ed  to have an
imperfect recollection  of  his past life. He would listen when people spoke
of  the  great frost or  the skating or  the carnival, but he never gave any
sign,  except by passing his hand across his  brow as if  to wipe  away some
cloud, of  having witnessed  them himself. When the events of  the  past six
months were discussed, he seemed not so much distressed as puzzled, as if he
were troubled by confused memories of some time  long gone or were trying to
recall  stories  told  him  by  another. It was  observed that if Russia was
mentioned or Princesses or  ships, he would fall into a  gloom  of an uneasy
kind and get up and look  out of the window or call one of the  dogs to him,
or take a knife and carve a piece of cedar wood. But the doctors were hardly
wiser  then than  they  are  now,  and  after prescribing rest and exercise,
starvation and nourishment, society and solitude, that he should  lie in bed
all  day and ride forty  miles  between lunch and dinner, together with  the
usual sedatives and  irritants,  diversified,  as the fancy took  them, with
possets of newt's slobber on rising, and draughts of peacock's gall on going
to bed, they left him to himself, and  gave  it as their opinion that he had
been asleep for a week.
     But if sleep it  was, of  what  nature, we  can  scarcely  refrain from
asking, are such sleeps  as  these? Are they remedial measures -  trances in
which the most galling memories, events that seem likely to cripple life for
ever, are brushed with a dark wing which  rubs their harshness off and gilds
them, even the ugliest and  basest, with a lustre, an incandescence? Has the
finger of death to be laid on the tumult  of life from time to  time lest it
rend  us  asunder? Are we so made that we have to  take death in small doses
daily  or we could not  go on  with  the  business of  living? And then what
strange powers are these that penetrate our  most secret ways and change our
most treasured possessions without our willing  it? Had Orlando, worn out by
the  extremity of his  suffering, died for a  week,  and then  come  to life
again? And  if so, of what  nature is death and of what nature life?  Having
waited well over half  an hour for an answer  to  these questions, and  none
coming, let us get on with the story.
     Now Orlando gave himself up to a life of extreme solitude. His disgrace
at Court and the violence of his grief were partly  the reason of it, but as
he made no effort to  defend himself and seldom invited anyone  to visit him
(though he had many friends who would willingly have done so) it appeared as
if to be alone in the great house of his fathers suited his temper. Solitude
was his choice. How he  spent his  time, nobody quite knew. The servants, of
whom he kept a full retinue, though much of their business was to dust empty
rooms and to smooth the coverlets of beds that were never slept in, watched,
in the dark  of the evening, as they sat over their cakes and  ale, a  light
passing along the galleries, through the banqueting-halls, up the staircase,
into the bedrooms,  and  knew that their  master was perambulating the house
alone.  None dared follow  him, for the house was haunted by a great variety
of ghosts,  and the  extent of  it made it easy to lose one's way and either
fall  down  some hidden staircase or open a door which, should the wind blow
it to, would shut upon one  for ever - accidents of no uncommon  occurrence,
as the frequent discovery of the  skeletons  of men and animals in attitudes
of great agony made  evident. Then the light  would be  lost altogether, and
Mrs Grimsditch,  the housekeeper, would say to Mr  Dupper, the chaplain, how
she hoped  his Lordship  had not met with some bad accident. Mr Dupper would
opine that his Lordship was on his knees,  no doubt, among the tombs of  his
ancestors in the Chapel, which was in the  Billiard Table Court, half a mile
away  on the south  side. For he  had  sins on his conscience, Mr Dupper was
afraid;  upon which Mrs Grimsditch would retort, rather sharply, that so had
most of us; and Mrs Stewkley and Mrs Field and old Nurse Carpenter would all
raise their voices in his Lordship's praise; and the grooms and the stewards
would swear  that it  was a thousand pities to see so fine a nobleman moping
about the house when he might  be hunting the  fox or chasing  the deer; and
even  the little laundry maids and scullery maids, the Judys and the Faiths,
who were handing round the tankards and cakes, would pipe up their testimony
to his Lordship's gallantry; for never was there a kinder  gentleman, or one
more free with  those  little pieces of silver which serve to buy a  knot of
ribbon or put  a  posy in  one's hair;  until  even the Blackamoor whom they
called Grace Robinson by way of making a Christian woman of  her, understood
what they were  at, and  agreed that his Lordship was  a handsome, pleasant,
darling  gentleman in the only way she could,  that is to say by showing all
her teeth at once in a broad grin.  In short, all his serving  men and women
held him in high respect,  and cursed the foreign  Princess (but they called
her by a coarser name than that) who had brought him to this pass.
