“I’ll sup lightly with a glass of canary in my chamber. Sotll Laurence. So’ll this lad. There’s no time to waste.”
I did not normally sleep in the house, but in the small Norman castle on the other side of the stream where Walter Ralegh had first lived when the estate was granted him four years ago and where he now housed the outdoor servants and any servants visitors might bring. But for the several weeks during which the account of the voyage was being written I slept on a couch in an ante-room off Sir Walter’s study, and I saw that couch too seldom.
At ordinary times Sir Walter retired to sleep at midnight and rose at 5 a.m., from then on driving through the day with immense and consuming energy. But this was not an ordinary time, and while he was writing the account of his experiences in Guiana his endurance was limitless and he expected ours to match. I recollect chiefly hours with aching limbs and pricking eyes, sitting copying or making notes or sharpening his pen or standing at his elbow for new instructions.
Although it was all done in a fever of inspiration most pages were written twice and many more often. I remember one lovely day in late October we had worked from six until twelve, and then broke for dinner and a rest. There were a few personal belongings I had left in the castle, so I hurried over in the hot afternoon to fetch them.
The narrow valley between the two houses was threaded by a trout stream, and at the higher end amid a copse of trees Sir Walter had had the stream dammed and a pool created where the Ralegh family and their guests and sometimes the servants at stated hours swam in the summer. At the lower end the stream was spanned by an old stone bridge which also carried the London road on the other side of the wall bordering the estate. Here was a big raised stone seat sheltered by an ancient durmast oak, where Ralegh sometimes sat, and he was already there this afternoon and beckoned me. I saw that he had an ink-horn and some sheets of paper with him.
“It’s a good point of vantage, this,” he said when I climbed up. “Here I can watch the stream and the bubbles of the trout. Or I can see the keep and think of England’s past, or turn to view my house which I trust will play a part in England’s future. As for the present,” he looked over the wall, “it passes by from time to time on horseback or in coach and four, and if I mind to I can greet it as it goes! That’s all helpful to thought and meditation.”
“You have written some more, sir?” I asked, looking at the pages he held.
“I have re-done a page or two. The break of dinner gives one a new sight.”
“The break of dinner always sends my father to sleep.”
“That’s a hazard of nature that comes on in later life … Not, I imagine, that your father is so much older than I. Here, see what you make of this.”
I squatted on the wall and read the page he handed me. It was a description of a day when they had almost reached the limits of their endurance.
“When we reached the tops of the first hills of the plains adjoining the river we beheld that wonderful breach of waters which ran down Caroli: and might from that mountain see the river, how it ran in three parts about twenty miles off, and there appeared some ten or twelve waterfalls in sight, every one as high over the other as a church tower, which fell with such fury that the rebound of water made it seem as if it had been all covered over with a great shower of rain: and in some places we took it at the first for a smoke that had arisen over some great town. For my own part I was well persuaded from thence to have returned, being a very ill footman, but the rest were all so desirous to go near the strange thunder of water, that they drew me on by little and little until we came into the next valley where we might discern the same. I never saw a more beautiful country nor more lively prospects, hills so raised here and there over the valleys, the river winding into divers branches, the plains adjoining without bush or stubble, all fair green grass, the ground of hard sand easy to march on either for horse or foot, the deer crossing every path, the birds towards the evening singing on every tree with a thousand several tunes; cranes and herons of white, crimson and carnation perching on the river’s side, the air fresh with the gentle easterly wind, and every stone that one stopped to take up promising by its complexion either silver or gold.”
For a moment the sonorous prose carried me with the scene he described.
“Copy that, will you.”
“Yes, sir.”
He must have caught some hesitation for he said sharply: “You have some suggestion?”
“Oh, no, sir … Except perhaps … if I may venture it, wasn’t the last line as you wrote it before superior to this one? “
“What? Read it to me.”
“Before, sir, you ended: ‘and every stone that we stepped on girt with grasses and strange flowers.’ Is that not more in keeping with the whole than: ‘and every stone that we stopped to take up promising by its complexion either silver or gold’?”
“You have not lived as long as I.”
“No, sir. Shall I write this now?”
“In a moment. Sit where you are.”
I sat and waited.
“It’s possible, Killigrew, that the interests of style would best be served by the gentle cadences of the first ending. But you must educate yourself to discover that other aims must sometimes be served. This is not merely a journal recording the quest for empire. It is a broadsheet of persuasion, and so one weighs in the balance the virtues of rare flowers against promise of profit, the values of a ringing sentence against the musical clinking sound of coin, and in such case the former gives way.” He took the sheet from me and read it through again. “No, I think there is little wrong with the new ending.
It has style of another sort. It lifts the end instead of letting it fall. I don’t fault it on any count.”
“Very good, sir.”
“One thing that’s not very good, Killigrew, is your obstinacy in not conceding a point when it is won. It’s a grave mistake in a secretary.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Even if you maintain your own opinion against the opinion of your betters, maintain it so in secrecy, not by an expression on your face like a flag nailed to the mast as the ship sinks.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“Did your father find you a handful?”
“I don’t think so.”
“He told me he did. And now and then even here I have noticed that the rebel stirs. We have no ships to board here, boy. Have you found yourself a wench?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you have one in Cornwall?”
I hesitated, and wondered if he had been told something. “I had one but I lost her, sir.”
“By death?”
“By marriage to another man.”
Sir Walter turned to gaze over the wall into the road, but it was only a wagon passing drawn by two oxen, with an old man, drooping between wisps of white hair leaning forward in his seat, whip held crosswise like a bow.
“It is never too young to be a rebel, but it is bad to feel too much about women too soon. At seventeen they should be a pleasant jest or a means of advancement.”
“As you said, sir, I am not educated.”
He glanced at me, his eyes assessing. “Your acceptance of that fact, boy, would carry a greater conviction if you admitted it with a show of humility. The way you speak suggests that you think your ignorance is a better condition than my wisdom.”
I did not know what to say so said nothing.
“Not that I have paused always,” he said, “to give myself the best advice. Or I should not be here, reduced to pen and paper to explain myself at a tedious length when a single audience would do.”
I picked up the sheet he had dropped.
“This journal, Maugan, is in effect a letter to the Queen, who still holds me in disfavour for my marriage. She was my great love and remains so on a queenly level. Knowing her with some closeness through the years I have come not only to an esteem of her brilliant qualities but to an understanding of her susceptibilities. And I have met few women with a greater susceptibility to the colourof gold. Now get off with those sheets and make a good copy. I have no liking for arrogant secretaries.”