by Neil McKenna
‘Stella’ was almost as good. Stella was a great and formal beauty. Stella was the cold light of the moon and the stars in the sky, and her love burned with the hard, clear flame of eternity. Stella was poetic and soulful, the dark and mysterious muse of Spenser or of Swift. Stella’s love was pure and untainted. An alabaster love, smooth and icily beautiful.
‘Ernest’ or ‘Ernest Boulton’, ‘E’ or ‘E.B.’ were admirably brisk and determinedly businesslike. They were commonsensical, down-to-earth, feet-on-the-ground names and they spoke of wanting to get things organised, of wanting to get things done. Ernest and Ernest Boulton, E and E.B., were often exasperated and irritated, angry and annoyed, and sometimes driven to distraction or to drink, or both, by Arthur’s enduring and ever-expanding catalogue of failings and inadequacies.
‘Stella Clinton’, on the other hand, was decidedly inauspicious. Stella Clinton was a stormy-petrel sort of a name, a name presaging destruction and disaster; a threatening, lowering, darkening sky of a name. Stella Clinton was a shot across the bows, or the rumour and rumble of approaching cannon. Stella Clinton was regal and haughty, imperious and imperial, a Roman matron, a Boadicea, a Bess of Hardwick, a Virgin Queen. Stella Clinton was glorious, and Stella Clinton was magnificent. But woe betide those who dared to cross her, for there was no escape from her vengeance, no escape from her cold fury.
On rare occasions there was no signature at all, just an angry full stop jabbed and stabbed onto the page. When in receipt of one of these anonymous missives, Arthur knew that a terrible storm was about to break above his head and that if he had any sense he would run for cover.
Stella bombarded Arthur with letters and notes. At the time of leaving Mrs Peck’s establishment in Southampton Street – and it was a moot point as to whether they left of their own accord or whether they were evicted by that good lady – things between himself and Stella went from bad to worse, and in the course of a week, or even less, he received not so much a flurry as an avalanche of letters by almost every post.
Arthur staggered under the weight of these letters instructing him to do this, ordering him to do that. Peremptory and insolent notes, reproaching him and rebuking him, telling him he was good for nothing and interrogating him about actual and alleged infractions. And these said instructions, injunctions and orders, once executed, were immediately and abruptly countermanded, usually without explanation or apology. No wonder Arthur sometimes did not know whether he was coming or going.
‘My dear Arthur,’ Stella’s missives invariably began:
‘I am just off to Chelmsford with Fanny where I shall stay till Monday. We are going to a party there tomorrow night . . .’ ‘We were very drunk last night, consequently I forgot to write to you . . .’ ‘I am very tired and seedy.’
‘How can you be so absurd?’ . . . ‘I must of course trust to you about the things you promised . . .’ ‘Now no promises please, as this is no joke.’
‘A game pie or two might be nice as a little present to me . . .’ ‘If you have any coin I could do with a little . . .’ ‘Send me some money, Wretch . . .’ ‘I wanted the money so it’s rather a bore.’
‘I shall leave here by the 10.40 train. Meet me . . .’ ‘Why cannot you tell me the truth for once and say you did not come to the station at all? . . . ’ ‘It is now five o’clock and no letter for me, of course, not that I expected them, but your everlasting promises are sickening . . .’ ‘When you write let it be a very proper letter.’
‘I have waited in for you just two hours and a half. I need not tell you I am extremely put out about it . . .’ ‘I do not like to be treated with such rudeness and if you had any feelings of a gentleman you would know that to be impunctual shows great ill breeding.’
‘I am quite tired of waiting and shall not return tonight, nor at all if I am to be treated in this way. I will call tomorrow at one o’clock and shall expect you to be in . . .’ ‘We cannot go on in this way . . .’ ‘I am most annoyed.’
‘I am consoling myself for your absence by getting screwed . . .’ ‘And now, dear, I must shut up.’
