Remember the Morning (34 page)

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Authors: Thomas Fleming

BOOK: Remember the Morning
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I was fascinated by the incredible number of shops, each with a colorful sign swinging from it. When we passed through Leicester Square, Hartshorne pointed to the huge mansion at one end as the residence of the Prince of Wales. In front of it were four crude wooden shops. Elsewhere, whole streets of shops were devoted to a single industry, such as snuff or candle making or cabinet making.
On Holborn Street, our carriage was brought to a halt by an enormous crowd following a man and woman standing in a cart. There were women with young children in the procession, as well as couples smiling and chatting as if they were going to a play. “Someone on their way to be hanged at Tyburn,” Hartshorne explained. “It's only about a half mile off, on the Oxford-Bayswater Road.”
He leaned out of the carriage and asked a man selling sweetmeats what crimes the offenders had committed. “Thievery” was the response. “They was in service. Caught them with a half dozen spoons in their pockets.”
“How many have they hanged this month?” Hartshorne asked.
“It's been brisk. Twenty-five!” the man said. “I've sold out me tray almost every day.”
“Twenty-five in a month?” Malcolm said. “We don't hang five in a year in New York.”
“Maybe you should multiply that number a bit,” Hartshorne said. “The town would be a lot more quiet.”
Finally we reached our destination—the White Horse Inn on Piccadilly, which was run by a Hartshorne relative, John Williams. He was a short rotund man with a red nose and vivid red dewlaps under his chin that made him resemble a rooster. He regarded Hartshorne with amazement, as if he had come back from the dead.
“I thought your head would be decorating some redskin's lodgepole long since,” he roared.
Hartshorne introduced Malcolm and me as his “American” friends.
Williams stepped back to get a better look at Malcolm's bulk. “Are they all this size?” he said.
Hartshorne shook his head. “They come in all shapes, like us,” he said. “His mother was Scottish. I think that's where the size originates.”
Hartshorne said we were all eager to hear the latest news about the political situation. Had the Patriots formed a government? Was Walpole's army of placemen about to join him in headlong retreat?
Williams shook his head and beckoned us into his empty taproom, where he opened a bottle of sherry to celebrate our arrival. “There's naught but trouble in the wind,” he said. “The Patriots is fighting among themselves and Walpole's army shows no inclination to retreat.”
He began discussing Parliamentary politics, with a profusion of names and nicknames that left even Hartshorne confused. Malcolm looked completely bewildered. Though I paid little or no attention to politics, I was able to grasp the essence of the story. Walpole had left behind him two major generals in his political army, the brothers Pelham. The elder was the Duke of Newcastle, who had immense estates and influence in the north, around the city of that name. With twenty-five thousand voters among his tenants, he controlled a formidable bloc of seats in Parliament. As secretary of state, he had vast numbers of government jobs in his control. His brother Henry, as paymaster of the forces, had access to millions of pounds for bribes.
“But the country gentlemen,” Hartshorne said. “What's happened to them?”
“Tories, most of'm. The king won't let one of'm in the cabinet. He claims they're all Jacobites at heart. He may be right.”
“I thought the Patriots would end that old quarrel between the parties,” Hartshorne said. “To me the names Whig and Tory are meaningless.”
39
“You've spent too much time in America,” Williams said. “They'll be Whigs and Tories as long as James Edward Stuart is sittin' across the channel, backed by French money and politics.”
40
“You mean the Tories are loyal to the Pretender?” Malcolm said. “There are still people of that persuasion in England?”
“Hah!” Williams said. “I've had my windows broke once a week since Walpole went down. There's plenty in London who are ready to throw rocks at my sign. But it'll swing as long as I'm proprietor and my son after me.”
“The White Horse is the emblem of the House of Hanover,” Hartshorne explained to an amazed Malcolm Stapleton. Thanks to my thorough grounding in recent English history from Harman Bogardus, I knew this was the family of the current king, George II. The British had imported them from Germany when William of Orange failed to produce an heir.
The next morning we rose early and with directions from our innkeeper set out for St. Martin's Lane, where our lawyer, Peter Van Ness, had rooms. As we strolled down this narrow winding street, past numerous shops of cabinetmakers and other craftsmen, we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a riot. A mob of several hundred people had gathered before a brick house with barred windows in the basement. On the sidewalk lay about a dozen women, most of them apparently dead. Friends and relatives wept over them.
“Murder the bastards!” screamed one woman. A rock sailed through the air and demolished a window on an upper floor.
Malcolm asked a ruddy-cheeked older man on the fringe of the crowd what had happened. “The constables was drunk last night and they gathered up all the streetwalkers they could find and stuffed them into the loft of the Round House here with all the doors and windows shut,” the man said. “There wasn't enough air in the place to keep a canary alive. They was piled on top of each other like logs. The poor women died like pigs in the slaughterhouse. Is this arbitrary power at work or ain't it? What a hell of a country!”
41
His words worked him into such a rage, the old man pried a paving stone out of the road and demolished another window of the Round House. “Burn it around their ears,” he howled.
The mob stormed into the house and began throwing furniture out the windows. Soon flames and smoke swirled from the top story. Bells clanged and tradesmen rushed from their shops. Down the street came a bright red fire engine, pulled by a half dozen men. New York had bought two of these machines, which were a great improvement on buckets.
At first the crowd refused to let the firemen into the house. A magistrate appeared and threatened to read the riot act. That would enable the authorities to call for the army. The mob fell back and sullenly allowed the firemen to run their hoses into the building. Malcolm volunteered to help work the pumper that sent the water gushing up the hoses to douse the flames.
