Fourpenny Flyer

by Beryl Kingston

  Frederick Brougham ran with the best of them, and submitted to having his long elegant legs pinioned to Sebastian’s short stubby ones, and then cheated so efficiently, swinging the child completely off his feet and running with him spreadeagled in the air, that they won a resounding and derided victory.

  Nan was happily occupied all afternoon. She didn’t notice the arrival of the two most important guests, although the two most important guests certainly noticed her and were highly entertained by what was going on. When she came panting into the house to dress for dinner they were standing beside the drawing room window.

  Frederick introduced her before she could catch her breath. ‘Mrs Easter, pray allow me to present my most esteemed friend the Earl of Harrowby and my cousin, Lord Brougham.’

  Well, well, well she thought as she wiped her dirty hands on her kerchief and smiled at the two gentlemen, I’ve arrived in society now, and no mistake. Then she touched the two gloved fingers that Lord Brougham was holding in her direction and had her entire hand engulfed in the warm grip of the noble earl, who was tall and grey haired and leaned upon a gold-topped cane.

  ‘You run a circus, ma’am, I see,’ he said, and his expression was amused and faintly mocking but not unkind. ‘’Tis not at all what I was led to expect of ’ee, upon me word. They told me you were a queen in the world of newsheets and newspapers and suchlike, and I find you running races, upon me life.’

  ‘She could turn her hand to most trades had she a mind,’ Frederick said with easy affection.

  ‘I can well believe it,’ the Earl said and he swayed his stiff spine towards their hostess. ‘I trust this lady and I are seated together, Lady Barnesworthy. There is nothing more aggravating than to make interesting acquaintances and then lose sight of ’em all through dinner.’

  ‘It shall be as you wish, my dear Lord Harrowby,’ Lady Barnesworthy said smoothly.

  ‘If it don’t inconvenience you, dear lady.’

  ‘’Tain’t the slightest inconvenience,’ the dear lady said at once, thinking what a dratted nuisance he was being. Now she would have to rearrange her entire table and all her friends would know that Mrs Easter had been taken up by the Earl. Really, men had no judgement in these matters! He will invite her to dine at Grosvenor Square, she thought rather crossly as she excused herself from their company. And then it will be as we feared: all doors will be open to her. I should never have allowed my dear Frederick to persuade me to invite her here in the first place. I was doubtful of the sense of it at the time. Howsomever, at least he has had the good sense not to marry her, which is some consolation. And whatever else might be said about the lady, she was entertaining company at dinner and would keep the Earl of Harrowby amused. The gentlemen were so tetchy these days what with bread-rioters and machine-breakers causing a nuisance and that dreadful penny press fairly screaming for universal suffrage and parliamentary reform, as if either would do any good at all.

  It was a sentiment expressed with some force by several of her guests that evening.

  ‘Give ’em the vote?’ Sir Joshua mocked. ‘Whoever heard such impudence? And allow pig-ignorance to outvote the likes of you and me? I should just think not! What say you, milord? Folly ain’t it?’ He had quite recovered his humour now that his exhausted infants had been retired to the nursery.

  ‘If suffrage were to be extended,’ Lord Harrowby said diplomatically, ‘and the necessity for such reform is arguable, I will agree ’twould need to be done by degrees.’

  ‘Meantime the mob is vociferous,’ Lord Brougham pointed out. ‘’Tis my opinion that we ignore their demands at our peril.’

  He is very like his cousin, Nan thought, tall and elegant and grey-eyed, with his hair greying at the temples in exactly the same way and in exactly the same place, but he is rangy and nervous and loud where Frederick is quiet and contained. And the thought made her feel very fond of her Frederick.

  ‘Put a few of the beggars in jail,’ Sir Joshua advised. ‘That’ud soon stop their noise.’

  ‘The jails are already crammed to bursting,’ Frederick Brougham said mildly. ‘Even the new penitentiary at Millbank is rapidly filling, so the courts are advised.’

  ‘Then send the beggars abroad,’ Sir Joshua said, unabashed by such difficulties. ‘Get rid of ’em. That’s what I say. Can’t send ’em to America, more’s the pity, not since those damned settlers stole the place, but there’s always Van Dieman’s Land.’

