by Deryn Lake
To read about herself in words written two hundred years before she had been born gave Sidonie the most extraordinary feeling of fear and yet there was a fascination to it. Shivering, she read on.
Holland House, 11th June, 1768. I today wrote to Lady Susan but told her nothing of it, nor have I said a word of my Shame to a living Being, other than to Him whose very existence is my sole purpose in staying alive. I am with Child by him and soon the World shall know of it, for how can such a Thing be hid? And those who have mocked all these Years and said my Husband had no good stuff in him to make a Child, will chatter and tear my Character, with no need to lie, for there will be the Truth for All to see. The consensus will be that Lady Sarah Bunbury is enceinte with a Bastard, as so deserves such an out and out Whore.
Sidonie found herself wishing the most ridiculous thing; that she could see Sarah and somehow cheer her up, explain that her predicament would not have been considered quite so outrageous in modern terms, though to be married and expecting a child by another man was not the most desirable of situations in any century.
‘I’ll go to Holland House when I get back to London,’ she thought, then realised that her relationship with the dead girl had taken on a new dimension, that she was now deliberately seeking to conjure Sarah up, and would not feel truly content until she had encountered her at least once more.
*
She wept as she wrote the words, so frightened and so worried that for some days now her lips had felt frozen, to the point that she could not smile and even found difficulty in speaking.
Sarah had first suspected the worst in early April when the monthly flux from her body had failed to appear. At the same time her breasts had enlarged and felt tender and, inexperienced though she might be about pregnancy, she had guessed at once that she was with child. When the May flux did not appear either there could be no denying the awful truth.
She had been utterly shocked, truly believing what she had told William Powell, that barrenness ran in her family and that both she and her sister, Louisa Conolly, were its victims. It had never occurred to her in all this time that it could have been Sir Charles’s fault, that his seed was useless, and the fact that they rarely had intercourse had nothing whatever to do with the case. But now the glaring truth was out. A liaison with a potent fellow had produced the inevitable result and Sarah thanked God that her child’s father was someone she adored with all her heart, not one of the cheapjack rake hells she had allowed to be free with her body.
At first she had written William that she did not want to see him. But the strain of bearing the burden alone had been too much, and she had called on him unexpectedly and unannounced, her tear-stained face revealing more about her condition than any words could say.
“You’re with child,” he had said, guessing instantly, and had gone to kiss her.
Sarah had not answered, merely nodding her head dumbly, then bursting into a million tears, soaking William’s shirt and the front of her dress.
“What am I going to do? Oh, God, help me, what am I going to do?” the unhappy girl had sobbed.
“Several things,” William had replied cheerfully. “For a start you can congratulate me on fathering a child, my first, I’ll have you know. Secondly, decide when and to where we shall elope. Thirdly, give me a proper kiss, not that silly snivelling thing.”
He was like sunshine, clearly delighted with the news, his pale features animated and his deep eyes calm and cheerful.
“I cannot decide anything,” Sarah had said dolefully. “I simply don’t know what to do for the best.”
Her cousin looked thoughtful. “It might be a good idea if we didn’t elope but let the child be born in wedlock. At least in that way it can avoid the stigma of bastardy.”
“But what shall I say to Sir Charles?”
“You could not —?”
“No, I could not. The meagre sexual relationship we once shared is over for good and all. Besides, he calls me whore and can hardly countenance to look at me.”
“Then you’ll have to use your powers of persuasion,” William had said firmly, and with that Sarah had to be content.
But writing in her journal, seeing the words “enceinte with a Bastard” in black and white, was more than she could stomach and now she wept afresh, wondering how long it would be before the whole world heard of her shame.
*
The journal ended abruptly and with the most extraordinary entry.
Goodwood, 25th August, 1781. With him to Holland House and what a strange Event. We could Both have Sworn we saw something, felt the Impact, indeed so. But Nothing there at all. I cannot Write of it More. In two Days time my new Life begins. Sarah Lennox.
It was past one o’clock in the morning but Sidonie sat staring at the words, puzzling over their obscure meaning. Nothing she had read before cast any light on the “strange Event”, whatever it was, and it was obvious that from this point onwards Sarah had started a new journal.
“My God, I’d like to get my hands on that one as well,” Sidonie muttered, and then realised that her parents must by now be fast asleep and, somewhat contritely, put her bedside light out.
She lay in the dark thinking extraordinary thoughts. She was going to see Sarah again, on three more occasions in fact, the last to be very special. Somehow, it was reassuring to know, not terrifying as her trips into the past once had been. Sidonie remembered the sickness she had felt when she had gone back to the great hayfield, the sheer fright of running down the corridor in the Château des Cedres, and was glad that those traumas were over for good.
‘Unless, of course,’ she considered, with that lovely first haze of dreaminess, the hypnotic state before sleep, ‘there are references to me in her other journal. But that I’ll never know.’
And with that she fell asleep and dreamed once more of the Earl of Kelly, though this was just a dream and not a visit to the past as she was positive the other had been.
