Stealing Athena

by Karen Essex

  Mary was not certain what to make of the spectacles that had been staged at the Park Lane address. Surely these were not the noble pursuits of Elgin’s imagination. Boxing matches—events at which Lord Elgin disgraced himself by appearing—were staged in front of the sculptures so that the gentlemen present, for a ticket price of five shillings each, could compare the physiques of the boxers to the statues. “They greatly admired the form of the pugilist known as Dutch Sam.” Robert was obviously enjoying himself.

  “There is something terribly crass in it, is there not?”

  “Oh, they are all standing about, drunk, imagining themselves ancient Greeks,” Robert said. “A pitiful pastime for men grown past the university phase. Look at this article. Mr. Gregson, a popular prizefighter, posed in the nude for two hours in front of the ‘masterpiece that is believed to be the god Dionysus.’”

  “And here is a piece about Mrs. Siddons coming to see the marbles and swooning—swooning—for the sight of them! Oh, these actresses should confine their performances to the stage.”

  “I imagine your Emma Hamilton will be performing her dances there soon,” Robert said.

  “She is not ‘my’ Mrs. Hamilton, thank you. And I do not think she is performing anywhere these days, poor dear. I have been invited to a dinner in London given by her friends, at which time they intend to ask the guests to contribute to her welfare. The poor thing is quite broke, in the wake of the deaths of Lord Nelson and Sir William.”

  “And will you attend?”

  “As likely as you attending one of Elgin’s boxing matches. I am invited only because I am the scandalous woman du jour,” Mary said.

  “Yes, a scandalous woman with the rare distinction of having money.”

  Mary did not say so, but she wished she might help Emma Hamilton, who seemed perennially in need of funds. But Mary had her own misfortunes to occupy her these days.

  “Oh, this is rich. Some swooning artist took one of his peers, a Swede, to see the marbles. The man lost control of himself on the drive back, shouting, ‘The Greeks were de gods,’” Robert said, laughing so hard that he had to blow his nose on his handkerchief before he could finish the reading the piece aloud. “‘The overly excited artists drove headlong along the Strand, upsetting an oncoming coal cart and a flock of sheep.’

  “It appears, however, that the government is siding with the Society of Dilettanti, rather than the swooning artists,” Robert continued. “They’ve made Elgin an offer for the statues of thirty thousand pounds.”

  “Why, that’s an insult!’ Mary said. True, she despised Elgin and all of his endeavors, but her own sweat and money were in those pieces of marble. She had seen to them from the very beginning of Elgin’s desire to copy and mold them all the way through the acquisition of the actual pieces, and then through the effort to raise them from the bottom of the sea. She was incensed, on Elgin’s behalf and on her own—and on behalf of the magnificent treasures themselves, the unwitting immigrants to Great Britain, standing silently while the government that now might lord it over them served up this kind of insult.

  “I am sure that the government’s agents are using the words of the Society of Dilettanti to push Elgin to accept the low offer.”

  “Has he accepted?” Mary asked.

  “Apparently he turned them down. Parliament has another scheme, though. Some members are questioning whether or not he actually owns the sculptures, whether he obtained them legally.”

  Again, Mary felt a confusion of emotions rise up inside her. “I obtained that firman myself from the Sultan! Of course he obtained them legally. Does our government think that the British ambassador to the Porte would run about the territory stealing?”

  “Apparently they do, or at least they are raising the point. Certain Grecian scholars have published letters against the acquisitions. Surely you are aware of that?”

  “Yes, yes,” she said wearily, not even sure anymore whose side she was on in the matter.

  “I’m afraid that this puts to rest our scheme for laying claim to the marbles, Mary. At this point, Elgin is out of funds, completely bankrupt and in debilitating debt. He would probably be eternally grateful to you if you took custody of the statues.”

  Mary felt her body go limp. She had rallied her spirits, thinking that she’d finally found a way to outsmart him and to reclaim her rights to her children. She was once again defeated, knowing that she had to gather her energy for the horrible, public fight ahead. “Elgin has nothing to lose now. He is like those pugilists boxing at Park Lane. I do not know if I have the skill to duck the punches thrown by a wild and desperate man.”

