by Lona Manning
“The poor girl is clearly miserable, and exceedingly cut up,” sighed Mrs. Butters, folding up Fanny’s letter. “Were I in her position, I should have defied all the uncles in the world—but sometimes a decision is only right or wrong as the event proves.”
She was addressing herself as much as her lady’s maid, who was completing the widow’s simple morning toilette.
“Poor Mr. Gibson!” Madame Orly responded. “Like you, madam, I would have stood by my lover, no matter what befell, and I would have visited him in the prison, and taken care of him.”
“Few can say that with such perfect truth as you, I think,” answered Mrs. Butters, referring to Madame Orly’s unhappy girlhood in France at the time of the Terror. “For your fiancé was imprisoned, as well as your parents.”
“Of course. But I could not visit them in prison—and they sent me word, ordering me to flee to England,” said Madame Orly, turning away to fuss with the bottles and brushes on Mrs. Butter’s grooming table. “I had to leave them to their fates.”
“Are you angry with Fanny, then, for abandoning Mr. Gibson?”
Madame Orly paused and considered. “As she says in her letter, her uncle was very severe on the matter. She might have been cast out of her family.”
“Do you blame Mr. Gibson, then? For being rash and getting himself arrested?”
Madame Orly shrugged. “I blame no-one, madam. I blame the times we live in. Your government, they want to prevent what happened in my country, from happening in your country. You may say, all men should be free to criticise their leaders. And I say, heaven and all the saints preserve England from the horrors that came to France! Are we not both correct?”
“Oh dear, such melancholy thoughts oppress us today!” Mrs. Butters sighed.
“I know what will cheer you, Madame,” came the answer. “Let us prepare a package of good things to send to Mr. Gibson. You know how much he loves Mrs. McIntosh’s baking. Let us see what we can do for him.”
“Yes, I had much rather be doing than fretting,” Mrs. Butters said, resuming her usual air of firm decision.
* * * * * * *
March, 1813
Mr. Gibson came to trial to defend himself on charges of raising “discontent and disaffection in the minds of the people to hatred and contempt of the government.” In fact, only a few dozen people, Mr. Meriwether included, had even seen his pamphlet before the authorities confiscated them all. But the accounts of his trial, widely reprinted in newspapers across the country, informed many persons who were hitherto unaware, of the government’s policy of sending spies amongst the ordinary people. Lord Sidmouth’s prosecution of Mr. Gibson, therefore, tended rather to increase public indignation toward the government. Mr. Gibson enjoyed firm support throughout the kingdom—except in York, and except in the opinion of the judge who sentenced him to two and a half years in prison.
Guilty under the law, but justified in his own conscience, Mr. Gibson resolved to serve his sentence with as much philosophic composure as he could muster. In this respect, his own sturdy spirit and the hardships of his early life had well-prepared him for the privations of prison.
And although he was imprisoned in York, very soon all of London was speaking of him. His last action before his arrest had been to approve the galleys of his first novel, Steam & Sagacity. His publisher brought the work out directly after his conviction. The notoriety surrounding his name brought him many curious readers, who pronounced the book to be excellent. Even critics who picked up the work, intending to condemn and insult the writer, found much to praise in his fantastical tale of a future era when steam machines relieved humanity of tedious and dangerous toil, when people could travel swiftly around the globe with locomotives and steam ships, and better commerce and intercourse between the nations of the world eradicated the cruel excesses of despotic powers.
Steam & Sagacity was a great success everywhere with persons of all walks of life, male and female, young and old. It was avidly requested at every lending library. Fanny never left her home without seeing copies for sale in the booksellers’ windows, she could not open a newspaper without reading articles praising the imagination and the vivid prose of the writer, “to whose future productions we look forward with the keenest anticipation.”
Her own copy, inscribed “with affectionate respect,” came to her in the post, and, being Fanny, she wept over it. Sorrow was also mingled with relief, for his sake. Mr. Gibson had accomplished all and more that he set out to do. He was famous, his talents were properly esteemed, and one day he would be free. With the fashionable world at his feet, he would harbour no regrets for an old attachment, an obligation, formed when he was poor and obscure. It would be folly for Fanny to cherish hopes of any lingering regard for her.
However, Fanny was without the power of teaching herself to be indifferent. Mrs. Butters kindly kept her informed of the latest news from London; the book was being got up into a play—artists were selling prints illustrating scenes from it, etc. Mrs. Butters added:
“What a very great pity it is that Mr. Gibson is not able to witness all of this for himself! However, he tells me he has his next novel well in hand, and when he is finally released, he will reap the deserved rewards of his genius. Also, my friend Lady Delingpole—you will recall briefly meeting her in London—has informed me her husband is endeavouring to get permission from the Home Secretary to move Mr. Gibson from York to a prison in London. But the outcome is in some suspense, as there is no love lost between Delingpole and Sidmouth, though they are of the same party.”
Alas, the animosity between Lord Delingpole and the Home Secretary indeed proved to be a barrier. Almost a year would pass before Lord Delingpole succeeded in effecting Mr. Gibson’s transfer from York.