‘W e cannot go on in this way,’ Stella had written. Arthur entirely agreed. He was exhausted. He yearned for some respite and some repose from the terrible strain of living with Stella. Never had he stood in greater need of a confidential friend, and it was with some relief that he turned to Fanny for guidance and support. Fanny, the older, wiser, calmer sister. Fanny, who knew Stella inside-out and upside-down. Fanny the diplomat, smoother of passages and privy counsellor to the secrets of Stella’s heart.
After one particularly epic and exhausting confrontation, which ended as usual with Stella flouncing out, he wrote despairingly to Fanny, who replied by return. ‘My Dearest Arthur,’ she began on her familiar blue notepaper, emblazoned with the monogram ‘F.W.P’ in gilt lettering (so very clever and so very economical a device, used with equal facility by Frederick William Park and by Fanny Winifred Park).
‘My Dearest Arthur,’ she wrote, ‘You must really excuse me from interfering in matrimonial squabbles (for I am sure the present is no more than that) and tho’ I am as you say Stella’s confidante in most things, that which you wish to know she keeps locked in her own breast.
‘My own opinion on the subject varies fifty times a day when I see you together,’ Fanny continued.
She may sometimes treat you brusquely, but on the other hand see how she stands up for your dignity and position, so that really I cannot form an opinion on the subject.
As to all the things she said to you the other night, she may have been tight and she did not know what she was saying, so that by the time you get my answer you will both be laughing over the whole affair – as Stella and I did when we quarrelled and fought down here. Don’t you remember when I slapped her face?
Arthur of course remembered that day very clearly. As he understood it, it was not the first time that Fanny had slapped Stella’s face (or indeed, the first time that Stella had slapped Fanny’s).
‘Do not think me unkind, Dear, as really I have told you all I know and have not an opinion worth having to offer you,’ Fanny concluded. ‘Goodbye Dear, Ever yrs, Fan.’
Arthur’s correspondence with Fanny was not all gloom and agonisings over Stella. He wrote her a charming letter offering his congratulations on the occasion of her twenty-first birthday and promising a suitably handsome gift – funds permitting. It prompted a gushing reply:
‘My dearest Arthur,’ Fanny wrote:
How very kind of you to think of me on my birthday. I require no remembrance of my Sister’s husband as the many kindnesses he has bestowed upon me will make me remember him for many a year and the Birthday present he is so kind as to promise me will only be one addition to the heap of little favours I already treasure up.
‘I cannot echo your wish that I should live to be a hundred,’ Fanny continued archly, in reply to Arthur’s earnestly expressed hopes, ‘though I should like to live to a green old age – green! did I say? Oh Ciel!, the amount of paint that will be required to hide that very unbecoming tint!
‘My “campish” undertakings are not at present meeting with the success which they deserve,’ she confided, ‘whatever I do seems to get me into hot water somewhere but n’importe, what’s the odds so long as you’re happy? Once more with many many thanks, believe me, Your affectionate Sister-in-law, Fanny Winifred Park.’
‘What’s the odds so long as you’re happy?’ It was a joyous sentiment, and so typical of Fanny. It was an attitude of mind in contrast, in marked contrast, Arthur could not but help thinking, to the sullen moods and gloomy introspections of Stella. Fanny lived for the moment. She was careless of tomorrow. If she got into hot water, as she called it, she would laugh gaily and simply shrug it off. It was, Arthur reflected, a very appealing quality, a very attractive quality.
‘Is the handle of my umbrella mended yet?’ Fanny jovially enquired. ‘If so, I wish you would kindly send it to me, as the weather has turned so showery that
I can’t go out without a dread of my back hair coming out of curl. Let me hear from you at any time,’ she concluded. ‘I am always glad to do so, Ever yr affectionate Fanny.’
‘Ever yr affectionate Fanny.’ These words stayed with him. To be sure, they were innocent and innocuous enough, but for reasons he could not immediately fathom, the words took root in his mind and he was surprised to feel a curious lightness in his heart when he thought of them, as if Fanny’s joyous spirit had in some mysterious fashion entered into his soul.
16
The Dragon of Davies Street
Ann Empson, a lady of determined appearance, who eyed the prisoners with no friendly aspect.
