The Ravishing of Lady Mary Ware (16 page)

‘What! Colonel Thursby dead?'

‘Yes, of a heart seizure in mid-July.'

‘Oh, poor Georgina!' Roger exclaimed. ‘'Twas he who furnished her fine mind with a thousand matters that are closed books to most women, and so enabled her to enchant her friends with intellect as well as beauty. He came second only to myself in her affections; and spent a great part of each year with her. I, too, shall miss him sadly, for he was more a father to me than my own. But why, Ned, why if she sought distraction from her sorrows, must she marry, of all people, old K? He must be near twice her age, and has a most unsavoury reputation.'

‘Old K', as the Duke of Kew was popularly known, was indeed a far from pleasant character. He was immensely rich and a great patron of the Turf. He had a big house at Newmarket and, when younger, had often backed himself to win a sackful of guineas by competing either in horse races or driving a tandem. But he was a slovenly man who took no care for his appearance, often going about in awful old clothes and a battered hat. This, and other eccentricities, together with his well-known lewdness and lechery, had long made him notorious.

Again Droopy shrugged. ‘I think she was in so sad a state that she cared not what became of her. He had pursued her all through last season; and, you may recall, she had oft boasted that she would become a Duchess before her hair turned grey. It may be that in accepting him she felt she was bowing to a decree of Fate.'

‘Well, she's got her full coronet of strawberry leaves,' Roger said bitterly, ‘and left me to moan the loveliest dream of my life.'

Taking him by the arm, Droopy said, ‘Come, Roger, let us go upstairs. A glass of wine will at least make you feel no worse.'

‘A glass!' Roger gave a harsh laugh. ‘'Tis a bottle I need; nay, a dozen.'

And he meant what he said. When, on returning to the West Indies at the end of 1795, he had learned that his wife, Amanda, had recently died in giving birth to their daughter, Susan, he had made himself drunk for a week. Now he followed that precedent and, for days, never left his bedroom while emptying bottle after bottle of Madeira. In vain Droopy begged him to moderate his potations, fearing that he would do himself an injury; but he remained maudlin and almost silent day after day while nursing his grief.

Lord Edward Fitz-Deverel was an unusual character for the age in which he lived. He abhorred all blood sports, horses, and any form of exercise. His interests lay in ancient religions, collecting antique jewellery and experimenting on himself with Eastern drugs. On the eighth morning after Roger had become his guest, he was amusing himself by translating a Greek papyrus that had come from Egypt. To his surprise, Roger came into his room, freshly shaven and dressed with his usual, almost foppish, elegance. The only signs of his long debauch were a slight watering of his eyes and the redness of his face. Sitting down, he crossed his silk-stockinged legs and said:

‘Well, Ned. I fear I've behaved like a very sot this past week; but, at least I've got the plaguey bile out of my system. I'm now as resigned as ever I am like to be to Georgina's having married.'

‘Zeus be praised for that,' Droopy replied, rubbing his high-bridged nose with a long, slender finger. ‘And what now are your plans? You know that, as ever, you are welcome to stay here as long as you wish.'

‘Thanks, Ned, I'll gladly accept your hospitality until
I can settle on how to occupy myself in the future. But tomorrow I'd like to go down to Stillwaters and spend a night or two there. That is, if Georgina has left my little Susan in her Great-Aunt Marsham's care.'

‘She has, at least for the present, while she is—er—during these first weeks of her marriage.'

Roger gave a cynical laugh. ‘You would have said, “while she is on her honeymoon”, eh? Though how she can bring herself to pleasure that old roué passes my comprehension. But we'll not dwell on that. I'll take a stroll round the town now, and buy some gee-gaws for my daughter.'

On her return to England in the spring, Georgina had given Droopy a true account of the events at Schloss Langenstein, so that evening Roger had only to relate the story of his imprisonment and escape.

Next morning he rode the twenty miles to Stillwaters, near Ripley in Surrey, which had long been Georgina's home. The day following his arrival, Droopy Ned had sent a messenger down to let Mrs. Marsham and Susan know that Roger was not dead; so they received no shock when he entered the house and greeted them. As for the greater part of his manhood he had lived abroad, his daughter was almost a stranger to him; so he was most agreeably surprised when she cried out with delight and threw herself into his arms.