The old man Malcolm questioned now began to harangue the crowd.
“This wouldn't happen in a country with an English king. We've got a king who speaks better French and German than English. Three cheers for the true king over the water!”
42
The crowd sent up three treasonous cheers with the greatest enthusiasm. Malcolm could not believe his ears. We continued down St. Martin's Lane to Slaughter's Tavern, where we asked for Peter Van Ness.
“The American poet?” said the smiling proprietor. “He's no doubt hard at work upstairs.”
We mounted to a room in the rear of the third floor and discovered our once hard-eyed young New York attorney had in fact become a poet. He wore a loose-fitting kimono and skullcap, making him look more like a Jew than a Dutchman. His desk was littered with books; a skull peered at us atop one pile. He was pleasantly surprised to see us, but treated us more like creatures from another life.
“New York seems so far away and long ago,” he said.
Malcolm's case against Georgianna Stapleton? Oh yes, he would give us the name of the barrister he had hired. He had heard nothing from him for months—perhaps a year. Van Ness was far more interested in telling us that he was publishing a book of poems and through one of the many literary men who drank at Slaughter's, he hoped to win the approval—and generosity—of the great Tory politician Lord Bolingbroke. There was a very good chance that Bolingbroke might soon become prime minister—which would mean fame and limitless fortune for his protégés.
I strongly suspected literature had stolen our lawyer's wits. He read us several poems, which extolled the “rustic peace” of the American forest, the unspoiled beauty of the Hudson or the Mohawk River. I did not associate peace or beauty with either place. For me the forest would always be haunted by terror and death—and the Hudson and the Mohawk were no more than tedious highways. Van Ness called his poems Iroquois
Odes—
a title which had already won him a publisher, but which struck me as absurd.
Restraining my sharp tongue, I let Malcolm congratulate Van Ness and wish him every success. He gave us Georgianna Stapleton's address and the name and address of our English lawyer. Malcolm decided to visit his brother first. We trekked back down St. Martin's Street and along a dozen more streets to Golden Square, a splendid set of four-story houses around a fenced green park. Strollers readily guided us to the house next to the Portuguese Embassy.
A maid led us to a well-furnished parlor, with a marble mantel and overdoors enriched by scrollwork and flowers. Georgianna Stapleton
swept into the room in a dress which was the equal of anything I had seen in Amsterdam. It was a rich damask, embroidered with golden lace, cut low in the front to display her splendid breasts.
“Stepson!” she said, boldly kissing Malcolm on the mouth. “And his commercial wife. What brings you to London?”
“My wife is here to do business on behalf of her store in New York, madam,” Malcolm said. “I'm here to see my brother and discuss the matter of my father's estate with him—and perhaps with you.”
“Jamey left London for the Scottish border six months ago. We've bought him a commission in the army.”
“He's only fifteen,” Malcolm said.
“Most ensigns are fourteen,”
43
Georgianna said. “Governor Nicolls thinks it will be the making of him. Jamey wanted to go.”
“Is it part of your plot, madam, to hope for his early death, so you can completely loot our estate?”
Infuriated, Georgianna returned this insult to Malcolm with interest. “Once and for all, let's make a few things clear. Hampden Hall was not built with your mother's money. When she died that was all gone, thanks to your father's feckless ways. I procured him credit to build the house and play the rich man. Whatever money I spend from his estate, which is still up to the chimneys in debt, I've earned it. You might even say I'm still earning it, since without Mr. Nicolls's intervention, it would have been sold for its debts long ago.”
“I don't believe a word you say, madam,” Malcolm said. “I never have and never will.”
Georgianna's smile became a sneer. “Still a booby, aren't you,” she said. “Do you think you can win a war with us? Mr. Nicolls sits in Parliament for the Duke of Newcastle. He and his brother, Henry Pelham, will soon be running the country. This Patriot stuff is so much moonshine.”
While Malcolm fumed, my ever-active brain was concluding that Georgianna Stapleton's comments about the estate had a ring of authenticity. This was a woman who had rescued herself from the pit of poverty by her wits and beauty and she was clearly proud of it. There was a mystery here—a mystery I had long sensed about the late George Stapleton—and I did not know the answer.
We left Georgianna's house after she and Malcolm exchanged more warm words about her treatment of Jamey—and she triumphantly informed me Robert Nicolls was about to marry a Miss White, who had a dowry of one hundred thousand pounds. A furious Malcolm rushed to Old Palace Yard with me gasping in his wake. He was much too angry
for me to discuss my intuition about Georgianna. In the Yard, we quickly located our lawyer, Thomas McDuffie. He was a small morose man, whose office was cluttered with dust-covered lawbooks.
“Stapleton? Stapleton?” he said, his snub-nosed face a blank. It took a paragraph of explanation for Malcolm to refresh his memory. “Oh, the American will! A very difficult case, young man. I've applied for a writ of mandamus, which would have returned the matter to a court in your colony, but the will has been filed and executed here as well as in New York, which complicates the matter—”
McDuffie paused and his eyes drifted from Malcolm to me. “Let's be blunt. How much money are you willing to spend to settle this?”
“What do you mean?” Malcolm said.
“I mean a bribe or two. Or maybe three.”
“I will pay no man a bribe. With Walpole down, won't there be a restoration of honesty and integrity here?” Malcolm said.
McDuffie regarded him with the sort of kindly smile people give harmless lunatics. “When that day comes, you may also look for Jesus Christ and a brace of Archangels to sail up the Thames. It will be the advent of the Second Coming, I assure you,” McDuffie said.
“How much money are you talking about?” I asked.
“At least two thousand pounds. Possibly three.”

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