE UNIVERSITY / Orlando as a Boy Orlando A BIOGRAPHY BY Virginia Woolf New York HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 8142 0 L COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY VIRGINIA WOOLF Fourth Printing, January, igsg Typography by Frederic Warde COMPOSITION BY PRINTING HOUSE OF WILLIAM EDWIN RUDGE PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY QUINN & BODEN COMPANY, INC., RAHWAY, N. J. V. Sackville-West Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Duke University Libraries https://archive.org/details/orlando01wool PREFACE M ANY friends have helped me in writing this book. Some are dead and so illustrious that I scarcely dare name them , yet no one can read or write without being perpetually in the debt of Defoe , Sir Thomas Browne , Sterne , Sir Walter Scott, Lord Macaulay, Emily Bronte, De Quincey , and Walter Pater, — to name the first that come to mind. Others are alive, and though perhaps as illustrious in their own way, are less formidable for that very reason. Iam specially indebted to Mr. C. P. Sanger, without whose knowledge of the law of real property this book could never have been written. Mr. Sy dney -Turner s wide and peculiar erudition has saved me, I hope, some lamentable blunders. I have had the advantage — how great I alone can estimate — of Mr. Arthur Waley's knowledge of Chinese. Madame Lopokova {Mrs. J. M. Keynes) has been at hand to correct my Russian. To the unrivalled sympathy and imagination of Mr. Roger Fry I owe whatever understanding of the art of painting I may possess. I have, I hope, profited in an- other department by the singularly penetrating , if severe, criticism of my nephew Mr. Julian Bell. Miss M. K. Snowdon's indefatigable researches in the archives of Har- rogate and Cheltenham were none the less arduous for being vain. Other friends have helped me in ways too various to PREFA CE specify. I must content myself with naming Mr. Angus Davidson ; Mrs. Cartwright ; Miss Janet Case ; Lord Ber- ners ( whose knowledge of Elizabethan music has proved invaluable'); Mr. Francis Birrell ; my brother , Dr. Adrian ■Stephen; Mr. F. L. Lucas; Mr. and Mrs. Desmond Mac- carthy; that most inspiriting of critics, my brother-in-law , Mr. Clive Bell; Mr. G. H. Ry lands; Lady Colefax; Miss Nellie Boxall; Mr. J. M. Keynes; Miss Violet Dickinson; the Hon. Edward Sackville West; Mr. and Mrs. St. John Hutchinson; Mr. Duncan Grant; Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Tomlin; Mr. and Lady Ottoline Morrell; my mother-in- law , Mrs. Sidney Woolf; Mr. Osbert Sitwell; Madame Jacques Raverat; Colonel Cory Bell; Miss Valerie Taylor; Mr. J. T. Sheppard; Mr. and Mrs. T. S. Eliot; Miss Ethel Sands; Miss Nan Hudson ; my nephew, Mr. Quentin Bell ( an old and valued collaborator in fiction); Mr. Ray- mond Mortimer; Miss Emphie Case; Lady Gerald Welles- ley; Mr.Lytton Strachey; the ViscountessCecil; MissHope Mirrlees; Mr. E. M. Forster; the Hon. Harold Nicolson; my sister, Vanessa Bell — but the list threatens to grow too long and is already far too distinguished. For while it rouses in me memories of the pleasantest kind it will inevitably wake expectations in the reader which the book itself can only disappoint. Therefore I will conclude by thanking the officials of the British Museum and Record Office for their wonted courtesy; my niece Miss Angelica Bell,f or a service PREFA CE which none hut she could have rendered; and my husband for the patience with which he has invariably helped my researches and for the profound historical knowledge to which these pages owe whatever degree of accuracy they may attain. Finally , I would thank , had I not lost his name and address , a gentleman in America , who has generously and gratuitously corrected the punctuation , the botany , the en- tomology , the geography , and the chronology of previous works of mine and will , I hope 3 not spare his services on the present occasion. V. w. CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE J 3 CHAPTER TWO 65 CHAPTER THREE IJ 9 CHAPTER FOUR 153 CHAPTER FIVE 22 7 CHAPTER SIX 263 INDEX 33 1 ILLUSTRATIONS Orlando as a Boy frontispiece The Russian Princess as a Child 54 The Archduchess Harriet 114 Orlando as Ambassador 126 Orlando on her return to England CO HH Orlando about the year 1840 246 Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine 3 Esquire 262 Orlando at the present time 318 >». \ CHAPTER ONE H E — for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it — was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters. It was the colour of an old foot- ball, and more or less the shape of one, save for the sunken cheeks and a strand or two of coarse, dry hair, like the hair on a cocoanut. Orlando’s father, or perhaps his grandfather, had struck it from the shoulders of a vast Pagan who had started up under the moon in the barbarian fields of Africa; and now it swung, gently, perpetually, in the breeze which never ceased blowing through the attic rooms of the gigantic house of the lord who had slain him. Orlando’s fathers had ridden in fields of asphodel, and stony fields, and fields watered by strange rivers, and they had struck many heads of many colours off many shoulders, and brought them back to hang from the raft- ers. So too would Orlando, he vowed. But since he was sixteen only, and too young to ride with them in Africa or France, he would steal away from his mother and the peacocks in the garden and go to his attic room and there lunge and plunge and slice the air with his blade. Some- *3 ORLAN DO times he cut the cord so that the skull bumped on the floor and he had to string it up again, fastening it with some chivalry almost out of reach so that his enemy grinned at him through shrunk, black lips triumphantly. The skull swung to and fro, for the house, at the top of which he lived, was so vast that there seemed trapped in it the wind itself, blowing this way, blowing that way, winter or summer. The green arras with the hunters on it moved perpetually. His fathers had been noble since they had been at all. They came out of the northern mists wearing coronets on their heads. Were not the bars of darkness in the room, and the yellow pools which chequered the floor, made by the sun falling through the stained glass of a vast coat of arms in the window ? Orlando stood now in the midst of