Her mother was even more active, scouring the parts of London she knew well, talking to those she could trust to be discreet, hinting to those in whom she had less confidence. She knew that during her service at the Linley house Emma had been attracted to the world of theatre, and although acting was not, for a woman, perceived to be much different from whoredom, Mary Cadogan knew it to be a far more respectable occupation.
‘I have managed to secure a position for both of us, Emma,’ said her mother, having got her daughter alone.
‘We have that here.’
‘You might, I don’t.’
Mary Cadogan fought to remain calm in the light of Emma’s pout; there was no doubt that her daughter relished the life, loved the clothes and male attention, and would put up not one jot of resistance to Kathleen Kelly when the time came for her to fulfil her side of their bargain. She also knew there was a wilful quality in that heaving breast.
‘Emma, do you believe me when I say I care deeply for you?’
That took Emma by surprise, making her answer sound weak. ‘As a mother should.’
‘More than most I know. Do you remember Hawarden?’
She nodded, her first recollection being of that huge feather bed, the kind she occupied by right now. It was soon replaced by the memory of the dark, heavy countenance of Sir John Glynne.
‘I gave myself to a man for whom I had little affection on the promise that he would see you educated.’
Emma’s reply had all the defensiveness of someone who had not appreciated the gift. ‘He didn’t, though.’
The smile on her mother’s face showed a real awareness of her own past foolishness. ‘No. I won’t say he lied to me – the attachment and the way it were governed was plain enough. But he evaded his word at the first chance presented, leaving me to fend for myself in a way that I did not relish.’
‘Here?’ Emma demanded, looking her mother straight in the eye.
‘It’s better in Arlington Street than it could have been. I don’t know that I’d have fallen so far as the street – I would have gone home rather than that – but have you ever stopped to ask yourself that with all the time I have been in this house, I have never scraped together much in the way of money?’
Emma couldn’t hold that eye contact. She knew that her negative answer would wound before she uttered the word ‘No.’ She heard the sigh though, not deep but a measure of the hurt.
‘You’ve seen the other nuns with the gifts they’ve been given stuck on finger or dress? Look Emma.’ Mary held up her ringless hands, and rubbed the top of her dress, which was free of jewellery. ‘Look back to the Steps, to your uncle Willy sat by the fire, shirking for a living. My da, stuck out on that damned marsh to keep marauding dogs from the sheep, was never much to bring food to the table. And your gran, for all her wiles, can’t fight increasing years. Then there was you!’
There was pain in those eyes a glistening of tears that spoke of years during which her mother’s desires had played second fiddle to the needs of the family, and an unspoken hint that it had scarce been worth it.
‘I know you sent money home.’
‘As often as I could, even selling that which I was gifted.’ The maternal voice was firm again, as Emma’s mother suppressed her memories and focused on her purpose. ‘Now, if you want to stay under this roof, I don’t know as I can stop you. But I hope and pray that you believe I have your best welfare at heart, and that if I was to advise you, you’d abide by what I say.’
Emma’s surrender was so meek and swift that it took her mother, geared up to continue the argument and unaware of how much guilt she had loosed, by complete surprise. It was a bonus that Emma was still young enough to see the need for conspiracy as a game. They had to get out of the house without Mrs Kelly finding out, and have rooms waiting for them to move into. London was no place to be on the streets. A few days without a roof and the deterioration in appearance became manifest. That meant accommodation was even harder to find.
James Graham was the provider. A Scotsman by birth, a doctor by training, he was also an innovator who sought cures outside the tenets of his profession, with its addiction to bleeding, blistering and laudanum. He was not a handsome man, rather stooped in his posture. His wig was rarely properly powdered and his narrow face with large bags under the deep-set brown eyes was far from attractive. But he was blessed with a silver tongue between his thick red lips and a persuasive personality, based on the assumption that if he believed something it must be true.
Graham, determined, forthright and sure of his own brilliance, had thrust himself into the world of fashion, claiming that he held the secrets of cures to innumerable ills that refused to answer to traditional methods, particularly in the article of procreation. Such nostrums, especially delivered with assurance, fell on eager ears. The rich and fashionable felt they had a God-given right to good health and were always willing to pay exorbitant sums to achieve it. But Graham’s great coup was to interest Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, the most fashionable hostess in London, in his electrical cures. With her endorsement, every door in the capital was open to him. If electrical therapy was good enough for her, causing her to shower fees on the Scotsman’s shoulders, it was good enough for the whole ton. Society clamoured for his attention in such numbers that he couldn’t cope.
His answer was a fanum, medicine with a touch of the theatricals, to be called the Temple of Aesculapius, which he was in the process of setting up at the Adelphi on the Royal Terrace in Bond Street. A mock Grecian edifice, it would be dedicated to health, with particular emphasis on all matters related to long life and the begetting of children. There he could treat people in numbers denied to him in a mere drawing room.
It also allowed Graham to extend his experiments. That it also added lustre to his name, by spreading it to a sector of society he had yet to reach was an added bonus. Dr James Graham became what he had always wanted to be: the talk of the town. In this round neo-classical hall, he had the perfect conditions he believed, to advance his ideas and take them to an audience that included the merchants, traders and businessmen of London, as well as the landed gentry.
