The Stranger From The Sea (11 page)

'I have discussed the King's condition with some of my colleagues. That would not be putting it too high.'

'And are they as optimistic of his recovery as the reports suggest?'

'I hardly knew that the reports were so optimistic. Certainly everyone hopes the King will recover.' 'Amen,' said George. 'But
...'
'But what?'

'It was not important,' said Dwight.

They moved towards the door. George said: 'I must take my leave now. I don't wish to disturb the others, so pray thank Caroline for her gracious hospitality, and Mrs Pelham too. And thank Caroline also, if you please, for the generous offer she made me at the supper table. I shall be delighted to accept it.'

'What that is I don't know; but of course
...'

Dwight rang for George's cloak and hat.

George said: 'What do
you
personally consider are the chances of the King's recovery, Dwight?'

Dwight turned the doorknob between his fingers. 'Why are you so interested?'

'It may determine the future of England.'

'The war, you mean.'

'The war. The conditions in the north. Even the future of Europe.'

Dwight said: 'My own opinion is that the King will not recover.'

George licked his lips. 'Even though he has regained his reason thrice before.'

'Then he was younger. Each time the chances of a full recovery are less.'

'And a partial recovery would not enable him to stop
the Regency Bill?*

'Parliament must judge that.'

'They say he has periods of lucidity still.'

'Oh yes. Has had from the beginning. But they don't last. Naturally I may be quite mistaken but I shall be much surprised if they ever do last long enough for him to be able to resume his conduct of the affairs of state.'

George heard the footsteps of the manservant.

'You judge from the reports of the other doctors or from personal observation?'

Dwight said: 'I believe it to be a complaint of the blood. Various symptoms suggest it. It is more common among men, though it can, I suspect, be carried, dormantly, as it were, through the female side. Ah, Chambers, will you see Sir George to his horse.'

George left next day for Manchester. If while he was away Mrs Pelham arranged some introduction for him to the Duke of Leeds, that was unfortunate. Financial affairs must come before affairs of the heart. Especially since one might influence the other.

It was necessary to move fast. Although he resented Dwight Enys's closeness of professional manner - and quietly resolved in return that, if or when it came time for a subscription list to be opened for the proposed mental hospital in Cornwall, a similar closeness - of his, George's, pocket - should be the order of the day; nevertheless Dwight had been proven right so often in medical matters that he was prepared to be influenced by what Dwight had said at this meeting. He was absolutely convinced that Enys had seen the King - however he appeared to dissimulate. Without such personal contact he would never have been so definite.

In Manchester he found the position scarcely changed since his visit of September. With the West Indies and South America as their only outlets, manufactured goods were piled in warehouses, unable to find buyers in a saturated market, while all embattled Europe cried out for them. Last month, December, there had been 273 bankruptcies, as against
65
four years ago. Weavers' earnings were less than half that of agricultural labourers. Skilled cotton operators were working a ninety-hour week for
8s.

Of course there was hope of a change. But nobody had the money to invest in a hope.

Except George.

At a knockdown price he bought a firm of fine cotton spinners called Flemings. Two other firms - Ormrod's -who were calico printers - and Fraser, Greenhow -builders and engineers - he arranged should receive large credits through Warleggan's Bank to enable them to keep afloat - this not by a straightforward loan but by the purchase of a substantial interest in his own name so that he owned a big share of the stock. He made three other smaller investments, and bought, at far below cost, commodities which could only rise when peace came. Altogether he invested seventy-two thousand, three hundred and forty-four pounds, which was almost every penny of realizable capital he possessed.

He returned to London in bitter weather after a week, satisfied that he had made the necessary provisions just in time.

Unfortunately his meeting with the Duke of Leeds, which occurred three days after his return, did not come off so auspiciously. His lordship clearly looked on Sir George as a middle-aged parvenu. Mention of Lady Harriet's name made his intentions obviously clearer than he had intended, and they were as clearly resented. The Duchess was more gracious, but only perhaps because it wasn't
her
sister or because she was too absent-minded to care. A pretty young woman, she kept wandering in and out of the room followed by two servants searching for a key she had lost.

But George, while setting a black mark against the Duke for his haughty manner - a mark incidentally which would never be forgotten - was not too put down by it. He knew that money talked even in the highest circles, and if and when the Manchester investments brought their proper return, which must be within the year, he would altogether be worth probably half a million pounds. Even the Leeds family, for all their great connections, could not ignore that. Harriet would not, he dared swear. With or without the Duke's ungracious permission, she should marry him in the end.