  ‘On what grounds would you transport ’em, pray?’ Frederick asked.

  ‘On the grounds that they’re a damn nuisance,’ Sir Joshua said trenchantly. ‘On the grounds that they’ve took potshots at the Regent, dammit. Have we to wait until they assassinate the man?’ There had been wild rumours in January that somebody had fired a gun at the Prince Regent as he was returning to Carlton House in the state coach.

  The Earl of Harrowby was watching him with a faintly amused expression on his face. ‘An assassination attempt is likely enough in all conscience,’ the noble gentleman said lightly. ‘He ain’t the most popular monarch we’ve seen. Howsomever, there are other means of dealing with the situation. Our Mrs Easter would put him to running races, I don’t doubt.’

  ‘If I had a mind to I might,’ Nan agreed, laughing with the rest of the company. ‘But I’d rather sell him a newspaper.’

  It was a splendid summer, just as Lady Barnesworthy had feared. Nan and Frederick were invited to Grosvenor Square no fewer than six times, and each occasion was more successful than the last. Soon they were among the most popular guests at Lord Harrowby’s table. And when the autumn began, Billy and Matilda set the seal on the season by bringing Nan a rather special piece of news.

  Frederick Brougham was away in York preparing for the quarter sessions, so it was only John and Billy and their wives who had joined her for dinner that evening at Bedford Square. Nan’s cook had prepared them a special Michaelmas meal of broiled chicken with oysters, followed by roast plover and a dish of sturgeon, so they had dined well and soon they would all be going on to the Michaelmas Masque at the Vauxhall Gardens.

  ‘What would you say,’ Billy said, beaming across the table at her, ‘if I were I to tell ’ee you’re to be a grandmama in the spring?’

  ‘I’d drink a health to the baby and I’d say –’ pretending to consider her words – ‘about time too.’

  ‘When is it to be?’ John asked soberly, gathering his last mouthful of blackberry and apple tart.

  ‘In April,’ Matilda said, blushing prettily.

  ‘Ain’t she a corker?’ the proud father-to-be wanted to know, patting his wife’s plump arm.

  ‘We are very happy for you,’ Harriet said, but secretly she was wishing that she could have been the first to make such an announcement. She and John had been married for nearly eighteen months and there was still no sign of a baby.

  ‘I have something to say too, Mama,’ John said, giving Harriet his lopsided grin. What on earth was it? ‘And mighty opportune, given Matilda’s present condition. Our new sorting office in Birmingham is primed and ready for action. The very next piece of important news can be sent there by express coach to catch the inland mails, which are all prepared to accept it I may say, and then I promise you, ’twill be spread all over the North West on the very day of printing. If you can contrive to have your baby before the papers go to print, Matilda, they shall know of it in Manchester and Liverpool before it’s a day old.’

  ‘Quite right too,’ Matilda said, not the least bit put out by his teasing, ‘when you consider he will be the first of a new generation of Easters.’

  ‘You are decided upon a boy, then?’ Nan said, teasing too.

  ‘Oh indeed,’ Matilda said, preening herself. ‘I am sure of it.’

  ‘Well, here’s to the baby, whatever sex it may be,’ Nan said, raising her glass. ‘You are in good company, Matilda.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Billy said, drinking the toast. ‘’Tis a year for babies in all conscience.’ For Princess Charlot
te, the heir to the throne, was expecting her first baby too and there was a great deal of interest in it. The birth was due in little more than a month, so the papers were running daily bulletins about the Princess’s health, and there was much speculation as to what the child would be called, especially if it turned out to be a boy.

  ‘Time for brandy,’ Nan told her butler, who had come into the room in answer to the bell. ‘The best, if you please. We’ve a new Easter to celebrate.’

  Matilda was enjoying her pregnancy. She was the centre of attention at the masque, declaring that she was too fatigued to sit through the first half and then insisting that she had the most powerful desire for caraway comfits.

  ‘I must have them, Billy my dearest,’ she said, pouting prettily. ‘’Tis a craving, you see, my love, and heaven only knows what would happen were we to ignore it. There could be the direst consequence for our precious baby, the direst, I do not doubt.’