the yellow body of an heraldic leopard. When he put his hand on the window- sill to push the window open, it was instantly coloured red, blue, and yellow like a butterfly’s wing. Thus, those who like symbols, and have a turn for the deciphering of them, might observe that though the shapely legs, the handsome body, and the well-set shoulders were all of them decorated with various tints of heraldic light, Or- lando’s face, as he threw the window open, was lit solely by the sun itself. A more candid, sullen face it would be impossible to find. Happy the mother who bears, hap- pier still the biographer who records the life of such a ORLANDO one ! Never need she vex herself, nor he invoke the help of novelist or poet. From deed to deed, from glory to glory, from office to office he must go, his scribe follow- ing after, till they reach what ever seat it may be that is the height of their desire. Orlando, to look at, was cut out precisely for some such career. The red of the cheeks was covered with peach down ; the down on the lips was only a little thicker than the down on the cheeks. The lips themselves were short and slighdy drawn back over teeth of an exquisite and almond whiteness. Nothing disturbed the arrowy nose in its short, tense flight; the hair was dark, the ears small, and fitted closely to the head. But, alas, that these catalogues of youthful beauty cannot end without mentioning forehead and eyes. Alas, that people are seldom born devoid of all three; for di- rectly we glance at Orlando standing by the window, we must admit that he had eyes like drenched violets, so large that the water seemed to have brimmed in them and widened them; and a brow like the swelling of a marble dome pressed between the two blank medallions which were his temples. Directly we glance at eyes and fore- head, thus do we rhapsodise. Directly we glance at eyes and forehead, we have to admit a thousand disagreeables which it is the aim of every good biographer to ignore. Sights disturbed him, like that of his mother, a very beau- tiful lady in green walking out to feed the peacocks with J 5 ORLANDO Twitchett, her maid, behind her; sights exalted him — the birds and the trees; and made him in love with death — the evening sky, the homing rooks; and so, mounting up the spiral stairway into his brain — which was a roomy one — all these sights, and the garden sounds too, the hammer beating, the wood chopping, began that riot and confusion of the passions and emotions which every good biographer detests. But to continue — Orlando slowly drew in his head, sat down at the table, and, with the half-conscious air of one doing what he does every day of his life at this hour, took out a writing book labelled “iEthelbert: A Tragedy in Five Acts,” and dipped an old stained goose quill in the ink. Soon he had covered ten pages and more with poetry. He was fluent, evidently, but he was abstract. Vice, Crime, Misery were the personages of his drama; there were Kings and Queens of impossible territories; horrid plots confounded them ; noble sentiments suffused them ; there was never a word said as he himself would have said it, but all was turned with a fluency and sweetness which, considering his age — he was not yet seventeen — and that the sixteenth century had still some years of its course to run, were remarkable enough. At last, how- ever, he came to a halt. He was describing, as all young poets are for ever describing, nature, and in order to match the shade of green precisely he looked (and here 16 ORLANDO lie showed more audacity than most) at the thing itself, which happened to be a laurel bush growing beneath the window. After that, of course, he could write no more. Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces. The shade of green Orlando now saw spoilt his rhyme and split his metre. Moreover, nature has tricks of her own. Once look out of a window at bees among flowers, at a yawning dog, at the sun setting, once think “how many more suns shall I see set,” etc., etc. (the thought is too well known to be worth writing out) and one drops the pen, takes one’s cloak, strides out of the room, and catches one’s foot on a painted chest as one does so. For Orlando was a trifle clumsy. He was careful to avoid meeting anyone. There was Stubbs, the gardener, coming along the path. He hid behind a tree till he had passed. He let himself out at a little gate in the garden wall. He skirted all stables, ken- nels, breweries, carpenters’ shops, wash-houses, places where they make tallow candles, kill oxen, forge horse- shoes, stitch jerkins — for the house was a town ringing with men at work at their various crafts — and gained the ferny path leading uphill through the park unseen. There is perhaps a kinship among qualities; one draws another along with it; and the biographer should here l 7 ORLAN DO call attention to the fact that this clumsiness is often mated with a love of solitude. Having stumbled over a chest, Orlando naturally loved solitary places, vast views, and to feel himself for ever and ever and ever alone. So, after a long silence, “I am alone,” he breathed at last, opening his lips for the first time in this record. He had walked very quickly uphill through ferns and haw- thorn bushes, starding deer and wild birds, to a place crowned by a single oak tree . It was very high, so high indeed that nineteen English coundes could be seen be- neath, and on clear days thirty, or forty perhaps, if the weather was very fine. Sometimes one could see the Eng- lish Channel, wave reiterating upon wave. Rivers could be seen and pleasure boats gliding on them; and galleons setting out to sea ; and armadas with puffs of smoke from which came the dull thud of cannon firing; and forts on the coast; and castles among the meadows; and here a watch tower; and there a fortress; and again some vast mansion like that of Orlando’s father, massed like a town in the valley circled by walls. To the east there were the spires of London and the smoke of the city; and per- haps on the very sky line, when the wind was in the right quarter, the craggy top and serrated edges of Snowden herself showed mountainous among the clouds. For a moment Orlando stood counting, gazing, recognising. That was his father’s house; that his uncle’s. His aunt 18 ORLANDO owned those three great turrets among the trees