results in a Disturbing Revelation. A Statue is transported to London and Two Characters in this History, destined never to meet, against all the odds, actually do.
In February 1876 two events electrified London’s intellectual circles: the final authentication of the statue of Lucian, discovered in a ruined basilica near Miletus – the very statue that had once stood before the market gates for centuries, guarding the way to the sanctuary – and the first episode of a new novel by the author of Middlemarch. The statue, destined to rest in an honoured alcove somewhere inside the British Museum, raised a frenzy of excitement among the learned societies of archaeologists and historians. Was it genuine? Or not genuine? After all, identical copies of Lucian’s image abounded throughout antiquity. Lucian became as ubiquitous as Antinous. Just as the beautiful beloved of Emperor Hadrian transformed himself into an archetypal image of lost youth, so too had the grave authority of the philosopher come to represent wisdom, endurance and the ancient values of the republic.
The circumstances of the statue’s discovery, so piquant and so glamorous, cast a spell over the newspapers. Photographs of the beautiful young Countess and her handsome husband, standing beside the mighty form to give it scale, did the rounds of all the journals. Professor Marek, the acknowledged expert on ancient Miletus, bounded off on lecture tours. The Great Professor, now mighty and famous on the basis of three huge trenches, eighty boxes of coins, pots, miscellaneous jewellery, curved masonry and inscriptions on stones, included passionate demands for money in his discourses. We must save the fragmented giant frieze depicting the Battle of the Amazons, which once surrounded the great altar in the temenos! Funding flooded into their expedition account, sponsors popped up like tulips; the ancient world became fascinating, mysterious, and above all, fashionable.
The novel also roused a good deal of turmoil and ferment, for unlike her earlier work, which dealt in ordinary lives, rural truths and the drama of everyday emotions, the Sybil’s masterwork, Daniel Deronda, addressed the social struggles of the rich, the not-so-rich and the would-be-rich. The opening, set in a Continental gambling resort, identified as Leubronn, but everybody knew it was Homburg, uncovered a society in flux, the class hierarchies shaken, the pursuit of wealth a naked necessity. And that first encounter between Gwendolen and Deronda across the gaming tables generated a babble of intrigued speculation. Mrs. Lewes wrote to her British publisher, John Blackwood, on 17th March 1876:
We have just come in from Weybridge, but are going to take refuge there again on Monday, for a few more days of fresh air and long, breezy afternoon walks. Many thanks for your thoughtfulness in sending me the cheering account of sales. [. . .]
Mr. Lewes has not heard of any complaints of not understanding Gwendolen, but a strong partizanship for and against her. My correspondence about the misquotation of Tennyson has quieted itself since the fifth letter. But Mr. Reeve, the Editor of the Edinburgh, has written me a very pretty note, taxing me with having wanted insight into the technicalities of Newmarket, when I made Lush say, ‘I will take odds.’ Mr. Reeve judges that I should have written, ‘I will lay odds.’ On the other hand, another expert contends that the case is one in which Lush would be more likely to say, ‘I will take odds.’ What do you think? I told Mr. Reeve that I had a dread of being righteously pelted with mistakes that would make a cairn above me – a monument and a warning to people who write novels without being omniscient and infallible.
Quietly satisfied by the universal adulation that descended upon her, although anxious at how the Jewish theme of the novel, nowhere evident in the first instalment, would eventually be received, the Sibyl gathered her skirts, received her guests, distributed her ardour, spiritual instruction and sympathy in generous armfuls, and braced herself for further huge sales.
Wolfgang Duncker paid £100 for the German translation rights of Daniel Deronda, but Tauchnitz pipped him to the post on the Continental reprint, and offered £250, hard cash in hand. Wolfgang remonstrated gently, even called in the old loyalties, but George Lewes proved inexorable. He confirmed the deal with Tauchnitz in a brief letter of polite finality. Wolfgang trotted down the Jägerstraße to moan about the Leweses and their grasping financial tactics. Should he send Max, handsome, charming Max, off to London at once, as a Trojan horse in the subtle war of author’s rights? The Sibyl clearly still cherished a tender regard for his younger brother. She always asked after him, in every letter. All the snow had dissolved into muddy slush. Wolfgang shook himself, standing in his brother’s hall, removed his outdoor shoes and settled into the new pantoufles, neatly labelled with names for regular visitors, that Sophie had arranged beneath the ancestral bench.
‘Max!’ he called out, tramping into the salon, without waiting to be announced. Here stood Sophie, radiant with fresh air, still in her riding habit, smelling of horses and lavender.
