‘And do you know anybody – a son or daughter, perhaps – who could take a message for me to the castle?’
‘I surely do, sir. My son Bob. BOB! Come on here, boy!’
Bob turned out to be a forward-looking boy whose eye glinted with amazed anticipation when I took a shilling from my pocket.
I borrowed a pencil and a sheet of rough paper from his mother, and wrote:
My Lord.
I am in Washing Alley, a humble lane off King George Street. The man we wish to talk to is at his dinner in lodgings opposite the pie shop where I am waiting. I would be greatly obliged if Your Lordship could come as expeditiously as possible with two able-bodied footmen, so that, with Your Lordship’s assistance, the matter can have a favourable outcome.
I am
Your Lordship’s humble servant, Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart
I read it over again. It seemed sufficiently obsequious. Then I folded it, gave it to the boy with instructions to deliver it to the officer on the castle gate as a message of the greatest urgency, and set him running off up King George Street to the castle.
I settled down to my pork pie, hoping the pig had led a more sedentary life than the goose.
17. At Bay
It was a little over half an hour before I was disturbed in my hideyhole over the remains of my pork pie. The friendly young footman appeared outside the window, and when I slipped out I saw a second stalwart figure and, in the shadows, Lord Howe, enveloped in a dark cape. I was glad I could not see his face. He had probably never been before in so low an alleyway. I gestured towards the house I took to be Mrs Lupton’s lodging house for gentlemen. We were just approaching the street door when a chirpy voice said, ‘You’d best guard the back, misters. They often escapes through the window at the back.’
It was Bob, my bright young messenger. Lord Howe tipped him a penny, and gestured to my friend the footman to take a small, dark path around the house. At the back we saw him vault over a low fence, skirt a tethered goat, and then take up a position under the window. Then, at a gesture from Lord Howe, the other footman went back to the door and banged his fist on it in a manner the castle servants had obviously developed to keep the citizens of Windsor in awe: authoritative it certainly was, though hardly tactful in its implied message that the castle somehow owned Windsor. There was a scurrying of skirts on the other side of the door, and after a minute it was opened by a flabby woman with a streaming red nose and an ineradicable tendency to curtsy to gentlemen.
‘Oh, good evening sir, sirs–’
Lord Howe stepped forward.
‘We wish to speak to Mr Thomas Garth.’
‘Oh, My Lord, I’ll see where he is.’ (She called him My Lord, not, I suspected, because she knew who he was, but because he was so lordly. I was surprised she didn’t call him Your Grace.) ‘He finished his dinner a while ago, Mr Garth did. That’s his room at the top of the stairs.’
She seemed to want to avoid another traipsing up to the first, floor, so I and the footman went ahead, and on opening the door we were just in time to see legs disappearing through an open window, immediately succeeded by shouts from the garden below. The footman ran down to give assistance but it was not needed. Within a couple of minutes Tom Garth was being press-ganged into his own bedroom, one arm twisted behind his back in what is popularly known as a half-Nelson (in tribute, no doubt, to the English national hero, half of whom would not have made a very impressive figure). Once he was well into the room, and the door was locked behind him, the footman flung him into a chair in disgust.
‘He’s a cheat, that one,’ he said. ‘Welshed on a bet with a mate of mine. Don’t trust nothin’ ’e says.’
He was frozen by a look from Lord Howe. Certainly if his friend had put his trust in Tom Garth he had misplaced it horribly. Getting my first good look at him close to, he seemed so obviously crooked that only the morally dubious were likely to consider having dealings with him. His dark eyes under beetling brows shot a look of resentment at the footman, then went on to Lord Howe and quickly away again. But his discomfiture was short-lived: he was adept, through practice, at picking himself up, physically and morally, and after a moment or so he shook himself, sat upright in his chair, and looked around the assembled company.
‘Well now, gentlemen: well and truly caught. Let’s get down to business. Let me hear what you want of me. And then I’ll let you hear what I want of you.’
As a piece of bravado it was breath-taking. It was also rather well done. I heard a sharp intake of breath from Lord Howe. I realised I was the only one who had the necessary knowledge of what he had been up to to take him on, and I decided I had a tough adversary.
‘What we want from you is answers to our questions,’ I said, with an attempt at severity.
‘Oh yes? And by what right are you questioning me?’ he asked perkily.
‘By order of the King,’ I said, stretching the truth.
‘Oh yes? Well, the King is a jolly old cove–’
‘Show some respect!’ hissed Lord Howe, through thin lips.
‘Personally I don’t know how to show more respect than to say a man is ajolly old cove,’ he said, his cheekiness undiminished. ‘As I was saying the King is a jolly old gentleman, and he has done very kindly by me in a number of ways, so if he wants the answers to a few questions, then ask away!’
I settled myself down on his bed.
‘We want to know first of all about a document purporting to be a record of marriage between the present King, when Duke of Clarence, and Dorothea Jordan, the actress.’
Tom Garth scratched his head theatrically.
‘You know, I do seem to have heard talk of some such document. I don’t know where. Wait a minute – perhaps it was from George FitzClarence, the King’s son. I think it must have been. You’d best go and ask him about it.’
