s; yet we  require critics to explain the one and biographers to expound
the other. That time hangs  heavy on people's hands is the only  explanation
of the monstrous growth.
     So, now that we have read  a page  or two of the "Rape of the Lock", we
know  exactly why Orlando  was so much amused and so much  frightened and so
very bright-cheeked and bright-eyed that afternoon.
     Mrs Nelly then knocked at the door to say that Mr Addison waited on her
Ladyship. At this, Mr Pope  got  up with a  wry smile, made  his congee, and
limped off. In came  Mr Addison.  Let us, as  he takes his  seat,  read  the
following passage from the "Spectator":
     "I consider woman as a beautiful, romantic animal,  that may be adorned
with furs and feathers, pearls and diamonds, ores and silks.  The lynx shall
cast its skin at her feet to make her a tippet, the peacock, parrot and swan
shall pay contributions  to  her muff; the sea shall be searched for shells,
and  the  rocks for  gems,  and every part of  nature furnish out  its share
towards the  embellishment of a creature that is the most consummate work of
it. All this, I shall indulge them in, but as for the petticoat I  have been
speaking of, I neither can, nor will allow it."
     We  hold that  gentleman,  cocked hat  and all, in  the hollow,  of our
hands.  Look once more into the crystal. Is he not clear to the very wrinkle
in  his stocking? Does not every ripple  and  curve  of  his wit lie exposed
before us, and his benignity and his timidity and his  urbanity and the fact
that he would marry  a Countess and die very respectably  in the end? All is
clear. And when Mr Addison has said his say, there is a terrific  rap at the
door,  and Mr  Swift,  who  had these  arbitrary  ways with  him,  walks  in
unannounced.  One moment,  where is "Gulliver's Travels"? Here it is! Let us
read a passage from the voyage to the Houyhnhnms:
     "I enjoyed perfect Health of  Body and  Tranquillity of Mind; I did not
find the Treachery or Inconstancy of a Friend, nor the Injuries of  a secret
or open  Enemy.  I had no  occasion of  bribing,  flattering or pimping,  to
procure the Favour  of  any great Man or of  his Minion.  I wanted no  Fence
against Fraud  or Oppression; Here was neither Physician to destroy my Body,
nor Lawyer to ruin  my Fortune; No Informer to watch my Words, and  Actions,
or forge Accusations  against  me for  Hire: Here were no Gibers, Censurers,
Backbiters,  Pickpockets,  Highwaymen,   Housebreakers,  Attorneys,   Bawds,
Buffoons, Gamesters, Politicians, Wits, splenetick tedious Talkers..."
     But stop, stop your iron pelt of words, lest you flay us all alive, and
yourself too! Nothing can be plainer than that violent man. He  is so coarse
and yet so clean; so brutal, yet so  kind; scorns the whole world, yet talks
baby language to a girl, and will die, can we doubt it? in a madhouse.
     So Orlando poured out tea for them all; and sometimes, when the weather
was fine, she carried them down  to the country  with her, and  feasted them
royally in  the Round Parlour, which she had hung with their pictures all in
a  circle, so that Mr Pope could not say that Mr Addison came before him, or
the other way  about. They were  very witty, too  (but their wit  is  all in
their  books) and taught her the most important part  of style, which is the
natural run of  the voice in  speaking -  a quality which  none that has not
heard it can imitate, not Greene even, with all his skill; for it is born of
the air, and breaks like a  wave on the furniture, and rolls and fades away,
and is never to be  recaptured,  least of all  by those who  prick  up their
ears, half a century  later, and  try. They  taught her this,  merely by the
cadence of their voices in speech; so that her style changed  somewhat,  and
she wrote some very pleasant,  witty verses and characters  in prose. And so
she  lavished  her wine  on  them and  put bank-notes, which they  took very
kindly, beneath their plates at dinner, and accepted  their dedications, and
thought herself highly honoured by the exchange.
     Thus time ran  on, and Orlando  could  often be heard saying to herself
with an emphasis which might,  perhaps, make the hearer a little suspicious,
"Upon my  soul,  what a life this is!" (For she was still in  search of that
commodity.) But  circumstances soon forced her  to consider the matter  more
narrowly.
     One day she was  pouring out tea for Mr  Pope while, as anyone can tell
from the verses quoted above, he  sat very  bright-eyed, observant,  and all
crumpled up in a chair by her side.