With politeness but with increasing impatience Ross stayed on in London. He had of course written again to Demelza. He was not only anxious to be home but bored with his days at Westminster, where everyone seemed far more concerned with what they could get out of the constitutional crisis than either the prosecution of the war or the starving weavers of the north. That all three problems were inter-related he fully admitted, but that the last two should be half submerged in the scramble for political power disgusted him.

A meeting was arranged for him with the Foreign Secretary, but this in itself was a difficult and delicate encounter. In the first place he did not care for Wellesley. His brother, the recently ennobled Viscount Wellington, was stiff-backed, austere, lacking in warmth, but he had the magic of a soldier of the very highest gifts. Wellesley, by ten years the elder, might well have done fine work in India but was far too authoritarian for England, and some thought him lazy as well as pompous. A wit had said that you couldn't see Wellesley out walking without feeling that he expected to be preceded by the tramp of elephants.

Foreign Secretary, most people thought, was the position Canning should have held, but he had been excluded from it by factional jealousies and his own misjudgements.

A delicate meeting therefore on two counts, for Ross had gone to Portugal only in a semi-official capacity as an 'observer', with the sanction of the government but not at its behest. Canning, Dundas and Rose were at the back of it, and Wellesley had at first tried to obstruct the visit on the grounds that there was ample official information available about Portugal without sending out spies.

Fortunately Ross had not heard this word as applied to himself, but he knew of Wellesley's general reluctance, and he could be as stiff-backed as the next. However, the nature of the report he had brought back showed so clearly his admiration for the disposition and behaviour of the British forces in the field tha
t Lord Wellesley expressed his
appreciation and promised that the whole Cabinet should have copies of it before the week was out.

Perceval also was complimentary and sent a note to say so, but Canning was still not satisfied.

'We're preaching to the converted, old friend. You must speak in the House on it.'

'I could not,' said Ross, 'or would not.'

‘
Why not?'

'Until the Regency Bill is through no one is in the least interested. Anyway, if you were to circulate this report to every member of the House, do you seriously believe it would alter their thinking? Or convince those who were not already of that mind? They wouldn't bother to
read
it. If I stood up and caught the Speaker's eye, how many would stay to listen? D'you suppose that Whitbread or Wilberforce or Northumberland would be one whit . influenced by anything I said - one whit less certain that England is going to lose the Peninsular war?'

Canning bit his thumb. 'It is a point that has been pricking at my mind all week. The question is, what to do about it.'

'Call it a day and let me go home.'

Canning said: 'Preaching to the unconvertible is little more use than preaching to the converted. It is the waverers who matter. And then only the waverers with influence. I have been thinking, I have been thinking for some time that you should tell this story to Lady Hertford who no doubt could be prevailed upon to repeat it to the Prince. But I am not at all sure. It's possible that this is an error on my part. Nothing is one half so convincing at second hand, is it. Well, is it?'

*No, I should think not.'

'So therefore it should be first hand. Am I not right? There is really only one person who must hear this report, and that is the Prince himself.'

As January waned the winter hardened and the Thames froze. The trees around Brompton were stiff with rime. Horses slithered and snorted in the icy lanes, their breath like dragons' in the sunless air. Birds dropped dead among the apple trees, foxes crept into the corners of the barns for shelter, the pall of London smoke, undisturbed by wind, kept its distance in the cast.

Ross occupied much of his time amending and revising his report so that it should read clearly and without ambiguity. He wrote a third time to Demelza, apologizing for but not explaining the delay: It was a very long letter, the longest he had ever written her, and in it he said quite a substantial part of what was in the report but in more colloquial terms. It helped him, he found, to see it through her eyes.

In vain he argued with George Canning that even if this meeting, this anomalous meeting, could be arranged, the Prince of Wales would long since have made up his
mind from his own ample sources of information as to the advantages and disadvantages of withdrawing from the Peninsula. Ross also pointed out that the Monarch (or his deputy) could certainly invite some statesman to form a government with whose policies he was in
general
agree
ment, but beyond that he could certainly not control every item of policy once the Cabinet was formed. Canning retorted that on the contrary Pitt, though a King's man, had had to resign office ten years ago because he wished to emancipate the Catholics, an act the King vehemently opposed. In other words, no statesman, not even Grey or Grenville, could negotiate peace with France if the
Prince Regent did not wish it. Sway the Prince, influence him in his thinking, and you might yet prevent the final disaster.

And how, Ross asked, did anyone imagine that a single account by a virtually unknown Member of Parliament sent out to observe the course of the war, would be likely to 'sway' in any remotest way the mind of the Heir Apparent? Canning wryly agreed. But drowning men, he said, clutched at straws: was it not worth clutching at this straw for the sake of the cause they all so much believed in? And after all, was there not also another saying, that a last straw could break a camel's back? Sheridan, for all his old allegiances, was, he now knew, on their side. Lady Hertford also. A great mass of the ordinary people of the country would deeply resent giving in to Buonaparte after all these years of bitter struggle. Did it matter so much if Grey or Grenville took office if, so far as making peace was concerned, their hands were tied?

