Words of Command (Hervey 12) (Matthew Hervey)

by Allan Mallinson

  ‘I must say that if the new king would do away with these breeches it would dispose me more towards his red tunics.’

  ‘I think they’re very smart, and just the thing,’ replied Johnson, taking the trees from his court shoes as Hervey pulled on the stockings.

  ‘Damnably cold in weather such as this.’

  ‘Corp’ral Wakefield’ll ’ave t’carriage warmed up right enough.’

  ‘I’m sure he will. No doubt I make too much of it.’

  He took a while to straighten the hose to his satisfaction, and then Johnson handed him the button-hook.

  ‘But this new king, ’e won’t be king for a bit, will ’e?’

  ‘No,’ said Hervey, managing to fasten the top two buttons of his knee-breeches more deftly than he’d expected. ‘I’m not at all sure the talk is correct. The King, though excitable, and fatter even than Corp’l Stray, didn’t look quite next to death’s door.’

  ‘But why is it ’is brother who’s going to be t’king? What about all ’is children? I thought them ’ad to be king first.’

  ‘All bastards, Corp’l Johnson. The first marriage was not deemed legal. And his only child by our late royal colonel Princess Caroline, as you’ll recall, died giving birth.’

  ‘So that’s why t’Duke o’ Clarence is t’heir?’

  ‘Yes,’ (the struggle to fasten the remaining two buttons was rather greater than he’d expected, but he eventually managed to pull them through the button holes without detaching either of them, then handing back the button-hook and taking the shoe-horn) ‘but strictly speaking he’s called the heir presumptive, which means that if the King were to produce an heir, the duke would become second in line not first.’

  ‘But ’e’s not going to do that, is ’e – produce an heir? Not now.’

  ‘It strikes me as highly improbable,’ said Hervey, with a wry smile as he eased his left foot into the shiny buckled-patent.

  ‘And does t’Duke of Clarence ’ave any heirs?’

  ‘A man has only one heir, and, as it happens, the duke has none, though he too has a good many bastards. And if he were to become king and Princess Adelaide were to produce no heir, the throne would pass to the daughter of his younger brother, the late Duke of Kent.’

  ‘That’s who we saw a couple of years ago when we were on that scheme at Windsor, and Princess Augusta were there?’

  Hervey slipped in his right foot and handed back the horn. ‘Your memory is very exact – Victoria, yes.’

  ‘That’ll be queer, a woman.’

  ‘We have not been ill-served in the past.’

  ‘How was that, Colonel?’ asked Johnson, handing him a silk stock doubtfully.

  ‘Queen Elizabeth? The Spanish Armada?’

  ‘Ah, Good Queen Bess. But that were a long time ago, weren’t it? Things were diff’rent then.’

  Hervey looked at him, puzzled, but thought better of seeking clarification. ‘There are two things of difficulty in a woman’s acceding to the throne, one of which was Queen Elizabeth’s difficulty too – who shall be her husband? And the other is that she may not be Queen of Hanover, because by their law a woman can’t succeed to the throne.’

  ‘Ah, so who’d be in charge of ’Anover then?’

  ‘The Duke of Cumberland, the youngest of the old King’s sons. And in turn his son.’

  ‘Well, that’s all right then, isn’t it?’

  ‘Except that Hanover would no longer be in personal union, as it’s called, with the British throne.’

  ‘An’ that isn’t good for us?’ Johnson held up the coat for him.

  ‘Well, I don’t suppose it’ll be the least concern to us during my command. What happens thereafter’s another matter, though having a sister who’s now a subject of the King of Hanover it might be of greater moment to me.’

  Johnson frowned. ‘How’s that, Colonel?’

  Hervey explained as he finished dressing.

  Johnson had known all about the marriage with the baron, but had not thought that it would make Hervey’s sister German. He liked ‘Miss Hervey’; she wasn’t like Mrs Hervey at all – well, she was like the first Mrs Hervey. But it was queer marrying a German, even if you got a castle and became a baroness. He’d never met a baroness before (he didn’t think). He supposed you could just say ‘Ma’am’ to them all the same. And Miss Hervey wouldn’t mind anyway if he got it wrong. Not like Mrs Hervey. If you got anything wrong with her it would be like being checked for something on guard mounting …

  Outside – five minutes to five o’clock exactly – the regimental chariot was drawn up. It was twelve miles to the castle, and there was a good half-moon (these things were always arranged with close attention, Hervey marked). It ought to be a comfortable drive.

