Sir William

by David Stacton

  That same day he and Lady Nelson went alone to Lord and Lady Spencer’s.

  Across the table, Fanny, who had talked both left and right until she was dizzy, drew to herself some walnuts, peeled them, put them in a glass and offered them to Nelson, who was sitting opposite her. The gesture would prove to all that they were not estranged by anything more serious than a healthy, natural reserve.

  Nelson swept the glass aside so roughly, for he was a little in wine, that it shattered against a set dish, and glass and walnuts flew everywhere.

  Fanny was startled into tears. Lady Spencer rose and suggested that the ladies retire. And then, since she was hostess and so had first grab, descended majestically upon Fanny, so that with one thing and another, in three hours—once the gentlemen had come upstairs and the ladies had gone downstairs and the last carriage had departed through streets spread with invisible straw—it was possible for her to burst into her husband’s dressing room with her dramatic announcement.

  “She has told me how she is situated. She now knows all.”

  “Well, now she has seen what she says; no doubt she knows what she thinks,” said Spencer, unhelpfully. “But I wish she did not.”

  “The poor thing had to talk to someone or burst.”

  “I should say her bubble was burst already. It is a damned shame. The man is too indispensable to be dispensed with. Why could he not remain a bachelor beyond Gibraltar, like the rest of them, and leave his reputation intact? What else do we have brothels for?”

  “Spencer, that is a man’s view.”

  “Well, now it seems it is a woman’s business,” said Spencer with a reminiscent sigh, for he had not himself been abroad for some time. “But what is to be done?”

  “Why, send him off to be a bachelor,” said Lady Spencer, “and when he returns they will both be that much the older.” For she knew by experience that though a marriage can survive a long separation, passion cannot.

  “Ummm,” said Lord Spencer. “Ummmm.”

  *

  “I cannot live without you,” said Nelson, who was, alas, sincere.

  “You silly boy, you do not have to,” said Emma, who was, alas, now not. “We can all four visit back and forth.” It was still her hope that Fanny might be induced to sponsor her at Court.

  “For a woman who says nothing, she kicks up the devil of a row,” said Nelson. “How I long to embrace you. Has Sir William returned?”

  “Ah so do I,” Emma agreed hastily. “No, he went out, but will be back shortly.”

  “I must return to her.”

  “Nelson,” enjoined Emma, who thought Fanny a frail stick of a woman, but one never knew. “Be true unto yourself. Do nothing vile.” For a woman eight months pregnant, she did not show it. She looked a virgin still.

  “I shall not. Besides, she is in her flannels.”

  “In her what?”

  “Pink. Two suits. She feels the cold.”

  Well, let her, thought Emma, as so do I, despite a fire smoking green in the chimney, with cord wood 2/6 the basket, wet. It is a characteristic of the English winter that so few of the trees seem to have been felled in time.

  “My own dear wife,” said Nelson, who had figured out this way of regularizing both their union and their child, for he meant the thing to be legitimate, no matter how. “If only it were not for her.”

  He found the situation trying.

  *

  On the 13th, Fanny was presented at Court, in the presence of Nelson, to the Queen, who gave him a cursory nod and Fanny a most warmhearted, but at the same time shrewd, smile; for not since Soemias had so many women gathered together in one room to legislate so much upon a subject so severe. She had been got at.

  All of which Greville reported to Sir William with a wealth of, to himself, gratifying detail. Aristotle informs us that justice is wisdom without desire; but if there is to be justice in this world, there must also be tit for tat, and Greville was not one to forgive easily anyone who had used him as a ladder up. Now she should have a ladder down, and moreover, it should be the same ladder, but better placed.

  *

  The Morning Herald, though cautious of the libel laws, presented its readers with a sketch of Lady Hamilton’s character which left her none.

  “The lady of Sir William Hamilton, K.B., who with her husband has lately accompanied Lord Nelson to England … in her 49th year … figure … now on the wane … conversaziones are at least sprightly and unceasing … the chief curiosity with which that celebrated antiquarian Sir William Hamilton has returned to his native country …”

  “William, I am not a curiosity,” said Emma, at her most wrathful. “Sue.”