Strings, said Ross in wry disgust, who would pull the strings to arrange this meeting? Not Wellesley, said Canning, he was too much an interested party. It must be Sheridan. No one else could contrive it. For it must be done privately so that no one but the Prince's closest friends knew.

In the last few days of the month the weather relented, and the ice-bound countryside became a quagmire. Ross went several times to the House when an important vote was pending, and heard Canning speak. Canning had an astonishing mastery of the Commons, one of the most difficult things to achieve, and equally difficult to maintain. A sudden silence fell on the rowdy chamber when a great or influential speaker rose; but what he had to say was subjected to as close a scrutiny as if he were a nobody, and if the subject-matter did not live up to his reputation the noisy interruptions would soon break out. Certainly not with Canning this time; he spoke for seventy minutes and received an ovation at the end. Later when
Ross moved among a crowd of members to congratulate him, Canning smiled and said in an undertone:
'I have just heard, old friend. Tomorrow evening at seven.'

‘
Where?'

'Holland House. Ask first for Sheridan.'

That would be the 29th. Ross nodded grimly and would have turned away but Canning drew him back into the circle of his friends - Smith, Ward, Huskisson, Bowne and the rest - as if to preserve him from the dangers of pessimism and doubt. Ross had met the Heir to the throne twice at receptions in recent years and had formed a very poor opinion of him. The country, he thought, was in a very bad way if it was going to be governed by, or be under a government which depended for its existence on, this fat pompous dandy. He was held up to almost universal ridicule and contempt, and the lampoons printed about him were of unsurpassed sarcasm and savagery.

Only last week Ross had paid a penny for a pamphlet which ran:

Not a fatter fish than he flounders in the Polar sea.

See he blubbers at his gills;

what a world of drink he swills!

Every fish of generous kind

scuds aside or shrinks behind;

But about his presence keep

all the monsters of the deep.

Name or title what has he?

Is he Regent of the sea?

By his bulk and by his size,

by his oily qualities, This

(or else my eyesight fails)

this should be the Prince of Whales.

There were a few, of course, who thought different. In his own arbitrary, haphazard way he had favoured architects, actors and writers more than any other prince in memory; but his spendthrift, dissolute life, the sheer aimless self-indulgence of his existence, offended Ross almost as much as it did the mass of English people. The thought of making his report to such a man seemed to him an essay in the sourest futility.

The Regency Bill must become law by the fifth or sixth of February. Canning had heard whispers that all was not concord in the Whig camp. Lords Grey and Grenville, having drafted suitable replies for the Prince to make to the resolutions of the House of Commons, found their elegant and sonorous prose discarded, and quite new and almost intemperate replies sent in their place, such as could only have been drafted by undesirable intimates of the calibre of Sheridan and Lord Moira. They had thereupon sent a dignified letter of remonstrance to the Prince, pointing out that, on the eve of their appointment to lead the country, it hardly became him to ignore their counsel and to take note instead of his secret advisers.

This had not at all pleased the Prince, who was very unused to remonstrance. However, there was little Prinny could do about it now. He had made it quite impossible for himself not to get rid o
f the present government – and
here was no one else. Lansdowne - Canning said - was too young and had no experience of office, Tierney was quite unreliable, Sheridan a drunk, Ponsonby a nonentity. The Prince would have to suffer the lectures and make do.

'I'd like you to stay till the Bill becomes law,' Canning went on. 'Not respecting what happens between you and the Prince. It is a crisis, Ross, that transcends the pettiness of some of the people taking part in it. There is even a week yet for the King to recover! When it is over, when it is all done, when we have lost the day, then you may return to your Cornish acres, and I will undertake to make no further claims on your friendship for a twelvemonth! Will you agree?'

Ross smiled. 'It is not my Cornish acres I am anxious to see but my Cornish wife.'

'Well, you can be with her by mid-February - scarcely more than three weeks' time. You will come to the Duchess of Gordon's next Friday?'

‘
What on earth for?'

'It's her soiree at the Pulteney. All the leading people will be there, both in government and prospective government.'

'I'm not one of the leading people.'

'I think it's important you should be present. Disagreeable though social events may be, they do fulfil an important function in the governance of this country.'

'By then,' said Ross, 'I may be in disgrace.'

'For what?'

'Who knows? Not keeping a civil tongue in my head to his Royal Highness? Assaulting one of his flunkeys? Wearing the wrong colour cravat?'

'The last is the worst offence,' said Canning. 'I've known men languish in the Tower for less.'