by Don Jacobson
The Maid
And
The Footman
A Pride and Prejudice Variation
By Don Jacobson
© 2016 by Donald P. Jacobson. All rights reserved. No portion of this work may be reproduced by any means electronic or mechanical without the expressed written consent of the holder of this copyright with the exception of brief excerpts for review purposes. Published in the United States of America.
Cover Art: “Maids of All Work.” (1864-65) By John Finnie (1829-1907). Oil on canvas. See the original at The Geffrye Museum. The author died in 1907, so this work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or less. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1923.
All characters, real or imaginary, are treated as fiction and may have been altered for literary purposes. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental. The author has made all translations. All errors are the author’s own. He humbly apologizes in advance for any inconvenience or discomfort these may cause.
For Pam who has always been my music
Table of Contents
Author’s Note
Prologue
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Epilogue One
Epilogue Two
Afterward
About the Author
Other Works by the Author
End Notes
Author’s Note
This novel covers the events described in the previously published “Of Fortune’s Reversal” as seen, however, from below stairs. In the Austen universe, the eternal stories spring from the gentry’s perspective. By taking what historians have labeled a “subaltern” approach (the history of sergeants not generals), I am hoping to reveal a hidden discourse and, in the process, add deeper context and meaning.
While the original novella begins on Guy Fawkes Day, 1815, this work necessarily opens about four months earlier, shortly after The Battle of Waterloo.
Prologue
November 3, 1964, House of Commons, London
Harold Wilson, Prime Minister of Great Britain, rose to his feet as the Speaker glanced his way. Sir Alec Douglas-Home, the Leader of the Opposition, had subsided back onto the Opposition front bench once he had delivered his rebuttal to the Moving of the Queen’s Address[i]. Wilson was no naïf when it came to the knife-fight that was Parliamentary Debate.
He had been a member of the House of Commons since the surprising Labour landslide in the July 1945 election. One of the party’s leading lights, the young Wilson had immediately been put into harness by Atlee and spent the next five years fundamentally transforming the country.[ii] Now, in 1964, the 48-year-old Wilson was a man whose fireplug-like solid build gave him a pugnacious appearance that had served him well, often causing opponents to underestimate his abilities. Hiding behind that brusque façade was the agile mind of an Oxford don.[iii] Labour was once again in the majority after thirteen years in the wilderness.
He approached the Dispatch Box with great dignity. This was to be his first speech as Prime Minister. Drinking it all in, he let his eyes sweep around the House. Then he sought out a pair looking down from the gallery, those of his wife of 24 years, Mary, who sat stock still, nervously fidgeting with her engagement ring, a distinctive two-carat blue diamond solitaire.
The PRIME MINISTER: “I should like to join with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Sir Alec Douglas-Home), not in all he said, but in the compliments he paid to my hon. Friends the Members for Jarrow (Mr. Fernyhough) and Rutherglen (Mr. Gregor Mackenzie), who moved and seconded this Motion…
“I think I must take up a reference in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman about the composition of the Government. I do recognise that hon. Gentlemen opposite may find something unusual and strange about this Government. For one thing, there are no relatives of mine in the Government. There are none of my wife's relatives in the Government. Nor have I any intention whatsoever of appointing any relatives or in-laws either to the Government or to offices of profit or power in the State. If I may put it this way, the day of the dynasties and the era of nepotism is over.[iv]
“…While[v] the past election seemed to have offered the nation a choice between the hidebound classism of the past (hisses from the Opposition benches, jeers from the Government side of the House), on the one hand, or unbridled socialist nationalization on the other (Cries of “Now He speaks the truth”…”Sit down” from the Opposition and roars of anger from the majority seats)…
The SPEAKER: “Order. Order. There will be order. Sit down! Order.” (The House quiets itself.)
The PRIME MINISTER: “Thank you Mr. Speaker. As I said a moment ago, the previous election appeared to be fought on those stark and polarizing terms. The British people made their choice, many, if not all, reacting to these messages. And, as much as it may pain the right honorable ladies and gentlemen on the other side of the floor, the people returned a Labour majority. (Grumbling from the opposition)
“Yet, Mr. Speaker, I assert that this dichotomy of perceptions was a creation of Fleet Street which loves to simplify great national questions into “yes-no,” “up-down,” and “wet-dry” propositions. I am sure that every member of this House will agree that there are precious few of these obvious options in our lives. We live in a world filled with shades of grey. (“Here-here” from the Majority benches.)
“In fact, it is my belief that the greatness of this nation, this Empire and this Commonwealth is that while our society has given every appearance of class antagonism and an antediluvian attitude about “betters and lessers,” the reality has been leagues away from those images. I hold up my family, the Wilsons of Yorkshire and Derbyshire, as an example.