there. The heath was theirs and the forest; the pheasant and the deer, the fox, the badger, and the butterfly. He sighed profoundly, and flung himself — there was a passion in his movements which deserves the word — on the earth at the foot of the oak tree. He loved, be- neath all this summer transiency, to feel the earth’s spine beneath him; for such he took the hard root of the oak tree to be; or, for image followed image, it was the back of a great horse that he was riding; or the deck of a tumbling ship — it was anything indeed, so long as it was hard, for he felt the need of something which he could attach his floating heart to; the heart that tugged at his side; the heart that seemed filled with spiced and amor- ous gales every evening about this time when he walked out. To the oak tree he tied it and as he lay there, grad- ually the flutter in and about him stilled itself; the little leaves hung; the deer stopped; the pale summer clouds stayed; his limbs grew heavy on the ground; and he lay so still that by degrees the deer stepped nearer and the rooks wheeled round him and the swallows dipped and circled and the dragon-flies shot past, as if all the fer- tility and amorous , activity of a summer’s evening were woven web-like about his body. After an hour or so — the sun was rapidly sinking, the white clouds had turned red, the hills were violet, the J 9 ORLANDO woods purple, the valleys black — a trumpet sounded. Orlando leapt to his feet. The shrill sound came from the valley. It came from a dark spot down there; a spot com- pact and mapped out; a maze; a town, yet girt about with walls ; it came from the heart of his own great house in the valley, which, dark before, even as he looked and the single trumpet duplicated and reduplicated itself with other shriller sounds, lost its darkness and became pierced with lights. Some were small hurrying lights, as if servants dashed along corridors to answer summonses; others were high and lustrous lights, as if they burnt in empty banqueting-halls made ready to receive guests who had not come; and others dipped and waved and sank and rose, as if held in the hands of troops of serv- ing men, bending, kneeling, rising, receiving, guarding, and escorting with all dignity indoors a great Princess alighting from her chariot. Coaches turned and wheeled in the courtyard. Horses tossed their plumes. The Queen had come. Orlando looked no more. He dashed downhill. He let himself in at a wicket gate. He tore up the winding staircase. He reached his room. He tossed his stockings to one side of the room, his jerkin to the other. He dipped his head. He scoured his hands. He pared his finger nails. With no more than six inches of looking-glass and a pair of old candles to help him, he had thrust on crim- 20 ORLANDO son breeches, lace collar, waistcoat of taffeta, and shoes with rosettes on them as big as double dahlias in less than ten minutes by the stable clock. He was ready. He was flushed. He was excited. But he was terribly late. By short cuts known to him, he made his way now through the vast congeries of rooms and staircases to the banqueting-hall, five acres distant on the other side of the house. But half-way there, in the bac k quarter s where. the servants lived, he stopped. The door of Mrs. Stewkley’s sitting-room stood open — she was gone, doubtless, with all her keys to wait upon her mistress. But there, sitting at the servants’ dinner table with a tankard beside him and paper in front of him, sat a rather fat, rather shabby man, whose ruff was a thought dirty, and whose clothes were of hodden brown. He held a pen in his hand, but he was not writing. He seemed in the act of rolling some thought up and down, to and fro in his mind till it gathered shape or momentum to his liking. His eyes, globed and clouded like some green stone of curious texture, were fixed. He did not see Orlando. For all his hurry, Orlando stopped dead. Was this a poet? Was he writing poetry? “Tell me,” he wanted to say, “everything in the whole world” — for he had the wild- est, most absurd, extravagant ideas about poets and po- etry — but how speak to a man who does not see you ? who sees ogres, satyrs, perhaps the depths of the sea in- 21 ORLAN DO stead ? So Orlando stood gazing while the man turned his pen in his fingers, this way and that way; and gazed and mused; and then, very quickly, wrote half-a-dozen lines and looked up. Whereupon Orlando, overcome with shyness, darted off and reached the banqueting-hall only just in time to sink upon his knees and, hanging his head in confusion, to offer a bowl of rose water to the great Queen herself. Such was his shyness that he saw no more of her than her ringed hand in water; but it was enough. It was a memorable hand; a thin hand with long fingers always curling as if round orb or sceptre; a nervous, crabbed, sickly hand; a commanding hand; a hand that had only to raise itself for a head to fall; a hand, he guessed, at- tached to an old body that smelt like a cupboard in which furs are kept in camphor; which body was yet capari- soned in all sorts of brocades and gems; and held itself very upright though perhaps in pain from sciatica; and never flinched though strung together by a thousand fears; and the Queen’s eyes were light yellow. All this he felt as the great rings flashed in the water and then something pressed his hair — which, perhaps, accounts for his seeing nothing more likely to be of use to a his- torian. And in truth, his mind was such a welter of oppo- sites — of the night and the blazing candles, of the shabby poet and the great Queen, of silent fields and the clatter of 22 ORLAN DO serving men — that he could see nothing; or only a hand. By the same showing, the Queen herself can have seen only a head. But if it is possible from a hand to deduce a body, informed with all the attributes of a great Queen, her crabbedness, courage, frailty, and terror, surely a head can be as fertile, looked down upon from a chair of state by a lady whose eyes were always, if the waxworks at the Abbey are to be trusted, wide open. The long, curled hair, the dark head bent so reverently, so inno- cendy before her, implied a pair of the finest legs that a young nobleman has ever stood upright upon; and violet eyes; and a heart of gold; and loyalty and manly charm — all qualifies which the old woman loved the more the more they failed her. For she was growing old and worn and bent before her time. The sound of cannon was al- ways in her ears. She saw always the glistening poison drop and the long stiletto. As she sat at table she listened ; she heard the guns in the Channel; she dreaded — was that a curse, was that a whisper ? Innocence, simplicity, were all the more dear to her for the dark background she set them against. And it was that same night, so tra- dition has it, when Orlando was sound asleep, that she made over formally, putting her hand and seal finally to the parchment, the gift of the great monastic house that had been the Archbishop’s and then the King’s to Orlando’s father. 