Wedlock (20 page)

Blithely running up debts through her scientific pursuits as well as her unflagging social life, that November Mary engaged a chaplain to help tutor the younger children. A widower in his late twenties who was down on his luck and in debt, the Reverend Henry Stephens was introduced through the Magra brothers, almost certainly at Stoney’s behest. Ambitious, grasping and unprincipled, in the manner of innumerable eighteenth-century clergy, Stephens rapidly established himself as a regular participant in the giddy round of theatre parties and musical suppers. Flirting with Eliza Planta, he also took a number of familiarities with his mistress, winning kisses and inducing her to sit on his knee. The chaplain’s brother, Captain George Stephens, who had formerly worked for the East India Company, likewise inveigled himself into the merry band at Grosvenor Square. Even less inhibited by rules of piety than his brother, the captain was ‘free in his way of thinking and acting’ even by Mary’s lax standards.

When the penniless chaplain eloped to Gretna Green with the young governess just ten days after their first meeting, the Planta family was understandably outraged - not least with Eliza’s mistress.
⁴⁴
Mary freely admitted she had actively encouraged the pair to abscond, partly in an act of revenge against Mrs Parish, partly in the knowledge that Eliza was pregnant at the time - although Mary little suspected the probable identity of the father.
⁴⁵
An enigmatic letter written jointly by Mary and Eliza to Reverend Stephens in Winchester, probably just before the elopement, reveals that Mary even encouraged Eliza to follow her own example and attempt an abortion. ‘Dear Eliza is thank God greatly better, & if she will follow my advice & quack herself (without
hurting
) she will be still
better,
’ hints Mary, while Eliza adds a note urging her fiancé not to be ‘alarm’d at my indisposition T’is the first experiment’. Mary would later admit that she had advised Eliza ‘to take a vomit, thinking she was with child; as I had taken a ridiculous notion into my head, that having children, made a man like his wife less’.
⁴⁶
Sensibly Mary herself now fled London to escape the wrath of the Planta family, although she could not resist instructing George Walker to report every detail of their rage.

By November Mary knew that she too was pregnant once again - the fourth time - by Gray. This time, however, neither the black inky medicine, nor prodigious amounts of pepper, brandy or emetics would induce the desired miscarriage. In desperation, she even resorted to the services of her surgeon and friend, John Hunter. An oblique reference in the letter to Stephens declares: ‘I am not able to assure you that either my
Soul
or
Body
are at your Service, for to confess the truth I have at present neither in my Possession - J. Hunter having torn to pieces my Body & the D-l having taken a Lease on my Soul.’
⁴⁷
Asked later about the reference, Hunter would confirm that he had supplied Mary with medicines but when pressed refused to say if he knew she was pregnant or wanted an abortion. Admitting to procuring an abortion would have meant almost certain prosecution for the eminent surgeon as well as his patient. In any event, Hunter’s best efforts were in vain and Mary now resigned herself to giving birth to her sixth child in the coming summer.

As the eventful year drew to its close, Mary’s future seemed mapped out. Betrothed to George Gray, pregnant with his child, she finalised her plans to marry and spend the next few years abroad putting her linguistic talents to good use. Her sour feud with the Strathmore family seemed finally to have been resolved and she could now look forward to a secure future for herself, her fiancé and her children. With her gardener poised to set sail for the Cape and her hothouses rising steadily at Stanley House, she had been granted a unique opportunity to pursue her ambitions and perhaps make a name for herself in international scientific circles. With the indulgent and educated Gray at her side, she would even have the chance to fulfil her literary aims. It seemed she could not fail. Yet fatally, at the last moment, she wavered. Then Stoney made his move.

Away from the city’s prying eyes in the tranquil countryside surrounding St Paul’s Walden Bury, in late November Mary received a letter with its familiar spidery handwriting. Ostensibly writing to express surprise at Eliza’s elopement and her choice of spouse - although plainly he had been involved in, if not masterminded, both - Stoney pressed home his advantage. Cleverly praising Eliza for not being swayed by the opinions of ‘guardians, relations or pretended friends’, he reminded Mary that a ‘free choice is happiness’.
⁴⁸
Feigning interest in her ‘good mother’ and her beloved cats, Stoney silkily professed that he wished he could adopt feline form so that he could be ‘stroked and caressed, like them, by you’. And under the pretence that he could no longer contain his passion, he declared: ‘I am all impatience to see your ladyship; I really cannot wait till Saturday; I must have five minutes chat with you before that time.’ Proposing an assignation, beside a ‘leaden statue’ in her mother’s formal gardens, it was patently not a ‘chat’ that Stoney had in mind. The statue, a classical figure of a Greek discus thrower known as the ‘running footman’, survives still beside an ornamental pond within an enclosed garden, close to the woods where Mary’s great-great-great-granddaughter, Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, would consent to marry the Duke of York, the future George VI, in 1923.
⁴⁹
Whether Mary accepted Stoney’s proposal and met him covertly behind the tall hedges, shielded from the view of the house in that unseasonably warm December, is unknown. But certainly by Christmas they had become lovers.