     "Lord," she thought, as she raised the  sugar tongs, "how women in ages
to  come will  envy  me! And yet"  -  she  paused;  for Mr Pope  needed  her
attention. And yet -  let us finish her thought for her  - when anybody says
"How  future ages will envy  me", it is safe to say that they are  extremely
uneasy at  the  present moment. Was this life quite  so exciting,  quite  so
flattering, quite so  glorious as it sounds when the memoir writer  has done
his work upon it? For one thing, Orlando had  a  positive hatred of tea; for
another, the intellect, divine as  it is, and all-worshipful, has a habit of
lodging  in the most  seedy of carcases, and often, alas, acts the  cannibal
among the  other faculties so that  often,  where  the Mind  is biggest, the
Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest
of them  scarcely have room to breathe. Then the  high opinion poets have of
themselves;  then the  low  one  they have of  others;  then  the  enmities,
injuries, envies,  and repartees in which they  are constantly engaged; then
the  volubility with  which  they impart them; then the  rapacity with which
they demand sympathy  for them; all this, one may whisper, lest the wits may
overhear us, makes pouring out  tea  a more precarious and, indeed,  arduous
occupation than is  generally allowed. Added to which (we whisper again lest
the women may  overhear us), there is a little secret  which men share among
them;  Lord Chesterfield whispered  it to his son with strict injunctions to
secrecy, "Women  are but  children of  a larger growth...A man of sense only
trifles with them, plays with them, humours and flatters them", which, since
children always  hear what they are not meant to,  and sometimes, even, grow
up,  may have somehow leaked out, so that the whole ceremony  of pouring out
tea is a curious  one. A woman knows very well that,  though a wit sends her
his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea,
this  by  no  means  signifies that  he respects  her  opinions, admires her
understanding, or will refuse,  though the rapier is  denied him, to run her
through the body with  his pen.  All this, we say,  whisper it as low as  we
can, may have  leaked  out by now; so that even with the cream jug suspended
and the  sugar tongs distended the ladies  may fidget a  little, look out of
the  window a little, yawn a little, and so let the sugar fall with  a great
plop  - as Orlando  did  now - into  Mr Pope's tea. Never  was any mortal so
ready to suspect an insult or so  quick to avenge one as Mr  Pope. He turned
to Orlando and presented her instantly with the rough  draught of a  certain
famous  line  in  the  "Characters  of  Women". Much  polish  was afterwards
bestowed  on it, but even in the original it  was  striking enough.  Orlando
received it  with  a  curtsey. Mr Pope left her with a bow. Orlando, to cool
her cheeks,  for  really  she felt as  if  the little man  had  struck  her,
strolled in the nut grove at the bottom of the garden. Soon the cool breezes
did their work. To her amazement she found  that she was hugely  relieved to
find herself alone.  She watched the merry boatloads rowing up the river. No
doubt the sight  put her in  mind of one or two incidents  in her past life.
She sat  herself  down  in profound meditation beneath  a fine  willow tree.
There she sat till the stars  were in the  sky. Then she  rose,  turned, and
went into the house, where  she sought her bedroom and  locked the door. Now
she opened a cupboard in which hung still  many of the  clothes she had worn
as a young man of fashion, and from among them she chose a black velvet suit
richly trimmed with  Venetian lace.  It was a little out of fashion, indeed,
but it fitted her to perfection and dressed in it she looked the very figure
of a noble Lord. She took a turn or two before the mirror to  make sure that
her petticoats had not lost  her  the  freedom  of her legs,  and  then  let
herself secretly out of doors.
     It was  a fine night early in April. A myriad  stars mingling  with the
light of a sickle moon, which again was enforced by the street lamps, made a
light  infinitely becoming to the human  countenance and to the architecture
of Mr Wren. Everything appeared  in its  tenderest form,  yet,  just  as  it
seemed  on the point  of dissolution, some drop of silver  sharpened  it  to
animation.  Thus it was that talk  should be, thought Orlando (indulging  in
foolish reverie);  that society  should  be, that friendship should be, that
love  should be. For, Heaven knows why, just as we have lost faith  in human
intercourse some random collocation of barns and trees or a  haystack  and a
waggon presents us with  so perfect a symbol of what is unattainable that we
begin the search again.
     She  entered  Leicester  Square  as  she  made  these observations. The
buildings  had an airy yet formal symmetry not theirs  by day. The canopy of
the sky seemed most dexterously washed in to fill up the outline of roof and
chimney. A young woman who sat dejectedly with one arm drooping by her side,
the other reposing in her lap, on a  seat beneath a plane tree in the middle
of  the square seemed  the very figure of grace, simplicity, and desolation.
