The Stranger from the Sea: A Novel of Cornwall, 1810-1811

by Winston Graham

  The critics at last were silenced. Even the fiercest Whigs, who had for so long been crying doom and disaster, indiscipline and incompetence, changed their views. A vote of thanks was passed in both Houses for the campaign, and the speakers had scarcely ever been more unanimous. As Canning wrote to Ross: ‘But for Prinny’s change of mind – and heart – all this would have been lost.’

  A few diehards, such as the Reverend Dr Halse of Truro, predicted that Napoleon would now take the campaign into his own hands and sweep the ‘Johnnies’ back into the sea; but nothing could prevent a national upsurge of pride and optimism. Overnight the abused General Wellington became an international figure.

  It was not in Sir George Warleggan’s nature to rejoice on any matter which did not personally concern him; but as he drove through High Cross in his post-chaise and saw the bonfire leaping up he felt his own spirits rising with the sparks. At the door of the Great House he walked briskly up the steps and was greeted by a bewigged footman.

  This was the time more than any other when he missed Elizabeth – still missed her after so long. Someone had recently said in his hearing – a newly widowed man such as he had once been – ‘possessions are no use if one can only possess ’em on one’s own,’ and he knew the bitter truth of this. The upturn in his fortunes now, after two months of the gravest anxiety, was something not to be kept to oneself. Yet his mother and Valentine and little Ursula were at Cardew; and in any case his mother was unwell and had no business head – one sometimes wondered how she had bred him – while Valentine was still too young – and withdrawn and sophisticated and sardonic – to share one’s fears and relief with.

  What George needed was that slim beautiful creature who now was no more than earth and bone – dead in childbirth eleven years ago. She, for all her patrician breeding, would have understood; they would have been pleased together. (Someday, he thought, God willing, and someday not perhaps so far distant, he might have another woman to confide in. He had not seen Harriet Carter since the Gordons’ soirée; he had had no right to seek her out when he had only a possible bankruptcy to offer her by way of a marriage settlement.)

  The only person of his flesh and blood in this house – if it were proper to think of him as having any of either – was old Cary. And he, certainly, would understand more truly than anyone the reason for his satisfaction. But there would be nothing responsive there; it would be like talking to a balance sheet.

  He went into the parlour and warmed his hands at the fire. The thought of going in search of his uncle was distasteful. He pulled the bell-cord.

  ‘Sur?’

  ‘Fetch me the brandy. The 1801. You will find a halfused decanter in my study. And, Baker, ask my uncle if he will be good enough to step this way. If he has already retired, ask him to come down.’

  ‘Yes, sur.’

  While he waited George eased his back with the warmth. Even with the introduction of turnpike roads a long coach ride was an ordeal. Another footman arrived with the brandy. It was known throughout the servants’ quarters that it was no good helping oneself to any form of liquor: Sir George would always know the level at which the decanter had been left and the exact number of bottles in the cellar.

  George took the glass and drank. Cary came shuffling in. He had not retired, but the black alpaca coat he wore would have done well enough for a dressing-gown.

  ‘So you’re back. It’s high time.’ He sniffed. ‘Four days gallivanting. We’ve lost six thousand in four days. On Wednesday it was almost a run. Farmers and the like coming in for market day. The rest of your northern properties will have to go – even at a knockdown.’

  ‘It has never been a run,’ George corrected. ‘A constant drain. Loss of confidence, nothing more. These are exacting times for any bank.’

  ‘It would not have been exacting for us if it had not been for your folly! Over and over, d’ye know, this last week, customers have refused our notes and asked for gold! And the shopkeepers, I’d have you know, the shopkeepers of this town, prefer to be paid in the notes of the Cornish Bank better ‘n ours!’

  ‘It will all end now.’

  ‘I’ve heard cases,’ said Cary, his long nose quivering, ‘in this town, where shopkeepers have made an excuse – said they had not enough change – so as to be able to refuse to give silver and copper for a note of ours! … What d’ye mean – it will all end now?’

