Simply Villette 🕯️ (and a little abbey-loitering)

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

So where am I? You who know the noises. Yes, I'm in the Ladies Chapel of Sherbourne Abbey, Sunday evening, sacred Sunday. Here I come. Here's my bench by the radiator. I used to come so often before my mother died, and I used to sit just here so I could lean against the edge and go make that noise that you make when you get older, that kind of ooise. It's not the same noise as when someone brings you a cup of tea. That's a kind of ooh. It's a different noise. But yeah, we all make our noises as we get older. I think I think they're self-soot soothing noises. And I'm sitting here in the brightly lit. It's it's been refurbished, the ladies' chapel. So there's but it was once the area that the headmaster lived in on two floors. So if you look up, you can see a lovely old timber, timber walled room, and it you can just see the windows. It'd be nice to go up at some point, but it's prettily done, really attractive. The timber's a really lovely oak, you know, the oak brown colour, but it's not faded, it's got a richness to it. The altar's lit up, and I've brought Villette. I thought, why don't I do what I used to do quite a lot and just do a little bit of reading here. I hope perhaps the organist might stay and do a little bit of practising, which he sometimes does. And I've brought some coins to light a candle, so maybe I'll do that now and then come back in a second and start reading it when it's quiet and down. There's just been the even song service. I've been out on a on a dog walk, and uh it's really nice to sit in here and to feel my bones rest and to feel the presence of the Abbey around me. I've lit the candle and I'm now sitting down, and I'm not gonna put the microphone on because I want you to enjoy whatever noises there are around me, and I'll start Villette and after a few pages I'll probably then go home and carry on where you'll hear it in better quality. But I hope you'd appreciate to feel that with this first part you're here with me in the abbey, enjoying the feeling of having this hundreds of year old building all around you, and the nice, comforting sound of footsteps, as there always would have been footsteps to and fro, chit-trot, chit-trot. We're like ants. Every ant has its little purpose, and but when you look from above, it just looks as though they're all higgledy-piggledy running around you know, hopelessly, as though they're running around going, what do I do next? What do I do next? But in actual fact, they're probably like us, thinking, right, I'm going from here to the bank and I'm going from here to the cafe or from here to the next job. Sometimes it's funny when uh we watch the dogs in the garden and my and the one dog will just go off and my son will say, right, I'm going off this direction or for I'm not quite sure why, but and he would basically tease them uh for having no intelligence and not really knowing why they're going around from one place to the other. I mean, Labradors are definitely without purpose, that's for sure. Now, where did we get with Villette? What was she up to? She's got these men, she's got letters disappearing. What is she feeling? What is she hoping? What do you feel about our beloved Lucy Snow? Would you like her as a sister? If you're a man, would you like her as a girlfriend or wife? Well, say if you're a woman, of course, and would you like her as a daughter, a sister, a friend? I think I'd like her as a friend. And I think there would be so much about her that I would admire and want to be like. She's similar in character, I think, to one of my closest friends, Claire, who we call Auntie Claire because she's my son's godmother. And those are the bells ringing. Seven. I don't think you can hear them. Before we start, I was sitting here thinking about those two men, Monsieur Paul and then lovely Graham, and how what different characters they are, and how brilliantly their characters are presented, and how clever Charlotte Bronte is because she doesn't, as a writer, write lots about their characters. Their characters you have to work out for yourself in how they talk and glances they make and sudden movements they make or or don't make, and well it's i i it's an interesting way to try to draw characters and it's um it's it shows that if you're considering writing, which which I am, you don't don't feel you have to do the whole kind of, you know, like when you're at school, so this is this individual and this is what he looked like, and this was his character, because what there's nothing left for the reader to work out for the for themselves. And I was also thinking about the evolutionary reasons why women like the bad boy, and because I was thinking, why would a woman want to choose a bad guy? And you know, why would you want to choose someone who might leave you, leave your children, and leave you exposed? And it's a risky, it's a risky thing to