Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron jam-10 Read online

  9. What did Lady Caroline Lamb do after Catherine left her?

  —Bathe; sleep; stay up until dawn writing a screed to Byron … or pursue her rival down to the water’s edge? Would any of the Pavilion’s servants be likely to know? Had Caro Lamb brought her personal maid?

  10. When did the General discover that his daughter never returned home Monday night—and did he sound an alarum?

  —The General claimed to have learnt the news at five o’clock in the morning, from his daughter’s maid, who had every reason to be truthful; he then stated he had alerted the Brighton constabulary that Catherine had very probably been abducted again by Lord Byron. While the General may be pardoned for leaping to such a conclusion, he appears not to have considered asking first at Mrs. Silchester’s for Catherine, who might easily have spent the night with her chaperon. A mere omission in his testimony, or something else?

  11. How could a body be carried into the King’s Arms in the dead of night without being seen?

  —There was absolutely nothing I could put down beneath this question. I had no idea how to answer it. Neither, it would seem, did the magistrate nor coroner—for not a single point of information had touched upon the subject at the inquest. The body had been found in Byron’s bed, therefore it had been brought into the Arms; but everyone connected with the enquiry appeared content to ignore the question of HOW.

  12. Did anyone at the Arms hear a disturbance in Byron’s rooms? Query: Who was lodged next to Byron?

  —I glanced towards my streaming windows; it would certainly rain all day. Perhaps dear Henry would consent to escort me to a nuncheon at the King’s Arms; he should have little else to do.

  And finally:

  13. Who, among the respectable and the highborn of Brighton, hates Lord Byron to the point of madness?

  —The poet himself had promised to supply me with a list; but I doubted, once restored to sobriety, he should recollect the offer. I need not wait for it. The tendency of the question was this: Who hated Byron enough to make him look guilty of murder, solely in order to see him hang? In this framing of Catherine’s death, she might have been anybody—a mere convenience, as victim. General Twining, of course, had every reason to hate Lord Byron; but that should hardly urge him to murder his daughter. Mr. Hendred Smalls was capable, perhaps, of a jealous rage—but of the subsequent black joke, the hammock from the Giaour, and the sodden gift of his cherished bride in Byron’s bed? I could not think him capable; I judged him to lack the necessary subtlety of mind. Lady Oxford was brilliant enough to fashion the scheme, but had known nothing of her lover’s unfaithfulness, and was in London at the time. Caro Lamb … I had already judged Caro entirely equal to such devious ploys, and heedless enough to execute them. But if she drowned her rival, how had the body been deposited in the King’s Arms ?

  My tea was cold, my fingers cramped, and my mind disordered. I thrust aside my pen in frustration, and put on my blacks for breakfast.

  “IF YOU WISH TO SAUNTER DOWN TO NORTH STREET,” Henry urged over the last of his toast, “I am happy to procure a chair for your use, Jane, and even walk alongside it until the modiste is achieved. That was an excellent notion of yours, that I should frank you in a new gown; for without your kind solicitude for my health, I should never have come to Brighton at all—or engaged in so advantageous a wager.”

  “It is remarkable, is it not, how unforeseen are the consequences of benevolence?” I returned. “I shall be urging you to adopt my slightest whim in future, Henry, from a desire to see you rich. But you need not accompany me to the modiste; I have been dressing myself for donkey’s years, you know.”

  “Not in Brighton. Do you expect Madame La Fanchette to extend credit to a complete stranger?” He drew his purse from within his coat. “Here is a draught on my bank, Jane—if you require anything over, I daresay the woman should consent to send the bill to the Castle with her compliments.”

  Fifty pounds. When Henry said my bank, he meant his bank—and the signature of the proprietor of Austen & Tilson over the draught should be all I required to win Madame La Fanchette’s confidence. But fifty pounds? I had existed an entire twelvemonth on as much. I stared at my brother in awe; whatever one might say of the evils born of gambling, stinginess was not one of them.