23 ORLAN DO Orlando slept all night in ignorance. He had been kissed by a queen without knowing it. And perhaps, for women’s hearts are intricate, it was his ignorance, and the start he gave when her lips touched him that kept the memory of her young cousin (for they had blood in common) green in her mind. At any rate, two years of this quiet country life had not passed, and Orlando had written no more perhaps than twenty tragedies and a dozen histories and a score of sonnets when a message came that he was to attend the Queen at Whitehall. “Here,” she said, watching him advance down the long gallery towards her, “comes my innocent!” (There was a serenity about him always which had the look of innocence when, technically, the word was no longer applicable.) “Come!” she said. She was sitting bolt upright be- side the fire. And she held him a foot’s pace from her and looked him up and down. Was she matching her speculations the other night with the truth now visible ? Did she find her guesses justified ? Eyes, mouth, nose, breast, hips, hands — she ran them over; her lips twitched visibly as she looked; but when she saw his legs she laughed out loud. He was the very image of a noble gen- tleman. But inwardly ? She flashed her yellow hawk’s eyes upon him as if she would pierce his soul. The young man withstood her gaze, blushing only a damask rose 24 ORLAN D O as became him. Strength, grace, romance, folly, poetry, youth — she read him like a page. Instantly she plucked a ring from her finger (the joint was swollen rather) and as she fitted it to his, named him her Treasurer and Steward; next hung about him chains of office; and bid- ding him bend his knee, tied round it at the slenderest part the jewelled order of the Garter. Nothing after that was denied him. When she drove in state he rode at her carriage door. She sent him to Scodand on a sad embassy to the unhappy Queen. He was about to sail for the Polish wars when she recalled him. For how could she bear to think of that tender flesh torn and that curly head rolled in the dust ? She kept him with her. At the height of her triumph when the guns were booming at the Tower and the air was thick enough with gunpowder to make one sneeze and the huzzas of the people rang be- neath the windows, she pulled him down among the cushions where her women had laid her (she was so worn and old) and made him bury his face in that aston- ishing composition — she had not changed her dress for a month — which smelt for all the world, he thought, recalling his boyish memory, like some 'old cabinet at home where his mother ls. furs were stored. He rose, half suffocated from the embrace. “This,” she breathed, “is my victory !” — even as a rocket roared up and dyed her cheeks scarlet. 25 ORLAN DO For the old woman loved him. And the Queen, who knew a man when she saw one, though not, it is said, in the usual way, plotted for him a splendid ambitious ca- reer. Lands were given him, houses assigned him. He was to be the son of her old age; the limb of her infirm- ity; the oak tree on which she leant her degradation. She croaked out these promises and strange domineering tendernesses (they were at Richmond now) sitting bolt upright in her stiff brocades by the fire which, however high they piled it, never kept her warm. Meanwhile, the long winter months drew on. Every tree in the Park was lined with frost. The river ran slug- gishly. One day when the snow was on the ground and the dark panelled rooms were full of shadows and the stags were barking in the Park, she saw in the mirror, which she kept for fear of spies always by her, through the door, which she kept for fear of murderers always open, a boy — could it be Orlando? — kissing a girl — who in the Devil’s name was the brazen hussy ? Snatch- ing at her golden-hilted sword she struck violently at the mirror. The glass crashed; people came running; she was lifted and set in her chair again ; but she was stricken after that and groaned much, as her days wore to an end, of man’s treachery. It was Orlando’s fault perhaps; yet, after all, are we to blame him ? The age was the Elizabethan ; their mor- 2 6 ORLANDO als were not ours; nor their poets; nor their climate; nor their vegetables even. Everything was different. The weather itself, the heat and cold of summer and winter, was, we may believe, of another temper altogether. The brilliant amorous day was divided as sheerly from the night as land from water. Sunsets were redder and more intense; dawns were whiter and more auroral. Of our crepuscular half-lights and lingering twilights they knew nothing. The rain fell vehemendy, or not at all. The sun blazed or there was darkness. Translating this to the spiritual regions as their wont is, the poets sang beautifully how roses fade and petals fall. The moment is brief they sang; the moment is over; one long night is then to be slept by all. As for using the artifices of the greenhouse or conservatory to prolong or preserve these fresh pinks and roses, that was not their way. The with- ered intricacies and ambiguities of our more gradual and doubtful age were unknown to them. Violence was all. The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover loved and went. And what the poets said in rhyme, the young translated into practice. Girls were roses, and their seasons were short as the flowers’. Plucked they must be before nightfall; for the day was brief and the day was all. Thus, if Orlando followed the leading of the climate, of the poets, of the age itself, and plucked his flower in the window-seat even with the 27 ORLAN DO snow on the ground and the Queen vigilant