do. And then I thought it has to be, because she realizes, although of course none all of this would be subconscious, she, I think I've been locked in. That's funny. Worst place to be locked in, aren't there? I've I could just heard the doors being locked. I'm sitting here quietly in the corner, like a mouse by the candles. I've never been locked in a church before, nearly I have. So I was thinking from the woman's point of view, thousands of years ago, thousands, I don't know, millions, who knows. But you choose the bad guy because you know that you're you can bet, and you're it's probably eight out of ten risk that it's it's in your favour that he's going to do well in the social group you're in, because other men are going to be wary of him and are uh therefore going to uh not pester you, not bother your babies and children, and leave you to your own devices. Also, other men might be obliging and actually sort of fawn and help you, and not only that, but the bad guy has more chance of working his way up to being group leader because I don't suppose it was the nice guys that got to that position. And you can see that when you watch nature programmes about apes and so on, and you know, it's it's not the kind ones who get to the top, unfortunately. It really has gone completely quiet here. Right, I'm gonna let you listen now to the silence. And on one occasion she got locked in, and they sh they were shutting the abbey for two weeks to refurbish it, and day by day she ran out of sustenance, and they found her after two weeks lying on her back in front of the order. A gothic tale. Well let's start Villette. I can't think of a better opportunity. Chapter twenty two The Letter When all was still in the house, when dinner was over and the noisy recreation hour passed, when darkness had set in and the quiet lamp of study was lit in the refectory, when the externs were gone home and the clashing door and clamorous bell hushed for the evening, when Madame was safely settled in the Salamanger, in company with her mother and some friends, I then glided to the kitchen, begged a bougie for one half an hour for a particular occasion, found it found acceptance of my petition at the hands of my friend Gauton, who answered Mesert Chouchu Vuzonore de Sivoule, and light in hand I mounted noiseless to the dormitory. Great was my chagrin to find that in the apartment a pupil gone to was gone to bed indisposed, greater when I recognised amid the muslin nightcap borders the figure chiffonet of Mistress Ginevre Fanshaw, supine at this moment it's true, but certain to wake and overwhelm me with chatter when the interruption would be least acceptable. Indeed, as I watched her, a slight twinkling of the eyelids warned me that the present appearance of repose might be but a ruse assumed to cover sly vigilance over Timon's movements. She was not to be trusted, and I had so wished to be alone just to read my precious letter in peace. Someone's coming. So I've been told to go, and the last one here. But am I just going or have I now come into the chancel at the choir and looked up? And oh, I'm looking up now at the ceiling, the ceiling. Oh I do know what the ceiling looks like. You must do by now. The ceiling of Sherborn Abbey. Let me take another picture and I'll paste it tonight. Please look at it because it's just so lovely. But before I do that, why don't I go to the Bible that's open? Would you like to know what it says? Okay. Right. But for as much as the people are many, and it is foul weather, so that we cannot stand without, and this is not a work of a day or two, seeing our sin in these things is spread far. Therefore, let the rulers of the multitude stay, and let them all of our habitations that have strange wives come at the time appointed. Okay. I think it's all about Persia. And then Eliadus, Elysimus, Sabbathus, Sardeus. Who knows? Right, let's take a picture of the roof. And as I come out, you're you're really the first thing you hear is just the wheat, wheat, wheat sounds of the of the Swifts high up. And I know sometimes it's easy to muddle up Swifts with House Martins, but House Martins have a white tummy and also fatter. They're fatter and heavier and fly lower, I think, from what I've seen. And I'm not sure they make this noise, they make a more rackety noise. And oh, there are two pigeons with a bit of pigeon love on the old old church wall, and a swifter settling down for the night, and I better go and get myself settled in the house and finish Villette, do some ironing, look after the children, be a mother, you know that that sort of thing. Remember that I've got responsibilities. Do you hear them? I'm now sitting on my bed and it's 15 minutes past nine and I've been chatting with my daughter lots and my son. They've been making themselves food, and I'm sitting here with tea and Villette, and I feel really tired, and I can see a week ahead, and I'm thinking, goodness, I really like to go and spend a night in Cornwall or