Her encounter with Henry Law the linen merchant, some six weeks before the performance of Handel’s Messiah, could not have been more natural, since they both happened to attend the same parish church. Henry Law’s wife was not close to the widow Doyle, who she thought had grown even bigger and more forthright over the years. They had little to say to each other. But Henry Law had no objection to talking to her, and also had a shrewd respect for her business brain. They would often chat for a few minutes after the service, while Mrs. Law attended to more social affairs. So it had been quite easy, that Sunday, for Barbara to steer the conversation towards the subject of families split by religion.
“That is the case with my own family, you know,” Henry Law had remarked. “In Ulster, I was a Presbyterian, but when I came to Dublin and married my wife, I changed to her religion, which is Church of Ireland.”
“I didn’t know that,” Barbara Doyle lied.
“Well,” he sighed, “my brother in Ulster has never spoken to me since.” He shook his head sadly. “I can well understand how he feels, but I have never felt so strongly myself. So far, all attempts by me to heal the rift have failed.”
Did he know Doctor Terence Walsh? she asked. By reputation only, he replied. A distant kinsman of her own, and a Catholic, she explained. Yet his brother, the Member of Parliament, and a solid Church of Ireland man, never let religion come between them. “He does everything he can to help Terence, and the two of them are bosom friends. They are very good people, I have to say.”
“Ah, that is how it should be,” said Henry Law. “I wish I had achieved the same. Those Walshes have an estate in Fingal, I think.”
“An old gentry family. But simple people. No foolish airs and graces there,” she said firmly. “Work hard and stick by your family.”
“I’d be glad to meet Mr. Walsh someday,” Henry Law said thoughtfully.
“And he’d have come to your house that very moment,” Cousin Barbara reported to Fortunatus afterwards. “But I know that’s not what you want. So I just said nothing, and we parted.”
“He really feels so strongly about the matter of family?”
“He does. He has made a fortune in the linen trade, but he’s always been ready to share what he has with his family. I learned this through the vicar, but he has twice saved his brother in Philadelphia from ruin, to his great cost. Your treatment of Terence would be all-important to him.”
“He must regret his lack of a son.”
“There was a boy, born after the girls, but he died. The vicar told me that as well. He never speaks of it. After that, it seems, he changed. He loves his daughters, I’m sure, but he hasn’t the same ambition for them.” Cousin Barbara grinned. “It’s the mother who’s ambitious for those girls. So tell me,” she enquired genially, “how are you planning to get the mother into your net?”
Isaac Tidy surveyed the room. There were three weeks to go before the grand performance of The Messiah. He did not imagine that the duke would require him for that event, but tonight the Lord Lieutenant was giving a Saint Patrick’s Day Ball in Dublin Castle, and Tidy had been working hard on the preparations since the morning.
There were some, he knew, who had thought ill of him for deserting Dean Swift. But it had not been easy. The Dean’s health had been in slow decline, and with it his temper. He had even quarrelled with Sheridan and turned him away. As Swift’s life became restricted and morose, Tidy had concluded that there wasn’t much he could do for him. “Unless I want to finish up his nursemaid, which I don’t,” he told his relations. At this very time, he heard of a position opening up in the household of the new Lord Lieutenant, and he had applied for it at once. To his amazement, the duke himself had interviewed him.
“I won’t have it said that I took you from the Dean of Saint Patrick’s,” the duke had told him plainly.
“You have my word, Your Grace, that I have left his service already,” he had firmly replied. For guessing that this might be a condition, he had taken his chances and left Swift’s employment that very morning.
Some people might have thought that his new position was quite a step down. He was certainly not the butler. The duke had a butler. But he was an under butler, well above the legion of gilded footmen who strutted about the duke’s mighty household. He was no longer the valued retainer, either, but a newcomer. And certainly nobody dignified him with the name of Mr. Tidy. But he was prepared to suffer these minor indignities because, by going to the duke, he had gone from a small private house to the palace of a mighty potentate. “Higher than the duke, in Ireland,” he told his family proudly, “you cannot go.” If he ever got the butler’s position, he would tower over every unfree man in Dublin. He walked carefully, therefore, abandoned his contemptuous glances for those who were not of the “gintry” for a suavity that was haunting, and made himself useful to those above him and below. Within his limitations, he was really very clever.
