Then take the lesser things into the Generous Hannah or one of the other merchantmen. And let us leave Captain Wright to his own devices.
So she swept out with all the disdain of a Cleopatra. I never loved her more than at that moment. I hadn’t thought she had so much spirit in her.
So the command was given and the seamen began to bring up the chests from the hold and put them into a longboat with militiamen at each end, their muskets being cocked lest any privateer should come up with us at this time (we were but ten leagues from the Canaries where many a Biscayan would lay up). All afternoon long, the sweating seamen brought up the chests and let them down on ropes, very slowly that they might not be lost, into the longboat. Some pieces were too big for the chests and must be wrapped in cloth, and now and then the cloth would come loose and the silver or gold would wink at the sun. There was a great censer on silver chains with a figure of St James the Pilgrim atop it that took two men to carry and a large gold dish engraved with Neptune and dolphins and a great chalice. I am sure they were meant for the Church of St Jaco, but she said they were popish ornaments and belonged to her husband and were hers to dispose of.
So we all went into the yacht, and delivered ourselves to the command of her mysterious kinsman. But I must confess that I saw the Assistance sink below the horizon with a dire apprehension. For our little fleet with its few pop-guns was easy prey for any sea-rover who would scarce believe his luck when he found the treasures that were heaped in every corner of the yacht (we could scarce move for the chink of coin and the clanking of plate in the great chests). We took the animals with us but they did not live long. The snake escaped and got up to the top of the cabins where Her Grace’s footmen lay and they being afraid to lie down in such company shot the snake dead. The iguana when running along the gunwale of the yacht was frightened by a seaman and leapt overboard and was drowned. And the alligator died a fortnight before we reached Plymouth.
My heart leapt when I was called on deck to see the Scilly Isles and the dangerous rocks of the Bishop and his clerk, and then Land’s End and the Lizard.
But still we knew not whether there was peace or war, and with whom. So Dr Sloane and I went in a longboat at night and rowed nearer shore to look for a fishing vessel. We saw one such some way offshore, about two leagues, fishing, but when they saw us they did what they could to fly from us and we had the devil’s trouble to come up with them.
What shall we say?
Say how does the King, I said.
But if they say he does very well, we’re no further forward.
Then we shall have to think of something else.
We were some twenty yards apart and I could see the master’s beard glistening by the light of his lantern.
How does the King? Dr Sloane called.
Which King do you mean? the man returned: King William is well at Whitehall, King James is in France. But beware, for the Channel is full of privateers and they have taken a dozen prizes already.
He went again to his fishing, and we went as quickly to the yacht to give the Captain notice to come into Plymouth as soon as he could, which we did that day.
But the strange thing was that as we came up to the Hoe, the first ship we saw was HMS Assistance (never was a ship worse named).
Captain Wright had reviewed his duty and had sworn eternal loyalty to King William.
It was raining hard as we came ashore, and I confess that I felt much aged. In my chest were nearly £5,000, but upon my shoulders lay the burden of the years. It had been but two years less four months since we had sailed from Plymouth, but time is a cruel worker. The dust rose from the floorboards to greet us at Clerkenwell. Dr Sloane took the attics to store his botanical collection where the specimens might be drier and flushed a nesting swallow. At night we had to chase bats out of the saloon. The butler swore he had greased the shutters, but the hinges were rusty and some would not turn. The men carried His Grace’s coffin up to the library.
Do you smell somewhat of a . . .
Yes, Jeremiah, pray open the window. The Dean has sent word. We may bury him tomorrow.
It was a maimed rite with few to mourn. The King had sent a Dutchman, one Keppel, to stand for him. This mynheer seemed still at sea and may have fancied that it was the old General we were burying. The Duchess’s family were all at Welbeck, where she went to restore her health after we had laid her husband to rest beside his parents. As the Dean mumbled his prayers for Kit, it was to Nan lying now six feet below me that my thoughts ran back, and as the earth rattled upon his coffin, in my fancy I was rattling the knocker with the Turk’s head on it in giddy expectation.