When she woke next morning, it occurred to Sidonie that in some way she had been destined to go to Holland House all along, for it was only through the means of Sarah she had heard the eighteenth-century master play. She knew then that this whole episode in her life, extraordinary though it was, had been one of total enrichment. That Holland House and its occupants had led her to a major turning point, both in her career and outlook.
“Can you play at Silbury Abbas on behalf of cancer research?” called her father up the stairs.
“You bet,” Sidonie called back and, unbidden but lovely, memories of Finnan came rushing and she wondered how long it would be before he returned from Canada.
“I love it here,” she shouted impulsively.
“We love having you,” Jane answered. “Do you have to go back on Monday?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“What are you going to play for them?” her father asked, still on the telephone.
“Tell them a selection of eighteenth-century music concentrating mainly on the works of the Earl of Kelly, including a piece I recently discovered called ‘Lady Sarah Bunbury’.”
“Bunbury? Anything to do with the chap who owned the first Derby winner?” George Brooks asked, covering the mouthpiece with his hand.
“The very same one,” answered Sidonie, and smiled to herself at all the odd coincidences.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It had been hanging over him like a small yet ever-present cloud since the time of Sarah Lennox’s wedding to Charles Bunbury. Then, he had thought nothing of it, an illness which had started as what appeared to be a common cold, though with incredibly severe symptoms and aftereffects. The doctors had bled him seven times, applied three blisters and purged him till he hardly dared be more than a few feet from the water closet. But this rough treatment for what was little more than a bronchial infection had, harsh though it was, finally cured him. The King had been pronounced fit and well and ready to continue with his daily life.
But then, in 1765, it had happened again. The il
lness, as before, had started as a cold and got worse, the same stitch in the chest, as he thought of it, coming back. From January until March he had been cupped for his fever and kept very quiet. The doctors, or so it seemed to George, had taken his pulse every few minutes, had bled him white, and purged him so violently that he had lived on the pan, hewn from solid marble, of his privy. The condition was obviously serious enough for a Regency Act to be considered, and by mid-May this had been passed.
He would have recovered sooner, the King was aware of that, if his ministers, pressing home the advantage of his temporary weakness, had not tormented him with their wiles and cunning. In a fury, George had dismissed the whole lot of them but, having made no arrangements as to who should succeed, had finally been forced to crawl, begging them to return to office. It was on this occasion that the name of Bunbury had again come to the King’s attention, Sarah’s husband being suggested as Secretary to the new Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, a posting that had, thankfully, not come off.
It was only now that George had realised for the first time how much his physical condition affected his emotions. A tendency to get flustered had developed in him and he had fallen prey to agitation. His sleep pattern had entirely changed as a result, and he had got into the loathsome habit of sleeping for little more than two or three hours a night. Not only was this tiring but extremely debilitating, making it small wonder that he became easily irritable and subject to fits of gloom.
Yet, though the illnesses and high dramas of 1765 had passed in God’s own good time, they had left a permanent mark on him. In the words of his doctors, King George had now become prone to “periods of flurry”. And there was nothing more guaranteed to bring about such an attack of extreme distress than the mention of the name John Wilkes.
A pornographer, a Satanist, a member of the Hell Fire Club, a duellist, a strident critic of the Royal Family through his newspaper The North Briton, John Wilkes, Member of Parliament for Aylesbury, a living thorn in the King’s side, had finally been exiled from the British Isles when he had fled to France in order to avoid standing trial for libel.
But now, in the summer of 1768, not only was the devil’s man back but raising the rabble, making trouble, a true “chieftain of riot and disturbance”. Having had the audacity to put up for Parliament for the county of Middlesex — and to be elected! — the new MP’s supporters had marched from Brentford to London shouting Wilkite slogans, smashing windows, doing great damage to the Mansion House where it was known that the Lord Mayor was violently opposed to the people’s hero and all that he stood for.
The situation had worsened. Wilkes, determined to fight his outlawry, to appeal against it, had finally offered himself for arrest. But, on his way to the King’s Bench prison, the rabble had unshafted the horses and pulled his coach themselves, going along the Strand and finally putting Wilkes down at the Three Tuns Tavern in Spitalfields.
Yet, though rioters demonstrated outside the prison in St George’s Fields, Southwark, when Wilkes was finally sentenced to a term of twenty-two months, never had any incarceration been more pleasant. Lodged in a first-floor apartment with a fine view over the Fields, Wilkes had held court. Every day scores of gag arrived from his admirers, including those in far-away America. Superb delicacies were sent: salmon, pheasant and other game birds, hams, turtles, cases of wine and brimming casks of ale. From Maryland came forty-five hogsheads of tobacco, while money and other donations poured in.
Allowed visitors of either gender, Wilkes’s sexual needs were catered for by a string of willing young women, including the wife of a City alderman whose idol the rabble rouser was. Yet all the while the Satanist lived a life of luxury, unrest was rife in every other quarter, and it was with little joy that the King retired to his favourite hide-out, Richmond Lodge, in the Old Deer Park, for the warmer months.