“Mr. Speaker, if I may be permitted a personal reference; in the Stranger’s Gallery[vi] today you will find disparate members of my family both near and extended. My distant cousins, the Baron and Baroness St. Jean, most certainly not a traditional constituency of my party (laughter from the House), along with other aristocratic relations from Burghley, Pemberley and Matlock,[vii] are here to observe this debate. They stand alongside others who rise from different, ruder backgrounds. Their names may not be as familiar to this House—Reynolds, Hastings, Gardiner, Annesley, Hill, Anderton, Poldark, Bennet and Campbell—but they represent the sinews that have held our nation together in times both delightful and desperate.
“I say these names to make a point. Mr. Speaker, I believe that we British are a pragmatic people. How else could we have avoided the revolutionary excesses of 1789, 1830 and 1848? Why is it that, unlike our NATO allies across the Channel, we are still perfecting our first democracy in this seventh decade of the Twentieth Century while they are now on their Fifth?[viii]
“Napoleon made the mistake of underestimating this ‘nation o
f shopkeepers,’ Mr. Speaker. I will gladly argue the proposition that we have enjoyed political stability for nearly three centuries precisely because the larger portion of our traditional landed aristocracy embraced the Industrial Revolution rather than seeking to arrest it. By doing so, Britain was free to discover the strength of those aforementioned shopkeepers and also its engineers, masons, shipbuilders, stevedores, and lorry drivers. These are people to be celebrated not scorned. And, if I may, Mr. Speaker, I will offer two anecdotes from my family history that will clarify my firmly held beliefs.
“About three weeks ago I stood should-to-shoulder on a hilltop overlooking my family’s ancestral home with those whose names I have already spoken. Well, truth be told, the prospect from that rise included the manor house known as Thornhill, the seat of the St. Jean barony. But, the Wilson family base, Hedgebrook House, a more modest brick Georgian, is a freehold on Thornhill—and has been since the 1820s.
“Some two score of us had gathered together to rededicate a monument recognizing one of our nation’s Napoleonic War heroes—the First Baron St. Jean, General Sir Richard Fitzwilliam. The stone obelisk marking the General’s battles in harness with the Duke of Wellington having been refurbished by the Salisbury Trust was being rededicated on the centenary of the General’s death.
“Some Members of this House who have martial experience may be familiar with the Fitzwilliam Memorial as it has served as the finishing marker for many competency tests undertaken by the Parachute Regiment.[ix] These young men, our nation’s fiercest warriors, have one goal as they pick their way through the Peaks District—to evade capture long enough to bury their wings with Fitzwilliam.
“What our distinguished friends may not know is that the Memorial is the final resting place not only for the General, but also for three others.
“His beloved wife, the Baroness Catherine.
“And a couple, unknown to posterity, Henry and Anne Wilson.
“Who were these other two persons who lay in the shadow of a national monument?
“Mr. Speaker, Anne Reynolds Wilson was the daughter of a butler and niece to Pemberley’s well-remembered housekeeper. Mrs. Adelaide Reynolds’ portrait is the only likeness of a servant to be placed in Pemberley’s Great Gallery. Her young relative, Anne, as was the custom, started working in service at the age of eleven.
“Henry Wilson was the illegitimate child of a barmaid from Liverpool and a sailor. He had served as a Sergeant in the Peninsular Campaign and at Waterloo. When he mustered out, his worldly possessions were just the clothes on his back and the French dragoon’s boots on his feet.[x]
“Two more common people could not have existed in the Regency period. They would have been so far beneath the notice of the second son of an Earl and his gently born wife that to even suggest the equality we all hope to achieve on that last final day standing before the Almighty would have been thought to be absurd.
“Yet, in October 1964, the Prime Minister of the British Empire, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and a fair number of the House of Lords stood bare-headed before their final resting place alongside the General and his Lady. This multitude of luminaries watched silently as Her Royal Highness the Princess Margaret placed a wreath from Her Majesty the Queen atop their graves.”
Wilson held the House and its galleries in the palm of his hand. He continued his tale in a chamber that had echoed with Sir Winston’s immortal words only twenty years before. Even now, that old man in the last months of his long life, the great master of the English language, sat in his traditional seat below the gangway, head bowed, listening like all the others in total silence.
“Who were those two people?
“Mr. Speaker, Mr. and Mrs. Wilson were the great friends and companions of the Fitzwilliams. They were also my five-times Great-Grandparents.
“The Wilsons would not have been remarked upon by anybody then who may have seen them walking along the Cobb in Lyme or in the public areas of Vauxhall Gardens wearing their Sunday-best. Nowadays, they would have been the couple you might see on a Friday evening at the corner pub; he with his pint arguing football results with his RAF comrades; she talking with the other exiled wives over their pink gins.
“Totally unremarkable, except that they and those like them today are still leading unremarkable lives. They go to work in factories and mines, on barges and railroads, in schools and offices without any sense of entitlement. They raise their families and hope to save enough for a week in a caravan touring those same Peaks that rise above my Great-Grandparents. We see them in their thousands and millions in our constituencies throughout the country.
