The deep-set eyes of Strange turned away, towards Jane, who gave an imploring look. Strange smoothed back his hair. ‘I accept your condition. I shall return to the office now, and inform à Beckett that his services are no longer required. You have won, Mr Seymour.’
*
On 31 January 1835, the street-sellers of Figaro proclaimed: ‘Seymour returns! New caricature by Seymour!’
*
‘THE CARICATURE,’ SAID MR INBELICATE, ‘was of a bloated bishop on a sickbed. Shears were applied to his nose to remove a polyp, while his gout-ridden ankle was sawn through.’
‘Do you think Seymour saw Gilbert à Beckett as a polyp?’
‘I cannot say. But the demand was so high that the issue had to be reprinted immediately. The rumour did the rounds that government ministers attempted to smother the ridicule heaped upon them by buying up the copies.’
‘Was Lord Melbourne prime minister then?’
‘No, it was Peel, as I am sure you know, Scripty. But you are right to give me a nudge. Time we introduced that most interesting triangle of George Norton, Mrs Norton and Lord Melbourne.’
*
THOUGH IT WAS NOT THE grandest estate in all Surrey, Wonersh Park was still the residence of the third Lord Grantley – thus, a desirable bachelor might be found there. If, on a summer’s afternoon, an unattached young lady saw an unattached young gentleman at a party held in the estate’s Elizabethan manor, and if the pair wandered outside on to the well-kept lawns, by the flowerbeds and beside the ivy trellises, they would encounter a sundial, at which pretty fingers could suggest that life was brief and to be lived; while a glittering stream nearby suggested life’s meandering course, and that a stroll upon its banks was all the better for being shared.
It was the case that Miss Caroline Sheridan’s school governess – a formidable, matronly woman, who would walk along the school corridors as though driven by a breeze – had a small family connection to Wonersh Park, being the sister of Lord Grantley’s agent; and from time to time Caroline, and several other schoolgirls, who together formed a favourable composition within the framing of the governess’s spectacles, received invitations to spend an afternoon at the estate.
At one such gathering, the entertainment was provided by an eccentric sister of Lord Grantley’s, who scraped away on the violin in the drawing room. During breaks from the strings, her mannish hand flourished the bow like a cavalry sword, and she stamped up and down, following Caroline into corners, asking her what tune she would like to hear next. In contrast, there was the unobtrusiveness of Grantley’s younger brother, George Norton, whose sole contribution to the party was his tallness and a ruddy complexion. That he took any interest in the gathering at all was by no means obvious; he had arrived well after everyone else, the violin did not stir his interest, and he uttered scarcely a word.
But there was one moment when a servant brought a tray of drinks on to the lawn, and Caroline Sheridan gazed in George Norton’s direction, just as the sunshine caught the glass he took. It was the briefest of events – she gave him a look up and down, and then looked away to someone else.
For George Norton, it was a visitation from those eyes. Eyes of the most exquisite, extraordinary darkness.
Two days later, the governess received a letter. She called Caroline to her office.
‘It is impossible,’ said the governess, ‘for you to accompany me to Lord Grantley’s again until I have been in communication with your mother, and learnt her wishes. I have received a letter from Mr George Norton this morning. He has stated that he desires to marry you.’
Caroline was, simply, astonished. Without the pair exchanging so much as a single word, George Norton wished to be her husband. That she could cause this!
She was already infused with a great taste for reading poetry – and showed considerable literary promise herself – and even if Norton’s letter were written in the dullest prose, there was at least poetry in the idea of it. It was impossible that she could love such a man, of course, but just to think he would send the letter!
Caroline’s mother said, sternly, that her daughter, at sixteen, was too young; but there was a certain look in the mother’s eye, as she disapproved, of a town house, many servants, grandchildren, and a well-appointed nursery.