Earlier that summer of 1768, the mob, led by striking Thames seamen, had marched in the direction of George’s retreat and had got as far as Kew Bridge, where the gates had been shut in their faces. The King had been forced to return to London in view of the worsening situation, the Riot Act had been read, the militia called out, and several people outside Wilkes’s prison had lost their lives in what became known as the St George’s Fields Massacre.
By 15th May, though, the riots-had been quelled, yet the situation left the King only too well aware that somehow or other the prime instigator, that lewd libertine responsible for it all, must be disposed of. It was in this frame of mind that George once again left London for his hideaway, wishing that he could remain there permanently, removed from the strife of duty, the noise and turbulence of the uneasy and festering city.
Rather against his better judgement he had asked Princess Augusta, his mother, to accompany him, thinking London to be unsafe for her, particularly in view of the general contempt and loathing in which the Dowager Princess was held. During the May riots a Boot and a Petticoat, a none too subtle reference to the Princess and her lover Bute, had been paraded on a gibbet through Cornhill, and with law and order barely restored it hardly seemed safe to leave the ailing woman behind. For though she was only forty-nine years old, the Dowager Princess’s health now showed definite signs of deterioration. Nevertheless, it was with a sigh of relief that her son deposited his mother at the White House at Kew, and made his way on through the park to Richmond Lodge.
“I shall call on you tomorrow,” he had promised dutifully as they parted.
“Do not forget,” Augusta had responded in that tone of voice which turned every request into a command.
“No, Madam,” George had answered, and given the instruction to drive on.
All the children were with the King and Queen on this trip; six-year-old George the Prince of Wales, five-year-old Frederick, three-year-old William, two-year-old Charlotte, Edward, aged one and the baby Augusta. The Queen, at that moment, was not pregnant. Yet, much as he loved his family, George found a strong need within himself to be solitary, to go out of doors and leave behind the sound of their small shrill voices. So it was with pleasure that he set off to ride through the forest on the following afternoon, keeping his appointment with his mother, looking forward most of all to the journey itself.
The White House at Kew had been leased by the Capel family to the King’s father, Frederick, and had only recently become one of His Majesty’s residences, Augusta having used it up until now. Adjoining Kew Village and Green, the most pleasant way to approach the house was by way of the long stretch of riverbank, and this route the King presently took, enjoying the fresh breeze that blew across the reach of water, a sharp clean smell in its essence.
It was a beautiful June day, near midsummer, and the sun, still high, shimmered on the rippling sheet of the Thames. Overhead, the sky was china-blue, the colour of the King’s eyes, small white clouds, delicate as blossom, sailing slowly over its broad expanse uncluttered by buildings or spires in this rural setting. The afternoon, or so it seemed to George, drinking everything in with much gratification to his spirit, was the colour of sweet peas, all pinks, whites and blues. The fields and woods on the far bank were rosy and fresh, the water clear and cool, and there was a smell of flowers in the heady, languorous air as he turned away from the river and its salty zephyrs.
Entranced with the glory of the day, the King of England was calm and at peace, more so than he had been for months. And when he dismounted outside the White House, handing the reins to a bowing ostler, and went in search of his mother, he half hoped that she would be out and he could spend the time until her return in solitary contemplation of nature’s loveliness. But this was not to be.
He found Augusta in the garden, sitting beneath an elm tree, a large muslin cap upon her head. She had grown no more beautiful with the passing years and now her look of natural severity did not lessen as she motioned her royal son to come and sit with her.
“A lovely day, Madam,” he said, planting a kiss on her uncompromising cheek.
“Indeed yes, though too
hot for my tastes.”
“But so much better here than in London.”
“That is true certainly. Effie, that is Lady Effingham, who has just come from town, tells me there is a stench in the streets, caused by the recent riots she believes, fit to rob a man of his wits.”
“Really?” George was not listening, staring out at the charming vistas all around him, wishing he had been born a farmer not a king and could stay here dreaming on the riverbank for the rest of his mortal span.
“Yes. The beau monde are leaving in droves. The capital is not the place for civilised folk this summer.” The Princess droned on and George allowed himself to drift into a brown study until a certain name caught his attention. “… even that rascally boy Fox is against him.”
“What did you say?”
Augusta snorted. “I do believe you were not listening. I may as well not waste my breath.”
“I’m sorry. My attention was momentarily distracted by those beautiful butterflies in the flowerbed. What about Charles James?”
“Effie says that the precocious brat has declared against Wilkes and the mob.”
“Gracious me. I would have thought him a mite too rebellious for that.”
“So would I. Certainly.”
Mother and son sat in momentary silence thinking about Lord Holland’s middle son who, along with his brother Ste, had been returned to Parliament in the recent general election, the elder of the two representing Salisbury, Charles James, though still only nineteen years of age, becoming the member for Midhurst in Sussex.
“A precocious family altogether if you ask me,” the Princess said cruelly.