     But though it  was probably cowardice, or love  of hot ale, that led Mr
Dupper to imagine his Lordship  safe among the tombs  so that he need not go
in search of him, it  may well have  been  that Mr Dupper was right. Orlando
now took a strange delight in thoughts of death and decay, and, after pacing
the  long  galleries  and  ballrooms  with a  taper in his  hand, looking at
picture after picture as if he sought the likeness of somebody whom he could
not  find, would mount into the  family pew and sit  for  hours watching the
banners stir and the moonlight waver with a bat or death's head moth to keep
him  company. Even this was not enough for him, but he must descend into the
crypt where his ancestors lay, coffin piled upon coffin, for ten generations
together. The place was so seldom  visited that  the rats made free with the
lead work, and now a thigh bone would catch at his cloak as he passed, or he
would crack the skull of some old Sir Malise as it rolled beneath his  foot.
It was a ghastly sepulchre; dug deep beneath the foundations of the house as
if  the  first  Lord  of  the  family, who  had come  from  France  with the
Conqueror, had wished to testify how all pomp is  built upon corruption; how
the skeleton lies beneath the flesh: how we that  dance  and sing above must
lie below; how the crimson velvet turns to dust; how the ring (here Orlando,
stooping his lantern, would pick up a gold circle  lacking a stone, that had
rolled  into a  corner)  loses its ruby  and the  eye which was  so lustrous
shines no more. "Nothing remains  of all these Princes," Orlando would  say,
indulging in some pardonable exaggeration of their rank, "except one digit,"
and he would take a skeleton hand  in his  and bend  the joints this way and
that. "Whose hand was it?"  he  went on to ask. "The right or  the left? The
hand of man  or woman, of age or youth? Had it urged the war horse, or plied
the needle? Had it plucked the  rose, or  grasped  cold steel? Had  it?" but
here either his invention failed  him or, what is more  likely, provided him
with  so many instances of what a hand can do that  he shrank, as  his  wont
was, from the cardinal labour of composition, which is excision, and he  put
it with  the  other  bones,  thinking how there  was a writer  called Thomas
Browne, a Doctor of Norwich, whose writing upon such subjects took his fancy
amazingly.
     So, taking  his lantern  and seeing that  the bones were in  order, for
though romantic, he was singularly  methodical and detested  nothing so much
as a ball of string  on  the  floor, let alone the skull  of an ancestor, he
returned  to that  curious,  moody pacing  down  the  galleries, looking for
something among the pictures, which was interrupted at length by a veritable
spasm of  sobbing, at the sight of a Dutch snow scene  by an unknown artist.
Then  it seemed to him  that  life was not worth living any more. Forgetting
the  bones of  his  ancestors  and  how life is founded on a grave, he stood
there shaken with sobs,  all for the desire of a woman in Russian  trousers,
with slanting eyes, a pouting mouth and pearls about her neck. She had gone.
She had left him. He was never to see her again. And so he sobbed. And so he
found his way back to his own rooms; and Mrs Grimsditch, seeing the light in
the window, put  the  tankard from her  lips and said Praise be  to God, his
Lordship was safe in his room  again; for  she  had  been thinking  all this
while that he was foully murdered.
     Orlando now drew his chair up to the  table;  opened  the works of  Sir
Thomas Browne and proceeded  to investigate the delicate articulation of one
of the doctor's longest and most marvellously contorted cogitations.
     For though these are not  matters on  which a biographer can profitably
enlarge it is plain enough to those who have done  a reader's part in making
up  from  bare  hints   dropped  here  and  there  the  whole  boundary  and
circumference of a living person; can hear in what we only  whisper a living
voice;  can see, often when we say nothing about  it, exactly what he looked
like; know  without a word to guide  them precisely what he thought - and it
is  for readers  such as these that we write -  it is  plain then to  such a
reader  that  Orlando  was  strangely  compounded   of  many  humours  -  of
melancholy, of indolence, of passion, of love of solitude, to say nothing of
all those contortions and subtleties of  temper  which were indicated on the
first page, when he slashed at a  dead nigger's head;  cut it down;  hung it
chivalrously  out  of  his  reach  again  and  then  betook  himself to  the
windowseat with a book. The taste for  books was an early one. As a child he
was sometimes found at midnight by a page still reading. They took his taper
away, and he  bred glow-worms to serve his purpose. They took the glow-worms
away, and he  almost  burnt the house down  with a  tinder. To put  it in  a
nutshell,  leaving the novelist to smooth  out the crumpled silk and all its
implications, he was a  nobleman afflicted with a love  of literature.  Many
people  of  his time, still more of his rank, escaped the infection and were
thus free to run or ride or make love at their own sweet will. But some were
early  infected by a germ said to be bred of  the pollen of the asphodel and
to be blown out of Greece and Italy, which was of so deadly a nature that it
would shake  the  hand as it  was  raised to strike, and cloud the eye as it
sought its prey, and make the tongue stammer as it declared its love. It was
the fatal nature  of this disease  to substitute a  phantom  for reality, so
that Orlando, to whom fortune had given  every  gift - plate, linen, houses,
men-servants, carpets, beds in profusion - had only  to open a book for  the
whole vast accumulation to turn to mist.  The nine acres of stone which were
his  house vanished; one hundred and fifty indoor servants  disappeared; his
eighty  riding horses became invisible; it would take too long to count  the
carpets, sofas,  trappings, china, plate, cruets,  chafing  dishes and other
movables  often of beaten gold, which evaporated like so much sea mist under
the miasma. So it  was, and Orlando would  sit by himself, reading, a  naked
man.
