by Barbara Vine
I’d forgotten, I always do forget, how he thrives on abuse. A smile of satisfaction spreads across his face. ‘I’ll help myself to some more of this,’ he says, ‘if you don’t mind,’ and he carries his whisky glass over to the cabinet, comes back with what you’d call a meagre amount if it was orange juice. ‘I just happen to feel that there ought to be a law against people who’ve been bad parents having any more kids.’
Jude counters this – bless her – with a calm and well-considered defence of me, telling him he can’t possibly call me a bad father when his mother took him away and did her best to deny me access. My anger has suddenly disappeared because I’ve realized something. Paul’s been rude and insulting and wildly slanderous, but what he hasn’t done is imply that things may go wrong and this baby never be born. I love him for that and ask him to stay to supper. He won’t, of course, but once he’s made a few of his essential phone calls and to my surprise heartily kissed Jude, he slopes off to a pub that does Thai food to meet one of the people he’s been talking to on his mobile.
Jude and I sit on the sofa, holding hands. She’s looking more like Olivia Batho than ever. Pregnancy has taken years off her, her skin glows with a pearly sheen and her eyes are clear and bright. She asks me if I’ve noticed she’s had no morning sickness and points out – this is her first reference to previous failures – that ‘last time’ she vomited every morning. This is a sign, she thinks, that everything is going to be all right.
‘You do want this baby, don’t you, Martin?’
I curse myself for my tactlessness half an hour ago and tell her that of course I do, I’m as excited about it as she is. And, though this is an exaggeration, I do have a feeling that considering the one I’ve got, another child might be different and might give me a chance to be a better father this time.
12
Last evening David Croft-Jones appeared on our doorstep, minus Georgie but bringing the latest version of the tree. Like most people, Jude and I don’t much like visitors turning up unannounced but we made the best of it. The tree is now several feet wide and growing by the week. I ask David about the letter from Patricia Agnew to his mother when he was three months old and he had another look at it. But he was as mystified as I am and a bit miffed too.
‘I obviously don’t have Down’s,’ he said rather stiffly.
‘No, but was that what Patricia thought you had?’
‘I really don’t have the faintest idea.’
I said that perhaps I could ask her. No, you can’t, he said, she’s dead. She’s been dead twenty years, and there’s a peevish note in his voice that implies I’d know that if I’d studied his tree properly. I suggested that her daughter, an only child, might know, but David poured scorn on that and said I’d have to employ a private detective because no one knows where Caroline is or what’s become of her. He didn’t explain what he meant by ‘no one’, though later on when he’d insisted on taking me relative by relative through the tree, he indicated he was sporadically in touch with Diana’s daughter Lucy.
He stayed so long that it was bedtime before he went. I fell asleep at once and some time during the night had a vivid dream. I was in a train – what else? – with Jude. We were on our way to some hospital in Scotland where she was going to undergo a test but I don’t know what kind of test because we seemed to be in the nineteenth century. At any rate, though I was in the sort of clothes I generally wear, Jude was in a crinoline and wearing a bonnet. She’s called Olivia but she looks more like Jimmy Ashworth than herself. In fact, she’s turning into Jimmy. It was evening. It was getting dark. A great gale rose, a storm of wind and rain. I suddenly realized what train we were in and where we were going. We were heading for the Tay Bridge and this was the night it’s going to collapse and take us with it.
I shall have to tell Olivia, I don’t want her to know, but I have to stop the train. A ticket collector comes in and I tell him my fears but I can’t tell him how I know. I don’t know how I know. Of course he doesn’t believe me, he thinks I’m mad. The bridge is new, he says, the bridge would stand a hurricane. I say, doesn’t he know who I am, I’m Lord Nanther. That makes it worse.
‘There’s no Lord Nanther,’ he says. ‘He’s lost his seat.’
After he’s gone I decide to pull the alarm handle, only it’s not a handle it’s a chain, a communication cord. Jude-Jimmy-Olivia has gone, disappeared, so there’s no one to stop me giving the alarm. I’m pulling on the cord when I wake up and find myself tugging on the bedlamp lead.
