Author’s Note
Parts of Essex are still known as the Witch Country.
In the last century the whole population, irrespective of social position, was obsessed by a fear of the unknown. Ghosts haunted the fields. The Devil had been known to chase a Parson from the pulpit.
In 1860 an old woman in Somerset was accused of inflicting fits upon a child and thrown into a pond with a rope round her middle. In 1924 a smallholder was summonsed for attempting to draw blood from an old woman with a pin and then trying to shoot her. He said she had bewitched his pigs.
Bristol possessed a ‘cunning woman’ as recently as 1930. She was a white witch, who discovered lost and stolen property with a needle suspended over a map. Ipswich had a ‘cunning man’ or white wizard who could hypnotise a thief from a distance, so that he wandered round the scene of his crime unable to make his escape.
In 1950 the Witchcraft Act of 1735 was replaced by the Fraudulent Mediums Act. Witchcraft was one of the great tragedies of the human race, consuming thousands in a holocaust of blood and torture. Yet deep in the human mind there still lingers the desire for persecution and the need for a scapegoat.
The details relating to the ‘Feast of Venus’ at The Cloisters and the Prince of Wales’s difficulties with Lady Jersey are factual. As is the huge party given by Mrs. Fitzherbert to celebrate her reunion with the Prince in June 1800.
Chapter One
1800
The Marquis of Aldridge yawned.
If there was one thing that really bored him, he decided, it was a brothel.
In all his relationships with women, which for many years had been the talk of the social world, he had never found his amusement in bawdy houses or paid for the favour of any woman to be found there.
Tonight, however, he had found it difficult not to accept the invitation of his host, who was doing his best to entertain the Prince of Wales and rouse him from the despondency in which he had been cast for some weeks.
There was every reason, the Marquis thought, for the Prince to be depressed.
Not only had his marriage proved a disaster, but he was also finding it more difficult than anyone could have imagined to end his liaison with Lady Jersey.
Always emotional, always ready to over-dramatize his feelings, the Prince, because of the violent dislike he had for his wife, Princess Caroline, had decided that the only way he could find solace and comfort was by renewing his love life with Mrs. Fitzherbert.
As twelve much-advertised nymphs performed out the ‘famous Feast of Venus as celebrated in Tahiti,’ the Marquis was thinking not of them, but of the Prince for whom he had a genuine and deep affection.
He had in fact been a close friend of the heir to the throne for the last nine years.
The Marquis was not surprised that Lady Jersey’s full-blown charms no longer enthralled the Prince and the sooner he was rid of her the better.
But the lady in question, being extremely determined, was refusing with an obstinacy that was proof against every inducement to be dislodged from her position as the Royal favourite.
It was, the Marquis thought, principally Lady Jersey who had been responsible for the breakdown of the Prince’s marriage almost before it had taken place.
Lady Jersey had already attracted him and supplanted Mrs. Fitzherbert in his affections before Princess Caroline had arrived.
Although the bride had been an incredibly bad choice on the part of the King’s Ministers, the Royal couple might have had some chance of making their union at least an amicable one, if it had not been for the intervention of Lady Jersey.
‘How could he have been such a fool as to like her in the first place?’ the Marquis wondered.
And he thought that it was not surprising that from the very beginning Mrs. Fitzherbert had been justifiably jealous.
Lady Jersey had been a serious threat to the Prince’s almost idyllic happiness with Mrs. Fitzherbert since the first moment that she had set her cap at the irresponsible and, where women were concerned, extremely susceptible young man.
It was inevitable that she should pursue him and not only for his position. He was very attractive to look at, witty, amusing, well read and could, as the Marquis well knew, be a most entertaining companion.
Moreover, Lady Jersey herself was an acknowledged beauty and more than one man had spoken of her ‘irresistible seduction and fascination’.
Even women had said to the Marquis that she was ‘clever, unprincipled, but beautiful’.
The fact that she was nine years older than the Prince and a grandmother was no handicap because he had always liked women older than himself.
The Prince, boyishly impressionable, was captured by her allurements, which were exercised with the practised ease of an ambitious, experienced, sensual and heartless woman.
She was in her early forties, but he was completely bowled over by her and fervently in love.
“How can he treat me in such a manner?” Mrs. Fitzherbert had wept when she told the Marquis that the Prince had written her a letter under Lady Jersey’s direction to say he had ‘found happiness elsewhere’.
“I am afraid, ma’am,” the Marquis replied, “that Lady Jersey has been persuading His Royal Highness for some time that his connection with you has been unwise. I have heard her say that it is the fact that you are a Roman Catholic, which has been the main cause of his unpopularity.”
“How can he believe such lies?” Mrs. Fitzherbert gasped.
“She has also averred in my hearing,” the Marquis continued, “that the Prince would have had no difficulty in settling his financial affairs satisfactorily had it not been for you!”
Mrs. Fitzherbert was understandably angry.
Both she and the Marquis knew perfectly well that the Prince had spent every penny of the quite considerable fortune she had been left by her late husband.
