The Indigo Pheasant: Volume Two of Longing for Yount: 2 (27 page)

[Letter in full from Mr. Sedgewick, Esq., to Sally and James]

                       
, 1817

Dear Miss McLeish and Mr. Kidlington, acting separately and jointly, in the matter of the application for six patents relating to equipment to be placed on board the ship
The Indigo Pheasant
:

We must now be prepared for a long wait, as the Court of Chancery is slow at the best of times,
nolens volens
, and for patents the process includes approvals from no less than seven separate offices—including a review by the Lord Chancellor’s Office, an opinion from the Attorney General, and the receipt of the Great Seal.

I am, at least, confident that the Sworn Clerk assigned to our applications is trustworthy, exacting and expeditious. Upon his initial review, he has already notified me of likely challenges, disputes and other problems arising from and pertaining to our applications. Among these, each of which bears our scrutiny and all of which together present a formidable barrier to our success, are:

I. Lack of clarity as to the precise patentable nature of the devices and technologies. He says the Court will need many more renderings and descriptions, especially as to the purpose, before it can evaluate—let alone rule on—our applications (
vide
, Lord Mansfield’s opinion in the Liardet case). Otherwise, we are up in the clouds,
in nubibus
.

II. Lack of certainty in the law as to how best to construe and characterize our technologies, insofar as we have stressed less the physical manifestation of said technologies but rather their underlying and supporting principles of thought and design. The Court must view the rents and benefits flowing from these as ‘incorporeal hereditaments,’
viz
., as ‘a thing invisible, having only a mental existence.’ Case law and rulings are as yet unformed in this area (
vide
, Stat. 53 Geo III c.141;
cf
., Blackstone,
Commentaries
, Book 2, chap. 3).

Having said that, our Sworn Clerk commended us on meeting with zeal and force the main thresholds for a grant of patent, namely those of novelty and potential utility. He says he has neither heard nor seen anything like our applications, and referred with favour to the cases
Rex v. Arkwright
,
Boulton v. Bull
, and
Morris v. Braunson
, any of which can serve as precedent for our successful petition.

Yet threats abound on every side. I have learned only this morning that we have rival claimants in the form of both the Maudslay engineering works and the Gravell firm of watchmakers, each of whom separately (but, I think, acting in concert) have applied for patents covering some of the themes we outline in our applications. I will not be surprised if Wornum the pianoforte manufacturer and possibly Flight Robinson the organ-makers also file. We may, in these instances, be estopped from pursuing our claims until the Court decides on priority amongst us. A distressing development, but one we can overcome with patience:
ne cede malis
.

Also—and the following is personally vexing—Gravell has sought injunctive relief on the basis that I am acting as agent and have provided you two with the money to cover the two hundred fifty pounds sterling application fee, which they assert is a clear case of champetry and thus in violation of the law. That I may be acting as champeter by lending you the money on terms that include my receiving a set percentage of any earnings derived from the patents is true enough, but that such an action violates any law is untrue, unjust, and unfounded. Allow me to handle this accusation directly and swiftly, as
virtus in medio stat.

Finally, and it grieves me to note it, we must be prepared for possible counter-action from the firm of McDoon & Co., with whom I worked so closely and so amicably for so many years, and for whom I bear no ill will. I was induced, Miss McLeish, to pursue our present course of action (initially against my sense of judgement and honour, since some possibly might see it as a breach of trust or conflict of interest) by your arguments and declarations that your uncle and Mr. Sanford would not take umbrage at your separate train in this matter. As you have reached your full maturity and as an unmarried woman, a
feme sole
, you have agency in your own right in contractual and other commercial matters, I assume that neither your uncle nor Mr. Sanford will see the logic of contesting your actions—but their hearts may overrule their heads in this case, as you well enough understand.

I was further induced, Miss McLeish, by your declaration that the subject and substance of the technologies etc. described in the patent applications are the product of your intellectual labours, i.e., matters over which you can dispose and command, separately from your uncle and Mr. Sanford (who you assert have had no hand in the devising of the patentable materials). I rely fully upon you, Miss McLeish, to preserve the comity and concord within your family that is central to any success you might wish to have in applying for the
Indigo Pheasant
patents.

With best wishes for a swift and complete accomplishment at the Court of Chancery,

I am your humble servant,
—Sedgewick, Esq.

[Excerpt from a letter to Sally from Mrs. Sedgewick]

By the Palustral Moon,

in Veneration of St. Euthina.

Dearest Sally:

I regain my strength a little piece every day, though I will never regain it all, or so I fear. Among other things, I hear always—at the very lowest level of hearing, but never absent—a feathery wind blowing.

[… . . . .]

You know how much I support your bold ventures at the Court of Chancery, with the aid of my husband (who is, at bottom, not a bad creature, though he can be trying even when the sun is shining in full). I was pleased to be able to help you by providing the two hundred fifty pounds sterling you and Mr. Kidlington required for the application fees—this is very nearly my entire personal wealth, from the inheritance I brought to my marriage.

You strike a blow, Sally, for the emancipation of woman-kind, with your fearless step here. Why should men lay claim and assert suzerainty over Thought itself, and harvest all the fruits thereof?

[… . . . .]

I confess to the prickings of conscience where it concerns Maggie. I was perhaps too rash in my turning aside and abridgement of communication, yet at the same time I do not feel, nor have I ever felt, the gratitude and warmth of true affection that I feel she owes me—I who have done so much for her, while receiving so little in return. Her coarse, indelicate and precarious status should compell her to it, yet she owns it not—which is to me insupportable.

