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Authors: Edward Cline

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BOOK: Hugh Kenrick
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Handel, offended at having esthetics dictated to him, at first balked at the royal stipulations, then acquiesced, after this performance. The Duke of Montague, in the meantime, out of his own purse, had built in a corner of St. James’s Park a great Doric pavilion to accommodate one hundred musicians and from which to launch a dazzling array of Italian fireworks once the orchestra had played Handel’s overture. The pavilion, conceived by a famous Italian stage designer, was an imposing structure four hundred feet long and one hundred high, boasting plaster copies of Greek gods, a bas-relief of George II himself, and, from the center temple, a two-hundred-foot column crowned with a sunburst, in the middle of which were inscribed the words Vivat Rex. The Duke of Montague wished it to be known that, where his fealty to the king was concerned, he had no scruples, esthetic or otherwise.

A rehearsal of Handel’s
Music for the Royal Fireworks
—sans fireworks—was held at Vauxhall Gardens across the Thames in mid-April, 1749, and was attended by the Duke of Cumberland, hero of Culloden, for the purpose of ascertaining that the music was martial enough for his father the king’s tastes. The rehearsal attracted some twelve thousand paying subscribers, causing a three-hour traffic jam of carriages on London Bridge and a number of fights among footmen competing for their employers’ rights-of-way. A week later, on the unseasonably warm and humid evening of the 27th, the king attended the official celebration in Green Park. He, his son the Duke of Cumberland, and other notables, toured the pavilion, then retired to the nearby Queen’s Library to hear the music and observe the display. One hundred and one brass cannon were scheduled to be fired in salute to His Majesty, a sound more to his liking, perhaps, than was the overture. In a lamp-lit cordoned area facing the pavilion, lords, ladies, viscounts, and important commoners sat uncomfortably in the stifling air under special shelters to audit the event. The ladies fluttered their fans, the lords scratched their itchy hose. In the park itself, beyond the
flower-bedecked railings and a cordon of grenadiers that secured the pavilion, milled many thousands more spectators.

Chapter 1: The Brass Top

I
N THE PARK, BENEATH AN OAK TREE, STOOD SEVERAL GOVERNESSES AND
their charges, children either too young to appreciate the select gathering at the pavilion, or too much of a care for parents distracted by the scintillating company gathered in it. With them were manservants of other families, assigned the duty of guarding the women and children from footpads and other criminals. Near the tree an altercation occurred between two of the boys, ages six and eight, just as the orchestra began to play Handel’s overture. The cause of the dispute was a top belonging to the younger of the boys, Hugh Kenrick, son of Garnet Kenrick and nephew of Basil Kenrick, the Earl of Danvers. It was coveted by the older boy, John Hamlyn, son of a Sussex baron and nephew of an important man who was a member of the king’s Privy Council.

It was a brass top, a beautiful, lustrous solid thing that hummed and that was powered by a finely made silk cord with a special brass grip on the end. Hugh’s father had bought it for him the day before in a Strand shop at his excited urging, once he espied it among all the other possibilities. Hugh Kenrick did not so much play with it as study it. He spun it over and over again and peered at it as it whirled and hummed, trying to imagine what physical properties it had and what forces were at work that caused it to sit on one end and spin so long, much longer and much more smoothly than did any of the wooden tops he had in his room at home. The hum, he had concluded, was caused by little notches artfully carved on the flat top of the tapered disk, and he had deduced that his role in its spinning ended when the cord disengaged and left the tiny hole in the shaft, leaving the thing to turn by its own rules. He had mastered the art of launching it so that it spun on exactly the point he had set it on, instead of traveling across the floor and bumping haphazardly into things. He had also established the policy of stopping the top when it began to wobble dramatically, so that it would not topple to an ignominious end and scratch its surface. He had even turned it over and launched it upside-down so that it spun on the knob on the end of the shaft, but this was more difficult to do and it did not spin so perfectly, and so he had concluded that the weight and shape of the top governed how well it performed. It was a small thing which barely fit into the palm of his hand, and the smallest of the things he owned, but it
fascinated him as nothing else ever had. He loved it and respected it.

Hugh had arrived at the park in the company of his governess and his father’s valet hours ago and joined the governesses, children, and manservants of other families. With them, also, was his mother’s wet nurse, who carried his one-year-old sister, Alice, wrapped in swaddling clothes, in a woven basket. After a while he tired of watching the endless throngs of spectators pass by the tree. He tried climbing the tree for a better view of the pavilion, but was prevented from doing so by Bridget, his governess, who was worried that he would spoil his blue suit or ruin his immaculate white wig by getting it tangled in branches, damages for which she would be held accountable. He watched the other children play games—Blind Man’s Bluff and Hot Cockles—but was not interested in joining them. Eventually he knelt in the grass not far away, took the top from his frock pocket, and launched it on a flat stone. Bridget was grateful that he could amuse himself, for now she could both keep an eye on him and trade gossip with the other governesses about their employers. Owen, the valet, had joined the manservants on the other side of the tree for a game of dice.