in the corri- dor, we can scarcely bring ourselves to blame him. He was young; he was boyish; he did but as nature bade him. As for the girl, we know no more than Queen Eli- zabeth herself did what her name was. It may have been Doris, Chloris, Delia, or Diana, for he made rhymes to them all in turn ; equally, she may have been a court lady, or some serving maid. For Orlando’s taste was broad; he was no lover of garden flowers only; the wild and the weeds even had always a fascination for him. Here, indeed, we lay bare rudely, as a biographer may, a curious trait in him, to be accounted for, perhaps, by the fact that a certain grandmother of his had worn a smock and carried milkpails. Some grains of the Kent- ish or Sussex earth were mixed with the thin, fine fluid which came to him from Normandy. He held that the mixture of brown earth and blue blood was a good one. Certain it is that he had always a liking for low com- pany, especially for that of lettered people whose wits so often keep them under, as if there were sympathy of blood between them. At this season of his life, when his head brimmed with rhymes and he never went to bed without striking off some conceit, the cheek of an inn- keeper’s daughter seemed fresher and the wit of a game- keeper’s niece seemed quicker than those of the ladies at Court. Hence, he began going frequently to' Wapping 28 ORLAN DO Old Stairs and such places at night; wrapped in a grey cloak to hide the star at his neck and the garter at his knee. There, with a mug before him, among the sanded alleys and bowling greens and all the simple architec- ture of such places, he listened to sailors’ stories of hard- ship and horror and cruelty on the Spanish main; how some had lost their toes, others their noses — for the spoken story was never so rounded or so finely coloured as the written. Especially he loved to hear them volley forth their songs of the Azores, while the parrakeets, which they had brought from those parts, pecked at the rings in their ears, tapped with their hard acquisitive beaks at the rubies on their fingers, and swore as vilely as their masters. The women were scarcely less bold in their speech and less free in their manners than the birds. They perched on his knee, flung their arms round his neck and, guessing that something out of the common lay hid beneath his duffle cloak, were quite as eager to come at the truth of the matter as Orlando himself. Nor was opportunity lacking. The river was astir early and late with barges, wherries, and craft of all de- scription. Every day sailed to sea some fine ship bound for the Indies; now and again another blackened and ragged with hairy unknown men on board crept pain- fully to anchor. No one missed a boy or girl if they dallied a little on the water after sunset; or raised an 29 ORLAN DO eyebrow if gossip had seen them sleeping soundly among the treasure sacks safe in each other’s arms. Such indeed was the adventure that befell Orlando, Sukey, and the Earl of Cumberland. The day was hot; their love was active; they had fallen asleep among the rubies. Late that night the Earl, whose fortunes were much bound up in the Spanish ventures, came to check the booty alone with a lantern. He flashed the light on a barrel. He started back with an oath. Twined about the cask two spirits lay sleeping. Superstitious by nature, his con- science laden with many a crime, the Earl took the couple — they were wrapped in a red cloak, and Sukey ’s bosom was almost as white as the eternal snows of Orlando’s poetry — for a phantom sprung from the graves of drowned sailors to upbraid him. He crossed himself. He vowed repentance. The row of alms houses still standing in the Sheen Road is the visible fruit of that moment’s panic. Twelve poor old women of the parish to-day drink tea and to-night bless his Lordship for a roof above their heads; so that illicit love in a treasure ship — but we omit the moral. Soon, however, Orlando grew tired, not only of the discomfort of this way of life, and of the crabbed streets of the neighbourhood, but of the primitive manners of the people. For it has to be remembered that crime and poverty had none of the attraction for the Elizabethans 30 ORLAN D O that they have for us. They had none of our modern shame of book learning; none of our belief that to be born the son of a butcher is a blessing and to be unable to read a virtue; no fancy that what we call “life” and “reality” are somehow connected with ignorance and brutality; nor, indeed, any equivalent for these two words at all. It was not to seek “life” that Orlando went among them; not in quest of “reality” that he left them. But when he had heard a score of times how Jakes had lost his nose and Sukey her honour — and they told the stories admirably, it must be admitted — he began to be a little weary of the repetition, for a nose can only be cut off in one way and maidenhood lost in another — or so it seemed to him — whereas the arts and the sciences had a diversity about them which stirred his curiosity pro- foundly. So, always keeping them in happy memory, he left off frequenting the beer gardens and the skittle alleys, hung his grey cloak in his wardrobe, let his star shine at his neck and his garter twinkle at his knee, and appeared once more at the Court of King James. He was young, he was rich, he was handsome. No one could have been received with greater acclamation than he was. It is certain indeed that many ladies were ready to show him their favours. The names of three at least were freely coupled with his in marriage — Clorinda, Favilla, 3 1 OR. LA N DO Euphrosyne-— to give them the names he called them in his sonnets.; ji’jCl mo io onon Jaimes! dood io mda oj Tobtake orderp Clorinda wasia sweetknanb iiered gentle lady enough — indeed Orlando was gready taken vnth her for -six months and a half ; but 'she ; had white eyelashes andconljinothear the- sight’ of bloocLA; harebroughtnproasted at her father’s table turned her faint Shd whsrhmch ikiderithe influence: ohthe Priests too*: and Stinted her nnderlinen an ordfer to give ito tb<£ poor: She took it on her to reform Orlando of his iinsy which sickened him, so that he : drew back from themar 1 - riage, and; did not much regret it wheil; she died soon after ofthe small pox. »oi boonnrbiem hoc ysw one ni ho Eavillaj iwhcccbihes next, was of :a; different sort alto- gether Sheiwas the daughter iof a poor Somersetshire gentleman; whd, by .sheer hssMcrity and the use of heri eyes had worked her way upJat court; where her, address in horsemanshipi/her fine instep, and her gracein danfk ing won the admiration of alL Once, hbwever, she was so dlkadyisedi ato tor. whip a spaniel rthat had lorn onebofe hercsilk stockings- ^and itdmust: be said ipnjustiee thati drugget) within an inch of its life beneath Orlando !s . windbwa Orlando* who: was; arpasadmaienJoverdi ahi- mals,' now noticed that herteeth were .cfooked;ramd' the z twdfrohttomed;ihwapk ; whichjhe!shd,isaSurejsigh)of 2Pt. 0 R LAN D 0 a pcrv^e-ai^<¥uei dispositieiH iff w©mari, ancbsfrbrofe£ the eng^geMgnt -that very -flight Id^lvd;;: •- ° m s vi s i bji o m The thi¥d9"E6|»hr(5^fie/ : was hy4a?