‘He’s gone down to the Museum to oversee the loading up of Lucian. Sit down, Wolfgang, and I’ll call for coffee.’ She described the statue as if it were the philosopher himself. ‘After everything we went through to extract him from the Orthodox Christians and then from the Turks, Max doesn’t want a disaster to occur right here in Berlin.’
And indeed, the grainy, veined marble body that was Lucian’s image, almost certainly taken from life, had traversed many bureaucratic and emotional storms since that day in the dark basilica when Sophie had caressed his foot. The small Orthodox community, ferociously attached to the statue of Saint Lucian, the just Man of God, refused to countenance his removal.
‘Lucian was an atheist,’ snapped Professor Marek. ‘Haven’t they read De natura deorum?’
‘I don’t think any of them, except perhaps the priest, can actually read,’ said Max, ‘and they venerate the statue. They think it’s holy. Apparently it’s worked many miracles.’
‘So much for our sundered brethren in the East,’ said the Professor briskly. ‘Bribe the Director of Antiquities. And don’t let him know what the statue is really worth. Or he’ll never let it escape his clutches. Not until he thinks he’s got the highest price.’
But the statue’s story could not be resolved through bribes with Reichsmarks. One part of the frieze from the temenos had already been uncovered by Monsieur Olivier Rayet and sold to the British Museum in London, unbeknown to anyone until it was triumphantly unveiled. Behold, one of the Furies, almost intact, handsome, deadly, swirling, her vital power unleashed. She formed a central part of the north frieze. Professor Marek had unearthed the rest, with a fatal missing figure in the jigsaw. Passionate archaeological recriminations, conducted through letters, journal articles and newspaper columns, were delivered as righteous salvos in the months that followed. The offer of an exchange came from the British Museum by urgent telegraph. Your statue for our glorious morsel of frieze? Who would get the better deal from this arrangement, Berlin or London?
By the 1870s a minor war of national collections, now well under way, as the new museums of Northern Europe expanded and bulged, exploded into patriotic spasms of pique and envy, usually expressed in fulminating editorials. The Old World pillaged fresh victims from the Mediterranean, Egypt, Asia and the Far East. Beautiful objects, restored, repainted, sometimes fraudulent, set out upon their travels, to end their days, carefully labelled in huge halls with high ceilings. The extraction of the statue from the tiny ruined basilica became ever more urgent.
Professor Marek, always dynamic and inventive, now blossomed with ideas. He hired a gifted Italian sculptor and set him to work with an enormous block of marble. Six months later, as the modern Lucian hove into view, flat on his gigantic back, wedged in straw on the ship’s deck, no one could immediately tell the difference, but the ancient version, blackened, chipped and missing several fingers, suddenly seemed a poor substitute for the gleaming resurrected saint, whose brave arm and completed hands reached out towards the seven ruined columns on the cliff, as if he longed for home. Professor Marek, his expression a perfect mask of piety, attended the incense-laden consecration of Saint Lucian.
Sophie retold the entire story, while pouring coffee and distributing cake to Wolfgang, who had flung his books and papers down upon her carpet. He had grown up in this house. He felt comfortable, at home, and untidy.
‘So! Our philosopher is en route to London? I assume Max will go with him?’ Wolfgang wondered how he could use the statue to entrap the Leweses.
‘And I will too. We’ll come back with the missing Gorgon from the frieze. And of course Max wants to oversee the packing and the transporters. At every stage.’
‘Ah, so you are accompanying the statue party?’ Wolfgang dipped into the gateau, which had a warm taste of ginger. And how could he exploit the beautiful Countess, who had now become something of a photographic celebrity, to extend his advantage over the rapacious English?
‘I’ve never been to London! Mother and Father used to go frequently when we were small and come back with a selection of tutors and governesses.’ Sophie wondered at the English, reputed to be so polite, remote and unknowable, and utterly unlike Miss Arrowpoint as was, who bubbled with warmth and suppressed laughter, when she wasn’t being serious and intense about interpretations of Schubert. Her eye fell upon Wolfgang’s heap of papers, and there, peeping out beneath the mass, lay the first hundred pages of Daniel Deronda.
‘Mrs. Lewes! Her new book!’ Sophie pounced.
‘Just the first instalment. I’m reading Book II at home. It’s unlike any of her earlier books. You’ll need a dictionary to get through it. But you’ll enjoy reading about some of our close acquaintances. Klesmer and Miss Arrowpoint are in there. Named, too. I suppose she has their permission. Klesmer comes out of it as a bit of a hero. He gives the heroine what for when she puffs herself up as a singer. Here you are.’ And so Wolfgang handed over the poisoned chalice, amused at Sophie’s unfeigned curiosity and delight.
