The Indigo Pheasant: Volume Two of Longing for Yount: 2 (7 page)

[
Advertisement in the
London Argus/ Commercial News and Price-Courant
, during the Week of Meditrinalia, 1816]

BE IT KNOWN TO ALL MEN, THAT THE
MATABRUNIAN CONGREGATION
HAS JOINED WITH THEIR SISTERS AND BROTHERS AMONG
LADY HUNTINGDON’S CONNECTION
TO EMBRACE THE PREACHER KNOWN AS
BILLY SEA-HEN
INTO THEIR MIDST, ALL THIS WEEK AT THEIR MEETINGHOUSES AT RESPECTIVELY THE
MULBERRY
IN
WAPPING
, NEAR THE
FINCH-HOUSE MEWS
, AND THE
THREE CRANES
IN
SHOREDITCH
, HARD BY
HOXTON SQUARE
. ALL ARE WELCOME.
NO ADMISSION IS CHARGED.

Dear Family McDoon:

We bring you greetings from the Cape and the Last Cozy House, sent this 14
th
day of _____ aboard the East Indiaman
Lady Balcarras
.

[... . . . .]

We come now to the strangest news. Three Chinese persons are staying at the Cozy House, remarkable even for us. They are an emissary from the Emperor himself with two young wards (a girl and a young man). The emissary met Staunton and Barrow in ’95 on the MacCartney expedition.

We cannot commit all we know about our Chinese guests to paper, for fear that Others might intercept this intelligence, but we want you to know that the Chinese know about Y. and seem to know something of the Project (at least the older gentlemen who leads them).

We think they are somehow important to the success of the Project. The girl is the key. She is a singer. A Singer,
comprenez-vous
? Please hear us when we say that you should include this girl as part of the Project. Sally will understand this best of all.

All of them enlighten and astonish us with their knowledge of mathematics and water-science and astronomy. They tell us that the Chinese have an encyclopedia beyond any our Diderot or Panckoucke have ever conceived, being 745 (!) volumes, called—as best we can write it in a European tongue—the “Goojin tooshoo zeechang.” They say it contains references to Y!

The girl and her companions seem inclined to stay with us at the Cape for now, but we suggest they come to you in London in the next good sailing season, it being the kentering time now and so unsafe for the Indiamen on the London-bound voyage.

Send us word soonest, while the winds favour the outbound voyage to the Cape from London.

Until then, we are yours in amity,
—The Termuydens

[Excerpt of a letter, on the Shad Moon, from Matchett in London to Frew doing business for the firm in Paris]

Barnabas McD. was in rare form last night at the coffeehouse, had the company in good humour with his tales of the Cape. Sanford his usual laconic self. Something fishy in this, but all in good time, I reckon, and then we will learn the truth from the McD’s or discover it for ourselves.

Curious news: do you recall the affair of the cunning man in Marylebone, back during the Peace of Amiens in ’02 (the vicious Moriarty, how he pressed us)? More to the point, his confederates—the Leipzig firm of Coppelius, Prinn & Goethals the Widow? With peace again after Nap’s fall, it would appear that Coppelius et al. have returned to London. They have opened a comptoir at Austin Friars near Blakensides.

I am more convinced than ever that this Prinn is a grand-nephew of the Ludwig P. who wrote De vermis mysteriis.

In nuco: hasten our business in Paris to its end, and return as soon as you may. We have work to do here.

As always, your . . .

On the Vigil of the Recrement,

by the morning post,

from Mrs. Sedgewick to the Miss Sarah:

My dearest Sally,

Words can barely express my pleasure at re-uniting with you since your return—seeing you these past weeks has raised my spirit beyond measure.

Speaking with you has piqued my curiosity as well, since you tell such amusing and marvelous stories of your time abroad, and yet I sense that you hold much back. Why withhold details from one of your closest friends, one who can guide and support you?

