Gunmen, Gallants and Ghosts

by Dennis Wheatley

  Tired but still smiling, he reached the old Palace of Whitehall, which the homely Mrs. Monk had made ready against his coming. Night drew on, and in every village throughout England the crowds danced round the blazing bonfires delirious with joy. In London the crowd surged hundreds deep about the Palace, yet still the King would not deny the crush that pressed to kiss his hand.

  So on his thirtieth birthday he was restored to sovereignty, yet he was of a wisdom far beyond his years, for nearly half his life he had lived abroad in poverty. He knew Frenchmen, Spaniards, Germans, Dutch, the English, Scotch and Irish too—princes, peasants, merchants, soldiers, clergy, spies, for he had met and spoken with them all. He knew them for what they were worth and judged them in accordance, remembered their splendid loyalties but forgot not their betrayals. And thus too sweet-natured to bear rancour for past ills, but armed with the bitter knowledge gained during fourteen years in the hard school of adversity, at long last ‘The King came into his own again’.

  The Fugitive King

  DRAFT TREATMENT FOR A FILM PLAY

  The actual historical record of the facts gives such an abundance of material for exciting episodes and sustained interest that it is more a question of exercising careful selection as to which to use and which to reject, than seeking to gild the lily with a fictitious plot, and the selection would, of course, be made in story conference. There are, however, two major problems which remain to be solved (I) Love interest, and (a) sustaining the momentum of the picture after the tremendous pace of the King’s flight and escape to France.

  For the first I propose that reasonable liberties should be taken with history and Jane Lane made to play a far more important part than she did in actual fact, and for the second, by shooting the story in parallel sequences showing Jane in England and the King in exile—maintaining the interest until the two can be brought together again in Holland, after the failure of the Royalist plot at home.

  The film version would therefore run something after the following:

  The story opens with Charles receiving the news of his father’s execution, on a warship, and the sad plight of the Royalist cause is disclosed.

  We then pass immediately to The Hague where the pros and cons of the Covenanters’ invitation to Scotland are briefly discussed between Charles and his counsellors—and the decision taken to return with them.

  A couple of sequences should be quite enough to cover the King’s stay in Scotland, and we proceed almost at once to the Battle of Worcester, where a few near-distance shots of Charles, with his staff, and troops of Cavaliers and Roundheads charging, should be sufficient to convey the fight without incurring the expense of vast crowds in costume.

  We enter then the picture proper and the exciting episodes of the King’s flight would be given in detail.

  Jane Lane, who was in fact a very lovely young woman, enters the picture on the first morning of Charles’s dash for liberty, discovering him in Boscobel Woods instead of Elizabeth Yates, and bringing him food. The story then continues in accordance with the facts, until they reach Colonel Wyndham’s house at Trent, and here, instead of Juliana Coningsby taking Jane’s place, as actually happened, Jane should continue with the King right up to his escape from Brighton in the coal barge.

  The film has now to be shot in parallel sequences showing events in England, and their effect upon the plans and fortunes of the Royalists abroad.

  The actual period of the second exile was a matter of eight years, but this should not appear, and only certain lapses of time indicated by alternating summer exteriors with winter sets as the sequences progress, and the ever-increasing poverty of Charles’s little band of loyalists demonstrated by meaner surroundings and plainer clothes, until at last they become utterly ragged and destitute.

  In England, the growing misery under Cromwell’s rule is shown. The notice chalked on the doors at Westminster, ‘This House to Let Unfurnished’. The Puritans smashing the lovely old stained glass in the village Church, despite Jane’s protests and prayers. Young people thrown into prison for dancing on the village green, and here Jane would have a narrow escape from being among them. A small shop-keeper putting up the shutters of his shop for the last time—gone bankrupt through the terrible taxation. The Roundhead soldiers seizing Colonel Lane’s corn. Cromwell threatening the French Ambassador that if Charles is not expelled from France he will make war upon them. Then Cromwell’s death which brings such false elation to the exiles abroad.