     The disease  gained rapidly upon him now in his solitude. He would read
often six  hours into the night; and when they came to him for orders  about
the slaughtering  of cattle or the harvesting of  wheat, he would  push away
his  folio and look as if he did not understand  what was said to  him. This
was bad  enough and wrung the hearts of Hall,  the falconer,  of Giles,  the
groom, of  Mrs  Grimsditch,  the housekeeper, of Mr  Dupper, the chaplain. A
fine  gentleman like  that, they said, had no need of books. Let  him  leave
books, they said, to  the palsied or  the  dying. But worse was to come. For
once  the disease of  reading has laid upon the system it weakens it so that
it  falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells  in the inkpot and
festers in the  quill. The  wretch takes to writing.  And while this is  bad
enough in a poor man, whose only property is a chair and a table set beneath
a leaky roof - for he has not much to lose, after all - the plight of a rich
man, who  has  houses and  cattle, maidservants, asses  and linen,  and  yet
writes books, is pitiable in the extreme. The  flavour of it all goes out of
him; he is riddled by hot irons; gnawed by vermin. He would give every penny
he has (such  is the malignity of  the germ)  to write one little  book  and
become famous; yet  all the gold in Peru will not buy him the treasure of  a
well-turned  line.  So  he  falls  into consumption  and sickness, blows his
brains out, turns his face to the wall. It matters not in what attitude they
find  him. He has passed through the gates of Death and known the flames  of
Hell.
     Happily, Orlando  was of a strong  constitution and  the  disease  (for
reasons presently to be given) never broke him down as it has broken many of
his peers. But he was deeply smitten with it, as the sequel shows. For  when
he had read for an hour or so in Sir Thomas Browne, and the bark of the stag
and the call  of the night watchman showed that it was the dead of night and
all safe asleep, he crossed the room, took a  silver key from his pocket and
unlocked the doors of a  great  inlaid  cabinet  which stood in  the corner.
Within  were some  fifty drawers  of  cedar  wood and upon each was  a paper
neatly written in Orlando's hand. He paused, as if hesitating which to open.
One was inscribed  "The  Death  of Ajax",  another "The  Birth  of Pyramus",
another "Iphigenia in  Aulis",  another "The Death  of  Hippolytus", another
"Meleager", another "The Return of Odysseus", - in fact there was scarcely a
single drawer that  lacked the  name  of  some mythological personage  at  a
crisis of his career. In each drawer lay a document of considerable size all
written over  in  Orlando's  hand.  The truth  was  that  Orlando  had  been
afflicted thus  for many years.  Never  had any boy begged apples as Orlando
begged paper; nor sweetmeats as he  begged ink.  Stealing away from talk and
games, he had hidden himself behind curtains,  in priest's holes, or in  the
cupboard behind his mother's bedroom which had a great hole in the floor and
smelt horribly of  starling's  dung, with an inkhorn in one hand,  a  pen in
another, and on his knee a roll  of paper. Thus had been written, before  he
was turned twenty-five, some forty-seven plays,  histories, romances, poems;
some in prose, some in verse; some in French, some in Italian; all romantic,
and  all  long. One  he had had  printed by John Ball  of  the Feathers  and
Coronet opposite St Paul's Cross, Cheapside; but though the sight of it gave
him extreme delight, he had never dared show it even to his mother, since to
write, much  more to publish, was,  he  knew,  for a nobleman  an inexpiable
disgrace.
     Now, however, that it was the  dead of night and he was alone, he chose
from this repository one thick document called "Xenophila a Tragedy" or some
such  title, and  one  thin one,  called simply "The Oak Tree" (this was the
only monosyllabic title among the lot), and then he approached the  inkhorn,
fingered the quill, and made  other  such  passes as  those addicted to this
vice begin their rites with. But he paused.
