Memories and Manuscripts

[Steven Hunley]

“It’s the publishers, Richard. They’re driving me mad with offers, and after I read your papers and annotations I’m at my wit’s end. I’m afraid, what with the contents, that they’ll value the sensational nature of the work, and end up selling it on Grubb Street or street corners and tout it as the latest pornography.”

“It’s true they’ll do anything to make a pretty penny. Publishers are ruffians. Like American outlaw barons, unscrupulous publishers will try to sell anything to make money, even lists of dirty laundry. I refuse to soil my hands with most of them.”

Richard looked pensively into the fire place that had been warm and alive when Isabel turned down the covers, but now was only a few glowing ashes. He considered.

“And I’m not there to defend my work.”

“They know your work is worth more, now that…” her eyes cast downward in anguish.

“Now that I’m gone?”

“Yes.”

Richard looked again and was illuminated by what he saw.

“The solution is burn them. Gather them up and set them ablaze. My journals, our personal letters, anything that might be misunderstood. But keep The Sentiment of the Sword, and Wanderings on Three Continents, and The Jew, the Gypsy and El Islam. Make money from those instead.”

“Whatever you say, My Darling.”

“The key to the library door is under the baby palm in the brown Sudanese pot.

And as quickly as he appeared he turned to go.

“But, Richard, when will I see you again?”

“Isabel, Dear One…” he related sadly. “You know I can’t tell you that.”

And then he was gone.

***
The last desk held the papers Isabel sought. These were the key to her dream. They made quite a pile, these annotations and manuscripts to the Perfumed Garden. They were absolutely wonderful and they were a pain in the neck. But now she had her instructions and knew what to do with them. Richard had seen to that. The orders weren’t written down; they’d been transmitted last night in person so there would be no mistakes. A gentleman honors his word.

That night led to the present. Isabel found the key, gathered the papers, tied them together with hemp twine using a bow one used for Christmas and sat them on her dresser.

Searching and examining the papers minutely seemed endless and took all day. The clock on the mantel struck seven. Isabel was late. She got up and rushed to her jewel box and found a gold chain hung with its charm, a bloodstone heart Richard gave her when he left to find the source of the Nile. Next she hurried to the closet and found the black and red velvet ball gown she wore the night they first met. Isabel put on the dress and checked in the mirror. Then on went her stockings and slippers. Shadows were growing longer with each passing minute.

Outside, still visible from the French windows, the sun was a fiery golden disc flattening on the horizon. Its slanting rays illuminated a thin line of smoke rising from what was left of the gardener’s pile of leaves. Lifting the stack of papers, she dashed down the stairs and out into the garden, and like Cinderella, one of her slippers slipped off and was lost among the roses that bordered the staircase.

She found the gardener’s rake and stirred the remains of the fire. Sparks flew and flames were reborn among the ashes. Isabel took a moment and threw in the private letters.

Ashes twisted into heart-shapes and teardrops rose into the twilight. The willow’s small leaves started trembling at the gentle caress of a breeze. English roses dipped their glorious heads in shame. The queen of flowers showed no empathy.

She took several handfuls of journal entries and tossed them in next. Small branches began to writhe in the wind. The fire burned brightly when red flames licked the air. White puffy clouds on the rim of the world turned black and the sun gilded their edges on its endless dive into the horizon. Isabel took a deep breath and picked up the annotations to the Scented Garden, Richard’s new version of the Perfumed Garden. It was a heavy burden in more ways than one.

She held the manuscript between her breasts with both hands, like a lover. Then she threw it in the flames as if it were trash. Some pages caught fire and burned at the edges first, and were carried skyward in swirling updrafts of heat.

There went Way the Tenth.