  A minute later his orderly officer, Cornet St Alban, presented himself, and in three more they were under way.

  Two dragoons accompanied them (Hervey had said it was not necessary, but Malet countered that changing a wheel in levee dress would hardly be edifying, and in any case, it would serve to relieve the dragoons on the War Office party) – and their progress was remarkably unhindered. Hervey first scrutinized the Gazette which Malet had put into the coach, and then talked very agreeably with his temporary aide-de-camp about Reform, the matter on which St Alban had written in The Spectator with, to his mind, singular dispassion and clarity. But where did the eminently reasonable arguments St Alban advanced have end? If popular – indeed turbulent – clamour was to be rewarded with such tinkering as was proposed by the radicals, would that not encourage yet more clamour? It was all very well for high-minded Whigs secure in their broad acres to advocate improvement of what was at times an undeniably sorry affair (the House of Commons), but what manner of man would it be that emerged to sit there in place of those with so solid a stake in the country? These were the men, were they not, with a true understanding of the general wellbeing, rooted as it was in the solid earth of the shires and the good sense of the church established? And then, when the Whig nobility had secured their ‘reforms’, what would be the fate of that other affront to rationalism, the House of Peers? Would that not go the way of their forebears in Cromwell’s day? Indeed, was not ‘Reform’ but a specious cloak for the introduction of republicanism? He declared that although in the peculiar circumstances that was his military service (peripatetic) and his father’s profession (pecuniary) he had no vote, he was perfectly content to allow such an indignity as the price of the English peace – which was the envy of Europe, if not the world. And St Alban countered that such an affront was insupportable – he himself having two votes (one in his father’s borough, one at Oxford) while his commanding officer, much decorated in the service of his country, had none.

  ‘Hard cases make bad law, it is said,’ Hervey had countered, thoroughly warming to his subject, as if polishing his credentials before joining the stoutly Tory assembly at Windsor.

  ‘Indeed, Colonel, but bad law makes hard cases too,’ replied St Alban, with disarming forthrightness. ‘And perhaps solely for want of effort. I’m not a thoroughgoing Whig. I find much sense in what Mr Burke said, that when it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change, but he wrote also that a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.’

  Hervey nodded. He had no objection to change – far from it: but it should be brought about gradually and naturally, as the seasons changed. ‘That is surely so. But tell me, for I’ve scarcely been in England these three years, and you were better placed to know: is there truly a mood here – in the country parts, I mean – that the authorities are so exercised by it? The affair in the park was vexing enough, but was it really a harbinger of worse to come?’

  St Alban considered his answer for a moment. ‘I believe, Colonel, that there is a mood – yes, but that it is in truth a mood of many parts. I am, though, much taken by something Mr Cobbett wrote lately,’ (Hervey took note of the dignity ‘Mr’ accorded to that inveterate radical – and forme
r NCO) ‘that it is scarcely possible to agitate a fellow with a full stomach.’

  And that much Hervey found unanswerable, suffused as it was with both humanity and his own experience. The chaise had slowed to a walk on coming into Windsor, as if the gravity of the matters under discussion required it, and he was glad of the change of speed, which seemed to give him leave to consider the matter more fully, but the horses were now bending to the sharp incline of Castle Hill in a trot once more, which belied their twelve-mile approach march. Horseshoes rang on the cobblestones where the guardsmen had cleared the latest snowfall.

  ‘Thank you for your candour, St Alban,’ said Hervey at length, with (to his own ear at least) a faint note of surprise. ‘You have given me much to ponder – and indeed to argue this evening if I’m bearded by “Ultras”,’ he added wryly.

  As they turned onto the bridge over the old moat the pair came back to a walk for King Henry’s Gate, where the sentries presented arms and a colour-serjeant saluted extravagantly – a considerably more auspicious entry than his last, said Hervey to himself, and wondering if he would find the King in any better state of mind.

