The Autograph Man Read Online Free

The Autograph Man
Book: The Autograph Man Read Online Free
Author: Zadie Smith
Tags: Fiction
Pages:
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they were. And then they went and had nine children, which seems rather
more
than fresh. To process the nine-children fact you have to, at some point, imagine Victoria as pretty fresh in the bedroom, and that takes some doing. But still, the facts are the facts. Here’s another one: after Albert dies, Victoria continues to have his razor and shaving bowl—filled to the brim with hot water—brought in every morning to their bedroom as if he were in a position to remove facial hair. She wears black for forty years. These days, there is most likely a name for that sort of thing. Something like: Excessive Grief Syndrome (EGS). But in the late nineteenth century, with a few exceptions, most people were still prepared to call it love. “Ah, how she loved him,” they say to each other, shaking their heads and buying posies for tuppence a bag in Covent Garden or somewhere. A lot of things that are syndromes now had simpler names back then. It was a simpler time. That’s why some people like to call them the good old days.
    MORE FACT . On the magnificent mosaic that wraps itself around the Albert Hall, the following is engraved: “This Hall was erected for the Advancement of the Arts and Sciences, and works of industry of all nations, in fulfillment of the intentions of Albert, Prince Consort.” He is dead, you see, by the time it opens in 1871, so whether his intentions are fulfilled is rather a matter for conjecture. Clearly, Victoria feels that intentions have been fulfilled sufficiently, for she opens it herself and praises the big red elliptical structure with its unfortunate echo problem; she visits it regularly throughout the rest of her life. We can even imagine her touring it alone sometimes, or maybe with one lady-in-waiting tracing the increasingly worn red velvet of the seats with her fingertips, ripped through by EGS, thinking of her dead husband and the fulfillment of his intentions. She feels very certain, Victoria, that she knows at all times precisely what Albert’s intentions were, or would have been had he ever thought about such and such a thing—she’s one of those types of women. She traces his death and her mourning around the country. She leaves a doleful trail of statues and street names, museums and galleries. Albert’s intention was ever to become something big in England. Something famous. Not just the awkward mustachioed slightly overweight German who brought us the Christmas tree, but something popular and loved. Victoria sees to it. Every new statue, every new building, causes someone to remark, “Ah, how she loved him,” while swishing their skirts and patting a little chimney sweep on the head in Whitechapel or wherever. She mourns in public, Victoria, and everybody mourns with her. That’s another reason they call it the good old days. Back then, people felt things in unison, like the sudden chorus that leaps from a country church when the choir starts to sing.
    FINAL FACTS : one could possibly, if one felt like it, date the current pliancy of the phrase “Arts and Sciences” to the inauguration of Victoria’s Albert Hall. “Arts and Sciences” did at one point mean Painting and Stuff and Petri Dishes and Stuff. It was quite a specific, stiff type of phrase and there wasn’t a lot of room in it. The Albert Hall (one could argue, if one had a mind to) helped change that. From the outset, you could go to see pretty peculiar things in that huge elliptical dome with the bad acoustics which caused every whisper in the stalls to be heard. In 1872, for example, you could see some people demonstrating Morse code (Gladys in Block M, Seat 72, to Mary sitting next to her: Q.
What’s he doing, Mary, love?
A.
Tapping something, I should say, dear
). In 1879, the first public display of electric lighting is given (Mr. P. Saunders, Block T, Seat 111, to his nephew, Tom:
Marvelous. Bloody marvelous
). In 1883, there is an exhibition of bicycles (Claire Royston, Block H, Seat 21:
I can’t see the
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