Jane and the Barque of Frailty (9 page)

“Would not it be preferable for the d’Entraigueses to part,” I suggested doubtfully, “than for your friend to endure the Comte’s vicious propensities?”

“Lord, no,” Eliza countered. “You must know, Jane, that gentlemen will have their amusements. You are not a married lady, and indeed it is highly improper in me to be telling you this—but in the general way men are not formed for the marriage vow. I do not speak of your brother, mind. Henry is a jewel past price, for all he is so pinch-penny as regards horses. But my mother was wont to observe: Eliza, so long as your husband treats you with tenderness, you have no business nosing into his affairs. The Muslin Company are of a piece, you know, with their gambling debts—their clubs—their cockfighting and sport— We cannot be expected to understand it.”

Advice in this vein from Eliza’s mamma—the late Philadelphia Hancock—was not to be lightly put aside; she was commonly believed to have formed a liaison while in India with so exalted a personage as Warren Hastings, the former Governor-General of Bengal, who had settled a fortune on Eliza. Indeed, my cousin was generally assumed to be Hastings’s natural daughter. Such easy habits of intimacy among the Great went unmentioned in the Steventon parsonage of my childhood; unquestionably, Eliza was more conversant with the habits of the ton than I should ever be.

“If the Comte has actually demanded a divorce, however … ?”

“—Then he has flouted every rule of a gentleman’s conduct,” she replied indignantly, “and that will be the Frenchman in him, I daresay. One may offer a woman carte blanche, Jane—one may indulge in every kind of ruinous expence … bestow high-bred cattle and equipages of the first stare … the lease of a quiet little house in a good part of Town … but one does not marry a Cyprian. If d’Entraigues cannot be brought to understand this, then we must assist poor Anne, as we did this morning, to provide against the dreaded future. Lord!—He is upon us, Jane—school your countenance to welcome!”

“La petite Elis-a!” cried the Comte d’Entraigues, his arms opened wide and the ebony stick dangling; “comme c’est beau d’encontre mes amies!”

I curtseyed at his bow; allowed him to kiss my gloved hand; and resigned myself to an interval of conversation entirely in the French. But my thoughts were running along different lines. If the Comte could violate every rule, why could not Jane? The old roué had done nothing to attach my loyalty.

“What a very charming young woman you were speaking with just now, Comte,” I said with an air of benign vacancy. “An accomplished one too! Such an air of dash! And such command of the reins! I was quite overpowered. Pray tell me her name—I long to know it.”

Eliza gave a tiny squeak, and for an instant I thought the old Frenchman would pretend not to understand me.

“You have not been very long in London, I think,” he observed in heavily-accented English. “It is most improper in you to enquire, Miss Austen. But me—I have never been one to observe the proprieties. Her name is Julia Radcliffe—and if she were not the Devil’s own child, I should call her une ange! Now forget the name, if you please—or your so-good brother Henri will accuse me of corruption!”

I affected a look of bewilderment, and Eliza turned the conversation; until at reaching the tollgate at the western edge of the Park, the Comte bowed, and went his own jaunty way.

“Julia Radcliffe!” Eliza burst out once the Frenchman was beyond hearing. “No wonder he insists upon divorce! Marriage is the only card he holds!”

“What do you mean, Eliza?”

“I have it on certain authority, Jane, that Julia Radcliffe—for all she is the merest child—is the Highest Flyer in the present firmament, the most sought-after Demi-rep in the Beau Monde—and that she should even look at d’Entraigues is beyond wonderful! Our Comte has never been very plump in the pocket, you know, since the Revolution—and it is certainly not he who pays for those matched greys. Marriage is all such a man may offer—and indeed, all Julia Radcliffe might value! Money she has; the hearts of a legion of Bond Street beaux are already in her keeping; but respectability, my dear—the certainty of a name and protection to the end of her days—is a prize no Demi-rep may command. Harriette Wilson once thought to be the Duchess of Argyll, I believe— but in the event, Argyll considered of what was due to his station, and dropped his handkerchief elsewhere.”

“Men are such fools, Eliza,” I said, gazing after the old Count.

“To be sure, my dear. Else they would never be so amusing. Only consider of your Willoughby! He should be enslaved to a Julia Radcliffe—she was a girl of very good family, you know, until just such a young gentleman gave her a slip on the shoulder. There is a child, I believe, somewhere in Sussex— However, none of the Radcliffes will notice her now.”

