Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Barque of Frailty

“I must introduce you to my cousin, Mr. Henry Walter,” I said, taking her hand firmly. “He looks as though he were in need of a dance.”

My unfortunate cousin was engrossed in a discussion of Theosophy with Mr. Guillemard and Mr. Wyndham Knatchbull, a clergyman — and barely disguised his outrage at being so imposed upon, as to be forced to trade insipid nothings with a child. The harpist striking up an air at that moment, however, my cousin was spared the duty; and Miss Beckford and I left Susan in his orbit. She might, perhaps, serve as Mr. Guillemard’s latest flirt. We retreated to the passage, so as to achieve the maximum degree of coolness with the minimum of crowding, and composed ourselves to listen.

ELIZA COULD TAKE PLEASURE, ON THE MORROW, IN the fact that the last of her guests did not quit her house until midnight, and that the evening was deemed such a success — so much of a crush, in fact, an intolerable squeeze — that it merited a notice in the Morning Post. No less a personage than Lord Moira, the Regent’s crony, condescended to grace Sloane Street with his presence; and it was thanks to the Earl that all my suspicions regarding Princess Tscholikova’s end were animated long into the night.

“I own to some delight at Lord Castlereagh’s discomfiture,” his lordship confided to a group of five gentlemen arranged respectfully around him in the interval between Miss Davis’s Airs in the Italian and the performance of Mozart upon the pianoforte. “There will be no talk of the Tories forming a government now.”

“But it can never truly have been under consideration,” Mr. Hampson — the Republican baronet— protested. “The Regent is known to espouse the most radical principles! As his intimate these many years, my lord — and a partisan of the Whigs yourself — you can only have expected His Majesty to approach Lords Grey and Grenville for his Cabinet! This Tory posturing is all rumour, with the paltry object of disconcerting the Regent and elevating the star of Mr. George Canning — whose service in the furtherance of his own ambition is well known to men of sense!”

“Hear, hear,” Mr. Guillemard intoned.

“Damn me,” Captain Simpson exploded, “that’s treason!” He lurched a little, as tho’ he felt the roll of a deck beneath his feet. It must be said that the good captain — who had disconcerted me earlier in the evening with the news that my sailor brother, Frank, was superseded in his command — had been drinking deep of

Henry’s claret. “Would you have us turn over the Kingdom, aye, and all the Continent, to Buonaparte and his crew? That’s what a Whig Cabinet will get ye!”

“Naturally I would have us do so, if it meant peace,” Mr. Hampson rejoined equably. “The cost of this war — ceaseless and senseless as it has been — is bleeding the country and the poor to the point of annihilation! Peace, I say, at any cost — and if the Whigs will help us to it, I felicitate them with all my heart!”

Lord Moira raised his glass in approval, but a heated argument immediately broke out, as to the merits of Tory governance, which should stand firm against France to the dying breath, versus the Whig desire to conciliate the Monster and withdraw Lord Wellington from the Peninsula before the rout of French troops should entirely be achieved. There was mention of our ally, Russia, and the clauses of treaties published and secret; and while I lingered near Fanny Tilson, who talked of her children, my ear trained to the more interesting conversation of the gentlemen — the trend of remark circled back to the strange death of Princess Tscholikova.

“The poor lady could not have done away with herself in a better fashion, nor at a better hour,” Lord Moira observed. “I am no ghoul, and must feel for the unfortunate creature in her misery — but if the woman must slit her throat, thank God she chose to do so at the present moment, and at Castlereagh’s door! It has been a close-run thing; we might almost have had Canning and Castlereagh returned to the Cabinet, and a host of Tories beside, and no end to the war in sight. The Regent, for all his Whig friends, has been considering of an approach to Canning and Castlereagh — His Highness regards them as likely to inspire publick confidence, and he is desperate to marshal the same in support of his Regency. Earls Grey and Grenville cannot offer him that.”

“I cannot believe George Canning would ever consent to serve again with his greatest enemy,” my brother Henry observed quietly. “Recollect, my lord, the duel.”

“George Canning would serve with Satan himself, if the Prince of Darkness offered him power,” Mr. Hampson returned scathingly.

“But now that the breath of scandal has touched Castlereagh,” Lord Moira said, “all hope of a Tory Cabinet is fled. There are even those who speak of a Publick Enquiry in the House of Lords! I say it in confidence — but some would suggest — with the utmost delicacy, I assure you — that the Princess may not have died by her own hand. It is even suggested that the one who struck her down was Lord Castlereagh himself … ”

“Good God!” Captain Simpson exclaimed. “That we should come to this! The governance of the land and the conduct of war determined by paramours!”

“It has always been thus,” Lord Moira told him kindly, “but I will admit the present case to be positively Providential.”

Providential, I thought, to the enemies of Lord Castlereagh — and scented in the phrase the iron smell of blood.

Wednesday, 24 April 1811

… The Dashwoods were now settled at Barton with tolerable comfort to themselves. The house and the garden, with all the objects surrounding them, were now become familiar, and the ordinary pursuits which had given to Norland half its charms, were engaged in again with far greater enjoyment than Norland had been able to afford, since the loss of their father.

I confess that I sighed as I read through those first few lines of Chapter Nine — that peculiarly interesting chapter in which my Willoughby must first emerge, like a questing knight of old from his dripping wood, and Marianne his Holy Grail. I sighed …. because the words seemed to me to be stilted past all bearing as I sat in Henry’s book room this morning, lapped in the quiet of a house not yet recovered from the previous evening’s exertions; sighed at the perversity of the printed word, which must appear as distinctly less lovely in its shape and significance than that same word set in flowing script. There is a clumsiness to typeface, I find, that strips from my prose its elusive mystery; I am revealed as a cobbler of letters as rigid and austere as the lead from which they are stamped.

— Or so I felt this morning. I may have experienced some lingering fatigue from Eliza’s party, so great was my concern last evening to delight all those with whom I met, and to ensure their comfort lacked nothing. Or perhaps my attention was drawn from the story on the page — so innocent and familiar — to the story taking shape in my thoughts: a collection of vague suspicions given an alarming trend by Lord Moira’s conversation. Whatever the cause, I could spare but half my mind to Willoughby, as he strode towards the hapless Marianne and her twisted ankle; the better part of my wit was sorting furiously through rumour, fact, and innuendo.

… His manly beauty and more than common gracefulness were instantly the theme of general admiration, and the laugh which his gallantry raised against Marianne, received particular spirit from his exterior attractions. —

Which is to say: Had Willoughby been short, fat, and ill-favoured, Marianne would rather have limped home.