When he had gone Sophie oversaw the kitchens, placed her orders for dinner, retreated to her rooms upstairs, pulled off her boots and dismissed the maid. Then, still wearing her unbuttoned riding jacket and wide skirts, she sat down to read.
Was she beautiful or not beautiful? And what was the secret of form or expression which gave the dynamic quality to her glance? Was the good or evil genius dominant in those beams?
Sophie read on, appalled, for the opening episode of the young woman gambling rose up before her in insolent accusation; there she was, her irresponsible recklessness, the pawning of the necklace, the young man who stalks her steps, the September day, the long tables, the scene of dull, gas-poisoned absorption, that afternoon, now nearly four years past, reworked, remade, becoming more vivid with every sentence. But the Sibyl’s heroine, foolish, reprehensible, lost again and again and again. Sophie sat, scarlet and trembling, awash with shame and rage. As she reached the end of the second chapter, hardly noticing the transformation into fiction, she actually read the message as she had originally received the handwritten note, with her own name inserted over that of the Sibyl’s ambiguous heroine.
A stranger who has found the Countess von Hahn’s necklace returns it to her with the hope that she will not again risk the loss of it.
Sophie read not one word more. She hurled the slender volume away into a corner of her warm room and sat staring into the fire, her palms damp and shaking. She felt utterly naked and exposed, her young heart ripped open. Max! What did Max know? For one terrifying moment she believed that Max had sanctioned the book, to teach her a lesson. But she jettisoned this strange idea at once. Max loved her more than his own soul, of that she was quite certain. And so far as he was concerned everything she did was wonderful just because she did it. But why then was this evil witch so jealous of her happiness? She remembered the message Mrs. Lewes had sent upon their wedding day and how it had disturbed her beloved Max. What strange power did the writer have to intimidate and unsettle people she hardly knew? And why did she fling Sophie’s youthful folly back in her face, and in so public a fashion, with an image distorted and broken? Why had she redrawn the scene so that the lovely gambler wagered all, and lost?
She wanted me to lose, to lose my money, my necklace and my husband. She cannot bear it that another woman should have beauty, youth, wealth and still be loved. She wants to punish me.
And perhaps, in thinking this, Sophie stumbled upon a truth that remained entombed in the writer’s unconscious mind. The Sibyl’s heroines are young women with everything to learn and everything to lose. Dorothea, short-sighted, obtuse, deluded and idealistic, learns who her husband really is the hard way, by marrying him. And finds herself chained to an old man, who is very far from being a ‘great soul’; he is fraudulent, mean-spirited and vindictive. Gwendolen Harleth, vain, self-satisfied, egotistical, naïve and confident, is almost destroyed by her husband, the monstrous Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt, and by the plot of Daniel Deronda. Most authors use the plot to punish their characters. Thomas Hardy is famous for doing just that. But who is that woman in the Sibyl’s novel, the woman who lurks on the edge of the tale? Who is the discarded mistress, demanding justice for herself and for her bastard children? Remember that the Sibyl never married George Henry Lewes. This woman’s fate might have been hers. Some malevolent ill-wishers hoped that it would be. Here stands Lydia Glasher, baying for blood. Would Grandcourt ever have married her? Who knows? Her curse upon the heroine comes good: You will have your punishment. I desire it with all my soul.
The older women in the Sibyl’s books are startling creations: unfettered, unleashed, seeking their prey and hungry for vengeance. Had Sophie von Hahn possessed all the elements in the story she would have seen this, and proudly taken their part. A fierce passion for justice and a curiously English understanding of fair play reigned in Sophie’s heart. There is a great deal of unmapped country within us, which would have to be taken into account, as an explanation of our gusts and storms. Sophie shared many things with the Sibyl; both women blazed with the desire for knowledge, a desire that reduced milder forms of curiosity to mere politeness. Both women grasped their lives, fortified by an unyielding common will, convinced that what they did and said mattered and echoed beyond their small circles and concerns.
Some say the Sibyl was fragile, insecure, lacking in confidence and self-esteem. But do frail and timid women decide to be atheists, challenge their fathers, refuse to go to church, educate themselves to an astonishingly high degree, run off to London, live abroad on their own, fling themselves at married men, beguile women too, and clearly enjoy doing so, edit distinguished literary journals, learn Hebrew, write fiction that will live for ever as long as we remember how to read, become rich and famous, and think for themselves?
