Then she went to bed, well pleased with her diplomacy.
And so Mr Easter received his first message from Miss Sowerby at last, and if he were surprised at Miss Pettie’s postscript, he was too much of a gentleman to say so. It occurred to him briefly that she was probably matchmaking again, but the knowledge was harmless. The important thing was that Miss Sowerby was well and had written to him, however briefly. And if she wished him to write to her at Miss Pettie’s house, than that was what he would do. Gladly. For although intrigues were foreign to his nature, the need for privacy was something he understood entirely.
That Tuesday evening, when Billy was dining with the Honeywoods and his mother was at the theatre with Mr Brougham, he wrote a very long letter indeed, telling Miss Sowerby all about Napoleon’s progress through France, and about the splendid increase in the number of newspapers that were now selling in London every day, and about how much he was enjoying the third and fourth books of Mr Wordsworth’s poem. And because he felt sure that she too would appreciate the philosophy of the Laureate, he copied out three of his favourite lines for her.
We live by admiration, hope and love;
And even as these are well and wisely fixed,
In dignity of being we ascend.
‘Isn’t that splendid!’ he wrote. ‘These are sentiments I have often felt myself without being truly aware of it, if you can understand such a thing. To see them expressed with such clarity and in such true words is an ineffable pleasure, which I trust you will share, since I am,
‘Your true friend,
John Henry Easter.’
Chapter Nine
All through the spring and early summer of that year the Allied armies prepared to do battle with Napoleon, and the London papers were hot with the latest news. Dispatches arrived in the city nearly every day with the latest information from Paris and Brussels and Vienna, except, of course, when the weather in the Channel was too bad for the packet ships to sail. And rumours were as thick as flies in high summer. Prices on the commodity markets rose and fell precipitously, for England was the paymaster to the great armies that were currently being mustered over in Belgium, and there were plenty of adventurers in London who were prepared to speculate upon the outcome. And the London gossips had a splendidly garrulous time.
On the night Nan went to the Theatre Royal with Mr Brougham, there were scores of them about, buzzing in the boxes and strolling in the pit, carrying off titbits with the assiduity of carrion crows.
‘How we do love bad news,’ Nan observed, looking down at the seething mass below her, where fans were already fluttering like frantic moths. The men were loud with excitement, baying their opinions and barking with laughter and the women were warm with their exertions, their bare necks flushed and their eyes gleaming.
But he had little interest in gossip or gossips. ‘What do you think of the new gas lighting?’ he asked.
‘’Twill take a bit of getting used to,’ she said, looking at the new glass globes that were shedding yellow light from the front of every box, ‘but ’tis a fine clear light, in all conscience.’
‘And cost a fine clear fortune,’ he said.
‘How is it lit, think ’ee?’
‘With a taper, I believe. And if you think this a clear light, wait until you see the stage.’
The scarlet curtains were looping upwards, gathering into scalloped folds as they rose, and behind them the stage was suddenly and dazzlingly revealed. Painted trees to right and left, a medieval castle with a portcullis and a drawbridge, storm clouds in an impossibly blue sky and all of it ablaze with light, throbbing with light, so bright and unexpected it quite hurt the eyes. The audience burst into spontaneous applause at the sight of it. And somebody in the next box squealed with surprise.
Nan knew who it was at once. No other woman in London squealed quite like that.
‘Sophie!’ she called, turning her head as the applause continued. ‘Sophie Fuseli!’
‘Nan, my dear!’ Sophie said. ‘Have you ever seen the like?’ She looked very plump and very pretty, the heart-shape of her face echoed by the heart-shape of her headdress, her dark hair falling in heavy curls on either side of those fine blue eyes.
But there was no time to answer, for all about the theatre footmen were turning down the new lights by pulling upon slender chains attached to the globes, and Richard II and John of Gaunt were striking attitudes on stage and the audience was beginning to settle. ‘I will see you in the interval,’ Nan mouthed.
