by M C Beaton
The Earl of Carrisdowne turned over the problem of Bascombe’s in his mind. What a pity the wretched place had become fashionable.
Then his face cleared.
Although he had never tried to be a leader of fashion, he was, nevertheless, because of the elegance of his clothes and the haughtiness of his manner, already looked up to as an arbiter of fashion.
He would make Bascombe’s unfashionable.
A little word dropped here. A little word there.
It was all very simple.
Chapter Three
The Earl of Carrisdowne was to be seen gracing many balls and parties during the following week.
He always managed to turn the conversation to Bascombe’s. “You like the place? How odd. I thought only peasants and mushrooms went there,” he said.
Until the full force of his social disapproval hit Bascombe’s, Henrietta, flushed and happy, did a roaring trade.
She had employed a boy from the workhouse. He was an ill-favored lad of fourteen called Esau. Esau had a bad squint that gave him a cunning look, belying the gentle soul within. To have been transported from a miserable life to a West End confectioner’s, to be able to eat cake for the first time in his life, persuaded the deeply religious Esau that all his prayers had been answered.
Even Miss Hissop, who had not at first approved of the boy, had her heart melted by the vast amount of work he did. Esau slaved early and late. No more did Henrietta have to nurse an aching back after stoking the bakery fires or taking down and putting up the heavy shutters. Esau was thin and round-shouldered. But he was very wiry and strong and could run like the wind.
He was to be dressed in red-plush livery as soon as his new suit of clothes arrived from the tailor, and he was to have his hair powdered.
The Duchess of Gillingham had ordered a centerpiece from Bascombe’s for a dinner party. It was Henrietta’s first order, and she planned to make it the talk of London.
The first signs of disaster came one day the following week. By noontime, although many gentlemen had hurried in to buy Bascombe’s elixir, none had stayed to drink it. Instead, they took the bottles with them, slinking in and out of the shop with a furtive air.
Henrietta did not know that Mr. Clifford and Lord Charles had gone into the country to attend a prize fight, and so she thought they had deserted her as well.
Then the final blow fell. The Duchess of Gillingham sent a servant, canceling the order for the centerpiece.
Gloomily Henrietta told Esau to put up the shutters at six in the evening. Then she called a council of war.
“What has happened?” she demanded. “Why are we become unfashionable again?”
“London society is fickle,” wailed Miss Hissop. “Do let us leave this dreadful place before we lose any more money, Henrietta.”
“No,” said Henrietta, her soft mouth setting in a stubborn line. “Mr. Clifford seemed much taken with you, Josephine, and Lord Charles with Charlotte. Why have they suddenly sheered off?”
“I am suddenly so very tired,” said Charlotte listlessly. “I was kept going by the excitement of success. I cannot bear to think of making and baking cakes again for people who do not come. Now, even the duchess has canceled her order. Could you have done it anyway, Henrietta? It is very difficult to make one of those elaborate centerpieces.”
“Yes, I could have done it; better than Gunter’s, too,” said Henrietta. “Sir Benjamin Prestcott’s chef used to let me watch how he created miracles out of spun sugar. I would spend my time with him in the kitchen while Papa was attending Sir Benjamin. He was a Frenchman who had escaped the Terror. He was an artist.”
“Something has gone badly wrong,” said Josephine, wrinkling her smooth brow. “Do you think someone had a disordered stomach after eating here and talked of it?”
“No,” said Henrietta slowly. “If that had happened, they would have descended on us and complained loudly. That is what they are like,” she said seriously, as though explaining the customs of some strange aboriginal tribe.
“Could go to a boozing ken and find out,” said Esau suddenly.
“I beg your pardon?” said Henrietta.
She waited patiently while Esau worked out a translation in his head. Esau had talked nothing but cant all his young life. He was trying hard to learn the King’s English and was having as much difficulty with it as a foreigner.
“I shall go to a pub where the flash servants hang out,” he said carefully, “and ask questions.”
“Splendid!” said Henrietta. “Miss Hissop, give Esau a few shillings.”