Isaac Tidy was happy. In a while, the dancing would begin. The great hall of Dublin Castle looked magnificent. The grand re-designing of the Irish capital as a classical masterpiece was still a work in progress but now it had reached the shabby old Castle, too. Work had already begun on a magnificent ceremonial staircase and a set of staterooms that would rival anything in Europe. For the moment, the huge old hall was used for functions such as this, but even the hall, tonight, had been transformed by the decorator’s art into a vast classical pantheon. And the company itself was equally splendid. Lords, ladies, gentlemen—here was the quality indeed. Many of the faces he knew; for once a person had visited any of the ducal residences, Tidy made it a point to remember him. As his eye travelled round the room, he even noticed, at the far side, the cheerful face of Fortunatus Walsh.
As for himself, here he was, where the entire company could see him, standing discreetly only feet away from, and awaiting the personal instructions of, the Duke of Devonshire. He permitted himself a tiny smile and glanced down at his exquisitely polished shoes. And in that tiny moment of bliss, he did not notice that Walsh had just given a nod to one of the ducal party.
A few moments later, the duke was indicating that he needed him. Tidy glided swiftly and smoothly to his side. And was most surprised to be told he was to fetch Fortunatus Walsh.
You couldn’t fail to notice Tidy as he crossed the great hall. Partly this was because, out of the corners of their eyes, everyone was watching the ducal party; and also because, as the sleek and powdered servant stalked from the duke across the centre of the room, with ladies and gentlemen parting before him, you couldn’t possibly miss him. Everyone at the ball, therefore, was wondering who was about to be approached.
Not least Eliza, wife of Henry Law, linen merchant.
It had surprised Eliza when a lady, whom she did not know particularly well, had asked if she’d accompany her to the Lord Lieutenant’s ball. The lady’s husband had to be away from Dublin, “And I don’t want to go alone,” she’d said. The Lord Lieutenant’s office had no objection to her making the substitution, she assured Eliza.
“But what if someone asks me to dance?” Eliza wanted to know.
“You dance, of course,” the lady laughed.
If the invitation was unexpected, it was hardly to be refused. It was one of Eliza’s greatest regrets that, as the years went by, her genial husband had become less and less interested in going to parties. It was not something she had been able to understand. “How can you be bored,” she had once asked him, in genuine astonishment, “when there is dancing?” He’d go to a theatre or a concert, or even to an assembly, to please her, and she had given him fair warning that he must soon do more for his daughters. But that was as far as she could get him. At least he had raised no objections to her going to the ball this evening.
Her companion was smiling. As it happened, though Eliza Law wouldn’t have known it, her companion’s closest friend was the wife of Doctor Terence Walsh.
“It’s a fine scene, isn’t it? The duke is looking very well t
onight.” The Duke of Devonshire was the second great aristocrat to be sent as Lord Lieutenant in the last decade, and his own huge wealth and standing conferred a sense of stability on the Dublin scene. Standing there in all his magnificence, in a blue and gold coat, the broad, intelligent face under a powdered wig gazing lazily but benignly out at the gathering, he was a symbol of magnificence and peace. Europe might be split into rival dynastic camps for much of the time; invasions might occasionally threaten, though they never seemed to materialise; even the Jacobite cause might still be alive here and there; but in Dublin, one could look out upon a scene of modestly increasing prosperity— except for the native Irish, of course—and political peace.
But it was not the duke, whom she’d seen before, that fascinated Eliza. It was his party. What a glittering crowd they were.
