by Karen Essex
Elgin’s words inspired nothing in the room but a universal grimace, which sent his own little smile back into a fastidious pursing of lips with which he delivered the rest of his speech. Mary listened to her husband, thinking that while he did speak with conviction, his words were entirely too predictable: that representing His Majesty on foreign shores was not a mission for personal glory but an act of patriotism, and that one mustn’t complain about one’s sacrifices but must endure them in the spirit that had made their small nation a great presence in the world. “We few,” Elgin said, “we happy few, we band of brothers assembled for foreign service, must agree to shed our blood together. Or so to speak.”
The newlyweds had just seen a vigorous London production of Henry V and Elgin had been particularly impressed by the passion with which Mr. Charles Kemble had delivered Henry’s St. Crispin’s Day speech. But her husband was no performer. Poor Elgin continued, trying to rally his troops to go into the breech. He spoke of the sacrifices that he and Lady Elgin, two patriotic Scots, were making in the service of the united kingdoms of England and Scotland, a union barely a century old. He proclaimed his young wife’s fortitude and commitment in making this dangerous voyage while in the family way. Of course he, being a gentleman and concerned only for her welfare, had offered to allow her to remain in the comfort of family while he sailed to Constantinople, or to refuse the post if that were her wish.
“But this valiant lady would hear of neither. Forgoing all that is familiar and dear, she would not send her husband off to distant lands without her by his side. I suggest that we emulate her graciousness and her spirit of sacrifice.”
The men nodded in Mary’s direction, but she felt no surrender from them. Elgin continued, elaborating on the urgency of their mission in the East. But he did not possess that quality of camaraderie that had made King Henry’s vow that “he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother” convincing. These men knew that in Elgin’s eyes they would never be his brothers. There was nothing in his words to give this away, but rather something in the demeanor that Mary knew made his staff regard him as stingy and cold. Besides, the reality was undeniable; given Elgin’s title and his position and his wife’s money, neither his physical person nor his pocketbook would feel the “sacrifices.”
“I suggest you contemplate the extraordinary opportunity this mission brings you. That, and the number of men who would be most anxious to replace you should you find it impossible to continue in my service,” he concluded.
Having said all that he was going to say upon the matter, Elgin stared frostily at his staff. His look and demeanor forbade any further comment from the men. Mary had seen this prickly side of her husband’s disposition before. Perhaps this was the way that men must manage those in their service. She was grateful and flattered that Elgin was the sort of husband who wished to include his wife in these affairs, for her curiosity about his work was boundless and she wanted to be a full partner in his every endeavor.
Finally, Reverend Hunt looked up at the skies and declared in a sulky voice, “The rain begins.” Then the staff went below to compose frantic requests for funds to their families that they might get into the post at the next port.
Hamilton took Mary aside. “Lady Elgin, I do not know if my family will be able to compensate for Lord Elgin’s thrifty eco-nom-ics.”
Mary patted him on the arm. “I assure you that I will not allow you to starve in our service,” she said, and this at least put a smile on the poor youth’s face. “You shall be very comfortable.”
“It’s beginning to rain, Lady Elgin,” her husband said. “You must go below.”
Mary turned to her husband, who still wore on his face the stern expression that he used with his staff. She wished that the private face that she saw in their moments of happy familiarity would return.
“These are obviously not men of means,” she whispered to him. “Can we not be more generous?”
“You are aware of the small and inflexible budget of six thousand pounds out of which we are to manage the entire embassy and ambassadorial staff? I suppose I should never have accepted this post. Diplomacy is notoriously a rich man’s game.”
“That is nonsense. You are perfectly suited to this post. The king himself thinks it so.”
“That is true. And yet His Majesty did not see fit to augment the funds. No, Mary, I’m afraid that if you feel sorry for the men, you shall have to find it in your heart to be more generous on their behalf, what with your greater purse.” His sweet expression returned, and he kissed her delicately on the forehead.
“I shall try, my darling,” she replied, happy to have returned to the place of affection in which they held one another. She found it intolerable when the sweet bond of their intimacy was broken. She could be playful to the point of insolence in their private life, but in public life he was the superior one, and she, as his helpmeet, wished to please him.
As she went below, she overheard Reverend Hunt speaking to Captain Morris about the injustice of the situation. “Lady Elgin’s father holds most of the land in Scotland; it’s a well-known fact. And we are being asked to deplete the meager resources of our families to subsidize His Lordship’s post!”
“Aye. The rich rarely give a black dog for a white monkey, my friend. It’s the way of the world.” Captain Morris sighed. “We all suffer the circumstances.”
Apparently neither the captain nor the men believed that they were getting a fair exchange from her husband. It occurred to her, perhaps for the first time in her life, that this was the notion that prevailed among all subordinates, and she made up her mind to do what she could to mollify the disgruntled, and to help her husband succeed in his mission.
MARY HAMILTON NISBET HAD set her sights on Elgin the first time he came to tea. She had heard about him all of her life, of course, since their families were practically neighbors, two prominent families living on opposite sides of the Firth of Forth—the Nisbets in the green, seaside village of Dirleton at their expansive estate, Archerfield, and Elgin on the Fife side at Broomhall, the mansion he was building in place of the more modest residence he had recently torn down. He was known to all simply as Elgin. Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kincardine, had not been called Thomas since the nursery, not since the day when, at five years old, he inherited the title.