  “What about, my dear?”

  “I am not forty-nine.”

  “If it is not a misprint, you most certainly would be by the time the case was settled, in or out of court,” said Sir William. “It is only a newspaper.”

  “But it is read.”

  “Only by the quasiliterate,” said Sir William. “Do not distress yourself. The better part of the world has yet to learn to spell.”

  *

  His favorite niece, Mary Dickenson, had paid him a visit.

  “William, she is an enormity.”

  “Large, Mary, merely large.”

  “Uncle, we call because we are fond of you, not because we wish to hear your wit. I own I feel responsible, for I condoned the match. But she must not be seen with this man.”

  “This man is my close friend, Mary.”

  “Then so much the more reason he should see her less.”

  “We will not talk about it.”

  “Then ours will be the only silent tongues in London,” said Mrs. Dickenson, gathering up her gloves. “I am truly sorry. Come to see us when you can, but do not bring her.” And out she swept.

  Though the visit had made him angry, he discovered that Mary’s advice, when followed, gave him such peaceful moments as were permitted him. As usual, it was sound. So when he went to visit her, he did not bring Emma.

  *

  “If we are to go to Ranelagh, I insist that Greville come, too,” said Emma.

  “But, my dear child, why?”

  “Because he does not get out enough. Besides, it is Bannister’s benefit.”

  *

  “But if she wants you to come, why not?” asked Sir William, bewildered.

  Charles was indignant. “Very well, if we must go through this dumb show, why we will.”

  So to Ranelagh they went and promenaded themselves in the approved manner and were gawked at and heard Nelson praised; and with a little coaxing from the audience, Emma was prevailed upon to sing, which she did most affectingly, a ballad about Nelson, of course. Once the song was ended, she seemed content to go home, and Greville equally eager to hand her into the carriage.

  “You have the memory of an elephant,” snapped Greville, which was only half of what he wished to say, a perfectly balanced phrase, but he dared not complete it.

  “Yes,” said Emma. “I am so glad you could come with us after all. Good night, dear Greville.”

  There was nothing he could do. He must bide his time.

  *

  On the 18th, both couples went to Covent Garden, as an example of solidarity. The applause was deafening. Nelson bowed, as to a sea surge, which considering what the sea had washed his way, was only courtesy. The Reverend Edmund burst into tears. The orchestra played “Rule Britannia,” with Miss Knight’s extra verses sung by all.

  Everyone then sat down: Lady Hamilton on Nelson’s right, Lady Nelson on his left, so that he was wedged between them; and the two older men behind. The performance was that last new comedy called Life. Lady Nelson wore white, with a violet satin headdress (the color of mourning), and Lady Hamilton a blue satin gown with black plumes on her head (to adorn the coach).

  *

  At night, now, Nelson often walked the streets, in that winter weather both an eccentric and an eerie occupation. Sometimes he would get as far toward t
he haunts of Tyburn Hill as Shepherds’ Market, there to sip grog at midnight among ruffians and go unrecognized. Sometimes he went into Hyde Park and let the snow whirl around him, as though he were inside one of those glass balls they give to children which, when overturned, produce a flurried flocculence around a central figure, though the flakes settle in time and must be shaken up again. Putting his hands in his pockets, he trudged on, a small, compact rage, intensely cold.

  It was a nightmare, and as in a nightmare, these white expanses were sometimes crossed by fugitive and curious shapes. He did not notice. By this time in his walk, he had entered the immense silences of Grosvenor Square, to stare up at a few dimly lighted windows in Beckford’s house, at number 22. Since he could not enter this door at this hour, back to Dover Street he went. He did not look well.

  On the 25th, they went, all of them, to see the play Pizarro, with Kemble, who had never been better. The animals go in two by two, but stop at four. The heat was so great that Lady Nelson fainted, had to be carried from the box, and was therefore applauded when she rallied sufficiently to be supported back into it again. She returned the applause with a bow, and sat down.