John Hamlyn did not join the other children, either, and they were glad of it, for he was a notorious fun spoiler who either threw tantrums if he did not win a game or bullied them into changing the rules so that he would. He was a thin, sickly-looking boy with a face scarred by a bout with smallpox. He sulked and roamed about the grass, undecided about whether to listen to the women’s gossip or to watch the men play dice, approving of neither diversion and resolving to report both to his parents. But he felt restless chiefly because he envied Hugh Kenrick. The other boy seemed not to need the other children, either, but for a reason he sensed was different from his own. And the other boy had something he did not so much wish to have for himself, as to take for the pure pleasure of challenging his right to it. After all, he was someday to be a baron—his parents never tired of reminding him of that—and this was a future baron’s prerogative.

Hugh Kenrick was oblivious to everything around him. It was only when the distant orchestra pronounced the first slow, regal notes of the overture that he became aware of someone standing near him. He looked up and saw John Hamlyn.

“I want it,” said the older boy, pointing down at the top.

Hugh Kenrick frowned in disdain, shook his head, and glanced back at his spinning top. Only his father or his uncle had a right to speak so arrogantly to him.

“I want it,” repeated John Hamlyn with finality.

To Hugh Kenrick’s amazement a bony hand reached down and grasped the top.

Hugh Kenrick rose and faced the barbarian. “You shall not have it. It’s mine.”

“It’s mine now,” replied John Hamlyn. “My uncle will speak to the king about it, and then it will be mine.”

From Hugh Kenrick’s perspective, this reply had no bearing on the matter. “Give it back,” he said quietly, “or I will thrash you.”

“If you touch me, my footman over there will hang you from that tree, and your father will be forced to pay damages.” John Hamlyn added with a smirk, “And I will still have this top.”

“So be it!” replied Hugh Kenrick, who kicked one of the boy’s shins, then smacked the surprised face with a fist, and then dove onto him, knocking him down. In a wink he was astride the boy’s chest, pounding the scarred face repeatedly, shouting “Let it go! Let it go!”

He snatched the top from his bawling enemy’s hand just before his valet and the other boy’s footman pulled them apart at the panicked urging of the governesses. “That’s no way for gentlemen to behave,” berated Bridget, “especially when His Majesty invited us all here to mark the peace! Peace! What am I to tell the master? Look at you!”

Hugh Kenrick dusted off his suit and readjusted his wig. “Gentlemen don’t steal from other gentlemen!” he replied.

“I didn’t steal your damned top!” shouted John Hamlyn. “I
took
it!”

“Men are hanged for stealing less value, John Hamlyn,” replied Hugh Kenrick, “even barons-to-be. Whether or not I saw you take it, it was still theft!”

This sophisticated rejoinder surprised both John Hamlyn and the adults, who had been ready to argue among themselves about which boy was at fault. But the younger boy had articulated an unanswerable moral position, and against this the adults had nothing to say.

“Keep your damned top!” shouted John Hamlyn, wresting himself from his footman’s grip. “My father will get me a bigger and better one than yours!” And he stormed off. The boy’s footman and governess followed, glowering at the back of their young master, whom they did not like, wondering how they were going to defend his and their conduct to his parents.

With a silent signal from Owen, the valet, Bridget rejoined the other women around the tree. Owen put a hand on Hugh Kenrick’s shoulder and
bent to say, “It would seem that I have the better of two possible masters. Well done, young sir. Now, let us listen to Mr. Handel’s tune.”

They found another, larger rock farther away, and sat to listen to the music. Before Hugh Kenrick was a quiet, vast mass of people, some of whose heads he could see in the lamplight. Far above them, atop the column, shimmered the sunburst in a circle of its own lamps.

When the overture was finished, even before the audience had time to applaud the music, the air rocked with the concussion of the royal salute as one hundred and one cannon were fired, one after another, by artillery men deeper in the park. A great cloud of white smoke rose beyond the pavilion from the blank discharges. After another moment, the first rockets soared into the sky from the pavilion and burst over the crowds. The crowd gasped and noisily approved, while some children began to cry, frightened by the abrupt presence of the unnatural light. Then the great fireworks machine roared into life as conical towers, vertical suns, Roman candles, and giant pinwheels flared all at once, while more rockets whooshed high into the air and exploded in so many patterns, as though touched by some invisible power. Only a brilliant glow and part of the illuminated face of the pavilion were visible over the heads of the crowd.