  So poor Billy had to miss the second half of the performance while he took a carriage to the nearest confectioner. And then she only ate two of the comfits and complained that she was feeling sick.

  ‘Your poor brother,’ Harriet said to John as they prepared for bed later that night. ‘She had him fetching and carrying all evening.’

  ‘He enjoys it,’ he said, pulling his shirt over his head. ‘Wouldn’t do it if he didn’t. Don’t you worry your pretty head about Billy. I never knew him do anything he didn’t want to.’

  ‘Will she truly announce the baby’s birth in The Times?’

  ‘I daresay.’

  ‘You won’t send it by express, will you John?’

  ‘No, my dear,’ he said, grinning at her. ‘I shall reserve that distinction for such events as the birth of the new Heir Apparent.’

  ‘What a joy that will be,’ she said, unpinning her hair.

  But she was wrong. There was no joy in the news at all, for the infant Prince was stillborn. On Thursday 6th November The Times printed the sad news between black borders, and John Easter, who had been waiting for it in Easter House all through that long cold night, had it dispatched right across the country before the day was out, just as he’d promised.

  The following morning the news was even worse. Mrs Toxteth brought a copy of The Times up to the dining room where Harriet was eating alone, Mr Easter having remained in the Strand yet again, and one glimpse at her housekeeper’s face told Harriet that the news was very grave indeed.

  ‘What is it, Mrs Toxteth?’ she said, biting her bottom lip with concern.

  ‘Read it, my dear,’ Mrs Toxteth said, ‘an’ tell me if it ain’t the saddest thing you ever heard.’ And she tiptoed from the room with her apron at her eyes.

  The Times leader was headed, ‘Friday, 7th November 1817’ and it made harrowing reading:

  ‘It is our painful and unexpected duty this day to give an account of as melancholy an event as occurs in the annals of hereditary monarchies,’ it said, ‘the death of the only two presumptive heirs to the Crown in direct succession, the mother and her child. We have lost a Prince just before he saw the light and a Princess in the prime of her youth.’ The Princess was dead too.

  For the next four days The Times was printed with a black border and was full of angry correspondence. Harriet read every word and agreed with most of them. The Prince Regent had no business being away in Suffolk when his poor dear daughter was dying. And hunting with the Hertfords too. It was scandalous. He thought of nothing but his pleasures. And why hadn’t he allowed her mother to come home and see her, just once? But no, the poor lady was still banned from the country. While as to that other dreadful man, Sir Richard Croft, the obstetrician, he should be put on trial for his life, so he should, for allowing the Princess to die. It was all due to his carelessness. He should never have gone to bed and left the poor lady alone. What was he thinking of?

  On the fifth day The Times seemed to have returned to its normal self. But John brought a copy home at breakfast time and read it closely.

  ‘Would you care to see the paper?’ he asked folding it and preparing to hand it across the table to her. He was looking rather pleased with himself, she thought, and wondered what it was he wanted her to read.

  It was an advertisement, right in the middle of the front page, and set within its own panel so that it caught the eye immediately.

  ‘The Times published on Friday the 7th inst. at half past eight o’clock in the morning, was forwarded, by special express, to Birmingham, where it arrived in time for the inland mails, by which the subscribers to the above paper in Birmingham, Liverpool, Chester, Warrington, Manchester, Rochdale, Preston, Lancaster obtained their papers fourteen hours before the arrival of the London mail. The above express was sent by A. Easter & Sons, newspaper agents, Easter House, Strand, London. It is the intention of A. Easter & Sons, to continue to forward The Times by express whenever there is any important news or when parliamentary debates prevent an early publication. J.H.Easter, Easter House, The Strand.’

  ‘John!’ she said, appalled.

  He misunderstood her. ‘Well done, is it not?’ he said. ‘We have given our first demonstration of the speed by which news may be spread through the midlands. If we were not a name in the land before this, we shall certainly be one now.’

  She looked up at his face, at the glint of his dark eyes and the glow of satisfaction on his cheeks and forehead. ‘The news you spread was of the death of a young woman,’ she said, and now there was no mistaking her abhorrence. ‘A terrible death, John, in agony and in the prime of her life. How could you make a newspaper advertisement of that? How could you?’

