Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron

“Yes. One might almost call it a judgement—if one were possessed of a vindictive turn, in matters divine.”

“I am glad I disliked that fellow upon first meeting,” my brother persisted. “I can only wonder that little Catherine did not fly to London with Byron when he asked—so eagerly must she have yearned for liberty.”

“But that is exactly what she would not do, Henry,” I countered. “Recollect her sheer terror at being returned to her home in disgrace—the reliance she placed upon us bearing her company—and the blow she received for her courage in having outwitted Lord Byron! I had heard before this that the General is most anxious on the subject of his name, and family dignity; and now we may know the cause. He perceives the world to be laughing at him, for having a shameful wife—and therefore no taint of a similar disease should be allowed to mar Catherine. She must be perceived as purer than the driven snow. What a curse for the poor child, that she should draw so rakish an eye as Lord Byron’s!”

“It explains the General’s determination to marry her off so early to Mr. Smalls,” Henry added. “What better safeguard against calumny than an aged clergyman?”

“What better inducement to a second elopement!” I cried. “No, Henry—the General understands nothing of women, and has been at every turn a fool. Did I not dislike him so thoroughly, I should be inclined to pity the man—so ham-fisted as he is. He even finds shame in Catherine’s murder—as tho’ she deserved it, through some moral lapse of her own. Could anything be more unjust?”

“For my part,” my brother replied, “I should like to strike General Twining.”

“And such are our ungenerous sentiments, on the very eve of his daughter’s funeral!” I mused. “Which puts me in mind of something—you must attend, as a representative of the family.”

Henry’s brows rose. “Indeed, Jane? I have this comfort: there can be no difficulty in procuring mourning.”

“I should not ask it of you,” I pleaded, “but that I cannot attend myself; you know it to be most improper. And I should dearly like an observant pair of eyes upon Mr. Hendred Smalls—he is to conduct the service.”

“Ah,” Henry said knowledgeably. “And at the cold collation that is certain to follow—not even the General could be so remiss in what is due to his daughter as to forgo the cold collation!—you would wish me to enquire as to the clergyman’s movements in the small hours of Tuesday morning. Say, between one and three o’clock?”

“Henry,” I sighed as I took a bite of cheese, “you are in every way a most excellent brother.”

THE PUBLICAN, MR. TOLLIVER, PRESUMING SO FAR ON HIS earlier conversation with Henry to approach our table, and beam in a kindly way at me—enquiring whether the ham was cured to my liking, and whether I should not wish for a glass of ratafia, as an aid to my digestion—I seized upon chance and professed myself entirely delighted with every aspect of the meal and the establishment. However modern the Castle’s conveniences, I assured him, it could offer nothing so comfortable or sound as the King’s Arms.

“Well, and it’s a home-like place enough, which I allus think the traveller appreciates,” Tolliver observed, gratified. “The lady has an appreciation, I take it, for fine old publick houses?”

“And posting-inns,” I added ingeniously. “I have made a little habit, I confess, of looking into every one I find, upon the various roads of England. The White Hart in Bath, for example, is the very soul of a posting-inn; and my brother and I were recently treated to a fine example in Guildford.”

“That’d be the White Lion, mebbe, or the Crown?”

“The Crown,” I agreed. “Mr. Spraggs, the proprietor, was most generous in showing us about the place.”

Tolliver took the hint, and despite a swell of custom—the hour being close on two o’clock—invited Henry and me to follow him through the principal rooms of the place, so that we might admire a quantity of ancient iron pots, pewter tankards, copper taps, oak settles, and stout barrels—all but the last, dating from Elizabeth’s time.

“For the Arms—it were called the Ship and Bottle then, before the Royals descended on Brighthelmston and we were forced, in deference, to make the change—in my old dad’s time, that were—has been the place for comfort and cheer, particularly along of the winter months, for time out of mind.”

“And you let rooms, I understand?”

Tolliver’s countenance lost a little in animation. “That we do—tho’ I’m considering whether I shall in future. Only the four bedchambers have we above-stairs, most of the gentry preferring the Old Ship or the Castle, if they’re not already in lodgings; and I don’t mind to say that with the goings-on of late, it’s hurt my reputation as an honest publican. You’d think, from what has been said, that the Arms was no better than a bawdy house! I thought we’d recovered from that indignity once the Regent grew too fat to stir out-of-doors—but there, you can never hope to serve the publick without suffering an injustice now and again. But Mrs. Tolliver feels it most acutely, I don’t mind saying—took to her bed these two days past, from a dislike of the gossip as is going around the town.”

“I am sure no impropriety can attach to your management of the house,” I said with sympathy, “or Mrs. Tolliver’s arrangements, either. It is not as tho’ you invited a brigand to carry that poor child’s body upstairs! And having seen Lord Byron quit the place—at such an unseasonable hour, too—you must have thought all business at an end for the evening.”

“Now, it’s odd you should mention it, ma’am,” Tolliver said, with one hand on the stair-rail. “For wracking my brains I have been, as to how that poor drowned girl was put in his lordship’s bed.”

A thrill of exultation stirred along my spine; at last we were coming to it!

“I allus keeps the doors unlocked and set a lad to wait up for folk, on Assembly nights—meaning Mondays and Thursdays—for the dancing will go on until all hours, and there’s no telling as when a lodger will want to seek his bed, nor an officer wish to wet his whistle, as the saying goes. So certain it is the doors was unbarred and the Ordinary rollicking with a number of hearties. But I’d turned in at eleven o’clock myself—and Mrs. Tolliver was that put out when his lordship decided, in the dead of night, that nothing would do but he must settle his accounts—and sent the boy to rouse me out of bed! He’s not to have a room from us again, Tolliver , she said, being fed to the brim with Lord Byron’s whimsical ways.”

“And, of course, the noise of packing would disturb the rest of your guests,” Henry said sympathetically, “who cannot have spoken kindly of it in the morning.”

“Jest the one other fellow upstairs there was,” Tolliver said. “Mr. Laidlaw, a gentleman down from Oxford, most interested in those bits of rock and sich you may find along the shore—here for his health and a spot of rock-hunting, he is, and not the sort to burn the oil of a midnight. A most quiet and respectable gentleman is Mr. Laidlaw. His bedchamber gives onto the stairs at the head of the passage—quite near the water closet, for he’s an elderly gentleman, is Mr. Laidlaw. Lord Byron being most insistent in the matter of quiet , for all he’s scribbling at his verses when he’s here, chose the room at the very end of the hall—quite pertickular when he first set eyes on the Arms. In April, that’d be, when he hired that yacht of old Benbow’s down’t the shingle. He’s kept it ever since, to be certain of having it whenever the notion to sail oversets him—a most whimsical gentleman, his lordship, as I said.”