“She does not seem to pine for the lack,” I observed, and stepped through Hyde Park gate.

Chapter 7
The Man Who Did Not Love Women

Thursday, 25 April 1811

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T
HE SPRING RAINS DESCENDED UPON
L
ONDON AN
hour before dawn, sluicing across the roof tiles and gurgling in the gutters, so that I dreamed I lay at the edge of a country brook in the wilds of Derbyshire. As is common with such dreams, I lived and breathed the air of the place while yet cognizant I was but a visitor—that my time and purpose were not of that world. I knew full well that I dreamed. When the elegant figure of Lord Harold revealed itself, therefore, under the shade of a great oak—silent yet welcoming, completely at its ease—I perceived with anguish that this was a memory: for we two had walked once through the woods and fields near Chatsworth. He fell into step beside me, companionable as ever; restful in all he did not need to say. When I told him impulsively that I loved him still, he kept his eyes trained on the middle distance, a derisive smile on his lips.

I awoke with a start, seared with thwarted yearning, and the dissatisfied knowledge that I should have preferred to walk forever in that enigmatic presence. He had offered no word; the beloved voice was silenced. I stared out despondently through the bed-curtains at the windowpanes streaming with rain. There would be no walks in the Park this morning, no rejoicing in the fresh sprays of lilac; this was a day for the nursing of colds, for books by the fire and the industry of the needle—for bemused scavenging in the lumber-rooms of memory.

The clatter of carriage wheels in Sloane Street below—unusual for the early hour—then drew my attention: a train of vehicles, of the most sombre black, was wending its way east. The second equipage bore a device on its door that was tantalisingly familiar—a gryphon’s head chained to an eagle’s, in red and gold. I knit my brows, endeavouring to recall where I had seen it before; and at that moment the carriages came to a halt. The lead horses stamped fretfully, coats steaming in the rain; a sleek black head was thrust out of the magnificent travelling coach, and a question barked in a foreign tongue. Something guttural and exotic in the consonants—it must, it could only be, Russian. Princess Tscholikova’s family had descended upon London at last.

The harsh words achieved their effect; the train of carriages slowly turned the corner into Hans Place. Would this potentate of the steppes bury his dead Princess with all possible speed? Or would he demand a full enquiry into the nature of her death?

And why did I persist in believing the suicide was false—a bit of theatre for the credulous ton?

Theatre. The Theatre Royal, where the Princess had sat, elegant and composed, her countenance earnest as she gazed at Lord Castlereagh’s box. But a few hours before her bloody end at his lordship’s door, the woman I’d seen was hardly on the brink of madness. I did not think she had ever been. I pulled the bed-curtains closed, and went back to sleep.

“H
ENRY
,” I
SAID AS WE HASTENED UP THE STEPS OF
the British Gallery a few hours later, intent upon the watercolour exhibition, “what do the members of your club say, regarding Princess Tscholikova’s death? How does the betting run—for or against Castlereagh, and murder?”

“We do not have the kind of betting book you should find at White’s, Jane,” my brother tolerantly replied; it is Henry’s great virtue that nothing I may say will ever shock him. “Nor does it approach what you should discover at Brooks’s. Your Lord Harold was a member of both clubs, I believe—but such company will always be far above my touch. The members are more careful of their blunt when they have earned it themselves. All the same, I have laid ten pounds upon the outcome’s being suicide—and know the odds to be rising steadily in my favour.”

“Had I ten pounds to wager, I should challenge you,” I instantly replied. “I had no notion you were such a pigeon for the plucking, Henry! There has been no mention of a weapon in the papers; and if none was found, depend upon it, the Princess was killed by another’s hand. It remains only to determine whether Castlereagh’s was that hand.”

“By no means,” Henry countered, as we paused before a delightful picture of the sea that my Naval brothers should have roundly abused, for its ignorance of the properties of both warfare and nature. “It is probable that the coroner charged with the lady’s inquest prefers to keep the particulars of the case to himself, until such time as the panel is assembled.”

“When is the inquest to be called? I have seen no mention of it in the papers.”

“Ah! In this you will find the true worth of the clubman,” Henry replied with satisfaction. “Tho’ it was thought the affair would be hastily managed—a verdict easily returned—there was some little delay, I collect, at the request of the Princess’s family. A representative desired to be present; a brother, I believe. The inquest is called for ten o’clock tomorrow morning—in the publick house next to the Bow Street magistracy. Any number of bets ride upon the outcome; most of your Pall Mall loungers will be crammed into the room.”