Two sons eventually arrived for Henry and Edith, so his fears of impotence were groundless. All Henry’s children looked like him and both boys, if Edith’s family photograph is anything to go by, were clones of their father. Edith’s features disappeared somewhere in the complexity of genetic inheritance. Only her large, beautiful and myopic eyes were replicated in some of her descendants. Both my father’s aunts, the maiden aunts, had fine eyes and both had worn glasses from their early youth. I’ve no way of knowing what Mary Dawson looked like, but she too must have passed on whatever genes she had of Henry’s facial appearance to her children.
His first son Alexander was born in 1895, when his mother was thirty-four and his father fifty-nine. The diary entry for 27 February, the day after the birth, reads only: ‘I have a son.’ Henry noted his arrival not much more fulsomely in the notebook. The baby, christened Alexander Henry, was three months old when Henry wrote in the notebook:
My son, like most infants, is obstreperous, noisy, greedy and apparently ill-tempered, always either in tears or asleep. Nurse has been instructed to keep him out of earshot. Were all things equal and were I able to manage our lives prudently and wisely, were I without these painful needs and desperate ambitions, I might settle for the status quo. But I thank Providence too that I was wrong when I felt my vitality diminished. It was no more than that I was tired and had been overworking. HM makes great demands on me. I am sent for to Osborne, to Balmoral, and these are not summonses to which one returns a refusal.
Providence has reared its head again. But what is the status quo? Obviously some family situation. From time to time Henry’s typical reticence finds its way into Alternative Henry as well as the diary. It very likely only means that while he considers his family complete, Edith wants more children. Or is there something I know nothing about? A legacy promised from someone or other to a second son? That would just about cover ‘painful needs and desperate ambitions’. The only wealthy member of the family was Dorothea Vincent and she had daughters of her own. There was never anything in Jude’s suggestion that Edith might inherit her money. But was there a settlement somewhere that only devolved on a second male child? Obviously I must find out.
Something else interesting, which I hadn’t noticed but Jude pointed out, is that, with the exception of the Queen and her daughters, no woman is ever mentioned in these essays, not just Edith. Not Olivia, not Eleanor and not Jimmy. One supposes that Henry considered ‘bad’ women beneath his notice and ‘good’ women of insufficient interest to merit a mention. Which category was Olivia Batho Raven now in? In 1896 she ran away from her husband to join a lover, leaving her three small children behind. Henry must have known, it would have soon become common knowledge. In the light of what I know of Henry, it’s needless to say he doesn’t mention it in either the diaries or the notebook.
Undoubtedly it’s true that Queen Victoria made great demands upon him, though one wonders why in the early nineties she required his presence so often. Haemophilia was by now his speciality but at that period there were no haemophiliacs in the royal family in England, though several abroad, of course. Carriers there were Princess Beatrice herself and her daughter Ena; the Queen’s granddaughters, the Princess Irene of Hesse and her sister Alix, mother of the ill-fated Tsarevich, and Princess Alice, Leopold’s daughter. Henry had claimed to detect her heredity in Princess Beatrice’s appearance but modern medicine would call this impossible, so any ideas that he might have been able to recognize ‘
carrier-ship’ in Irene and Alix on their visits to their grandmother, or in the baby Ena, must be nonsense. Nor would he have passed on his belief to the Queen. It was a subject she’d have refused to discuss. In any case, beyond the largely ineffective plugging of wounds, application of ice and horrific cauterizations, there was nothing approaching alleviation, let alone cure.
The answer probably is that Victoria liked his company, liked having him there. Tall, handsome, very masculine men had always attracted her. She was fond of discussing ailments (not haemophilia) and may have spent many pleasant hours in her seaside retreat talking about rheumatism and her failing eyesight. By 1893 this had become acute. She could hardly read at all and asked her correspondents to write ‘in as black ink as you can’. These health problems were not in Henry’s specialization, but he was a doctor of medicine and would understand. If she trusted her chief physician Sir James Reid always to tell her the truth and not that which might be more palatable, perhaps she also enjoyed Henry’s courtly optimism. He had another talent the Queen would have valued. Like Sir James, he spoke German. Many connections of the royal family, from small princedoms and Grand Duchies visiting Osborne or some other royal residence, had only limited English. Henry could have talked to them in their native tongue if they needed medical advice during their stay.