Though she was already well acquainted with many of the details of his life, the two had never met. By the time Mary was born, in 1778, Elgin was away pursuing his education at Harrow, Westminster, and St. Andrews. As she entered Edinburgh society, attending the events that would naturally have thrown them together, he was reading law in Paris. They might also have met at court; Mary spent a great deal of time in London at Grosvenor Square with her grandmother, Lady Robert Manners, where she participated in all the festivities and rituals of the Season. Elgin’s mother, Lady Martha, was governess to King George’s granddaughter Princess Charlotte, and Elgin was no stranger either to London society or to the royal family. But Elgin was rarely in the city. After his studies in Paris, his mother was able to procure for him a military commission; he quickly advanced from the lower ranks and found himself in command of his own regiment, the Elgin Highland Fencibles. He had been elected one of the sixteen representative peers to the House of Lords at only twenty-four years of age, and by twenty-nine he held the rank of lieutenant colonel in His Majesty’s army. While managing these precocious accomplishments, he was in service in diplomacy in foreign lands. Thus, it was a well-known, if heretofore unseen, entity who, on a brisk December 8, as the year 1798 was dying down into a cold, brown winter, suddenly invited himself to tea.
The Nisbets were not mystified by his appearance. Mary was just twenty years of age, the sole heiress to their various estates, and a beauty. Her curly raven hair, her pale hazel eyes, and her slim but curvaceous figure attracted every man who set eyes upon those assets. Mary’s was not a rarified beauty, nor an ethereal one. She had the wholesome and unobjectionable he
althy good looks of a pretty milkmaid, wrapped nicely in the body of the heiress to the largest privately held landmass in Scotland. More than physical beauty, she also had what her parents referred to as sparkle. They were a little afraid of this quality; they did not approve of any sign of flightiness in a young woman. Their daughter was confident, but for the most part she remained modest in the way she behaved in front of others. She did not have airs of conceit; however, she could be unapologetically alluring in the company of men.
Mrs. Nisbet had coached her daughter to converse with Lord Elgin upon light topics that could not be found offensive on the tongue of a young lady, but Mary ignored her advice. There was something about Elgin that called up Mary’s flirtatiousness right from the start. While formal words were being exchanged and his hat and coat given to the footman, the two young people circled each other like beautiful, hungry animals at the same prey. But in this case, the prey was the other. Mary saw the alarm and disapproval in her mother’s eyes, but she did not care. She’d been courted by many men in the last eighteen months—all eligible and all predictable. None had excited her in the way that she knew was possible, not from experience, but from her reading of literature and love poetry. She knew that she was not being foolishly romantic, only demanding. How could one spend a lifetime reading about the great passions without desiring to experience them in one’s life? She knew that she was destined for marriage—respectable, conventional marriage. But why could not a respectable marriage be tinged with the kind of passion described by her favorite writers?
Here was Elgin, who looked at her with mirth in his eyes, which swept over the length of her body as he introduced himself. She felt herself shiver when his eyes returned to meet hers. Taking her hand and staring intently, he replied to their introduction with a single word: “Delighted.” That solitary word and the way that he uttered it told her everything she needed to know about the impression she’d made upon him.
“How was it that you entered diplomatic service?” Mrs. Nisbet asked as tea was poured, though all of Scotland already knew the story. Mary’s mother was a firm believer in giving a man as many opportunities as possible to brag upon himself.
“After I gave my first speech to the House of Lords, Mr. Pitt invited me to dinner.”
“Dinner with the prime minister. Oh my. And you were such a young man. Isn’t that exciting, Mary?”
“However did you cope, Lord Elgin?” Mary asked slyly, ignoring her mother’s shocked look.
Elgin smiled at Mary’s comment, but addressed her mother. “I was the right man at the right moment, Mrs. Nisbet. Mr. Pitt was rather desperately looking for someone to go to Vienna to make an alliance with Emperor Leopold II. Within twenty-four hours, I was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and on my way. I traveled for one year through Italy with the emperor until he died, but I’m afraid that I never convinced him to love Britannia.”
“Perhaps in the future you will be more successful in convincing others to love,” Mary said. She was engaging in risky behavior, she knew, but if Elgin was a man to reject a saucy woman, he was not the man for her. She also risked annoying her parents, but as she was their only child, she was sure that they would forgive her, and continue to love her. What did she really have to lose?
“She is joking with you, Lord Elgin,” Mrs. Nisbet said. “Mary is known throughout Scotland for her sense of play.”
“A charming quality, Mrs. Nisbet, and one that I appreciate.” He did not look at Mary as he spoke. Perhaps he was seducing her parents, one at a time, before he returned to completing the deed with the daughter. Or perhaps he sensed that the daughter was already won.