Others started burning in the center and flames crept towards the edges, and these too spiraled upward so that black ragged ashes rained down on the garden and the wall and beyond to the trees and dark somber fields lying nearby. Each page took time to consume as if the fire wanted nothing to do with the business. Isabel, however, remained steadfast at her task. When it was finished she stirred the ashes, propped the rake near the door to the lathe house, and after retrieving her slipper, returned to the house never saying a word, and climbed the stairway to her room with its four-poster bed, tired and exhausted, yet trembling in anticipation. Her pale fingers grasped the heart-shaped stone hanging between her breasts. And although it was stone it was warm.

There was silence, pure unadulterated silence, enveloping the house like a fog.

Isabel approached the dresser. Instead of the nightgown she wore last night she chose another. More like a shift, it had small straps for her round shoulders, and tiny buttons and ties on the bodice, and ties alone on the split in the middle over her heart. She pushed her hair to one side and slipped it over her head, and watched in the mirror as she pulled it down over her figure. It was shear and the finest Egyptian cotton. She’d made it to fit after Richard returned with a bolt of cloth wrapped up in a camel-skin bag. It flattered her in the same way a courtier flatters a queen, which is to say, with sincerity and reverence. Then she brushed her long flowing hair, but instead of tying it up, she arranged the curls just so, and let it hang naturally wherever it fell.

She noticed the small buttons and ties on her bodice and laughed.

“The finest swordsman on the continent always had trouble with these! I’d swear the old campaigner was a bundle of nerves like a raw recruit!”

She unbuttoned the first three…or so. She untied ties in intimate strategic places.

Then she drew closer to the mirror and checked her champagne eyes. They had just the right sparkle, like Chateaux Lafitte Rothschild ‘76. Then she pinched her cheeks until they blushed like a bold ripe peach.

Slipping down between the Egyptian sheets, she nestled her head on her pillow and arranged her dark hair in the most seductive patterns possible. The clock ticked on the mantel, and every tick marked a moment closer to her lord.

Hovering on the threshold of awareness, Isabel quoted Shakespeare, a line from Hamlet that Richard wrote once in a love note. At the time it seemed theatrical and silly. Now it was her mantra, and the last thing she said as she fell where she wanted.

“… and by a sleep to say we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep; to sleep: perchance to dream...”

As the slumbering woman waited, the doors overlooking the garden sparkled and glittered. Winds of Time stirred up the fire, reflected in the diamond-shaped panes of the tall French windows. A dog and a cat fought a duel over a scrap of meat. Both young men and old spoke of the horrors of war. An elderly stick-man flew a kite in the moonlight, and dew drops infested the lawn like fireflies on parade…and lovers? Lovers once separated by circumstance now lay secure in each other’s arms. The reason was simple. Sleeping with your mate is the only patented remedy guaranteed to cure longing.

And all is right in Trieste.

©Steven Hunley 2012

[Hawkman]

Most entertaining Steven. I have thoroughly enjoyed this tongue in cheeky rollercoaster ride through your fertile imagination. Incidentally, When I was at college I made a film about bees which had a scene in which a nun was required to be seen reading a copy of The Perfumed Garden. (I know, don't ask!) Anyway, I was having the devil's own time finding a copy. In desperation, and with my tongue firmly in my cheek, I asked one of the female lecturers if she knew where I might find one. She replied that she'd ask her friend, as she was bound to have it because she was a herbalist. Hi, Ho. In the end, the nun wound up reading "The Joy of Sex, but it wasn't quite as good to my mind - lol. Then of course there was the additional hazard when a real nun inconveniently turned up in the middle of the shoot and wanted to talk to her 'sister'. Such are the joys of guerilla filmmaking

Live and be well - H

[AuntShecky]

Well!

I'm glad to see that you've completed this magnum opus, but I bet probably not as glad as you are. You're undoubtedly exhausted, relieved, and not a little proud, which you should be.