Orlando  swept  her hat off to her in the  manner  of a gallant  paying  his
addresses to a lady of fashion in a public place. The young woman raised her
head. It was of the most exquisite shapeliness. The young  woman  raised her
eyes.  Orlando  saw  them to  be of  a lustre such  as is sometimes seen  on
teapots  but rarely in a  human face.  Through  this  silver glaze the young
woman  looked  up  at  him  (for a  man he was to  her)  appealing,  hoping,
trembling, fearing. She rose; she accepted his arm. For - need we stress the
point? - she was of the tribe which nightly burnishes their  wares, and sets
them  in  order on the  common counter to wait the highest  bidder. She  led
Orlando to  the room in Gerrard Street which  was her lodging. To  feel  her
hanging lightly yet like a suppliant  on her arm, roused in Orlando  all the
feelings which become a man. She looked, she felt, she talked like one. Yet,
having  been  so  lately a woman  herself,  she  suspected that  the  girl's
timidity and her hesitating answers  and the very  fumbling  with the key in
the latch and the fold  of her cloak and the droop of her wrist were all put
on to gratify  her  masculinity. Upstairs they went, and the pains which the
poor  creature had been at to decorate  her room and hide the fact that  she
had no other deceived Orlando not a  moment. The deception roused her scorn;
the truth roused her  pity.  One thing  showing through the other  bred  the
oddest assortment  of feeling, so that she  did not know whether to laugh or
to cry. Meanwhile  Nell, as the  girl called herself, unbuttoned her gloves;
carefully  concealed the left-hand thumb, which  wanted  mending; then  drew
behind a  screen, where,  perhaps,  she  rouged  her  cheeks,  arranged  her
clothes, fixed a new  kerchief round her neck - all  the time  prattling  as
women do, to amuse her lover, though Orlando could have sworn, from the tone
of her voice, that her thoughts were elsewhere. When all was  ready, out she
came, prepared - but here Orlando could stand it no longer. In the strangest
torment of  anger,  merriment,  and pity  she  flung  off  all  disguise and
admitted herself a woman.
     At  this,  Nell burst into  such a roar of laughter as  might have been
heard across the way.
     "Well, my  dear," she said, when she had somewhat recovered, "I'm by no
means sorry to hear  it. For the plain Dunstable  of the matter is" (and  it
was remarkable how soon, on discovering that they were of the  same sex, her
manner changed  and she dropped  her plaintive, appealing  ways), "the plain
Dunstable of the matter is, that I'm not in the mood for the society  of the
other sex to-night. Indeed, I'm in the devil  of a  fix." Whereupon, drawing
up the fire and stirring a bowl of punch, she told Orlando  the  whole story
of her  life. Since it is Orlando's life that engages us at present, we need
not relate the adventures of the other  lady, but it is certain that Orlando
had never known the hours speed faster or more merrily, though Mistress Nell
had not a particle of wit about her, and when the name of Mr Pope came up in
talk  asked innocently if he  were connected with the perruque maker of that
name in Jermyn Street.  Yet,  to Orlando, such is the charm of ease  and the
seduction of beauty,  this poor girl's talk, larded though  it  was with the
commonest expressions of the street corners, tasted like wine after the fine
phrases she  had  been used to,  and she was  forced to  the conclusion that
there was  something in the sneer of Mr  Pope,  in the  condescension  of Mr
Addison, and in the secret of  Lord Chesterfield which took away her  relish
for  the society of  wits, deeply though she must continue to respect  their
works.
     These poor creatures, she ascertained, for Nell brought Prue, and  Prue
Kitty, and Kitty Rose, had a society of their own of which  they now elected
her a member. Each would tell the  story of the  adventures which had landed
her in her present way of  life. Several were the natural daughters of earls
and one was a  good  deal nearer  than she  should have been to  the  King's
person.  None  was too  wretched or  too  poor  but  to  have some  ring  or
handkerchief in her  pocket  which  stood her in  lieu of  pedigree. So they
would  draw round the  punch-bowl  which  Orlando  made it  her  business to
furnish generously, and  many were the  fine  tales they  told and  many the
amusing observations they made, for it cannot be denied that when  women get
together - but hist - they are always careful to see that the doors are shut
and  that not a word of it gets into  print. All they desire is  -  but hist
again  - is  that not a man's  step  on the stair? All they desire, we  were
about to say when the gentleman took the very words out of our mouths. Women
have no desires,  says this  gentleman,  coming  into  Nell's parlour;  only
affectations. Without  desires (she has  served  him and  he  is gone) their
conversation  cannot be of  the slightest interest to  anyone.  "It  is well
known,"  says Mr S. W., "that when they lack the  stimulus of the other sex,
women  can find nothing to say  to each other.  When they are alone, they do
not talk, they scratch." And since they cannot  talk together and scratching
cannot continue  without  interruption  and it is well known (Mr  T.  R. has
proved it) "that women are incapable of any feeling  of affection for  their
own sex and  hold each  other in the greatest aversion", what can we suppose
that women do when they seek out each other's society?
