By the spring of 1775, however, tensions between the British and the colonists began to progress from simmering to boiling point. An array of regulars under General Thomas Gage had been bottled up in Boston and this seemed intolerable to the British who had despatched three additional generals, Howe, Clinton and Burgoyne to restore order. On site they agreed a plan to occupy the Charleston promontory to the north and the Dorchester Heights to the southeast to draw the Rebels’ fire and, in the meantime, the main British force would cross the Charles river and take Boston.
Colonel Thirleby’s men would form part of this main assault group and William Wortley was keen to show his mettle.
“They are poorly equipped, lacking in discipline and led by farm boys,” said Wortley confidently. “A little order and professionalism and we shall be eating our dinners in Boston this evening.”
The initial stage, crossing the Charles River, went smoothly. So smoothly that General Howe had his men pile arms and eat lunch. But the delay was to prove fatal. The Rebels had called in a further thousand militiamen, some of them the best marksmen in the American army. They joined their compatriots behind hastily thrown-up fortifications on Bunker Hill.
The British, meanwhile, had lost the valuable elements of time and surprise. Furthermore, with each grenadier carrying a load of around 130 pounds uphill and decked out in brilliant red coats, they became an easy target for musket and cannon. After the first advance became broken up through a combination of difficult terrain and casualties, Thirleby regrouped his officers to reformulate tactics. Wortley, with his astute strategic brain, proposed a more measured approach.
“We should wait until it is clear that the British are advancing on all sides of the hill so that the militia fire is distracted. That will also give us an opportunity to erode their numbers through artillery.”
Thirleby, however, agreed with General Howe.
“It is our prime duty to take this hill. Once we are among them they will turn tail and run. I would back the British Grenadier in any fight with farm boys, mountain men and bumpkins,” said Howe belligerently.
He led his men up Bunker Hill three times, taking heavy casualties. Eventually artillery was brought forward and General Clinton, observing events from the flank, brought up reinforcements. It was at this time that American ammunition and gunpowder gave out and British bayonets were suddenly amongst the Rebels who retreated in some disorder. Bunker Hill had been secured.
*
Several weeks later, at number 15 King’s Circus in Bath, Wortley Senior was taking his ease in his garden. The sun shone on his favoured spot on the cushioned stone bench set against the trellised rose. Wortley congratulated himself on his commercial skills, his exquisite taste and the refined enjoyment of his wealth. A maid showed a military figure into the garden, who stood to attention before Wortley.
“… Died doing his duty… position secured… heavy losses… buried where he fell… tragic end to a short but promising career…”
Wortley only took in every third word. Somewhere in the house there arose a howl.
In the garden the sun went behind the clouds, darkening and chilling the garden.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
At the same time that Captain William Wortley’s military career was coming to its untimely conclusion, Henry Wortley’s legal career at the Middle Temple was blossoming. The prosperity of the Georgian days meant that many a newly-minted Croesus was turning toward the law in order to secure and entail their wealth away from the clutches of less scrupulous and disciplined children.
Henry Wortley was now the master of trust law and well-to-do clients competed for his expertise in his chambers, filling the coffers of Sir Athelstan Treble and ensuring Henry Wortley a degree of pre-eminence that was self-perpetuating.
But money, security and personal repute could not assuage the lawyer’s anxieties. His obsessive eye for detail and the threats he wrongly perceived from conspiring rivals began to infect his mind. When with clients or sometimes in court, he sensed a voice in his head. At first the voice simply required him to check legal facts two, three, four, perhaps fifteen times. He would also be told to check his keys, his purse, and his other belongings at regular intervals, often at particularly inconvenient times. He also had to leave work from time to time to check the security of his lodgings. Then, one day, the siren demands of the voices became more sinister and told Henry that unless he performed certain ritualistic duties then he would be harmed himself.
Cripps, the clerk to the chambers, had also noted that Henry had begun to neglect his personal appearance. He wore the same clothes each day and was accompanied by a pungent stench of body odour. Some clients had remarked on this. Henry was also now wont to make the occasional irrational statement, which would surprise those with him at the time. Once, when discussing a codicil with wealthy clients called Shadbolt, he had – apropos nothing – said, “There are medleys of devils in London you know. Cripps is controlling them you know.”
But then returned normally to the business in hand. However, increasingly, Henry lost his train of thought and began not to look clients in the eye. He became hostile and suspicious. Sir Athelstan summoned him.
“Wortley, you are one of my best lawyers but I have been receiving unwelcome reports about your state of mind, and Cripps tells me…” at the sound of this name Henry lowered his head, scowled and looked askance,
“… that you are neglecting to see to your toilet properly. It seems, all in all, that business is beginning to go elsewhere and we must get to the bottom of it.”
Henry said, in a low voice, “Cripps is it? Well he is controlled by a malevolent devil and they are sending the voices. It is Cripps you should see, not me. He answers to a devil but has many other devils. They can hide anywhere. They are in the books. I have to take the utmost care.”
Sir Athelstan, a man characterised by logic, discipline and rationality had no clue as to how he should deal with this strange problem. After attempting to re-engage Henry in a commonsensical debate, exasperated, he declared his final remark.
