Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron

by Stephanie Barron

  Presently we were joined by Madame La Fanchette herself, a strong-featured, rail-thin woman with a pronounced Yorkshire accent who had certainly never seen Paris; her toilette, however, was the last word in elegant severity, and I imagined I should be happy in anything her workrooms might fashion for Henry’s fifty pounds. At the snap of her fingers, a bevy of young women appeared to exhibit the latest modes, all of them nicely suited to a lady of Mrs. Silchester’s station in life; Madame was familiar with her clients’ tastes.

  “You will not have visited any of the warehouses,” the modiste mused, “but I may be able to supply you with a lavender silk—only observe, Miss Austen,” she said with polite acknowledgement as an assistant brought forth the bolt for my inspection, “as the weave is that fine, and the colour not too sharp.”

  “It might almost be grey, in a certain light,” I admitted. “I cannot think this to be objectionable. One so dislikes to go in darker shades during the summer months—which are nearly upon us.”

  “I take it you’ve recently lost a close relation,” she said, with an assessing glance at my black gown. “The workmanship is not without merit.”

  “A Frenchwoman who resides in London made it for me,” I said carelessly. “Have you a clear dove sarcenet or perhaps a slate-blue twill, for Mrs. Silchester’s walking dress?”

  Indeed Madame La Fanchette had; and while she discussed necklines and sleeves, and ordered her assistant to measure Mrs. Silchester’s waist, I looked on as tho’ granting opinions to an acquaintance was all the joy I required. Mrs. Silchester’s countenance, which had been suffused with anxiety, gradually relaxed under the combined ministrations of Madame and myself—there is nothing like ordering one’s clothes to lift a lady’s spirits, after all—and when at last we had arrived at the coveted cloth of silver, with a beaded hem and matching headdress, her spirits were entirely restored.

  Madame promised faithfully to send round the lavender silk on the morrow, with the rest of the gowns to follow; then turned her blunt features upon me. Was there anything Miss Austen required?

  I saw, to my regret, that the hour was now too advanced to permit of my own frivolity and a nuncheon with Henry, and informed Madame of the unfortunate fact of a previous engagement—promised to return at the first opportunity—and accompanied Mrs. Silchester as she quitted the establishment.

  “I must assume that tho’ we cannot attend the funeral itself,” I observed as we walked back along North Street in the direction of the Steyne, “that we ought, in good conscience, to pay a call of condolence upon the General at the conclusion of the service. Surely there will be any number of Brighton’s notables who shall do the same?”

  Mrs. Silchester hesitated. “In truth, the General lives so quietly—and tho’ commanding respect, has never sought a broad acquaintance among the first families in the town—I cannot undertake to say whether he shall be receiving or not. However,”—and she squared her shoulders a little—“that shall not prevent me from paying a call. I hope that I know what is due to that poor lost darling, tho’ her father may not. I hope I am conscious of what her mother should have wished, on the occasion.”

  Here was my opening. “She died some years since, I collect?”

  “When Catherine was but three years old, and her brother seven. Richard had already been sent away to school, of course, and Catherine was in the care of her nurse when Lydia … but that is ancient history, my dear Miss Austen, and cannot be of interest to yourself.”

  “I hope you will not think me inquisitive,” I returned with an air of apology, “but the General was so indiscreet as to speak of his late wife in a manner I found rather shocking. I attempted to pay a call on him only yesterday, to offer my sympathy at the loss of his daughter; but he refused to admit me, and so far forgot himself as to declare that the sins of the mother had been visited upon the child. Naturally, I could not know what to think. I ascribed it to the excesses of grief.”

  “Ye-es,” Mrs. Silchester said hesitantly, “tho’ with my knowledge of the General, I should be inclined to call it spite rather than sorrow. You will forgive me for speaking frankly, Miss Austen—the General is not an amiable man. Dear Lydia was quite otherwise—possessed of perhaps too much sensibility, indeed—and a more ill-sorted pair I never hope to encounter again.”

  “The marriage was unhappy?”

  “She fell in love with a red coat, I fear—and never gave a thought to the nature of the gentleman who wore it.”

  “Many ladies might say the same, to their infinite misfortune,” I offered piously.

