Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron jam-10

by Stephanie Barron

  Chapter 18 The Rivals

  WEDNESDAY, 12 MAY 1813

  BRIGHTON, CONT.

  WE PARTED FROM THE EARL AND COUNTESS ON SCROPE Davies’s doorstep. It had been agreed that Henry should accompany Swithin to the day’s race-meeting—“for murder or no,” he said, “I have a horse running at four o’clock, and must not fail to appear, or the betting shall be all against me. Wyncourt—old Gravetye’s heir, you know, and as sound a judge of horseflesh as any ever born—is my only competition.”

  “I have seen Lord Wyncourt’s gelding,” Henry observed coolly, “and thought it a trifle too short in the back—” At which the Earl clapped my brother delightedly, and the two set off in search of a hackney carriage bound for the Downs east of town.

  Lady Swithin was to return to the Marine Parade, in expectation of her friend Lady Oxford’s arrival; and she invited me cordially to accompany her—but a nearer duty obtruded. Directly opposite our position was General Twining’s house, its doorknocker muffled and its windows hung with crape.

  “I must pay a call upon a bereaved parent,” I said, “however much I should prefer a few hours of sun and excitement on the racing-ground.”

  The Countess’s face lit up. “But I have a capital scheme! I shall call round in my perch phaeton, with or without my London friend, in half an hour’s time—to save you from the General’s clutches, and carry you off to the races. All the world shall be there, you know, and it must prove an excellent opportunity for your researches.”

  “I can have no objection, and should be delighted to accept of your ladyship’s invitation,” I replied.

  Lady Swithin unfurled her sunshade with a look brimful of mischief and said, “I almost hope Lady Oxford is delayed. We might enjoy a most delicious tête-à-tête in the phaeton—for I mean to hear every word Byron spoke to you this morning. Never have I seen him so little bored by a lady’s conversation—even Caro Lamb’s!”

  I coloured, and deflected suspicion with the novelist’s chief tool—a facility for timely invention. “That is because I was impertinent. Lord Byron cannot often meet with a woman so little inclined to captivate him.”

  “I wonder it did not send him into strong hysterics,” Desdemona said, “but you must school your tongue a little, my dear, before entering the opposite abode—it should never do to carry pugnacity to the General!”

  She was correct, of course; the encounter with Byron had perhaps been too invigourating. I ordered my emotions into a confirmed serenity, bade her ladyship adieu, and crossed to the far paving with a step that was the very picture of meek womanhood.

  It seemed, at the first, as tho’ my efforts were for naught—Suddley the butler being little inclined to admit me this morning, whether he recognised my countenance from my previous visit, or no.

  “The General is not at home to visitors,” he said austerely; and I could well imagine that the General was loath to parade his grief before the stream of the curious and the hypocritical who had left their cards upon the foyer’s table. Suddley’s elderly face was marked with the ravages of grief; and I recalled how Catherine had greeted him as one might an old nurse, a friend of the schoolroom. How little right the serving class was accorded to mourn for those they loved, of whatever station—duty must always intervene. Someone must lay the fire each morning; someone must answer the door.

  “I quite understand.” My voice was firm and a trifle over-loud; behind Suddley’s stooped form was the hushed length of the Twining hall, and if there was to be any hope of the General’s overlistening our conversation, I must condescend to bray a little. “If you would be so good as to convey Miss Jane Austen’s deepest sympathy to General Twining. Tho’ I knew his daughter only briefly, I could not help but regard her with admiration and respect—and know how severe his loss must be.”

  “You are very good, ma’am,” the butler said in a quavering voice, and his gaze—which had been correctly fixed at an indeterminate point over my right shoulder—met my own. “It is an affliction we never looked for, in plain terms. Such a sweet and biddable child as she was—hardly one of these harum-scarum misses, wild for a red coat and no thought to her family name. I wish that Lord Byron had never been born! Her death, that Devil’s imp was, from the moment his evil foot crossed her path.”

  I murmured encouraging nothings.

