A Fine Retribution

by Dewey Lambdin

  Well-off at last or not, Lewrie pictured growing stacks of silver shillings in his head.

  “Here in the front, sir, under the street, actually, there is a large space for fuel,” Penneworth told them. “Coal, wood, and such?”

  They took a look at that, then, as long as they were on the basement level, they went out into the back garden to take a look at that, and the stables and coach house.

  There was a stone area, then stone steps up to the garden proper, which might have been well-tended in the past, though was now over-grown with scraggly grass several inches long, and some wilting ornamentals. There was a pump lever, a match to the one in the kitchen, to draw water from the company that supplied water to the district.

  The stable and coach house had room for two coaches, and at least six horses, plus tack room, hay and grain bins. Above, there was the sparse lodgings for a coachman, groom, and stable boy, if Lewrie was ever of a mind to hire such people on.

  “First floor, sir?” Penneworth suggested once they were back inside, and the rear door locked with a loud clank. They went up the back stairs to the ground-floor hallway, then up the front stairs to the first storey, Penneworth describing the curved mahoghany railings on the way up.

  The upper hall was also done in sky blue; six feet wide, they were told, more than sufficient for servants with trays, the moving of furniture, and a sense of spaciousness.

  There was a front drawing room overlooking the street, with a set of three large windows, this time, equal in size to the parlour below on the ground gloor, done in the same white woodwork and trim, but painted almost a teal blue.

  “And not a bit of wallpaper in sight so far, thank the Good Lord,” Lewrie said, for he’d never been big on florals, reproductions of ancient Rome or Greece, or whimsical Chinese gardens and birds.

  Off to the right of the drawing room, above the foyer, was a smaller room with only one of the windows, what Penneworth termed a library or study. The rest of the first storey was made up of bed-chambers with dressing rooms, four of them all told, and at the very back, just off the stairs that led to the second storey, was the “necessary closet” which, thankfully, had its own window for ventilation. Chamber pots in each bed-chamber could take care of night-time urination, but the “necessary closet” was for serious work, one with two wooden seats of ease with a shoulder-high partition between, and doors in front of both so the night soil could be taken down the back stairs by the servants each morning without disturbing the “air” of the house.

  The second storey proved to be the highest, with a decent-sized nursery and bed-chamber for any children of the house, and servants’ rooms behind, with their own “necessary closet”, all thankfully furnished in some fashion. Penneworth told them that there was a chamber for the female housekeeper up there, so she could keep an eye on the female servants who’d sleep under the roof. And, there was an exit to the roof itself, and a walkway inside the slate roof proper, and the parapet, so tile workers or chimney swifts could access the many chimneys. Penneworth assured Lewrie that the landlord had had the swifts in just after the last family had moved on to larger lodgings, and that there had been no complaints on how the chimneys drew, just a month before.

  “How much per month, sir?” Lewrie asked once they were all in the ground-floor parlour for a last look-about.

  “Twenty pounds the month, Sir Alan,” Penneworth told him, making a “pooh-poohing” expression, as if it was a grand bargain, “with three months in advance, as I said before, and month-to-month after, if you find it necessary, given the uncertainty of your circumstances.”

  “Hmm, I’ll have to purchase some furnishings,” Lewrie speculated, “enough for two bed-chambers, for the drawing room, things which I have no need for at sea, or Yeovill’d need in a ship’s galley. What if, when I do get orders, and a new ship, the rent might be reduced if I leave all that behind for the new tenants?”

  “Hmm, I would have to discuss it with the principal, Sir Alan,” Penneworth said, obviously not used to haggling with his sort of customers, who were wont to spend more freely, especially for a house in the Mayfair area. “A few pounds less per month, perhaps, but after the first three-month advance at the stated rate, I fear.”

  “That would be alright,” Lewrie told him. “What d’ye think, Yeovill? Just big enough t’be roomy, but not so big I’d need a small army of help t’manage it.”

  “Bags of room for all of us belowstairs, sir,” Yeovill agreed, “with Desmond promoted to ‘Bosun’ of the house, Dasher to serve as a footman, Pettus to tend to you, and Deavers to help in the kitchen? We could still use a scullery maid, a pair of chamber maids, but we’d get by handsomely.”