I have shared with you some of my premonitions and dreams, and I thank you for the courtesy you have paid in listening to me with sympathy—which is more than I ever get from Mr. Sedgewick, though I shouldn’t complain.

Speaking of Mr. Sedgewick, and on a more convivial topic, I have persuaded His Old Badger-ness to hold a small rout, an
assemblée
(doesn’t that sound more elegant in French!), on Thursday next to honour the McDoons upon your homecoming.

You will have discovered already my main goal, which is of course to bring you to the attention of select and attractive young men, with whom you
might
—if the flint reveals its spark!—form a liaison that
might
in due course blossom into something more lasting.

Don’t blush or protest! You left us a girl and you have returned a young woman, and must needs be brought into society as best we can—despite all the drawbacks of your temperament (you have too much spirit!) and your education (you have far too much for any one of our sex!). Since you will have to attend such routs and ridottos regardless, where your temperament will be judged wanting and your education will be either dismissed or bevelled down, then you might as well attend one at the instigation and in the embrace of your closest friends—where we who love you can protect and steer you at least some little bit.

Besides, Sally dear, the best cover for your scholarly pursuits is that of an accommodating husband.

Also, to speak directly, I do not understand the dalliance you seem to have established with this Mr. Bammary whom you met on your travels. I do not dispute his impeccable manners and his learning—how could I, given his degree from Oxford? All in all, he is a pleasant enough fellow, almost a gentleman. Yet—and please do not think me forward here, I only think of your welfare, Sally, and what others might say against your reputation—he has the look of an Egyptian or a Hindoo and in the end he is no more an Englishman than you are an Indian. We must respect each other, of course, but the darker races can never be united with ours through the most intimate of relations, if you take my meaning. Think on it, Sally, and do not create in Mr. Bammary—or leastwise your self—hopes that can only be dashed here in London.

Returning to the party: who shall we have there? Your friends the Gardiners would make a suitable addition to the gathering, as well as those lively fellows from our mutual friends at Matchett & Frew—with their droll tales and maggots to match your own.

Also, through my sister’s relation and Mr. Sedgewick’s connections there, we shall have many naval officers and admiralty officials present.

Two in particular spring to mind, but I will not tell you their names, so as to tease you and arouse in you the intellectual curiosity for which you are best known, thus to lure you out of your books and to the party. One is a lieutenant who fought in Wellington’s Army of the Peninsula; frankly, he is a bit on the morose side, but could—I am quite sure—be tempted out of his lugubrious ways under steady feminine influence.

The other is a most peculiar yet wholly charming individual, recently returned from Australia (of all places!), who is clerking for Mr. Sedgewick. He—the young man, not Mr. S.—is trim and well-made, cutting a fine figure and clever in his speech. Mr. S. tells me that there is more to this young man than meets the eye, a mystery of unbalanced ballast beneath his painted sails—if Mr. S. means to warn me off then his words have had the opposite effect.

So, there is my plot revealed—mischief I am crafting to benefit my young friend, meaning you, Sally.

Please accept this invitation, which I shall follow up tomorrow with a formal letter to your uncle and the rest of your household.

I had a quote to share with you from a poem by the newcomer, Mr. Keats, but now it has gone straight out of my head, and they will collect the morning post at any second, so I must postpone our Keatsian conversation until later.

In haste, your ever affectionate
—Shawdelia Sedgewick

P.S. We have gotten a real pianoforte since you left. I will teach you all the new airs and melodies—it won’t do for you still to be singing “Lillibullero” and “Stepney Cakes and Ales” etc. from the last century! And the latest dances, though I know you dislike dancing, still you must do so if only to avoid the censure of a chattering public.

P.P.S. Hoping the weight of your brother’s absence is not too heavy to bear. Will remember to honour him with a toast at our
soirée
. Post here, must go.

“O charming Noons! and Nights divine!

Or when I sup, or when I dine,

My Friends above, my Folks below,

Chatting and laughing all-a-row,

The Beans and Bacon set before ’em,

The Grace-cup serv’d with all decorum:

Each willing to be pleas’d and please,

And even the very Dogs at ease!”