  “Henry—are you entirely sure—”

  He gestured me away, his colour heightened. “This is nothing, Jane. Recollect that I shall not be dressing Eliza in future—who cost me four times that whenever she entered a modiste.”

  We were both of us silent an instant; my throat constricted. Trust Henry to suggest that I did him a kindness by accepting of his winnings.

  “Is there anything else you require of me, Jane?”

  “Only to meet me at the King’s Arms for a nuncheon,” I replied recovering. “Perhaps one o’clock?”

  “I should be delighted. I don’t know how it is—but even so elegant a table as the Castle’s begins to grow tiresome after several days. And you will be wanting, of course, to put your questions to the publican.”

  Wise Henry.

  “Or his bootboys.”

  “Just so. One o’clock it is.”

  He threw down his napkin and left me quite happily to my own devices—the sort of freedom that is almost never afforded me in the more crowded household at Chawton. I think I should be content to travel with Henry forever, did his luck hold out.

  THERE WAS ALREADY A KNOT OF FASHIONABLE LADIES AT Madame La Fanchette’s, in North Street, all of them a little breathless from having walked hurriedly along the paving in the rain, umbrellas held high. Three of them were young matrons, consumed with talk of children and measles; one was a mamma with a young, fair-haired daughter, just out, from her looks, which were compounded of hesitancy and exuberant conceit; and the last was Mrs. Silchester.

  “I cannot be so presumptuous as to go into full mourning,” she murmured from among her floating veils, when I had greeted her, “for that is most truly the province of family, and however I may have cherished dear Catherine as another daughter—tho’ I attempted to supply her dear mother’s place—I cannot claim so near a connexion. I thought it not unpardonable, however, to put on some grey. The funeral, you know, is to be tomorrow at ten o’clock—Mr. Hendred Smalls is to lead the service—and tho’ as a lady I shall not, of course, be in attendance, I should not like to be remiss in any mark of respect on the occasion. What is your opinion, Miss Austen?”

  I assured her most earnestly that grey—whether charcoal or dove—must always be unexceptionable.

  “I am most partial to lavender,” Mrs. Silchester pursued doubtfully, “and cloth of silver for evening—you do not think either would offend?”

  On no account could so conservative a choice offend, I insisted—but would Mrs. Silchester prefer that I review the gowns in question?

  This was officiousness in the extreme from a relative stranger; but the lady appeared to require reassurance. Her reference to Catherine Twining’s mother had recalled certain phrases of the General’s I should dearly wish explained. I determined to profit from the happy chance that had thrown us together this morning, and put my questions to Mrs. Silchester while half her mind was distracted by millinery.

  Presently we were joined by Madame La Fanchette herself, a strong-featured, rail-thin woman with a pronounced Yorkshire accent who had certainly never seen Paris; her toilette, however, was the last word in elegant severity, and I imagined I should be happy in anything her workrooms might fashion for Henry’s fifty pounds. At the snap of her fingers, a bevy of young women appeared to exhibit the latest modes, all of them nicely suited to a lady of Mrs. Silchester’s station in life; Madame was familiar with her clients’ tastes.

  “You will not have visited any of the warehouses,” the modiste mused, “but I may be able to supply you with a lavender silk—only observe, Miss Austen,” she said with polite acknowledgement as an assistant brought forth the bolt for my inspection, “as the weave is that fine, and the colour no
t too sharp.”

  “It might almost be grey, in a certain light,” I admitted. “I cannot think this to be objectionable. One so dislikes to go in darker shades during the summer months—which are nearly upon us.”

  “I take it you’ve recently lost a close relation,” she said, with an assessing glance at my black gown. “The workmanship is not without merit.”

  “A Frenchwoman who resides in London made it for me,” I said carelessly. “Have you a clear dove sarcenet or perhaps a slate-blue twill, for Mrs. Silchester’s walking dress?”