“Would you escort me there, Henry?”

“Good Lord, Jane!” he cried, startled. “I cannot think it proper. However many panels you may have seen in recent years, they are as nothing to a Bow Street affair.”

“But the magistracy is only a step from your bank! You know you will never resist the temptation to look in upon the proceedings.”

“What has that to say to your presence?”

“Do not play propriety with me, Henry,” I told him warningly. “I am no more broken to saddle than Eliza. If you do not agree to escort me to Bow Street, I shall walk the whole way by myself.”

Henry stopped still in the middle of the gallery, the stream of visitors flowing around us like rainwater round a pebble. “Jane, I cannot think you a victim of vulgar curiosity. Why does the lady’s self-murder trouble you so?”

“I cannot credit it.”

“—Tho’ she was a stranger to you? Tho’ you are entirely unacquainted with her history, her morals, her character?”

“I might learn more of all three from the coroner’s inquest,” I observed.

Henry lifted his hands in amazement. “A formality, merely! The whole business cannot demand above an hour—and will conclude as it began, with the judgement of suicide!”

“You do not credit Lord Moira’s opinion? —That the lady was killed by another, and Castlereagh must certainly fall under suspicion?”

“I do not. The Earl is a Whig, Jane, and should wish calamity upon all Tories even had the Princess never been born.”

I strolled towards a depiction of Attic ruins. “Tell me about Lord Castlereagh. What sort of man is he?”

“Respected by many, but loved by few. A cold fellow of decision and despatch, but pig-headed by all accounts and incapable of compromise. Lord Castlereagh must and shall be judged correct, in all his dealings, and will brook no criticism. Such a man may command well enough in the field—but may swiftly bring disaster on his government colleagues at home.”

“You describe the arbiter of policy, Henry. I would learn more of Robert Stewart, the man. What are his passions? His attachments? His loyalties?”

My brother hesitated. “I cannot rightly say. I am hardly intimate with his lordship; I know only what I read of him in the papers, and what Eliza may tell me. She is a little acquainted with Lady Castlereagh, who is forever throwing open the house on Berkeley Square to all the world.”

“Has he any children?”

“None.”

“Perhaps there is no love between the lord and his lady.”

“I cannot undertake to say. The marriage has endured for many years, and no breath of scandal has attached itself to the principals—until the Morning Post chose to publish the Princess Tscholikova’s private correspondence. Indeed, had she written to anyone other than his lordship—George Canning, perhaps, or another Tory member—I might have been less surprised. It is a part of Castlereagh’s coldness to find little of beauty in any woman. He prefers the society of gentlemen.”

“What! He does not frequent the Muslin Company?”

“Jane!” Henry replied, with an expression of distaste. “What has Eliza been teaching you?”

“Nothing I did not already know.”

“To my knowledge, Castlereagh is singularly disinterested in women of that order.”

“—And our Henry is all astonishment! Is a Barque of Frailty so necessary to a gentleman’s comfort?”

“In one way, at least: the company such a woman attracts is vital to any man of policy. You can have no notion, Jane, of the gentlemen who assemble in Harriette Wilson’s salon each evening—both Whigs and Tories may be found there. Lady Cowper’s drawing-rooms—or Lady Castlereagh’s—are as nothing to it. Some of the most powerful movers in the Kingdom meet at Harriette Wilson’s feet; and I do not scruple to say that more decisions of moment are taken in her company than in the House of Lords. One is neither Whig nor Tory in Miss Wilson’s circle; one merely worships at the altar of the divine Harriette.”

“I have it on excellent authority that her star is on the wane,” I said. “Julia Radcliffe has supplanted her.”

“Now you would speak of Canning’s latest flirt,” Henry said.

“Mr. Canning should never be adjudged cold, then, by his fellows?”

“Far from it. No less exalted a personage than Princess Caroline was once the object of Canning’s gallantry, if you will believe; and tho’ he is spoken of as a devoted husband and father, his family does not reside in London.
¹
The eldest son is sickly, and must be often in the care of a particular physician; Mrs. Canning is quite a slave to her child, and neglects her husband. Canning was used to be met with often at Harriette Wilson’s—and I understand it was she who introduced Julia Radcliffe to his society.”