Author’s Note
As I write this book I see in the newspapers that four drawings by Constable found in an attic wrapped in brown paper fetched nineteen thousand pounds yesterday at Sotheby’s
The great houses of England were filled with treasures in the seventeenth and eighteen centuries because their owners were ardent collectors. Anxious to preserve these collections for posterity, they entailed their possessions onto the future holders of the title ad infinitum.
So many of my friends pleading poverty after the Wars searched their huge ancestral homes for something to sell. One couple discovered a priceless pair of Chinese jade vases in a servant’s bedroom. Another found that the boots were cleaned on a table that was a perfect example of Queen Anne oyster walnut.
In the 1920s while showing me a Chinese cabinet, my host accidentally touched a secret drawer, which disclosed a pearl necklace. It was nearly green with age, but recovered its lovely sheen when worn next to the skin.
Christie’s opened their sales rooms in Pall Mall in 1766 to compete with Sotheby’s who had opened in 1744. There were at one time sixty auctioneers handling the pictures and furniture that Noblemen wished to sell.
Yet even the best valuers sometimes make a mistake. The Earl of Caledon sold the contents of his house a few miles from mine. His daughter was staying with me and we attended the sale. I was not very interested when a small ivory crucifix was knocked down at seventeen pounds.
It was subsequently discovered to be unique and was bought by the Victoria and Albert Museum for a sum exceeding six figures!
CHAPTER ONE ~ 1817
The quay at Dover was in chaos.
There were three ships unloading at the same time and others waiting out at sea for a place.
It seemed impossible for anybody to put down another pin on the soil of England.
There was a mêlée of guns, boxes of ammunition, trunks, bales, harness and saddles, besides horses, dizzy and still trembling from the terror of the sea, while the grooms attending to them seemed in much the same condition.
Stretchers were being carried ashore with men who were wounded and seemed on the point of dying and others, legless or armless, being assisted by orderlies who did not seem in much better shape themselves.
Besides which there were troopers who had lost their weapons and their kitbags and Sergeant Majors roaring orders that nobody appeared to listen to.
‘If this is peace,’ Colonel Romney Wood thought as he stepped down the rickety gangplank, ‘at least the War was better organised.’
At the same time although he told himself that it was sentimental, he could not help a thrill of excitement that he was, home after six long years of War in enemy territory.
He had hoped like most of the British Army that after the Battle of Waterloo and Napoleon Bonaparte’s exile to St. Helena they would be able to return home, but the Army of Occupation was, in the Duke of Wellington’s opinion, essential to the peace of Europe.
At first Colonel Wood had thought that his Commander-in-Chief's insistence on it was unsubstantiated, especially after the capitulation of Paris without further fighting.
But Wellington had no thought of interfering with the future French Civil Government. He was occupied as always after a battle with protecting civilians from Military excesses.
As far as the Prussians were concerned, they saw nothing wrong in heavy reprisals and the difference between the British and their allies had become evident as soon as the battle of Waterloo had been won.
Romney Wood had done his best not to become involved in political issues, but the Duke of Wellington was fond of him besides knowing that he was an exceptional soldier and undoubtedly one of his best Officers.
He therefore found himself not only looking after his own troops but being constantly sent off by Wellington to cope with the difficulties that appeared all too frequently like spectres to spoil the triumph of victory.
“Dammit all!” Colonel Wood’s younger Officers said to him almost daily. “What did we fight for if it was not to defeat Napoleon and be allowed to go home?”
They could not find any reason for the Duke’s insistence on an Army of Occupation and agreed with the French that the feeding of one hundred and fifty thousand men would require a miracle of organisation.
The Duke had sent for Romney Wood.
“They want me to send thirty thousand men home forthwith,” he said abruptly.
“I heard, Your Grace, that was the number that had been decided upon.”
“Decided!” the Duke said testily. “I am the one to do the deciding!”
“Of course,” Romney Wood agreed at once.
“I have already brought the Army down from one hundred and fifty thousand by sending home eight thousand men,” the Duke grumbled.
Romney Wood said nothing.
He knew that the Politicians in both countries would not think that enough. In January 1817 the Duke had said to the permanent conference of four Ambassadors,
“I confess that my opinion has altered and I would propose a reduction of thirty thousand men to begin on the first day of April.”
It was, most people agreed, a step in the right direction, but Madame de Staël and a large number of very attractive women were using every variety of allure in their extensive repertoire to bring about the total end of the Occupation of France.
Hopes, however, were dashed when as usual dilatory Cabinets kept changing their minds.
The Duke of Wellington showed Colonel Wood a letter from the Earl of Bathurst saying,
“Popular impatience in France to be rid of foreigners does not inspire me with a corresponding wish to leave.”
Romney Wood had laughed.
“I know exactly what you are feeling, Your Grace. Equally it would be a mistake to outstay our welcome to the point where it becomes a retreat.”
The Duke nodded.