  “But few with poor Lydia’s result.”

  Poor Lydia. It might be a veritable quotation from my own pen.

  And as we walked towards the King’s Arms and my expected nuncheon, Mrs. Silchester shared her friend’s sad history.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  A Passion for Publick Houses

  THURSDAY, 13 MAY 1813

  BRIGHTON, CONT.

  “IT IS QUITE A DISMAL TALE, HENRY,” I WARNED AS THE potboy set a tankard of ale, half a cold ham, some new-baked bread, and a Stilton cheese before us. I was drinking lemonade. We were seated in the King’s Arms’ coffee room among perhaps half-a-dozen other parties, with the horde of more common folk collected in the Ordinary beyond the communicating passage, and the cheerful din made the perfect foil for intimate conversation. The Arms was a handsome-enough old publick house, broad-beamed and low-ceilinged, with smoke-darkened walls and ample hearths. Henry had already informed me that the Regent had been frequently revelling here in his salad days—before Mrs. Fitzherbert or the unfortunate marriage to his cousin Princess Caroline—and that the carousing of the 10th Hussars, whose preferred publick house it was, could be as nothing to the example His Royal Highness had once set.

  “No local maiden was safe from his party,” Henry observed. “And the gallons of wine and ale that were drunk! The publican, Mr. Tolliver—who has lived in the Arms, man and boy, his father being publican before him—says there was nothing to equal Prinny’s lust for life, in his youth. The reputation of the house grew so tarnished among the gentry, indeed, that Mr. Tolliver’s father very nearly barred the Prince from the premises—but for the uncomfortable fact of his being the Prince. But you were speaking of General Twining: Pray forgive my interruption.”

  “I fear that what I have to relate is less amusing.” I allowed my brother to serve me a cut of ham. “General Twining was once himself a member of the 10th Hussars, as should not be unusual; and while in London a quarter-century ago, met and married a beautiful young heiress named Lydia Montescue—only then in her first Season. He was thirty; she was but seventeen, and wild for a red coat, as Mrs. Silchester would have it—the two ladies were together at school, and remained friends ever after. As is so often the case, poor Lydia discovered that she had married a stranger on the strength of three weeks’ acquaintance, several balls, and a drive or two in Hyde Park—who proved, as a life partner, harsh and incomprehensible: so strict a disciplinarian, that her frivolous pleasures were at an end; so parsimonious a master, that her ample purse was hers no longer; and so jealous a husband, that she might not stand up with one of his fellow officers at a garrison ball, without earning a blow from his hand. In short, she left the General—who was but Major Twining then—when her son was five and her daughter an infant still in arms.”

  “Eloped with another?” Henry suggested.

  “One of her husband’s cavalry officers—Captain the Honourable Philip Barrett, Mrs. Silchester persisted in calling him, as tho’ his courtesy title lent greater glamour to his memory. Captain Barrett was the second son of the Earl of Derwentwater, she tells me, and exquisitely expensive—being addicted to gambling. Poor Lydia appears to have possessed appalling taste in men.”

  “Fellow ditched her?”

  “I am sure his family would have preferred him to have done so. In the event, Twining pursued them, challenged the Honourable to a duel—and killed him at twenty paces.”


  “Good Lord!” Henry almost choked on his ham. “And having put his rival below ground, Twining did not feel obliged to flee to the Continent?”

  “He stood his trial, and was acquitted the crime of murder on the plea of having defended his honour—the first duty of any soldier or gentleman. Mrs. Silchester, however, could not quite condone such violence. I believe she was as smitten as all the rest with the dashing Captain. A tragedy, she called it.”

  “And Lydia?—She was hauled back to do penance, I suppose?”

  I shook my head. “Having killed her lover, Twining cast off his wife without a penny, Mrs. Silchester says. Lydia died in extreme poverty in a back slum of London when Catherine was but three years old, and lies in an unmarked pauper’s grave. Mrs. Silchester knows this to be true, because she received a letter from the vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, which parish had the burying of Mrs. Twining; Mrs. Silchester’s direction was found among the unfortunate lady’s effects, when she had died.”

  “And the Montescues? They made no effort to support her? They allowed their Lydia to end in misery?”