It was no great distance from Arlington Street to Bond Street and Mary Cadogan had come to him through a friend, just at the moment when both were in need. The good doctor was sure that the physical presence of beauty would enhance his lectures, just as the purity of a sweet voice would help to set the tone and calm the nervous. With her connections to the world of the demi-monde, Mary was able to provide him with half a dozen handsome women who could be trusted not to disgrace his efforts, while she secured for herself the position of managing them. Emma, with her sweet, high voice, gained the place of chanteuse.
Not that either was right away thrust into work. Flush with money from the indulgent Duchess of Devonshire, Graham seemed indifferent to the fact that he was employing a pair for his spectacle without them, at that point, having much to do. He was an odd creature, evangelical in the way he propounded his beliefs, yet unable to shake off the impression that a charlatan lurked in his hollow chest. Tall, thin and stooped, with arms and legs that never seemed quite to co-ordinate with his body, he nevertheless had facial features that became compelling when combined with a deep, reassuring voice that in full rhetorical flow was quite spellbinding.
A man who had treated the Duchess and her friends to a dose of electricity was hard to argue with when he insisted on treating Mary and Emma. All his employees must see the benefits too. Emma was thrilled by the idea, unlike her mother, to whom the tingling that coursed through her limbs was the cause of alarm not pleasure.
The Adelphi was transformed: the windows were painted with portraits of the relevant Greek goddesses, those who spoke of good health, wisdom and fecundity. Doric columns stood at either side of alcoves where at night those recruited and costumed by Mary Cadogan would disport themselves, revealing just enough flesh and outline of figure to titillate the audience. Emma was given song sheets, which she w
as obliged to learn, her role to sing and so soothe those who came to visit, especially the night-time clients. They paid heavily, a crown a head to enter for the privilege of listening to the good doctor speak, to see him treat a patient or two while enjoying the suggestive portraits and the possibilities latent in the still life, semi-nude figures in the alcoves.
Any medicines or treatments they purchased occasioned great expense, swelling Graham’s profits. But to prove his philanthropic credentials, Dr Graham opened his temple during daylight hours to anyone who was sick or infirm at no charge for either treatment of curatives, leading to a queue made up of London’s unhealthy. This displeased everyone in the neighbourhood, except the quondam benefactor busy dispensing his free supply of pills and mild shocks. When they entered both groups, rich and poor, had to pass two enormous footmen, dressed as the heirs of Hercules, followed by a pile of walking sticks and crutches, physical evidence that the remedies proposed and administered were truly efficacious. The clients limped in and walked out.
Graham’s lectures were concerned with long life and procreativity, with much reference to the causes of sterility, and were full of expressions like ‘the staff of creation’ and the ‘valley of man’s entry to the light of life’. He would thunder at the point where he insisted that a dutiful act was no bar to that same manifestation occasioning pleasure. Fluids unmentionable by name took on different properties from their natural state when, using the properties of electricity, he had a hand in preparation for the ‘act of conception’.
At the centre of the room, roped off to the audience but preached over by Graham, stood his celestial bed, a gorgeous construct covered in silk and decorated with gilded lilies. This was available to childless couples for the princely sum of fifty pounds per night, the Latin inscription above reminding these educated patrons that it was a sad thing for a rich man to have no heir to his property. That was the last act of the night, when all others had gone home. Graham would admit whichever couple had booked his facility, treat them to the prescribed regimen, then leave the pair to cavort on his bed, assuring them that their union, previously unblessed, could not now be but fruitful.
For a man who spent so much time talking in a roundabout way about sexual congress, Graham was strangely indifferent to the possibilities he had created for himself in the fanum. The ladies who occupied his alcoves, indeed Mary Cadogan herself, were not prudes, and as a wealthy man – as well as their employer – he was in prime position to take advantage. Mary watched him closely, with particular regard to his dealings with Emma. But she had no cause to worry: he was benign in his dealings with all his female employees, vague and paternalistic rather than libidinous.
With the stipend from Dr Graham, Emma and her mother were free to depart Arlington Street, leaving at an early hour when only the skivvies were at large to see them go. They repaired to the Liberties of the Savoy, just south of the Strand. The streets might be narrow and the smell of the Thames too close for comfort, but it was a safe place, beyond the reach of bailiffs and the like. As Emma’s mother explained, ‘It’s where I came to when that scrub Glynne left me high, with debts that he failed to pay. That’s the first thing you must do if ever debt threatens, get into the Liberties where those who nab for Newgate are barred from operating. Change your name, as I did, so that everyone knows you by it. You’re safe in the Liberties but it’s no spot to make the means to eat. You has to go out for that, and a new name is just the thing to keep you out of debtors’ prison. So, as soon as I ran for here, I ceased to use the Lyon name.’
‘Can you not go back to it?’ Emma asked.
Emma’s mother had no desire to tell the truth, that she had no intention of ever reverting to the Lyon name, which held for her, in association, nothing but disappointment and hurt.
‘I’ve no desire to. The name Cadogan has a ring to it, which I’m fond of.’