Ah, that’s the key, the power of independent judgement. Sophie and the Sibyl tested everybody else’s judgement against their own. Both women believed in their inalienable right to discriminate and decide, and both were inclined to accept their own opinions. Both women loved getting their own way. Never give up! Neither woman had any intention of ever doing so. A crisp modernity defined their approach: no shame, no guilt, no fear, no hesitation. And no quarter.
Well, what happened next?
Sophie’s warm sitting room, filled with mementoes of equestrian achievements, with large double windows overlooking the bare gardens, not yet quite risen from their winter grave, led into the bedroom she shared with Max, who had his own dressing room beyond. She prowled once round the bedroom, searching for a handkerchief and weighing her fears and suspicions. Then she poured clear, cold water into her washing basin and scrubbed her burning face. Outside, dusk settled over the smoke rising from thousands of freshly built fires. Wary as a cat, Sophie approached the first instalment of Daniel Deronda, which lay in a fluttered heap behind an armchair, smoothed the pages and slid it carefully into one of her leather travelling cases. She had not decided what to do, but knew the book constituted undeniable, published evidence. As she set off down the staircase she heard Max crashing through the door, bellowing at the servants.
‘Has the Countess come home?’
He saw her descending towards him and pounded up to the first landing in a climactic sequence of bangs and creaks.
‘Sophie! The statue is all packed and ready for the train. It’s locked in the depot with two men on guard. Dearest! Whatever is the matter? You’ve been crying.’
And this immediate recognition of any glint of pain or trouble in her open face and red-rimmed green eyes reassured her completely. He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me. And he has nothing to do with this vicious treacherous book. Max embraced his wife, suddenly riddled with unease.
‘It’s all right.’ Sophie told the truth, if not the whole truth. ‘I’ve been reading a novel. And I was so affected by the story that it made me cry.’
Husband and wife mounted the stairs, their arms around one another. Sophie stood on safe ground. Max never read novels, or at least she had never seen him do so.
Two days later Max, Sophie, Professor Marek and a little court of acolytes set out for London, their trophy safe in straw, guarded in the goods van. Wolfgang saw them off at the Hauptbahnhof, then went home to write a torrent of calculated adulation to the Sibyl. He composed the letter in his odd stilted English. Max, he had to admit, could write a more fluent, graceful hand, but was not so adept at flattery, and Wolfgang counted on Lewes reading the letter first.
My dearest Madam Lewes,
Your extraordinary new book has become the event of the month for me. I had not thought that the elegance and sophistication of Middlemarch could be surpassed, but I am at present devoured by curiosity to see what will become of the unfortunate little Jewess and our noble hero, Deronda. Pray take pity on your most passionate German admirer here in Berlin and allow me to request the forthcoming proofs from Mr. John Blackwood. Our translator, the one you have approved, is already at work, but of course, not a word will reach the public until he has received the benefit of your astute linguistic advice and you have given your imprimatur. This novel is magnificent, dear madam, the opening scenes masterly, your little minx Gwendolen as captivating as she is dangerous. What will be her fate and how will the two meeting streams of this great work be bound together? As you see, I think of little else.
Mr. Lewes apprised me of the arrangements you have agreed with Tauchnitz, and while I regret that we shall not have the pleasure of promoting the original in the Continental reprint this time, I trust that you will not forget us when the Cabinet edition of the Collected Works is to be considered. Nothing would give me greater pleasure, or be a higher honour, than to publish you here, in both languages.
(There, thought Wolfgang, that should do it. Be a gentleman. No recriminations. Don’t mention figures at this stage. He dipped his pen again into the glass well.)
Max, as you no doubt already know from the Times reports, has carried off a little coup with his discovery of the original statue representing Lucian. I shall never forget your comments on the famous Fragment when you discussed that unsettling work here with Max, in this very office. He has become a more stable and dedicated person. I firmly believe that this is due to your influence, for after his journey to Stuttgart all those years ago, he returned, chastened, transformed, more serious and responsible. Your wisdom, madam, transfigures lives, and raises our sights to the ideals we might achieve, enables us to become better men.
(‘Transfigures’ sounds convincing. She has a religious turn, and likes to see herself as a saviour.)
Max is at present on his way to London in company with his young wife and the great Professor Marek. They are transporting their rare find to the British Museum, and hope to return with the bas-relief of the Erinys, who forms part of the glorious frieze, also discovered at Miletus and at present incomplete. He longs to see you and Mr. Lewes again, and I trust he will bring back word of your good health and steady progress towards the completion of this glorious book.
I remain, madam, your loyal and devoted publisher
Wolfgang Duncker
(There, that should plant the seed for future negotiations. I’ve set out my stall and I’m open for business.)