  Indeed Madame La Fanchette had; and while she discussed necklines and sleeves, and ordered her assistant to measure Mrs. Silchester’s waist, I looked on as tho’ granting opinions to an acquaintance was all the joy I required. Mrs. Silchester’s countenance, which had been suffused with anxiety, gradually relaxed under the combined ministrations of Madame and myself—there is nothing like ordering one’s clothes to lift a lady’s spirits, after all—and when at last we had arrived at the coveted cloth of silver, with a beaded hem and matching headdress, her spirits were entirely restored.

  Madame promised faithfully to send round the lavender silk on the morrow, with the rest of the gowns to follow; then turned her blunt features upon me. Was there anything Miss Austen required?

  I saw, to my regret, that the hour was now too advanced to permit of my own frivolity and a nuncheon with Henry, and informed Madame of the unfortunate fact of a previous engagement—promised to return at the first opportunity—and accompanied Mrs. Silchester as she quitted the establishment.

  “I must assume that tho’ we cannot attend the funeral itself,” I observed as we walked back along North Street in the direction of the Steyne, “that we ought, in good conscience, to pay a call of condolence upon the General at the conclusion of the service. Surely there will be any number of Brighton’s notables who shall do the same?”

  Mrs. Silchester hesitated. “In truth, the General lives so quietly—and tho’ commanding respect, has never sought a broad acquaintance among the first families in the town—I cannot undertake to say whether he shall be receiving or not. However,”—and she squared her shoulders a little—“that shall not prevent me from paying a call. I hope that I know what is due to that poor lost darling, tho’ her father may not. I hope I am conscious of what her mother should have wished, on the occasion.”

  Here was my opening. “She died some years since, I collect?”

  “When Catherine was but three years old, and her brother seven. Richard had already been sent away to school, of course, and Catherine was in the care of her nurse when Lydia … but that is ancient history, my dear Miss Austen, and cannot be of interest to yourself.”

  “I hope you will not think me inquisitive,” I returned with an air of apology, “but the General was so indiscreet as to speak of his late wife in a manner I found rather shocking. I attempted to pay a call on him only yesterday, to offer my sympathy at the loss of his daughter; but he refused to admit me, and so far forgot himself as to declare that the sins of the mother had been visited upon the child. Naturally, I could not know what to think. I ascribed it to the excesses of grief.”

  “Ye-es,” Mrs. Silchester said hesitantly, “tho’ with my knowledge of the General, I should be inclined to call it spite rather than sorrow. You will forgive me for speaking frankly, Miss Austen—the General is not an amiable man. Dear Lydia was quite otherwise—possessed of perhaps too much sensibility, indeed—and a more ill-sorted pair I never hope to encounter again.”

  “The marriage was unhappy?”

  “She fell in love with a red coat, I fear—and never gave a thought to the nature of the gentleman who wore it.”

  “Many ladies might say the same, to their infinite misfortune,” I offered piously.

  “But few with poor Lydia’s result.”

  Poor Lydia. It might be a veritable quotation from my own pen.

  And as we walked towards the King’s Arms and my expected nuncheon, Mrs. Silchester shared her friend’s sad history.

  Chapter 22 A Passion for Publick Houses

  THURSDAY, 13 MAY 1813

  BRIGHTON, CONT.

  “IT IS QUITE A DISMAL TALE, HENRY,” I WARNED AS THE potboy set a tankard of ale, half a cold ham, some new-baked bread, and a Stilton cheese before us. I was drinking lemonade. We were seated in the King’s Arms’ coffee room among perhaps half-a-dozen other parties, with the horde of more common folk collected in the Ordinary beyond the communicating passage, and the cheerful din made the perfect foil for intimate conversation. The Arms was a handsome-enough old publick house, broad-beamed and low-ceilinged, with smoke-darkened walls and ample hearths. Henry had already informed me that the Regent had been frequently revelling here in his salad days—before Mrs. Fitzherbert or the unfortunate marriage to his cousin Princess Caroline—and that the carousing of the 10th Hussars, whose preferred publick house it was, could be as nothing to the example His Royal Highness had once set.