Which she did and a great pleasure it was to introduce ‘my oldest friend’ to ‘my newest acquaintance’, especially as her newest acquaintance instantly invited Sophie and her companion to join him in his box for supper. Sophie’s companion, whom she introduced rather carelessly as Mr Macintosh, was a young man with a large appetite and nothing to say for himself, but as Sophie didn’t seem to mind that he was being left out of the conversation, and she and Nan and Mr Brougham had such a lot to say to one another, they made a cheerful party, talking of the war and Napoleon and of the various artists of their acquaintance, including Sophie’s husband, Mr Fuseli, whose great paintings were, so she said, ‘little considered these days, I fear, although Mr Constable, who was once his pupil, you know, does uncommon well’.
‘Which must, I am sure, be partly attributed to the excellence of your husband’s tuition,’ Mr Brougham said courteously.
But Sophie wasn’t really very interested in her husband or his tuition.
‘I used to call on Mrs Easter every week,’ she said, changing the subject, ‘or she on me, and now I declare I ain’t seen her at home for above two months. Where have you been, you dratted creature?’
‘Hard at work,’ Nan said ruefully. ‘There’s been a deal to do.’
‘You must save her from herself, Mr Brougham,’ Sophie said, ‘or she will work twenty-four hours a day and fade away to nothing. Are you to eat all those oysters, Mr Macintosh, or do you mean to leave some for Mrs Easter?’
Her companion handed the plate across to Nan without a word, but excitement had taken away her appetite. ‘Oh it is good to see you,’ she said to Sophie. ‘You’re right, I confess it. I’ve let work take me away from my old friends.’
‘Then you must allow me to bring old friends together again and invite you both to dinner on Saturday,’ Frederick Brougham said, smiling first at Sophie and then at Nan. The footmen had reappeared and were walking purposefully towards the gas lights again. ‘And Mr Macintosh too?’ he suggested, but so quietly that the young man could not hear him above the noise of his own jaws.
Sophie shook her head and grimaced. ‘I think not, thank ’ee,’ she whispered, as she stood up. ‘Come now, Mr Macintosh, we must return to our seats.’
Mr Macintosh took the last pasty and crammed it into his mouth, spattering crumbs and thanks in the direction of his host as he followed her out of the box. Westminster Hall was being revealed on stage, with the Lords Spiritual and Temporal splendidly robed and the four actors who represented the Commons huddled together in sackcloth, looking gormless.
‘Have ’ee heard the news of Calverley Leigh?’ Sophie said from the doorway. ‘Married an heiress over in County Kerry, so they say, twice his age, with three grown daughters and an idiot son.’
Nan was startled, but she recovered quickly. ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ she said. It was just what they ought to have expected.
‘Call forth Bagot!’ Bolinbroke commanded, striding into Westminster Hall with such vigour that he made the gas lights pop like balloons.
‘It has been a most enjoyable evening, I think,’ Mr Brougham said as he and Nan drove through the quiet streets towards Bedford Square when the play was over.
‘Very,’ she said. ‘I’m beholden to ’ee, sir. ‘Twas good of ’ee to invite Mrs Fuseli to supper.’
‘A pleasure,’ he said, smiling at her in the darkness. And thinking, but not an unmitigated pleasure for you, I do believe. For he had noticed her start of surprise when Calverle
y Leigh’s name was mentioned and, knowing how long they had been lovers, had been concerned that she might have been upset by Mrs Fuseli’s news. ‘You promised to give me your opinion of the play, don’t forget,’ he said.
‘Aye, so I did.’
‘What did you think of it, pray?’
‘Plays are all the same,’ she said briskly, ‘painted trees what don’t rustle, and painted clouds what don’t move and a man stabbed through the heart without a drop of blood spilt. I liked the new gas lights, though.’
He roared with laughter at her, delighted because she was so outspoken and relieved that she didn’t seem upset at all, for she was laughing and teasing.
‘How now, Mrs Philistine,’ he said, responding to her mood, ‘did the drama not move you at all?’
‘’Tis all play-acting when all’s said and done,’ she said. ‘A chance to wear fine clothes and pretend to noble passions, but of no real consequence. However fine the play, it don’t change the world.’