Chapter 5: London, January 1814
John Price paced along Leadenhall Street with his arms wrapped across his chest and his hands tucked in his armpits for warmth. He had not wanted to spend his Saturday half-holiday shut up in his bedchamber, despite the bitter cold of the day, but he could find no companions interested in a lounge at a coffee shop. He decided to make an excursion to his favourite used book shop, and look for some scientific treatises about weather. In London, last month, there had been a fog so thick and dark that anyone going abroad had to carry a lantern. Coachmen hired beggars to guide the horses through the streets. A strong wind arising out of the north blew the fog away but brought with it temperatures so severe that the Thames was frozen solid between London and Blackfriars bridge. He had heard that some men of science claimed the strange weather afflicting the globe was as a result of recent severe earthquakes in America.
Another theory held that a variation of the rotation of the earth on its axis—
“John! Hey! Is that you? Slow down, will you! Hey!”
John paused, and was turning to see who wanted to speak to John and to confirm that he was in fact the John the person wanted to speak to, when a mighty slap on his back almost sent him sprawling to the pavement.
“It IS you, then, by g-d! Brother John!”
John looked up and beheld a young man with a bronzed countenance and brawny frame.
“Richard?”
For it was indeed Richard, the middle son of the six Price boys, whom John had seen only once in the past eight years, now grown to manhood.
“John, you are the runt of the litter, aren’t you now? You haven’t gained an inch since we were in grammar school.”
Richard grabbed John’s hand in a hearty handshake, exclaimed over the softness of that hand, then threw his arm around John’s slender shoulders, and proposed that they repair instantly to a public house to toast their unexpected reunion.
After being half-carried to the King’s Arms on Lower Thames Street, John listened to a lengthy discourse from Richard on his great good fortune on having been taken into the East India Company—the “Com’pn’y”—how it was preferable to any other service on the seas, including the King’s Navy, for superior accommodations,
certainty of promotion, and guaranteed riches. “The best thing old Sir Thomas ever did,” declared Richard, “was place me in the way to be taken aboard the Neptune in the year five. I have been promoted to third mate while Sam is still a midshipman and you have been scribbling away at the police office.”
“I shall be promoted one day,” John replied stiffly. “From inventory clerk to police clerk, or perhaps to river constable.”
“Ooooh, that’s grand then, truly. Bashing thieves over the head with your cudgel. Here’s to your good fortune.”
“Richard, you must have arrived back in London before the freeze-up,” John observed. “When did you make port?”
“Oh, aye!” agreed Richard. “Late October, it was, after the very devil of a journey back from Canton, had to put in at the Cape for repairs, and then again at St. Helena, and now the good old Neptune must be patched together again before we can be off! More holes in her than a tea-strainer!”
“The weather has been especially peculiar this year,” John remarked.
Richard scoffed. What was a little ice and fog to a man such as himself who had sailed in the teeth of a typhoon, or survived the monsoons of Bengal, or the blistering heat of Cathay?
The more Richard spoke, the more his voice, expressions, and gestures reminded John most powerfully of their late father, and the recollection was not altogether agreeable. But he gave a sudden start when the thought occurred— and he asked his brother, did the news of their father’s demise reach Richard in Cathay?
“Oh, aye,” Richard answered, draining his mug of ale and filling it again from the jug placed before them. “I got a letter from Fan. How Fan did carry on for a man she hardly knew! ‘Devoted husband and father’! Well,” Richard laughed, “the old bugger devoted himself to climbing on our mother enough times, so I suppose you might say he was a devoted father. Taught us all to love the sea, though, did he not? So, how is mother? Is the old girl hard up?”
“Did you not send her a letter?” John sniffed, aware that he himself had not written for several months.
“Well, if I wrote to her, and let on I was here in London she would be pressing me to give her some money. So, does she have enough to keep herself on?”
“I think so, because our uncle—”
“Good old Sir Thomas, then!” said Richard with satisfaction. “We shall drink his health, and long life to him. For I have nothing to send her.”
“But you just said you were better paid than William—”
“What? And don’t you suppose I know how to spend it as well as make it?” Richard laughed. “I have a little friend in Canton—-mind, do not tell mother. Let’s have another, shall we?”
John felt in his pocket, to see if he had enough coins to pay for their drinks, as it suddenly dawned on him that as the elder brother, he would be expected to be the host of their reunion. He was abstemious in his habits himself, and regarded money poorly spent on drink that might be spent on reading. He proposed that they go for a walk to the Frost Fair on the Thames instead, and Richard readily agreed to the diversion.
John settled the bill, Richard announced he was for the privy, and all the amber liquid John had just paid for would be deposited therein, a thought which amused Richard very much, and after the smoke and heat and muggy air of the tavern, they were outside once more, walking into the teeth of the biting wind, toward London Bridge.
The two brothers stepped down to the quay and awkwardly slid down a causeway to the frozen river. The Thames was black with people and tents; they could hear a fiddler playing an Irish air, and young girls shrieked with laughter on the swings. They could smell wood-smoke and roasting meat.
Richard hailed the sight of a temporary tavern made of two canopies stitched together. John ignored his invitation to go in for a drink and instead wandered slowly along the row of stalls that stretched almost across to the opposite bank.