  Robert was instantly at her side. “We shall get through all of this, Mary. I am here with you, and soon you will be free of the tyrant, and we shall be married. That is when life is going to begin.”

  “My only consolation now is his pain and his disgrace. He cannot pay for that house on Park Lane. He cannot even pay for his own house, which he once thought to make into the height of baronial grandeur. Whoever acquires the marbles will have to pay for the transport because Elgin cannot do it. Oh, I can just hear his evil scheming mind roiling and toiling to find a solution to his many problems. The marbles are now his grand albatross. My hope is that he puts one end of a rope around his neck and the other around the enormous horse’s head from the pediment, and both sink together into the sea.”

  In the city of Edinburgh, March 11, 1808

  IT WOULD HAVE BEEN their ninth wedding anniversary. Instead, it was the day that Thomas Bruce, Lord Elgin, was suing his wife, Lady Mary Elgin, for divorce in an Edinburgh court of law on grounds of adultery, intending to prove—her lawyers had discovered—that she was so immoral, so loose, so lacking in judgment, so immature, and so suggestible where handsome men were concerned that she was unfit, not only to care for her four children, but to care for the vast sums of money and many acres of land she was to inherit from her family.

  When Elgin’s true motivation came to light, Mary could only slap herself on the forehead and mutter, “Of course!” It was money—the one thing Elgin had always sought from his alliance with Mary Nisbet. People didn’t change. It was a cliché, but it was true. Elgin could find other women to bear more children carrying his name, but he would need Mary’s fortune to transform himself from a disfigured and disgraced fallen aristocrat into a desirable catch.

  “Do not forget that he needs your money to be able to hang on to those marbles until the British government finally admits what they are worth,” Robert said. “Without the funds, he’ll be forced into giving them away, which is what Parliament wants, don’t you know?”

  Mary knew it would be a grim day, but she felt a small sense of satisfaction when she awoke and saw that the weather was inclement. Rain poured down, embittering an already unseasonably cold spring. She remembered how Elgin suffered in the damp weather, and she smiled.

  The rain did not stop the crowds. She arrived with her parents at the courthouse, where urchins selling newspapers stood under umbrellas, hawking out the headlines. “Lord Elgin sues Adulterous Lady for Divorce. Details of Her Affairs Chronicled Inside!”

  Inside the courtroom, twenty-one grim-faced male jurors, each old enough to be her grandfather, were seated. Their white wigs sat atop undoubtedly bald heads, their pinched faces stared ahead solemnly at nothing. She tried to meet their eyes, careful not to smile at them for fear of being proclaimed a tart who tried to use her sexual powers to sway them.

  She almost gasped when Elgin entered the courtroom. He looked older, much older. He had taken to wearing a new mask, the other one perhaps become too small for his widening face. His once-taut body had turned soft at the middle, and his quite correct posture had turned into a resigned slump. She almost felt sorry for him. No, she reminded herself, this is the man who is trying to destroy you. Pity will not do. And yet she was torn between gloating over his much-diminished appearance and her memory of how handsome he had once been.

  It was one thing to
prepare to hear vicious and untrue things said about oneself; it was another entirely to go through the experience of hearing them said. As Mary watched witness after witness called by the prosecution, she felt as if she were attending a tableau of her past, some macabre theatrical production in which she was the unwitting main character who had yet to appear onstage. They were all assembled, all the servants who had worked for the Elgins during their marriage—Duff, Mary Ruper, and Thomas Willey, the footman Mary had fired in London for drunken misconduct, among others. The whole cast was lined up, ready to breach all manner of trust. Elgin’s attorney had even managed to drag a deposition out of poor Miss Gosling in the last days before that good lady died. Numerous employees who had gone to Constantinople with the newlyweds were on hand to give witness to the disintegration of Lady Elgin’s feelings for her husband.

