Dynasty 8: The Maiden: The Maiden (The Morland Dynasty)

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘King Charles gave her that,’ Jemmy said in awe. ‘It’s worth a small fortune.’ He looked at the Princess and frowned. ‘Surely it must be a mistake. Surely she did not know the diamonds were in there.’

  ‘Alessandra doesn’t think so. She is adamant that it was what grandmother wanted,’ the Princess said. She took the diamonds from Jemima and looked at them. Against the dull black of her chamois gloves their brilliance seemed muted. She gestured towards the miniatures and the lock of hair. ‘Apart from the locket she gave Clementina, those were her greatest treasures, though they are worthless.’

  ‘Why should she give them to Jemima, then?’ Jemmy said, still puzzled. But the Princess met Jemima’s eyes, and as an understanding passed between them, she blushed deeply.

  ‘An old woman’s fancy,’ she said harshly, with a shrug to cover her sudden, brief shame. ‘Here, child, take your own.’ And she dropped the diamonds carelessly into Jemima’s hand, turning away in such a manner that Jemmy was obliged to turn with her, presenting their backs to Jemima. Jemima put the diamonds carefully back into the box and closed the lid, holding it against her chest as if afraid she might drop it. Tears prickled, and she shut her eyes to hold them back, afraid that if Marie-Louise saw them, she might think she was the cause.

  The diamonds and the two miniatures were locked away in the strong room with the family jewels and treasures. The lock of hair Jemmy had enclosed in a gold locket, which he gave to Jemima as a belated birthday present. The box, being of no value, she was allowed to have, and she kept it by her bed and put her locket in it when she was not wearing it, which was hardly ever. Sometimes when she felt lonely or discouraged, she would reach out and touch it, and think of the Princess’s words, ‘Those were her greatest treasures.’ I am the real heir, she would think.

  But still she spent her days in embroidering, playing the spinnet, learning the fashionable dances, and keeping a journal in which, since her mother read it every day, she could only record the permitted commonplaces. Nothing was said of education for her, and she had no opportunity to speak to her father again on the subject, even had she thought it of any use to do so. But there was one improvement in her lot: as often as his duties permitted, Allen began to accompany her on her morning rides, and as they rode along with the uncaring groom a discreet distance behind, he would tell her things: the names of the planets and constellations, the order and dates of the Kings of England, the names and histories of the Greek Gods and Heroes, the names of the countries of Europe and their principal cities, the history of the Pragmatic Sanction and the Austrian Succession, which were likely to cause war in Europe at any moment. And one day he brought along a slate and chalk in his saddlebag, and when they stopped and dismounted to breathe the horses and enjoy the view, he began to teach her the elements of mathematics and Latin.

  It was a poor, piecemeal sort of education, but it was a great deal better than nothing, and Jemima absorbed it all frantically, and repeated everything over to herself at night in bed for fear of forgetting part of it. He could not ride with her every day; sometimes a week would pass without her seeing him; but sometimes other occasions would arise to compensate. The servants probably knew what was going on, but now that Jemmy was the Master, instead of the young master, they no longer told him everything; and if Jemmy noticed that Allen had a predilection for his daughter, he only thought it all of a piece with Allen’s general kindness to those smaller or weaker than himself.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  In February, 1742, Walpole, whose grip on power had been slipping ever since, against his desire and his advice, England had declared war on Spain, was forced to resign. Maurice missed him more than he had ever thought possible. He had always cultivated a carefree, offhand, and even faintly cynical attitude to life, and had professed to maintaining only such friendships as were useful to his career. In this way, he had juggled with such success his relationships with George Lewis and his son, now George II. But Walpole’s fall left him feeling flat, and aware of a strange lassitude. Queen Caroline, of whom he had been very fond, had died her painful and horribly undignified death four years ago, and without her Maurice found it hard to be interested in Court affairs, for he had never liked her husband, and had never managed to get on terms with Frederick, the Prince of Wales, and his wife Augusta.