“They are unremarkable except that they are the heart and soul of this nation.
“However, Mr. Speaker, the Members of this House may have seen Anne and Henry Wilson, although they may not realize it.
“How many of us recollect from our school days an early photograph taken of Her Majesty Queen Victoria and her husband, His Royal Highness Prince Albert, as they opened the new railway station in Lambton in the early 1850s? It is an arresting and truly unforgettable image.
“Standing with the royal couple, Mr. Speaker, is Sir Fitzwilliam Darcy, recognizable by his towering and craggy figure draped in mourning black and his dark eyes seeking out the photographer with an imposing stare. Next to him and equally identifiable is his cousin, the Baron St. Jean.
“Now, what makes this picture absolutely memorable to ten year old boys is the exotic woman on the Baron’s arm. You see she wore a patch over her left eye. This was the Baroness Catherine although it is said that she hated that name and preferred to be called Lady Kitty. Adults in the family know that the patch was no affectation on her part. You must imagine the questions it inspired in a youngster’s fertile mind.
“However, the reason my mother first showed me this picture, this treasured heirloom, was neither the royalty nor the aristocrats.
“It was the couple standing directly behind the Baroness—she on the right wearing the subdued grey of a servant and he, where he was always to be found, on her left, guarding her blind side. Those were my ancestors—only feet from the most famous people of their time, yet always unseen.
“This pair was unremarkable and unknown except to their family.
“After all, Mr. Speaker, they were just a maid and a footman.”
Chapter I
July 31, 1815, Cecil House, Grosvenor Square, London
Walter Hastings, butler, and therefore head of the family below stairs, looked up at the giant standing opposite him. The man’s posture was ramrod stiff inside of a uniform faded to pink from its original scarlet by years in the field. Three chevrons were sewn precisely on both sleeves, strained to their limit by his powerful biceps. The former soldier cradled his somewhat battered shako in his left arm. His close cut sandy hair brushed the plastered ceiling of the tiny butler’s office. Rich blue eyes stared at a spot about two feet above Hastings’ head.
The Sergeant’s relaxed right fingers were draped exactly on the outer seam of whitish trousers that dropped from slender hips. Made from lightweight cotton duck, Hastings guessed that these were the subaltern’s sole pair of pants given the several areas of delicate stitching that rewove material torn by heaven-knew-what hard, perhaps pointed, objects. Rather than the impractical thigh-hugging leggings of a gentleman’s breeches, these loose fitting pantaloons were designed for quick, often life-saving movement. Even though they flowed gently, their bagginess could not conceal the rippling cords of his muscles.
Noting the fighter’s gleaming black dragoon boots with their characteristic high-flanged tops—nothing this common soldier could ever have hoped to legitimately own—Hastings surmised that they were spoils earned through successful combat. Furthermore, a French officer’s eagle-emblazoned sabretasche rested on his narrow right hip. More clear evidence that this man was a potent, likely deadly, force.
All in all, former Sergeant Henry Wilson was the perfect candidate for employment as a foot
man in the household of Lord Thomas Cecil. He was handsome enough—best keep a close eye on the housemaids—but the Cecils did not ascribe to the fashionable conceit that tall, nearly identical-looking footmen further bespoke of real or imagined prestige. Rather, such an ancient family as the Cecils cared little about appearances and more about the physical prowess, agility and stamina required to protect the relatives of the Marquess of Salisbury.
Wilson could feel a trickle of sweat coursing down between his shoulder blades beneath his linen shirt. London’s mid-summer heat seemed especially designed to torment a man in full uniform, even if that outfit was made of wool worn nearly to the point of being flannel.
Thank God Mr. Sharpe made us throw away those damned stocks.[xi] I doubt if Mr. ‘astings notices the difference. He looks like a cove what ‘as never ‘eard the beat ‘o the drum. But, that does not make ‘im any less the Sarg’n’Major ‘o this ‘ouse. Best be sure I take care not to cross ‘im. I need this job.
Hastings regarded Henry, “So, you knew Michael Tomkins’ brother? He was the one who told you that Michael was in service here at Cecil House?”
“Aye, sor, Charlie was one ‘o me boys when we was serving with the Duke in June. 33rd Buffs it was, sor. He was a brave ‘un, that Charlie Tomkins. Shame the French bastids punched his ticket,” Wilson nearly shouted.
Hastings winced, both from the parade-ground volume as well as the patois.
“Sergeant, we are not at Mont St. Jean. Please lower your voice. And, if you join this household—and that is if—you should not speak except to utter ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ That Liverpudlian accent of yours will upset the quality.”
Wilson smiled to himself. Oh, so you are worried about rough edges, Mr. Hastings, are you? Henry Wilson did not live through the Corsican’s Hell these past six years without learning which side of the horse to mount. Well, I have a wee surprise for you.
“I do apologize to you, sir, for my earlier unschooled language. I lapse back into that when I am pressed, say in an interview.