- thi^albfepSefioui of his flamesi She was by birth one of the Irish DeS- inonds-and had therefore a family tree of-h'e¥oWn as old and deeply footed as Orlando VitselfeShe-wks fair^d^df and a 'trifle phlegmatic. She spoke Italian well, had a? peffect-se : t : of teeth inthe upper jaw, though those On the lower were slightly discoloured. She was never without a whipped of spaniel at her kned;Teddhem with White bread from her own plate; sang sweetly to the virginals*; and was never dressed before- mid-day owing -tef the tremc care she took of her person. -In short, she- would have made- a perfect wife -for such a nobleman as Or-i lando, and matters had gone so far that thxrlawyers 0n : both sides- were busy with dovehantsi- jointures,- : settle-2 ments,-' messuages, tenements, and whatever is needed before one great fortune can mate with another when, with the suddenness and' severity that then marked -the English elimatey daffie the ^feat Fro'str 0 lot £ecq • - The \Greaf Ffdst iwas-, historians fell- us, ‘-■the ifio^TsO-> vere that has ever Visited 1 these -islands/ -Birds. -fdozd id mid-air and fell like stones to the ground. At Nofwich a young countrywoman started to cross th£ rOad : in her usual robust health and Waascen by the ohloOkers to turd visibly to powder and be blown id apU# of dust ovet the* ORLAN DO roofs as the icy blast struck her at the street comer. The mortality among sheep and cattle was enormous. Corpses froze and could not be drawn from the sheets. It was no uncommon sight to come upon a whole herd of swine frozen immovable upon the road. The fields were full of shepherds, ploughmen, teams of horses, and little bird- scaring boys all struck stark in the act of the moment, one with his hand to his nose, another with the botde to his lips, a third with a stone raised to throw at the raven who sat, as if stuffed, upon the hedge within a yard of him. The severity of the frost was so extraordinary that a kind of petrifaction sometimes ensued; and it was commonly supposed that the great increase of rocks in some parts of Derbyshire was due to no eruption, for there was none, but to the solidification of unfortunate wayfarers who had been turned literally to stone where they stood. The Church could give little help in the matter, and though some landowners had these relics blessed, the most part preferred to use them either as landmarks, scratching posts for sheep, or, when the form of the stone allowed, drinking troughs for cattle, which purposes they serve, admirably for the most part, to this day. But while the country people suffered the extremity of want, and the trade of the country was at a standstill, London enjoyed a carnival of the utmost brilliancy. The Court was at Greenwich, and the new King seized the 34 ORLAN DO opportunity that his coronation gave him to curry favour with the citizens. He directed that the river, which was frozen to a depth of twenty feet and more for six or seven miles on either side, should be swept, decorated and given all the semblance of a park or pleasure ground, with ar- bours, mazes, alleys, drinking booths, etc., at his expense. For himself and the courtiers, he reserved a certain space immediately opposite the Palace gates; which, railed off from the public only by a silken rope, became at once the centre of the most brilliant society in England. Great statesmen, in their beards and ruffs, despatched affairs of state under the crimson awning of the Royal Pagoda. Soldiers planned the conquest of the Moor and the down- fall of the Turk in striped arbours surmounted by plumes of ostrich feathers. Admirals strode up and down the narrow pathways, glass in hand, sweeping the horizon and telling stories of the north-west passage and the Spanish Armada. Lovers dallied upon divans spread with sables. Frozen roses fell in showers when the Queen and her ladies walked abroad. Coloured balloons hov- ered motionless in the air. Here and there burnt vast bonfires of cedar and oak wood, lavishly salted, so that the flames were of green, orange, and purple fire. But however fiercely they burnt, the heat was not enough to melt the ice which, though of singular transparency, was yet of the hardness of steel. So clear indeed was it that 35 O R LAN D O there could be seen, congealed at a depth of several feet, here a porpoise, there a flounder. Shoals of -eels layrino^- tionless in a- trance, but whether their state, was one of deathLoE; taierel-yv of suspended animation! which: the warmth would, revive .puzzled the philosophers.: Near London Bridge, where the river had frozen to a depth of some twenty fathoms, a- wrecked wherry boat was plainly visible, lying on the bed of the river where it had sunk last autumn, overladen with apples. The old bum- boat woman, who was carrying her fruit to market on the Surrey side* sat there in her plaids and farthingales . with her lap/full :of apples, for all, die world- as if; she were about to-serve a customer, though a certain: blueness about the lips hinted the truth. T was. a sight King James specially liked to look upon, and he would bring a troupe of courtiers to gaze with him. In short,; nothing could exceed the brilliancy and gaiety of the scene by day. But it was at night that the carnival was at its mer- riest. For the frost continued unbroken; the nights were of perfect stillness ; the moon and stars blazed with the hard fixity of diamonds, and to the fine music of flute and trumpet the courtiers danced. ; ' i Orlando, it is true, was none of those who tread