  “She was an orphan, I understand—which accounts for her considerable fortune, which fell entirely to General Twining’s use.”

  “Melancholy,” Henry observed. “And do but consider, Jane, how little his course in life has availed him—only son killed in the Peninsula, and now his daughter snuffed out in violence.”

  “Yes. One might almost call it a judgement—if one were possessed of a vindictive turn, in matters divine.”

  “I am glad I disliked that fellow upon first meeting,” my brother persisted. “I can only wonder that little Catherine did not fly to London with Byron when he asked—so eagerly must she have yearned for liberty.”

  “But that is exactly what she would not do, Henry,” I countered. “Recollect her sheer terror at being returned to her home in disgrace—the reliance she placed upon us bearing her company—and the blow she received for her courage in having outwitted Lord Byron! I had heard before this that the General is most anxious on the subject of his name, and family dignity; and now we may know the cause. He perceives the world to be laughing at him, for having a shameful wife—and therefore no taint of a similar disease should be allowed to mar Catherine. She must be perceived as purer than the driven snow. What a curse for the poor child, that she should draw so rakish an eye as Lord Byron’s!”

  “It explains the General’s determination to marry her off so early to Mr. Smalls,” Henry added. “What better safeguard against calumny than an aged clergyman?”

  “What better inducement to a second elopement!” I cried. “No, Henry—the General understands nothing of women, and has been at every turn a fool. Did I not dislike him so thoroughly, I should be inclined to pity the man—so ham-fisted as he is. He even finds shame in Catherine’s murder—as tho’ she deserved it, through some moral lapse of her own. Could anything be more unjust?”

  “For my part,” my brother replied, “I should like to strike General Twining.”

  “And such are our ungenerous sentiments, on the very eve of his daughter’s funeral!” I mused. “Which puts me in mind of something—you must attend, as a representative of the family.”

  Henry’s brows rose. “Indeed, Jane? I have this comfort: there can be no difficulty in procuring mourning.”

  “I should not ask it of you,” I pleaded, “but that I cannot attend myself; you know it to be most improper. And I should dearly like an observant pair of eyes upon Mr. Hendred Smalls—he is to conduct the service.”

  “Ah,” Henry said knowledgeably. “And at the cold collation that is certain to follow—not even the General could be so remiss in what is due to his daughter as to forgo the cold collation!—you would wish me to enquire as to the clergyman’s movements in the small hours of Tuesday morning. Say, between one and three o’clock?”

  “Henry,” I sighed as I took a bite of cheese, “you are in every way a most excellent brother.”

  THE PUBLICAN, MR. TOLLIVER, PRESUMING SO FAR ON HIS earlier conversation with Henry to approach our table, and beam in a kindly way at me—enquiring whether the ham was cured to my liking, and whether I should not wish for a glass of ratafia, as an aid to my digestion—I seized upon chance and professed myself entirely delighted with every aspect of the meal and the establishment. However modern the Castle’s conveniences, I assured him, it could offer nothing so comfortable or sound as the King’s Arms.

  “Well, and it’s a home-like place enough, which I allus think the traveller appreciates,” Tolliver observed, gratified. “The lady has an appreciation, I take it, for fine old publick houses?”

  “And posting-inns,” I added ingeniously. “I have made a little habit, I confess, of looking into every one I find, upon the various roads of England. The White Hart in Bath, for example, is the very soul of a posting-inn; and my brother and I were recently treated to a fine example in Guildford.”

  “That’d be the White Lion, mebbe, or the Crown?”

  “The Crown,” I agreed. “Mr. Spraggs, the proprietor, was most generous in showing us about the place.”

  Tolliver took the hint, and despite a swell of custom—the hour being close on two o’clock—invited Henry and me to follow him through the principal rooms of the place, so that we might admire a quantity of ancient iron pots, pewter tankards, copper taps, oak settles, and stout barrels—all but the last, dating from Elizabeth’s time.

  “For the Arms—it were called the Ship and Bottle then, before the Royals descended on Brighthelmston and we were forced, in deference, to make the change—in my old dad’s time, that were—has been the place for comfort and cheer, particularly along of the winter months, for time out of mind.”