  “No local maiden was safe from his party,” Henry observed. “And the gallons of wine and ale that were drunk! The publican, Mr. Tolliver—who has lived in the Arms, man and boy, his father being publican before him—says there was nothing to equal Prinny’s lust for life, in his youth. The reputation of the house grew so tarnished among the gentry, indeed, that Mr. Tolliver’s father very nearly barred the Prince from the premises—but for the uncomfortable fact of his being the Prince. But you were speaking of General Twining: Pray forgive my interruption.”

  “I fear that what I have to relate is less amusing.” I allowed my brother to serve me a cut of ham. “General Twining was once himself a member of the 10th Hussars, as should not be unusual; and while in London a quarter-century ago, met and married a beautiful young heiress named Lydia Montescue—only then in her first Season. He was thirty; she was but seventeen, and wild for a red coat, as Mrs. Silchester would have it—the two ladies were together at school, and remained friends ever after. As is so often the case, poor Lydia discovered that she had married a stranger on the strength of three weeks’ acquaintance, several balls, and a drive or two in Hyde Park—who proved, as a life partner, harsh and incomprehensible: so strict a disciplinarian, that her frivolous pleasures were at an end; so parsimonious a master, that her ample purse was hers no longer; and so jealous a husband, that she might not stand up with one of his fellow officers at a garrison ball, without earning a blow from his hand. In short, she left the General—who was but Major Twining then—when her son was five and her daughter an infant still in arms.”

  “Eloped with another?” Henry suggested.

  “One of her husband’s cavalry officers—Captain the Honourable Philip Barrett, Mrs. Silchester persisted in calling him, as tho’ his courtesy title lent greater glamour to his memory. Captain Barrett was the second son of the Earl of Derwentwater, she tells me, and exquisitely expensive—being addicted to gambling. Poor Lydia appears to have possessed appalling taste in men.”

  “Fellow ditched her?”

  “I am sure his family would have preferred him to have done so. In the event, Twining pursued them, challenged the Honourable to a duel—and killed him at twenty paces.”

  “Good Lord!” Henry almost choked on his ham. “And having put his rival below ground, Twining did not feel obliged to flee to the Continent?”

  “He stood his trial, and was acquitted the crime of murder on the plea of having defended his honour—the first duty of any soldier or gentleman. Mrs. Silchester, however, could not quite condone such violence. I believe she was as smitten as all the rest with the dashing Captain. A tragedy, she called it.”

  “And Lydia?—She was hauled back to do penance, I suppose?”

  I shook my head. “Having killed her lover, Twining cast off his wife without a penny, Mrs. Silchester says. Lydia died in extreme poverty in a back slum of London when Catherine was but three years old, and lies in an unmarked pauper’s grave. Mrs. Silchester knows this to be true, because she received a letter
from the vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, which parish had the burying of Mrs. Twining; Mrs. Silchester’s direction was found among the unfortunate lady’s effects, when she had died.”

  “And the Montescues? They made no effort to support her? They allowed their Lydia to end in misery?”

  “She was an orphan, I understand—which accounts for her considerable fortune, which fell entirely to General Twining’s use.”

  “Melancholy,” Henry observed. “And do but consider, Jane, how little his course in life has availed him—only son killed in the Peninsula, and now his daughter snuffed out in violence.”

  “Yes. One might almost call it a judgement—if one were possessed of a vindictive turn, in matters divine.”

  “I am glad I disliked that fellow upon first meeting,” my brother persisted. “I can only wonder that little Catherine did not fly to London with Byron when he asked—so eagerly must she have yearned for liberty.”

  “But that is exactly what she would not do, Henry,” I countered. “Recollect her sheer terror at being returned to her home in disgrace—the reliance she placed upon us bearing her company—and the blow she received for her courage in having outwitted Lord Byron! I had heard before this that the General is most anxious on the subject of his name, and family dignity; and now we may know the cause. He perceives the world to be laughing at him, for having a shameful wife—and therefore no taint of a similar disease should be allowed to mar Catherine. She must be perceived as purer than the driven snow. What a curse for the poor child, that she should draw so rakish an eye as Lord Byron’s!”