  “Right there on the paving he bowed to Miss Catherine, being arm in arm with our friend Mr. Davies. I may say, meaning no disrespect to the gentleman, that I was surprized at Mr. Davies’s judgement—knowing Lord Byron’s vicious tendencies as he does, he should not have encouraged the acquaintance, in my opinion. But, however, Mr. Davies may have felt he had no choice but to accede to his friend’s wishes, in all politeness.”

  Scrope Davies, on intimate terms with the Twining family? I had not had an idea of it—and felt a ripple of excitement twist my entrails. I must speak to Henry. Surely my piquant brother would have learnt much from his brief conversation with the gentleman.

  “Not a moment’s peace did any of us know, from that day to this,” Suddley went on. “His lordship was fair took with a passion for Miss Catherine. It wasn’t like the usual courting of a gentleman and a young lady. Quite dotty he was—mooning about below her windows of a midnight, and calling her by some foreign name.”

  “Leila?” I suggested.

  “That was it! Spanish, I thought it,” the butler confided, “or maybe French. It was as tho’ his lordship had been took with a sickness, of the heart and head. Miss Catherine went in fear of him—her poor little self all of a tremble when the bell was pulled, lest it be his lordship calling—and the General could not abide him! A wolf, he said, come to ravish my white lamb. And look where it’s ended! With that Devil’s white hands round the sweet child’s throat!”

  “You believe, then, that he drowned her?—Tho’ so respectable a friend as Mr. Scrope Davies vouches for Lord Byron’s movements?”

  “Suddley!”

  The General’s voice, as harsh and bellicose as tho’ he commanded the heights of a battlefield, rang out from the far end of the passage. “Cease your prattle at once and send that woman away! She calls only to feed upon our misery, like all the rest!”

  “Very good, sir,” Suddley said woodenly; then added in an undertone, as he made to close the door in my face, “May I beg leave to apologise—”

  “Pray do not regard it. You have all my sympathy.” I turned away.

  “Miss Austen, is it?”

  The General’s form was just visible behind his man’s as Suddley hesitated, his hand on the door.

  “I am come to condole, sir—but have no wish to intrude upon so profound an affliction.”

  “Then be off with ye,” he snarled, thrusting his head round the jamb, “and do not presume to return! I have nothing to say to you, madam! Nor to any woman of my acquaintance; you are all jades, whores, and vultures—not a pure soul among you. Not even,” he added, his voice breaking down entirely, “my poor Catherine, tho’ her winding sheet be white! Oh, God, that I should live to see the sins of the mother visited upon the child—”

  There is no uglier sound, to my mind, than that of a grown man weeping; its utter desolation strikes the heart to stone.

  “Forgive him, ma’am,” Suddley whispered as he drew his master inside. “He does not know what he says.”

  But I wondered very much, as I walked towards Marine Parade, whether Suddley lied. A new train of thought had been opened to me: I must speak to Mrs. Silchester once more.

  LADY OXFORD HAD NOT BEEN DELAYED, HAVING FLOWN south that morning with the lightest of traps and a team of four high-steppers to speed her journey. She declared herself an excellent traveller, who suffered not at all from the headache, requiring only a simple nuncheon to restore her jangled nerves—was only too happy to encounter all her acquaintance at the race-meeting that afternoon—was sure that Byron would venture out to lay a wager on Swithin’s horse—and would be charmed to further her acquaintance with any of dear Mon
a’s intimate friends.

  I had progressed, in a matter of days, from a lady briefly recollected from Mona’s Bath girlhood, to an intimate friend, and was hardly likely to quarrel with the change.

  Jane Elizabeth Harley, Countess of Oxford, was nothing that I expected. From her reputation as a captivator of powerful men—her liaisons with such Whig potentates as Sir Francis Burdett, Lord Granville, and the reformer Lord Archibald Hamilton being everywhere known—I had predicted a heavy-lidded seductress, with expansive bosom and swaying hips, her indolence suggestive of the boudoir. But here was a trim and adorable creature some years my senior, whose pert nose and rosebud mouth belonged to an ingénue. Brisk and merry in her attitudes, she was nonetheless as sharp as she could stare—pronouncing some blistering insight upon her fellows with every second sentence. She kept a lorgnette in her reticule, the better to examine any fragment of leaf or fossil that might fall in her way, and was forever losing herself in a book. At present, she informed Desdemona, she was engrossed in fourteen volumes of a history of Ancient Rome, and had brought Volume the Seventh with her to peruse in the phaeton on the way to the race-meeting.

