Rake's Progress

by Beaton, M. C.

  ‘I would never be sure,’ said Esther in a low, shaky voice, ‘that you were faithful to me.’

  ‘Every man does silly things at some time in his life,’ he said. ‘If only you had done something silly, Esther, then you would be glad of the shelter of my unrespectable arms. Take a risk. Marry me. Surely even the respectable Miss Jones knows she cannot kiss a man in a London street and not marry him. I could gossip, you know, and damn you as a wanton.’

  ‘But you will not.’

  ‘Ah, if I am such a paragon, then I am respectable enough for you. By all that’s holy, I hear a carriage.’

  The sound of horses’ hooves plodding along came to their ears.

  ‘Hey!’ called Lord Guy. ‘I say, driver!’

  The bulk of a carriage loomed up, a blacker blackness in the fog.

  ‘I’m lost,’ came a plaintive voice from the box. ‘Strothers is the name. You sound like a gentleman.’

  ‘George Strothers!’ cried Lord Guy. ‘It is I, Carlton.’

  Lord Guy turned to Esther. ‘One of my drinking companions,’ he said. He turned back to the carriage. ‘Strothers, take us up and get us somewhere civilized.’

  ‘Can’t,’ said Mr Strothers. ‘Try your hand with the ribbons if you like, Carlton, but I’ve been driving my poor beasts around and around for hours trying to find the way home.’

  Mr Strothers slid along to the passenger seat, and Lord Guy helped Esther up onto the box. Lord Guy took the reins, and, with Esther between them, they set out through the fog.

  By dint of stopping when they saw a linkboy’s torch and by diligently asking every shape they could see in the fog, Lord Guy and Esther managed to pilot the carriage up into Broad Street, along Broad Street to High Street and then into Oxford Street, down Bond Street, round into Hay Hill and so into Berkeley Square. Esther and Lord Guy thanked Mr Strothers and sent him on his way to his house in Hill Street off Berkeley Square. Esther thought it odd that she did not even know what Mr Strothers looked like.

  To her distress, Lord Guy followed her into her home. She was overset with the events of the evening, the effects of the punch were melting away, and she was becoming horrified at her own behaviour. Miss Fipps appeared in her undress, wearing quite the largest nightcap Lord Guy could ever remember seeing. She cooed with distress over Esther’s adventures, her faded eyes wide with anxiety, and Esther, who had planned to dismiss Miss Fipps, found herself glad of her companion’s motherly concern.

  But no sooner had Miss Fipps seen the couple furnished with the tea-tray and warmed by a roaring fire than she smiled gently on both of them and drifted out of the room, leaving them alone together.

  ‘A fine chaperone I have chosen,’ said Esther bitterly.

  ‘As far as my cousin is concerned,’ said Lord Guy, ‘we are engaged and want to be together. Come! Drink your tea and go to bed. I have no intention of laying a finger on you. This repellent room is enough to put anyone off.’

  ‘This is a charming and well-furnished room,’ said Esther hotly.

  He raised one eyebrow and looked from the open Bible to the grim furniture and the gloomy hangings.

  ‘You see!’ went on Esther when he did not reply. ‘Why should I marry? Why should I have my taste criticized and the equilibrium of my life upset?’

  ‘For love,’ he said, putting down his teacup. He rose to his feet and she shrank back in her chair. ‘I am not going to kiss you,’ he said. ‘Good night, Miss Jones.’

  His face was suddenly older, tired and drawn, and his blue eyes were serious. He bowed and left.

  Esther sat alone, looking at the fire. Perhaps he had taken her in dislike and would go away and never see her again. Her head began to ache, and she reflected that punch had a very lowering effect on the spirits.

  Lord Guy let himself in at 67 Clarges Street. Three of his servants were waiting for him in the hall, Rainbird, Angus MacGregor, and Joseph.

  ‘There was no need for you all to wait up for me,’ said Lord Guy, somewhat touched.

  But the idea that they had been waiting up to see to his needs was soon banished as Rainbird said, ‘We have a most important matter to discuss with you, my lord.’

  ‘Come into the front parlour,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Mr Roger at home?’

  ‘He has not come back from White’s.’

