Wherein the pained blood falters and goes out;
Soft, and stung softly—fairer for a fleck.
But though my lips shut sucking on the place,
There is no vein at work upon her face;
Her eyelids are so peaceable, no doubt
Deep sleep has warmed her blood through all its ways.
“Gad!” Monckton Milnes whispered to Burton. “Remarkable! Remarkable!”
It was. Swinburne, though shrill-voiced, was so eloquent and evocative in his performance that his poetry became almost mesmeric, raising such an emotive response in the listeners that every other thing they sensed appeared to fuse with his strange lilting intonation, and the crashing waves sounded as if they were eulogising the words and rhythms with far-off acclamations.
Burton strolled and listened and absolutely marvelled.
The poet’s praise of Venus continued until they reached the headland where the outlying cottages of Cullercoats overlooked the beach. He finished:
I seal myself upon thee with my might,
Abiding alway out of all men’s sight
Until God loosen over sea and land
The thunder of the trumpets of the night.
He stopped, took a deep breath, turned to face the group, and said, “Shall we convene in the local tavern before we head back?”
“That was breathtaking, Algy!” Sir Walter said.
“A masterpiece!” his wife agreed.
“Bravo!” Levi cheered.
“A work of genius!” Rossetti declared.
“I found it incred—that is, utterly extraordinary, and, um—” Dodgson added.
Monckton Milnes stepped forward. “Mr. Swinburne, I should very much like to see about getting your work into print.”
Swinburne hopped up and down and waved his arms. “Never mind that now! The tavern awaits! Come along! Come along!”
He scampered up a slope and they followed him into the village.
Eliphas Levi leaned close to Burton and murmured, “Il est un jeune homme très doué, non? But also very strange!”
A few minutes later, they found The Copper Kettle—which overlooked Cullercoats Bay—and settled in its lounge bar. The introductions made on the beach were now supplemented as—in conversations expertly guided by Lady Trevelyan—the men discussed their work and interests.
It was an exceptional gathering of singular personalities: Burton, magnetic, forceful, but somewhat troubled; Monckton Milnes, stylish, charming, and eclectic; Levi, perceptive and inquisitive; Rossetti, complex and a little pensive; Charles Dodgson, quiet, dreamy, and self-conscious; Arthur Hughes, brooding but penetrative in his comments; Sir Walter, passive but jocular; and Swinburne, whose enthusiasms and excitability increased in proportion to his consumption of alcohol, for which he displayed such an inordinate predilection that, three hours later, when the party departed the establishment, he required Rossetti and Hughes to hold him upright.
As they proceeded southward along the Grand Parade, Dodgson’s hat was snatched from his head by the wind and flung far out to sea. “My goodness!” he exclaimed. “Where’s my topper off to? It looks like—it appears that the weather is change—is taking a turn for the worse!”
Burton looked to the west and saw the dark clouds Monckton Milnes had noted earlier, now expanded dramatically and piled high into the upper atmosphere.
“Le jour tombe,” Levi observed.
“Straight back to Wallington, I think, gentlemen,” Lady Pauline announced. “There is a storm coming.”
Burton shivered at the ominous words.
At Tynemouth’s coach house, Sir Walter hired the same two steam-driven landaus his group had arrived in. He, his wife, Rossetti, Hughes, and the barely conscious Swinburne squeezed into one, while Burton, Monckton Milnes, and Levi were joined by Dodgson in the other.
The carriage lurched into motion and Dodgson, who was leaning out of the window and looking at the sky, received a faceful of steam. He dropped back into his seat, coughing. “By golly, I shall never learn my lesson. These steam transports are forever puffing—that is, blowing their fumes into my face!”
“But they make the world more small, non?” Eliphas Levi said. “We travel so much fast de nos jours!”
“I am afraid—I fear they make literature smaller, too, Monsieur Levi.”
“Oui? How is that?”
“If steam has done nothing else, it has at least contrib—added a whole new species to English literature. The booklets—the little thrilling romances, where the—the—the murder comes at page fifteen, and the wedding at page forty—surely they are due to steam?”
“Bien sûr, you speak of the publications for sale at the train stations, non?”
“I do, sir—er—monsieur. And if the Department of Guided Science succeeds in its intentions—its plans, and one day we travel by electricity, then we shall have leaflets instead of booklets, and the murder and the wedding will be—will come on the same page!”
Burton and Monckton Milnes laughed, and the latter said, “Have you read any of Sir Richard’s accounts, Mr. Dodgson?”
“No, sir, I regret not.”
“He stuffs into them so many appended facts, qualifiers, and opinions that your observation has given me a whole new understanding of the term ‘footnote,’ for if steam shortens a journey to the extent that only a booklet may be read, then Burton’s volumes must require one to forgo the railway and take a very long walk!”
The landau, following the other, turned onto the coast road toward Newcastle upon Tyne. The wind gusted against it, causing it to rock.
“Have you known Swinburne for long, Mr. Dodgson?” Burton asked, grabbing at the edge of the bench to steady himself. He stifled a hiss as his arm gave a pang.
“Not at all, Mr. Burt—Sir Richard. I’ve not—I hadn’t ever encountered him until my arrival at Wallington Hall yesterday. It is Rossetti with whom I am—that is, who I am friends with. He strikes me as—I refer to Mr. Swinburne—as a very eccentric fellow. It’s a quite fantast—an amazing thing, but did you know that he cannot feel pain at all?”
“He can’t feel pain? How is that possible?”
“It seems his brain is arranged—is not put together in the normal manner. Indeed, there are certain forms of pain that he even senses—interprets as—as pleasure. According to Rossetti, it has resulted in him acquiring a rather—um—um—peculiar taste for—for—for—”
“Whippingham, Bendover, and Lashworthy,” Monckton Milnes offered.
“Yes.”
“You mean flagellation?” Burton asked.
Dodgson cleared his throat, went beetroot-red, and nodded.
“The English vice,” Levi declared. “You are a race très drôles!”
Monckton Milnes said, “Must I remind you that the Marquis de Sade was French, Monsieur Levi?”
“A philosopher and Utopian! In transgression, he seek to expand the mind, to allow for the establishment of Socialist thought, but you English—ha!—all you want is the whack, whack, whack of the strap!”
Dodgson crossed his arms and legs and mumbled, “Anyway, the more time I spend with—in Mr. Swinburne’s company, the more I think him curiouser and curiouser.”
By the time the two carriages reached the train station in Newcastle, the clouds had filled the sky from horizon to horizon. They were dark and billowing, suggesting gale-force winds at a high altitude. Even at ground level, the gusts were now whistling and howling with growing ferocity.
“It’s the end of our long, hot summer,” Lady Pauline commented as the party climbed aboard the Glasgow train. “And thank heavens for that. You gentlemen will never understand the infernal combination of heat and corsets. I’m certainly not the fainting type, but I came perilously close to it this season.”