The usual foul stench of the river was subdued by the cold, and the thick layer of ice beneath his feet. As to the thickness of the ice, he had no qualms about walking where so many others went, but he wished to know its precise thickness, merely as a knowable fact, because not knowing that fact was like an itch which he could not scratch. He supposed someone in authority had drilled a hole and had measured the ice, to ensure the safety of the populace, and he hoped the information might be supplied somewhere, or had been printed in the papers.
Out of habit, he also watched the people, training himself to spot pick-pockets. Everyone appeared to be in excellent spirits. Rationally, though, John could see no advantage to walking out on a frozen river to go shopping. The same articles were for sale on the ice that one might buy anywhere, on any day—honey in the comb, candles, gloves. And yet everyone treated the occasion like a festival day. Just the novelty of being able to walk on the Thames, and suddenly everyone was willing to pay a higher price for gingerbread. There was no understanding people sometimes.
He came across a small bundle of rags which someone had left upon a low wooden stool. The bundle moved and he saw it was a tiny, hunchbacked old woman. Two crutches lay on the ice in front of her. She extended a bony hand with long dirty fingernails. “Your fortune, young sir?”
“Pardon?” said John.
“I can trace your fortune, sir. Give me your palm.”
John’s hands were firmly tucked in his pockets, out of her grasp.
He looked at her. “You can see into the future?”
“Yes, sir. I have the sight.”
“Then why are you dressed in rags if you know which horse will win at Newmarket?”
The woman gave John a piercing look. “Sir, I do not see horses, I see destinies.”
“So can I. I can tell you what yours is, for I am about to report you to the river police. You will be brought up at the Old Bailey, and you will be placed in the stocks. I’m surprised you did not know that.”
The woman swore a colourful string of oaths at him, snatched up her stool and crutches, and scurried away with surprising rapidity.
John continued his exploration of the fair and came across a stall of books. Out of habit, he started glancing over the titles laid out on the wooden counter.
“Well, hello yourself, John Price,” said a female voice. He looked up and saw a small figure swaddled in blankets and scarves standing behind the counter, and recognized Prudence Imlay, whose father owned his favourite book shop.
“Oh, hello, Miss Imlay,” John answered. “How do you like being on the river?”
“I am slowly freezing to death,” answered Miss Imlay calmly. “And I might as well not have bothered to drag all these books down here. These, on the other hand, are extremely popular.” And she held out a poster with an engraving of London Bridge and a bit of doggerel:
The season cold
You now behold
A sight that’s very rare
All in a trice
Upon the ice
Just like a Russian fair.
“What a terrible verse,” said John.
“I know. I wrote it,” answered she. “The first time I have sold my writing to the public and it has to be this.”
John wanted to say something encouraging. “Maybe if you write something better, the public will like it as well.”
“Are you going to buy a book, John Price?”
“Not today. I spent all my money at the King’s Arms.”
“Oh!” she said, surprised. “That’s not like you, surely.”
“For my brother,” he amended.
“Ah, well, you seldom buy our books anyway. Father says you treat our shop like a lending library.”
“That is why I take care to visit when he is not there,” said John. “And anyway, I prefer it when you are there.”
Miss Imlay looked away.
“I think you are getting too cold,” said John. “Your cheeks are turning red. If they turn white, then it is frostbite. You should be careful.”
Richard appeared out of the throng, and saluted John wi
th another hearty slap on the back.
“Ho, John, you artful bugger! Not so backward with the ladies after all!” And he turned to bestow a devastating smile on Miss Imlay. He looked at her, and his smile dissolved.
“Oh,” he said, taking in the red smallpox scars which covered her face.
The girl flushed again and turned away. “I think I shall start packing up. The sun is going down.” She bent down and disappeared behind the counter.
“Do you want any help, Miss Imlay?” asked John.
“No, thank you,” came her voice. “I can do it myself. My father is meeting me at the quay.”
“Very well, good afternoon,” said John, and he and Richard walked away.
“Poor girl—what a shame,” said Richard, his loud voice carrying across the ice. “Nice eyes. Pretty hair, too. Too bad about her face.”
“What about her face?” asked John.
“The pock-marks, what d’you think I meant!” Richard laughed. “There isn’t enough ale in London to make her into a beauty.”
Something was making John feel uncomfortable. He was not sure what it was. He thought he should go back to talk to Miss Imlay. “You go on, Richard,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”
He ran, slipping and sliding, back along the rows of stalls, dodging children and stray dogs.
Prudence Imlay was still clearing the books off the counter.
“Even if you do not need help, Miss Imlay,” said John, “I can help you. That is, do you want help?”
Prudence tossed her head but made no reply.
“Is something wrong? Are you angry?” asked John.
“Leave it to you, John Price, to not know when somebody is angry,” said Prudence. “A fine thief catcher you would make, if you do not know if someone is angry, or happy, or sad.”
“Are... you feeling sad?”
Prudence sighed. “I caught the smallpox when I was a child, and I did not die, but I know what I look like, and—and—that is just the way things are and I cannot change it. And I do not want to talk about it.”