At any rate, she took the extraordinary step in 1896 of ennobling him.
It seems strange to us today, the violent opposition which existed in the nineteenth century against conferring peerages upon worthy commoners. In 1856 the Queen had tried to make a judge, Sir James Parke, into Lord Wensleydale, but the Committee for Privileges considered the proposed life peerage contrary to usage. (Life peerages had been given before, despite the belief of those who think this first happened in 1958.) The committee decided that Lord Wensleydale’s letters patent did not entitle him to a seat in the House of Lords and that was that.
Things gradually began to change. With the changeover in England from an agricultural to a manufacturing society, industrialists began to be regarded as of greater worth. Sir Arthur Guinness, the brewer, was ennobled under Disraeli and in 1892 the scientist Lord Kelvin was sent to the Upper House, followed three years later by the first of many newspaper proprietors, Lord Glenesk. The poet Tennyson was the first literary figure to receive a peerage. Still, Henry’s elevation was unusual for its time. A year later Sir Joseph Lister became the second doctor to be ennobled.
In the Queen’s Birthday Honours of 20 May 1896, Henry was invited to accept a barony. No doubt he agreed to this with alacrity and, in a visit to Garter King of Arms at the College of Arms, would have chosen his title and his armorial bearings. Of this, in the diary, he writes only: ‘Her Majesty has graciously bestowed upon me, her humble servant, a barony.’ He never had his coat of arms framed and hung. It still remains curled up in its long red-leather box. I wonder why. From the photographs I’ve seen he’d had all his other certificates and diplomas framed and hung up on the study walls. Surely none of these equalled in his estimation his coat of arms, beautifully executed, hand-painted and lettered in gorgeous colours. For the time in which he lived, it would have cost him a lot, yet he kept it in its box, hidden from all eyes.
Soon afterwards he’d have received his Writ of Summons. Written in feudal language and in use since the fourteenth century, it’s still in use today, though it’s been considerably shortened and simplified. Henry’s read like this:
Victoria, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom and Ireland Queen, Defender of the Faith: To our right trusty and well-beloved Henry Alexander Nanther, of Godby in Our county of Yorkshire, Chevalier, greeting. Whereas for certain arduous and urgent affairs concerning Us, the state and defence of our said United Kingdom and the Church, we did lately, with the advice and consent of Our Council ordain Our present Parliament to be holden at Our City of Westminster on the eleventh day of August in the sixtieth year of Our reign, which Parliament hath been from that time by several adjournments and prorogations, adjourned, prorogued and continued to and until the twenty-fourth day of March now next ensuing, at Our city aforesaid, to be then there holden; We strictly enjoining command you upon the faith and allegiance by which you are bound to Us, that considering the difficulty of the said affairs and dangers impending (waiving all excuses) you be personally present at our aforesaid Parliament with Us and with the Prelates, Nobles, Peers of Our said Kingdom to treat and give your counsel upon the affairs aforesaid. And this as you regard Us and Our honour and safety and defence of the said Kingdom and Church and despatch of the said affairs in nowise do you omit.
Henry would have brought his Writ of Summons with him to his Introduction and worn his own robe. The one he had made, trimmed in those days with real ermine, not rabbit which is used today, is the robe I still wear at State Openings of Parliament, though of course will wear no longer. He was introduced ‘between’, as it’s still put, a junior and a senior supporter, two of his soon-to-be fellow Peers. How did he come to choose them? Did they offer their services? Did he know them previously? Were they perhaps his patients?