     As  this pause  was  of extreme significance in  his history,  more so,
indeed, than many  acts which bring men  to their  knees and make rivers run
with  blood,  it behoves us to ask  why he  paused;  and to reply, after due
reflection, that it was for some such reason as this. Nature, who has played
so many queer tricks upon us,  making us so unequally of clay  and diamonds,
of  rainbow  and granite, and stuffed them  into a case, often of  the  most
incongruous, for  the poet  has a butcher's face  and the butcher  a poet's;
nature,  who delights in muddle and mystery, so  that even now (the first of
November  1927) we know not  why we go upstairs, or why we come  down again,
our most daily movements  are like the passage of a ship on an unknown  sea,
and the sailors at the mast-head ask, pointing their glasses to the horizon;
Is there land or is there none? to which, if we are prophets, we make answer
"Yes"; if we are truthful we say "No"; nature, who has so much to answer for
besides   the  perhaps  unwieldy  length  of   this  sentence,  has  further
complicated  her  task and added to our  confusion by providing not  only  a
perfect rag-bag  of  odds and  ends within us  -  a piece  of  a policeman's
trousers lying cheek  by jowl with Queen Alexandra's wedding veil -  but has
contrived that the whole assortment shall  be lightly stitched together by a
single  thread.  Memory  is  the seamstress, and a capricious one  at  that.
Memory runs her needle in and out, up and down, hither and  thither. We know
not what comes next, or what follows after. Thus, the most ordinary movement
in  the world, such  as  sitting  down at a table  and  pulling the inkstand
towards one, may agitate a thousand odd, disconnected fragments, now bright,
now dim,  hanging and bobbing and dipping and flaunting, like the underlinen
of a family of fourteen  on  a line in a gale of wind.  Instead  of being  a
single, downright, bluff piece  of work  of which no  man need feel ashamed,
our commonest deeds are set about with a fluttering and flickering of wings,
a rising and falling of lights. Thus it was that Orlando, dipping his pen in
the  ink, saw  the mocking face  of the lost  Princess and  asked  himself a
million questions instantly which  were as arrows  dipped in gall. Where was
she; and why had she left him?  Was the Ambassador  her uncle  or her lover?
Had they  plotted?  Was she forced? Was she married? Was she dead? -  all of
which so drove their venom into him that, as if to vent his agony somewhere,
he  plunged his quill so deep into the inkhorn that the ink spirted over the
table, which  act,  explain it how one  may (and no explanation  perhaps  is
possible - Memory is inexplicable),  at once substituted for the face of the
Princess  a face  of a very  different  sort.  But  whose  was  it, he asked
himself?  And  he  had to wait,  perhaps half  a minute, looking  at the new
picture  which lay  on top of the  old, as one  lantern  slide  is half seen
through the next, before he could say to himself, "This is the face  of that
rather fat, shabby man  who sat in Twitchett's  room ever so many years  ago
when  old Queen Bess came here to dine; and  I  saw him," Orlando continued,
catching at another of those little coloured rags, "sitting at the table, as
I peeped in  on my way downstairs, and  he had the most  amazing eyes," said
Orlando, "that ever were, but who the devil was he?" Orlando asked, for here
Memory  added to  the forehead  and  eyes,  first,  a coarse, grease-stained
ruffle,  then a brown  doublet, and finally a  pair of  thick  boots such as
citizens wear  in Cheapside. "Not a Nobleman; not one  of us," said  Orlando
(which he  would not have  said  aloud,  for  he was the  most  courteous of
gentlemen; but it shows  what an  effect noble  birth has  upon the mind and
incidentally how difficult it is for a nobleman  to be a writer), "a poet, I
dare  say." By all  the laws, Memory,  having  disturbed  him  sufficiently,
should now have  blotted the whole thing out completely, or have fetched  up
something so idiotic and out of keeping - like a dog chasing a cat or an old
woman  blowing her nose into a red cotton handkerchief - that, in despair of
keeping  pace  with  her  vagaries, Orlando should  have  struck  his pen in
earnest against his paper. (For we can, if  we have the resolution, turn the
hussy, Memory, and all her ragtag and bobtail out of the house.) But Orlando
paused. Memory  still held before him the  image of a  shabby man with  big,
bright eyes. Still he  looked, still he paused. It  is these pauses that are
our undoing.  It is then  that  sedition enters the fortress and  our troops
rise  in insurrection. Once before he had paused, and  love  with its horrid
rout, its shawms, its cymbals,  and  its heads with gory locks torn from the
shoulders had burst  in. From  love he  had  suffered  the  tortures  of the
damned.  Now, again,  he  paused,  and  into  the  breach  thus  made, leapt
Ambition,  the harridan,  and Poetry,  the  witch, and Desire of  Fame,  the
strumpet;  all joined  hands  and made of  his  heart their  dancing ground.