“He should not be encouraged to go drinking,” said Miss Hissop stiffly.
“I’ll only drink shrub,” said Esau. Shrub was fruit cordial mixed with rum.
“Only one glass, then,” said Miss Hissop, counting out the money.
“Give him two shillings, Miss Hissop,” said Henrietta. “If he wishes to get information, he may have to buy a servant some beer.”
Esau took the money and went out into the cold, blustery evening.
He had a fund of underworld gossip and knew in which pubs to find the upper-class servants, since those hostelries were often frequented by thieves looking for information on how to break into some noble’s house and steal the silver.
He was gone over an hour. Henrietta heard him returning, the boy’s swift, light steps coming running along the street from Piccadilly. Esau never walked.
She went to the door and let him in.
“I found out, mum,” he said triumphantly. He started on a long story. Henrietta had to take him back over it time after time to iron out all the cant phrases so that she could understand. At last she had it all.
“Only peasants go to Bascombe’s,” the upper servants had told Esau.
“Why?” Esau had asked, and had kept on asking until it had come out that that was what the Earl of Carrisdowne was saying, and what the earl said was law.
“Oh, dear,” said Miss Hissop, when Henrietta repeated Esau’s story. “You know, Lord Charles is the earl’s younger brother, and he has been paying a lot of attention to Charlotte. This must be the earl’s way of trying to put us out of business.”
“But did you not say that Lady Sarah is his sister? She still sends a servant for cakes.”
“Fat as a pig,” said Esau suddenly. “Earl don’t like that neither.”
“It must be to put us out of business,” frowned Henrietta. “This earl has not been here himself. He probably disapproves of Lord Charles’s visits.”
“Not ’arf,” said Esau. “Nor Mr. Clifford’s neither.”
“But what has Mr. Clifford to do with the Earl of Carrisdowne?”
“Chums,” said Esau. “Close as inkle weavers, they is. Carrisdowne said t’other night…” here Esau’s voice rose to the strangled falsetto he considered upper-class, “‘Any fellow going to Bascombe’s is indeed making a cake of himself.’”
“Is this earl so powerful?” marveled Henrietta.
“Oh, yes,” said Josephine sadly. Josephine picked up a great deal of gossip from the lady customers. “All the debutantes talk of little else. He is the catch of the coming Season. Rich, handsome, titled. The ladies say he looks deliciously like the wicked earl in a circulating library romance—all dark and overbearing.”
“He is a monster,” said Henrietta. “He must have so much money, and we have so little. Why cannot he leave us alone?”
“Lord Persham’s underfootman told me real ladies don’t work in shops,” said Esau. “I drew ’is cork—may the good Lord forgive me,” he added piously.
“You did the right thing,” said Henrietta firmly. “But it is Lord Carrisdowne who should have his nose punched. Do you know, Esau, I am beginning to understand every word you say.”
“I knew I could talk flash if I put me brainbox to it,” said Esau proudly.
“Then, that is that,” said Charlotte, her eyes filling with tears.
Josephine began to cry as well. “I h-have never m-m
et anyone as n-nice and kind as Mr. Clifford before,” she sobbed. “Now all I have left is a future of being beaten day and night by my papa. And I shall n-never s-see Mr. C-Clifford again.”
“Fustian,” said Henrietta. “What we need is someone more powerful than the Earl of Carrisdowne to bring us back into fashion. There is the Prince Regent.”
“No one seems to follow the Prince Regent, not when it comes to fashion,” said Charlotte, drying her eyes. “Mr. Brummell is still the leader. No one talks about anyone else but Brummell and Carrisdowne. But I believe he is harder to reach than the Prince Regent.”
“Of course,” breathed Henrietta. The fame of the great dandy had reached even the village of Partlett. Beau Brummell was an intimate of the Prince Regent. He had changed fashion by introducing impeccably tailored clothes, clean linen, and starch—‘plenty of it.’ Although the Beau himself was reported to be a miracle of understated elegance, most of his followers overdid his advice. Sometimes young men wore their neckcloths so high, and stiffened with so much starch, that the wearers could not turn their heads.