     As that is not a  question that can engage the attention of  a sensible
man, let us, who  enjoy the immunity of all biographers and historians  from
any sex  whatever, pass it  over, and merely state  that  Orlando  professed
great enjoyment in the society of her own sex, and leave it to the gentlemen
to prove, as they are very fond of doing, that this is impossible.
     But to give  an exact and particular account of  Orlando's life at this
time becomes more and more out of the question. As we peer and grope  in the
ill-lit, ill-paved, ill-ventilated courtyards that lay about  Gerrard Street
and Drury  Lane at  that  time, we  seem now to catch sight of her and  then
again to lose it. The task is made still more difficult by the fact that she
found  it convenient  at this  time  to change frequently  from one  set  of
clothes to another. Thus she often  occurs in contemporary memoirs as "Lord"
So-and-so, who was in fact her cousin; her bounty is ascribed to him, and it
is he who  is said to have written the poems that were really hers. She had,
it  seems,  no difficulty  in sustaining the different  parts,  for  her sex
changed  far  more  frequently  than  those who have  worn only  one set  of
clothing can conceive; nor can  there be any doubt that she reaped a twofold
harvest by this device;  the  pleasures  of  life  were  increased  and  its
experiences multiplied.  For  the  probity of  breeches  she  exchanged  the
seductiveness of petticoats and enjoyed the love of both sexes equally.
     So  then one may  sketch her spending  her morning in  a China robe  of
ambiguous  gender among  her books; then receiving a client  or two (for she
had  many scores of suppliants) in the same garment;  then she  would take a
turn  in  the garden  and clip the nut trees - for which  knee-breeches were
convenient; then she would change  into a flowered taffeta which best suited
a drive to Richmond and a proposal of marriage from some great nobleman; and
so back again  to town, where she  would don a  snuff-coloured gown  like  a
lawyer's and visit the courts to hear how her  cases  were  doing, - for her
fortune was wasting hourly and the suits seemed no  nearer consummation than
they had been a hundred years  ago;  and so, finally, when night  came,  she
would more  often than not become  a  nobleman complete from head to toe and
walk the streets in search of adventure.
     Returning  from  some of  these junketings  - of which there were  many
stories told at the time, as, that  she fought a  duel, served on one of the
King's ships as a captain, was seen  to dance naked on  a  balcony, and fled
with a certain  lady  to the Low Countries where the lady's husband followed
them - but of the truth or otherwise of these stories, we express no opinion
- returning from whatever  her  occupation may have  been,  she made a point
sometimes of passing beneath the windows of a coffee house, where she  could
see the wits without being  seen,  and thus could fancy  from their gestures
what wise, witty, or spiteful things they were saying without hearing a word
of them; which was perhaps  an  advantage; and once she  stood half  an hour
watching three shadows on the blind drinking tea together in a house in Bolt
Court.
     Never was  any play so absorbing. She wanted  to cry out, Bravo! Bravo!
For, to  be sure, what  a fine drama it  was - what  a  page  torn from  the
thickest volume of human life! There was the little shadow with the  pouting
lips, fidgeting this way and that on his chair, uneasy, petulant, officious;
there  was  the bent female shadow, crooking a finger in the cup to feel how
deep the tea was, for she was blind; and there was the Roman-looking rolling
shadow in the big  armchair - he who twisted his fingers so oddly and jerked
his head from side to side and swallowed down the tea in such vast gulps. Dr
Johnson,  Mr Boswell, and Mrs Williams, -  those were the shadows' names. So
absorbed was she in the sight, that she forgot to think how other ages would
have envied her, though it seems probable  that on this occasion they would.
She was content to gaze and gaze. At length Mr Boswell rose. He saluted  the
old  woman  with  tart  asperity. But  with what humility did  he not  abase
himself before the  great Roman shadow, who now rose to its full  height and
rocking  somewhat as he stood there rolled out the most  magnificent phrases
that ever left human lips; so Orlando thought them, though she never heard a
word that any of the three shadows said as they sat there drinking tea.
     At  length  she came home one night  after one of these saunterings and
mounted to her bedroom. She took off her laced coat and stood there in shirt
and breeches looking out of  the window. There was something stirring in the
air which forbade her  to go to bed. A white haze lay over the town, for  it
was a frosty night  in midwinter and a  magnificent vista lay all round her.