  “Right, then,” Lewrie decided, “I’ll take it, sir. If you will come by my father’s house in the morning, I’ll have a note-of-hand on Coutts’ Bank for you for the first three months, and you can negotiate with your principal owner for a longer stay at your leisure.”

  “Excellent, Sir Alan, simply excellent!” Penneworth exclaimed, “I am certain that you shall be pleased with your selection, and most comfortable for as long as you stay!”

  “In point of fact, if you will come in once we reach my father’s place, you’ll have my note-of-hand at once!” Lewrie assured the man.

  And I can get off my screamin’ bloody feet! he told himself.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Oh, Christ, what’ve I gotten myself into? was the thought that struck Lewrie several times a day over the next week, along with the apt analogy between fitting out a house and bringing a warship out of de-commissioned Ordinary to a state ready to go to sea.

  It did not help that breakfast conversations with his father pretty-much consisted of irritated scowls, dubious “harrumphs”, and pointed questions as to Lewrie’s progress, his plans for that day, and some much put-upon sighs of stretched-beyond-measure tolerance.

  “And just what is that you do with your privacy, that you have to have me out instanter?” Lewrie finally protested. “Havin’ whores in, chasin’ after your chamber maids in the nude?”

  It here must be noted that, whilst Sir Hugo was undisputedly “of an age”, the females of his house staff were young, quite comely, and all were perkily, cheerfully nigh-flirtatious, which was a trial for Lewrie’s men, and even for Tom Dasher, who came away from all of his interactions with them with a red face and burning ears, barely able to stutter.

  “What I do in my private moments is none of your God-damned business!” Sir Hugo snapped, though looking a tad cutty-eyed and smug as he leered over the rim of his coffee cup. “What is it today, hey? Bedding, settees, two gross of candles? Well, you’d best be at it!”

  *   *   *

  It was a lot more than candles that Lewrie needed, as he was learning to his dismay. Need small-clothes, shirts, bed linens, and tablecloths washed? That required copper cauldrons for the boiling, the rinsing, clotheslines both within and without the house where they could dry, depending on London’s weather, and the amount of coalsmoke smut in the air, with a gross of cloths pins, to boot, and a goodly supply of lye soap, several irons to heat on the stovetop, and a place to put a clothes press!

  It wasn’t just Lewrie’s glassware and tableware needed, either, for the house staff needed plates, bowls, knives, forks, and spoons, and glasses and mugs to eat with, and more pots and pans than Yeovill had to prepare the victuals, then the staples themselves…!

  Furnishings, well … half London was continually in the process of selling up and moving, and the city had used goods on sale nigh on every street corner, with more shops dealing in cheap and shoddy used goods, piled into cavernous warehouse-like stores, with decent pieces lost in a jumble. Lewrie could have spent a week picking over the discards, but he did have one old school chum who might be able to “steer him a fair course” … even if that old school chum might soak him dearly. After all, the fellow was a former “Captain Sharp” who’d supported himself by playing a man of taste and refinement to “co
untry-puts” just come to town with inheritances, looking for fashionable advice on just about everything, and more than happy to pay for all that guidance to such a “helpful” fellow, who also got a cut from tailors, dressmakers, milliners, bootmakers, landlords, and furniture dealers to which he steered the gullible.

  Lewrie decided that he needed to see Clotworthy Chute! With a firm grasp upon his coin-purse, even so.

  *   *   *

  Clotworthy had come up in the world from those old, bad days, and his expulsion from Harrow for helping Lewrie and Peter Rushton, now Viscount Draywick, burn down the governor’s coach house in youthful emulation of the Gunpowder Plot. He had, to all accounts, become an honest dealer in fine new furnishings, genuine antiques, and all sorts of artworks, from paintings to statuary, some reputed to be ancient Greco-Roman obtained during aristocratic Grand Tours of the Continent.

  Of course, acid washes and a month in seawater could age a week-old copy of a Roman bronze most marvellously well, as Clotworthy had proven in the past.

  Lewrie found Chute’s expansive shops in New Bond Street, and Clotworthy himself, in fine, and gladsome, fig.

  “Alan, me old!” Clotworthy enthused as he came to greet him. “Gad, the conquerin’ hero returns with the gilded laurel wreath of glory ’pon his locks, what?”