Caroline herself put George Norton into the scales. Weighing heavily in his favour was that he was besotted. A marriage, not begun in love, may still become something. Admittedly it was his brother who was the lord, not George himself, but the brother might never father children. And George Norton was tall and presentable. To add further troy weight to his pan, in due course he became the Member of Parliament for Guildford. Admittedly he was a Tory, and this was avoirdupois to the detrimental side of his scales. But still – the balance tipped.
Caroline Sheridan became Caroline Norton when she was nineteen years old. The wedding was at St George’s, Hanover Square, on 30 July 1827. The marital home was a little house near Birdcage Walk – and, as vulgar folk might say, it did not take long for feathers to fly.
One evening, as they sat in the parlour, they talked about politics, and Caroline said: ‘George, you are such a silly cake. An argument like that just makes me want to laugh.’
Norton stood up, grim-faced. Suddenly his hip twisted round and upwards. The toe of his boot went straight to her side – delivered with such force that she and her chair crashed to the floor. She lay howling, and he walked out of the room, telling a servant girl in the hall: ‘Your mistress may possibly require some assistance.’
There was another evening in the parlour, after the 1830 general election, when George Norton was no longer the Member for Guildford.
‘I was the more popular candidate,’ he told her. ‘My opponent was loathed! There were droves of men sobbing, even as they cast their vote for him—’ He noticed her silence. She was not even listening. She was sitting at the bureau composing a verse. He stood over her, and only then did he capture her attention. ‘You must be happy your friends are in power,’ he said.
‘For you, personally, as my husband – I am sorry you have lost your seat.’
‘Why don’t you write a poem about me, Caroline? Make some money from it. Put my humiliation on public display.’ Before she could answer, he struck her across the cheek, and when she stood, he followed up with a punch in her stomach.
There was a third evening shortly afterwards, when they examined, with some anxiety, the ledger recording household expenditures and receipts.
‘Call on the friends your grandfather made,’ he said. ‘Use them.’
‘George, I have told you many times that you could earn a living in the law – yet you always look with disdain when I mention it. But you could.’
‘You have striven all your life to escape dullness. Why give me that fate? Years of dull study and years of even duller practice! And a man is still regarded as a young puppy in the law even in middle age! No, your family have connections. So use them – and get me an income.’
After a pause she said: ‘When we married, I believed you were financially secure. I earn a little from my writing. But a man should earn money, if he has the ability to do so.’
‘Are you suggesting I do not have the ability?’
‘There is no point in continuing this discussion, George. I must get on with my verse.’ She closed the ledger, and picked up her quill and paper.
‘Caroline the poetess. Writing’s in her blood.’
‘Please leave me to myself. The quieter you are, the less I am distracted, and the faster I earn for us.’
‘There is a word I know you do not like to use, Caroline. That word is “fucking”. Fucking.’ He said it directly in her ear. ‘Not a word for a poetess’s pen, is it? Fucking. I don’t know many poems. I do know a bit of Scripture. In the name of the fucking Father, and the fucking Son, and the fucking Holy Ghost.’
She gathered her quill and paper, and stood to leave. He stood in front of her, preventing exit.
&nb
sp; ‘I say fuck the Father, fuck the Son, fuck the Holy Ghost – fuck all three. And I wish fucking God would just slap you in the fucking face with his cock, a shit-covered cock, right after he had fucked Jesus. I am not good with words, am I, Caroline?’
He punched her in the face. He forced her to kneel.
December 1830
The zestful man, sitting in front of his superior’s desk, had given a report of many accomplishments that day, corresponding to zestful miles walked along the corridors of the state for discussions with half the Civil Service and three-quarters of the legal establishment.
His superior, by contrast, had a lazy but dignified expression, and a sideways look towards the clock. The superior was Lord Melbourne, Home Secretary in His Majesty’s Government. The subordinate, his private secretary.
‘There is one other matter,’ said the private secretary. ‘You have received a letter from the wife of the former Member for Guildford, George Norton.’
‘From his wife? Not from Norton himself?’