“The Ponsonbys are all there,” her friend remarked. Eliza gazed at them avidly. The Ponsonby family—or “Punsinby,” as it was fashionable to pronounce the name—had been a family of Cromwellian settlers not so very much greater than her own. But two generations of careful intrigue and some important political patronage had brought them to a point where they were even more important than the rich Boyle family down in Munster. By the time that the Duke of Devonshire had come to Ireland, the Ponsonbys could already undertake, with their followers, to deliver the government the votes it needed to pass legislation smoothly through the Dublin Parliament; and it had added to their own prestige—and suited the duke’s political convenience—that one of their sons had now married one of his daughters. Best of all, as far as Eliza Law was concerned, these activities had brought the family not only wealth but a title.
Ah. A title. There were plenty of them going in Ireland nowadays. If the head of the Ponsonby family could be Earl of Bessborough, lesser men could hope for simple peerages. Irish peerages, in particular, were often given for political services. A man had only to be in the right place at the right time, and deliver a vote that the government needed, to get himself made a lord—a reward that was almost eternal, since it passed down to your heirs forever. If you sought status for your family—and who at that assembly did not?— then a peerage was the thing to have.
A title. Ah. A dreamy look came into Eliza’s eyes at the thought of it. She mightn’t ever be called Lady Law herself, but she would fain have such a thing for her lovely, her dear, her swanlike daughters. Young gentlemen with the prospect of a title: that was what she dreamed of for her girls. It was not a subject she discussed with her husband, for his own ambitions were more down-to-earth. But in her own sweet way, she was quite determined about it. And here they were, in the hall before her, concentrated in particular in the blessed group around the Lord Lieutenant. How wonderful it was. She did not know when she had been more delighted.
And now she saw Tidy returning. He was leading a handsome, middle-aged man behind him. They were crossing the floor, straight towards the ducal party, while everybody was looking, the gentry and the lords and ladies, and the future lords, all looking, in that great hall with ten thousand candles blazing. Oh. She gave a tiny quiver of excitement; she couldn’t help it. They were all watching, and all their murmurs had died away to a little silence as he’d reached the duke, and the duke had put out his hand and, oh, the duke was smiling.
As Walsh approached, the duke had turned to his son-in-law.
“What’s this all about, by the way?” he mildly enquired.
“Fortunatus Walsh. Member of Parliament. Old Fingal gentry. Wants Your Grace to make much of him. Needs to be seen. Won’t take a minute.”
“And there’s no reason we shouldn’t?”
“None at all. Loyal man. Always helpful. Good friend.”
“Then we’d better oblige him.” Behind his sometimes lazy exterior, the duke was a very shrewd operator, and an expert at little courtesies like these. He extended his hand. “My dear Mr. Walsh, we are very glad to see you.”
It was easy enough to make small talk for a moment or two. He spoke to Walsh of Handel, for whom Fortunatus expressed a well-informed admiration. They touched upon a few plays they had seen at the Smock Alley Theatre. Indeed, the duke quickly decided that he liked Fortunatus very well, and even—ultimate mark of distinction —proffered his snuff box. They actually went on talking for five minutes, while all Dublin watched.
“We must speak again,” the duke said to close the interview, but with a nod to his son-in-law to indicate that he really meant it. After which Fortunatus retired in discreet triumph. “So tell me,” the duke murmured to Ponsonby after Walsh had gone, “what’s the game?”
During the whole of this time, Eliza Law had been so captivated by the honour bestowed within the glittering circle that she had watched without saying a word. Now she turned to her companion.
“Who is that gentleman?”
“Oh, didn’t you know? That’s Fortunatus Walsh. Fine old family. And in high political favour, so I hear.”
All these careful preparations, together with the intelligence that the Law family was going to the performance of The Messiah, would not have been enough to bait the trap this evening had it not been for one other, propitious circumstance.
This was the fact that, just at that moment, young Tom Sheridan had nothing much to do.