‘We know already that he has some such document,’ I said testily. ‘An entirely spurious thing. The question is, how did he get hold of it?’
‘Best thing would be to ask him, wouldn’t it?’ The man sat forward in his chair and sneered at me, and even at Lord Howe. ‘Or do you prefer not to, because he is the son of a king? That’s interesting! Say we’d gone through all the precious children of King George III and their offspring and we’d come to my mother and she was Queen Sophia, would I get a bit of respect? Would you be a bit chary about having a footman frog-march me up the stairs and throw me into a chair? Well, now, that could be something to look forward to!’
Lord Howe’s face wore an expression of pain, that such things could be talked about – and by a son! – in the presence of menials.
‘I’m not interested at the moment in the man who has the document,’ I said, ‘but in the man who provided him with it, even if he didn’t actually forge it himself.’
He looked at me closely, his mouth twisted satirically.
‘Been listening to private conversations, have we?’ he asked. ‘I didn’t recognise you in the Fox and Newt, but you’re the cove who played the piano at the little piece they put on at the castle, aren’t you? Bit odd when my uncle the King has to employ a piano strummer to do his dirty work for him. Suggests that things are not quite what they should be.’
‘I’d advise you to show some respect,’ said Lord Howe in his constipated voice. ‘It is not so long since a low scribbler spent two years in Surrey Gaol for libelling the Prince Regent.’
‘If you’re referring to Mr Hunt,’ said Tom Garth imperturbably, ‘what he said was that the Regent was a libertine head over ears in debt and disgrace, and that was no more a libel than – all right! All right!’ Lord Howe had pushed the stalwart footman forward to menace him and stop his mouth. ‘Well, we don’t seem to be much forrader, do we? You say that George FitzClarence has a document, and I say I don’t know how he got it.’
‘I saw you give it to him – yesterday at the picnic,’ I said, stretching the truth.
‘Did, you? Were you close enough to see what it was? No, of
course you weren’t Mr Whatever-your-name is. Nobody was. Next question?’
‘I would advise you not to trifle with us,’ said Lord Howe, with icy fury. ‘The King has powers–’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t threaten me with the King’s powers, if I were you,’ said Tom Garth, with an unpleasant laugh. He leaned forward. ‘Because I’ll tell you this: if I’m accused of anything, George FitzClarence will be accused of worse. If I’m in anything, then I’m up to my ankles, but George FitzClarence is up to his eyes in it. You accuse one and you accuse both.’
‘You can be accused of procuring a forgery without involving him,’ I suggested, but not hopefully.
‘Oh?’ The man laughed outright. ‘And do you think no questions would be asked as to why that particular forgery might be profitable to me? Oh no, Mr–’
‘Mozart.’
‘Mozart. Funny name. Oh no, if a little comes out, then everything comes out.’
That, in a nutshell, was our problem.
‘You are underestimating the King’s powers,’ Lord Howe said, but it sounded like a last throw. ‘You talk about questions being asked, but you could be put away for a very long time and no one would have a chance to ask questions at all.’
The scoundrel actually laughed in his face.
‘Come, come, Lord–’
‘Howe,’ I supplied, because he couldn’t bear to.
‘Come, come, Lord Howe. We are living in the nineteenth century. And let me tell you I have written (damned fag it was too) an account of the whole matter, detailing everyone’s involvement. A copy of that account will be put into the hands of the King if anything should happen to me. I am a man with friends, and one of them will do exactly that. I would advise you to have done with threats, My Lord.’
‘On the other hand, inducements …?’ I suggested. He was delighted and relaxed at once into his chair.
‘Right. What did I say when we started? We’ve heard what you want of me, but that’s the wrong way round: I want to hear what you’ll do for me, and then I’ll give you – the arrangements being satisfactory, of course – an account of the whole matter.’
I turned my head towards Lord Howe.
‘Five thousand pounds, on condition that you give us a full account of the affair, and then leave England, not coming back for at least ten years.’
Ten years, I’m sure Lord Howe calculated, would see the present King out of this world. The man was a realist, albeit of a rather unpleasant kind. Tom Garth gave a show of considering.
‘Ten thousand and it’s a deal.’
‘Done,’ said Lord Howe, who was clearly used to business of this kind (serving such a family it was perhaps not surprising). He gestured to one of the footmen, who produced paper of an impressively official kind. Lord Howe went over to a little table under the window, and using Tom Garth’s pen and ink wrote five or six lines. He presented them to the scallywag, who read them through carefully, pondered, and then signed. Lord Howe folded the paper into the pocket of his dress coat, then gestured to the footmen to leave the room. I imagined them outside on the landing, their ears glued to the door. Such a thought did not occur to Lord Howe. He turned back to the man in the chair.
‘Now,’ he said.
Tom Garth scratched his ear.
‘Difficult to know where it all started. I suppose the real beginning was when the present King came to the throne, or maybe even a bit before that, because the old King was failing for months, and people were talking about what would happen when the Duke of Clarence became King – laughing about it a bit, too, because the Duke was a bit of a joke. It started going around – among gentlemen in the know, that is – that a certain person who would then be very close to the throne was becoming not quite right in the head on the subject of his own birth.’