“You are very gracious, my lord,” Mrs. Nisbet replied, straightening her spine to sit even more erect than usual, which Mary knew was an indirect order to her to cease her insolence and emulate her mother’s correctness. Mr. Nisbet, on the other hand, was not one to endure foolish wordplay when there were serious matters to be seen to. He stood, ostensibly to adjust the fire, which he did, before turning to confront Elgin. “After the unsuccessful mission in Vienna, you were sent to Brussels and Berlin, am I correct, Lord Elgin?”
Mary wished that her parents would strike a balance between her mother’s solicitousness and her father’s inhospitableness, but she also knew that it was a mother’s duty to charm a suitable marriage prospect, and a father’s duty to put that prospect through the rigors of interrogation, no matter how illustrious his title. Mr. Nisbet would never allow his daughter—and her fortune—to go to a frivolous man, no matter how many titles the man had inherited. And Mrs. Nisbet would never allow her daughter’s impudence to ruin her chances with a good prospect for a husband.
“I was sent to Brussels to serve as liaison to the Austrian army. I chose it over Berlin so that I might return home from time to time to attend to my duties in the House of Lords. Eventually I was sent to Berlin anyway as British Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Prussia. I remained there three years. The mission, Mr. Nisbet, was successful for the English government, but the climate was less than satisfactory for my health, I’m afraid. I spent too much time in German spas taking the waters for rheumatism.”
Mrs. Nisbet took the opportunity to turn the conversation once again in Elgin’s favor. “I do not doubt your suffering, Lord Elgin, but despite your troubles, we heard from travelers that your German home provided shelter and entertainment for many an English and Scottish guest. You have a reputation as a generous and amiable host.”
Particularly to the ladies, Mary thought. Elgin’s conquests of foreign women were well known in Scottish circles. Rumors circulated that he had honed his ambassadorial skills on the nobility and the politicians, and his other skills on their wives and mistresses. Mary hoped that her parents were not privy to those rumors; Mr. Nisbet would never allow his daughter to marry a sexually profligate man. But she imagined that, at their advanced ages, her parents were too dignified to participate in such tawdry gossip.
“You are too generous in your compliments, Mrs. Nisbet,” Elgin said. “I merely did my social duty, as would any gentleman.”
From what Mary had heard, Elgin’s duties were indeed of a broad range. Elgin had been friends with another envoy who eventually married one of Mary’s dearest friends. The two girls spent many an hour gossiping over Elgin’s foreign exploits, as delivered in vivid detail by the young husband, who had used the prurient details to titillate his reluctant bride in the bedroom. “He told my Harold that he discovered in Paris that he had a natural talent in the erotic arts,” Mary’s friend had confided. “Which he refined in the company of that city’s wicked women!” But she added: “I could never repeat what I heard, Mary. You would never hold a good opinion of me again if you knew some of the things I allowed Harold to whisper in my ear!” Nothing Mary said could persuade her friend to reveal the specifics of Elgin’s exploits with French women of ill repute. But her friend did continue: “In the Prussian territories, he turned his interests to married women and widows. Imagine!” This much Harold did divulge: Elgin grew to love the company of older women because, in his words, they did not swell, they did not tell, and they were grateful as all hell. Mary’s friend had to explain the joke to her, much as Harold had had to explain it to his young wife, but once Mary understood the meaning, the two girls giggled until they were sick in the stomach and had to call for seltzer water.
“He sounds deplorable,” Mary had said insincerely, for to her eighteen-year-old ears he sounded most intoxicating.
“Oh no. Elgin is a gentleman. Harold assured me that he would never, never ruin a proper lady.”
Mary mused on these delicious tidbits of information as she watched the formidable Elgin attempt simultaneously to impress her father and to appear as modest as a gentleman must appear. Her amusement must have shown on her face.
“You find diplomacy amusing, Miss Nisbet?” Elgin asked.
“I am smiling because I am certain that in your more recent assignments, your ability to convinc
e our foreign allies to love the English were improved. At least that is your reputation.”
“She is joking again, Lord Elgin,” Mrs. Nisbet said, this time, more sternly. But Mary did not care. She knew the cards she was holding, and it was a winning hand. She was as desirable a bride as Elgin might hope for. Though this was their first encounter, she felt already as if she knew the man, and knew that their liaison was meant to be. She was prone to presentiment and had been since girlhood. She knew in advance when grim news was to arrive with the post. She could predict with fair precision when a favorite mare would give birth to a colt. And she could predict at this moment that Lord Elgin was making up his mind to ask her to be his wife.
“Indeed, Mrs. Nisbet, I hope she is not joking at all,” Elgin said, this time looking directly at Mary. “I should like to be thought very convincing in these matters, both now and in the future. But particularly in the present.”
After passing this preliminary interview with her parents, Elgin called upon Mary several more times, arranging to be alone with her on various walks through the gardens of Archerfield, and taking her hand at opportune moments, helping her across rocky terrain by putting his arm around her waist and caressing her side as thrills coursed through her body. This fast courtship culminated in a visit to his home, which was under construction—and was the talk of Edinburgh and its surrounding countryside.
“I am working with the architect Thomas Harrison,” Elgin said. “He has made his considerable reputation designing in the Greek Revival style, inspired by classical values and proportions, which he and I agree embody perfection in all aspects of art, architecture, and design.”