However, for all Lady Jersey’s attractions, the Marquis knew the Prince did not find it easy to live without Mrs. Fitzherbert. In fact he wanted both women at once.
Unfortunately, sweet character though she was, Mrs. Fitzherbert had a temper and, despite the mediations of the Prince’s friends, quarrels over Lady Jersey became continuous.
Finally five years ago, the Prince had severed all connections with Mrs. Fitzherbert and told the King that, if he could have his debts paid, he was ready to consider the possibility of being married.
From that moment, the Marquis told himself, everything had gone wrong!
The Prince’s friends had hoped that with his marriage he would be free of debt. But as he owed the immense sum of six hundred and thirty thousand pounds, this proved impossible. They also had hoped that he would break with Lady Jersey, but he saw more of her than ever and even installed her in a house adjoining Carlton House.
The Princess referred to her as that ‘old sorceress’, a description with which too late the Prince heartily agreed.
The Marquis was so absorbed in looking back into the past that he suddenly realised that the Feast of Venus had progressed quite a long way since he had even noticed it.
The twelve beautiful nymphs, who were also, everyone had been assured, ‘spotless virgins’, were giving their performance under the leadership of Queen Oberea, a role taken by Mrs. Hayes herself.
Charlotte Hayes had for some years run the immensely successful establishment of pleasure, which was named the Cloisters, in King’s Place, Pall Mall.
She was getting older and the Marquis suspected that, having made a large fortune, she would, like her predecessors, soon retire.
She had indeed improved the standard of the notorious ‘houses’ in London and, looking round at the guests present tonight, the Marquis thought it would be difficult to find a more d
istinguished gathering in any social salon.
There were twenty-three gentlemen of the Nobility present, headed by the Prince of Wales, and five other guests were members of the House of Commons.
The food was sumptuous, the wine superlative and, although the Marquis was aware they would all have to pay for it eventually, there was no doubt that Mrs. Hayes was prepared to give them their money’s worth.
The performing nymphs were certainly very attractive, but the other women present, to whom Mrs. Hayes referred as ‘assistant hostesses’, were exceedingly experienced in their profession and chosen for their accomplishments as well as their looks.
The Marquis had as a dinner companion a girl called Yvette, who, because it was patriotic to do so, proclaimed herself to be a Belgian, although the Marquis was certain that she had been born in France.
She had a nimble wit and a rather fascinating manner of looking at a man from under her eyelashes.
It was, however, an old trick with which he was well familiar and he found it irritating that her small hands with long elegant fingers frequently caressed him.
“You are very silent, my Lord,” Yvette said, pouting her red lips provocatively.
It might have excited a younger man, but merely made the Marquis wish to yawn again.
“I find all sorts of charades extremely tiresome,” he replied.
Yvette drew a little nearer to him.
“Vous venez somewhere quiet avec moi, mon cher?” she asked. “I amuse better – much better – than ‘charades’. Supper finit tout de suite.”
The Tahitian Festival, which had been designed, the Marquis realised, from a description given by Hawkesworth, a companion of Captain Cook, in his book, An Account of a Voyage Round the World, 1773, was practically at an end.
The guests, who had eaten too much and certainly imbibed freely, were now, as they half-lay on the couches which had played an important part in the festival, abandoning themselves to the enjoyment either of their supper companions or of scantily clothed nymphs, whose performance was now at an end.
The Prince, the Marquis noted, was exceedingly ‘foxed’ and had for the moment undoubtedly forgotten his troubles.
But in the morning they would all be back to confront him.
The most difficult problem of all was that Lady Jersey followed him wherever he went and was determined to talk to him even when he did not wish to speak to her.
‘One good thing about this evening is that she cannot follow him here,’ the Marquis told himself.
Then he thought with a feeling of anger that he was almost in the same position as the Prince where Lady Brampton was concerned.
“Why do women never realise when an affair is finished?” he asked himself savagely.
“Vous dites something, my Lord?” Yvette enquired and he realised that he had been expressing his thoughts out loud.
She drew even nearer to him as she spoke and now her red lips were not far from his as she whispered,
“We amuse ourselves, mon brave? You forget tout le monde but Yvette. I make you very happy, oui?”
The Marquis put aside her clinging arms and rose to his feet.
“I regret that I suddenly feel unaccountably indisposed,” he said. “Please make my apologies to Mrs. Hayes and congratulate her on providing an unusual and extremely colourful entertainment.”
“Non, non, my Lord!” Yvette protested.
She was, however, silenced as the Marquis put a banknote of so high a denomination into her hand that the words she was about to say died in her throat.
Quickly, so that no one would attempt to stop him, the Marquis left the room and had passed through the outer hall and into King’s Place before anyone else at the supper party was aware of his departure.
His carriage was waiting for him and he threw himself back on the comfortable padded seat. A footman wearing the Aldridge livery placed a light rug over his knees and waited for instructions.
“Home!” the Marquis ordered briefly.
The door was closed and the horses set off, climbing the steep incline of St. James’s into Piccadilly and down Berkeley Street into Berkeley Square.