Wolfgang patted the letter with his blotter, read it over again, checked for the duplication of flattering adjectives and then prepared the evening post, while his clerk made a fair copy. Wolfgang kept track of every obsequious phrase; he liked to think that his delicate insinuations were well judged.
(I haven’t sounded bitter or reproachful; softly, softly, that’s the way. Lewes is bound to read this out to her, as it’s billowing with compliments. Have I laid it on too thick? No, nothing here I can’t honestly repeat. The new book is powerful, no denying it, but why on earth does she have to drag in the Jews?)
Professor Marek’s younger sister had married an Englishman, a man not overeducated in classical languages, but good-natured and rich. The couple maintained a large white house in Regent’s Park, complete with carriages and stables, not half a mile from the Priory. Marian Evans and George Henry Lewes purchased a forty-five-year lease on this house at No. 21 North Bank, for £2,000 in August 1863, and had lived there ever since. The Priory stood on the edge of the canal, embedded in a garden of roses. Sophie and Max had therefore settled on a London perch uncannily close to the Sibyl’s lair.
Sophie, enchanted by the dynamic bustle of the London streets, wrote to her dear Mama and Papa that the multitudes churning up the mud, both in carriages and on foot, made Berlin’s wide boulevards seem comfortable and empty of all urgency. She loved the theatres, luminous in gas light, she watched the prostitutes in the Haymarket, gaudy as tropical birds, working the crowds. She galloped round the park on her host’s horses, enjoying the early white frosts, which gave way to ravishing floods of narcissi and yellow jonquilles. The London spring foamed over garden walls in white brushes of lilac, and thick green buds. But the greatest excitement for the young Countess presented itself in mechanised form: her hostess possessed a small fleet of bicycles.
She had a high-wheeler, later known as the penny-farthing, which she couldn’t ride, and a vélocipède that her husband had purchased in France. This astonishingly heavy machine sported a cranked axle, like the handle of a grindstone, which could be turned by the feet of the rider. Sophie read the accompanying instruction booklet. ‘The rider who wishes to stay upright and in command would be wise to pedal as rapidly as possible or take a spill in consequence.’ Once on board and held straight by two grooms Sophie padded out the saddle with a small cushion. After several inconclusive wobbles round the stable yard the intrepid Countess enrolled for an intensive course of lessons with a well-known bicycling expert. They battled with the oily vélocipède until she could handle corners unaided. Max watched, appalled, as his wife whirled away at speed.
1. Always look where you’re going. (She didn’t.)
2. Always sit straight. (Well, she always did that, especially at table.)
3. Pedal evenly and use both legs. (Her boots vanished in a circular blur.)
4. Pedal straight. (Corners, corners, Countess. Lean.)
5. Keep the foot straight. (Both feet.)
6. Hold the handles naturally. (Of course!)
7. Don’t wobble the shoulders. (Never!)
8. Hold the body still and sit down. (Sophie was anxious to keep her cushion firmly beneath her.)
9. Don’t shake the head. (At this point her hat flew off. Max chased after his wife, who was even now flying over the winter potholes in a torrent of ribbons, cheered on by the footmen and grooms whose democratic spirit had begun to alarm him.)
10. Sophie, Sophie, your hat!
She bicycled away round Regent’s Park alongside Professor Marek’s enthusiastic little sister, delightfully unchaperoned.
‘It’s quite a craze among the ladies, Max,’ grinned the vivid little Professor. ‘But don’t worry. As soon as our young Countess is in anderen Umständen, or as the English put it, an interesting condition, we’ll persuade her to give it all up.’
Max blushed and rubbed his chin.
The statue’s size caused a furore in the Museum, not because of the niche for which it was destined, and into which it fitted perfectly, but because the Director of Antiquities had set his heart on a theatrical coup, in which the veiled figure of Lucian would suddenly be unveiled, emerging from a mass of swirling red drapes to ecstatic exclamations. But the marble form settled so snugly into the designated space that removing any form of veil, let alone the heavy red velvet cape, already lying folded and ready, proved practically impossible. A screen? A curtain? Various solutions were proposed, then rejected. No screen tall enough could be procured at short notice, the curtain would have to go round a corner before the philosopher could be entirely revealed, and the necessary rails with runners needed an Isambard Kingdom Brunel to perfect the contraption. Lucian stared blankly at the gaggle of great minds, none as distinguished as the philosopher they honoured, who stood assembled before his mighty toes, disagreeing with one another, like new pupils seeking enlightenment.
And so it fell to Sophie, Countess von Hahn, addressing her Professor with ringing decisiveness, to slash the Gordian knot.
