A Daughter Rebels

by Ann Birch

I placed the coins in Mr. Forbes’s hands. “Will you be so kind as to find the husband of the woman who died of scurvy and give him these? He is an old man and he probably will be carrying a fiddle. I want to assist him in providing a decent burial for the poor woman.”

  Around us, passengers had begun to drag their trunks on deck in preparation for debarking. Children ran about, and there was much bustle and laughter. Mr. Forbes departed on his errand, and I stood alone, staring at the Liverpool harbour. Soon I, too, would have to ready myself for departure. In a few hours Papa and I would be making our way to London.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  London, April, 1817

  Upon our arrival in the city, Papa had rented what at first seemed like comfortable lodgings near the Inns of Court. We soon became acquainted with the realities of the place, however. The landlady, Mrs. Grundy, was a grumpy old soul. Her cooking was good, but uninspired. She provided us with kippers and coffee every morning, a spread of curried chicken breasts with apples served at every dinner on pewter plates, and pound cake with prune chutney for late afternoon tea. Papa often tired of the fare and took his dinner and tea at the Inns of Court when, as he said, the sight of one more chicken breast would send him cackling.

  At first, I, like Papa, was appalled by the limitations of Mrs. Grundy’s meal offerings. But there were other adjustments. I’m afraid that I had been grossly naïve in believing those words of Handel that Mrs. Moses had sung so beautifully on the ship. Hope of those cool gales fanning the glade had led me to think of the pleasant scent of flowers and trees. The reality was certainly different, at least in the part of London we inhabited.

  My landlady lived in one of the older London houses, and there was no provision on the upper floor for a water closet. The chamberpots were emptied infrequently. Hence, when I was at home with Mrs. Grundy, I generally made use of the privy—or the “Jericho” as Mrs. Grundy called it. It was located over a cesspool in the small yard behind the house. I recall that at the end of the first week of my residence in Mrs. Grundy’s lodgings, I came down the stairs to find two filthy men carrying buckets of urine and excrement through the house and out the front door where they dumped the mess into a large container on a rough wagon pulled by a team of unhappy-looking horses.

  “Is there no other way that they can clean the privy?” I asked Mrs. Grundy. “Surely they could carry the pails through the outside gate?”

  “Youse fine folk,” she replied with a snort, “youse never stop to consider the trials of us, the working poor. Look at that gate the next time youse come through it. How is a man with a pole on his shoulders and two buckets to push through?”

  Well, I was rightly chastised. I said no more. I tried instead to avoid thinking of that wagonload of putrescence ending up in the river Thames. I also began to understand why Mrs. Grundy kept a huge pot of water on the boil every day. At home in York, the drinking water came from a well on our farm north of the town. I had never before given any thought as to how it was transported to our house. And though I knew that we sometimes sold our urine to the dye factory on the lake, I had never thought about what happened to the rest of our bodily wastes. Now the plight of the “working poor” crashed down on my simple-minded head.

  I could not let Mrs. Grundy get away with her insolence, however.

  “I merely asked a question, ma’am,” I said. “Your answer was unnecessarily rude. Do you think that we in Upper Canada have no working poor? I believe you have little idea of what goes on in our world, just as I know very little about life here in London. ”

  “Humph,” was her response as she moved away from me to slam the front door shut behind the last of the privy cleaners.

  As the weeks went by, I became accustomed to these household aberrations and to the noise and squalor of London streets. I learned that in the poorer sections of the city, it was always possible that a maidservant might empty the contents of the chamberpots from a third-storey window. I soon learned to take my cue from the other denizens of the neighbourhood and duck into a doorway whenever I heard a window slam open.

  But there were good moments too. Mr. John Beverley Robinson soon renewed his acquaintance with us, and when he was not at the Inns of Court with Papa, he was assiduous in showing me around the city. Since Papa was desirous of having our marriage go forward, he had nothing to say in protest against the evenings when Mr. Robinson took me to see plays at Drury Lane or the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden.