Standing upright in the solitude of  his room, he vowed that he would be the
first  poet of  his  race and  bring immortal lustre upon his name. He  said
(reciting the names and exploits of his ancestors) that Sir Boris had fought
and killed the  Paynim;  Sir  Gawain,  the  Turk; Sir  Miles, the Pole;  Sir
Andrew, the Frank; Sir Richard, the Austrian; Sir Jordan, the Frenchman; and
Sir Herbert,  the Spaniard.  But  of all that killing  and campaigning, that
drinking and  love-making, that  spending and hunting and riding and eating,
what  remained? A skull; a finger. Whereas, he said,  turning to the page of
Sir Thomas Browne, which lay open upon the table - and again he paused. Like
an  incantation rising from  all parts of the room, from the night  wind and
the moonlight,  rolled  the  divine  melody of those words which,  lest they
should outstare this page, we will leave where they lie entombed, not  dead,
embalmed rather, so  fresh is their colour,  so  sound their breathing - and
Orlando, comparing that achievement with  those  of his ancestors, cried out
that  they  and their deeds were dust and ashes, but this man  and his words
were immortal.
     He soon  perceived, however, that the  battles which  Sir Miles and the
rest  had  waged  against armed knights  to  win a kingdom, were not half so
arduous  as  this  which he now  undertook  to win immortality  against  the
English language. Anyone moderately familiar with the rigours of composition
will not need to be told  the story  in  detail; how he wrote and it  seemed
good; read and it seemed vile;  corrected and  tore up; cut out; put in; was
in ecstasy; in  despair; had his  good nights and bad mornings;  snatched at
ideas and  lost them; saw  his book plain before him and it vanished;  acted
his people's parts as he ate;  mouthed  them as he  walked; now  cried;  now
laughed;  vacillated  between this style and  that; now preferred the heroic
and pompous;  next the plain and  simple; now the  vales  of Tempe; then the
fields of Kent or Cornwall; and could not decide whether he was the divinest
genius or the greatest fool in the world.
     It was  to settle  this last question that he decided after many months
of such feverish labour, to break the solitude of years and communicate with
the outer  world. He had  a friend  in London, one Giles Isham, of  Norfolk,
who, though of gentle birth, was acquainted with writers and could doubtless
put  him  in  touch  with  some  member  of  that  blessed,  indeed  sacred,
fraternity. For,  to Orlando in the state he was now in, there was  a  glory
about a  man who had  written a  book and had it printed, which outshone all
the glories of blood and state.  To his imagination it seemed as if even the
bodies  of  those instinct  with such divine thoughts must  be transfigured.
They must have aureoles  for hair,  incense  for breath, and roses must grow
between their lips  - which was certainly  not true either  of himself or Mr
Dupper. He could  think of no  greater happiness than  to be allowed  to sit
behind a  curtain and hear them talk. Even the imagination of that  bold and
various discourse made  the memory of what  he and his courtier friends used
to talk about - a  dog, a horse, a woman, a game of cards - seem brutish  in
the extreme. He bethought  him  with pride that he had always been called  a
scholar, and sneered  at for  his love of solitude and  books.  He had never
been apt at  pretty phrases. He would  stand  stock still, blush, and stride
like a grenadier in  a ladies'  drawing-room. He had twice  fallen, in sheer
abstraction, from his horse.  He had broken Lady Winchilsea's fan once while
making a rhyme. Eagerly recalling these and other instances of his unfitness
for the life of society, an  ineffable hope, that all the  turbulence of his
youth,  his clumsiness, his  blushes, his  long walks,  and his  love of the
country proved that  he himself belonged to the  sacred race rather  than to
the noble  -  was by birth a writer, rather  than an aristocrat  - possessed
him. For the first time since the night of the great flood he was happy.
     He  now  commissioned Mr  Isham  of Norfolk  to  deliver to Mr Nicholas
Greene of Clifford's Inn a document which set forth Orlando's admiration for
his  works (for Nick  Greene was a very famous writer at  that time) and his
desire to  make  his acquaintance; which he  scarcely dared  ask; for he had
nothing to offer  in return; but if  Mr Nicholas  Greene would condescend to
visit him, a  coach  and four would  be at  the  corner  of Fetter  Lane  at
whatever hour Mr Greene chose to appoint, and bring him safely to  Orlando's
house. One may fill up the phrases which then followed; and figure Orlando's
delight  when,  in  no long time, Mr Greene signified his  acceptance of the
Noble Lord's invitation; took his place in the coach and was set down in the
hall to  the south  of  the main  building  punctually at seven  o'clock  on
Monday, April the twenty-first.