  Moreover his mother and brother Karellie were both dead; Vanbrugh and Wren were dead; Walpole, out of office and an old man, could not last much longer. Maurice was forced to realize that he was approaching seventy, and even by his own standards was past middle years. Greatness, having passed him by so far, seemed unlikely to visit him in the time that remained, and the Italian opera was, in any case, dying in London. Maurice’s young friend Handel – not so young now, he had to remind himself – had abandoned the form for the more popular oratorios, for which he could still find audiences, but Maurice no longer had the energy to start any major new works. Recently, he had contented himself with rewriting old pieces, and composing the songs and entertainments for which he could find commissions.

  Last year, 1741, had been particularly lean for him, beginning with the death of his daughter Apollonia in April at the age of twenty-three. Though he had claimed to have no favourites amongst his children, he had always had a marked partiality for Apollonia, the shy and grave one who had acted as second mother to her younger siblings. He had never troubled to arrange a marriage for her, but Apollonia had not seemed to mind staying at home with Papa. After she had become Lady Apollonia with her father’s accession to the title, she had had one or two suitors, but never seemed seriously to consider the possibility of marrying any of them. Her death came suddenly and unexpectedly after a short illness, and left Maurice so low and shocked that he could not even exorcise his emotions with music, as he had done before in times of grief.

  Without her, the big house, growing shabby after the years of occupancy with insufficient money, seemed empty. Clementina was gone, married to Viscount Ballincrea and living in Northumberland; Nicolette was gone, married to her Russian prince, Nicholai Anosov, to whom she had just presented a daughter, Nicholaevna, and living in St Petersburg; even Charles, the ‘baby’, now thirteen, was gone, being a chorister at St George’s Chapel school at Windsor, from which holidays at home were infrequent and short. His wife Nicoletta was past childbearing, so there could be no more additions to the nursery to fill up the silences. Maurice sat out in the garden under the cherry trees as often as the weather permitted, to avoid being in that tomb of a house.

  His friends did their best to cheer him up and to persuade him to write again. In the heat of that summer, George Handel was occupied with a new oratorio, using some of his old operatic arias and a strange mixture of Biblical texts, and he tried to engage Maurice’s interest by talking about it.

  ‘It’s to be a little different from my previous oratorios,’ he said. ‘The subject matter, to begin with.’

  ‘But you have done religious oratorios before’ Maurice said. ‘What about Saul? And Israel in Egypt?’

  ‘Ah yes, but those were, shall we say, dramatic texts which told a story. This time it’s …’ he hesitated, evidently not sure how to describe his vision. ‘I would say i’s a statement of belief, a summary of the Christian code. Jennens has assembled various extracts and put them together, from both Old and New Testaments. I don’t suppose’ he added gloomily, ‘that the public will like it. They did not like Saul and Israel.’

  ‘It sounds rather – incoherent’ Maurice said. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t be better off with some other subject matter?’

  ‘It’s something I want to do,’ Handel said, ‘and it seems there’s no pleasing the public anyway, so I am not troubled about it. I’ve been bankrupt already, so there can be nothing worse to fear.’

  ‘And I’m on the brink of it, though I suppose my title will keep me out of Newgate itself’ Maurice said with an attempt at cheerfulness.

  ‘I think I shall not present this new work in London at all,�
� Handel said. ‘The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland has invited me to visit again next year. Perhaps I shall take my piece over there, and see if Dublin society has better taste than London.’ He cocked his head speculatively at Maurice. ‘Why don’t you come with me?’ he coaxed. ‘It would do you good to get away from here. It must have so many sad memories for you. You used to travel such a lot, and now you never leave Pall Mall.’

  ‘What, impose myself uninvited on the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland?’ Maurice opened his eyes wide with simulated shock. Handel snapped his fingers.

  ‘The Earl of Chelmsford need not talk about “imposing himself”, even if Maurice Morland the composer is out of favour. Besides, I am hoping you will give me some very material help with my Messiah – that’s what I’m calling this new piece. I want to have a trumpet obbligato part, and you are the best trumpeter in England, as well as the best composer for trumpet…’

  ‘Aren’t you thinking of Maurice Green?’ Maurice said slyly. Handel refused to be baited.