There were Dutchmen everywhere. The great Catholics were all gone to France and those Protestants who came in with King James went out with him too, among them one Samuel Pepys, lately Secretary to the Admiralty. This time he fell never to rise again, but the ironical aspect was that I had nothing to do with his downfall (nor Will Symons either, for he was dead). Nor did I take much pleasure in it, my own ups and downs having left me scant-breathed for the sport. The affidavits we had procured, the witnesses we had sworn (to be candid, the lies we had rehearsed), all were crumbled into dust and nothingness. Thus it is that when we finally obtain that which we have so dearly prized, we find we have lost the power to enjoy it. The future which shone so brightly when it lay yet upon the horizon now looks shoddy at close quarters, and we turn our eyes backward to things past which seem to shimmer ever more gloriously as they go further off from us.
IX
The Coffee-House
BUT THERE WERE others where minds were keenly fixed upon the future. Some weeks before the Assistance had reached Plymouth, news of Kit’s death had reached England. And as we were coming in to that port, Lord Bath was leaving the very same place for London carrying with him Kit’s first will (anno 1675) together with the deed of six years later that confirmed his lion’s share in the estate. Simul, down from Welbeck came the Duchess’s mother with the second will (anno 1687) which left Lord Bath’s share to the mysterious Thomas, known as Colonel Monck, and the other Monck cousins.
Both wills provided for a monument to the Moncks to be put up in the Abbey, at a cost of £5,000. Both provided for almshouses for twenty poor widows to be built in memory of Nan. Both supplied the Duchess with an annual widow’s portion of £8,000, together with the use of New Hall during her life. But the second will was more to her profit, because the dreadful deed appended to the first gave over to Lord Bath all Kit’s possessions should he remain childless, reserving for Kit himself only a life interest, while the second will gave her room to enlarge the Duke’s personal estate, a third of which would fall to her. The deed was to be kept secret, but Lord Bath could not forbear to tell his daughter-in-law who felt compelled to tell Lady Clarges, who thought it her duty in respect and kindness to acquaint the Duchess with what was going forward.
Her lawyer Sir Thos. Stringer now confirmed the vile fact to her, that her devious lord had conspired with Lord Bath that the second will should be null and void. The secret deed (which she had not seen till then because he would not let her) had stated that the said deed and the first will could not be revoked save by another will that must be witnessed by six witnesses, three of whom were to be peers, and in the revoking of it the sum of sixpence must change hand. Now the second will had had only three witnesses, none of them peers, and there had been no sixpence to be seen.
Thus, Your Grace, it is a reasonable assumption that your late husband never intended the latter will to stand. Or at any rate the court might hold so.
Sixpence, for want of sixpence, I am to be defrauded, I and (hastily remembering) all his Monck cousins whom he held in such esteem. Sixpence.
These are, I fear, the conditions. They are fairly set out and witnessed. We cannot –
I shall fight this vile document body and soul to my dying breath. It shall not stand.
And fight it she did. The suit and its successors continue to this day. It is e
stimated to have employed more than 120 lawyers thus far, and to have consumed some £50,000 of the estate, although some claim that the expense was nearer £100,000.
All day long, she sat with Sir Thomas and his assistants. All night long, she read legal documents and charters. As I passed her door, with a chink of the candle’s light showing beneath it, I could hear the rustling of parchment, and the low mutter of her voice whilst she read out the clauses and appendices to herself, as though saying them out loud were to confer increased authority on them.
. . . and the said charges and assigns to apply for the lifetime of Her Grace and to her absolutely . . .