She could see St  Paul's, the Tower,  Westminster Abbey, with all the spires
and domes of  the city churches, the  smooth bulk of  its banks, the opulent
and  ample curves of its  halls  and  meeting-places.  On the north rose the
smooth, shorn heights of Hampstead, and in  the west the streets and squares
of Mayfair  shone out  in  one clear radiance. Upon this  serene and orderly
prospect the stars looked down, glittering, positive, hard, from a cloudless
sky. In the extreme clearness of  the atmosphere the line of every roof, the
cowl of every chimney,  was perceptible;  even  the  cobbles in  the streets
showed distinct one from another, and Orlando could not help  comparing this
orderly scene with the  irregular  and huddled purlieus  which  had been the
city of London in  the reign of Queen Elizabeth.  Then, she remembered,  the
city,  if   such  one  could  call  it,  lay  crowded,  a  mere  huddle  and
conglomeration  of  houses,  under her  windows  at Blackfriars.  The  stars
reflected themselves in deep pits of stagnant water which lay in  the middle
of the  streets. A black shadow at the  corner  where the  wine shop used to
stand was,  as likely  as not,  the corpse  of  a  murdered  man.  She could
remember the cries of many a  one wounded in such night brawlings, when  she
was a little boy, held  to  the  diamond-paned  window in her  nurse's arms.
Troops of ruffians, men and women, unspeakably interlaced, lurched down  the
streets, trolling out  wild songs  with jewels flashing  in their ears,  and
knives gleaming in their fists. On  such  a night  as  this the  impermeable
tangle of the forests on Highgate and Hampstead  would be outlined, writhing
in contorted intricacy against the sky.  Here and there, on one of the hills
which rose above  London, was a stark gallows tree, with a corpse  nailed to
rot or  parch on  its cross; for danger and insecurity, lust  and  violence,
poetry and filth swarmed over  the  tortuous Elizabethan highways and buzzed
and stank - Orlando could remember even now the smell of them on a hot night
- in  the  little rooms and narrow pathways of the city. Now - she leant out
of  her window  - all was light, order,  and serenity. There  was  the faint
rattle  of a coach on the  cobbles.  She heard the far-away cry of the night
watchman - "Just  twelve o'clock  on a  frosty  morning". No sooner  had the
words left his  lips than the first stroke of midnight sounded. Orlando then
for  the  first time noticed a small cloud  gathered behind the  dome  of St
Paul's. As the strokes sounded, the cloud  increased, and she saw  it darken
and spread  with extraordinary speed. At  the same time  a light breeze rose
and  by the time  the sixth stroke of  midnight had struck  the whole of the
eastern sky was covered with an irregular moving darkness, though the sky to
the west and north stayed clear as ever. Then the cloud spread north. Height
upon height above the city  was engulfed  by it.  Only Mayfair, with all its
lights shining,  burnt more  brilliantly  than  ever by  contrast.  With the
eighth stroke, some hurrying tatters of cloud sprawled over Piccadilly. They
seemed to mass themselves and to advance with extraordinary rapidity towards
the  west end.  As  the ninth,  tenth, and  eleventh strokes struck,  a huge
blackness sprawled over the whole  of  London.  With  the twelfth stroke  of
midnight, the darkness was complete. A turbulent welter of cloud covered the
city.  All  was darkness;  all was doubt; all was  confusion. The Eighteenth
century was over; the Nineteenth century had begun.
     


        CHAPTER 5.
     The great cloud which hung, not only over London, but over the whole of
the British  Isles on  the  first day  of the nineteenth century stayed,  or
rather, did not stay,  for  it was buffeted  about constantly  by blustering
gales,  long enough to  have extraordinary consequences upon those who lived
beneath its shadow.  A  change seemed  to  have  come  over  the  climate of
England.  Rain  fell  frequently,  but only  in fitful  gusts, which were no
sooner over than they began again. The  sun shone, of course,  but it was so
girt about  with clouds  and the  air was so saturated with water,  that its
beams were discoloured and purples,  oranges, and reds  of a dull sort  took
the place of  the more positive landscapes  of the eighteenth century. Under
this  bruised and sullen canopy the green of the cabbages  was less intense,
and the white of the snow was muddied. But what was worse, damp now began to
make its way into every house  -  damp, which is the most  insidious  of all
enemies, for while the sun can be shut out by  blinds, and the frost roasted
by a hot fire, damp steals in while we sleep; damp is silent, imperceptible,
ubiquitous. Damp swells the wood, furs the kettle, rusts the iron,  rots the
stone. So gradual is the process, that it is not until we pick up some chest
of drawers, or coal scuttle, and  the  whole thing drops  to  pieces  in our
hands, that we suspect even that the disease is at work.
     Thus, stealthily and imperceptibly, none marking the exact day or  hour
of the change, the constitution  of England was  altered and nobody knew it.
