the wild North.
*
Letters home gave Edwardâs instructions for return in early November, within the agreed time. A large room was made ready for the Lapp women, who, it seemed, were sisters. Furniture was uncovered, fires lit, supplies of meat and fish ordered. Anticipation pulsed among his neighbours.
Edward was a mystery to his peers. His interests were not shared, thought more suitable for old men. At best he was comical, a useful butt, at worst irritatingly abstruse, aloof. Mrs Clavering, celebrated for youthful indiscretions, failed in her ambition to take him in hand.
Adored by his short-lived mother, heâd been a gentle boy, almost effeminate. He wandered the estate through bilberries and gorse-covered forts; collected birdsâ eggs, paying boys in tied cottages to bring more. Set them out tenderly. In winter months, after a pint of port, his widowed father abandoned attempts to remove him from the library. Oneiric hours filled Edwardâs mind with other worlds.
The baronet resolved to push his son out on the grand tour. Edward was delighted. Words, architectural plans, engravings became flesh, stone, heat, colour, Nature. He moped among ruins, sketched, scribbled. He learned how much to give for desired objects. Haggled. Took lessons in love from the Roman demi-monde; thereafter only found women desirable who laughed in a foreign tongue.
He bought the usual classical fragments, but travel and inexhaustible funds bit like addiction. Heâd take a common thing, seek every variation: Japanese silk shoes, Pyreneean espadrilles, Indian wooden clogs, Moroccan leather slippers; funerary flasks and caskets from crude to exquisite; scores of coffee pots.
He loved natural objects made more extraordinary by human ingenuity: carved hornbill skulls, ivory powder horns, a geometrically perfect nautilus shell painted with the Spanish naval defeat of 1639; snuff boxes, cups, knife handles, rings of jade, cornelian, lapis, amethyst, nephrite; a tiny cameo of reindeer in pink agate. He built an extension to the library with countless cupboards, glass cases, batteries of drawers. Encouraged his servants to look and be amazed; never imagined collectors among them.
Edwardâs excursion to Lapland had been difficult within the wagerâs time-limit. It was summer when he arrived in Norway: lack of bread, wine and salt in the far north mattered little in the exhausting beauty of the light. His gifts swiftly bought the two sisters from their father, such was the value of tobacco and spirits, gold brooches, bangles.
Demonstration of success completed the wager. On the Herefordshire estate with its mountainous backdrop, neighbours and friends saw picturesque reindeer nibbling last leaves beyond the ha-ha; found the Lapp sisters quite acceptable, their features almost delicate, figures shapely, clothed not in mephitic skins but dresses of coarse cloth, with belts, necklaces of silver and copper. The two women stood by timidly as Edward explained his hoard of Lappish artefacts, encouraged his guests to try morsels of dried fish and reindeer meat.
Perhaps there was disappointment at the womenâs pleasantness, their shy smiling. Two more decorative oddities in Edwardâs collection. The guests had hoped for signs of disorder, feculence, something more deliciously rancid.
Edwardâs obsession with Lapland had begun years earlier in his fatherâs library where heâd found John Schefferusâs History of Lapland on a distant shelf. The book, already antique, promised â a new World di Ê covered â where lives were lived in hunger, cold, solitude. Edward already liked solitude. In the first year of his reading he tried all three, striking out in wintry Marcher dusk, shivering beneath rocks at midnight with half a game pie. His paltry stick fire died, the cold skewered his bones, he stamped and chanted a mesmeric declension:
Immel Immele Immela
Immel O Immel Immelist
Immeleck Immeliig
*
Letters home gave Edwardâs instructions for return in early November, within the agreed time. A large room was made ready for the Lapp women, who, it seemed, were sisters. Furniture was uncovered, fires lit, supplies of meat and fish ordered. Anticipation pulsed among his neighbours.
Edward was a mystery to his peers. His interests were not shared, thought more suitable for old men. At best he was comical, a useful butt, at worst irritatingly abstruse, aloof. Mrs Clavering, celebrated for youthful indiscretions, failed in her ambition to take him in hand.
Adored by his short-lived mother, heâd been a gentle boy, almost effeminate. He wandered the estate through bilberries and gorse-covered forts; collected birdsâ eggs, paying boys in tied cottages to bring more. Set them out tenderly. In winter months, after a pint of port, his widowed father abandoned attempts to remove him from the library. Oneiric hours filled Edwardâs mind with other worlds.
The baronet resolved to push his son out on the grand tour. Edward was delighted. Words, architectural plans, engravings became flesh, stone, heat, colour, Nature. He moped among ruins, sketched, scribbled. He learned how much to give for desired objects. Haggled. Took lessons in love from the Roman demi-monde; thereafter only found women desirable who laughed in a foreign tongue.
He bought the usual classical fragments, but travel and inexhaustible funds bit like addiction. Heâd take a common thing, seek every variation: Japanese silk shoes, Pyreneean espadrilles, Indian wooden clogs, Moroccan leather slippers; funerary flasks and caskets from crude to exquisite; scores of coffee pots.
He loved natural objects made more extraordinary by human ingenuity: carved hornbill skulls, ivory powder horns, a geometrically perfect nautilus shell painted with the Spanish naval defeat of 1639; snuff boxes, cups, knife handles, rings of jade, cornelian, lapis, amethyst, nephrite; a tiny cameo of reindeer in pink agate. He built an extension to the library with countless cupboards, glass cases, batteries of drawers. Encouraged his servants to look and be amazed; never imagined collectors among them.
Edwardâs excursion to Lapland had been difficult within the wagerâs time-limit. It was summer when he arrived in Norway: lack of bread, wine and salt in the far north mattered little in the exhausting beauty of the light. His gifts swiftly bought the two sisters from their father, such was the value of tobacco and spirits, gold brooches, bangles.
Demonstration of success completed the wager. On the Herefordshire estate with its mountainous backdrop, neighbours and friends saw picturesque reindeer nibbling last leaves beyond the ha-ha; found the Lapp sisters quite acceptable, their features almost delicate, figures shapely, clothed not in mephitic skins but dresses of coarse cloth, with belts, necklaces of silver and copper. The two women stood by timidly as Edward explained his hoard of Lappish artefacts, encouraged his guests to try morsels of dried fish and reindeer meat.
Perhaps there was disappointment at the womenâs pleasantness, their shy smiling. Two more decorative oddities in Edwardâs collection. The guests had hoped for signs of disorder, feculence, something more deliciously rancid.
Edwardâs obsession with Lapland had begun years earlier in his fatherâs library where heâd found John Schefferusâs History of Lapland on a distant shelf. The book, already antique, promised â a new World di Ê covered â where lives were lived in hunger, cold, solitude. Edward already liked solitude. In the first year of his reading he tried all three, striking out in wintry Marcher dusk, shivering beneath rocks at midnight with half a game pie. His paltry stick fire died, the cold skewered his bones, he stamped and chanted a mesmeric declension:
Immel Immele Immela
Immel O Immel Immelist
Immeleck Immeliig
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