a night doing something. I I often feel not often it's just part of my character that I just always want to go and visit somewhere else. Are you like that, or do you pretty much always stay where you live and going somewhere else is quite rare? I wonder what other people are really like, because I get the feeling that I uh I probably need to grow up a bit and realise that it's not normal to go gallivanting off and scalliwagging myself round Edinburgh and other places, but I love it. It makes me feel so alive when I go to a new city, and then it makes me feel so alive too in coming back. So it really is good from that point of view. I'd love to hear from you. I haven't heard from anyone for a few days, so I if you haven't written in yet, now's your chance. You have my full attention. Email me at gretelm at yahoo.com and I will read whatever you send, I promise. Let's carry on now. And I had so wished to be alone just to read my precious letter in peace. Well, I must go to the classes. Having sought and found my prize in its casket, I descended. Ill luck pursued me. The classes were undergoing sweeping and purification by candlelight, according to hebdominable hebdominable hebdomadal custom. Let me just look that up. So it means weekly, so it must be linked to the word seven heb as in hep, I suppose. Benches were piled on desks, the air was dim with dust, damp coffee grounds used by the Las Courien housemaids instead of tea leaves, darkened the floor. All was hopeless confusion. Baffled but not beaten, I withdrew, bent as resolutely as ever, on finding solitude somewhere. Taking a key whereof I knew the repository, I mounted three staircases in succession, reached a dark, narrow, silent landing, opened a worm eaten door, and dived into the deep, black, cold garret. Here none would follow me, none interrupt, not Madame herself. I shut the garret door. I placed my light on a doddered and mouldy chest of drawers, and I put on a shawl, for the air was ice cold. I took my letter, trembling with sweet impatience. I broke its seal. Will it be long? Will it be short? thought I, passing my hand across my eyes to dissipate the silvery dimness of a suave south wind shower. It was long. Will it be cool? Will it be kind? It was kind. To my checked, bridled, disciplined expectation, it seemed very kind. To my longing and famished thought it seemed, perhaps, kinder than it was. So little had I hoped, so much had I feared. There was a fullness of delight in this taste of fruition, such perhaps as many a human being passes through life without ever knowing. The poor English teacher in the frosty garret, reading by a dim candle, gluting in the wintry air, a letter simply good natured, nothing more, though that good nature then seemed to me godlike, was happier than most queens in palaces. Of course happiness of such shallow origin could be but brief, yet while it lasted, it was genuine and exquisite, a bubble, but a sweet bubble of real honeydew. Dr John had written to me at length. He had written to me with pleasure, he had written in benign benignant mood, dwelling with sunny satisfaction on scenes that had passed before his eyes and mine, on places we had visited together, on conversations we had held, on all the little subject matter, in short of the last few halcyon weeks. But the cordial core of the delight was a conviction the blithe, genial language generously imparted that it had been poured out not merely to content me, but to gratify himself. A gratification he might never more desire, never more seek, an hypothesis in every point of view, approaching the certain, but that concerned the future. This present moment had no pain, no blot, no want, full, pure, perfect. It deeply blessed me. A passing seraph seemed to have rested beside me, leaned towards my heart and reposed on its throb, a softening, cooling, healing, hallowing wing. Dr John, you pained me afterwards, forgiven be every ill, freely forgiven, for the sake of that one dear, remembered good. Are there wicked things not human which envy human bliss? Are there evil influences haunting the air and poisoning it for man? What was near me? Something in that vast solitary garret sounded strangely. Most surely and certainly I heard, as it seemed, a stealthy foot on that floor, a sort of gliding out from the direction of the black recess haunted by the malefactor cloaks. I turned, my light was dim, the room was long, but as I live, I saw in the middle of that ghostly chamber a figure all black or white, the skirt straight, narrow, black, the head bandaged, veiled white. Say what you will, reader, tell me I was nervous or mad, affirm that I was unsettled by the excitement of that letter, declare that I dreamed, this I vow. I saw there in that room, on that night, an image like a nun. I cried out, I sickened. Had the shape approached me, I might have swooned. It receded, I made for the door. How I descended all the stairs I know not. By instinct I shunned the refectory, and