Aldridge House, magnificent outside and even more breathtaking inside, had been altered and improved by the Marquis’s father, who enjoyed building, until it almost rivalled Carlton House in size and luxury.
The Aldridges had always been connoisseurs and the treasures they had accumulated over the centuries comprised a magnificent collection that was equalled by few other great families in England.
The Marquis, walking across the marble hall, was conscious only of his own boredom and had at the moment no appreciation of his surroundings.
He went into the long library whose windows looked out onto the garden at the back of the house and where he habitually sat when he was not entertaining.
The butler, who had opened the door for him, waited until he was halfway across the room before he said respectfully,
“There’s a note on Your Grace’s desk. The groom who brought it asked me to say it was urgent.”
The Marquis did not reply. He looked towards the note and one glance at the handwriting told him who it was from.
‘Damn the woman!’ he said to himself. ‘Why can she not leave me alone?’
He made no attempt to pick up the note. Instead he sat down in an armchair and absentmindedly accepted the glass of brandy the butler poured out for him. Then quietly, without speaking, the servant left the room.
The Marquis stared unseeingly at the magnificent picture painted by Rubens which hung on the wall opposite him.
There were few other pictures in the room, as the walls were mostly covered with books.
However, the glowing colours, exquisite flesh tints and the allegorical subject made no impression on him.
He was thinking instead of Nadine Brampton’s fair beauty and of the determination in her blue eyes that told him she was of the same mould as Lady Jersey. It would not be easy to be rid of her.
Young in years, for she had not yet reached her twenty-sixth birthday, Lady Brampton had the age-old wisdom of Eve and the Adam she was determined to keep in her very special Garden of Eden was, as the Marquis knew, himself!
Married when she was seventeen to a man much older than she was and who rapidly degenerated into an invalid, Lady Brampton had taken London by storm.
She was beautiful! She was well-bred! She was wealthy!
What was more, her Dresden china looks disguised a fiery temperament that made her take and discard one lover after another, as in turn she quickly tired of them.
That was until she met the Marquis. Then what should have been an amusing ‘affair’ and an entertaining interlude became, as far as Lady Brampton was concerned, an affaire de coeur in which her heart was completely and irrevocably captured.
The Marquis felt as if he had unexpectedly been caught in a whirlpool of such overwhelming strength that it was dangerous.
Nadine Brampton pursued him until even he, who never put himself out for anyone and rejoiced in his reputation of being egotistical and supremely selfish, found it hard not to be overwhelmed by her persistence.
If the Prince was troubled by Lady Jersey, he was certainly be-devilled by Lady Brampton to the point when for the first time he was not certain how to end a liaison which had grown both tedious and exasperating.
Lady Brampton bombarded him with notes, presents and invitations.
She called at his house at unpredictable moments, ignoring the fact that she jeopardised what little remained of her reputation in so doing.
She contrived, by some method of her own, to be at every party, every entertainment, every theatre at which the Marquis was present.
If he rode in the park, she appeared and rode beside him. When he was in attendance, which was practically every day, on the Prince at Carlton House, it was almost automatic that, as soon as he arrived, Lady Brampton would be at the door begging for an audience with His Royal Highness.
Because the Prince was good-humoured and liked pretty women, it was difficult for the Marquis to persuade him to send her away.
Only tonight had it been impossible for her to be present, which the Marquis thought again had been the only redeeming feature of the evening.
He doubted if the imitation Tahitian revels would lift the cloud under which the Prince was suffering and he was quite certain that tomorrow he would have to listen to another long recital of complaints about Lady Jersey, and a dramatic exposition of his ever-increasing desire to make it up with Mrs. Fitzherbert.
If the Prince was taking pains to avoid Lady Jersey, Mrs. Fitzherbert was equally determined to avoid him.
She had given up going to Brighton. She had sold the lease of Marble Hill and was in fact living quietly in a small house at Castle Hill, Ealing, where at the moment she refused to consider the possibility of a reconciliation.
“A link once broken can never be rejoined,” she had said to the Marquis when to help the Prince he had pleaded with her to listen to what His Royal Highness had to say.
The Marquis had taken with him presents which included a locket containing a miniature of one of His Royal Highness’s eyes painted by Richard Cosway and a bracelet with the words rejoindre ou mourir.
Mrs. Fitzherbert had accepted the gifts, but she still refused to meet the giver.
“I shall go mad! I shall die if she will not have me!” the Prince declared dramatically. “Oh, my heart! My heart!”
The Prince was in such a state that the Marquis, like many of his other friends, thought he really might become seriously ill. But there was nothing they could do about it.
‘Our positions of course are entirely different,’ the Marquis told himself ‘There is no danger of my making myself ill over Nadine Brampton. At the same time, I have to take some action where she is concerned. This cannot go on!’
The Marquis’s lips tightened as he thought that owing to her persistence there was every likelihood of his becoming a laughing stock.
He was very aware that in the past he had broken a great number of hearts.
It was inevitable, since he was not only so good-looking but also had a kind of cynical indifference to love which made women pursue him all the more frantically.
The Blue Eyed Witch Page 1