Then as I went along the upper passage, I could hear Dr Sloane moving the pots and trays that held his dried plants and animals, for he was arranging a museum for the curious who wished to inspect his botanical treasures, though I wager many of them would rather inspect the other treasures that were locked away in the Treasury at the end of the passage with the two militiamen we had brought back from Jamaica standing sentinel at the door. Sometimes, very late I would see Her Grace in her pale gown go down the passage and make a sign to the dozy guards to open the door, and she would go in and converse with her jewels, being the dearest things in life to her, but I could not hear whether she spoke, for the doors were plated with brass.
It was a house of treasure and one that was alive with rustling and muttering but there was no human discourse to be had there. Dr Sloane went out each morning to call on his patients, for he had a growing practice out of doors. I for my part resolved to carry on my own trade, viz. that in which I had so prospered in in the West Indies. If I could enlarge my business only a little, I might at last set up a household of my own at Clapham, take a wife, and achieve that independent position in society which by misfortune and the malignity of others had hither to escaped me.
I hastened to inquire of my agent at Clapham what intelligence he had of Alderman Gauden and his house, but I found only his sorrowing widow, for my man had been carried off by the smallpox while I was yet in the West Indies. The widow told me that Gauden had died soon after him at a ripe old age and the house had been sold the year before.
Sold?
Yes, to a Mr Hewer.
Hewer? Not Will Hewer that was a clerk in the Navy Office?
I don’t know, sir, she said, he’s a great India merchant. I’ve seen him in church, a jovial gentleman.
Red hair?
It would have been so once, she said. He presented his guest to me, Mr Pepys that was Secretary to the Navy. I hadn’t thought he would be such a little man.
Could the world be so cruel? Even Pepys’s boy had the advantage of me. Well, I would show them both. There were other houses, other peach avenues. We must press on.
Oh you must to the coffee-houses. There’s no business done in taverns now. Garraway’s is the place.
And indeed the stranger who told me this was the only fellow in the Crown that used to be thronged with merchants at mid-day. Truly London was much changed.
Mr Garraway’s coffee-house was a bare room with sober merchants seated at tables and sawdust upon the floor. Were it not for the pipe-smoke and the aroma of coffee beans, you might fancy yourself in a Quaker chapel.
I hailed a waiter, whom they called Kidney (which I at first fancied was his surname but then found that all the waiters in the place were called so): Tell me, where may I find the shipping gentlemen.
Over there, sir. Who shall I say wishes to speak to them?
Don’t trouble, I will make myself known to them.
As you please, sir, but they do like to have gentlemen introduced to them.
Well, I don’t care for such solemnity, I will speak direct to them.
Waving Master Kidney aside, I went over to the table in the corner by the fire (which was not lit) and presented myself. They looked at me with as much interest as one might look at a sack of coal.
You’re a merchant, sir? one of their number at length inquired, with the utmost languor.
I have done some underwriting, sir, in Jamaica.
Ah Jamaica, the languid gentleman sighed.
We have suffered such misfortunes with the colonial carrying trade, his neighbour said. No one will touch it, not for twenty per cent.
Ah the privateers, the languid gentleman sighed.
And the French. Better cleave to Norway firs.
Much better.
Or the Bordeaux trade.
But not Jamaica.
Certainly not Jamaica.
I coughed to make an interruption in this dirge: I did not mean that my interests are confined to that island. My intention is to underwrite any good risk. You gentlemen are brokers, I take it.
Office-keepers, sir. We prefer to be called office-keepers. Any rogue may call himself a broker, but we have to keep a place on the Exchange.
Well, however you may be called, I hope I may have the honour of doing business with you.
You must be introduced, you know, properly introduced. We have had such trouble with fellows walking in off the street and writing half a dozen lines and then disappearing into thin air.
Such trouble, said another of the brokers, a fat man who scarcely troubled to take the pipe out of his mouth.
Well, I am secretary to Her Grace the Duchess of Albemarle.
Aah.
It was gratifying to see the frowns fall away from their faces and a smiling welcome shine upon me.