  “And you let rooms, I understand?”

  Tolliver’s countenance lost a little in animation. “That we do—tho’ I’m considering whether I shall in future. Only the four bedchambers have we above-stairs, most of the gentry preferring the Old Ship or the Castle, if they’re not already in lodgings; and I don’t mind to say that with the goings-on of late, it’s hurt my reputation as an honest publican. You’d think, from what has been said, that the Arms was no better than a bawdy house! I thought we’d recovered from that indignity once the Regent grew too fat to stir out-of-doors—but there, you can never hope to serve the publick without suffering an injustice now and again. But Mrs. Tolliver feels it most acutely, I don’t mind saying—took to her bed these two days past, from a dislike of the gossip as is going around the town.”

  “I am sure no impropriety can attach to your management of the house,” I said with sympathy, “or Mrs. Tolliver’s arrangements, either. It is not as tho’ you invited a brigand to carry that poor child’s body upstairs! And having seen Lord Byron quit the place—at such an unseasonable hour, too—you must have thought all business at an end for the evening.”

  “Now, it’s odd you should mention it, ma’am,” Tolliver said, with one hand on the stair-rail. “For wracking my brains I have been, as to how that poor drowned girl was put in his lordship’s bed.”

  A thrill of exultation stirred along my spine; at last we were coming to it!

  “I allus keeps the doors unlocked and set a lad to wait up for folk, on Assembly nights—meaning Mondays and Thursdays—for the dancing will go on until all hours, and there’s no telling as when a lodger will want to seek his bed, nor an officer wish to wet his whistle, as the saying goes. So certain it is the doors was unbarred and the Ordinary rollicking with a number of hearties. But I’d turned in at eleven o’clock myself—and Mrs. Tolliver was that put out when his lordship decided, in the dead of night, that nothing would do but he must settle his accounts—and sent the boy to rouse me out of bed! He’s not to have a room from us again, Tolliver, she said, being fed to the brim with Lord Byron’s whimsical ways.”

  “And, of course, the noise of packing would disturb the rest of your guests,” Henry said sympathetically, “who cannot have spoken kindly of it in the morning
.”

  “Jest the one other fellow upstairs there was,” Tolliver said. “Mr. Laidlaw, a gentleman down from Oxford, most interested in those bits of rock and sich you may find along the shore—here for his health and a spot of rock-hunting, he is, and not the sort to burn the oil of a midnight. A most quiet and respectable gentleman is Mr. Laidlaw. His bedchamber gives onto the stairs at the head of the passage—quite near the water closet, for he’s an elderly gentleman, is Mr. Laidlaw. Lord Byron being most insistent in the matter of quiet, for all he’s scribbling at his verses when he’s here, chose the room at the very end of the hall—quite pertickular when he first set eyes on the Arms. In April, that’d be, when he hired that yacht of old Benbow’s down’t the shingle. He’s kept it ever since, to be certain of having it whenever the notion to sail oversets him—a most whimsical gentleman, his lordship, as I said.”

  Whimsical indeed, to demand quiet in a publick house, and chuse the haunt of cavalry officers for his writing-room. However, in Byron’s world the hubbub of the Arms—so different from the genteel drawing-rooms of his usual circle—might seem to promise anonymity. Until Caro Lamb appeared on the scene, and forced him to fly.

  “Mr. Laidlaw, I suppose, did not mention a disturbance in the night—as tho’ a heavy load of baggage was carried past his door?”

  “Mr. Laidlaw takes laudanum,” Tolliver replied heavily, “and sleeps with a green eyeshade, and his ears plugged up with beeswax. A dreadful light sleeper, Mr. Laidlaw is, and a martyr to it, in publick places—and so he never retires but with his precautions, as he calls ’em. It was the first thing I asked him, after poor Mary carried in the coffee to Lord Byron’s rooms—her meaning to lay the fire, not knowing as his lordship had quitted the place, her sleeping out at her mother’s. It was Mary found that unfortunate lady sewn up in the hammock, and she screamed so loud not even Mr. Laidlaw’s beeswax could preserve him. But he declared as he’d heard nothing—not even Lord Byron’s valet, packing up of his traps.”