  ‘I have spent the last three nights with Sir Humphry Willyams,’ George said, ‘at his house in Saltash. He is the chief partner in the Devon and Cornwall Bank of Plymouth, and a man of great substance. We’ve agreed to an accommodation.’

  ‘I know all about Humphry Willyams.’ Cary then fell silent, his hand plucking at the edge of his gown. One could almost hear the wheels clicking. ‘What sort of an accommodation?’

  ‘That we shall work in partnership. A loose yet binding partnership, each giving guarantees of support to the other; to an upper limit, of course, though this need not be published.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Initially twenty thousand pounds.’

  ‘How can we guarantee that, in our present state?’

  ‘The rest of my – northern properties, as you call them, will part cover it. You told me to sell them, and now I have sold them. Every last one! Does that satisfy you? Let me get you a drink.’

  Cary waved this suggestion away as if it were a troublesome mosquito. ‘But to have any effect on the public…’

  ‘Something must be published. Of course. That is the whole point of the arrangement. Such an announcement will immediately restore confidence. The Devon and Cornwall Bank is well known even in this western part of the county.’

  There was a pause. George went to the window and looked out. You couldn’t see the bonfire from here but there was a flickering light reflected from the steeple of St Mary’s Church.

  ‘And what have they to gain?’ Cary asked.

  ‘Sir Humphry has often wanted to extend his interests. Being in constant touch with us will enable his bank to extend its business to cover most of Cornwall.’

  From outside came a burst of cheering. ‘You’d think we’d won the war,’ said Cary. ‘We’re still outnumbered twenty to one. I’d lay they’d drive us out again, if I didn’t begin to have some expectations of this man Wellesley.’

  ‘Wellington.’

  ‘Wellesley. That’s how he began. So now at last you’re free of all those insane investments.’

  ‘I shall regret it, I know. Even this war can’t last for ever. There would have been big profit in the long term. But now our foundations are made secure. Full confidence will be restored.’

  Cary scratched under his skullcap. ‘You expect me to be pleased, I suppose. But I’m suspicious. I suspect – interference by these fellows in our affairs.’

  ‘There’ll be none. That is agreed. We go our own ways in all except the guaranteed accommodation.’ George poured himself a second brandy. The first had gone down, warming his heart and stomach. The heat of the fire was easing his back. ‘We have not yet decided on one point, and that is on a change of name.’

  ‘What?’

  George carefully drank, rubbed his chin, looked out of the window, then hunched his shoulders and turned.

  ‘It has not been decided. Sir Humphry suggested – in view of the fact that his own name is not on his own bank, and in view of the fact that it is such a distinguished one in the county – and I cannot cavil at that – he has suggested “Warleggan & Willyams”.’

  Cary was breathing fast through his nose.

  ‘By God, George, if your father was alive!’

  ‘He is not, Uncle Cary. And I do not suppose in the exceptional circumstances that he would have greatly opposed it. There was a time – and don’t forget this – when we should have considered the name of Willyams an honour to have in association with our own!’

  ‘You know how he felt about our name! Ye well know it, George! An’ I thought you was the same! Always so proud of
it, so determined the name Warleggan should be respected – aye, and feared!’

  ‘You’ll notice,’ said George, ‘that I am not proposing to abandon it. I’m proposing to link another with it – and a notable one at that. And our name is to be first … It is a time – apart from any ill-considered investments I may have made – for combining together. The age of the small bank is passing. There have been at least four failures in Cornwall this year: Robinson’s of Fowey and Captain Cudlipps’s at Launceston –’

  ‘Small fry!’ snarled Cary. ‘Small fry! We was not small not small like that. But for your gross blunders … Besides … I should have been consulted. I must be consulted before this combination goes through!’