  Lady Hamilton, who had not fainted, but who felt the heat, also bowed.

  Nelson was leading too social a life. Lord St. Vincent wrote to warn him of its dangers, for there was much risk of illness in going out of a smoking hot room into the damp, putrid air of London streets. Nonetheless, out he went, for he could not abide to stay in. Lady Nelson was debarring him from his station, if not at the side of his child, at least at the side about to produce it.

  “The reason why Lady Hamilton has not been presented at Court,” explained The Morning Herald, in its mendacious way, “is her not having received any answer from Her Majesty to the letter of recommendation of which her Ladyship was the bearer from the Queen of Naples.”

  *

  “We are going to Beckford for Christmas,” said Emma. “Would you like to come along?”

  It was one of those evenings when Nelson had come in out of the snow.

  “Yes, I should.”

  *

  “Do you mean you are going there without your wife?” demanded Fanny.

  “Sir William is a very old man and a very close friend. He may not see many more Christmases.”

  “I dare say not.”

  “It is useless to argue. I am going.”

  Beaten brass is one thing; beaten putty quite another. Neither was wax in the other’s fingers, but the process is called cire perdu. It is impossible to argue with a public monument. He went.

  *

  They stayed at Salisbury overnight, in order to observe the prospect first by day, for though Beckford had called Horace Walpole’s Twickenham a Gothic mousetrap, his own folly towered like a Gothic guillotine and was accounted thereby a considerable spectacle.

  And there it was, all 276 feet of it, casting a sundial shadow through the light sprinkling snow, a sight for sore eyes, and those rubbed in disbelief.

  “O tu severi religio loci,” said Nelson (for he had had Latin as a boy). “By God, the thing is real.”

  “On the contrary, it is principally plaster of Paris,” corrected Sir William. “But that, I grant you, of an inspiring cast.”

  Getting out of the carriage between two rows of remarkably handsome footmen, all carrying candelabra in broad daylight, they ascended a flood of stairs if not into the warmth of the nave, at least toward the source of warmth, for the draft of frozen air which swept down the hall had some heat caught on its fore edge, like fluff on a broom. The footmen advanced ahead of them, to illumine the Gothic gloom.

  “My goodness, where does he find them all, and all so alike?” said Emma, whom Aprile had taught tolerance, and since she was that rare thing, a sexually satisfied woman (her only passion was guttling), she did not mean it ill.

  Behind them clanged (it had taken four months and two acoustic tinkers to produce that clang) the immense, authentic but copied doors.

  “Welcome, welcome, welcome,” piped a small still voice a hundred feet away, “to the Halls of Vathek.”

  Unfortunately the building shook in the slightest breeze and snow on the roof was always a problem. The floor was stone. It was not Emma who set the hall in motion with majestic tread.

  For the last sixty feet of the hall, they were entertained by a medley of “O God Our Help in Ages Past,” “Green Grow’th the Holly” and “The Hero of the Nile,” pealed from the bells in the belfry, though by the time they reached the crossing, this had modulated reassuringly into “Hearts Stout as Oak,” and the weather was warmer.

  Here a butler met them and led them around a statue of Antinoüs and a sleepy immovable St. Bernard called, to judge by the cellaret around her neck, Lucy, toward the parlor. Beckford was waiting to meet them—surrounded by a few friends, all glittering, all young—himself garbed in Court costume, a Turkish pelisse bound with fur, and a velvet smoking cap.

  They found there an assembly of all that was best in the worlds of title, rank and glory, which is to say, people like themselves, who were not acceptable to the proper cadres of polite society, and therefore had to accept each other; who instead of discussing dogs, the public schools, their children, the weather and each other, prattled about Kant, Kemble, Coutts, and the intimate, archly delineated lives of people they had met perhaps once and would never know. Always by first name and of course knowingly, with that simper to be found nowhere but in a chafing dish—the soft simper of a freshly coddled egg. Take away the daily duchess of which each cognoscente has but one, and he would dwindle at once, without a head to stand on.