[… . . . .]

[Confidential memorandum from Sir John Barrow to Lord Melville, head of the Admiralty]

Your Lordship:

The following will memorialize the steps you have approved the taking of, in the matter of the
Indigo Pheasant
, and to further acquaint you with the material facts of this affair:

The Admiralty shall invest in the
Indigo Pheasant
project a further twenty two thousand pounds sterling immediately (“Tranche Two”) and up to an additional eight thousand pounds sterling (“Tranche Three”) as, and if required, under terms and conditions laid out under separate cover, for a grand total in all three tranches of up to forty thousand pounds sterling.

As before, all Admiralty investments shall flow through and under the name of the Honourable East India Company (see agreements between them and us, under separate). The Governor-General of the E.I.C., Lord Rawdon-Hastings (who is grateful for the support you gave him in the recent bestowal upon him of the Marquisate of Hastings) readily agreed, as did Canning in his role as President of the E.I.C. Board of Control—after the revocation of its monopoly rights in 1813, the E.I.C. is keen to shelter under Admiralty’s wing.

With the disbursement of Tranche Two, the Admiralty and thereby His Majesty’s Government becomes the
de facto
majority owner of the
Indigo Pheasant
and all equipment and technologies belonging thereto (the latter described in full also under separate).

The hitherto lead partner, the private firm McDoon & Co. (London), shall remain as a minority interest, and shall continue as a co-manager of the Project and as co-ship’s husband, with the Admiralty—in consultation with the E.I.C.—as equal co-manager and co-husband, with final approval on all actions and statuses pertaining to the Project.

The firm of Coppelius, Prinn & Goethals (Widow)— which has acquired a plurality of shares outstanding in the venture, and which has in accordance with the partnership association agreement called for remaining in-payment and declared their right to buy out the remaining partners—can be expected to contest our actions. We will see to it that they have little grounds upon which to stake their case (reasons of state alone will suffice, if more narrowly defined arguments arising from within the laws of commerce cannot be found), and less likelihood of success in the courts. We may need to guard, however, against their taking extra-judicial measures against the ship and its equipment, as we have reason to believe that they are not a conventional firm of merchants in the normal sense of the designation.

In a separate but related matter, a member of the McDoon household, aided by the lawyer Sedgewick (whom your Lordship may recall has done much work for the Admiralty over the years, and whose patrons include the Tarleton family) has filed an application for six patents connected to devices and instruments to be fitted to and carried by the
Indigo Pheasant.
It is my considered opinion that the Admiralty must control or outright possess any such patents as the Court of Chancery and His Majesty may grant—the patents are of vital interest to the Crown, to the Empire, and to the well-being of our island Nation. I will write further under this heading in the near-future.

Concerning the raising of the necessary funds, which you can expect to be subject of intense scrutiny by the Treasury and against which the Home Secretary and possibly the Prime Minister himself will opine: We have sterilized the impact through re-allocating certain monies by virement from one part of the budget to another, and most satisfactorily through placing the primary burden on those we vanquished: Lord Castlereagh at the Foreign Office has negotiated additional payments from the French for our restoration to them of Pondicherry and Chandernagore in India, from the Dutch likewise for our restoration to them of Pulicat, Tuticorin and Negapatnam, and from the Danish for our forebearance in not seizing Serampore and Balasore and for our returning to them Nancowrie and the Nicobar Islands. Also, Lord Castlereagh has arranged with the Kingdom of Prussia that a portion of the loan it is raising via the Rothschilds shall be used to pay us for our allowing them use of Heligoland in the North Sea.

Also, the presence of the Chinese alters all our strategic possibilities and forces us to draw under the mantle of
raison d’état
many threads that previously existed separately in our thinking. Ensuring our control of the
Indigo Pheasant
, for the reasons I have told you in strictest confidence, has become a matter of imperial exigency. You can expect the Duke of Wellington and also Lord Bathurst at the Colonial Office to support you in this. Incidentally, as you so astutely supposed, our support for the Regent in his so-very-public and increasingly embittered discussions with his wife about her impending royal prerogatives has also gained the Admiralty his patronage—which can be useful vis-à-vis his faction in the House of Commons, should any of our business be made the target of parliamentary inquiry.

In closing: I recommend to you the lawyer Winstanley, who has been remarkably useful to us in constructing this entire plan. He is connected to me through my wife’s family, and can also call the Duke of Wellington a patron.

As always, your servant,
—Sir John

Addendum: I agree with your Lordship that Mr. Kidlington has not been wholly the asset that we had hoped he would be—he is the template for rakish inconstancy. However, neither has he wholly disappointed, and I think he may prove even more useful in future. He has communicated some unique and incisive information—albeit sporadically and with many lacunae—about those Others of whom I have spoken, and the nature of the foreign Land that is their and our focus of interest and that we hope to acquire for the British Empire. Above all, Mr. Kidlington has played an essential and irreplaceable role in precipitating the application for patents by the McLeish girl—upon which so much else hinges in our machination.

“The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.”

—William Blake
,
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
(1793)

“I ascend into the holy, inexpressible, mysterious Night. Far off lies the Earth, fallen into a deep chasm, desolate and alone. . . . I will intermingle myself with the ashes, fall back and dissolve into the ocean of dew.”