  ‘You are my friend,’ he said, ‘and I want to see you raised out of this slough of despond and interested in some work again. Look here, won’t you give me your advice? This is the text – “The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed”. The bass sings the first phrase, and then the trumpet replies. This is my idea – what do you think of it?’ In a few moments their heads were bent over the manuscript, and for a while Maurice actually forgot his woes in the old potent magic of creation.

  The effect lasted long enough for him to search out and rewrite an old opera of his – Herodias – along oratorio lines, which he presented at the Ranelagh Rotunda in September. It coincided with the visit to London of the remarkable Italian female soprano, Karelia, who was the daughter of his brother’s former mistress, Diane di Francescini, and therefore reputedly Maurice’s niece. Karelia had sung at all the principal Courts of Europe, had been invited to sing for the King of Spain at the recommendation of the great Farinelli himself. For the past six months she had been at Versailles, where Louis XV had so loved both her beautiful voice and, it was widely rumoured, her equally beautiful body, that he had given her a title and a fabulously valuable jewel, and begged her to remain permanently in France. But in London her welcome was cool. King George would not receive her because she would be returning from England to the exiled Court of King James III, and though she consented to sing the title role in Herodias at the Ranelagh Gardens, the audience was small and unappreciative. Though Maurice would gladly have kept Karelia in London for his own pleasure, he could not pretend that she was likely to be feted there, and she said that in any case she did not wish to miss another Carnival in Venice. So after a stay of only one month she took ship for France again on the first leg of her journey home. Maurice saw her off with great reluctance. She was his last link with his brother, and he thought it unlikely that he would ever see her again.

  Money was becoming a pressing problem, for though he had now only one son, Rupert, Lord Meldon, at home, that one son was a considerable expense. Rupert was twenty-two, an extremely handsome young man, but with increasingly and alarmingly dissolute habits.

  ‘It is your own fault, Maurice,’ Nicoletta would rebuke him mildly. ‘You never gave him anything to do, and you never loved him as you did your daughters. It has been long since I was able to restrain him, and now he is beyond mending.’

  ‘I always intended him to go to Europe,’ Maurice said. ‘He should have gone on a Grand tour with Ashe Windham’s son, but somehow I never got around to arranging it.’

  ‘There are so many things you did not “get around to”,’ Nicoletta said with unaccustomed severity. ‘You always believed tomorrow would do, and now tomorrow is come and gone, and it is too late. I wish you may not regret it.’

  Maurice looked surprised. ‘He is not so very bad, is he? Not worse than the rest of the Patriot Boys?’ This was the name given to the young bucks who hung around the Court of the Prince of Wales at Leicester House. ‘All young men get drunk – it is a part of growing up. It is his gambling debts I am really worried about. I don’t know if he is unusually unlucky, or unusually stupid, but he seems to lose a great deal more at cards than any of his friends.’

  ‘I’m sure he is not really bad,’ Nicoletta said. ‘Poor Rupert, he needs a father’s guidance. But he is your son; I cannot help him.’ And she would not be prevailed upon to say any more.

  In October, therefore, Maurice gave a concert of popular vocal and instrumental music at Goodman’s Fields to raise a little money, and, so that he should for once at least know where Rupert was, he obliged him to attend. The concert was divided into two parts, and between the parts was a performance of the Tragedy of Richard III by William Shakespeare. The part of Richard was taken by an unknown young actor called David Garrick, who had only recently come to the stage, having failed in his previous career as a wine-merchant. His method of acting was strange, even revolutionary, for he did not declaim and make grand gestures, but spoke the words in a normal tone of voice and moved about the stage so quietly and naturally that at times Maurice found himself forgetting that it was an actor he was watching. The audience, strangely enough, loved it, and applauded the young man wildly, and Maurice was intrigued enough to invite him to supper afterwards. It was the beginning of a rather unexpected friendship between David Garrick and Rupert – unexpected, because Garrick was such a quiet, dedicated young man, albeit friendly and cheerful. But Rupert seemed a changed person in Garrick’s presence, leaving aside his oaths and heavy drinking and gambling, and as the months passed Nicoletta prayed that the friendship would continue, and that Garrick would not tire of being hero-worshipped by such a young reprobate as her son. For the time being, however, Garrick seemed happy enough to be a frequent visitor at Chelmsford House; though he had taken London by storm, he had many enemies amongst the jealous exponents of the Old School of acting, who were powerful and influential.