  “Molly …” “Fred …” “Old Q …” “The most divine …” “… the sidling, effeminate nonesuch came ogling across the lawn, and poor Paddy was in a dither, not knowing how to address him …” “Grant her at least the wit to choose a good banker.” (The future Duchess of St. Albans had just come up for the last time.) “Such an ordinary little man.” “Overdressed.” “The last bagwig in London.” “… Lady Conyngham.” “Of course, absolutely impossible.” “Dicky said …” “A fetishist. Largest collection of Delft wig stands in Cumberland … Bald as an egg and likes her to paint his pate with Chinoiserie designs in robin’s-egg blue.” “Which was wicked of him, really …” “… is a clergyman’s son, I suppose she appeals to his sense of sin, which as you can see, is enormous.” “Then the wig is lowered and that’s all there is to it. She takes her guinea and goes. Most odd.” “… but ten years ago, when she could not only reach the note to which she now aspires, but swung there like a monkey …” “His mother is furious of course, because the property is entailed, and who could beget a child upon a wig stand?” “Very sad.” “… so I said, call him Mr. It is a courtesy title merely.”

  *

  “Who’s Molly?” asked Nelson.

  There was a short scurrying whirr back into the wainscot. He was an outsider. He came from where the world’s work is done. “Who’s Molly?” they asked blankly, unwilling to face the implications of such a question. For who was Molly when you came right down to it? A mere nobody who had been so fortunate as to marry, some thirty years ago, the second son of Lord Ipswich, who had then no possible pretensions to the title …

  *

  “You must remember that the world, according to the Brahmins and Warren Hastings, is supported by an elephant which stands on a tortoise. If you have not eyes in your head, neither is this the time to explain the exquisite symbolism of the device. But you have only to look to see which one is which …” “Of course genuine. Angerstein almost bought it, though true, how would he know …”

  With that unerring instinct for hindering the actual performance of the sexual act which women do have, Emma sat down between two young Honorables who had been looking at each other speculatively, and did not get up again until one of them had seen, hopelessly, the other drift away.

  *

  “Such a nice quaint old man. A perfect period piece.” “A museum of
the tastes of yesterday.” “Related to everybody.” “Well, I can quite see they hold her up. But what does the tortoise stand on?” “Water, you silly thing. So you see, it all works out.” “Schlüter, in his work on Claude, cites it nowhere, but of course the index is bad.”

  *

  “Emma!” cried Beckford, whose sincerity was apt to be intense, led her forward, as though on a string, and presented her to the company. “You superior being. You Madonna della Gloria. You unique and marvelous creation. So glad you could come, for a few days repose, uncontaminated by the sight or prattle of drawing-room parasites.”

  (Not at all delicate, ill-bred, often very affected, a devil in temper when set on edge. She affected sensibility, but felt none—was artful—he wrote in his memoirs.) And casting over her a beady eye, he made her welcome. He was a true friend.

  Emma enjoyed herself. Christmas is a dour time for the childless, but they were all quite jolly, though the only mistletoe discoverable hung in the butler’s pantry, and the guests had a habit suddenly to disappear in ambiguous pairs.

  As for Fanny, who was on both their minds, let her go sailing to sea in a bedpan, since that was all she understood. Nonetheless, Nelson looked forlorn and proved difficult to cheer.

  On Christmas Eve, Emma did the Attitudes, “not the ruin of their former glory,” as Master Godfrey (one of the more anomalous guests, but a most talented boy soprano) said, “but the tumulus,” and was rewarded with a ravished glance. He had found a variation on a joke grown thin. He had earned, if not their gratitude, at least a moment of their attention. He promised well.

  Since it was not prudent at this late date to move about, she did Agrippina with the Ashes of Germanicus, with the assistance of a chair. In a dim light, she was most affecting and most applauded.