Susan was now nearly fifteen and well developed for her age. She had her mother's auburn hair, freckles and blue eyes, with a feminine version of Roger's finely-chiselled features. There could be no doubt that, within a few years, she would be one of the toasts of the town. He felt justly proud of her, and her joy in seeing him again greatly added to his pleasure in giving her the costly furs and jewels suitable to her age that he had brought with him.

But before he had been in the house for long he was
overcome by the same depression he had felt during his last visit, when Georgina had been in Germany and married to von Haugwitz. The stately mansion, with its lovely garden, woods and lake gave him little pleasure now that they were no longer animated by her gay spirit. As he wandered about the splendid, lofty, now-empty salons, he was filled with nostalgia as he recalled the days when they had been crowded with statesmen, poets, ambassadors, painters and lovely women. A visit to the suite so often occupied by Colonel Thursby caused him new grief at the loss of that gentle, clever and dear friend; while Georgina's rooms, their fine furniture now under covers, brought home to him more strongly than ever the bitter disappointment he had suffered on learning that it was now no longer possible for him to make her his wife. Sitting down on the side of her big bed he thought of the way in which they had often frolicked in it, and was near to bursting into tears.

On the morning after his arrival he felt that he could bear to remain there no longer; yet was plagued by the thought of his duty to Susan. Often enough he had reproached himself for having been such a bad father; and, now that he had the opportunity of repairing his neglect of the girl, he was contemplating leaving her again within a matter of hours.

Then he hit upon a plan that greatly revived his spirits. He meant, in any case, shortly to live again at Thatched House Lodge in Richmond Park, a ‘Grace and Favour' residence of which Mr. Pitt had given him the life tenancy for his services to the Crown. He would have Aunt Marsham and Susan to live with him there for a while.

That afternoon he told them of his plan. Mrs. Marsham said that such a change would be pleasant, and Susan jumped for joy. Then, struck by a thought, she said, ‘But, Papa, we must be back here by mid-December, for Charles will be returning from Eton.'

She had been brought up with Georgina's boy, and knowing their devotion to each other Roger replied, ‘Unless his mother has other plans for him, well have him, too, at Richmond, and make it a truly merry Christmas.' Half an hour later he had mounted his horse and was on his way back to London.

After riding a few miles it suddenly occurred to him that if the report of his death had reached the Prime Minister, the tenancy of Thatched House Lodge might, by now, have been given to somebody else; so he made a slight detour in order to go there. To his considerable relief he found Dan Izzard, the ex-smuggler who acted as caretaker for him, up on the roof replacing a broken tile. As had always been the case after Roger's long absences, the house and garden had been well cared for and Dan, although now ageing, was still hale and hearty. Since Amanda's death Roger had occupied the house only for brief periods at long intervals, so it had not even occurred to Dan that his master might be dead, and, giving a cheerful hail, the old salt came nimbly down the ladder to welcome him.

Roger stayed only long enough to knock back a noggin of rum with his bearded retainer, and tell him to engage an adequate staff during the coming week; then he rode on in the gathering twilight to Arlington Street.

For the next ten days he took up again the life he normally led while in the capital. It was the dead season, so many of the big mansions in the West End were closed and shuttered, while their owners took toll of pheasants and partridges in the country. But Parliament was in session, the leading clubs: White's, Brook's, Boodle's and Almack's, still had their quotas of gamblers every night, a play at Drury Lane was nightly drawing crowds, there were several other good pieces on and a number of exhibitions.

As Roger and Droopy were both members of White's,
they went there frequently, and Roger was soon brought up-to-date with the political scene. Early in 1806, after over fourteen years of unremitting effort by Pitt to check the destruction by the French of the old order in Europe, Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz had broken the Third Coalition and, with it, Pitt's heart. Exhausted and in despair, the great champion of true liberty had turned his face to the wall and died.

His Ministry had shortly been followed by one led by his lifelong rival, James Fox. It had been composed mainly of Whigs and been termed, ‘The Ministry of All the Talents'. But it had turned out to be a coalition of weak, discordant men who lacked all initiative in prosecuting the war. Fox's death, that September, had heralded the end of its short life and, for two decades, rule by the Whigs.