  This was the state of affairs in February 1742 when Walpole finally relinquished office. In the middle of Maurice’s depression over losing such a friend, George Handel came to tell him that he was definitely going to Dublin to stay with the Lord Lieutenant, and that he would be giving the first performance of his Messiah there in April. He asked Maurice, with the Duke of Devonshire’s permission, to accompany him, and this time Maurice accepted.

  Nicoletta was not pleased. ‘To cross the Irish Sea at this time of year? No, Maurice, it is too much. I should be dreadfully ill. And you know I have been unwell lately. I cannot go. I will not.’

  ‘Very well, my dear,’ Maurice said peaceably. ‘I have no objection to going alone. You shall stay here.’

  ‘I shall do no such thing!’ Nicoletta said crossly. ‘Stay here alone, with Rupert? And how do you suppose I should keep him within bounds? And what should I do in this house day after day without you? No, Maurice, it is too much to bear!’

  Maurice suddenly began to smile. She was so very Italian when she was in a rage, and the image of the tiny, crowded house in Naples where he had first been taken by her father, where her mother, Antonia, had ruled supreme always sprang to his mind at such moments. Nicoletta could have made just such an excellent wife and mother in just such a house, ordering the irrepressible servants, alternately hugging and chastising the children, abusing the tradesmen and berating her husband. She had always been out of her place here, in the great empty tomb of a house Maurice had blessed and cursed her with, where no voice was ever raised and no ear was ever boxed. He suddenly thought that she was indeed looking unwell, pinched and pale like a plant shut out from the light. He put his arms round her and hugged her suddenly and hard.

  ‘My dear Nicoletta,’ he said, kissing her brow. ‘My poor, dear Nicoletta! What you have had to bear all these years as my wife is past telling. Can you ever forgive me?’

  ‘Forgive you? Maurice, what nonsense is this?’ she asked suspiciously. He pulled her closer still and rocked her a little, his face agains
t her hair.

  ‘It was cruel of me, cruel, to take you away for my own selfish pleasure. How brave and uncomplaining women are! Listen, carissima, would you like to go on a visit while I am in Ireland? Would you like to go and visit some of your relatives in Italy?’

  ‘Italy?’ she scolded. ‘How could I travel to Italy, when I am too ill to travel to Ireland?’ But her bird-thin body pressed against him for a moment, and he knew she was pleased. ‘I should like to visit Alessandra, though. I have missed her very much all these years.’

  ‘Then you shall go, uccella mia,’ Maurice said. ‘I shall write and arrange it immediately.’

  Jemmy’s hound Jasper had been working his way stealthily towards the drawing room fire for nearly a quarter of an hour, but when he covered the last few feet round the back of Lady Mary’s chair and finally crept belly-low to the hearth, pushing Spot out of the way with his nose, he could not help letting out a sigh of bliss and achievement, which called the mistress’s attention to him.

  She put down her book, drew her skirt back fastidiously, and said, ‘Will you call this dog away from the fire! He smells abominable, and the heat of the fire makes it worse.’

  Jemmy looked up from the chessboard, exchanged a silent glance with Father Andrews, and called, ‘Jasper, come here.’ Jasper came unwillingly, head low, tail clamped between his legs, and rolled his eyes tragically at his master. Jemmy gave him a grimace which might well have been of sympathy, and then ostentatiously seized the hound by his considerable scruff, and pulled him down beside his seat. ‘Lie down. Good dog. Stay.’

  Lady Mary did not seem satisfied. ‘Why don’t you keep him out in the yard with the other dogs? A creature like that has no business in the house.’