shaped my course to Madame's sitting room. I burst in, I said There is something in the Grenier. I have been there. I saw something. Go and look at it, all of you. I said all of you, for the room seemed to me full of people, though in truth there were but four present Madame Beck, her mother, Madame Kint, who was out of health and now staying with her on a visit, her brother, Monsieur Victor Kint, and another gentleman, who, when I entered the room, was conversing with the old lady and had his back towards the door. My mortal fear and faintness must have made me deadly pale. I felt cold and shaking. They all rose in consternation. They surrounded me, I urged them to go to the cannier. The sight of the gentleman did me good and gave me courage. It seemed as if there were some help and hope with men at hand. I turned to the door, beckoning them to follow. They wanted to stop me, but I said they must come this way. They must see what I had seen. Something strange standing. standing in the middle of the garret, and now I remembered my letter left on the drawers with the light. This precious letter, flesh or spirit must be defied for its sake, I flew upstairs, hastening the faster as I knew I was followed. They were obliged to come. Lo, when I reached the garret door all within was dark as a pit, the light was out. Happily someone, Madame, I think, with her usual calm sense, had brought a lamp from the room. Speedily, therefore, as they came up, a ray pierced the opaque blackness. There stood the bougie quenched on the drawers, but where was the letter? And I looked for that now and not the nun. My letter, my letter I panted and plained almost beside myself. I groped on the floor, wringing my hands wildly cruel, cruel doom to have my bit of comfort preternaturally snatched from me ere I had tasted its virtue. I don't know what the others were doing, I could not watch them. They asked me questions, I did not answer. They ransacked all corners, they prattled about this and that, disarrangement of cloaks, a breach or crack of the skylight, I know not what something or somebody has been here was sagely averred. Oh they have taken my letter cried the grovelling, groping monomaniac. What letter, Lucy, my dear girl, what letter? asked a known voice in my ear. Could I believe that ear? No, and I looked up could I trust my eyes? Had I recognised the tone? Did I now look on the face of the writer of that very letter? Was this gentleman near me in this dim garret, John, Graham, doctor Breton, himself? Yes it was. He had been called in that very evening to prescribe for some access of illness in old Madame Kint. He was the second gentleman present in the Sala Manger when I entered Was it my letter, Lucy? Your own, yours the letter you wrote to me. I had come here to read it quietly. I could not find another spot where it was possible to have it to myself. I had saved it all day, never opened it till this evening. It was scarily g scarcely glanced over. I cannot bear to lose it. Oh my letter Hush, don't cry and distress yourself so cruelly what is it worth? Hush, come out of this cold room they are going to send for the police now to examine further. We need not stay here. Come, we will go down a warm hand, taking my cold fingers, led me down to a room where there was a fire. Dr John and I sat before the stove. He talked to me and soothed me with unutterable goodness, promising me twenty letters for the lost one. If there are words and wrongs like knives whose deep inflicted lacerations never heal, cutting injuries and insults of serrated and poison dripping edge, so too there are consolations of tone too fine for the ear, not fondly and forever to retain their echo, caressing kindnesses loved, lingered over through a whole life, recalled with unfaded tenderness, and answering the call with undimmed shine, even out of that raven cloud foreshadowing death himself. I have been since told that doctor Breton was not so nearly perfect as I thought him, that his actual character lacked the depth, height, compass and endurance it possessed in my creed. I don't know he was as good to me as the well is to the parched wayfarer, as the sun to the shivering jail bird. I remember him heroic, heroic at this moment will I hold him to be he asked me smiling why I cared for his letter so very much I thought but did not say that I prized it like the blood in my veins. I only answered that I had so few letters to care for I'm sure you did not read it, said he, or you would think nothing of it. I read it but only once I want to read it again. I'm sorry it is lost, and I could not help weeping afresh. Lucy, Lucy, my poor little god sister, if there be such a relationship here, here is your letter why is it not better worth such tears and such tenderly exaggerating faith? Curious characteristic manoeuvre his quick eye had seen the letter on the floor where I sought it his hand as quick had snatched it up he had hidden it in his waistcoat pocket. If