The Glasgow slow train—the express didn’t stop near Wallington—halted at a succession of towns and villages until, at nine o’clock, it reached Kirkwhelpington, which was little more than a hamlet, lacking even a small station. Only the Trevelyan party was getting off here, and the guardsman brought from his van at the back of the three-carriage train a set of wooden steps, which he placed beneath the door to allow the nine passengers to alight.
Swinburne had by now recovered with no ill effects after his lunchtime indulgence. As the locomotive chugged away and heavy drops of rain began to slant down, he laughed, put his face to the sky, and hollered:
Outside the garden
The wet skies harden;
The gates are barred on
The summer side:
“Shut out the flower-time,
Sunbeam and shower-time;
Make way for our time,”
Wild winds have cried.
“You’ll catch your death,” Lady Pauline fussed, grabbing him by the elbow. The rest followed as she hurried the little poet along a path toward a large farmhouse. The wind and rain rapidly increased in fury, soaking them all.
“By God!” Rossetti shouted above the clamour. “Old England is in for a battering!”
Upon reaching the ramshackle building, they were greeted by a burly giant of a man who hustled them into a barn in which was stored one of Wallington Hall’s vehicles: a very large and ornate stagecoach.
Sir Walter said, “Bless my soul, Mr. Scoggins, what weather! Can you drive us home in this downpour?”
“I ’ave no objection,” the farmer replied. He eyed Burton, Monckton Milnes, and Levi. “More o’ ye a-goin’ back than what come out, though. Might be a tight squeeze. Would one o’ the gents be willin’ t’ sit up top wi’ me?”
“I’ll do so,” Burton volunteered.
Scoggins set about fetching four horses and, with Burton’s help, harnessed them to the stage. He then ran to the farmhouse and returned with a set of waterproofs, which Burton donned. The passengers climbed aboard, Scoggins and Burton mounted the driver’s box, and moments later the vehicle was bouncing and swinging eastward, with rain hammering against it and wind slapping at its side. Thunder roared overhead, and the countryside was one second buried in pitch darkness and the next vividly illuminated, until it achieved a vague state of permanency in the form of an after-image etched onto Burton’s retina.
The journey was short—two miles—but tested them all. Those inside the stage were thrown about as it jolted through ruts and potholes, while the two men up top were soaked to the skin, even through their waterproofs.
To Burton’s relief, a flash of lightning finally revealed the huge Palladian-style manor.
They’d arrived at Wallington Hall.
With one foot curled up on the chair beneath him, Algernon Swinburne was declaiming verse, introducing to the gathering his latest—but incomplete—work. His consumption of alcohol—which had resumed as soon as they’d arrived at the Trevelyan residence, changed into dry clothes, and gathered in the large and lavishly appointed sitting room—appeared to have no effect on his performance; his voice was clear, the words enunciated with passion and style. His audience was entranced. They listened in rapt silence, but Wallington Hall itself was not at all quiet, and the recitation was accompanied by ghastly moans, sobs, screams, and howls from the chimney as the wind moved in the flue, sounding like a horde of tormented ghosts.
Swinburne finished:
I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even so.
For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span;
A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.
So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep.
For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.
For a short period afterward, Lady Pauline and her guests spoke not a word.
There came a loud rattle and crash as a slate was dislodged from the roof and fell to the patio outside the French doors.
Burton found himself dwelling on a line from earlier in the poem: Time and the Gods are at strife, ye dwell in the midst thereof.
Charles Dodgson broke the spell. “A lament, Mr. Swinburne? You regret the passing of—the death of paganism and the rise of—of Christianity?”
“When we turned our eyes to the sky,” Swinburne replied, “and placed our faith in the unknowable, we ceased to worship the ground beneath our feet and all that springs from it to sustain us. See how our mighty machines now despoil it! My hat, Dodgson, I rue the day we became blinded by hope and repudiated responsibility for the world in which we live. I would rather we strive to understand what definitely is than place reliance on what probably isn’t.”
Arthur Hughes said, “But can you not see that the intricate beauty of this world is nothing short of miraculous? How can its creator be anything less than divine?”
“I recently met Charles Darwin,” Burton interjected. “You’ve heard of him? The Voyage of the Beagle? He’s formulated a rather astonishing and elegant hypothesis in which he proposes that a particular system of nature is enough to explain the extraordinary diversity and interconnectedness of life.” He went on to repeat, as best he could, Darwin’s summary of the theory of natural selection.
“No God need apply,” Rossetti murmured.
Sir Walter opened his mouth to speak. He was cut off by a splintering crash as the French doors suddenly flew open and wind came shrieking into the chamber, overturning glasses and small tables, sending ornaments, antimacassars, and doilies flying, and causing the guests to leap out of their chairs in panic.
Burton and Eliphas Levi dived across the room and forced the doors shut.
“The latch has broken,” Burton called to the others. “Rossetti, drag that chair over—we’ll jam it against the handles.”
This was done, and with the doors secured, they surveyed the chaos.
“I call an end to all discussions relating to God,” Sir Walter proclaimed, “for whether He exists or not, we have obviously infuriated Him! What!”
Lady Pauline summoned the butler and asked him to have the staff clean up. The group then divided, with the Trevelyans ushering Rossetti, Hughes, and Dodgson to Lady Pauline’s private gallery, while Burton, Monckton Milnes, Levi, and Swinburne retired to the library. There, until long past midnight while the storm raged on with ever-increasing ferocity, they discussed the merits of Darwin’s theory. Even Eliphas Levi, who’d trained as a Catholic priest, agreed that it had the potential to lead mankind to a new respect and responsibility for the world and its many wonders.
Despite his growing state of inebriation, Swinburne so impressed Burton and Monckton Milnes with his unique outlook and intuitive intelligence that, by two in the morning, they’d invited him to join the Cannibal Club. Burton had taken an instant liking to the poet. They shared a similar philosophical outlook—an aversion to physical, moral, and intellectual boundaries; a fascination with the banned, the censored, and the denunciated; and a restless dissatisfaction with the mores and manners of British society—but he also detected in Swinburne an indefinable ennui, as if a normal life couldn’t offer the poet even one jot of fulfilment. This, Burton understood.