‘That is so. She would like a meeting with you, for personal reasons. She says that you knew her late grandfather, the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan.’
A spark of interest awoke in Lord Melbourne’s eyes.
*
A few days later, Caroline Norton occupied the seat previously taken by the private secretary, who had shown her in and left with a sharp sniff, which could be interpreted as jealousy. A friendly discussion ensued.
‘I will not say your grandfather drank like a fish, but he fished and he drank,’ laughed Melbourne.
‘Cork and hook were his passions,’ she laughed back.
‘He was a member of an angling club, was he not?’
‘The Longstock. Formerly known as the Leckford. And he was no mere member, Lord Melbourne – he drew up the club’s rules.’
‘Were they restrictive?’
‘One I remember was that if a gentleman claimed to have caught a fish of immense size, but which got away, he would be fined half a guinea for every story like that he told. I think men should always be fined for such boasts!’ She laughed as coarsely as a soldier.
*
What did Lord Melbourne see in the dark eyes of Caroline Norton? Some evocation of her distinguished grandfather? Or was it the voice, pitched masculinely low, that did it? These were the questions the private secretary asked himself as, in a soured mood, he wrote the letter which offered George Norton the position of stipendiary magistrate in the Lambeth Division of the Metropolitan Police Courts. The letter set out the terms: attendance in court three days a week, from the hours of noon until five, for which Norton would receive a salary of £1,000 a year.
The post did offer one additional benefit, although it was unwritten, and was more of a perquisite to Melbourne than to Norton, should he choose to take advantage of it.
‘The job gets Norton out of the house,’ the private secretary thought. He contemplated his superior, and muttered, with a shake of the head: ‘The old dog.’
*
It was a warm afternoon in Whitehall and a weariness hung over the Home Secretary. A seasoned observer of the Melbournian demeanour could tell from the pursing of the lips, beside the window, that Melbourne had considered the attractions of his club, but decided the food was too rich for the weather; a tapping of the desk meant he was considering the advantages of Holland House, but the company there could tire him, or he tire them. The third option – by far the best – was a visit to Mrs Norton.
He rubbed Arnold’s Imperial Cream pomatum into his hair, and after applying a small comb, he ran a smaller comb through his eyebrows. He dabbed cologne on his pocket handkerchief. He put on his coat and surveyed himself in the cheval glass. The clothes were a perfect fit. For a man in his fifties he was very presentable.
Caroline Norton had already set herself in a favoured dress, and her hair was up. She applied rouge, though her cheekbones were already among the most striking of her features. When Melbourne called, she waited five minutes, then downstairs came dress, hair, rouge, cheekbones and Mrs Norton. They shook hands, entered the parlour, and closed the door.
Their conversations on the blue upholstered sofa usually began with the current political situation. Mostly, she saw Melbourne in a relaxed state, but she had also seen his extreme agitation after the riots in Bristol, when he was barely able to keep still. ‘I was frightened to death,’ he said, shaking like a guilty man facing a black-capped judge, as he spoke of the decision to send in the dragoons; but in a short while, her dark-pool eyes had soothed away his fears.
Sometimes he spoke of reform – how some said it was too slow, and some said too fast, and some that it was best not to move at all – and that he, for his part, merely wished to forget king, lords, party and government, and sit on the sofa with Caroline Norton in the afternoon.
To change the subject, she might recount an anecdote, such as about a well-endowed horse, and laugh from deep within her chest. She gave him a look that negotiated a course between extreme self-confidence and utter shamelessness, and said that it is a well-known fact that there are five unsound horses for every two sound.
‘When I was a little girl,’ she said once, ‘it was thrilling to hear people recall the Duchess of Devonshire’s extraordinary parties. Her beauty sent politicians mad.’
‘You do know,’ he said lazily, ‘of her ulcerated eyeball at the end of her life, and that a leech was applied to it?’
‘I did know,’ she said, giving him a half-annoyed, half-playful poke in the rib, ‘but do you have to mention it to me?’