  An avenue of Grenadiers at the ‘present’ lined their way up the bailey, past the lower ward lit uncommonly brightly by gas, where carriages were already parked, past St George’s Chapel, and the motte, and Great Round tower, on through the Norman Gate and into the upper ward, where at last the chaise drew up before the canopied entrance of the state apartments.

  Hervey got down briskly, took off his cloak, hitched up his sword, acknowledged the salutes of more Grenadiers and footmen, and marched into St George’s Hall with as much self-possession as he judged reasonable. He had no doubt that a lieutenant-colonel of light dragoons would be of little consequence to many – perhaps even all – of the assembled grandees of the court and the men of moment in parliament, but he had no intention of submitting to their opinion. How many were to be at the levee he had no idea – he supposed several hundred, for the castle was a vast place, by all accounts – but he had at least the assurance that in St Alban he would have diverting company if no other were forthcoming.

  There was an orchestra playing at the top of the grand staircase – Grenadiers again, with some strings. Even to Hervey’s ear it was pleasing.

  ‘I did not ask: do you know the castle?’

  ‘I have not been here since I was a page, Colonel,’ replied St Alban, gazing up in some awe at the soaring vaulting. ‘It’s vastly changed, I think. The King has done much with it, and of late too.’

  Hervey abandoned his somewhat forced insouciance to gaze at the decorator’s art – the suits of armour, swords, shields, pikes, halberds, and the lifelike equestrians at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Those suits are uncommonly small, are they not? Or a miniature, do you suppose?’

  ‘That I do remember, Colonel. They were made for Prince Henry when he was a youth, the Prince of Wales, soon after James the first ascended the throne. One, I recall, was a present of the French king. We pages were allowed to try them.’

  Hervey stood in appreciation before them for some time. ‘How history might have been different had their prince lived to fill a man’s suit.’ Better, though he did not say, than with his brother, Charles.

  ‘Indeed, Colonel. “He is dead who while he lived was a perpetual Paradise; every season that he showed himself in a perpetual spring, every exercise wherein he was seen a special felicity …”’

  Hervey nodded. ‘Well spoken. My father used that sermon on two occasions that I know of, and when I asked him whence the words came he told me from the King’s chaplain, but that he had taken them from Donne, so that he himself had no compunction in appropriating them in turn.’

  ‘We pages were made to recite them before putting on the armour. I don’t recall why. I suppose a mark of worthiness, perhaps.’

  Hervey looked at him with approval. He was glad, now, to have come here, for he’d not expected to be. ‘We had better proceed.’

  Footmen bowed and held out hands to usher them towards the place of the audience, but Hervey was perplexed that the guests seemed so few in this stately progress, for it was his experience always to queue – though he supposed the castle was so great as to make the largest of assemblies seem small. He was certain that they arrived in good time.

  The guiding hands led them to the Grand Reception Room, a Rococo confection of gold leaf, looking glass and tapestries, where another orchestra played, and the earliest arrivals made their introductions and glanced uneasily (some at least) at their reflections. Hervey took in the room with as little movement of his head as he could manage, and then turned to his aide-de-camp. ‘Is there anyone of your acquaintance?’

  Cornet St Alban looked about the room, his brow furrowing slightly. ‘None that I can see, Colonel. Those with their backs to us I can’t vouch for. I recognize the Marquess of Framlingham, but I’m not acquainted with him. His interest, I understand, is entirely with cattle improvement.’

  Hervey smiled. ‘And that is his marchioness, I take it – with the feathers to outdo an hussar?’

  St Alban smiled too. ‘I can’t rightly say, Colonel. The feathers are magnificent, though.’

  Hervey felt no great inclination to present himself to anyone. Nor could he see any uniforms, to which he might have been obliged to do so.

  ‘Ah, but I see over there, now that he’s turned, is Rowly Fane,’ said St Alban happily. ‘He was page here, too.’

  ‘Not a son of General Harry’s, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, indeed – his youngest. He came up to Oxford in my year. I wonder what he does here?’

  ‘Well, in due course you must discover.’