“Well, Wortley, I feel that you should seek help. There seems to be a certain fever of the mind, but all I know is we cannot prejudice business. Tell Cripps when you are well again and we will see if we can bring you back into the fold.”
“Aha!” expostulated Henry. “So you are in with Cripps also! Don’t you see? He has sent the voices to you and now you are controlled. I must see a justice, or perhaps a vicar? They are coming from all sides and they are all in league. Oh yes!”
By now Henry was shouting and threshing and Sir Athelstan called for Cripps who rushed in. Although a lusty oak of a man, on seeing the commotion and attempting to calm Henry, he had to summon his assistant, Circuit, and they restrained Henry, who was now deranged by the attack from all sides. They tied him to a chair in an anteroom and considered what to do.
“Well, he’s a lunatic, and no mistake!” puffed Cripps.
“Only thing for him in this state is the madhouse. We’ll take him there in the cart and let them deal with him. Better go out the back way.”
Henry was now foaming, his eyes rolling. Cripps, the anti-Christ, was about to do for him. All of them: Cripps, Circuit, Treble, everybody. They were all in it together!
Henry was carted away to the Bethlem Hospital and deposited there, trussed and struggling. The warders had seen this all before and had Henry manacled and roped and taken down to a cell in short order. The hospital was, in reality, an asylum where lunatics and melancholics and others of unsound mind could be kept securely where they could not damage themselves or others. Henry was thrust into a barred cell with a floor of straw. The attendants told him he could shout all he liked but it wouldn’t make a ha’porth of difference.
And so it was that Henry Wortley became confined as a lunatic in a long, dismal corridor of incurables and wailing inmates, who were not allowed to con
sort as there had been fights and murders. A little food was thrown in each cell daily but became mixed with straw and excrement in scenes that resembled one of the circles of Hell. From time to time members of the public would pay a few coppers to see and laugh at the creatures and goad them to fury by poking sticks through the bars as though with animals, fettered for general amusement.
*
Henry had been there several weeks before word reached his parents in Bath. They immediately journeyed to see him and were shocked at the dirty, unkempt, shaggy Caliban who did not recognise them. After much deliberation and research they found a doctor called Bouverie-Flint who ran a private madhouse in Moorfields.
“And can you cure him Doctor?” asked Wortley Senior anxiously.
“Well, given what I see of him, perhaps a cure would be beyond us. However, I can, through various medical practices, greatly ease his sufferings.”
Bouverie-Flint took them through his potential treatments – blistering, bleeding, emetics, purgatives.
“Voiding of the bowels is considered to be particularly beneficial, laudanum for calmness, if we can persuade them to take it in food or drink…”
He was particularly keen to demonstrate the latest medical thinking, the ‘bath of surprise’. This arrangement balanced the lunatic on a slideable lid over a vat of icy water, into which they would be plunged and immersed.
“We find this calms them,” he said, with the confidence of a skilled practitioner showing off medical secrets to an untutored public.
“I can assure you, sir, that we can make it as tolerable an existence as possible for your son. He will be cleaned out on a regular basis so as to avoid infection. And who is to say that there will not be, in time, a permanent cure that will restore him to what he was. In short, he is in the best place that he can be.”
And with that, and the exchange of a considerable sum of money and a signed obligation for further annual funds, Henry Wortley was consigned to oblivion.
Mrs Wortley was tearful on the return trip.
“What did we do? What else might we have done? My little boy in a cage like an animal!”
“It is God’s will my dear, and we cannot be privy to his reasons. We must accept his purpose in all humility. Let us trust in the doctor and hope for recovery.”
The journey was passed in a ruminative silence. One son now gloriously dead and another son as good as dead in shackles and locked up.
*
Within a year, Mrs Wortley had succumbed to her grief and died of a sudden apoplexy. And, as is the way of these things, within weeks Wortley Senior followed his wife.
“Died of a broken heart,” intoned the priest at the interment.
The last family member standing – Hugh, aged twenty-two – was now an orphan. After a suitable period of mourning for his brothers and parents he became reconciled with his grief when the family lawyer informed him that the fine house in Bath and the considerable family wealth had now devolved on him. Life had dealt him some blows. But now, young, handsome and rich, it was incumbent on him to acquit himself well in life and to undertake purposeful enjoyment of what God had sought to give him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The youngest, and only surviving Wortley made an appropriate show of grief for several months. Hugh was not a bad man but found it difficult to be a perpetual mourner with a world of delights opening up before him. In truth he rather enjoyed the title of orphan and the attendant sympathy that accompanied that epithet.
“My poor boy. Papa, Mama and brothers all gone and you are alone in the world,” soothed Catherine de Neufville in her girlish trill after one of their diminishing encounters. “But you know, my little lost lamb, that Catherine is always here to pour balm on your troubles!”
Catherine, in addition to enjoying her trysts with young and handsome Hugh – who was now becoming a skilled and vigorous lover – also had half an eye on the Wortley assets.