     Many Kings, Queens, and Ambassadors had been received there; Judges had
stood  there  in their  ermine. The  loveliest ladies  of the land  had come
there;  and the  sternest warriors. Banners  hung  there  which had been  at
Flodden and  at Agincourt.  There were displayed the painted coats  of  arms
with their lions and their leopards  and their coronets. There were the long
tables  where the  gold  and  silver plate  was stood;  and  there the  vast
fireplaces of wrought Italian  marble where nightly a  whole oak tree,  with
its  million  leaves and its  nests of  rook and wren,  was burnt  to ashes.
Nicholas Greene, the  poet stood there now, plainly dressed in  his slouched
hat and black doublet, carrying in one hand a small bag.
     That Orlando as he hastened to greet him was slightly disappointed  was
inevitable.  The poet was not above middle height; was of a mean figure; was
lean and stooped somewhat, and, stumbling over the mastiff  on entering, the
dog  bit him. Moreover, Orlando for all his knowledge of mankind was puzzled
where to place him. There  was something about him which belonged neither to
servant,  squire, or noble. The head  with  its rounded forehead and  beaked
nose was fine, but the  chin receded. The eyes were  brilliant, but the lips
hung  loose and slobbered. It was  the expression of the face  - as a whole,
however,  that  was disquieting. There  was none of that  stately  composure
which makes  the faces  of the nobility  so pleasing to look at;  nor had it
anything of  the dignified servility  of  a well-trained domestic's face; it
was a face  seamed,  puckered, and drawn  together. Poet though he  was,  it
seemed as if he were more used to scold than to flatter; to  quarrel than to
coo;  to  scramble than to ride; to struggle  than to rest; to hate  than to
love.  This,  too, was  shown  by the  quickness  of his  movements;  and by
something fiery  and  suspicious  in his glance. Orlando was  somewhat taken
aback. But they went to dinner.
     Here, Orlando,  who  usually took such things for granted, was, for the
first time, unaccountably ashamed of  the number of his servants and of  the
splendour of his table.  Stranger  still, he bethought  him with pride - for
the  thought was generally distasteful - of  that great grandmother Moll who
had milked the cows. He was about somehow to allude to this humble woman and
her  milk-pails, when  the poet forestalled him by saying  that it was  odd,
seeing how common the name of Greene was, that the family had come over with
the Conqueror and was of the highest nobility in France. Unfortunately, they
had come down in the world and done little more than leave their name to the
royal  borough  of  Greenwich.  Further  talk of  the same sort, about  lost
castles,  coats   of  arms,  cousins   who  were  baronets  in  the   north,
intermarriage  with noble families in the west, how  some  Greens  spelt the
name with an e at the end,  and others without, lasted till  the venison was
on the table.  Then Orlando  contrived to say something of  Grandmother Moll
and her cows, and had eased his heart a little of its burden by the time the
wild  fowl were before them.  But  it was not until  the Malmsey was passing
freely that Orlando  dared mention what  he could not  help thinking  a more
important matter than the  Greens  or the  cows; that is to  say  the sacred
subject of poetry. At the first mention of the word, the poet's eyes flashed
fire; he dropped the fine gentleman airs he  had  worn; thumped his glass on
the  table,  and  launched into  one  of the  longest, most  intricate, most
passionate, and bitterest stories that Orlando had ever heard, save from the
lips of a jilted woman, about a  play of his; another poet; and a critic. Of
the  nature  of poetry  itself, Orlando only gathered that it  was harder to
sell  than  prose, and though  the lines  were  shorter  took  longer in the
writing. So the talk went on with  ramifications interminable, until Orlando
ventured to hint that he had himself been so rash as to write - but here the
poet  leapt  from  his chair. A mouse had squeaked in the wainscot, he said.
The truth was, he explained, that his nerves were in a state where a mouse's
squeak  upset them for a fortnight. Doubtless the house was full of  vermin,
but Orlando had not heard them. The poet then gave Orlando the full story of
his health for the past ten  years  or so. It had been so bad that one could
only marvel that he still lived. He had had the  palsy, the  gout, the ague,
the dropsy,  and the  three sorts of  fever in succession; added to which he
had an enlarged heart, a great spleen, and a diseased liver. But, above all,
he had, he  told  Orlando, sensations in his spine which defied description.