  There could be no one less akin to Caro Lamb on the face of the earth—and that the same man could find The Sprite captivating, as swam in Lady Oxford’s orbit, defied comprehension. Still further did Byron’s passion for Catherine Twining strain belief, when presented with the worldly and erudite Countess. I began to think that my judgement of his lordship’s character was correct—any lady must be mere window-dressing to his fundamental love of self, each affair representing an attitude he tried on as another man might study various ways of tying a cravat.

  Or his lordship was mad.

  Lady Oxford’s excellent spirits on the present occasion were explained by the intelligence she had received at Cuckfield but an hour earlier, on her road from London.

  “Even the ostlers were talking over the news,” she observed boisterously as we were handed into Mona’s phaeton, “that the inquest was done, and no judgement returned against Byron! There remains, then, some sense in the minds of men! I despaired of it when in my twenties; but with the gravity of age—or perhaps second childhood—have lately found my innocence returning.”

  “Impossible,” Mona said drily. “That will do, Hinch—I shall take the reins. Stand away from their heads!”

  She had undertaken to drive a team in the perilously sprung high-perch phaeton, the sort of sporting vehicle rarely adopted by ladies, and only then in Hyde Park of a summer’s afternoon. Had the team been Swithin’s breakdowns, turned off to his wife for the remainder of their useful years, I should have felt greater security; but in fact they were beautiful goers, with velvet mouths that responded to a feather touch on the reins.

  “Poor things,” Mona observed as one bucked and reared in the traces, “they have not been out of their stable since Hinch brought them down from London three days ago. I fear they will be a trifle fresh!”

  I was reminded of nothing so much as her uncle, Lord Harold, as the blood chestnuts sprang from before No. 21, Marine Parade, and nearly ran away with their mistress in the direction of the Downs, scattering sedan chairs, promenaders, and errand boys to the kerb. Desdemona was magnificent, in complete command of her team and herself, responding to the surging animals as tho’ to a delightful gambit in courtship—she had only to tug a little, and the rampant course was contained. Lord Harold had taught her well; no other could have instructed her ladyship how to feather a turn, or catch the thong of her whip with a flick of her wrist; she was masterful—and fearless.

  For my part, I clung to the sides of the phaeton as it swayed, and found that I had neglected to breathe for the first dreadful seconds. Lady Oxford quite abandoned her history-book, being engaged in keeping a firm hand on the crown of her jockey bonnet.

  The race course set out by the late Duke of Queensberry and various Royals mad for horseflesh—the Regent chief among them—traverses a rolling saddle of Down-land. There is a neat little stand erected for the use of spectators, but the majority of those present—gentlemen, in the main—preferred to sit their mounts or stand in ranks along the turns of the course, which is irregular and demanding as it cuts through the hills.[19]

  Desdemona pulled up her phaeton alongside a curricle, which I observed to contain Mr. Hodge and a companion—the redoubtable Mrs. Alleyn, who was looking very pert in a deep rose spencer and green sunshade. She hailed us smartly and complimented Mona on her courage, in sporting so dashing an equipage.

  “I am accustomed to drive myself everywhere, you know,” Mona returned indifferently; “and Swithin is too wise to oppose me. Mrs. Alleyn, may I have the honour of presenting the Countess of Oxford?”

  The lady’s brown eyes widened at being made the familiar of so notorious a personage; but she accepted the honour with good grace, inclined her head sweetly; and recovered herself a little in gazing out at the general scene. I smiled to myself as I watched: the jaunty Mrs. Alleyn might stile herself a prize in Brighton; but she had not yet encountered a ship of Lady Oxford’s draught.

  “How do the odds run at present, Hodge?” Mona enquired.

  If any gentleman were likely to know the state of the betting, it should be Hodge; he embarked on a fluent discourse regarding the points of the various horses and the weight of their riders; the variability of one animal’s response to dry turf, versus another’s liking for mud; the possibility of Lord Wyncourt’s gelding being a trifle touched in the wind; and the excellent action of Lord Swithin’s horse, which was called by the lovely name of China Trade. From which we concluded that the Earl’s entry was a high favourite.