  I carefully tailored my reports of these evenings for Papa, speaking freely of Edmund Kean’s wonderful performance of Othello or describing the opulence of these theatres and the amazing gas lighting that had been so recently installed. I did not, of course, relate my horror at “Monk” Lewis’s performance in The Castle Spectre where the monsters and ghosts terrified me so much that Mr. Robinson reached over and took my hand in his.

  Was romance in the air? Perhaps. Or so I thought. It was at moments like these when I forgot the smell of the privy at Mrs. Grundy’s house, the narrow escapes from overturned chamberpots, and the stench of garbage in the river Thames.

  One fine early April afternoon, Papa, Mr. Robinson, and I took a walk through Hyde Park, one of the grand parks of London. The air was sweet with the scent of springtime. Small children were floating boats in a nearby pond. Daffodils grew abundantly everywhere, and several goldfinches seemed immersed in their mating rituals. For a moment Handel’s aria came into my mind, and I began to sing “Where’er you walk.” Mr. Robinson joined in. He had a rich tenor voice, and the effect was beautiful. I could see that Papa immediately grew uneasy.

  “I must go down that path,” he said, pointing to a walk that led back into a busy street, “and see if I can find a gift to take to your Mama when we return to York. I’ll meet you in an hour back here near that pond.”

  I could hardly believe it. Was Papa making himself scarce so that Mr. Robinson and I could come to some definite decision about our future? Certainly, Mr. Robinson seemed happy to seize the opportunity. “Let us sit here and enjoy the view,” he said, leading me to a bench overlooking the pond that was rimmed with daffodils in full bloom and alive with the laughter of the children.

  We sat in silence for several moments. I expected him to move closer to me, but he kept a discreet distance between us. Perhaps he was shy, though I had never before found him lost for words. As the silence grew in length, I decided to help him out.

  “Do you intend to return to York soon?”

  “Yes, though I love the beauty of England’s ‘green and pleasant land,’ I must return to my home in York very soon. My many mentors here assured me that after a few months in my position as Solicitor-General of Upper Canada, I am certain to become Attorney-General by February of next year at the latest.”

  “And well you deserve that title.”

  “I had impressive backers in York who set me up to succeed, and for them I shall ever be grateful. But I no longer need their support. So many dignitaries here have received me graciously. Lord Bathurst, for example—the current Secretary of State for the Colonies—has encouraged me and pushed me forward into the top ranks of officialdom. I have travelled to the Continent and to Scotland and northern England and made friends with all the folk who supervise the colonies. Really, it seems as if I have been born to succeed.”

  He was beginning to sound like Papa at his worst. But I was also becoming angry at his dismissal of Papa’s influence in his life. After all, it had been Papa who had encouraged him to come to England for further legal studies, and I knew that the Reverend Mr. Strachan had also been a strong booster of his need for further education. I remembered the little man standing on the York Wharf on that early fall morning in 1815 helping him with his luggage and waving to him as he passed out of the harbour.

  “You need to remember that it was my father and Mr. Strachan who set you up for success. I believe that your birth had very little to do with it. Was it not Mr. Strachan who gave you a solid education at his school at Cornwall? Wa
s it not Papa who was instrumental in making you Acting Attorney-General after the war? And surely it was Papa and Mr. Strachan who insisted that you be called to the bar here at the Inns of Court.”

  He was silent for a moment. Then he began to tell me about all the feats he had accomplished since his arrival in England. As I sat there listening to his display of braggadocio, another thought smote me. I moved closer to him on the park bench. I turned my head towards his and placed my hand on his arm, forcing him to look into my eyes. “Is it possible that you cultivated a friendship with me to ensure Papa’s support for your advancement?”

  As I asked the question, I already knew the answer, but I wanted to hear what he would say for himself. It was a bit like studying an Australian marsupial--a creature about which I knew nothing yet yearned to learn more—and I scrutinized his every movement and expression. He blushed, he squirmed, and sweat broke out on his forehead.