‘George FitzClarence,’ I said. ‘There need be no beating about the bush in the privacy of this room.’
‘George FitzClarence,’ he agreed equably. ‘He’d always been a bit unbalanced – that’s why his army career, with all his advantages and connections, was a chequered one. Brilliant, handsome, unbalanced – an interesting combination. And as his father approached the throne he was getting to a condition close to madness. The fact that he was so close to the throne – not legally, but close to the King’s affections – suggested the possibility that there might be some rich pickings in prospect.’
‘You having already successfully blackmailed your mother,’ I put in. He was unperturbed.
‘Quite. Only moderately successfully, and done through third parties so she hardly knew anything was going on. Well, what is a bastard child to do, to get the things that ought to be his by rights? Let’s stick to the point, shall we? The first thing to be done was to convey to the King’s son the idea that there was in existence a letter from the King to Mrs Jordan appointing a time for them to go through a ceremony of marriage. This, was the start of our exciting him, stirring up the fever in his blood – which was there, as you well know, long before I did anything about it. Every bastard would prefer to think his parents had gone through some kind of marriage ceremony. I told him I thought I could get hold of it for a fee. I have a very good little chap who is a genius at … penmanship. I was the one who told him what to write, of course, and got the specimen of the King’s handwriting. I put together something that I thought could pass muster. “Dearest Dora, the place is St Peter’s in Holborn, the time is twelve o’clock on Wednesday 1st April, when we shall be joined in the eyes of heaven at least, if not in my father’s. Your ever-loving William.” I made him put in a couple of misspellings, to make it convincing, and dated it March 1793, more than a year before his birth. People can be just as sensitive about their conception as about their birth.’
‘I can see this would please a natural child,’ I said, puzzled, ‘particularly one as sensitive as George FitzClarence. But I can’t see why a supposed marriage should excite him so much, when it would still be an illegal one.’
Tom Garth laughed.
‘In conjunction. We had a second card up our sleeves. When you have someone as … excitable as George FitzClarence was when his father became King, you can feed him all sorts of stuff and be believed. I started feeding him the notion that people were commenting on the fragile life of little Princess Victoria, which was the only thing that stood to prevent the Duke of Cumberland coming to the throne on his father’s death. People were talking, I said, about the end of the monarchy in England, because the people of England would never accept such a man as King. And the fact is, what I said was true: people were talking, and they were saying just that.’
‘That may very well be true,’ I said. ‘I don’t think they would accept the Duke of Cumberland as King. But I fail to see how that could affect George FitzClarence in any way. Even if his parents had gone through a form of marriage, it was totally illegal.’
‘Ah ha! True enough,’ he said, with considerable self-approbation. ‘But once I’d planted that idea, I had another up my sleeve to put into his head. I constructed another letter and took it to my little man. This one was in the handwriting of the Duke of Wellington. Very well he did it too. The Duke’s gruff little notes are famous, and as an old soldier I had no trouble getting hold of a specimen of his handwriting. Wait a second – I think I have my rough draft. This is the one that really excited him!’
He got up and rummaged among the papers on his desk, finally coming up with a sheet which he handed to Lord Howe. I went across and read it over his shoulder.
To the Rt Hon. Sir Robert Peel.
My dear Peel,
I write to convey my thoughts on the subject we touched on at the Mansion House banquet. The prospect of the Duke of Cumberland as King is one the British nation would never accept. It would spell a certain Republic. To cut him out of the succession, with his son, would be to leave the Duke of Sussex as heir – a mad radical, and as mad as he is radical. I favour the solution of repealing the Royal Marriages Act (which should never have been enacted) and d
eclaring valid all marriages in the royal family contracted in defiance of it since. This would have the virtue of being an Act of Justice, and would appeal to the public’s sense of fairness.
Yours, Wellington.
‘But this is preposterous!’ protested Lord Howe. ‘A Tory prime minister would never contemplate barring anybody from the succession to the throne! The Tory party is the party of loyalty.’
‘Are they, My Lord?’ said Garth, with a sneer on his face. ‘They transferred their loyalty from the Stuarts to the Hanoverians when they realised they were never going to come to power on the coat-tails of the Old or the Young Pretenders. Not so preposterous, My Lord. And certainly not preposterous to one who wants to believe it, and is on the verge of insanity.’ Lord Howe looked furious at the libel on his party, but thoughtful too, especially when Tom Garth added, ‘And you see the beauty of it, don’t you?’
We both pondered for a moment.
‘His late Majesty King George IV contracted an illegal marriage with Mrs FitzHerbert,’ I said slowly, at last, ‘but there were no children. The late Duke of York contracted no illegal marriage, and had no children of any kind. If the Duke of Clarence and Mrs Jordan had married, and if the marriage had been legitimised by Parliament, the FitzClarences would be the eldest grandchildren of George III, and the undoubted heirs to the throne. They would be the new royal family.’
Too Many Notes, Mr Mozart Page 18