‘But didn’t Lucian teach in the marketplace at Miletus? So that everyone, even the poorest weavers and farmers, and all the artisans who worked in the port, could hear what he said? Well, why are we trying to hide him now? He taught in the open air. He said that hidden and secret things were dangerous. Aren’t we here to celebrate him and his philosophy? Not to devise some vaudeville trick?’
At this point, the Director of Antiquities, who disapproved strongly of uppity young women speaking out of turn, felt himself criticised and tried to intervene. Professor Marek tapped his elbow. Sophie bounded on.
‘Why don’t I weave a crown of laurels for him? As if he were an athlete or a victor at the games. He was a decathlon champion in his youth, wasn’t he? And we can lay flowers at his feet. Then anyone who comes in early can see him in all his splendour.’
Sophie cherished a possessive interest in the statue. In her imagination Lucian still belonged to her. She had first touched the greening feet of the worshipped saint in the dark church and known at once who he was, and while she may have been written out of history in the academic papers she still queened it over all others in the popular magazines and expensive memorial photographs. She gazed up at the curiously naked marble face; the body modestly clad in his toga of office, now immaculately cleaned, the features webbed with emotions and judgements. Professor Marek kissed the Countess’s gloved fingers. Her father’s money gave her the right to speak up whenever she chose.
‘Once more, chère Madame,’ he said in French, ‘you show us the way that leads to glory.’ To the assembled scholars and the Director of Antiquities he announced in English:
‘I find this idea charming. Flowers, of course, we must have flowers. I propose that the Countess’s suggestion be adopted at once.’
Max led his wife aside, capturing her hand, and stared at her, astonished. Her living beauty glowed, fair and luminous, before the cobalt blocks of the Assyrian warriors, pinched from Mesopotamia.
‘I had no idea that you had already read the Letters to Myriam – Lucian’s letter on secrets and the pernicious effect of the anger that is never spoken. I’m reading that section at the ceremony. In English and in Greek.’
‘But I haven’t.’
‘You haven’t? That’s not possible. You just quoted him verbatim. That which is hidden and secret is always dangerous, because it serves an undeclared interest.’
‘I didn’t say exactly that. It’s just a coincidence. And anyway, Max, that’s not a sacred piece of wisdom, it’s just common sense.’
Sophie kissed his cheek and grinned.
‘Come on, let’s go to the market and buy armfuls of bay leaves and red tulips.’ Red spring flowers, she had already decided, would set off the philosopher’s massive marble toes to perfection. And everyone seated before him at the ceremony would be gazing at his feet.
In fact the bay leaves had to be filched from the Royal Botanic Society Gardens and wound into a crown by the cook, who devised a cunning method of holding it all together with a shaved branch of pyracantha.
‘If he was still alive this would prick his forehead like the crown of thorns,’ said Sophie, holding the thing at arm’s length. ‘You go on ahead with this and the tulips, Max. I’ll get dressed and have a rest. But I’ll be down there for the inauguration ceremony by two o’clock. I hope the afternoon won’t be too dreary. There’s very little natural light in that gallery.’
She packed the laurel crown into a hatbox and waved him off in the front hall. Then she marched into the library, built up the fire with her own hands, despite the housemaid’s anxious circling patter, and climbed the movable stairs to the top shelves, looking for Lucian’s Letters to Myriam. And here they were, the bilingual edition in English and Greek. Sophie sniffed the unread volume, all the pages still uncut. She rang for a paper knife, pulled her chair close to the fire, kicked off her damp boots and sat down to read. ‘Letter VII: On Lies, Secrets and Silence’. Myriam understood Greek and Latin. Some said she was a Jewess, welcomed into Lucian’s household, a fugitive from the wars in Palestine. Other sources described her as a Christian, a convert who had known the first disciples. One thing remained certain, she had become the philosopher’s adopted daughter, and he had set her free, of his own volition. No child he chose would ever be his slave. The Letters to Myriam embodied his teachings on ethics, the metaphysics of daily life and the common good. References to the early practices of Christianity, scattered throughout the texts, ensured that the Letters remained topical, scoured by historians and theologians for evidence to prove their numerous theses. Sophie ploughed through a third of the turgid introduction, then gave up and sliced open the very pages Max deduced that she already knew.
All at once the clarity and distinctiveness of a unique, unsilenced voice spoke directly to her, as if she listened like the freed slave, the philosopher’s only daughter.
That great anger within you, that remains unacknowledged and unspoken, will corrode and destroy your soul. Did you not tell me the story of your master, the rabbi who drove the moneylenders out of the temple at Jerusalem, armed only with a scourge of small cords? And did he not also drive out the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables? So too should you drive out your anger. Confront that passion within you, and transform its force into a river you control, and you will no longer be its slave.