Reynolds’s Newspaper, 5th June 1870
M iss Ann Empson was a lady of singular, not to say startling, appearance. She was tall and spare and grey, and she scowled a great deal. And when she was not scowling, her face wore a fell and determined expression, as if life were a battle that must be fought to the bitterest of bitter ends.
Miss Ann Empson was conspicuously unmarried, and it was clear from the very severe and resolute tone with which she declared her state of spinsterhood in court that she had never contemplated matrimony and never would, which came as something of a relief to London’s eligible bachelors as Miss Empson was not an easy person. Not at all an easy person.
Miss Ann Empson maintained a small establishment at number 46 Davies Street, in the fashionable environs of Bond Street, where she condescended to let lodgings – chambers, as she grandly termed them – to suitable single gentlemen with an irreproachable character. But such suitable single gentlemen rarely stayed for long after they discovered, in very short order, that Miss Ann Empson was a fire-breathing Dragon, clearly descended from a long and distinguished line of fire-breathing Dragons.
There were long lists of rules and regulations, strictly enforced and invigilated by the indefatigable Miss Empson herself, who policed and patrolled her kingdom with admirable – if fearsome – zeal. Infringements and infractions rarely, if ever, escaped detection, and were invariably punished by a vigorous tongue-lashing or by summary expulsion from her kingdom, and very often by both.
Miss Ann Empson constantly seethed and was always out of temper. If it was not this, it was that. If it was not one thing, it was another. If it was not something, then it was someone giving her cause for complaint. She fumed and smouldered and burned with perpetual indignation and rage at the world, so much so that there were those who swore they detected a faint bituminous odour about her, though it was more likely that these sulphurous exhalations were a consequence of the numerous nips of brandy she felt it necessary to imbibe throughout the day to help settle her stomach.
M iss Ann Empson was still seething, still fuming, even after all this time. It was disgusting. There was no other word for it. She felt physically sick every time she thought about it. Under her roof. In her bed. (Not her bed, exactly, but near enough.)
It had all begun so well. Lord Arthur Pelham-Clinton seemed to fit the bill perfectly. Blood, after all, was Blood, and having little or none of that commodity coursing in her own veins, Miss Empson was all the more eager to have a resident gentleman of irreproachable Bloodstock. Lord Arthur was a Lord, the son of the late Duke of Newcastle, no less, and an Honourable Member to boot.
What with it being so close to Christmas, Miss Empson had been resigned to not getting a let for the drawing-room floor until after the festive season had passed. And then Lord Arthur had turned up out of the blue and charmed and delighted her so much that she was putty – yes, putty – in his hands. Indeed, so charming and so delightful had he been that she had waived her usual month’s deposit, and even advanced him the not inconsiderable sum of ten golden sovereigns on a note of hand. In retrospect, she thought that she must have taken temporary leave of her senses. Either that, or Lord Arthur had unusual powers of Mesmerism which he had exercised in order to make her agree to things that went so very much against the grain.
Matters had not stopped there. Incredibly, given her strict and sacred injunctions against overnight visitors in any shape or form, Miss Empson found herself weakly agreeing to allow Lord Arthur’s country cousin, a Mr Ernest Boulton, to stay in Davies Street on those occasions when he was up in town, and she was even persuaded to buy – yes, buy – a single bed for that express purpose. As she said, she was putty in his hands. Putty.
Things started to go wrong almost immediately. Lord Arthur moved in, and within a day she had smelt a rat. Or rather, two rats, in the form of the two young men – though that was rather a loose description – who arrived very shortly after him. One of them was Mr Boulton, the country cousin, the other a Mr Park – but she could not remember which was which, which was not at all surprising as they seemed to be two peas from more or less the same pod. All she could say with any certainty was that one was dark and one was fair, and that one was pretty and the other plain.
T he manner of Miss Ann Empson’s giving evidence at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court was refreshingly bracing.
‘Are you married?’ Mr Straight, for the defence, gently enquired of her after she was sworn.
‘Certainly not!’ she replied with a snort of contempt. ‘I am a single woman,’ she said, glaring at the assembled multitude, daring any or all to contradict her.
It was clear from her abrasive tone that Miss Empson was angry and aggrieved and spoiling for a fight.