  The opening statement by one of Elgin’s lawyers was an endless recap of the marriage, focusing on the ardor and warmth the noble personage Lord Elgin brought to the union, recounting their days in Turkey, and taking their story all the way through Elgin’s imprisonment in France. The lawyer presented such a delightful picture of blissful marriage that Mary wondered when, if ever, he would begin to address the charges against her. She needn’t have worried. The trial against Robert and the conviction for criminal conversation was soon enough invoked.

  Elgin’s lawyer began his case by reading the testimonies given by Hamilton, Morier, and others at the trial in London. Mary wished she had read the pamphlets that Robert had brought home. He’d been right; if she had already read these horrible things, she would have been immune to the unique feeling of sitting through the awful impressions that others were made to give about her marriage and her behavior within it.

  To her astonishment, most of it centered on the disappearance of Elgin’s nose.

  Everyone in their employ had assumed—incorrectly so—that once Elgin’s nose had been removed by the doctor, surely Lady Elgin had become repulsed by him.

  “It has already been proven in an English court of law that Mr. Robert Ferguson in fact seduced by degrees and in such a way as to especially suit the innocent and naïve character of Lady Elgin. The noble plaintiff was misrepresented to his wife by Mr. Ferguson, who attacked his public and private conduct and made him, in his wife’s eyes, a victim of scorn and disgust. Oh, unhappy woman!” he said, as if reciting a monologue from one of Mr. Shakespeare’s tragedies. “How little she must have foreseen that she would be making her children orphans and entailing upon them such miserable consequences!”

  At that point, Mary’s lawyer came forward. “Sir, please contain your theatrics, which may be appropriate for the London theater, but not for a courtroom in the fair city of Edinburgh.” This brought a wave of snickers from the audience, but soon everyone was silenced by the reading of the testimony of Mr. William Hamilton, former secretary to Lord Elgin. Mr. Hamilton attested to the happy marriage between the Elgins, until “Lord Elgin contracted a severe ague which consequently resulted in the loss of his nose. At that point, the lady’s interest in His Lordship began to wane. Even prior to this, Lord Elgin had complained of his wife’s adolescent predilection for flirtation with handsome men.” Hamilton went on to list the names of General O’Hara at Gibraltar, Count Sébastiani, and even Mr. Lusieri, the painter. And, of course, Mr. Ferguson. The testimony detailed how Elgin had sent Hamilton to London to spy on Mary, observing who went in and out of the house, and what letters were delivered. “Lord Elgin always harbored suspicions of his wife’s conduct where men were concerned.”

  Mary wanted to rise to her feet and defend herself. In London she had been suffering terribly before and after Lucy’s birth, but still working to free Elgin from prison. Robert was often present, but he too was using all of his connections to aid Elgin’s cause.

  But she could not speak out in her own defense. She had been told that it was unthinkable that a lady should stand up in a court of law and defend herself. Better leave that to the gentlemen lawyers. It would be unseemly for her to speak. The more she was seen as reserved and demure, the better off she would be when the jury was debating the outcome. “Better to be silent and regal, Lady Elgin. That way, no criticism can be leveled against you. Whereas if you speak, they will all find fault in something that you say, no matter what it is that you have said or how you have said it.”

  Servant after servant from the days in London was called, and Mary wondered who had paid for all of them to travel to Edinburgh for the trial. What expense Elgin was going through to do this to her! But none had much to say except that Miss Gosling, poor dead lady’s maid to Mary, had disapproved of a married lady receiving a gentleman not her husband late into the evening. Thus far, no one had seen anything that would damn Mary for adultery.

  Then a gossipy chambermaid, along with the waiter from Fortune and Blackwell’s Hotel in Edinburgh, whom Mary recognized as the man who’d served her and Robert on the evening they were there, testified that Mary and Robert had taken rooms in the hotel at the same time. The chambermaid said that it had appeared that Robert’s bed had not been slept in, whereas both pillows in Mary’s bed had been utilized. The waiter confirmed that the girl had shared this scandalous news with him at the time.

  During a recess, Mary’s lawyer tried to console her. “I realize that it must be mortifying for Your Ladyship to have to listen to this tripe. But I wonder if his lawyer will ever be able to substantiate the charges. A thing so serious as adultery does not hinge on the condition of a pillow!”

