Patrick O'Brian - Desolation island

"Oh yes, indeed. We first met during the peace, aboard the Dover packet from Calais. I had finished my work with the Pere Bourgeois -

"Pere Bourgeois the sinologist? The China missionary?"

"Yes, sir. And I was returning to England, meaning to take ship for the States after a week or two in Oxford. I saw that she was alone and in some distress - impertinent fellows all about her - and she was so good as to accept my protection. Very soon we found that we were both Americans, and that we knew several of the same families; that we had both been educated mainly in France and England, and that we were neither of us rich. She had recently disagreed with Mr Wogan - I believe he had gone to bed to her maid - and she was travelling with no very clear end in mind, a few jewels, and very little money. Fortunately my half-yearly allowance was waiting for me at my father's agent in London, so we set up house in a cottage some way out of the town, at Chelsea. Those were days of a happiness I cannot hope to describe, nor shall I attempt to do so, for fear of spoiling it. The cottage had a garden, and we calculated that if we were to plant it, we could hold out, in spite of the cost of the furniture, at least until we heard from my father, in whose generosity I placed all my hopes. My books followed me from Paris, and in the evenings, after my gardening, I taught Louisa the elements of literary Chinese. But our calculations proved mistaken, for although the market gardeners all around the cottage were very kind, giving us plants and even showing me the right way to dig, we had not harvested our first crop of beans, and Louisa had not learnt about a hundred radicals, before

men came and took away her small spinet. I do not know how it was, but money seemed to vanish away, in spite of all our care. Mr Wogan had been an expansive man, in the lavish southern way and perhaps Louisa had never learnt to keep house on very little: she too was born in Maryland, with a troop of blacks about her; and in those states they do not look upon a shilling as we do in Massachusetts, and there is not the same almost religious dread of debt. Then again, having some friends in London, both English and American, she was obliged to have clothes to receive them in - she had left everything behind. They came more and more often, and they brought their friends to what they called our bower; interesting men like the Coulsons, and Mr Lodge of Boston, and Horne Tooke, whose conversation was a delight. But even a simple dinner is a costly affair in England, compared with France or America, and our difficulties grew and grew.

"And I am afraid I was a dull companion. I had seen very little of the world; my life had always been very quiet; and although she was sensible of the beauty of my poets' work, she could not share my pleasure in the China of the T'ang emperors. Nor could I share her passionate eagerness for republican doctrines. My father was a Loyalist during the War of Independence, while my mother took the other side, being kin to General Washington; they lived uneasily together, each trying to convince the other, and I heard so much talk of politics when I was a child, that being unable to reconcile their views, I dismissed both. It seemed to me that a king and a president were equally disagreeble and remote and unimportant and I conceived an aversion for all political discourse. At all events, she took to seeing more and more of her radical friends in London: some of them were wealthy and high-placed, and she told me candidly that she loved their train of life.

"By the time I heard -from my father our affairs were very near their crisis: I could not have withstood the

tradesmen's importunities another week, and indeed, if it had not been for the good forbearing baker, we must have gone hungrier than in fact we did. But my father's letter brought no more than a draught on his agent to bear my charges to America, and a direct order to return at once. I had laid the position fairly before him, and he replied with a frankness equal to my own. I had flattered myself that my description of the feelings I entertained for Louisa, and their everlasting nature, might overcome the rigour of his Episcopalian principles: I was mistaken. He disapproved the whole connection: first on moral grounds; secondly because the lady was a Romanist; and thirdly because of her political views, which were abhorrent to him. He was surprisingly well informed by his London correspondents, and he had made enquiries in Baltimore among our common friends. Even if the lady were not married, he would never consent to such a match. Upon the duty I owed him, I was to return at once. And in a postscript he added that when I called upon his agent to present the draught, the agent would hand me a packet that I was to bring to the States with me, taking the utmost care of it.

"I knew what the packet would contain. As a Loyalist, my father had suffered heavy losses through his support of King George: he had been obliged to retire to Canada for some years, and it was only because of my mother's convictions and her connection with General Washington that he was allowed to return. The British government had undertaken to indemnify the Loyalists, and after very, very long delays my father's claim was, in part, admitted. From time to time I had heard of the progress of the case from his agent; and now the payment was become due. I opened the packet, discounted the bills, and we removed to London itself, taking furnished apartments in Bolton Street.

"My father's money lasted little more than half a year: we lived very cheerfully in the style that Louisa liked, and

we entertained. Louisa's circle of acquaintance grew wider still. When no more than a hundred pounds was left, she wrote two pieces and some verse, which I copied for the playhouses and the booksellers. She had a pretty turn that way, and they had some success. At the time I had hopes of being admitted to a mission to Canton as interpreter: a knowledge of Chinese was my only qualification for earning a living, yet it was an unusual one, and I was told that I should be highly paid. But the mission was abandoned and literary success scarcely finds a couple in the necessities of life; our last guinea melted; and Louisa vanished. She had often told me that for literary and political reasons it was necessary for her to cultivate and indeed to visit some men whom neither she nor I particularly esteemed: she had often paid these visits, sometimes of a week or more; and now I heard that she was living under the protection of one of these men, a Mr Hammond.

11 did not attempt to describe my happiness; nor shall I say anything of my extreme distress. But she was not unkind; settled unkindness or rancour is not in Louisa's nature. After some time she learnt where I was living, and she sent me money. During that year and the next she travelled a great deal, but when she was in London she would find me out and sometimes give me a meeting in the park, or even in my room. She told me of her various liaisons with the candour of a friend - she always, except at that moment of parting, treated me as a friend, and we were very well together. On one of these occasions, when she found me extremely Ill, she said I might accompany her as a secretary: I was, however, to say nothing of our intimacy. She was then living In a small, discreet, but perfectly elegant house behind Berkeley Street, and she had a salon where I saw numbers of men remarkable for their understanding, their rank, or their wealth, or sometimes all three. The conversation was sprightly, more nearly in the French manner than anything I had heard in England: it was rarely improper, but upon the whole they

were, I gathered, a loose-living set. Mr Burdett, I recall; a fat melancholy duke; Lord Breadalbane. But there were others: I remember Mr Coleridge and Mr Godwin - they were outside the usual set, however. It was not only men that came, for Mrs Standish used often to be there, and Lady Jersey, with quite a band of her friends. Yet men predominated, and it was in her boudoir that she used to receive those who were closest to her such as John Harrod, the banker, John Aspen of Philadelphia, whom Mr Jay had left behind, and the elder Coulson - he was their chief. They used to come in through a door from another house beyond the garden.