‘Life is life, one has to accept so damn much in the long climb, and there is nothing one can do.’
It was then she began to describe how her husband beat her. She noticed the intensity of Melbourne’s expression, which was not exactly of concern. She stretched out the description, repeating the details, as though she wanted to see him lean forward and nod again. He said not one word of pity. But he did ask: ‘How often has he struck you?’ And he did remark: ‘You must tell me if it happens again.’
‘I shall,’ she said. ‘I shall indeed. But he is not always cruel.’ She told of a very reasonable discussion with her husband about the education of their children.
‘Education!’ exclaimed Melbourne. ‘Once the damn nonsense is in, can you ever get it out again? People are what they are, and some people are better off in their ignorance.’ He gave a very artful look. ‘I am tempted to say – especially the poor.’
‘You are a wicked tease, Lord Melbourne, a bigger tease than any woman I have ever met!’
Melbourne smiled his easy-going smile.
‘Every day,’ she said, ‘is April Fool’s Day for you. You don’t believe half of what you say – this week education is a waste of time, last week reformers should be hanged and the hemp for the rope was already growing for them. I think you will have a mighty laugh behind my back if you ever make me believe you.’
‘Why point out to a man that he is uneducated and make him unhappy with what he is?’ The artful look appeared again. ‘People need a few simple rules. Elementary Christianity will do. And please make it elementary. Where is the damn fun these days? Young men are mad with religion. I see them with their long, dull faces – and they would make Sunday as long and as dull as themselves. No, each man has the amount of religion he can take, like a doctor’s dose, and it will make him sick to take one swig more. Education is the same.’
‘I refuse to take your bait. But I do have something to show you. You politicians are not the only ones to suffer at the hands of the caricaturists.’
She fetched a volume, The Poetical March of Humbug!, with drawings of poets by Robert Seymour.
Seymour had depicted Caroline Norton sitting with her needlework box, darning, as though she patched together her verses. She laughed her deep laugh as she read aloud the unflattering description of herself:
Yet in her heart they say the muses dwell –
Why don’t the muses th
en come out and tell?
*
AMONG THE POETS SEYMOUR RIDICULED in The Poetical March of Humbug! was a well-known frequenter of the Ben Jonson, a dingy establishment down Shoe Lane, off Fleet Street, though he did not disdain any other public house of central London. Thomas Campbell was a small individual, with unruly hair which stuck up at all angles, and which, in all likelihood, formed the components of a wig. His lips were constantly in motion – when, that is, they were not involved with a glass of cheap gin and water – exchanging trifles with whomsoever stood next to him. He was instantly recognisable from any angle by his blue cloak, which almost stretched to the floorboards.
Seymour amused himself listening to the slurred speech of this supposedly accomplished wordsmith. Befitting a poet so moist, it occurred to Seymour to depict Campbell at the coast, cloak billowing, sitting on an anchor which was half stuck in the beach, a glass of gin en route to the poetical lips.
Having made his observations of Campbell, Seymour looked over to another corner of the Ben Jonson, where there was a square table with a ‘Reserved’ sign. Here sat two men with notebooks, apparently reporters, entertaining themselves with oysters and ale, while converting their notes into a readable account. One had obviously returned from a fire.
‘Conflagration, combustion and incandescence are very useful words,’ said this reporter, putting down his pencil to prise open a shell.
‘Just as consonance, concordance and indivisibility are for a political meeting,’ said his associate. ‘After I have added cheers, applause, and hear hears, I think I can wring an extra twenty lines out of this.’
These men were liners, reporters paid by the per-line length of a published column. A third liner now joined the table. ‘Perfect angel of a murder I’ve got,’ he said. ‘As good as the man who made the hole in the water last week.’
A thoroughly irrigated drunkard staggered to their table, and rested his knuckles on the edge.
‘I am sorry, sir,’ said the liner working on the fire, ‘this table is reserved for reporters.’
Death and Mr. Pickwick Page 45