  ‘Oh, is that where’s he’s gone? Then he won’t be back until morning. Out with it, Rainbird. What is it?’

  Rainbird produced a small black notebook. ‘We have reason to believe your servant, Manuel, is a French spy,’ he said. ‘We took the liberty of searching his clothes when he was asleep. We found this. It is all in Spanish and none of us can read Spanish.’

  ‘I’ve never heard such nonsense,’ said Lord Guy wearily. ‘Pass it over.’

  There were only two pages of writing. He read them carefully and then a smile curled his lips. ‘Do you want me to read this to you?’ he asked.

  ‘If you please, my lord,’ said Rainbird.

  ‘Very well. It begins, “I do not like this household. The butler is a mountebank who does not behave like a butler at all. He is quite ill-favoured and smells bad. The chef is a barbarian, a Scotchman who speaks a savage language. He has a foul temper. The footman is a . . .”’ Lord Guy raised his eyebrows. ‘I really don’t think I ought to go on,’ he said. ‘I suggest you replace this and do not interfere with my servant’s personal property again. It appears that people who read other people’s notebooks are like people who listen at keyholes. They never hear any good of themselves.’

  Rainbird took the book, and the three servants shuffled out.

  ‘The wee sneak,’ fumed Angus, ‘writing all thae nasty things.’

  ‘I wonder what he wrote about me?’ asked Joseph. ‘We stayed awake for nothing and I’m that tired. Me and Lizzie walked and walked and thought we’d never get home.’

  Manuel opened one eye as they slid the book back into his pocket. Then he closed it again and smiled to himself as he went back to sleep.

  NINE

  When Charlotte first increased the Cyprian corps,

  She asked a hundred pounds – I gave her more.

  Next year to fifty sunk the course of trade,

  I thought it now extravagant, but paid.

  Six months elaps’d, ’twas twenty guineas then;

  In vain I prayed, and press’d and profferr’d ten.

  Another quarter barely flip’d away,

  She begged FOUR GUINEAS of me at the play:

  I haggled – her demand still humbler grew,

  ’Twas ‘thank you kindly, sir’ for two pounds two.

  Next, in the street her favours I might win

  For a few shillings and a glass of gin.

  – And now (though sad and wonderful it sounds)

  I would not touch her for a hundred pounds.

  ANON

  The sickening, choking fog clung on all the next day. There seemed no chance of Esther going to society, but, to her surprise, society came to her.

  Finally drawn as if by a magnet by the lure of her great wealth, carriages rolled up and men and women of the ton descended in droves.

  Amy and Peter were delighted, for an Esther coping with a saloonful of the beau monde had no time to attend to their lessons. Furthermore, she did not know it was not fashionable to have children present, and Peter and Amy were made much of by the members of the ton, who judged that the road to Miss Jones’ heart was through the hearts of her little brother and sister.

  At first, Esther felt at a loss. She did not have any conversation, or rather, any that was acceptable. Her interest in the wars with Napoleon, the welfare of servants, and the current political climate were items of too base a coin to offer guests who rattled on at an amazing rate about a great deal of people she did not know. There was much talk also of the Prince of Wales’ penchant for elderly ladies, some claiming that his taste in mistresses showed a desire for common and sentimental domesticity rather than nights of erotic passion. />
  And then Lord Guy was ushered in. He smoothly took over the role of host in such an expert way that several adventurers who had still had hopes of catching the eye of the heiress shortly took their leave. Esther was able to relax and attend to the simple duties of seeing everyone had enough to eat and drink while Lord Guy chatted lightly of this and that. How a man who had only been a short time in Town could amass such an amazing amount of trivial society gossip was startling to Esther. She would have liked to despise him, but her better nature told her that he was saving her from a great deal of embarrassment and, at the same time, giving her a social gloss.

  He stayed for fifteen minutes and then offered to take the children out with their pony, Snowball, and their new cart to see how Peter handled the ribbons.

  With glowing faces, Peter and Amy went off with him, one child hanging on to each hand.