‘I still wonder who they are addressing when people say Mary Cadogan.’
‘You’ll get used to it, Emma. I just hope that you’ve no cause one day to change your own.’
The shared room was small and cramped yet comfortable and Emma’s mother seemed content, although her daughter was not. She liked singing well enough, but when performing she was hidden from view. She longed to appear before the audience, ached to don one of her mother’s simple Greek costumes. And, though it was never mentioned, she missed the gaiety of Arlington Street, the gossip and the laughter shared with the other nuns, the picnics and the open carriages that made those people forced to walk regard her with envy. The comfort was another thing, as well as the pleasure to be had from acting the temptress while serving the tables.
Often she lay awake at night, listening to the sound of her mother’s gentle snoring, reflecting on the way that her life had been ordered by parental instruction. From the attempt at schooling to every domestic post she had occupied her mother’s hand had been present. Liberty from that held fear as well as anticipation and she would sometimes fall asleep wondering if she would ever be allowed to lead a life of her own.
CHAPTER 17
1776
‘Remarkable, sir,’ exclaimed Captain James Pigot, ‘close to a miracle given the depth of your last bout. You begin the New Year a new man.’
Nelson was sitting up for the first time in a week, able to feed himself. The faint tinges of pink in his cheeks were a long way from being termed colour, but it was a distinct improvement on the translucence that had been his lot since leaving Calcutta. The yellow tinge was fading too, though the weakness in his legs prevented him walking on a heaving deck.
‘I have a question to ask you, sir.’
The voice was still far from strong, but Pigot noted that uncertainty made it soft, not want of good health. Nelson seemed nervous. ‘Ask away.’
There was a pause of several seconds before the question was posed, during which Nelson rehashed all the pros and cons of enquiry that had filled his mind since the fateful day when his fever had reached crisis.
‘Do you believe in visions?’
‘Visions?’
‘They are related often in scripture, sir,’ he said, aware that he was speaking too quickly, ‘as being afforded to saints and the like.’
Pigot’s face darkened at the mention of saints. ‘There is a danger here, Mr Nelson that you may border on blasphemy.’
‘I do not mean to claim any such elevation for myself, sir,’ Nelson protested. ‘I only wish to enquire if mere mortals, a sinner even, is also open to such divine favour.’
‘I detect a notion here. You feel you have experienced such?’
He had to force out the reply. Divine retribution for blasphemy was not something to be trifled with. ‘I do, sir.’
‘The nature of this is?’
‘I feel I have been close to death, yet spared, called forth by God to a heroic future, called to serve my country.’ Seeing the other man’s doubt he continued hurriedly. ‘I need no longer fear death, having been so spared.’
‘Death is not to be feared, Mr Nelson. Dying in sin is.’
‘I would not claim purity, sir, only purpose.’
He went on, stammering, to describe the experience, the images of a dead yet saintly mother, the golden halo that had attended the vision, until it had turned into a blinding orb attended by thunder that beckoned him to some distant but weighty destiny. As he spoke Pigot picked up the Bible that lay on the table by Nelson’s cot, as if by doing so he could protect himself from the risk of transgression.
‘I cannot believe,’ Pigot said, as the youngster’s voice trailed off, ‘that heavenly visions are confined only to candidates for sainthood. Many times myself I have felt close to God, in that time between waking and sleeping, and, I confess, on my own deck. But I’ve never mustered the arrogance to claim a vision.’
Nelson replied with genuine humility, ‘It is the thought of such arrogance that checks me.’
Pigot laid a hand on his shoulder, which was skin and bone with little flesh. ‘
You have been ill, Nelson, very ill indeed. At one time I was rehearsing the words I would give to your uncle to describe your demise. Yet here you are, sitting up unaided, able to take victuals by your own hand. I do not doubt that you were close to death, and in that state you may have been blessed with insights denied to those who go through their days in robust health.’
The young man’s eyes flashed at that moment. ‘Then I should act upon it.’
‘If you believe it, yes. Damnation awaits you if it is fancy, just as it awaits you if, having been so sanctified, you ignore the divine injunction.’
‘My desire is to serve my country, sir. Whatever God has seen fit for me to achieve I would wish to place at the nation’s feet.’
Pigot was taken with the expression on the youngster’s face. The bright blue eyes, now in hollowed sockets, seemed to blaze. Colour filled the pallid cheeks and the cast of the head, as though fixed on a distant destiny, inspired rather than troubled him. Clutching his Bible harder he said with deep conviction, ‘We are all servants of God, and we are humbled before His majesty, just as we are all ordered by His grace.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘I think that what thanks might be offered are due to God,’ replied Pigot, sinking from his chair to his knees, Bible in hand. ‘Let us pray.’
Nelson was a walking invalid, albeit a weak one, when they raised the Cape of Good Hope, and able to stand as a member of a watch before they crossed the Equator going north. The cooling air seemed to invigorate him. Though not on the muster roll of HMS Dolphin he soon became a valuable member of the crew, taking on the full set of duties that went with the role of an aspiring officer. That included continuing his nautical education, which he pursued with a singular zeal that impressed his less driven colleagues and his uncle’s good friend, James Pigot.
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