  “Of course, my dear Anne, I have always greatly esteemed you for your own worth”—a pause, a clearing of his throat, a wiping of his forehead—“but . . .”

  “But. . .” I reached down, picked a daffodil from the grass in front of me, looked at it for a moment, and threw it away. “Please finish your sentence.”

  “I am already engaged to someone else.”

  Well, there it was. And not entirely unexpected. I had heard enough, and I rose to depart, but he pulled me back. “Please, please, let me tell you something about it.”

  “Very well. Get on with it.” I sat down again.

  “One of my first letters of introduction when I came here was to William Merry, the Undersecretary for War. He has a fine Georgian house in Mayfair, and I went there for a party soon after my arrival.” He paused for breath.

  “Let me help you out with your fine story,” I said. “The Merrys have a beautiful daughter and you fell in love with—”

  “No, no, you have it all wrong. I met a very fine, pretty little girl at the party, no relation at all to the Merrys. Her name is Emma Walker. She was so pleasant and engaging in her manner that . . . ”

  “You fell in love with her at first sight.”

  “It’s such a silly phrase, is it not, but in my case it was absolutely true.”

  “And now . . .?”

  “We are to be married on the fifth of June in a chapel near the Inns of Court. Then, in early July, we will set sail for Upper Canada.”

  I thought of our visits to the theatre, of our convivial suppers in fine restaurants, of his friendly support throughout these early weeks in London. It had all been a fraud. His perfidy aroused in me such a rage that for a moment I was overwhelmed. I wanted to scream, to beat him over the head with my parasol, but I strove to keep my voice level, mindful of the happy little children nearby. “You have been taking me about for several weeks now, and yet you have told me nothing about this new love of yours. It is true that we were never officially engaged while we were in York, yet you must surely know that everyone expected us to marry someday. You have been dishonest and deceitful.”

  “I have been a great coward, dear Anne, and for that I give you my most abject apologies and beg for your forgiveness.”

  “I can never forgive your duplicity, but I expect that I shall have little difficulty in dealing with the death of our romance—if you can call it that. In a few days I intend to leave Papa here in London and travel to the village of Tolpuddle in Dorset to spend some months with my aunt and uncle. There I hope to forge a new life for myself. Please do not flatter yourself by thinking that I am in any way heartbroken over this new romance that you have undertaken. My best wishes to you and . . . what is her name?”

  Of course, I had remembered the name of my erstwhile lover’s new mate, but I enjoyed his discomfiture at having to say it again to me.

  “And now, Mr. Robinson, I must ask you to move on. I shall wait here on the bench and enjoy the children at play while Papa does his shopping.”

  I watched the man escape down the path towards one of the exits leading out of the park. He walked quickly, looking straight ahead. It was almost as if he had been released from some unbearable torture. Certainly he must have feared that I would insist he stay with me and explain his new love affair to my father.

  That chore was to be mine. I did not look forward to it.

  The minutes passed. Finally, I caught sight of Papa in the distance. I knew what to expect. He would rant and rave and blame me for my passivity in passing up an opportunity to nail down “a prudent marriage.” But truth be told, I was already feeling as if I, too, had been released from torture. Propriety had dogged me all my life. Now I was freed from the necessity to marry a man whom I had never really loved. I could now depart for Tolpuddle and perhaps there find new opportunities and a new life.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  York, March, 1818

  Annie Powell was annoyed to find her daughter Eliza seated at the pianoforte in the parlour, thumping out a passage from Haydn’s Surprise Symphony. Since William had become Chief Justice, there were so many new functions to prepare for.

  “I thought you were to be stitching your new gown for the assembly next week.”

  “I know, Mama. I was merely giving myself a break from the stitchery. I wanted so much to try out the sheet music that you gave me permission to buy.”

  “Tush, daughter, you must persevere with the important elements of our lives. With Anne far away in Tolpuddle and Mary more and more entranced with Samuel Jarvis, you are my main source of support.”

  “Am I therefore to have no leisure time to pursue amusements that give me solace?”