He knew, as Romney Wood did, that the hostility between the French and British Officers was an increasing problem.
But now at last after more and more difficulties a large number of the British Army was back on their native soil.
Romney Wood thought as he crossed the Channel that the last three years had not been particularly pleasant ones.
There had undoubtedly been moments of enjoyment, especially in Paris where from a social point of view things had gone back to normal far quicker than might have been expected.
However, as he told himself over and over again, he had no wish for poodle-faking and preferred the battlefield to the boudoir and the roar of guns to the waltz.
At the same time, after enduring privations and desperate fighting both in Portugal and France, he had found both the food of Paris and its beautiful women something that he could not ignore even though there was something cynical in his regard of them.
What really perturbed him was that he would from today cease to be a soldier. He had sent in his papers and said ‘farewell’ to the Duke of Wellington before he left France.
“I shall miss you,” the Duke had told him briefly, but with a sincerity that was undeniable.
“My father died two years ago,” he replied to the Duke, “and it is therefore essential that I should go home and see to my own affairs.”
“Good Heavens!” the Commander-in-Chief exclaimed, “I had forgotten that you are now Lord Heywood!”
“I had no wish to use my titles while I was still soldiering,” Colonel Wood replied, “but I know Your Grace will understand that as I was an only child there is nobody else to see to the estate in my absence and I have in point of fact not set foot in England for six years.”
The Duke had not demurred after that, but Romney Wood had known with an ache in his heart how much he would miss the men he had serve
d with for so long and the friendships he had made in the War, which in peace would never be the same.
‘I am home!’ he tried to console himself as he picked his way through the debris on the quay.
Then his sentimental feelings were forgotten as he cursed a porter for running into him with a truck.
There was no possibility of getting away from Dover that night and it was only the fact of his superior rank combined with his air of authority and his exceptional good looks that enabled him to find a room to sleep in.
The following morning there were innumerable problems brought to him by men of his own Regiment, which he was obliged to help them to solve before he left.
He had also to conduct a personal interview and it was difficult to find in the general confusion in the hotel as well as in the streets a place where he could have a quiet conversation.
Having made up his mind before he left France that he would not go to London, but having arrived in England would ride home across country, he had written to his family Solicitors to send a representative to meet him at Dover.
He had no idea how difficult it would be not only to find the man who was waiting for him with a somewhat glazed expression on his face in the foyer of a hotel that was packed to suffocation with Officers or to find a room where they could talk without having to shout above the noise of a hundred other voices.
Finally the Hotel Manager offered Romney Wood the use of his own private office and, when he closed the door, it seemed for the moment to be an oasis of quiet,
“I had no idea when I asked you to come down from London, Mr. Crosswaith,” Lord Heywood told the Solicitor, “that the conditions at Dover would be so chaotic.”
“That is understandable, my Lord, in the circumstances,” Mr. Crosswaith replied.
He was a small dried-up-looking man nearing old age with white hair and wearing glasses and Romney Wood thought with a faint smile that he would have recognised him as being a Solicitor anywhere and in any company.
“First,” Lord Heywood said as Mr. Crosswaith sat down clutching his bulging briefcase, “I should thank you for the letters you wrote to me when I was in France. I found, however, that those I received in the last eighteen months were somewhat depressing.”
“That is not surprising, my Lord,” Mr. Crosswaith replied. “Many young men like yourself when they have left the Army are being unpleasantly surprised with the conditions here in England.”
“I had heard that the wartime economy had collapsed in poverty and suffering,” Lord Heywood said sharply,
“It is true,” Mr. Crosswaith agreed, “and I will not disguise the fact from your Lordship that there is a great deal of distress and social unrest throughout the country.”
This was something that Lord Heywood had already learned from the Duke who had paid a flying visit to England.
“Things are rough,” he had said. “Starving agricultural labourers are being hanged, but food shops being gutted and machines wrecked by Luddites do not solve anything,”
Lord Heywood was, however, at the moment concerned with his own personal problems.
“What I gathered from your last letter, Mr. Crosswaith,” he said, “is that the Heywood estate is almost bankrupt.”
“It’s not a word I like to use lightly, my Lord,” the Solicitor replied, “but it is an unfortunate fact that the farmers cannot pay their rent because they are making no money and, unless your Lordship has some source of income that has not been revealed to me, it will be hard to decide what you can do in the immediate future.”
“As bad as that?” Lord Heywood enquired.
And he knew without Mr. Crosswaith replying what the answer would be.
“Worse!”
“Very well,” he said, “we now have to decide what we can sell.”
“I anticipated that was a question that your Lordship would ask,” Mr. Crosswaith replied in his prim voice. “I have therefore made a list of the assets available. I am afraid there are very few.”
Lord Heywood frowned.
“What do you mean by few?”
Mr. Crosswaith coughed apologetically.
“Your Lordship must be aware that your grandfather, the third Baron, tied up everything that the family possessed in an entail, which it is impossible to break without there being three direct heirs to the estate alive at the same time.”