  In the meantime, we have seen Charles humiliated by the French, the Dutch, the Spaniards, and now the picture is linked up again by the activities of the Secret Royalist Society, ‘The Sealed Knot’.

  Ormonde and Wilmot are sent to London to arrange a rising. Colonel Lane and Jane are among the conspirators who meet them there.

  All is in readiness for the Royalist coup d’état which is to restore the King when Sir Samuel Moreland, one of the Parliamentary Secretaries for Foreign Affairs, but secretly a Royalist sympathiser, learns that Sir Richard Willis has betrayed their plans.

  Moreland hastens to warn Ormonde, Wilmot, Jane and the other conspirators of their danger. Then he returns to his lodging where he finds certain papers which have been brought for his signature. Among them is an urgent order from Parliament to their Ambassador in Holland, instructing him to arrest the King now that he has ventured back into Dutch territory, in order to sail at once for England the moment his friends declare war on the Parliament. Moreland dares not suppress the order, but immediately the courier has departed with it he dashes back to the headquarters of The Sealed Knot.

  Jane is there, but alone. All the men have ridden off post haste for various counties in the north and west, to try to countermand the orders for the Royalist rising before it is too late. It is vital that someone should warn the King of his danger, as the sloop which carries the courier to Holland is leaving immediately. Moreland dare not leave his post, so Jane returns with him to his lodging, dresses in man’s clothes, and armed with a pass, which Moreland as Secretary of State is in a position to give her, sails for Holland on the same sloop as the Government courier. She arrives at the King’s inn just in time to save him from Downing’s men, who are on their way to arrest him, and together they gallop over the frontier into Flanders.

  Safe again for the moment, Charles pleads with her to stay with him, but she is terribly anxious as to what awful effects the betrayal of their plans may have had on her family and friends in England, and so leaves him, to return.

  We now see Lambert quarelling with the other Parliamentary leaders, a number of whom he arrests because they demand a General Election and the summoning of a ‘Free Parliament’. Then the Parliamentary Generals quarrelling among themselves.

  The scene now moves to Jane’s village. The Puritan soldiers have come to arrest Colonel Lane and other gentlemen who were concerned in the abortive rising. The angry villagers stone the troops, but are driven off. Lane is arrested and as he is being marched away Jane arrives, so they seize her too, and both are flung into prison.

  We then see Charles’s meeting with his little sister Minette, whom he so adored, at Colombes, and he tells her of the brighter happier England he would build if only he could regain his throne, but at the end of the sequence a messenger arrives with news of Jane’s arrest so, worried and anxious, he sets out for The Hague in the hope that he may learn further news from his little Court which is stationed there.

  General Monk is then shown with the well-disciplined Scottish Army. His chaplain is urging upon him that it is his duty to march down into England and save the country from the terrible state of anarchy into which it has fallen. Monk disarms his Anabaptist officers and sets out on his march to London.

  On his return to The Hague, Charles finds his little Court reduced to direst poverty. The canals are frozen over and there is deep snow, but they sit shivering in a fireless room, without candles and with very little food.

  He learns that Monk’s army has occupied London,
and Lambert been flung into the Tower, but the news does not lighten their despondency for they have no reason to suppose that Monk will prove anything but another Cromwell, and now that another strong man has seized power all hope of a Restoration seems further off than ever. Hyde grimly repeats his old dictum that ‘The resurrection of English courage and loyalty shall alone recover England for the King’—and all his staunchest friends at home have now been flung into prison. They call for supper, but the landlord refuses them further food on credit. None of them has a penny piece, so they decide to set out for Brussels in the hope that the Spanish Government may provide them with food and shelter for a few weeks. While the horses are being saddled, the final blow descends. A courier arrives with a list of the Royalists at home who have been sentenced to transportation to the slavery of the plantations, and Jane’s name is among them.