Here's why I think this is an achievement:
It wasn't until I got to the second chapter that I realized that this is speculative fiction (or imagined biography) about a real person, in this case, Richard Burton --not the Welsh actor and one of E.T.'s former husbands--but the world-famous explorer, writer, etc., Sir Richard Burton. Just a quick check of the wiki machine told me that you did a copious amount of research which you for the most part cleverly wove into the fabric of your narration.

Within several patches of dialogue Burton reveals himself to be just the polymath (and multilinguist) he was in real life. He drops factoids (or whatever the 19th c. term for them was) as easily as present-day Hollywood types drop names. I have to wonder, though, if his colleagues and acquaintances thought he was a know-it-all or show-off, if not an insufferable bore. (It's probably a godsend that there were no such things as
thirty-five mm. color film and slide projectors in those days. Stereopticons, maybe.)

But there was one aspect of Burton's life that I guess wasn't exactly soporific. Evidently what sparked your creative imagination was speculation about Burton's marriage. According to the wiki thing, Isabel was about a decade his junior,and he married her when he was forty-- a piece of information which, coupled with the fact that --among Burton's many accomplishments-- he translated The Kama Sutra, would pique the curiosity of nearly every red-blooded, breathing reader of either gender or any age. Not only that, Richard and Isabel reflected the era in which they lived; underneath the superficial and self-righteous prudishness of the Victorian Age there was an underbelly of sensual excess, blending into the decadence marking the fin de siecle years. A case in point, one of Burton's friends was Swinburne, who shared his interest in erotica. Your story reflects both this historical perspective and Burton's supposed proclivities with its depiction of the role-playing conjugal games (including costumes!)

The story is right on the money with its dramatisation of how authorities criticized and sought to censor some of Burton's work; it is also true that Isabel burned the translation of The Perfumed Garden after her husband's death. (How exactly she arrived this decision is where your story takes liberties and deviates from the biographical facts, but it's quite a creative and unique take.)

In addition to that kind of excess, almost every aspect of Victorian life--furnishings, food, fashion, etc.-- was ostentatious through and through, as typified by the iconic Victorian "gingerbread" house. Again your story reflects that. BUT--

we only need to know a few of the details about Isabel's ballgowns, china,
sumptuous furnishings etc.--either to establish a sense of Burton's wealth and
certainly his world-wide experiences. However, as one of Hawkman's earlier replies points out, you need to tamp down your own excesses --egregious stylistic flourishes--in the descriptions. Avoiding the tendency to explicate too much will allow the exotic life of the Burtons will emerge and stand out more clearly. A rule of thumb is: include descriptions only if the added information enhances the story. (Like "a little garlic," you know?)

Another rule of thumb is to cut the material you most enjoyed writing-- as
Faulkner and before him Quiller-Couch said, "Murder your darlings" Here's an article (click) which sort of agrees with me, but then allows for a little self-indulgence.

For instance, the syntax of the second para. in the first section is convoluted, similar to "Yoda" speech. Not only that, the subject of those sentences "they" is vague and the verbs are passive. Participles are useful tools to elaborate on a description and also to help vary sentence structures, but you have to take care that they don't "dangle" and that they are close to the object or person described. Otherwise, they can be confusing and present a kind of unintentional double entendre : as in "She never held being a fantastic lover against him either." (It reminds me of that old tired joke: "If I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me?")

Finally, Steven, this is a hugely ambitious undertaking, and I believe you did
your subject proud.

EDIT--2/11/2012 7:30pm EST:
There's an anecdote about Isabel which is in the Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, pub. 1985, pages 88-89: in which it states that Isabel Arundell always wanted to marry Richard, but that their engagement was lengthy, mainly because Richard was constantly traveling. But she didn't let the time go to waste, using it "to milk cows,groom horses, ride astride. She sought out a
celebrated fencer and demanded that he take her on as a pupil." When the fencing teacher asked her why, she replied: "So that I can defend Richard whenever he is attacked."

[Steven Hunley]

Here's a book I'm bound to read: http://youtu.be/r1JYZmT2uPQ