  Esther, who had spent the morning drafting out an advertisement announcing the termination of her engagement, began to realize that, despite her money, without Lord Guy she would find it very hard to be on terms with any of these people. She wondered whether she had basically a very common soul, since she would actually have preferred to have a comfortable cose with Rainbird. He had called briefly in the morning, and she had taxed him with the case of Miss Fipps.

  But Rainbird had pointed out that Miss Fipps, although she happened to be Lord Guy’s cousin, was an estimable lady and there were very few of those around. He added that if Miss Fipps had initially announced she was Lord Guy’s cousin, then Miss Jones would not have hired her, and both ladies would have therefore lost the chance of suitable companionship.

  Soothed as ever by Rainbird’s common sense, Esther had offered him a post in her household. He had said he would need a little time to consider the matter, but Esther was sure he meant to refuse.

  That a mere servant should put loyalty to his friends above money was a new idea to her. Hitherto, Esther had never considered any of the lower orders as individuals. She saw them as a sort of anonymous mass. Rainbird had opened her eyes to that other world.

  It was an awakening that was to be Esther’s social undoing.

  As the uneasiness of war and the threat of invasion once more gripped London, society paradoxically seemed more hell-bent on frivolity than ever. The Dandies, led by their king, Mr George Brummell, sat in the clubs of St. James’ polishing their wit – usually quite horrendous puns. A roomful of Dandies could talk for hours about their clothes without a glint of humour.

  The laws of society became more rigid as London was engulfed in the greatest wave of snobbery ever known. Sons openly cut their mothers if they considered their appearance to be at all at fault, daughters tried to commit suicide if their vouchers to the famous Almack’s Assembly Rooms were not forthcoming.

  Perhaps Lord Guy’s flippant remark about his servants’ being like a tribe should have been applied to his peers. Esther was entering a world of peculiar shibboleths and taboos, and she had as much knowledge of them as an Elizabethan explorer encountering American Indians for the first time.

  Because of her father’s scandalous country life, Esther had kept herself isolated from her peers, and so Miss Fipps did not know the extent of her employer’s social ignorance. Although Esther could not be accounted in the first bloom of youth – Miss Fipps was used to ladies’ absorbing the dos and don’ts of social behaviour by a sort of osmosis.

  That Esther wished to appear at the opera for the very start of the performance was a harmless eccentricity in Miss Fipps’ eyes.

  So when the dreadful fog blew away and sunny skies shone over sooty London and the air was once more warm with spring, the two ladies set out for the opera, both comfortably feeling fashionable and elegant and secure.

  Esther was wearing a gown of French net over white satin, painted in ‘natural’ flowers. On her head, she wore a new tiara of amethysts, having learned from Miss Fipps that diamonds were ‘quite exploded, my dear’. She had had her hair cut so that her burnished red curls covered her head like a cap. She wondered if Lord Guy would be angry because she had had her hair shorn, and then told herself angrily it did not matter what he thought.

  Miss Fipps wore a round train dress of Moravian muslin, fastened up the sides with clasps of gold. To her relief, Esther had chastised her only mildly for having kept the secret of her relationship with Lord Guy. Miss Fipps was even more devoted to Esther than ever, but nonetheless she had sent a note to Lord Guy to inform him they would be attending the opera.

  Esther was disappointed in the production, which was called The Harlequin’s Revenge and had been written by a Mr Dyer ‘in the Italian manner’. It was a silly piece of nonsense, and Esther’s attention strayed to the audience.

  ‘There are a great number of ladies in the centre boxes without escorts,’ she whispered to Miss Fipps.

  ‘Prostitutes,’ said Miss Fipps. ‘Do not look. Oh, there is Mr Brummell and Lord Alvanley, and see, just entering, there is Lord Petersham. He has a different kind of snuff for every day of the year.’

  But Esther found her eyes being drawn back to the prostitutes. Had Miss Fipps not told her what they were, she would have taken them for ladies of fashion. In an age when women wore less than they had ever done but wore just as much blanc and rouge, there was little difference between the ladies in the side boxes and the ladies in the centre.

  And then she saw a little drama being played out in one of the centre boxes. She raised her opera glasses. What was going on was more intriguing than the performance on the stage.