  Jane is seen in prison with her uncle and other Royalists. They speak of the hopelessness of their position. The Puritan soldiers then enter and, hustling them out, bind their hands behind their backs, then herd them like cattle into large open springless wagons for their terrible journey down to Bristol where they will be shipped overseas into virtual slavery.

  We then see Charles in bed in a miserable garret. It is early morning and the street outside deserted, but a Cavalier comes galloping up. He flings himself off his horse, dashes up the stairs of the house, and bursts in on the sleeping King. It is Sir John Grenville who brings the staggering news that at Monk’s order a ‘Free Parliament’ has assembled, and that their first action was to carry a motion that the Constitution of England ever consisted of ‘King, Lords, and Commons’. They then resolved unanimously that the King should be asked to return at once to rule them. With astounding suddenness the wheel of fortune has turned and Hyde’s famous dictum come true. Ormonde, Wilmot, Taaffe, and the rest are called in and, wild with excitement, they dash downstairs to saddle the horses.

  The scene shifts now to the bedroom of the Spanish Governor Don John of Austria. He, too, is awakened by an almost exhausted messenger, who tells him of events in England. England is still officially at war with Spain, and now that the English people want their King to resume his throne Charles’s person will prove a hostage of incalculable value. They must seize him before he has time to leave Spanish territory, and imprison him in the fortress. From his window, Don John bellows orders to a troop of Spanish Cavalry in the courtyard below, and drawing their swords they gallop out through the gateway.

  The King and his friends are just mounting their horses as the Spaniards come clattering down the street. A sharp fight ensues. Charles and Hyde charge through the Spaniards and gallop off into the open country, while Ormonde and the rest protect the King’s retreat.

  At Breda, Charles and his friends are seen in fine new clothes. He signs the famous Declaration, and deputations arrive from all quarters, bringing chests of money and presents of all kinds. Sir Edward Montague and Pepys arrive with the fleet to bring him home, and we see him again aboard a ship about to set sail once more for England.

  His triumphant progress through the cheering multitude in a London street, while the joy-bells ring and the cannons thunder, leads to the final scene in the banqueting hall on the night of his Restoration at Whitehall.

  Jane, who was actually present, is seated on Charles’s right, and Barbara Villiers, afterwards Countess of Castlemaine, on his left. He rises from the table and goes to the window where he bows to the cheering throng in the street below. The two women are just behind him, and as he withdraws from the window he turns to Castlemaine with the words—‘I am utterly weary after this wonderful day, but not too tired to wish for ten minutes of your company now that I am about to leave my guests.’

  Jane, overhearing this, draws him aside and asks him reproachfully what she has done to be thus passed over, and he replies with all his natural charm and tenderness, ‘Now that I am a King indeed duty demands that I should wed some Royal Princess. For I mean to be a good King, though I doubt not that when I am dead they will count me a bad man from my love of pleasure—yet I am not so bad that I would repay your fidelity and love by making you as these others. Let us show these people that we can resist temptation, Jane, for I swear to you that your honour is dearer to me than my own.’

  The picture closes on the old Cavalier tune ‘Here’s a Health unto His Majesty’, as the King moves slowly towards the door, and turns once more to bow at the entrance, while his courtiers and ladies raise their glasses to the new era of happiness and prosperity which has opened that night for England.

  NOTE

  This suggested ending has the advantage that in addition to being artistically sound, there are strong reasons for believing it to be historically correct. From the age of seventeen onwards, Charles undoubtedly seduced every good-looking woman with whom he came into contact, yet it is a remarkable and interesting fact that although Jane Lane was a very lovely lady, that they were thrown together for many days and nights during his flight after Worcester, that she corresponded freely with him during the whole of his exile, visited him in Paris after his escape, and was a notable figure at his Court after the Restoration, no breath of scandal has ever been attached to her name. The explanation of Charles’s restraint in her case is, however, perfectly apparent and absolutely in keeping with his character.