Despite the unfortunate business at Quilca all those years ago, Fortunatus had been able to keep up his friendship with Doctor Sheridan and with his family. Tom was the good old doctor’s most lively son, in Walsh’s opinion. A godson of Swift’s, he had shown a marked literary disposition himself, and gone to Trinity College. Now he had just come down from that institution, and expressed a wish to act—unusual for a young gentleman, though not unknown—and to write plays.
“Smock Alley’s the place for me,” he had cheerfully told Fortunatus.
Dublin’s Smock Alley Theater was certainly a lively place. Not only did it put on plays old and new during the winter season, but in the summer, the best productions from the London theatre would tour there. This year, the new sensation of London, the actor Garrick, was due to come.
“If you can get a play put on at Smock Alley, Tom, I promise you we shall all come,” Fortunatus had told him. “But how are you keeping body and soul together in the meantime?”
A variety of small jobs, it turned out, including one with the Musical Society. And it was this fact that had come into Walsh’s mind when he considered how the desired arrangements might be secured for The Messiah .
“Do you have any part in the allocation of places for the concerts, Tom?” he asked him when he met him in the street one day.
“I could certainly arrange something.”
“How would you like to make two guineas?”
“I should like to make two guineas very much indeed.”
“Then at The Messiah,” Fortunatus said, “I should like you to place us next to the family of Mr. Henry Law.”
And now, here they came at last. Evidently, Eliza Law had delayed them by talking to someone in the audience. Fortunatus hid his relief.
There could be no mistaking them. The merchant, spare and handsome, his hair still fair, was smiling quietly. He looks a gentleman, too, Walsh noted approvingly. His wife, fussing over her daughters, gazed around with pale blue eyes. Her figure was still trim. Quite passable. Then the three girls. It was obvious which one was Lydia: she must be the one with the long neck. She certainly looked very pale and sickly, just as Terence had said. But as for the other two, his eyes opened wide. What beauties. One was fair and smiling; the other, with a dash of burnished red in her hair, was bold and buxom. Was she Anna or Georgiana?
How would they sit, though? Would it be as he had hoped? He gazed forward, smiling vaguely and holding his breath. Yes. It was perfect. Himself, then Grey, and then Henry Law just on the other side of him.
And now the purpose of Grey would appear. For turning to his right, that worthy gentleman smiled.
“Mr. Law, I see.”
“Why, Mr. Grey. I am delighted to s
ee you, Sir. My dear, you do not know Mr. Grey, I think, but he and I have business together.” Smiling greetings were made.
Then Mr. Grey, rather quietly, to Mr. Law:
“Do you know Mr. Fortunatus Walsh, the Member of Parliament? I am in his party.”
“Oh. I don’t, but have heard of him.”
“Should you care to be introduced?”
“Indeed,” with some warmth, “I should.”
“May I present Mr. Henry Law? This is the Member of Parliament Mr. Fortunatus Walsh.”
“Mr. Law. I have the honour.”
“Mr. Walsh,” Henry Law was smiling with some excitement, “I am most honoured, Sir, and delighted to make your acquaintance.”
The performance was sublime. For Handel, for the duke, for the Musical Society, indeed for everybody, it was a triumph.
As the Law family walked home—for, the weather being dry and the distance not great, Henry Law had not seen the point of using their carriage—he turned to his wife.
“If we gave a dinner, I think we should invite Fortunatus Walsh and his wife. He is a most sensible man, and I think he would come.”
For just a moment, his wife was about to tell him that not only was he a sensible man but in high favour with the duke himself and, for all she knew, in line for a title; that he appeared to have a handsome unmarried son; and that given the chance she would lie down on the ground and invite him to walk over her to the front door of her house, but she thought better of it. Better not to share that information with her husband, who might not approve. She’d keep it to herself and the girls.
“As you wish, my dear,” she said. And thanked God for sending not only Handel but Fortunatus Walsh to the Music Hall of Dublin that sublime evening.
The Rebels of Ireland: The Dublin Saga Page 42