  ‘You talk of our name,’ said George. ‘But who is to carry it on? You’re seventy-one. I shall shortly be fifty-two. There is only Valentine. In five years he may wish to join the firm, but I see no signs of it yet. Indeed, I’m not sure that his temperament will ever enable him to take over the reins. I have frequently to discipline him. Indeed, I have more confidence in little Ursula – but she’ll not stay a Warleggan all her life. We have trained no one for ultimate responsibility – which has been a choice of our own, for we have never wished to delegate – but we have need of new blood now. This link – this accommodation is the first step.’

  Cary coughed and spat in the fire. The spittle hissed bubbling on the bars.

  ‘I get catarrh,’ he muttered. ‘Always I get catarrh. I remind meself of your father.’

  ‘You should take more rest, more exercise. More time off.’

  ‘Who wants more time off?’ Cary said peevishly. ‘I shall have time enough off when I’m dead – which can’t be long, as you so surely predict. Then the name of Warleggan can go to the devil for all I care!’

  ‘Maybe it will,’ said George under his breath.

  ‘Eh? What’s that? What’s that?’

  ‘Whatever you may feel at this moment, Uncle, you will, I’m sure, become accustomed to the idea of such a union. I tell you, it will not only allay nervousness in the county, it will give us greater freedom to use our own money commercially without a half-uttered threat at our backs. Have you noticed the Cornish Bank trying to blow on the little flame of nervousness? I believe I have!’

  ‘They’ve certainly done nothing to help us. I’m not surprised with your friend Poldark in the partnership.’

  George poured himself another half glass. It never did any good to overdrink, even for such a celebration as this. And it was a celebration. Whatever Cary might say, it was for him an emergence from a dark and ominous corridor. The money he had tragically lost was not retrieved; but he could begin to build again. And he only had to look at the industries and merchantries he possessed around this county to know that they were ninety per cent sound and had good prospects for the future. Often during these last few terrible months he had wondered quite as sincerely as Uncle Cary what devil of recklessness had made him plunge so deeply into an area he did not know, why he had not been content to let Lady Harriet choose him or refuse him with the fortune he then had.

  Now with his base secure he could begin to rebuild.

  Some comment Cary had made, some word he had dropped was stirring uneasily at the back of his consciousness, a tiny worm in the bud, hardly worth considering but not altogether to be ignored. He identified it.

  ‘A pity,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I sold the shares in Wheal Leisure to John Treneglos for four hundred pounds. Had we been less tight I would have held on to them.’

  ‘They were no use to you,’ said Cary scathingly. ‘Who else would give you that for a derelict mine?’

  George finished his drink. ‘Come, Uncle, a nightcap to see you to bed.’

  ‘Oh, well. If you insist. But I warn you it gives me heartburn.’

  ‘Four hundred pounds for a hole in the ground. I doubt if it’s more. But it’s near Poldark property, and I’ve heard Wheal Grace is yielding none too well. I suspect Poldark is behind Treneglos in this. I would have preferred to have blocked his activities.’

  II

  Letter from Captain Geoffrey Charles Poldark of the 43rd Monmouthshires to Captain Ross Poldark, Nampara, Cornwall.

  Before Almeida, 18th April 1811.

  My dear Uncle Ross,

  It was only during a lull in the fighting, when we were standing side by side among the bullets on that misty hillside of Bussaco that it occurred to me formally that you were not really my uncle at all but my cousin – or cousin once removed, I conject, to be quite Accurate. However, uncle it first was and uncle it must now remain.

  D’you remember how we stood that September morning, after the Charge? I believe it was disobedience of orders amounting almost to mutiny when you joined in, biting at your cartridges, leaping like a boy over boulders and dead Frenchmen alike and firing and stabbing with the best. I was lucky that I found you a Regimental Jacket – tight though it was on you, and split at the shoulder seams, I discovered later – else you might have been spitted from behind by one of our excited lads! I thought to myself that day, ‘two Poldark cousins are fighting together in this battle, and I’m damned if I know which is the more out of breath!’ Killing and being killed is not a pretty business, but I estimate there was an element of Inspiration in us all that day!