lightly the coranto and lavolta; he was clumsy ; and a little absent-minded. He much preferred the plain dances pf his own country, which he had danced as a child : to 0 R RA N D O -these; fantastic foreign measures.! - He had indeed just brought his feet together about six in the evening of the seventh of January at the finish of; some sucfaquadriUe or minuet when he beheld,, coming from the pavilion of shd Muscovite Embassy, a figure,/whichi whether boy’s or. woman’s, for the loose tunic and trousers of the' Rus- sian fashion served to disguise the sex-, filled 1dm .with the highest curiosity . The person, whatever the namedr sex*, was. about middle: height,! very slehderlyrf ashidhed, and dressed entifeiy in oyster-coloured velvet-, trimmed .with some unfamiliar greehish-colouredifur^ Rut thiese.details .were .obscured by the extraordihary^ednetivenes.slwhich issued f rain, the whole person. Images, metaphors of the mind; He called hcf.a.meloh,' a pineapple, an-plnfe tree* afaememldr,- and af foxin the^iiow hHin thd spacepf .three seconds?; he did n6thnow ?W.he.ther.hie had heardlheri tasked her, deep herhdioalirthr de smgether . i f(E®r EtKojjgh we.'must pause: not a moment, in' the narrative we ibay here hastily note that all his: images at ;tbi§ntim£ simple, in the extreme to match his senses and. dyere mostly taken, from. things he. had liked the taste of as a boy.':Butif'iiis senses were simple they were at the same time extremely. '-strong. To pause therefore and seek die reasons if things i isidhtn of the -question;) j a oJ.mat A melon? mTiemeraldjjae fox: imthe. snovl— r-so he ra^edpio ORLAN D 0 he called her. When the boy, for alas, a boy it must be — no woman could skate with such speed and vigour — swept almost on tiptoe past him, Orlando was ready to tear his hair with vexation that the person was of his own sex, and thus all embraces were out of the question. But the skater came closer. Legs, hands, carriage, were a boy’s, but no boy ever had a mouth like that; no boy had those breasts; no boy had those eyes which looked as if they had been fished from the bottom of the sea. Finally, coming to a stop and sweeping a curtsey with the utmost grace to the King, who was shuffling past on the arm of some Lord-in-waiting, the unknown skater came to a standstill. She was not a handsbreadth off. She was a woman. Orlando stared; trembled; turned hot; turned cold; longed to hurl himself through the summer air; to crush acorns beneath his feet; to toss his arms with the beech trees and the oaks. As it was, he drew his lips up over his small white teeth ; opened them perhaps half an inch as if to bite and shut them as if he had bitten. The Lady Euphrosyne hung upon his arm. The stranger’s name, he found, was the Princess Ma- rousha Stanilovska Dagmar Natasha Iliana Romano- vitch, and she had come in the train of the Muscovite Ambassador, who was her uncle perhaps, or perhaps her father, to attend the coronation. Very little was known of the Muscovites. In their great beards and furred hats 38 they sat almost silent; drinking some black liquid which they spat out now and then upon the ice. None spoke English, and French with which some at least were fa- miliar was then little spoken at the English Court. It was through this accident that Orlando and the Princess became acquainted. They were seated opposite each other at the great table spread under a huge awning for the entertainment of the notables. The Princess was placed between two young Lords, one Lord Francis Vere and the other the young Earl of Moray. It was laughable to see the predicament she soon had them in, for though both were fine lads in their way, the babe unborn had as much knowledge of the French tongue as they had. When at the beginning of dinner the Princess turned to the Earl and said, with a grace which ravished his heart, “Je crois avoir fait la connaissance d’un gen- tilhomme qui vous etait apparente en Pologne l’ete der- nier,” or “La beaute des dames de la cour d’Angleterre me met dans le ravissement. On ne peut voir une dame plus gracieuse que votre reine, ni une coiffure plus belle que la sienne,” both Lord Francis and the Earl showed the highest embarrassment. The one helped her largely to horse-radish sauce, the other whistled to his dog and made him beg for a marrow bone. At this the Princess could no longer contain her laughter, and Orlando, catching her eyes across the boars’ heads and stuffed 39 O'RKAMDO peacocks, laughed: too- He laughed, hutthelaughonhis lips ^rore id wonder. Whom had he loved; what had lie loved* -he asked himself in artumult of 'imotiph, until now ?.. ! An dld womany he. answered, all skin: and- bone. Reddbeeked trulls tPo many, to mention. Ai puling riun. A hard-bitten' cruel-mouithed; adventuress; A nodding mass of lace and cercniony. Lovc had meantto him; noth- ing but saWkhistfand Cinders,: The joys he had had of it -tasteddiiisipifl in dieLpxtreme. ; He marvelleddhbw dip couldlhaveigdne through .with it without yaiwhing.rEdt asi helhoked the thickness of his bloodmeltcd; die ice turn edk» /wine in hisrviemsd he; heard, thhwiters dewing anddithirds^sih^iiigpspuhg brok^ oventhe hardwintry landsca|)e'5.)hhrminhopd r iWoke;l he^grasped 4 .iwordim his: hand; he charged a more daring! foe than} Rale; or Moorphe dived i in deep iwaferi;:. he saw $6 flowenof danger growibglaa crevice; he istretohedihishaiiid^dim fact he: whs iratding off. one of hisbniostinapaJSioaje’^'SQa?