Everywhere the  effects  were felt. The hardy country gentleman, who had sat
down gladly to  a meal  of ale and beef  in a  room designed, perhaps by the
brothers Adam, with classic dignity,  now felt chilly. Rugs appeared; beards
were grown; trousers  were fastened tight under  the instep. The chill which
he  felt in his legs the country gentleman  soon transferred  to  his house;
furniture was muffled; walls and tables were covered; nothing was left bare.
Then a  change of  diet became essential. The  muffin  was invented  and the
crumpet. Coffee  supplanted the after-dinner port,  and, as coffee  led to a
drawing-room  in  which to drink  it, and a drawing-room to glass cases, and
glass  cases to  artificial flowers, and artificial flowers to mantelpieces,
and mantelpieces to  pianofortes, and  pianofortes to  drawing-room ballads,
and drawing-room  ballads (skipping  a stage or  two) to innumerable  little
dogs,  mats, and  china ornaments, the home  -  which  had  become extremely
important - was completely altered.
     Outside the house  - it was another effect of  the damp  - ivy grew  in
unparalleled profusion. Houses that had been of bare stone were smothered in
greenery. No garden, however formal its original design, lacked a shrubbery,
a wilderness, a  maze. What light penetrated to the bedrooms where  children
were born was naturally of an obfusc green, and what light penetrated to the
drawing-rooms where grown men and women lived came through curtains of brown
and  purple plush.  But the  change did not stop at outward things. The damp
struck within. Men  felt the chill in their hearts; the damp in their minds.
In a desperate effort to snuggle their feelings into some sort of warmth one
subterfuge was tried after another. Love, birth, and death were all swaddled
in a  variety of fine phrases. The sexes drew further and further apart.  No
open conversation was tolerated. Evasions and  concealments  were sedulously
practised on both sides. And just as the ivy and the evergreen rioted in the
damp  earth outside, so did the same fertility show itself within.  The life
of the  average  woman  was  a  succession  of childbirths.  She  married at
nineteen and had fifteen or eighteen  children by  the time she  was thirty;
for twins abounded.  Thus the British Empire came into existence; and thus -
for there is  no stopping damp; it gets into  the inkpot as it gets into the
woodwork - sentences  swelled, adjectives multiplied,  lyrics  became epics,
and  little  trifles   that  had  been  essays  a  column   long  were   now
encyclopaedias in ten  or twenty volumes. But  Eusebius Chubb  shall  be our
witness  to the  effect this all  had  upon the mind of a  sensitive man who
could do nothing to stop it. There is  a  passage  towards  the end  of  his
memoirs  where he describes  how, after  writing thirty-five folio pages one
morning - all about nothing - he screwed the lid of  his inkpot and went for
a  turn in  his garden. Soon  he found  himself involved  in the  shrubbery.
Innumerable  leaves  creaked  and  glistened above  his head.  He  seemed to
himself "to crush the mould of a  million more under his feet". Thick  smoke
exuded  from a  damp bonfire at  the end of the garden. He reflected that no
fire on earth could ever hope  to consume  that vast vegetable  encumbrance.
Wherever  he  looked, vegetation  was  rampant.  Cucumbers "came scrolloping
across the grass to  his feet".  Giant cauliflowers towered deck above  deck
till they rivalled, to his disordered imagination, the elm trees themselves.
Hens laid incessantly eggs of no special tint. Then, remembering with a sigh
his own fecundity and his poor wife Jane, now in the throes of her fifteenth
confinement indoors,  how, he asked himself, could  he blame  the  fowls? He
looked  upwards  into  the  sky.  Did  not  heaven  itself,  or  that  great
frontispiece of heaven, which is the  sky, indicate the assent,  indeed, the
instigation of the heavenly hierarchy? For there, winter or summer, year  in
year  out,  the  clouds  turned  and  tumbled, like whales, he pondered,  or
elephants rather; but no, there was no escaping the simile which was pressed
upon him from a thousand airy  acres; the whole sky itself as it spread wide
above  the  British  Isles was  nothing  but  a vast  feather bed;  and  the
undistinguished fecundity  of the  garden, the bedroom and  the henroost was
copied there. He went indoors, wrote the passage quoted above, laid his head
in a gas oven, and when they found him later he was past revival.