In December the Duke of Portland had brought together a Cabinet with Spencer Perceval as Prime Minister. Perceval was a very skilful politician, and a fluent orator, but not a very forceful personality. However, he had George Canning as Foreign Secretary, and Lord Castlereagh as his Secretary of State for War.

At Oxford Canning had been one of a circle of brilliant young Whigs, but his admiration for Pitt brought him over to the Tories. In 1800 he married Portland's sister-in-law, who was a great heiress. He was made Postmaster General, then in 1807 Perceval had given him the Foreign Office.

Castlereagh had made his name as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He had fought hard for Union and Catholic emancipation; but George III had rejected these measures so stubbornly that, in 1801, Pitt had resigned and Castlereagh with him. In 1805, on Pitt's return to office, Castlereagh had been made Secretary of State for War and, later, under Perceval, again filled that office.

Both Canning and Castlereagh had striven hard to re
arouse the determination of the war-weary British people to defeat Napoleon, and had prosecuted hostilities with renewed vigour. The former had been responsible for the cutting out by the British Navy of the Danish Fleet at Copenhagen, thus preventing it from falling into the hands of the French and again giving them near-parity at sea after their defeat at Trafalgar. The latter had initiated the use of fire ships, in an attempt to destroy the great French flotilla at Boulogne, which was being assembled for the invasion of England.

Unfortunately, early in Perceval's ministry, the two had quarrelled. On the withdrawal of the British Army from Corunna, after Sir John Moore's death there, Canning had pressed for a renewal of the war in the Peninsula and had sent the able Marquis Wellesley as Ambassador to the Spanish Junta of Insurrection. It was he, too, who had secured the appointment of the Marquess' younger brother, Sir Arthur Wellesley, as Commander of the new British Army sent out to aid the Spaniards. An undertaking had then been given that all the support of which Britain was capable should be used for this campaign. Castlereagh had agreed but, after the British had withdrawn from Copenhagen, sent the troops there to Gothenburg instead, in order to close the Baltic to the Russians. Then, without Canning's knowledge, he had sent a British expedition to the fever-ridden island of Walcheren, at the mouth of the Scheldt, where it had failed dismally in its objective of capturing Antwerp.

Angered by this dispersal of troops which he had expected to be sent to reinforce the Army in the Peninsula, Canning had demanded Castlereagh's dismissal, with the threat that otherwise he would himself resign. Neither Perceval nor Portland had had the courage to inform Castlereagh of this situation, so he had not been made aware of it for several months. When at length it came to his knowledge, the two Ministers had quarrelled
furiously and fought a duel. The first shots of both had gone wide. Canning's second shot had glanced off a button on Castlereagh's coat, and Castlereagh's had slightly wounded Canning in the thigh. Both had then resigned.

The Marquis Wellesley replaced Canning as Foreign Secretary. He had spent a number of years as Governor General of India and proved a most able administrator. It was there, too, that his brother Arthur had made his name, as Commander-in-Chief during several victorious campaigns. Having long ruled over vast territories, when the Marquis returned to England in 1806 his associates found him extremely haughty and self-willed. At the Foreign Office he proved the same, rarely bothering to attend Cabinet meetings, and holding the Prime Minister in contempt.

Lord Liverpool had taken over the War Office from Castlereagh, and had followed his policy of greatly increasing the army establishment; so that, including reserves, it now stood at over half a million men. Between them, he and Wellesley had overcome the former considerable opposition to continuing the war in the Peninsula, and were now the strongest men in the Government.

However, the burning question of the hour was a recurrence of the King's malady. Some twenty years earlier his mind had become unstable, which had resulted in George, Prince of Wales, becoming temporary Regent. The King had recovered but, in recent years, had become increasingly feeble both in mind and body. A cataract had made him totally blind in one eye, and another in the other eye had so restricted his sight that he could not recognise anyone at a distance of more than four feet. He had, moreover, recently become quite mad, imagining that he was still King of Hanover, and that the Countess of Pembroke, for whom in his youth he had nurtured a secret passion, was his wife.