The procession, as it enters the Chamber after prayers have been said, consists of the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod in black tail coat and knee breeches, Garter King of Arms dressed like the Knave of Hearts, then should come the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain, but mostly they don’t come, the Junior Supporter, the new peer carrying his Writ of Summons, and the Senior Supporter, the last three all in their robes and carrying black cocked hats. At the Bar each member of the procession makes a court bow – that’s a nod of the head – to the Cloth of Estate. Henry and company would have proceeded up the Temporal side of the House and gone towards the Woolsack, bowing again and again – but I can’t go on with this, it’s really a bit tedious and can be ludicrous if anyone makes a mistake or loses his voice or stumbles. In Henry’s day, and up to a couple of years ago, new peers had to kneel before the Lord Chancellor to present their Writs of Summons. But many of them were too old for this and too stiff in the joints. They could kneel but they couldn’t always get up again.
Henry would have knelt. Slender Henry. Agile Henry. He’d have taken the Oath of Allegiance. Whether the watching peers in those days graded new ones according to their performance I don’t know but I’ve no doubt it was in a ringing voice that Henry uttered, ‘I, Henry Alexander, Baron Nanther, do swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true Allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, her Heirs and Successors, according to law, so help me God.’
After a lot more bowing and cap-doffing, as much as fifteen minutes for the whole thing, Henry had become Lord Nanther amid the congratulations of his peers. In the following year, he records in his diary for the end of June and early July how he took part in some of the celebrations of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. These entries, perhaps needless to say, are more fulsome than anything he wrote about his wife and children.
On 23 June he joined the procession out of the House of Lords’ Chamber to the Peers’ Entrance in Old Palace Yard where the Lord Chancellor entered his state carriage and the peers followed in their private carriages. Henry mentions the gold lace and cocked hats, the Levee dress worn by Privy Counsellors, and I detect a wistful note as if he wished he too might have been privileged to wear it. They proceeded to Buckingham Palace, hardly a novelty to Henry, to present an Address to the Queen. Nothing is said by him as to the weather but according to Her Majesty in her journal, ‘the heat was dreadful’.
The Houses of Parliament must be almost alone today in still giving the name Whitsun to the Sunday and Monday seven weeks after Easter. The Church calls it Pentecost and the country the Spring Bank Holiday but we still call it Whitsun. Parliament has a week off and after that, when we go back, tea is served on the terrace. Not before, no matter how warm it may be, but always after Whitsun. Visitors usually ask if they can ‘have tea on the terrace’, a request that puzzles me because this embankment above the Thames is set about with grimly functi
onal tables and hard chairs, is complicated of access and when you get there by a cold winding staircase and through kitchen regions, has one of the least attractive views on the river. Facing you is St Thomas’s Hospital, the old part and the new, reminding MPs and peers that this is where they’ll take you if you have a heart attack climbing the stairs. I much prefer the Peers’ Guest Dining Room, Puginesque red and gold, carpet on the floor and a lofty ceiling. But the food at teatime is delicious wherever you have it, smoked salmon sandwiches and strawberries with the largest portions of thick golden clotted cream, positively slabs of it, you’ll get anywhere.
Coming out of the Chamber I encounter Lachlan Hamilton in the Peers’ Lobby and he suggests tea on the terrace. We make our way down the staircase that probably has a name but I don’t know what it is. Bright hot sunshine meets us and blazing light coming off the river. Lachlan is humming a tune. I don’t recognize it but a Viscount sitting at the nearest table to the door does. He says, ‘You need not be quite so sickeningly appropriate, Lachlan,’ and manages a hollow sort of laugh. The woman with him, probably the Viscountess, is as puzzled as I am. She looks up from her strawberries and gives us the sort of long-nosed icy look you only get from a certain kind of peeress.
‘The Götterdämmerung,’ says Lachlan as we sit down.
Are we gods? I’m sure they didn’t have glorious summer days like this in Valhalla but a kind of perpetual twilight. I order strawberries and sugar and cream and therefore, according to Lachlan, am like the young lady who sewed a fine seam.
‘Must have been a bloody good doctor, your great-grandpapa,’ he says, ‘to get a peerage out of Victoria.’
‘He was a courtier.’
‘Must have been. Did he cure any of that lot of anything?’
I say that I believe the Queen thought he could cure her grandsons’ haemophilia. Of course he couldn’t, no one could. ‘Perhaps today they can do it by transplanting a gene but this was over a hundred years ago.’