     While this went on in every  part of  England, it was all very well for
Orlando to mew herself in her  house at  Blackfriars  and pretend  that  the
climate was  the same; that  one  could  still say what  one liked  and wear
knee-breeches  or  skirts as the  fancy took  one.  Even she, at length, was
forced  to acknowledge that times  were changed.  One afternoon in the early
part of the  century  she was driving  through St  James's Park in  her  old
panelled coach when one  of those sunbeams, which  occasionally,  though not
often, managed to come to earth, struggled through, marbling the clouds with
strange  prismatic  colours  as  it passed. Such  a sight  was  sufficiently
strange after the clear and uniform skies of the eighteenth century to cause
her to pull the  window down  and look at  it. The puce  and flamingo clouds
made  her  think  with  a  pleasurable anguish,  which  proves  that she was
insensibly  afflicted  with  the damp already, of  dolphins dying  in Ionian
seas.  But what was her surprise  when,  as it struck the earth, the sunbeam
seemed to call forth, or to light up, a pyramid, hecatomb, or trophy (for it
had something of a banquet-table air) -  a conglomeration at any rate of the
most heterogeneous  and  ill-assorted objects, piled higgledy-piggledy  in a
vast  mound where  the statue of  Queen Victoria now stands!  Draped about a
vast cross of  fretted  and floriated gold were  widow's  weeds  and  bridal
veils; hooked  on to other excrescences  were crystal palaces,  bassinettes,
military helmets,  memorial  wreaths,  trousers,  whiskers,  wedding  cakes,
cannon,  Christmas   trees,  telescopes,  extinct  monsters,  globes,  maps,
elephants,  and  mathematical  instruments  -  the  whole  supported like  a
gigantic coat of  arms on the right side  by  a  female  figure  clothed  in
flowing white;  on the left  by  a portly gentleman wearing a frock-coat and
sponge-bag trousers. The incongruity  of the objects, the association of the
fully clothed and the partly draped, the garishness of the different colours
and their plaid-like juxtapositions afflicted Orlando with the most profound
dismay. She had never, in all her life, seen  anything  at once so indecent,
so hideous, and so monumental.  It might, and indeed it  must be, the effect
of the sun on the  water-logged air; it would  vanish with the first  breeze
that  blew; but for all  that, it looked, as  she drove past, as if it  were
destined to endure for ever. Nothing, she felt, sinking back into the corner
of  her coach,  no wind, rain,  sun, or  thunder, could  ever demolish  that
garish erection.  Only the  noses would mottle and the  trumpets would rust;
but there  they  would  remain,  pointing  east,  west,  south,  and  north,
eternally.  She  looked  back as her coach swept up Constitution Hill.  Yes,
there it was, still beaming placidly in a light which - she pulled her watch
out of her  fob -  was, of course, the light of twelve o'clock mid-day. None
other  could be so prosaic, so matter-of-fact,  so impervious to any hint of
dawn or sunset, so seemingly calculated to last for ever. She was determined
not to look again.  Already  she felt the tides of her blood run sluggishly.
But  what was more  peculiar a  blush,  vivid and  singular,  overspread her
cheeks as she  passed  Buckingham  Palace and her eyes  seemed forced  by  a
superior power down upon her  knees. Suddenly she  saw with a start that she
was wearing black breeches. She never  ceased blushing till she  had reached
her country house, which, considering the time it takes four horses to  trot
thirty miles, will be taken, we hope, as a signal proof of her chastity.
     Once there, she followed what had now become the most imperious need of
her nature and wrapped herself as well as she could  in a damask quilt which
she snatched from her bed.  She  explained to the Widow Bartholomew (who had
succeeded good old Grimsditch as housekeeper) that she felt chilly.
     "So do  we all, m'lady," said  the Widow, heaving a profound sigh. "The
walls is sweating," she said, with a  curious,  lugubrious complacency,  and
sure  enough,  she had  only to lay  her  hand on  the  oak panels  for  the
finger-prints to be marked there. The ivy had  grown so profusely  that many
windows were now sealed up. The kitchen was so dark that they could scarcely
tell a kettle from a cullender. A poor black cat had been mistaken for coals
and shovelled on the fire. Most of the maids were  already wearing three  or
four red-flannel petticoats, though the month was August.
     "But is  it true, m'lady," the good woman asked, hugging herself, while
the golden  crucifix heaved  on  her bosom,  "that the Queen, bless  her, is
wearing a what d'you call it, a?," the good woman hesitated and blushed.
     "A crinoline," Orlando helped her out with it (for the word had reached
Blackfriars).  Mrs  Bartholomew nodded. The tears  were already running down
her cheeks, but as she wept she smiled. For it  was pleasant  to  weep. Were
they  not all of them weak women - wearing crinolines the  better to conceal
the fact; the great fact;  the only  fact; but, nevertheless, the deplorable
fact;  which  every  modest woman did  her best to  deny  until  denial  was
impossible; the fact that she was about to bear a child - to bear fifteen or
twenty children indeed, so that most  of a  modest  woman's life  was spent,
after  all, in denying what,  on one day  at least  of every year, was  made
obvious.
     "The muffins is  keepin'  'ot," said  Mrs  Bartholomew, mopping up  her
tears, "in the liberry."