  “Now you are beginning to sound like your sister Anne. Our duties are to present an example to the citizens of this town. We must support your father in every way we can, especially now that he is finding the new Lieutenant-Governor so difficult to deal with.”

  “Has there been some new problem with Governor Maitland, Mama?”

  “You surely know that he got the position only because he married into a noble family. He is a low-born fool and his ongoing haughty and overbearing nature distresses your father.”

  “You do like Lady Sarah, though, don’t you, Mama?”

  “Yes. I like her. She is modest and unassuming in spite of the fact that her father is the Duke of Richmond.”

  Eliza gave a deep sigh. “So what have you in mind for this afternoon, Mama?”

  “Let us go now and visit the new Mrs. Robinson. She has apparently just given birth to their first child. I believe his name is James Lukin, though I have no idea where that strange second name comes from. No doubt we shall have to look upon the brat and make appropriate comments. Put on your redingote with the satin collar. We must appear at our best. I do not want the gossips in this place to assume that the Powells are in any way distressed by Mr. Robinson’s decision not to marry Anne.”

  In a few minutes, they were on their way north to the newly enlarged cottage that Mr. Boulton had vacated in favour of his fine new house called The Grange. Mr. Robinson and his wife Emma were now the inhabitants of Boulton’s old home. Mr. Robinson had added a wing to the westward side of the brick cottage, raised the whole building, added an extensive verandah, and built stables to the north-west. He had even endowed it with a new name, Beverley House.

  “How painful it is for me to think that your sister Anne might have been the lady of this fine abode!” Annie commented as they turned down the path towards the front door. But as she and Eliza moved up the steps to the verandah, she cautioned her daughter, “Remember that under no circumstance must we indicate in any way our displeasure with the present lady!”

  A maidservant took them into the parlour where Emma Robinson sat by the hearth, rocking her infant son. Annie and Eliza made the appropriate cooing noises over the child whose face was bright red from crying.

  Mrs. Robinson was an attractive young woman with dark curls and a delicate nose. She made an effort to greet them, but her words were drowned by the squalling infant. “May I?�
� said Eliza, reaching down into the cradle where she gathered up the child and placed him on her shoulder, giving his back a pat at the same time. A loud burp arose from the infant, followed by a stream of puke onto Eliza’s satin collar. At the same time, the squalling stopped.

  “Oh, Miss Powell, you do know how to placate an infant. But your lovely coat will be ruined.” Mrs. Robinson pressed the button on the mantelpiece and the maid reappeared. “Please, please, see what you can do to remove the stains from Miss Russell’s redingote.”

  The girl took the infant from Eliza and returned him to the cradle where he promptly fell asleep. Then she took Eliza’s coat, saying, “I be giving it a good sponge, ma’am, and it be as good as new.” She disappeared down the hallway, and Annie and Eliza sat down on chairs next to the fire.

  “You have a way with children, Miss Powell,” their hostess said, “but I’m afraid that I know nothing about the care of infants. Fortunately, I can hand most of the responsibility over to the nanny, but the woman insists on a day off each week, and today was her day, alas.”

  Mrs. Robinson then proceeded to mix the tea, and a second maid appeared with Derby cakes. A stench of bowels emanating from the cradle was overpowering, and for a moment conversation stalled while Mrs. Robinson pressed the mantel button again, and the first maidservant reappeared and removed the cradle and its inmate.

  They took a few bites of the Derby cakes, and Annie was relieved to hear the silence broken by Eliza’s praise of their quality. It was now her turn to keep the conversation going. “And may I have the recipe, Mrs. Robinson?” she asked. “I shall give it to Cook whose Derby cakes are sadly diminished by these fine specimens.”

  Eliza’s request brought another summons on the mantel button, and a new maid appeared. Annie had begun to count. Three maids so far and a nanny somewhere as well. A cook belowstairs and no doubt a groom and coachman. How does John Beverley Robinson afford it all? Anne, for all her crazy obstinacy, would have managed far better than this woman has.