It so happens, said the fat broker, removing his pipe from his mouth and knocking it out in the tray, that we have a ship bound for Africa that wants five hundred pounds, a very sound bottom, has done the run half a dozen times. We are offering twelve per cent, though to my mind it is only worth eight, but I like to oblige my frequent customers.
Fifteen, I said.
I beg your pardon, I didn’t hear you.
Fifteen.
I thought you said fifteen.
I understand that is the going rate since the war broke out. You spoke of the French.
You’re a hard man, sir. If I do too much business with you, I shall be in the almshouse by Michaelmas.
And he handed me over a long paper with lines written on it in various hands. I wrote £500 and signed my name, while he gave me his note for £75. As I did so, several of the company gasped, though they feigned to be coughing or sucking in the tobacco smoke.
You’re a venturer, sir, said the man whose paper I had signed. I like that quality in a man. Welcome to our company. Do you take coffee, sir, or chocolate, or perhaps sherbet?
Chocolate, if you please. I gained a taste for it in the West Indies. My companion Dr Sloane recommends that it be taken with a little milk.
But they were not interested in Dr Sloane.
I trust the Duchess is recovered from her sad voyage. Do you think perchance that in the fullness of time she might take an interest in our trade?
She is yet in mourning, I said, and besides she has little head for business.
Quite so, quite so. I understand she is somewhat, ah, distracted by her loss.
Utterly mad, said another merchant, put out that he had not been quicker to offer me his paper.
As a March hare, said a third.
Gentlemen, I said, we may be barbarians in the colonies but it is our custom to speak more delicately of a lady. Her Grace is much saddened by her husband’s death, and does not go out.
And the will, sir? What of that, what of the will, who shall win? I’m for Lord Bath.
That matter is yet sub judice.
But the whole town can talk of nothing else. Surely you must hold an opinion?
I am sorry to disappoint you, sir, but my lips are sealed.
Thus I gained a character for loyalty and discretion as well as for solid credit. Indeed, my success was greater than I had calculated, for on looking at Mr Groundsel’s paper (such was the merchant’s name), I saw that no other underwriter had subscribed for more than £100 and I deduced therefrom that assurances in London were broken
up into smaller lines than in Jamaica, there being many more brokers to spread the risk between. Yet the inconvenience of rushing to and fro about the coffee-houses to rake together a hundred underwriters for a single voyage was so great that a broker would always welcome with open arms a warm man who would take on half the risk at one signature.
How gay the city looked to me as I walked back to Clerkenwell. The noise of hammers along Cheapside and the cries of the building men were as sweet to me as the call of nesting birds. The city was still arising from its ashes, and I too was a phoenix newly hatched from the ruins of my former life. Insurance was to be the watchword of the modern age. Every new-built office and lodging had its badge – the hand-in-hand, the phoenix or the sun, each advertising that it was stoutly protected against any renewal of the great conflagration. When I had made my name in sea assurance, I would turn to fire, being the next element of nature, and double my fortune there.
Thus I was singing to myself as I came up the steps of Her Grace’s and near lost my footing as the sisters Wright came down them in a great hustle.
I will not, said one (I think it was Sarah).
It is only a fancy.
I will not, she has no right to ask it.
Don’t fret, she’ll forget it in a day or two.
What’s your trouble, ladies? I asked, my nonchalance yet unruffled.
Her Grace has told us that we must not show her our backs . . .
We must leave her chamber backwards and curtseying to her, as though she were a queen . . .
I can’t do it, I bruised myself so bad on that big commode.
It’s the indignity, Jem, we’ll not do it.
Well, I would humour her, she is much distracted, I said.
She says the gentlemen are to do the same, and three reverences when they come in to her.
I am sure she’s but jesting.
I warrant you she’s not. Try her yourself.
Very well, I will, I said, resolved not be put out by this nonsense.
I went up the great staircase to be met at the top by a footman in full livery whom I had not seen before.
Jem (and Sam) Page 37