‘True,’ he said. ‘And pithily expressed, as I have come to expect of ’ee. Well then, as you have such a poor opinion of players, I’d best not invite you to Covent Garden again next Wednesday.’
‘Ah!’ she teased, ‘but then I should miss the oysters.’
The carriage was turning into Bedford Square, wheels crunching on the cobbles, grinding to a halt outside her imposing door.
He got out before her and offered his forearm for her to lean upon as she stepped down after him. It was such a gentlemanly gesture she was quite touched by it. Then he walked her to the door and waited with her until it was opened.
‘I have taken much pleasure from your company tonight, Mrs Easter,’ he said, smiling down at her, his long face gilded by the light from the hall.
‘And I from yours, Mr Brougham.’
After such a rewarding evening it was no surprise to her that she should sleep sound and wake energetic. She packed her bags as soon as she got up, and at breakfast she told her sons that she was off to Bath, ‘Seeing there’s business there to be finished and you en’t the ones to do it now.’
‘True enough, Mama,’ John said. ‘We’ve enough to do here in all conscience.’ The stamping that morning had been even more troublesome than usual and there were rumours that the government intended to put up the stamp duty yet again, which seemed highly likely given the enormous expense of the present campaign, ‘If ’tis to be fourpence, as Mr Walter suspects, then the price of a quality newspaper will go up to sevenpence,’ he said, helping himself to more devilled kidneys, ‘and that will have an adverse effect upon trade. I do not see how it may be avoided.’
‘No ’twon’t,’ his mother said cheerfully, ‘not with a war and battles to look forward to. There en’t nothing sells newspapers so well as a war. You stay here and look after the shop, my dears, and I’ll open another for us in the West Country. I shall be back by Saturday, you may depend upon it, for I’ve promised to dine with Mr Brougham, and Sophie Fuseli is to be there.’
It was quite a compliment to be left to ‘mind the shop’ but Billy said he was a ‘bit miffed with all this war stuff. The number of newspapers that had to be stamped and sorted every day had doubled since Napoleon escaped from his wretched island, and now that Mama and John had extended their trade to so many country towns, half their daily purchase had to be dispatched on the first available coaches out of London, and that meant that he had to be in the sorting rooms at the ungodly hour of five in the morning. And all this just at a time when he was courting seriously and needed his energy to keep up with Matilda at all the balls and routs and suppers they attended.
‘As far as I’m concerned, Johnnoh,’ he said to his brother after one particularly hectic night when the two of them were drinking tea in the chilly dining room at half past four in the morning, ‘they can string old Boney up by his heels next time they catch him. Then perhaps we shall all have a bit of peace and quiet to get on with our lives.’ He’d had no sleep at all that night, for the ball he’d been to hadn’t ended until nearly three o’clock so he was in rather a sour mood.
But John enjoyed the pressure and worked well in the chill hours of early morning. He kept careful accounts of all their sales and watched their profits grow with all the satisfaction of a parent observing the health of a well-loved child. Routs and balls that went racketing on into the small hours had never been to his taste, although Mama and Billy loved them and were always out gallivanting somewhere. He was happy to dine at home and be in bed by ten o’clock. Especially as the last thing he did before he blew out the candle was to write a letter to Harriet Sowerby.
Thanks to his diligence, Harriet was probably the best informed young lady in the whole of England during that nervous time. At the end of March he wrote that Napoleon had entered Paris. ‘walking up the steps of the Tuileries, so it is said, with his eyes closed and his hands outstretched as though he were a blind man’. In April he gave her all the details of the Emperor’s new legislation: ‘He has abolished the slave trade, which is a thing I feel sure we should applaud had it been done by anyone other than Boney, and given a free pardon to all those who worked for the Bourbons while he was in Elba, saying, so it is rumoured, that they were under duress and could do no other. It is quite foolishly generous, but will ensure their silence now, if nothing else.’ At the end of May he reported with some agitation that the Emperor’s army now numbered more than a quarter of a million men, and that the Saxon troops, ‘who are supposed to be on our side’, had mutinied and been sent away, but that the Duke of Wellington was ready and waiting in Brussels with an allied army of a comparable size, ‘for which we must be profoundly thankful’ and that the battle when it came would be ‘the clashing of Titans’.