One young man was reported to have turned up at a dinner so starched that when he wanted to speak to the footman standing behind him he had to bend his head back until his face was horizontal. Another young man burned his chin by trying to iron the bows of his neckcloth after it was tied.
“I have an idea… I think,” said Henrietta cautiously. “I must find out what Mr. Brummell looks like. Where does he live?”
“I’ll find out, miss,” said Esau, pulling his forelock.
Again he disappeared into the night, while Henrietta and the other ladies grimly set to work, trying to preserve as many of the day’s uneaten delicacies as they could.
After only half an hour, Esau was back. “Mr. Brummell lives at 13 Chapel Street, which is just at Park Lane, off a South Audley Street, just a few streets away, miss.”
“Good,” said Henrietta.
“What do you plan to do?” asked Charlotte.
“I shall tell you after I have had a look at this famous Beau,” said Henrietta, “but let me tell you one thing, Charlotte and Josephine. You may dry your tears, for Bascombe’s is not going to fail!”
Henrietta had learned quickly that the ton did not keep country hours. The gentlemen who crept into Bascombe’s at ten in the morning for their elixir were usually going home.
So at two o’clock the following afternoon, on a freezing day with the metallic smell of approaching snow in the air, Henrietta set out to walk to Chapel Street, a sketch pad under her arm.
The wind beat against her thin cloak and set it flapping about her ankles. When she got to Chapel Street, she was forced to keep walking up and down at a brisk pace, not only to keep warm, but to stop drawing any gentleman’s attention to her.
Any woman strolling about at a leisurely pace, unescorted, was bound to be taken for a prostitute. She wished she had brought Esau with her.
How would she recognize the famous Beau, he who had evidently said that if people turned to stare at you in the street, then you were badly overdressed?
Just as she was about to give up, for flakes of snow were beginning to fall, she saw a slim young man emerge from Number 13. Two giggling debutantes, passing by with their maids in attendance, cried, “Only look! There is Mr. Brummell!”
Henrietta, now stationed on the opposite side of the street, whipped out her sketch pad and began to draw rapidly.
Almost as if he had noticed her and was gratified at the attention, the Beau posed on the steps of his house, slowly pulling on his gloves.
He was wearing a blue swallowtail coat, tailored by the famous Weston, over a fifteen-guinea waistcoat from Guthrie’s. His pantaloons were buff-colored and tucked into glossy Hessian boots. Gentlemen were beginning to adopt pantaloons because “Napoleon and his upstarts” had adopted breeches. He had a high-crowned beaver hat on his head of light-brown curls. His face was humorous, the nose flattened and upturned, the result of a horse having kicked it.
While Henrietta sketched busily, he finished drawing on his gloves and strolled into South Audley Street, his toes turned outward as he walked, evidently heading for St. James’s.
Henrietta closed her sketch pad with a sigh. Her plan must work.
After the confectioner’s had closed that evening and the chores had been done, Henrietta set to work in the kitchen with the sketch pad beside her.
Charlotte and Josephine were curious as to what she was planning, but Henrietta sent them all to bed, saying she would need as much help as she could get on the morrow, for they were shortly to be fashionable again.
When they all appeared in the kitchen for breakfast at six in the morning, it was to find Henrietta asleep with her head on the table. In front of her stood a foot and half high statuette of Beau Brummell, made out of spun sugar and colored with vegetable dye. They circled around it in awed silence. It was, they were sure, Beau Brummell to the life. They knew that Henrietta had gone out to sketch him, but not that she meant to create a confection from that hurried drawing.
Even the Beau’s eyes sparkled where Henrietta had placed a coarse grain of sugar near the center of each pupil to catch the light. His cravat of white sugar was as delicately sculptured as the original.
Henrietta stretched sleepily and yawned, and then grinned up at the circle of admiring faces.
“It is wonderful,” said Miss Hissop. “I knew you were a good artist, Henrietta. I never realized to this moment that you were a genius!”
“Are you going to display it in the window?” asked Charlotte.