  As their last witness, Elgin’s lawyer called Thomas Willey, the former footman discharged by the Elgins for his unreliable behavior when he was at the drink. Mary barely remembered anything about him save that he was lazy and indifferent toward his job, and always had red eyes and a runny nose.

  “Oh yes, Mr. Ferguson was in the habit of frequently calling on Her Ladyship, both day and night, while she resided at Baker Street, often coming very late in the evening and staying until two or three in the morning. Lady Elgin was always happier in his company than in the company of any other. On one of these occasions, at about noon, I went into the drawing room about six weeks after Lady Elgin had delivered the little girl, and opened the door without knocking. I saw Lady Elgin lying at full length on the sofa, and upon my coming in, both Lady Elgin and Mr. Ferguson got hold of a shawl and threw it over Lady Elgin’s legs.”

  “Were Her Ladyship’s petticoats up?” asked Elgin’s lawyer in a thunderous voice so that no one could miss his words.

  Willey stammered, clearly embarrassed. Or was that part of his act? “I could not positively say. A little writing table stood in front of the sofa, which prevented me from seeing whether or not Her Ladyship’s legs were covered. However, from the confused way that the shawl was thrown over her, I would have to say that, indeed, her petticoats must have been up!”

  That was all that the jury needed to hear. Mary could feel the mood in the room begin to change. The jurors, who had occasionally sent curious glances Mary’s way, would no longer look at her at all, so sullied a woman was she. It was as if she had suddenly disappeared. This was how life was going to be now. In the eyes of the society of which she had been a member all the days of her life, she was now a ghost to be looked through if encountered in public. Yet she would not be afforded any of the respect that one generally gave to the dead. Her living body would be flesh for the vultures of the world to feed upon as they liked, food for cruel gossip, both in print and around dinner tables and card tables in the cities that she had loved to frequent. She knew this as surely as she knew that she was sitting in the courtroom, and she felt herself die inside.

  Only Elgin had the audacity to look her way. He was calm and smug, letting a tiny smile show on his lips to demonstrate how much he was enjoying burying her in the eyes of respectable society. She stared back at him, mortified at her own gall, until he turned away.

  Satisfied that he had indelibly stained Mary’s reputation, the lawyer turned to his tr
ue goal—listing the properties that Mary would inherit from her family and elaborating on how a woman so irresponsible must not be allowed to control such vast assets.

  Though Mary remained silent, her attorneys argued well in her stead.

  “Here is a list of Lord Elgin’s debts compiled throughout the length of the marriage, and here is the evidence of Lady Elgin’s payment of those expenditures,” one of them said. He went on to read lengthy descriptions of Elgin’s extravagant purchases intended to decorate his home, or “merely purchased out of boredom, or to improve his mood on that particular day.”

  The bankers, called in Mary’s defense, did not disappoint, making it clear that on several occasions she’d had to take control of his finances rather than see him flee the country or be summoned to debtors’ prison.

  Finally, the list of assets controlled by Mary was to be presented to the court.

  “You may approach the bench with your papers,” the judge said.

  “But there is no paper to present, Your Honor,” said her counsel.

  “What games are you playing here, sir? I demand that you submit the documents verifying the defendant’s assets.”

  “But, sir, if I may, the defendant has no assets. She is under the age of thirty. She has not inherited a penny. Much to Lord Elgin’s dismay, I am sure, you may see for yourself that Mr. Nisbet is alive and well and seated in the courtroom next to his daughter. I’m afraid that while this is true, Lady Elgin has no control over any aspect of her projected inheritance. The law states that a husband may have control over his wife’s assets. Nowhere does the law state that the husband’s rights extend to control over his father-in-law’s estate!”

  It took the jury no time at all to deliberate. Lord Elgin was granted his divorce on grounds of adultery. Lady Elgin was to forfeit all rights and privileges associated with the marriage, now terminated, including the custody of her children. No financial remuneration was awarded to Lord Elgin, since under the law, Lady Elgin had no fortune to give.