In Miss Pettie’s brown parlour Harriet read every word, and passed on the news to her hostess, like the dutiful child she was. But when she was alone in the dark cell of her little back bedroom, it was the beginning and end of his letters that she re-read and cherished. ‘My dear Miss Sowerby … I have the honour to be your devoted friend, John Henry Easter.’ and they were the hope of her dreams. ‘Your devoted friend.’ ‘My dear.’
She had got into the habit of calling upon Miss Pettie nearly every day on one pretext or another and staying in her parlour long enough to read his latest letter and answer it by postscript. But the fifth was so long and so full of questions that she and Miss Pettie both thought it was only right and proper that it should be answered at equal length. A postscript that was longer than the original letter seemed a trifle foolish, so Miss Pettie provided her with a sheet of writing paper all of her own and left her in peace for half a discreet hour to write as she pleased.
‘I have so much to do that I simply cannot stay with you, my dear,’ she said, patting her curls, ‘but if you will fold your letter and seal it before you leave, I will see that it gets to the Post.’ And she went tottering off to find something to occupy the time, chuckling to herself at how successful this match was becoming.
*
At the beginning of June, the Honevwoods moved back to Bury for the summer, and Billy followed them whenever his work and his mother would allow. His presence in Angel Hill on that first Saturday afternoon cast Harriet Sowerby into a state of such tremulous anticipation that she chipped two of her mother’s precious coffee cups after dinner that night and had to be prayed over for her clumsiness for more than an hour.
And this time, although she appeared to be listening meekly to her mother’s hectoring voice, she was actually paying no attention at all, being busy inside her head with problems of quite another kind. What would happen when Mr Easter came to Bury with his brother, as he surely must sooner or later? He might even spend the summer in town as his mother did, and what then? If they were to meet – in the street somewhere or in Miss Pettie’s parlour, perhaps – he would be bound to greet her and then what would happen? It would be most improper to ignore him, especially after all the letters that had passed between them. And he might invite her to jo
in him at some ball or other. How could she contrive to accept him if he did? It was all rather complicated. But there was bound to be a way round it, if she thought hard enough.
‘For Thy Name’s sake, Amen,’ her mother said with fierce satisfaction. ‘Now see if you can mend your ways, my girl.’
Back in Bedford Square Nan had decided to go to Liverpool and open a branch of A. Easter and Sons there, ‘since Mr Brougham travels in that direction to assist his cousin Henry, who is hoping to be elected a member of Parliament for the town. ’Twill be pleasant to have company on the journey. ’Tis a growing town, with a deal of custom a-waiting us, if I’m any judge.’
But John was more interested in the coaches that were now running with dependable regularity from another growing town. ‘The inland mails from Birmingham could take our papers out to the better part of the North West,’ he said. ‘To Liverpool and Chester and Manchester, which is growing apace so Mr Walter tells me with so many army uniforms and blankets and such being made. Why not start with a shop in Birmingham, Mama?’
But Liverpool had far greater attractions. ‘No,’ she said, dusting her hands together. ‘’Twill be Liverpool first. ’Tis all arranged. And if all goes well there, we will open up the North West between us. Liverpool today, Birmingham tomorrow, eh.’
‘Birmingham will be far more use to us,’ he persisted. It annoyed him that she would insist on doing his work for him. Having given him the job of extending their trade to the provincial towns she really ought to allow him to do it, and in his own way what’s more. Particularly as his way was methodical and trustworthy and hers was somewhat haphazard.
But there was no gainsaying her. ‘That’s settled then,’ she said, dusting her hands together.
However, they were both reckoning without Napoleon.
On the 13th June, while she and the Broughams were still busy in Liverpool, a dispatch arrived reporting that the Emperor had begun to move his army towards the Belgium frontier. Billy was recalled from his courtship in Bury, and Nan came back to London immediately, leaving Mr Brougham with his cousin, and her newly opened shop in Liverpool to fend for itself.
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