  This matter of historical correctness is an important factor as far as the educated public are concerned, and if the present suggested treatment is adopted, the picture will remain, in all except a few minor details—such as Jane warning Charles to escape from Holland instead of Downing, the ambassador, and her imprisonment—absolutely in accordance with the known facts.

  STORY VIII

  This story is based on memories of my early days as a Mayfair wine-merchant. In 1886 my grandfather—Dennis Wheatley I—secured a building lease from the Westminster Estate and had erected the block of shops and flats on the east side of South Audley Street, between the Grosvenor Chapel and Mount Street. He then merged the wine, spirit and mineral-water connection he had built up in three provision shops that he owned in the district and housed it in the corner shop of the block, opposite the Chapel.

  By a combination of shrewdness and intensely hard work he was able to retire at the age of forty, having installed his four sons as managers of the four businesses. To my father’s lot fell the wine-merchants, and under him it greatly prospered. As an only son I should have been half-witted had I then considered any other career than that of following my father in this interesting and lucrative business. To fit me for that, it was decided that from the age of sixteen I should spend a year in Germany, a year in France and a year in Spain and Portugal, learning about how wines were made.

  In 1913 I spent a very happy year in Germany. I returned in December and it was arranged that I should go out to Rheims in August 1914. But we all know what happened then. In September of that year I received my first commission in the 2nd/Ist City of London R.F.A.(T) and, later, I had my year in France, but it was on the Western Front.

  Immediately the war was over, I returned to the business and on my fathers’ death in 1926 became its sole owner. During the five years that followed I bought and dispensed wines from many famous cellars, including the Royal Saxon Cellars and those of the Empress Eugenie, and among my customers I could count three Kings, twenty-one Imperial, Royal and Serene Highnesses, twelve British Ducal Houses, the Archbishop of Canterbury and a score of millionaires.

  It was a full and delightful life, but the impressions for this story date mainly from my first months in the business—from January to September, 1914.

  Nearly every morning I was sent out to see customers in the neighbourhood. In those days, there were no blocks of offices or flats in Grosvenor Square and Park Lane or the streets adjacent to them. The only shop in Berkeley Square was Gunter’s—renowned for its strawberry ices—and no couturier had then invaded Bruton Street. Instead, there were several hundred fine private houses with narrow fronts,
but of great depth, the London homes of the titled and the wealthy. Sometimes in winter there were dense pea-soup fogs. On such days one could glance through the ground-floor windows, admire the beautiful furniture the rooms contained and let one’s imagination play on the luxurious life led by their owners.

  In the Fog

  The fog came down quite suddenly; otherwise I would not have been out in it. I mean I would not have been walking in it, but would have had the porter get me a taxi to take me to my luncheon appointment. For a long time now I’ve had a horror of fog, as it was in one that I squared accounts with Eric Martin.

  When I left my office on the far side of Regent Street there was no more than the grey mist that so often blurs the outlines of London’s buildings on a November morning, and I had felt that the walk across to the lower end of Piccadilly would do me good; but by the time I crossed Hanover Square the mist had thickened and taken on a yellowish tinge. When I reached Bond Street the drivers of motor vehicles were having to switch on their headlights.

  There was a time when I enjoyed walking in a fog in the West End of London. In those days nearly all the mansions in Mayfair were still occupied as private houses. The servants rarely troubled to draw the heavy brocaded curtains and often the lights were on, so one could see into the downstairs rooms. It was fun to glance in passing at the gracious interiors with their Adams mantelpieces and Chippendale furniture. Sometimes a footman would be laying a table and one could speculate with a shade of envy on the well-dressed men and lovely women who would soon be sitting there enjoying an epicurean lunch.

  But now that glamorous Mayfair depicted by Michael Arlen was no more. The mansions had been converted into offices or shops; and as I turned into Grosvenor Street I had no inclination to look into them. The fog was now billowing down in thick, sluggish waves from the direction of the Park, and it aroused in me again those awful memories of my last walk with Eric.