There was one knob  about the third from the  top  which  burnt  like  fire;
another about second  from the  bottom which was cold as  ice.  Sometimes he
woke with a brain like lead;  at others it was as if  a thousand wax  tapers
were alight  and people were throwing fireworks  inside him. He could feel a
rose  leaf  through his  mattress,  he said;  and knew his  way almost about
London by the feel of the cobbles. Altogether he was a piece of machinery so
finely  made  and curiously  put  together  (here he  raised his  hand as if
unconsciously, and indeed  it was of the finest  shape  imaginable) that  it
confounded him to think  that he had only sold five  hundred  copies  of his
poem, but that of course was largely due  to the conspiracy against him. All
he could say, he concluded, banging his fist  upon  the table, was that  the
art of poetry was dead in England.
     How that could be with Shakespeare, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Browne, Donne,
all now  writing or  just having  written, Orlando, reeling off the names of
his favourite heroes, could not think.
     Greene laughed sardonically. Shakespeare, he admitted, had written some
scenes that  were well enough; but  he  had taken them chiefly from Marlowe.
Marlowe was a likely boy, but what could you say of a lad who died before he
was  thirty? As for Browne, he  was for writing poetry in prose, and  people
soon got tired  of such conceits as that. Donne was a mountebank who wrapped
up his lack of meaning in hard words. The gulls were taken in; but the style
would  be out of fashion twelve months hence. As for Ben Jonson - Ben Jonson
was a friend of his and he never spoke ill of his friends.
     No, he concluded, the great age of literature is past; the great age of
literature was the Greek; the Elizabethan age was inferior in every  respect
to the  Greek. In such ages  men cherished a divine ambition which he  might
call  La Gloire (he pronounced  it Glawr, so that  Orlando did not  at first
catch his meaning). Now all young writers were in the pay of the booksellers
and poured out any trash that would sell. Shakespeare was the chief offender
in this  way and Shakespeare  was already paying the penalty. Their own age,
he said,  was marked by precious conceits and wild experiments  - neither of
which the Greeks would have tolerated for a moment. Much though it hurt  him
to say  it  - for he loved literature as he loved his life - he could see no
good in  the present and had no hope for the  future. Here he poured himself
out another glass of wine.
     Orlando was shocked by these  doctrines; yet  could  not help observing
that  the  critic himself seemed  by no means downcast. On the contrary, the
more he denounced his own time,  the more  complacent he  became.  He  could
remember, he  said, a  night  at the  Cock  Tavern in  Fleet Street when Kit
Marlowe  was there  and some others. Kit was in high feather, rather  drunk,
which he easily became, and  in a mood to say silly things. He could see him
now,  brandishing his  glass at  the company  and  hiccoughing out, "Stap my
vitals, Bill" (this was  to Shakespeare), "there's a great  wave coming  and
you're  on the  top of it," by  which he meant,  Greene explained, that they
were  trembling on  the verge of a great age in English literature, and that
Shakespeare was to be a poet of some importance. Happily for himself, he was
killed two nights later in a drunken brawl,  and so did not live to  see how
this prediction turned out. "Poor foolish fellow,"  said Greene, "to  go and
say a thing like that. A great age, forsooth - the Elizabethan a great age!"
     "So,  my dear Lord," he continued, settling himself comfortably  in his
chair and rubbing the wine-glass between his fingers, "we must make the best
of it, cherish the past and honour those writers  - there are still a few of
'em  - who take antiquity for their  model  and  write, not for  pay but for
Glawr."  (Orlando could have  wished him  a  better  accent.) "Glawr,"  said
Greene, "is the spur of noble minds. Had I a pension of three hundred pounds
a  year paid  quarterly,  I  would live for Glawr alone. I would  lie in bed
every morning reading Cicero. I would imitate his style so that you couldn't
tell the  difference  between  us. That's  what  I  call fine writing," said
Greene; "that's what I call Glawr.  But it's necessary  to have a pension to
do it."
     By this time Orlando had abandoned all hope of discussing his own  work
with the poet; but this mattered the less as the talk now got upon the lives
and characters of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and  the rest, all of whom Greene
had known intimately  and about whom he had a thousand anecdotes of the most
amusing  kind to tell. Orlando had never laughed so much in his life. These,
then,  were his gods! Half were drunken and  all  were amorous. Most of them
quarrelled with their wives; not one of them was above a lie  or an intrigue
of the  most paltry  kind.  Their poetry was scribbled down  on the backs of
washing bills held to the heads of printer's devils at the street door. Thus
Hamlet  went  to press; thus Lear; thus  Othello. No wonder, as Greene said,
that these plays show the faults they do. The rest of the time  was spent in
carousings and junketings in taverns and in beer gardens,  when things  were
said that  passed belief  for wit, and things were done that made the utmost
frolic of the courtiers seem pale in comparison. All this Greene told with a
spirit that roused Orlando to the  highest pitch of delight. He had a  power
of mimicry that brought the dead to life, and could say the finest things of
books provided they were written three hundred years ago.