“I had no idea of that.”
“I have brought the deeds with me for your Lordship to see.”
“I am quite prepared to take your word for it, Mr. Crosswaith. What you are saying is that I cannot sell Heywood House in London or Heywood Abbey in the country and little or none of their contents.”
“That is the exact position, my Lord.”
He spoke in a tone of satisfaction because he had not had to spell out the bad news in detail himself
Lord Heywood drummed with his fingers on the deal table that the Manager of the hotel used as a desk.
It was stained with alcohol that had been upset and with ink and scarred with the rough edges of pewter pots, but Lord Heywood did not notice.
He was actually wondering how he was going to live on nothing for that was what the news that Crosswaith had brought him amounted to.
Looking back he could remember how flourishing the Heywood estate in Buckinghamshire, where he had been brought up, had seemed when he was a boy.
The farmers had been prosperous and the labourers smiling and happy. At the Abbey the stables had been filled with horses and there had been at least six tall young footmen in attendance in the pillared hall.
Outside a whole army of gardeners, stable hands, stonemasons, carpenters, woodmen, keepers and foresters made the Heywood estate one of the most enviable possessions in the country.
It did not seem possible that everything should have collapsed like a gas-filled balloon and that there was nothing left.
He told himself that this was impossible and he would find that Mr. Crosswaith was exaggerating.
“I promise you I have been into it very carefully, my Lord, in both the main houses, besides counting the other assets on the estate itself. But once again I am afraid that there is little or nothing that your Lordship can sell.”
“What about trees?”
“Those that were of any use were cut down during the early years of the War. Those that remain are either too old or too young and not suitable for ships’ timbers or for building houses.”
“There must be something!” Lord Heywood said and, however much he tried to control it, there was a note of desperation in his voice.
He was aware that he himself was in debt. It was for quite a large sum because there had been considerable drains on his purse this past year. It was not, as people might have supposed, because he had spent money on the beautiful but greedy women that Paris abounded in, but because he had helped so many of his brother officers whom he had considered at the time to be in a far worse plight than he was himself.
“I shall arrive home without a penny to bless myself with,” one of his Captains complained bitterly.
“Bust, broke, below hatches,” another and younger man told him. “This is what comes of fighting for your King and country, while those who remained at home are living off the fat of the land.”
There had been a loan here and a loan there that he had never expected to see again, but it was a price, Lord Heywood had thought, that he had paid gladly for the friendship, the obedience and the admiration that the younger men had given him both in the War and during the years of Occupation.
Now he knew that he had been too generous and had forgotten his obligations to his own people, the people whose whole life centred round the Big House.
He was aware that Mr. Crosswaith was looking at him with worried eyes.
“I shall wait until I return to The Abbey,” he said, “and see what can be done. But are you telling me that there is nothing in the Bank?”
“My partner and I, my Lord, carried out your wishes after your fa
ther’s death by paying the pensioners and the wages of those servants who stayed on until they could find other employment.”
“How many are left in London?” Lord Heywood asked.
“There is the butler and his wife, who are really too old and should be pensioned if there was a cottage available for them. The boot boy is seventy-three and the odd job man who I should imagine is getting on for eighty.”
“And in the country?”
“Fortunately almost all of the servants have been found other jobs,” Mr. Crosswaith replied. “The only one left is Merrivale, who you may remember was a footman in your grandfather’s time and later became butler to your father.”
“Yes, I know Merrivale,” Lord Heywood nodded.
“He is a very old man now and he and his wife were appointed caretakers of The Abbey. They live in a cottage in the stable yard.”
“Is that all?”
“Grimshaw, the Head Groom, died last year and so did Evans the gardener. And their wives are both deceased.”
“So there is only Merrivale left at The Abbey?”
“That is so, my Lord, but you will appreciate that there was no money to pay for new servants and anyway it seemed to us to be an extravagance until we knew when your Lordship would be returning.
“You are quite right,” Lord Heywood said, “and now for what can be sold.”
He put out his hand as he spoke and Mr. Crosswaith put a sheet of paper into it.
On it were written a dozen items in a clear hand.
“This is all?’
“I am afraid so, my Lord. The furniture in the State bedrooms, together with the pictures and the silver, are naturally entailed and anything else in the house, such as curtains, carpets and furniture in the minor rooms, would not be saleable at this moment except for such a small sum that it would hardly be worth mentioning.”
“And the same applies in London?”
“Exactly the same, my Lord.”
Lord Heywood’s lips tightened.
Then he said,
“I need not ask if there are any purchasers for land these days and farms in particular.”
“There is a glut on the market,” Mr. Crosswaith answered. “Every landlord is trying to dispose of his farms because they are unproductive. The Corn Laws that were passed to keep out cheap foreign corn have only resulted in more starvation without there being any prospect of the farmers receiving an economic price for their produce.”
203. Love Wins Page 1