  “Then put it all on the nag for me, Hodge,” Lady Oxford said gaily, tossing him a silken purse that clinked delightfully with coins. “You know I cannot approach the bookmen.”

  “Your servant,” Hodge said with a bow, and sprang down from his curricle, quite deserting Mrs. Alleyn. I might have shifted my place to supply her want of a companion—but that I observed her eagle eye already fixed on an elegant sporting figure making its way on horseback to the curricle’s side: Sir John Stevenson. He tipped his hat, acknowledged his old acquaintance Lady Oxford, and soon made Mrs. Alleyn the grateful recipient of his exclusive attentions.

  “Did Byron say whether he intended the race-meeting?” Lady Oxford asked carelessly of Desdemona.

  There was a pregnant silence, both Mona and I being well aware that Byron’s determined drinking must make all exertion impossible; but then some imp in the Countess’s soul encouraged her to declare, “I do not recollect. Jane—Miss Austen—may have heard him mention it, however … they were much in conversation.…”

  “I cannot say,” I stuttered, as some memory of that engrossing tête-à-tête obtruded. He had penetrated the secret of my authorship. Stripped me naked with a single look. And called me a writer greater than himself.… “Indeed, we spoke so briefly—the merest nothings … but were I pressed, I should imagine his lordship too greatly fatigued by the labours of his morning, to venture out-of-doors so soon after the inquest. And then, too, there is the undesirability of drawing notice—”

  “Whatever do you mean?” Lady Oxford retorted coolly. “Byron adores drawing notice. It is as life-blood to the man.”

  “But I do not think his Bow Street Runner should advise it.”

  Lady Oxford turned her head to frown at me a little. “Are you suggesting he means to skulk within doors, from fear of the rabble? His innocence has been declared!”

  “I beg your pardon—say rather that his guilt has been doubted. Until some other is charged with the murder of Catherine Twining, the general feeling against his lordship remains high.”

  Her ladyship emitted a brittle little laugh. “I collect you are entirely unacquainted with Lord Byron’s character, Miss Austen; and it is as well that I have remembered the fact, else I should resent your picture of the gentleman—for it is the picture of a coward. Good God! He can hardly have known the chit who drowne
d—a brazen piece who thought nothing of wandering the shingle at the dead of night, and got herself tossed like a sack of flour into a stranger’s bed—”

  Understanding shot through my brain with the clarity of a lightning-bolt. I glanced swiftly at Desdemona, whose countenance was alive with anxiety. She gave the barest shake of the head in my direction; it was true, then: Lady Oxford had no notion of her lover’s passion for another.

  “I had understood,” Mona said breathlessly, “that the two had met some once or twice.”

  An exclamation of annoyance escaped Lady Oxford’s lips. “Very probably! The better part of the known world has thrown itself at poor George’s head! If you only knew, Miss Austen, the throngs of ladies desperate for his lordship’s notice!—The stratagems and schemes to which they resort, without the slightest regard for their own dignity! Did I not possess a keen delight in the absurd, I should be reduced to tears by the folly of their display! But his lordship remains insensible to all!”

  “Not quite all,” came a whisper from somewhere beside us.

  A shiver ran up my spine, as tho’ an incorporeal spirit and not a human form had spoken.

  Lady Caroline Lamb had condescended to join the race-meeting.

  Chapter 19 Incident on the Downs

  WEDNESDAY, 12 MAY 1813

  BRIGHTON, CONT.

  SHE WAS MOUNTED ON A LEGGY BLACK COLT, PERHAPS three years of age, with a strong Arab nose and a venomous look—culled from the Regent’s stables, no doubt. I may say that she had an excellent seat, and became it to admiration in her Prussian blue riding habit, cut as severely as tho’ Weston had fashioned it for the Marquis of Wellington, with a stiff, high collar and narrow sleeves. The colt was restive, snorting and tossing its head, but she paid it no heed, her tiny hands in their doeskin gloves grasping the reins with ease.

  “Lady Caroline,” Desdemona murmured. “How delightful. I hope you are entirely recovered from your misadventure on the shingle?”