  “Good t’see ye, Clotworthy,” Lewrie said in response, shaking hands with him. “I see you’ve prospered.”

  Always a fellow fonder than most of a good table, Clotworthy had, over the years, packed on more than his share of pounds, and was now quite elegantly, fashionably rotund, his bulk garbed in fine suitings, the very picture of a wealthy and successful man of business.

  “Oh, I do well enough,” Chute admitted, sweeping a hand over the vastness of his shops, and the goods on display. “Ran into Peter t’other day, and heard that you’re back. The three of us must dine together, have a caterwaulin’ carouse or two if you’re long in town, for old times’ sake, hey?”

  “Just so long as it don’t involve settin’ something afire,” Lewrie agreed.

  “D’ye know, Alan, that Harrow has invited Peter to give a speech to the student body?” Chute said with a laugh, and a shake of his head. “Why, they’ll be dinin’ you and me in, and all’s forgiven, do they keep that up, ha ha! Mean t’say, no horses were hurt in the fire!”

  “For the moment, though, Clotworthy, I’ve come to shop,” Lewrie told him. “Necessity’s forced me to take a house.”

  “And you thought of me, first,” Chute marvelled. “How grand! Where’d you light, and what do you need?”

  After Lewrie explained why he needed to take a house, for a very short term, he told him, how little he had from his great-cabins, and what he expected to need to make the place the slightest bit presentable, Clotworthy frowned for a time, pursed his lips, and placed both hands under his chin, fingers spread to touch right and left counterparts.

  “A drawing room … at least one bed-chamber to furnish, perhaps the front parlour on the ground floor, hmm?” Chute posed, humming to himself. “Colours? Paint, wallpaper that’s already there?”

  “Thought I’d leave the parlour almost bare, with nothing but my ship-board settee and such,” Lewrie told him. “The drawing room abovestairs is paint, only, in a greenish-blue. Teal, they call it?”

  “And you’d be leaving it all behind when you get a new ship?” Clotworthy further supposed. “Well, then … good antiques are right out. Even some of my, ah … diligenty crafted reproductions, hah! But, see here, Alan. You’ve a cheval mirror for your dressing room so you can primp properly? No? Sufficient side-tables for your parlour, so you can have enough candle holders? Enough Turkey carpets?”

  “Ah, no,” Lewrie had to confess.

  “My dear fellow, you need more than you realise,” Clotworthy said with a sad shake of his head. “Never fear, though. You’ve come to the right place, and I’ll see what I can do for you, and for a most reasonable price. Mean t’say … I’d never rook an old friend, what?”

  First I heard o’ that from you! Lewrie warily told himself.

  “Dash it all,” Chute said, “it’d be best did we coach over to your new digs and let me decide what’d suit it, make some notes…”

  “Dine somewhere along Piccadilly?” Lewrie offered, hoping that a fine feed at his expense would help keep the cost low.

  “That’s sounds topping, Alan, me old!” Clotworthy replied. “Let us go whistle up a hackney and be about it. I must say, though … what are you wearing? I don’t recall…”

  “My father’s gone all Beau Brummell on me,” Lewrie said with a frown. “With all my civilian clothes down at the country estate, I had to borrow some of his older suitings.”

  “I’d recommend a good tailor, instanter, but … no fear, I no longer get a share of his fees,” Chute vowed. “Well, only if a customer is simply too gullible to live, ha ha!” he quibbled.

  A quick jaunt to Dover Street, a rapid tour of the house with Clotworthy cocking his head, squinting, and scribbling notes in a thin ledger, and now and then making “Aha” and “Hmm” noises, and they were off to dinner at a chop-house conveniently near the Reverend Chenery’s church, Saint Anselm’s, in Piccadilly Street, where Chute put away a steak, a dozen oysters, a salad, baked potato adrip with butter, some pease pudding, followed by a large dollop of figgy-dowdy pudding with port, and they were back in New Bond Street, where Clotworthy showed Lewrie round, pointing out items he thought would do, all of which were bustled away by workmen that instant to be packed aboard a dray waggon for immediate delivery the very next morning.