  He straightened his spine, and sat stiff-necked. She was right. His instincts had recognized that immediately she spoke. But he had no intention of admitting it to her, for this was business. ‘In the matter of selling the news,’ he said coldly, ‘you must allow me to know rather more than you do, Harriet.’

  She was confused and upset by his coldness and began to stammer apologies, for she knew very well that a wife should never criticize her husband’s calling. ‘I am sorry John. I didn’t mean … it was not my intention ….’

  ‘We will say no more of it, he said coldly. ‘I have to return to the office.’ And he was gone before she could think of anything to placate him.

  How dreadful to have upset him so, she thought. I should have considered before I spoke, that much is very plain. I grow careless because I am so happy, that’s what it is. And she bit her bottom lip with agitation. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know the likely outcome of thoughtless speech. She had been chided about it often enough. And yet, and yet, the death of the Princess was the most heartrending thing she’d ever heard, and she knew that it should never have been used as the subject of an advertisement, business or no.

  Oh, how I wish there were someone I could talk to, she sighed to herself. But there was no one except Peg, and you couldn’t discuss your husband with a servant. The great Mrs Easter was quite out of the question for she was too much in awe of her, and Annie was too far away.

  She put on her thick pelisse and its matching bonnet and set off for Smithfield Market to chose the meat for dinner that night. The walk would clear her head and, besides, the sooner she got on with her household duties this morning the better. It was a brisk clear morning, spiced with smoke but not overcast, and the streets were full of busy women off to market, baskets swinging. An oddly cheerful day when all flags were flying at half-mast and so many front doors were swathed in black crepe.

  In High Holborn there were black ribbons everywhere, tied to door knockers, plaited into horses’ tails, trimming hats and fluttering quite gaily at window frames. After a while the sight of so many marks of mourning began to oppress her and she averted her eyes, seeking some other colour that would remind her of something else. And her attention was caught by the display in one of the Easter shops, of all places.

  There was a green baize counter in the window and set in the middle of the counter was a pretty fan-sh
ape composed entirely of quill pens and containing within its centre a loyal address of sympathy to the Royal Family, neatly penned on a black-edged card, and quite easily avoided. Six large bottles of ink stood sentinel behind it and to the right and left there were stacks of writing paper tied with purple and white ribbons and piles of account books with red marbled bindings. It was a very pretty display. She was quite charmed by it and resolved to tell John so at dinner that very evening. But then she saw that placed in a neat row in front of the quill fan were half a dozen sturdy books bound in the same marbled red and marked by a plain white card which bore the legend, ‘Suitable for notebooks, recipe books, diaries, etc., etc.’. And she recognized at once that here was the answer to her dilemma. A diary. Of course. It was the very thing. A silent confidante, a listener who could always be depended upon to keep counsel, an ear without a mouth. She went into the shop and bought one at once.

  That afternoon, when she had made sure that preparations for dinner were progressing satisfactorily, she went quietly upstairs to her bedroom and took up her pen to write to her diary for the very first time. It was like making a friend.

  ‘Monday 10th November 1817,’ she wrote. ‘Dear Diary, there is so much I want to tell you I hardly know where to begin. Such a tragedy has occurred. The Princess Charlotte is dead and my husband John has put such a dreadful advertisement in The Times, but I must not criticize him. I will tell you all about it….’

  She felt so much better when her complaint had been written, and delighted to think that it had all been done while John was out of the house. And of course writing a diary was perfectly proper. Plenty of great ladies did it. There was no question of intending to deceive. Now she could say exactly what she liked and no harm done. It was an admirable solution. Quite admirable. She hid the book under the mattress and rang the bell for Peg to come and help her dress for dinner.

  By the time John came back to the house that evening, worrying about how he could mend their quarrel, she was quite herself again. They dined happily, and she encouraged him to talk of the day’s affairs, although they were both very careful not to mention the advertisement. When they retired to bed, they walked upstairs arm in arm as if there had never been any argument, as if their customary mode of behaviour had never varied. Which apart from that sudden uncharacteristic row, it never had. And so they made their peace without a word of explanation or apology, and the subject of the Princess Charlotte and her untimely death was never discussed between them again.