my trouble had wrought with a whit less stress and reality I doubt whether he would have ever acknowledged or restored it. Tears of temperature one degree cooler than those I shed would only have amused Dr John. Pleasure at regaining made me forget merited reproach for the teasing torment. My joy was great it could not be concealed, yet I think it broke out more in countenance than language. I said little Are you satisfied now? asked Dr John. I replied that I was satisfied and happy. Well then he proceeded how do you feel physically? Are you growing calmer? Not much for you tremble like a leaf still It seemed to me however that I was sufficiently calm, at least I felt no longer terrified I expressed myself composed. You are able, consequently, to tell me what you saw your account was quite vague you looked white as the wall, but you only spoke of something not defining what was it a man? Was it an animal? What was it? I never will tell exactly what I saw, said I unless someone else sees it too and then I will give corroborative testimony otherwise I should be discredited and accused of dreaming. Tell me, said Dr Breton, I will hear it in my professional character I look on you now from a professional point of view, and I read perhaps all you would conceal in your eye which is curiously vivid and restless, in your cheek which the blood has forsaken, in your hand which you cannot steady. Come, Lucy, speak and tell me you would laugh if you don't tell me you shall have no more letters you're laughing now. I will again take away that single epistle being mine I think I have the right to reclaim it. I felt railery in his words it made me grave and quiet but I folded up the letter and covered it from sight. You may hide it but I can possess it at any moment I choose you don't know my skill in sleight of hand I might practice as a conjurer if I liked. Mamma said sometimes too that I have a harmonising property of tongue and eye but you never saw that in me did you Lucy? Indeed, indeed when you were a mere boy I used to see both far more than now for now you are strong and strength dispenses with subtlety. But still, doctor John, you have what they call in this country an air fan that nobody can mistake. Madame Beck saw it and liked it, he said, laughing because she has it herself but Lucy give me that letter you don't really care for it. To this provocative speech I made no answer. Graham in mirthful mood must not be humoured too far. Just now there was a new sort of smile playing about his lips very sweet but it grieved me somehow. A new sort of light sparkling in his eyes not hostile but not reassuring. I rose to go, I bid him good night a little sadly. His sensitiveness that peculiar apprehensive detective faculty of his, felt in a moment the unspoken complaint, the scarce thought reproach. He asked quietly if I was offended I shook my head as implying a negative permit me then to speak a little seriously to you before you go you are in a highly nervous state I feel sure from what is apparent in your look and manner, however well controlled, that whilst alone this evening in that dismal, perishing sepulchral garret, that dungeon under the leads smelling of damp and mould rank with Pathysis and Qatar, a place you never ought to enter, that you saw or thought you saw some appearance peculiarly calculated to impress the imagination. I know you are not nor were, subject to material terrors, fears of robbers, etc I am not so sure that a visitation bearing a spectral character would not shake your very mind. Be calm now this is all a matter of the nerves, I see, but just specify the vision You will tell nobody Nobody, most certainly you may trust me as implicitly as you did Per Silas. Indeed, the doctor is perhaps the safer confessor of the two, though he has not grey hair You will not laugh perhaps I may it might do you good, but not in scorn. Lucy I feel as a friend towards you, though your timid nature is slow to trust He now looked like a friend, that indescribable smile and sparkle were gone, those formidable arched curves of lip, nostril, eyebrow were depressed, repose marked his attitude, attention sobbered his aspect. One to confidence I told him exactly what I had seen, ere now I had narrated to him the legend of the house whiling away with that narrative an hour on a certain mild October afternoon, when he and I rode through Bois Long Letang. He sat and thought, and while he thought we heard them all coming downstairs. Are they going to interrupt? said he, glancing at the door with an annoyed expression. They will not come in here, I answered, for we were in the little salon where Madame never sat in the evening, and where it was by mere chance that heat was still lingering in the stove. They passed the door and went on to the Salamanchet. Now, he pursued they will talk about thieves, burglars and so on. Let them do so mind you say nothing and keep your resolution of describing your nun to nobody she may appear