  It all only came to £28/10/8, a sum Lewrie deemed was more than reasonable, and they parted with a promise that Chute would be asked to supper at the Madeira Club when they threw Lewrie his celebratory supper, once he was completely settled.

  *   *   *

  “Made progress today, have you?” Sir Hugo grumpily asked at supper that evening.

  “Quite a lot, actually,” Lewrie told him. “Furniture shows up in the morning, and I’ll have another dray remove my stuff from your coach house. I’ll still have to hire on some staff, but I believe I can move in, and be out from underfoot, by the next day after. Went to Clotworthy Chute’s, and found everything I need.”

  “Chute? That scamp expelled with you at Harrow?” Sir Hugo asked with a bark of a laugh. “Did he leave ha’pence in your purse, haw haw?”

  “All at a very reasonable price,” Lewrie told his father.

  “A leopard don’t change his spots, my boy,” Sir Hugo sniggered, “though I must confess he’s put me in the way of a good investment or two, especially the Portuguese Brazil trade. Damn my eyes, but it’s a sellers’ market, that.”

  “What about the Brazil trade?” Lewrie just had to ask.

  “Hah!” Sir Hugo enthused. “When the Portuguese royal court had to flee when Napoleon invaded their country two years ago, Admiral Sir Sydney Smith, and our Foreign Minister, Lord Castlereagh, presented ’em with a treaty heavily in our favour, opening their ports and their markets to British ships and goods, which had been closed to us for ages. The worst sort of mercantilism, the Spanish and the Portuguese, practiced. Their Ambassador to England, de Soussa Coutinho, held a meeting with over an hundred English merchants, who formed the Society of English Merchants Trading in Brazil, and the scramble for profits was on!

  “What we’d usually sell in Europe, that Napoleon’s idiotic Continental System blockades, goes to Brazil, and at low prices, to boot, and those poor, benighted devils never saw the like! Not one backward Latin colony can manufacture anything worth having, so Brazil snatched up everything shipped over,” Sir Hugo chortled. “Wool shawls, and wool blankets, for God’s sake. In such a hot country? Warming pans for their beds? They most-like use ’em to flambé snake and monkey meat! Coffin furniture, when they bury people in winding sheets? And ice skates, haw haw! What they use ’em for, only Heaven knows. The best part is what we get in return,” Sir Hugo sa
id, cutting himself a bite and chewing in seeming bliss.

  “Ehm, what do we get in return?” Lewrie just had to ask.

  “Brazil’s simply riddled with gold and silver mines, emerald and diamond, and topaz mines,” Sir Hugo went on quite rapturously between sips of claret, “and we get access to their vast tropical forests for log wood, dye wood, and timber for new ships, for furniture, I don’t know what-all. All in exchange for shovels, axes, saws, cheap shoes, and kegs of nails! It’s such a one-sided trade that everyone invested is raking in profits. Normally, I’d take anything that your old chum says with a huge pile of salt, but in this instance, Clotworthy Chute is a seer on par with Old Testament prophets, ha ha!”

  “Which means you’ve made yourself a tidy sum, hey?” Lewrie said with a sly grin.

  “That’s for me to know, and you to discover when my will’s read!” Sir Hugo snapped, turning waspishly grumpy, just as the fish course came from the kitchens.

  “I didn’t know you’d become a devotee of the Exchange,” Lewrie saw fit to tease further, which jibe made Sir Hugo’s upper lip twitch.

  “Investin’ through a broker’s a deal different than engaging in direct … trade, I’ll have ye know!” his father all but snarled back in sudden heat to be demeaned as someone who bought and sold like any grubbing shopkeeper, but the nicely lemoned crispy-skinned sole course seemed to mollify him. After a moment he tossed in, “Profits off my Three Percents allow me to dabble, here and there … nothing beyond a flutter or two. Nothing larger than what I’d wager in the Long Rooms at the Cocoa Tree, or Boodle’s. My days of gambling deep are long past. I only trust that you learned your lesson, hmm?”

  Ouch! Lewrie thought with a wee wince; He just won’t forgive me for my gamblin’ in the early days, and what I cost him payin’ my debts off! Hell, I haven’t risked more than a shilling on any game in ages!

  “Move tomorrow, is it?” Sir Hugo asked after a long silence.