     And wrapped in a damask bed quilt, to a dish of muffins Orlando now sat
down.
     "The muffins is keepin' 'ot  in the liberry" - Orlando minced  out  the
horrid cockney phrase  in Mrs  Bartholomew's  refined cockney accents as she
drank - but no, she detested the mild fluid - her tea.  It was in this  very
room, she remembered,  that Queen Elizabeth had  stood astride the fireplace
with a  flagon of beer in her hand, which she suddenly dashed  on the  table
when  Lord   Burghley  tactlessly  used  the   imperative  instead  of   the
subjunctive. "Little  man, little  man," - Orlando could hear her  say - "is
`must' a word to  be  addressed to princes?" And down came the flagon on the
table: there was the mark of it still.
     But when Orlando leapt to  her feet, as the mere  thought of that great
Queen  commanded,  the bed quilt tripped her up, and she  fell  back in  her
arm-chair with a curse. Tomorrow she would have to buy  twenty yards or more
of black  bombazine,  she  supposed,  to make  a skirt. And  then  (here she
blushed), she would have to buy a crinoline, and  then (here she blushed)  a
bassinette, and then  another  crinoline,  and so on...The  blushes came and
went with the most exquisite iteration of modesty and  shame imaginable. One
might see the spirit of the age blowing, now hot, now cold, upon her cheeks.
And if the spirit of the age blew a  little unequally,  the crinoline  being
blushed for before the husband, her ambiguous position must excuse her (even
her sex was still in dispute) and the irregular life she had lived before.
     At length the colour on her cheeks resumed  its stability and it seemed
as  if the spirit of the age - if such  indeed it  were - lay dormant for  a
time. Then Orlando felt in the bosom of her  shirt as if for some  locket or
relic  of lost  affection, and drew out no such thing, but a  roll of paper,
sea-stained,  blood-stained,  travel-stained - the  manuscript of her  poem,
"The Oak Tree". She  had carried this about with her for so many years  now,
and in  such hazardous circumstances, that many of  the pages were  stained,
some were torn, while  the straits  she had been in  for writing  paper when
with  the gipsies, had forced her to  overscore  the margins and  cross  the
lines   till  the   manuscript  looked  like   a   piece   of  darning  most
conscientiously carried out. She turned back to the first page  and read the
date, 1586, written in her own  boyish  hand. She had been working at it for
close three hundred years  now.  It was time to make  an end. Meanwhile  she
began turning and dipping and reading and skipping and thinking as she read,
how  very little she had changed all these years. She had been a gloomy boy,
in love with death, as boys  are; and  then she had been amorous and florid;
and  then she had been sprightly and satirical; and sometimes she had  tried
prose and sometimes she had tried drama. Yet  through  all these changes she
had  remained,  she  reflected,  fundamentally  the  same. She had  the same
brooding meditative temper,  the same love  of  animals and nature, the same
passion for the country and the seasons.
     "After all," she thought, getting up  and going to the window, "nothing
has  changed. The house, the garden are precisely  as they were. Not a chair
has been moved, not  a  trinket sold.  There  are  the same walks, the  same
lawns, the same  trees, and the same  pool,  which, I dare say, has the same
carp  in it. True, Queen Victoria is  on the throne and not Queen Elizabeth,
but what difference..."
     No  sooner had the thought taken shape, than,  as if  to rebuke it, the
door  was  flung  wide  and  in  marched  Basket,  the  butler,  followed by
Bartholomew, the  housekeeper,  to clear  away  tea.  Orlando, who had  just
dipped her pen in the  ink, and was about to indite some reflection upon the
eternity of all  things,  was much  annoyed to be  impeded by a  blot, which
spread and meandered round  her pen. It was some infirmity of the quill, she
supposed;  it was split or dirty.  She  dipped it again. The blot increased.
She  tried to go on with what she was saying; no words came. Next she  began
to decorate  the blot with wings and whiskers, till it became a round-headed
monster, something  between  a  bat and a wombat. But as  for writing poetry
with  Basket and Bartholomew in the room, it was  impossible. No  sooner had
she said "Impossible" than, to her astonishment and alarm, the pen began  to
curve and caracole with the smoothest possible fluency. Her page was written
in the neatest sloping Italian hand with the most insipid verse she had ever
read in her life:
     I am myself but a vile link
     Amid life's weary chain,
     But I have spoken hallow'd words,
     Oh, do not say in vain!
     Will the young maiden, when her tears,
     Alone in moonlight shine,
     Tears for the absent and the loved,
     Murmur?
     she wrote without a stop as Bartholomew  and Basket grunted and groaned
about the room, mending the fire, picking up the muffins.
     Aga