Free Bear by Marian Engel Page A

That gave her a perverse desire, which she suppressed, to reveal his truth, anda vivid memory of courses in Victorian history. Suddenly her life on the newspaper seemed ephemeral and impoverished (and it is true that Greek newspapers, like certain insects, are called ‘ephemerides’), and she changed her life in order to find a place for herself in the least parasitic of the narrative historical occupations. She went upstairs to work. The bear took some time to follow her.She was at herdesk when he stood full height at the top ofthe stairs, she paid no attention to him. She had found an autographed first edition of Major Richardson’s Wacousta, inscribed to John Cary with regards in 1832. She wished she had saleroom catalogues to ascertain its value. Meanwhile, she catalogued it and held it a long time in her hands. It was a rare, rare bird, worth coming here for.There were other valuable books, Boston editions that were in fact pirated Canadian editions,produced without revenue to English and French authors, but nothing, so far, to equal Wacousta. Strange I have never read it, she thought, but I won’t read this copy.Get myself a reading copy from Toronto and compare the texts. Well, Cary, you were somebody after all if you knew Richardson.“Lie down, by duck, my beau,” she said, for the find had put her in good humour. Then she reached for the next book, shook it for notes, and opened it. Trelawny’s remembrances of Byron and Shelley. She opened it and began to read (for it was not a sacred copy, not a rarity, it was dated London, 1932).
    Trelawny? The man who burned Shelley’s body and saved the heart. Yes, that Trelawny. The pirate. Giant of a man. Went to Greece with Byron after Shelley died. She began to read, enthralled.She had never read this book before, though the subject interested her. Why? Someone, some scholar, had told her it was a pile of rubbish. Most autobiography is rubbish, shethought. People remember things all wrong. But what amusing rubbish this is!What a man! Big. Abusive. A giant.A real descendant of the real Trelawny, the one about the twenty thousand Cornishmen. Oh, I’ll believe he’s a liar. Look at the bear, dozing and drowsing there, thinking his own thoughts. Like a dog, like a groundhog, like a man:big. Trelawny’s good. He speaks in his own voice.He is unfair, but he speaks in his own voice. She sat up and said that out loud. The bear grunted. She got down on her knees beside him. Colonel Cary had left her tiny, painful, creepily paper-saving notes. She was stillsearching the house to find his voice. She had an awed feeling that Trelawny and the bear were speaking in Cary’s voice. Trelawny wanted to find a poet, to know a poet, because he couldn’t be one,and he was romantic about p oets.He lived to be old, he knew Swinburne and the pre Raphaelites. There’s some connection there. Cary wanted an island.
    She was excited. She wanted to know how and who this Cary was.Trelawny. Colonel Cary.The bear. There was some connection, some unfingerable intimacy among them, some tie between longing and desire and the achievable. She lay beside the bear and read more Trelawny. Appalling blowhard, savage to both Byron and Mary Shelley. Byron was too sedentary. Shelley couldn’t swim. He bought the boat for Shelley. It wasn’t a good one. She read about the drowning.Then she skipped to the end ofthe book.Oh Christ, he turned the shroud back to have a look at Byron’s lame foot. Disgusting man. All the Victorians, early or late, she thought,were morbid geniuses. Cary was one ofthem and bought himself an island here. He didn’t have Ackerman’s Views or Bartlett’s prints to go by.He sensed what he wanted and came and found it. How did he start wanting it? Did he come entranced by the novels ofMrs .AphraBehn, then move on to Atala and the idea of the noble savage, then James Fenimore Cooper? He came for some big dream. He knew it was going to be hard. There were no servants who would come