“No,” said Henrietta. “Esau’s new livery arrives today. He is to be washed and brushed and then he will take it to Mr. Brummell as a present.”
Esau was so excited at the idea of his new livery that he even submitted to taking a wash in a tin bath in the kitchen behind a sheet pinned up as a screen.
He privately thought the whole business of bathing was shameful and indecent and had anyone other than Henrietta told him to scrub himself, he would most definitely have refused.
But Henrietta’s soft voice and large brown eyes, which smiled on him in such a merry way, had done more for poor Esau than any workhouse whippings. What Miss Henrietta wanted, Miss Henrietta should have. The bathwater was scented with rose petals, and Esau began to find the novelty of washing quite pleasant.
Miss Hissop thought Henrietta had gone too far by insisting the boy wash himself all over. But Miss Hissop had to admit to herself that Henrietta had very odd notions when it came to washing and even soaped and washed her own hair, which everyone knew could lead to all sorts of agues and fevers.
Dressed in his best and looking even more sinister with his hair powdered—it seemed to accentuate his squint—Esau set out.
He came back quite crestfallen. He had hoped to have presented it to the Beau himself, but Mr. Brummell’s servant had simply taken the large beribboned box and told Esau rudely to “hop it.”
Although Beau Brummell’s household effects boasted a dinner service of twelve oval dishes, twenty soup plates, and seventy-eight meat plates, as well as nine wine coolers, three claret jugs, a dozen hock glasses, and forty others, Mr. Brummell usually dined out at friends’ houses.
But that very evening he was holding one of his rare dinner parties. Henrietta’s statue was not exhibited on his dining table, but on a special stand placed in the middle of his chintz-upholstered, Brussells-carpeted drawing room upstairs where he received his guests.
Candles had been arranged to set the grains of sugar in the candy eyes sparkling to perfection. His guests exclaimed, admired, and all began to gossip about Bascombe’s. “Who is saying it is a common establishment?” asked Mr. Brummell crossly. “In my opinion, it is the home of a genius. And you say Bascombe is not some ancient pastry cook but a pretty, genteel lady?”
“Carrisdowne says no one who’s anyone goes there,” was the reply from all sides.
Mr. Brummell said gently, “When could Carrisd
owne—such a stiff soldier one expects him to wear a cannonball in his stickpin—when could our military friend ever appreciate the finer things of life, whether a painting, a pretty ankle, or…” he waved his quizzing glass at the statue “… a work of genius?”
Mr. Brummell had only a nodding acquaintance with the earl. But he was vastly annoyed that society should follow anyone else’s dictates.
“I have heard that he is a bully, horse-whipping sort of fellow,” went on Mr. Brummell. “Oh, he is a fine figure of a man and dresses almost as well as I myself. But he has such a badly dressed mind.”
“Such a badly dressed mind,” muttered everyone gleefully, saving those bon mots to pass around at less exalted gatherings.
“Now Gunter’s,” went on the Beau pensively, “has become quite dull. I actually brushed shoulders with a merchant there the other day, and had to ask my valet to throw the besmirched coat away.”
Mr. Brummell’s views could not damn socially such a marriageable man as the Earl of Carrisdowne. But they could, and did, bring Bascombe’s roaring back into fashion.
By the end of another week, Henrietta had the pleasure of being able to save a daily table for Mr. Clifford and Lord Charles, who had arrived back in London and to employ three kitchen maids.
The Duchess of Gillingham renewed her order for a centerpiece. Henrietta sent her “Hannibal Crossing the Alps,” taken from Turner’s famous painting, which had just been exhibited at the Royal Academy. Marzipan elephants strained up sugar mountains, laden with baskets of tiny sweetmeats wrapped in gold and silver foil.
Bascombe’s appeared for the first time in the social column of the Times.
Mr. Clifford, grown courageous, laughed in the Earl of Carrisdowne’s face and accused him of behaving like a Methodist. “Imagine,” said Mr. Clifford, “what a figure of fun you look trying to stop your brother and your best friend from visiting a respectable confectioner’s in the middle of the afternoon. You have a badly dressed mind.”