to you again. Don't start You think then, I said, with secret horror she came out of my brain, and is now gone in there and may glide out again at an hour and a day when I look not for her I think it's a case of spectral illusion I fear following on and resulting from long continued mental conflict Oh doctor John, I shudder at the thought of being liable to such an illusion it seems so real is there no cure, no preventative happiness is the cure, a cheerful mind the preventative cultivate both No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato to be planted in mould and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of heaven she is a divine dew which the soul on certain of its summer mornings feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of paradise. Cultivate happiness, I said briefly to the doctor Do you cultivate happiness? How do you manage? I am a cheerful fellow by nature, and then ill luck has never dogged me. Adversity gave me and my mother one passing scowl and brush but we defied her or rather laughed at her and she went by There is no cultivation in all this I do not give way to melancholy. Yes, I have seen you subdued by that feeling about Geneva Fanshaw, eh? Did she not make you miserable sometimes? Poo stuff and nonsense you see I am better now If a laughing eye with a lively light and a face bright with beaming and healthy energy could attest that he was better better he certainly was You do not look much amiss or greatly out of condition, I allowed and why, Lucy, can't you look and feel as I do buoyant, courageous and fit to defy all the nuns and flirts in Christendom I would give gold on the spot just to see you snap your fingers try the manoeuvre If I were to bring Miss Fanshaw into your presence just now I vow, Lucy, she should not move me or she should move me but by one thing true yes and passionate love, I would accord forgiveness at no less price. Indeed, a smile of hers would have been a fortune to you a while since Transformed, Lucy, transformed remember you once called me a slave, but I am a free man now. He stood up, in the port of his head, the carriage of his figure, in the beaming eye and man, there revealed itself a liberty which was more than ease, a mood which was disdain of his past bondage. Miss Fanshaw, he pursued, has led me through a phase of feeling which is over I have entered another condition and am now much disposed to exact love for love, passion for passion, and good measure of it too. Ah doctor doctor you said it was your nature to pursue love under difficulties, to be charmed by a proud insensibility? He laughed and answered My nature varies the mood of one hour is sometimes the mockery of the next Well, Lucy, drawing on his gloves, will the nun come again to night, think you? I don't think she will give her my compliments if she does, doctor John's compliments, and entreat her to have the goodness to wait a visit from him. Lucy was she a pretty nun, had she a pretty face you have not told me that yet, and that is the really important point. She had a white cloth over her face, said I, but her eyes glittered. Confusion to her goblin trappings, cried he, irreverently but at least she had handsome eyes bright and soft cold and fixed was my reply. No no we'll have none of her she shall not haunt you, Lucy. Give her that shake of the hand if she comes again. Will she stand that, do you think? I thought it too kind and cordial for a ghost to stand, and so was the smile which matched it and accompanied his good night. And had there been anything in the garret? What did they discover? I believe on the closest examination their discoveries amounted to very little they talked at first of the cloaks being disturbed, but Madame Beck told me afterwards she thought they hung much as usual, and as for the broken pane and the skylight, she affirmed that aperture was rarely without one or more panes broken or cracked, and besides a heavy hailstorm had fallen a few days ago. Madame questioned me very closely as to what I had seen, but I only described an obscure figure clothed in black. I took care not to breathe the word nun. Certain that this word would once suggest to her mind an idea of romance and unreality, she charged me to say nothing on the subject to any servant, pupil or teacher, and highly commend my discretion in coming to her private salamanger instead of carrying the tale of horror to the school refectory. Thus the subject dropped I was left secretly and sadly to wonder in my own mind whether that strange thing was of this world or of a realm beyond the grave, or whether indeed it was only the child of malady, and I of that malady the prey The next chapter is chapter twenty three Vashti and it starts to wonder sadly, did I say? No, a new influence began to act upon my life and sadness for a certain space was held at bay thank you for joining me this Sunday evening and I wish you a restful and peaceful night with lots of love and a very good night.