  A young girl, finely dressed in white muslin, sat in tears in one of the centre boxes. She looked about sixteen years of age. She had thick fair hair and a flawless complexion that owed nothing to paint. She had large brown eyes and a neat figure. Her bosom was generous, and her gown had been cut low to display its charms. She kept putting an arm across her breasts, and the elderly hard-faced woman who sat with her kept roughly pushing her arm down and scolding her. Tears ran down the girl’s cheeks without making her eyes red.

  Esther nudged Miss Fipps. ‘That little beauty,’ she said, nodding her head in the direction of the centre box, ‘cannot be a prostitute. She looks much too innocent.’

  Miss Fipps cast a worldly eye in the same direction and sighed. ‘She is, at the moment. Fresh come from the country, I should imagine.’

  ‘Is she that awful-looking woman’s daughter, think you?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Miss Fipps, ‘she is an abbess.’ And, seeing the puzzled frown on Esther’s face, explained, ‘The owner of a brothel. You see, they wait around the agencies looking for servant girls fresh up from the country. They hire the girl and set the bully-boys on her. She is not seduced, that would reduce her price. She is taken here and put on display. Before the evening is out, some gentleman will offer a high price for her.’

  ‘But it should be stopped!’ said Esther, appalled. ‘The law . . .’

  ‘There is no law for such as she,’ said Miss Fipps. Esther sat biting her lip in distress and Miss Fipps began to feel anxious. She wished Lord Guy would put in an appearance. It was most odd of Esther to anguish over the fate of an about-to-be prostitute. There were prostitutes everywhere; one could hardly move without tripping over one. But a lady never noticed them.

  Because London was still policed much as it had been in Shakespeare’s time, east of St. James’ was an inferno of crime. The policing of London was completely ineffectual, an antiquated hotchpotch of parish officers, beadles, constables, watchmen, and street keepers. It was hopelessly out of date in its traditional organization, belonging to a cluster of parishes and not to a city whose population was nearly a million. The strongest permanent force, which was that of the City of London itself, had only about forty-five men, directed by two City marshals. The famous Bow Street had only a few more men, chiefly for patrol duties, than the other London magistrates courts, which had at their disposal only eight to twelve policemen. The forces of law and order stopped very short outside the boundar
ies of society and were hard to find in the hundreds of alleys and narrow, badly lit streets that made up the most of London.

  The girl in the centre box was crying harder than ever.

  Esther felt her own eyes begin to water with sympathetic tears.

  ‘And does she sit there like a cow at auction waiting for some gentleman to call at the box and buy?’ she asked.

  ‘I think she will be taken to Fops Alley at the second interval and be put on display,’ said Miss Fipps.

  To her relief, Esther appeared to lose interest in the girl. But still Miss Fipps worried over the nonappearance of her cousin.

  Joseph was in deep disgrace. This time, if he had been attacked by Manuel with a long stiletto, no one would have been in the least surprised.

  The laundering of Lord Guy’s fine linen was done in the kitchen, Mrs Middleton being proud of the work of Jenny and Alice. Sheets and huckaback towels were sent out to the washerwoman when there was a great number to be laundered, but shirts and cravats were washed, ironed, and starched at Number 67.

  Joseph had trodden on a rusty nail, which had stabbed through the thin sole of his shoe. He was afraid of infection and had asked Angus to boil him a pan of water. Alice had put a large copper pan of water on to boil, in which she meant to wash Lord Guy’s cravats. She then had gone upstairs to change the bed linen, and while she was away, Joseph, thinking the water was for his foot and not seeing the cravats in it, had added a generous helping of potassium-permanganate crystals.

  When he lifted the pan down to bathe his foot, he saw the cravats.

  It was then Manuel had come into the kitchen demanding a clean cravat for my lord. And that was when they discovered that the Spanish servant had given them all Lord Guy’s cravats, along with all those belonging to Mr Roger, and that all the cravats were now bright pink. The servants were sent running throughout London to try to purchase new cravats while Lord Guy fretted over the delay. He did not know whether to be angrier with Manuel or with Joseph, because, for some strange reason, the Spanish servant had sent at least six clean cravats down to the kitchen to be washed along with the dirty ones.