Mr Straight tried another tack. ‘Have you been drinking this morning?’ he asked.
It was a reasonable enough question. The unhealthy pallor that so many fashionable young ladies struggled to achieve by dint of draughts of strong vinegar and copious quantities of ingested chalk was emphatically not exhibited by Miss Ann Empson. She spurned such fashionable conceits and instead defiantly sported a ruddy and flushed complexion entirely congruent with numerous nips of brandy. There was something, too, about the way she slurred certain words, about the gleam and the glaze of her eyes, and about the fixity of her fell expression, which suggested she had not, for the time being at least, taken the Pledge.
‘Have you been drinking this morning?’ Mr Straight asked again.
‘I could not speak so well as I do if I had,’ Miss Empson replied combatively. There was loud laughter. For some reason, the spectators crammed into Bow Street appeared to find Miss Empson funny, and she had barely to open her mouth before guffaws of laughter broke out. Miss Empson was simultaneously offended and pleased by the laughter and played up to it wonderfully.
‘You had better answer the question,’ Mr Flowers the magistrate sternly interjected.
‘Have you been to a public house to-day?’ demanded Mr Straight.
‘On my oath I have not,’ answered Miss Empson, swaying slightly. ‘I have not had any drink at home. A policeman brought me here in a cab, but I don’t know who it was.’
There was much more in the same vein, but slowly, with much difficulty, Mr Straight got down to the meat and drink of Miss Ann Empson’s evidence. Lord Arthur Clinton had lodged with her for a fortnight before she was obliged to evict him. Shortly after he had taken possession of his rooms, his young cousin from the country had turned up and enjoyed ‘a mutton chop and bitter beer at Lord Arthur’s expense’ and had stayed that night. So far, so good.
Miss Empson rarely hesitated when it came to exercising her ancient rights and privileges as a landlady and regularly entered her tenants’ apartments for a good snoop around while they were out. So on the morning after his country cousin had spent the night, Miss Empson found herself in Lord Arthur’s bedroom feeling puzzled and perplexed.
‘I was surprised,’ she said, ‘to see that the new bed I had bought had not been slept in.’ Had Lord Arthur’s cousin changed his mind and returned to the country? It was possible. But a thorough examination of the bedding suggested that the country cousin had ‘slept with Lord Arthur in the same bed’, which raised some unpleasant, some very unpleasant, speculations in her mind.
A night or two lat
er, while on one of her regular patrols, Miss Empson had seen a woman coming out of Lord Arthur’s rooms, which was strictly forbidden under the draconian laws of the establishment.
‘I saw Lord Arthur go on tiptoe to let her out,’ she said. ‘I saw him through the kitchen stairs letting a lady out, as I considered.
‘I complained to Lord Arthur that he had brought a woman to my house. He said it was a man. Lord Arthur assured me it was a man. He represented him as his cousin.’ But Miss Empson was quite certain of what she had seen. There was no two ways about it. It was a woman.
‘I complained of it as an abuse of my latch-key,’ Miss Empson declared indignantly, much to the amusement of the public gallery. But, shocking and disgusting as the presence of this woman in her house was, at least it put paid to those earlier and very unpleasant speculations.
A day or so later, she had caught the two young men, Mr Boulton and Mr Park, in the very act of moving in, which again was strictly forbidden. This sort of cheap trick might pass unnoticed in certain common lodging houses, but it would not do in Davies Street. It would not do at all. There they were, bold as brass, in Lord Arthur’s rooms with their boxes just brought up and about to be unpacked. Miss Empson confronted them.
‘I said to them, “You have brought your boxes up, and I will make you take them down.” I did so. One of them turned round and said, “I wish never to see your house again,” and I replied “I’ll take good care you don’t.”
‘He said, “Why not?” and I replied, “Because I let the rooms to Lord Arthur Pelham Clinton.”’
‘I’m not having this,’ she told them in no uncertain terms. ‘I will not have it. I shall not have it.’
Miss Empson was ruddy with the glow of this remembered triumph and glared out defiantly at the courtroom, armed and ready to repel all boarders, doubters and naysayers.
