When the Subplot Becomes the Plot
A constant sense of foreboding seems to underpin Sam’s joy in Week 27 of 1661…
What a difference a week makes, yet makes not. Last, I wrote to you from my own bed, my poor sick wife beside me, and yet still optimistic for our health and wealth.
Now I write to you from a bed far from home, my father snoring beside me, the stench of death still occasionally repulsing my nostrils on its way to the windows, and a feeling of…
…what? What am I feeling? Sadness? Gladness?
Maybe there’s a reason those feelings share a rhyme, so close they are in my heart right now.
In this semi-putrid haze, I can’t help but think of all the signs this week that pointed to how it would end. Even on the Lord’s Day, as I hummed to myself on a walk through Gray’s Inn, admiring the fine ladies beneath the hot sun, reflecting on how I had lately enjoyed a great expanse of money thanks to the responsibilities my Lord Sandwich had entrusted unto me, and resolving to make it up to see my poorly Uncle Robert after I was done getting things ready for the Queen’s upcoming journey to England… Even then was I meeting with the Duke of York to explain how our fleet had been unable to obey his orders the day before due to the direction of the wind.
A sign, you see, of how the real control is always in the hands of God and Nature.
This is the way the week toyed with me: moments of joy, but with an undercurrent of unease. On Tuesday, I went to the new theatre in Lincoln’s Inn, where Sir William Davenant has taken the bold approach of staging an opera, with all its machinery, in a small building once used for tennis.
The start was delayed due to a long wait for the King and his aunt – already an ominous portent – but the opening was indeed very fine and magnificent. Well-acted, too, but for a eunuch who was so much out of key that he was hissed off the stage.
Amongst the merriment, though, a board broke over our heads. A great deal of dust fell into the ladies’ necks and the men’s hair, and we made good sport of it – but looking back now, that moment had all the hallmarks of an omen.
“…the real control is always in the hands of God and Nature.”
Elisabeth was well again by midweek, only to join Lady Batten for the burial of John Lawson’s daughter. I couldn’t attend myself because of work, the schedule for which included dinner with my Lady Sandwich. My Lady was mourning her brother Sam, who died the day before of the spotted fever. That’s three omens so far.
Even my old favourite, the Theatre Royal on Vere Street, seemed on the road to ruin. I watched Thomas Killigrew’s tragicomedy Claracilla, which was well-acted – but this house, that used to be so thronged, was empty now Davenant’s opera had begun. A trend I believe will continue, unless they refurbish to accommodate machinery of painted scenery like that now found in Lincoln’s Inn.
By then, my father had sent word that Uncle Robert was by fits stupid, like a man that is drunk, and sometimes speechless. In an effort to cheer myself, I went to The Mitre with Uncle Wight – but he brought the tone down again by complaining about my father travelling to see Uncle Robert without him.
Ah, and that was wherein I encountered the most obvious omen: we happened upon Mr Batersby the apothecary. He had a great deal to say on my uncle’s condition. “I’ll lay my life,” he said, “that bleeding by leeches will cure him. Latch ‘em on his behind, that’s the place.”
It might have been sound advice. But in the moment, I felt sure my father and the doctors in Huntingdonshire would have everything under control, and I resolved not to meddle in it.
“…the auspices suggest it shan’t be so easy…”
The very next day, my Uncle Robert was dead.
I was waked by a messenger this morning with the news. I instantly rose to let others know – in particular Uncle Wight, and of course my Lady, who observed with compassion my need to leave at once. Knowing the marshy lands to which I was headed, I bought myself some new boots from St Martin’s, and joined the messenger in his return coach about noon.
The journey to Brampton took around nine hours. Upon entering, I was immediately hit by the smell – my Uncle’s corpse was laid in a coffin, standing upon joint-stools in the chimney in the hall. How my father hadn’t already caused it to be taken from the house, I do not know – cared he not for the miasma, the stench of putrefaction infecting us all with the Plague?!
I set my Uncle forth in the yard, to be watched all night by two men. My aunt was already in bed, in a most nasty ugly pickle – it made me sick to see it. That she has lost one husband already might lead some to think she should be used to it by now. The strength of her grief regardless suggests she had great love for the most recently departed.
And so here I am, surrounded by sorrow, in the eerie peace of the Fenland countryside – and what is the only thing I can think of?
The Will! What is in the Will?!
Ah, I am so greedy to see it…! As I said at the start, I am of course sorry in some respect, but glad in another: my expectations…
Of course, I did not ask to see it. I shall wait till tomorrow. But sleep eludes me currently, kept at bay by my keen desire for the undercurrent of malaise to make way for pure happiness again.
That, and the fact that the auspices suggest it shan’t be so easy…
In return for these words of mine, please pay just one word of yours. What one word could help you fall asleep in a time of simultaneous sorrow and excitement?
Speak with you again soon – and may the Lord bless you and keep you till then!
What one word could help you fall asleep in a time of simultaneous sorrow and excitement?
Mine is 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'. Challenge anyone to spell it letter by letter after getting into bed late at night, and not be asleep by the second ali...