- netswhenthePrincess addresscdhim, “. W ould.you: have the goodness to pass:.thesalti;’.’i ot;ov aup sauabrng zuic ' oEfeiblhshedddepLyhanmd bred diod '\2nn0i?. d sup ‘‘With I’alL the pleasure in die world, Madame/’ he replied; speaking. Frenchriwitli a. perfect accent; 0 JF©$, heavehi be‘ praise dj. he :spoke .the .tongue as his o.wn;:his .motherT braid, hadptabghtAim.j Tet perhapsoit would have been betterfror him had'he never learnt that, tohgue; 0 R. L'A:I& fX 0 never answered that .'yoke p never doll owed thelightof those eyes* & meal begnada esw ad ; zzsnkcnmo deiyod airi -qeThe fiiriricessxontirmedsiWhdrwef^ those' 1 hdkffphins sheaskeddiim, whQ.satbesrdeberWitb'thefeiahfersbf stablemen? What Was the nauseating ntixtfire'tbiy fed poured on her. plate ? Did the' dogs eat at the same table with the men in England h Was-thast figUre^f fuft J at the endiof the !tablerwith"hefohair rigged Up Me a4daypdle (une grande perche mal f ago tee) ifaily dJe^Qdeehh^Vrid did the King. always slobber like that? r Arfd which of those popinjays was George Viiliers ? b Though these questions rather discomposed Orlando at first, theyWere put with such archness and drollery that he could not help hut laugh; and as he saw from the blank faces' of the company bthat nobody uhdei^tfed a' wordb he an- swered: her as freely as -she'askedTim, speaking; as she di^ihi'perfectTkenchiieriqqae bibnslqz s'obnmO aicw : .Thus began an intimacy between the tWo-which soon became the.scandahof the Courts .anobnette i\ o .Soon it: was observed Orlando paid the Muscovite far more.attention than mere civility demand«sdt; Me' was seldom farironrhef side, and their conversation, though unintelligible to the rest, was carried on with such ani- mation, provoked such blushes and laughter, that the dullest could guess the subject. Moreover, the change in Orlando himself was extraordinary. Nobody had ever 4 * ORLANDO seen him so animated. In one night he had thrown of! his boyish clumsiness; he was changed from a sulky strip- ling, who could not enter a ladies’ room without sweep- ing half the ornaments from the table, to a nobleman, full of grace and manly courtesy. To see him hand the Muscovite (as she was called) to her sledge, or offer her his hand for the dance, or catch the spotted kerchief which she had let drop, or discharge any other of those manifold duties which the supreme lady exacts and the lover hastens to anticipate was a sight to kindle the dull eyes of age, and to make the quick pulse of youth beat faster. Yet over it all hung a cloud.The old men shrugged their shoulders. The young tittered between their fingers. All knew that Orlando was betrothed to another. The Lady Margaret O’Brien O’Dare O’Reilly Tyrconnel (for that was the proper name of Euphrosyne of the Sonnets) wore Orlando’s splendid sapphire on the second finger of her left hand. It was she who had the supreme right to his attentions. Yet she might drop all the handker- chiefs in her wardrobe (of which she had many scores) upon the ice and Orlando never stooped to pick them up. She might wait twenty minutes for him to hand her to her sledge, and in the end have to be content with the services of her Blackamoor. When she skated, which she did rather clumsily, no one was at her elbow to encour- age her, and, if she fell, which she did rather heavily, no 42 ORLAN DO one raised her to her feet and dusted the snow from her petticoats. Although she was naturally phlegmatic, slow to take offence, and more reluctant than most people to believe that a mere foreigner could oust her from Orlan- do’s affections, still even the Lady Margaret herself was brought at last to suspect that something was brewing against her peace of mind. Indeed, as the days passed, Orlando took less and less care to hide his feelings. Making some excuse or other, he would leave the company as soon as they had dined, or steal away from the skaters, who were forming sets for a quadrille. Next moment it would be seen that the Muscovite was missing too. But what most outraged the Court, and stung it in its tenderest part, which is its vanity, was that the couple was often seen to slip under the silken rope, which railed off the Royal enclosure from the public part of the river and to disappear among the crowd of common people. For suddenly the Princess would stamp her foot and cry, “Take me away. I detest your English mob,” by which she meant the English Court itself. She could stand it no longer. It was full of prying old women, she said, who stared in one’s face, and of bumptious young men who trod on one’s toes. They smelt bad. Their dogs ran between her legs. It was like being in a cage. In Russia they had rivers ten miles broad on which one could gallop six horses abreast all 43 0 R LAN, n 0 day long without rrieeting a soub. Beside?, ishfejwa.hfcefito 'see'the Tower,, the Beefeaters, the Heads on T emple Rar-j and the jewelers’ shops in the city* Thus, it ctme About that Orlando lookiher to die city, showed her the Beef- eaters and! the rebels’ heads, ■ [and bought hen whatever took- her fancy in the Royal Exchange. .But this was not enough. Each increasingly desired the others company inptivacyallday long where there were none to marvel or to. stare. Instead of taking the road to London, therer fore, .they.turn.ed. the other way about and were soon-be^ yond the crowd among' the frozen reaches of the Thames whereirsave f or sea birds andtseme ojd; country woman hacking at the ice in a vain attempt to draw a pail full of water. dr gathering, what sticks; or dead leaves she -could find for_ firing, not a Jiving soul ever came their way. The poor kept closelyto their>gpttages> and the better >sort> who could afford it, crowded fox warmth and merri- ment to the oiity;'cb;j2 iou .siqo-j- ; nonunco io bwoio erb :u Hence,; Orlando. and Sasha, as he called her for- shorn and because it was the name of a white. Russian fox he had frad.as ahoy— -a creature soft a§ snow, but with teeth of steel, which bit. him so savagely that his father had it killed-^henee they had the; river to. themselves. - Hot with skating add with ldve they would .throw jthemselyes down in some solitary reach, where the. yellow osiers fringed: the bank, and wrappedin a-greatiur cloak Orf 44 ORLANDO lando would take her inhis armsj and know, for the fttst tijnCj^Q: murmured, the delights of love. Then,, when the : jecstasy was over and they laydulled in a swoon on the ice, he would tell her of his other - loves,; and how, compared with her, they had been of wood, of Sackcloth, and of; cinders.; And laughing at his vehemence; she would; turn' ones more, in his arms and giyi? ;hinfc,-jEoir love’s sakg,, one more embrace. -And then they, would marvel that the ice did not melt with their heat, and pity the poor old’ woman who had no such natural means of thawing it, but must hack at it with a chopper of.cold steel. .And; then, wrapped in their sables, they would talk of every thingmnder the sun; of sights and travels;- of Moor and Pagan; of this man’s beard and that woman’s skin ; of a rat thatfed from her, hand at table ; of the^arras that moved always in the hall at home;, of a face; of a feather. Nothing was too small for such converse, noth- bus inebbm 2211! anwab ash