This fragment of wisdom from Lucian, addressed to an unknown woman in the first century, suddenly acquired an echo that seemed sinister and pertinent. London is the city of the Sibyl. Where is the woman who has held me up as vain, foolish and shallow, a just target for the world’s derision and contempt? Sophie kicked the fender with her stockinged foot. In the distance she heard a bell ringing and ringing through closed doors. Then the maid appeared, clutching a folded note.
‘It’s a message for the gentleman, Madam the Countess.’ She bobbed in the doorway. ‘The boy said it was urgent, but didn’t need an answer.’
‘Oh.’ Sophie looked up, stretching out her hand for the letter. ‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know, ma’am. But it’s from Mrs. Lewes at the Priory.’
Sophie snatched the letter from the maid, flung Lucian upon the hearthrug and tore it open, ripping the Sibyl’s careful steady writing in the process. Her face changed as she read, as startled and affronted as Our Lady herself, accosted by the angelic messenger. Sophie, far from mastering the lurking anger that bubbled within her, now burned with a pure, white rage.
My dearest Max,
Were I strong enough to attend the ceremony at the Museum this afternoon, nothing would prevent me from congratulating you in person. To think that you have discovered our beloved Lucian who means so much to us both! My delight in seeing you after all these years would make my presence at this particular celebration a temptation indeed, but I am most unwell with an infected tooth. Mr. Lewes will be there to applaud you on behalf of us both. However, I trust that you will call at the Priory before you return to Berlin. My satisfaction in learning that you have at last found your vocation, and have indeed become the famous scholar and adventurer I always longed to honour and admire is indeed a high reward. You have fulfilled all my hopes and expectations.
My dearest Max, if you but knew how deeply I wish to efface any misunderstanding that might still divide us. You have shown nothing but reverence and esteem towards me and I treasure our friendship. My affection for you remains unchanged.
Kindest Regards
Marian Evans Lewes
What was it that unleashed Sophie’s colossal rage? The fact that she was ignored? Unmentioned? Her discovery of the statue in the basilica unacknowledged? Her passions and ambitions written out of the official recorded history, yet distorted in the Sibyl’s grandiose prose, and held up to be jeered at and belittled by the fashionable world? Should she sit by, powerless, while this antique dame wrote intimate little letters to her husband? Well, whatever it was that exploded in Sophie’s heart, a fierce sense that she had been wronged urged her to don her boots, thunder into the hall, bellow in French for her straw hat and long coat, hurtle out of the main doors, clutching the fatal letter with its innocent address printed on the crest, and bound away down the quiet road in the direction of Regent’s Park Canal.
‘Sophie? Sophie!’ called her impotent hostess.
But Countess Sophie von Hahn would not, could not, now be stopped.
The house stood well back from the road: two storeys, high windows and the roses, bristling with fresh shoots, arched before the main doors. The pointed white gables gleamed above her. Sophie paused at the gateway, intent as the Avenging Angel, and looked down at the address in her gloved hand, which she now unfolded like the seventh seal. The Priory – yes, this is the place. She swung on the doorbell and heard it pealing through the house. A tiny maid, with curious, knowing eyes looked up at her, clearly expecting a different face. Sophie instantly stepped inside, and to the maid’s obvious alarm, closed the outside door behind her.
‘I am very sorry, madam, but Mrs. Lewes is indisposed and can see no one. Mr. Lewes has gone to a ceremony at the British Museum. I’m very sorry, but –’
Sophie cut her short and practically pushed her into a Chinese jar that served as an umbrella stand.
‘I’m perfectly aware that Mr. Lewes is out. Tell your mistress that her German publisher, Maximilian Reinhardt August Duncker, needs to speak to her on urgent business.’
A foreign whisper in Sophie’s accent startled the maid who lost confidence in her role as Cerberus, the guardian of the gateway. Unscrupulous and forearmed, Sophie handed over Max’s visiting card. Shaking her head doubtfully the little maid sped off up the staircase, indicating that Sophie should wait in the morning room. Green wallpaper, comfortable chairs, occasional tables, hand-painted botanical studies, elegantly framed, Sophie waited for thirty seconds, and then set off after the maid, catching up with her on the second landing.
‘But, madam –’
‘Go on. Announce me. Say that I’ve brought an important message from Max. She will see me. She’s expecting a reply.’