     So time passed, and  Orlando  felt for his guest  a strange mixture  of
liking  and contempt,  of  admiration  and  pity,  as well as  something too
indefinite to be called by any one name, but had something of fear in it and
something of fascination. He  talked incessantly about himself, yet was such
good company that  one could listen to the story of his ague  for ever. Then
he was so witty; then he was so irreverent; then  he made so free  with  the
names of  God and Woman; then he  was so full  of queer  crafts and had such
strange lore in his head; could make  salad in three hundred different ways;
knew all  that could  be known of the  mixing of  wines; played half-a-dozen
musical instruments, and  was the first person, and  perhaps  the  last,  to
toast cheese in the great Italian fireplace. That he did not know a geranium
from a carnation, an oak from a birch  tree, a  mastiff  from a greyhound, a
teg from a ewe,  wheat from barley, plough land from fallow; was ignorant of
the rotation of the  crops; thought oranges grew underground  and turnips on
trees; preferred any townscape to  any  landscape, -  all this and much more
amazed Orlando,  who  had  never  met anybody of his kind  before. Even  the
maids, who  despised him, tittered at his jokes, and the  men-servants,  who
loathed  him, hung about  to  hear his stories. Indeed, the house  had never
been so lively as now that he was there - all of which gave Orlando  a great
deal to think about, and  caused  him to  compare this way of life  with the
old.  He  recalled the sort of talk  he had been  used to about  the King of
Spain's apoplexy  or the mating of a  bitch;  he bethought  him how the  day
passed between  the stables and the  dressing closet; he remembered  how the
Lords  snored  over  their  wine  and  hated anybody  who woke  them up.  He
bethought him how active and valiant they were  in  body;  how  slothful and
timid  in  mind.  Worried by these thoughts, and  unable to strike  a proper
balance,  he came  to the  conclusion that he  had admitted  to  his house a
plaguey spirit of unrest that would never suffer him to sleep sound again.
     At  the  same  moment,  Nick  Greene  came  to precisely  the  opposite
conclusion.  Lying  in bed of a morning  on the softest  pillows between the
smoothest sheets and looking  out of his oriel window  upon  turf which  for
centuries had known neither dandelion  nor dock weed, he thought that unless
he could  somehow make his escape,  he should be smothered alive. Getting up
and  hearing the pigeons coo, dressing and hearing  the  fountains  fall, he
thought that unless he could hear the drays roar  upon the cobbles of  Fleet
Street, he would  never write another line.  If this goes on much longer, he
thought, hearing the footman mend the fire and spread the  table with silver
dishes next door, I shall fall  asleep and (here he gave a prodigious  yawn)
sleeping die.
     So  he sought Orlando in his room, and explained that he  had  not been
able to sleep  a wink  all night because of the silence. (Indeed, the  house
was surrounded by a park fifteen miles in circumference and a wall ten  feet
high.)  Silence,  he  said,  was  of all things the most  oppressive  to his
nerves. He would  end his visit, by  Orlando's  leave,  that  very  morning.
Orlando felt some relief at this, yet also a great reluctance to let him go.
The house, he thought, would seem very dull without him. On parting  (for he
had never yet liked to  mention the subject), he  had the  temerity to press
his play upon the Death of Hercules upon the poet and ask his opinion of it.
The  poet took it;  muttered something about Glawr and Cicero, which Orlando
cut short by  promising to pay the pension quarterly; whereupon Greene, with
many protestations of affection, jumped into the coach and was gone.
     The great hall had never seemed so large, so  splendid, or  so empty as
the chariot rolled away. Orlando knew that he would never have the heart  to
make toasted cheese in the Italian  fireplace again. He would never have the
wit to crack jokes about Italian pictures; never have the skill to mix punch
as it should be  mixed;  a  thousand good  quips and cranks would be lost to
him. Yet what a relief to  be out of the sound of that querulous voice, what
a luxury to be  alone once  more, so he  could not  help reflecting,  as  he
unloosed the mastiff which had been tied up these six weeks because it never
saw the poet without biting him.
     Nick  Greene  was set  down  at the corner  of Fetter  Lane  that  same
afternoon, and  found things going on much as he had  left them. Mrs Greene,
that