Their latest coupling had been brief and functional with Catherine bent over a desk whilst Hugh had simply dropped his breeches to his ankles. Hugh, having done what he had come to do and now satisfied his physical needs, was eager to leave.
“I am managing well enough thank you, as a man does,” he said brusquely whilst disentangling Catherine as he sped downstairs. He made a mental note that, given his new status, there would be other female company that he would prefer. Company with good teeth, shining hair, unlined skin, who would not use the voice of a silly girl. No, she had served her purpose and would, no doubt, always be available to savour as a raisin if grapes were not abundant.
Personal wealth was a sturdy consoling friend. The family lawyer, Cawthorne, was proficient in the workaday world of provincial law, but was aware of brother Henry’s fame with trusts. He had made a remark at one of their meetings about dealing with property and finances.
“Well, young man, it seems that it has all devolved to you directly as the last surviving – and sane – relative. It is not in trust or entailed to you as your brother might have suggested. So you are free to do with it as you please. You are of majority. Of course if you wish to divert any of it to good causes then I am sure the recipients will be grateful. Might I proffer a few suggestions?”
Henry gave a non-committal shrug.
“Well,” continued Cawthorne. “In view of the origins of your father’s wealth, then perhaps a donation to the Wigmakers Guild might be appropriate? They assist those in distress or who have fallen on hard times through no fault of their own.”
“Perhaps. I will consider it,” conceded Hugh who was instinctively against transferring his wealth to undeserving paupers.
“Or maybe a contribution to the good works of Mr and Mrs Penley of Bath who take children from the region’s poorhouses and put them to productive and gainful work in the spinning mills in Lancashire?”
“All in good time, Cawthorne. Now what papers do you wish me to sign?” deflected Hugh.
The business concluded, Mr Cawthorne saw Hugh out with suitable deference for his new young paymaster.
*
Hugh observed the required niceties of a bereaved young man for as long as he could. But with gold in the bank, a fashionable residence in the best part of Bath and the attention that comes from being young, handsome and eligible he had soon decided that a life of merriment, self-gratification and indulgence would be very agreeable. The poor could look after themselves and should be expected to demonstrate fortitude in the face of adversity as he himself had done. In any case many would benefit indirectly from his personal expenditure on pleasurable matters.
Hugh had continued to play a passable violin as part of a quartet at the Pump House in Bath where the local elite would gather to listen and to be seen. As well as an intrinsic enjoyment of the music, Hugh exhilarated in the role of handsome and wealthy orphan as he observed the knowing nudges and winks of his audience.
It was at one of these gatherings that he was engaged in conversation by Alice Winfrey, the friend and confidante of Catherine de Neufville. Alice knew of the liaison and had urged Catherine to enjoy herself in view of her neglectful husband.
Some ten years younger than Catherine, petite, polished and flirtatious with an abundance of curly hair and a permanent upturned smile, she was aware of the cooling of the affair and sidled up to Hugh as he packed his violin into its case.
“You play so beautifully,” she sighed winsomely.
“Thank you, although I know my limitations when compared to my great friend Thomas Linley. But it is one of my life’s pleasures in a sometimes cruel world,” he said with a wistful sideways glance which Alice acknowledged.
She looked up at him with a knowing smile and said, prettily, “And what might your other pleasures be? I would very much like to know.”
She had heard from Catherine about his youthful vigour, his strong body and how he had been an enthusiastic student
in satisfying her needs. Hugh sensed the crackle in the air and enquired in a low amused voice: “Are you not a friend of Catherine de Neufville?”
“A friend, yes, but it would be inexpedient if she knew all of my business would it not?”
There was a locking of eyes that went on for too long and needed no words for explanation. An assignation was arranged within the week. Alice’s husband, Charles Winfrey was a naval officer who spent many weeks away on service and left his pretty wife in gilded isolation at their houses in Bath and in their country estate. Alice, a headstrong girl, was bored of the heavily mannered routines of her circumscribed life and ached for physical closeness. Hugh offered a diverting frisson.
The Winfrey country estates in Somerset had a number of comfortable cottages available for estate staff. One of these was conveniently empty and Hugh and Alice arranged to meet there one clear June morning in 1778. Once inside Alice wasted little time on preliminaries and divested herself of several layers of clothes looking directly at Hugh as she did so. Naked, she embraced him. Alice stroked him, murmuring approvingly.
“Shall I also…?” he enquired, beginning to loosen his shirt.
“No. Not yet,” she said demurely. She led him upstairs to a bedroom, he following, all the while looking at her bare behind a couple of steps ahead. She looked around lasciviously at him while she slowly mounted the stairs. In the room was a large wooden bed, which had been dressed with fresh linen. She lay on the bed and looked at him coquettishly. She beckoned him over and he sat by her. She put his hands on her naked breasts and closed her eyes in pleasure as he touched her strawberry nipples with thumb and forefinger.
“I like to be naked and feel the rough grain of clothes against my body. And I like to be touched and satisfied before my man takes his pleasure.”
She was passionate, fresh and sensual. Hugh noted that her breasts did not droop like Catherine’s and her breath tasted sweet when they kissed.
The Violin Page 10