  I have been re-reading your letter from London and am happy you reached home safe; and ashamed I am not to have written in Reply. It has been a hard Winter for us all, with many of our best officers sick or wounded and some of our Worst applying for – and receiving! – leave to return home. The inactivity – for a time – and the sickness were equally Tedious, but since early March we have been advancing and fighting, advancing and fighting day after day in the most arduous, brilliant and bitter Fashion.

  Alas, it has not been a happy time; for our continuing victories have been poisoned by the horrors we have found in the Villages and Towns we have been repossessing. Do you know, Cousin – there I’ve called you that for a change! – do you know until now I have always felt myself fighting a ferocious but a brave and chivalrous Enemy? I have come across numerous instances of respect and friendship shown between English and French. Often it has been difficult to prevent the ordinary soldiers fraternizing before and after battle. Like pugilists in a boxing ring, once the bout is over … And among the generals. Soult putting up the monument to Moore at Corunna is but a case in point. But here – towards the Portuguese! We have walked, marched, tramped for miles through a Charnel house, of putrid corpses, violated and tortured women, children hanged upside down, polluted churches, mutilated priests, men with their eyes gouged out … It has changed my feelings. Can a just war turn into a war of revenge? It certainly has for the Portuguese.

  Now we are Encamped before Almeida. The French have left a Garrison behind, and it will be the devil’s own job to winkle them out. And you will observe I am back on that River once again where I lost a chip of my jaw bone. So far I have survived this winter with all the luck of a bad egg, though I have lost my good friend Saunders; and Partridge, who was decapitated by a shell one morning shortly after we had finished breakfast. You met them both, you will remember. Partridge was the one with the long fair hair.

  By the way, your War Office has slightly relaxed its grip on promotions, and Brevet Colonel Malcolm McNeil has been awarded his lieutenantcolonelcy! I have met him more than once since you left, and he is an Estimable man but full of stories about the bad old days when every Cornishman – in his view – was a smuggler!

  My warmest love to Aunt Demelza, to Jeremy, Clowance and Isabella-Rose, to Drake, to Morwenna, to Sam, to Zacky Martin, to Ben Carter, Jacka Hoblyn, Jud and Prudie Paynter – if they are all still alive – and to any other friend of yours who you think will remember me and to whom I may be safely commended.

  I too could obtain leave now if I so requested. I don’t so request – partly because the war in the Peninsula is entering, I believe, a Victorious phase, partly b
ecause it somehow doesn’t seem suitable – meet is the biblical word! – for me to return. I know I would have so many welcoming friends, but it is somehow not yet meet, right or my bounden duty.

  All the same, may that time roll on!

  As ever your affectionate nephew, (Cousin – Second Cousin?)

  Geoffrey Charles.

  III

  Advertisement in the Royal Cornwall Gazette for Saturday the 18th May, 1811.

  As from next Monday, the 20th May, 1811, Warleggan’s Bank announces its conjuncture with the Devon & Cornwall Bank of Plymouth, Saltash, Bodmin and Liskeard. The activities and note issue of Warleggan’s Bank, Truro, will remain unchanged in every respect, except that the interests of its clients will be still more safely secured and the facilities of the Bank more usefully extended. Henceforward, Warleggan’s Bank will be known as Warleggan & Willyams Bank. Partners will be Sir George Warleggan, Sir Humphry Willyams, Mr Cary Warleggan and Mr Rupert Croft.

  IV

  Letter from Lord Edward Fitzmaurice to Miss Clowance Poldark, 16th June, 1811.

  Dear Miss Poldark,

  I venture to write to you again, having persuaded myself that my first letter may have gone astray, and to renew, if only in the formality of a letter, our friendship of February and to say I hope you reached home safely and have been enjoying the many and diverse pleasures of spring and summer there. Cornwall is so very far away, and though in a sense a West Countryman myself I was never in your county and only once as far west as Exeter.