  After ten minutes or so of more intense scrutiny, the room began to fill steadily. The King had commanded their presence at seven, which by custom allowed half an hour more, whereupon he would make his appearance, take a turn about the assemblage, nod here and there, stop to talk to no one, then retire to a low dais and receive those singled out by his gentlemen-ushers, leaving the room half an hour later to dine in semi-state with a further chosen few, while the rest were shown to a buffet of legendary indulgence. So said the equerries.

  ‘Hervey!’

  He looked round. ‘Upon my word, Howard!’

  ‘I saw your name on the list just this evening. You didn’t say on Friday that you were to be here.’

  ‘That’s because it was only on Saturday that I was commanded to be here. And you? This is all part of your duty, I suppose.’

  ‘I was made an additional usher last year.’

  ‘Of course. This is Cornet St Alban.’

  St Alban bowed.

  Lord John Howard returned the compliment. ‘The Earl of Bicester’s son?’

  ‘I am, sir.’

  Howard smiled. ‘Your father writes the best letters of any lord lieutenant. Lord Hill circulates them at the Horse Guards, with “Read, mark, learn and inwardly digest”.’

  Hervey allowed them a word or two more before pressing Howard on another matter, knowing that his old friend would soon have to excuse himself to his ushering duties. ‘I’m summoned to the Horse Guards on Thursday and I’m damned if I can discover the why. I’d thought of asking you on Friday but you were called away before I had opportunity.’

  Howard glanced at St Alban, who bowed and retired out of hearing.

  ‘So confidential?’ asked Hervey.

  ‘So confidential that I myself know little but that it concerns precautionary measures in the event of further civil violence. Lord Hill himself is to speak.’

  ‘“The secret things belong unto the Lord”?’

  Howard frowned. ‘Quite. And for what purpose I don’t know, but ten lieutenant-colonels of cavalry in all have been summoned.’

  ‘Ten colonels: I hadn’t supposed there were so many on the home list.’

  ‘I think some may be from the half-pay, but you might therefore conclude that it is a business of some moment. “Those things which are re
vealed belong unto us, that we may do all the words of this law” – as you’re evidently of a Scriptural mind this evening.’

  Hervey inclined his head.

  ‘By the bye, your friend, Fairbrother – I understand he’s to be offered a rather handsome bounty for the information he provided to the Master-General. I saw a letter this morning with a testimonial from the Royal Society. They wish to meet with him.’

  ‘That I’m very glad of. He is not without means, but he is somewhat without purpose at present.’

  Howard nodded. ‘But not a word till the eggs are in the pudding … But see, I must go and attend on Sir Henry Hardinge,’ he said, indicating the little knot of beaux in the middle of the room.

  Hervey saw – and approved. ‘What a man is Hardinge. There was never a brigadier greater admired in the Peninsula.’

  Henry Hardinge was but a few years his senior, but had commanded a brigade of Portuguese, and was at Ligny with the Prussians, where he lost the better part of an arm. The duke had made him Secretary at War eighteen months ago when Lord Palmerston resigned.

  ‘He’s at his desk by eight of a morning, by all accounts, and there still when the hour-hand touches it again.’

  ‘The smaller the army, the greater the work.’

  ‘I suppose it is so … but you’ll forgive me, Hervey – until next week?’

  They bowed, and Lord John Howard took his leave.

  Cornet St Alban rejoined him. ‘The King has just come in the room, Colonel.’

  The band ceased its merry airs and struck up God Save the King. Hervey strained for a glimpse of the royal progress without giving that impression. ‘It cannot be but a trial for him – he has such an embarrassment of breathing, and his legs so terribly swollen. I wonder he puts himself to the ordeal.’

  ‘The equerries say he’s dosed heavily, but he will insist on it.’

  Footmen in the finest livery he’d seen preceded the sad figure – the tallest too, and ramrod-straight, giving the occasion all the majesty that the poor old, dropsied King might otherwise have been unable to conjure.

  There was no seeing him for the cloud of attendants and those paying court, so instead Hervey observed the onlookers in the outer circles of the room. They appeared rather disconsolate, if respectfully attentive to the unseen progress. Although he had never sought such company, nor even wanted to be here this evening, he found himself wishing he had seen a levee in the days of the King’s pomp.