It was a phenomenon Hugh Kenrick had never before seen. He stood up to watch the multicolored bursts of fire far above him as they lit up the roof of clouds that threatened the festivities. He chanced to turn around, and through a break in the trees, saw the reflection of the violence flash off the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral far down the river, and reveal even London Bridge, and the rooftops and steeples of the city. If he had been able to articulate his thoughts then, he would have said to himself: What a vast city! It is a great city, where great things have been done, and where great things can and will be done. I shall live here someday, as a great man, and celebrate all the splendid things men are capable of.
I
shall do splendid things! This is a proper place for me.

It is not important that someone so young be able to express his deepest thoughts so precisely at the moment he has them; if he clings to the thoughts, and to the feelings they cause, he will someday have the words. Hugh Kenrick did not forget the feeling. He preserved it, and later was able to express it. Nor did he think it presumptuous to think of himself matching the greatness of the city; his response to it was a smile of joyful benediction. He did not challenge it; he approved of it.

It was a night of a nation’s celebration of peace. For six-year-old Hugh
Kenrick, it marked the beginning of a war, for what he saw and heard, together with what he thought and felt, ignited another series of explosions as spectacular as fireworks, and would put him at odds with most men he would encounter. For while many men would experience the same things, but would let the glow fade and the fire fizzle out, Hugh Kenrick would not. Just as the fireworks lit up the spires and domes and roofs of the city and even the clouds above it, something lit up the peaks and valleys possible within himself. He was held rapt by the sights and sounds of that night, enthralled by some inchoate vision of his own make-up, by some tantalizing vista of the landscape of a soul that could be his. These things, he would realize in time, came from within himself, not from outside. He would grow to know, founded and sanctioned by the vision he would not release, that he owed nothing to anything external in terms of what he was, could be, or was to become, that nothing outside had a claim on him, except for what he chose to swear loving allegiance to.

*  *  *

With attentive though distant courtesy, Hugh listened without comment to the conversations of his parents, his uncle and aunt the Earl and Countess, and other guests at a long table at Ranelagh Gardens as the party was served dinner that night. The talk dwelt on the peace, on the fireworks, and on the absence of Countess Walmoden from the event. It was spiced with gossip about other notables, speculation on how the Duke of Montague was to be rewarded for his ostentatious loyalty to the king, and complaints about the weather. There was also ribald amusement over the likely fate of the Chevalier Servandoni, designer of the pavilion, who was arrested for drawing his sword and verbally castigating the Comptroller of the Ordnance for his negligence; an errant rocket had started a fire that destroyed one wing of his exquisite structure.

Owen, the valet, had dutifully reported the fight between his charge and John Hamlyn to the boy’s father. Garnet Kenrick spoke to his son about it in the study of the Earl’s terraced house that overlooked the Thames in Westminster before they departed for dinner. “Couldn’t you have shared your top with him?”

Hugh Kenrick had shaken his head. “He wanted to keep it,” he said. “And I didn’t want to share it with him. You bought it for me. It is mine.”

“It doesn’t do to go knocking down the sons of barons, Hugh. Doubtless
we will receive a note from Baron Hamlyn. Your uncle will smooth things over, but it will cause him some annoyance. He does not like to be distracted by trivial matters.” His father paused to sip some sherry. “However, we are fortunate in this matter. Baron Hamlyn is a particularly favorite enemy of your uncle’s.”

“Does it do for the sons of barons to behave like footpads?” asked Hugh.

His father scowled at him with mock seriousness, and bent a little closer to him from his armchair. “Does it do for a future earl to be so un-Christian in his thoughts and deeds?”

His father would not relent on the impropriety of his son’s own behavior, but the son noticed a twinkle of pride in his eyes. This caused Hugh to wonder why his father did not express what he felt, and why propriety was of more importance to him than was proprietorship.

But he did not think of these things now as he sat quietly in the gay, boisterous company. There were hundreds of guests at other tables all around him, and in the scores of boxes that ringed the promenade, and across the crowded space a small orchestra played gentle music as loudly as it dared, so much of his table’s conversation was drowned in the hubbub that rang under the great dome of Ranelagh. For all the festivity, he felt a curious emptiness, even an indifference. He was excited by something else, and did not know by what, but he was certain that it had little to do with the people and events of the day.

In an unconscious need for affirmation that something important had happened tonight, he slipped his hand into a pocket of his frock coat and felt the cool shape of the top.

BOOK: Hugh Kenrick
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