—Alexander Pope
,
An Imitation of the Sixth Satire of the
Second Book of Horace
, lines 133-140 (1737)

“A man shall . . . sin, by which, contrary to all the workings of humanity, he shall ruin for ever the deluded partner of his guilt;—rob her of her best dowry; and not only cover her own head with dishonour,—but involve a whole virtuous family in shame and sorrow for her sake.”

—Laurence Sterne
,
The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy,
Gentleman
, vol. II, chap. xvii (1760)

“Insensate doth the dreamer drift

Upon dark Lethe’s course,

While song immense from angel-choirs

Whelms vast-flung night, rings swift oblivion’s source.”

—Charles Oldmixon
,
The Caliper’d Heart
, lines 121-124 (1774)

F
igs and fiddles! Sedgewick and wife have outdone themselves this evening, I must say!” Barnabas said to himself, as he surveyed for the third—or was it, fourth?—time the spread of food before him.

“A knuckle of veal, a ham the size of a house (what a prodigious pig that must have been!), pies full of larks and woodcocks and other wingy little birds,” he chuckled. “Eels and burbots, pikelets, tench and trouts! Turtle soup, oh my, oh my. A forced hare. More kinds of beef and mutton than I can name, though ’tis a damnable shame to drown honest English roasts under so many sauces. What is this one?”

He bent down to read the calligraphied card, folded like a miniature tent, set before the dish. Mrs. Sedgewick had missed no detail in preparing her rout to celebrate the return of the McDoons.

“
Les cotelettes d’agneau glacées à la Toulouse
. Well, I’ll call it a lamb-chop in onion-butter, I will, and will make short work of it no matter what it calls itself!”

As he ate, he thought, “I wonder that we won the war at all, since everything has become so very French. Once upon a time we called a duck a “duck,” but now we must call it a “moularde.” And whatever happened to the green bean—poor fellow, now he must answer to “haricot vert.” Truly, you’d think that old Nappy was at St. James, and not King George!”

Barnabas turned his attentions now to the desserts.

“I love Yount,” he thought. “But I must confess I have so dearly missed sweets. A singular lack, that, in Yount, there being no sugar, just the odd dab of honey. Oh my, figs and farthings, what have we here?”

He stood transfixed before heaps of oiled almonds, peels of candied lemon, golden currants, slabs of marchpain, creamy dariendoles, a great syrupy pulpatoon, a
croque-en-bouche aux pistaches
, pralines, glazed biscuits, an enormous Nesselrode Pudding topped with a froth of whipped cream, . . . all gleaming and glistening in the gas-light (the Sedgewicks being among the first to adopt the new form of illumination), beckoning, alluring with a seeming life of their own.

His satisfaction was complete, nay, overwhelmed and utterly unbayed, when he came upon the selection of port, sherry, Madeira, claret and wine surrounding a most estimable punch bowl.

“Oh Sedgewick, you have sailed clear beyond the Pillars of Hercules this night!” he said. “A most noble punch-bowl. Why, ’tis large enough to launch a ship in; indeed, I believe I detect a tide! Now, then, what about these bottles? No thin, washy stuff here, oh ho! Why here is, no it cannot be? It
is
! A bottle of Cahors, you remembered my old favourite.”

Cradling the Cahors (near impossible to secure in England during the Napoleonic blockade), its contents the thick, deep red of bull’s blood, Barnabas considered the rest of the crowd.

“Matchett looks very well,” he thought. “Nice brandy-coloured stockings, I must ask where he got them. And Gardiner, whose niece just married that Pemberley lord in Derbyshire, also nicely turned out—isabelline and vinegar rose, I’d call it, that cravat of his.”

Barnabas turned so that his bretticoed vest in pale blue silk could be seen to best effect in the gas-light.

“I must ask Sanford tomorrow how soon we can get the gas installed,” he thought. “Wonderful how it shows the colours!”