With uncanny prescience Sophie knew that her husband’s name would prise the Sibyl out from beneath her afflictions, and raise her cage of prophecy from the Delphic abyss. The maid knocked and entered the great drawing room. Sophie stepped inside the door and paused, assessing the battlefield. Theatrical drapes, pulled back a little, revealed the full extent of the room. A slender, bowed figure in a white lace cap with a poultice tied round her face sat bent double on the sofa, apparently mending a rug. The famous pendulous jaw remained quite concealed, but the nose, spotted red and purple, projected forth. The great head, apparently too weighty to lift, rose tentatively in acknowledgement of the unwelcome intrusion. The maid scuttled up to the Great Lady, pressed the card into her hand, muttered an unintelligible apology and fled, closing the drawing-room doors behind her. Sophie, lurking by the curtains, heard only one word – ‘Max!’
And that name had a magical effect upon the shrunken, morbid shape. The Sibyl straightened, turned, and attempted to rise, her shawl slipping back upon the cushions. All the blinds, pulled half-down, created shadows across the carpets. In the murky dark the two women peered at one another, in appalled surprise.
‘You are Mrs. Lewes?’ Sophie strode forward. She intended her opening salvo to be fierce, rational and unanswerable, but her voice boomed like a cannon in the still, fetid air, her tone scornful and incredulous. Was this pale shade really the great sage to whom all Europe bent the knee? And there was no dancing ape-man to shield and protect the famous writer now. She faced one of her most ardent readers, whose rage, unchained, shattered the silence.
‘I would not wait downstairs only to be told to go away again. I’ve waited long enough for an answer to my letter. That letter I wrote to you over four years ago, the letter you never answered. And I am returning this incautious message you sent to my husband expressing your undying affection. So you at least have been fully answered. You did not have the decency to return my letter to me. Nor did you answer it. You gave it to my husband to make trouble between us.’
She flung down the crumpled note at the Sibyl’s feet. Two white lines appeared on either side of the writer’s purple nose. She was wearing spectacles. Had Sophie, now standing before her, back to the light, taken the trouble to observe her antagonist closely, she would surely have seen a frail old lady, ravaged by toothache. But the young Countess, hat straight as a cardinal’s, a shimmering demon incarnate, busy exorcising her anger in a manner never envisaged by the philosopher Lucian, had no intention of pausing, even to draw breath.
‘I am Sophie, Countess von Hahn, and you have written me into the opening chapters of your new book – a thing you had no right to do. I accuse you of stealing one moment of my life and of distorting the facts. You are not just. And you are not honest. I once admired your books and now you have disappointed me.’
The Sibyl sank back upon the sofa, as if bludgeoned into the cushions. This accusation proved too preposterous to comprehend. Who on earth had allowed one furious, articulate reader to blaze through her quiet drawing room with her voice raised? And who was this young woman after all? What possible connection did she have to Max? The Sibyl’s toothache created a mist in her brain. This room served as her audience chamber, her throne room, the sacred space where her disciples bowed down before her, paid homage to her genius, waited quietly to be granted a moment beside her, a little breath of comfort and guidance from the elderly deity. And where was her mountebank? Her ardent keeper, her defender against unhinged enthusiasms? Her deepest fears rose to the surface, and stuttered out from her swollen jaw.
‘You have judged me,’ she whispered, ‘you scorn me for who I am, for how I have lived. You presume to know how I have suffered.’
The Sibyl answered another tribunal, where she had been judged in absentia, not the one before her. The present confrontation collided at a crossroads. But Sophie stood her ground. She had not stormed the Priory to discuss the Sibyl’s situation or the writer’s feelings, but to give vent to her own. Her savage cry could be heard all down the stairs, where the servants, gathered at the foot, gazed upwards, transfixed with curiosity and alarm.
‘No, you’re wrong. I don’t judge you for what you’ve done or who you are. And frankly, I don’t care what you’ve suffered. Why should I care whether you are, or are not, legally married to Mr. Lewes? Plenty of people live like that in Germany. I wouldn’t be so small-minded. I wasn’t brought up to think about other people in such an ungenerous way. But you, you are not generous. If I had been you and had your choices before me, I would not have written your books in the way that you have done. I would not have told women to be satisfied with self-sacrifice, convention and subservience. I would not have lived one life and believed in another.’
And with that Sophie turned on her heel, flung open the drawing-room doors, and then slammed them behind her. The thud of her boots on the descending stairs vibrated back through the great house. The servants scattered. The Sibyl sat rigid in the half-light, clutching Max’s card, her scorned and loving letter fluttered at her feet, her eyes dimmed.
One way and another the Furies had crossed her threshold.
END OF CHAPTER FIFTEEN