At last Stoney could set in motion the final stages of his elaborate plot.

 

 

 

 

W
hen the salacious articles first began to appear in the
Morning Post
in December 1776, Mary could hardly have been surprised. Reporting various sightings of her about town with her rival lovers in tow, such gossip was generally dismissed as an occupational hazard by the celebrities of the day. Revelling in the press fascination with her libertine lifestyle, Mary laughed as she read the articles. But when the first of the letters appeared on 12 December, coldly levelling pernicious accusations at her, Mary felt decidedly uncomfortable. Signed ‘A Conscience-Stinger’, it charged her with insulting her late husband’s memory by prostituting herself and abandoning her children. Also accusing her of infidelity to the earl, the letter bore all the hallmarks of the Strathmore family or the disgruntled Plantas - as was no doubt the intention. Plainly hinting at revelations to come, with a chill blast from beyond the grave, the writer warned her to mend her ways or he would ‘harrow up your soul !’
¹
Well aware of the need to keep the latest turn in her love-life and her current condition a secret - not least from her two lovers - Mary had good cause to worry.

Two weeks later, on Christmas Eve, an anonymous champion leapt to her defence. Signed by ‘Monitus’, or warning voice, this letter insinuated that the previous attack had emanated from the Planta family, with a veiled reference to Eliza’s hasty elopement with a ‘good-natured clergyman’. But if Mary hoped that the response would put an end to the correspondence she was sadly mistaken. On 3 January 1777, her mysterious critic redoubled the assault. Making its literary allusions more explicit with the moniker ‘Hamlet’, the letter cast the former Lady of Glamis as another of Shakespeare’s scheming women, Queen Gertrude. Ludicrously describing her late husband as ‘fond and doting’, the writer accused her of greeting the earl’s illness with ‘cold indifference’ and of forsaking her eldest son. Inevitably Monitus retaliated, four days later, with a verbose and flowery defence that rather brought Mary into ridicule by its risible exaggeration than vindicating her. The reply insisted that she had been devastated at the late earl’s illness and suffered ‘agonizing, and heart-felt sorrow’ at his death. Knowingly drawing attention to her obvious disregard for widowhood, the writer lamented: ‘She no sooner goes to the
Play
, or walks in the
Park
, than there are a thousand eyes upon her, and every step taken to attract her attention!’ With leaden sarcasm - and a revealing insight into the trap closing around her - Monitus continued, ‘how charming, and profitable would it be, were it possible to prey upon her weakness, or delude her into those snares her sex are most subject to!’

Now two months pregnant, and secretly planning her flight abroad with Nabob Gray even as she entertained ‘Captain’ Stoney, Mary plainly hoped for a swift end to the intrusive scrutiny of her affairs. Whether she went so far as to promise to marry the man who would avenge her cause on the editor of the
Morning Post
- as the newly wed Eliza Planta, now Mrs Stephens, would claim - is uncertain. But when her suave Irish lover announced that he would defend her honour by challenging the turbulent priest to a duel, it was a gesture guaranteed to appeal to her romantic nature.

Swaggering about her Grosvenor Square house in his scarlet jacket, brandishing his steel sword and melodramatically swearing to fight unto death on her behalf, the athletic Stoney cut an imposing figure. With her trusted friend Captain Magra kindly volunteering to act as Stoney’s second, Mary entered into the spirit of the adventure with gusto. Nevertheless, even as Stoney provoked the seemingly reluctant Bate with escalating threats, she continued with her wedding plans to Gray and met her lawyer, Joshua Peele, to sign important legal papers on 9 and 10 January. As the badinage between Stoney and Bate intensified at their coffee-house encounters over the weekend of 11 and 12 January, Mary no doubt relished reports of the unfolding drama. Whether she believed the play-acting would ever come to genuine blows, or that her hero would exact his rashly promised prize, is unknown. But when romance turned to tragedy and she heard that Stoney had been mortally wounded in the engagement at the Adelphi Tavern on Monday 13 January, Mary was understandably distraught.

It was her fiancé, Gray, who was first on the scene, visiting the stricken Stoney in his apartment above the St James’s Coffee House the following day to shake his hand in gratitude for rescuing the honour of his future bride. Later that day Mary despatched her footman, George Walker, to enquire as to Stoney’s condition. And when Walker reported that the ailing soldier was ‘deadly white’ Mary herself dashed to his bedside that evening. The surgeon Jessé Foot, whom Mary met for the first time, assured her that Stoney now lay on the verge of death, and she had no reason to doubt his medical opinion. Even so, when Stoney insisted that he could not die happy unless he married the woman for whom he had sacrificed his life, Mary consented from a ‘misapplied sense of Gratitude and Honour’ and warned him she would go ahead only ‘with Reluctance’.
²
Since it was the opinion of no less than three medical men that Stoney was unlikely to live beyond a few days, there seemed no need to inform him that she was already pregnant with his rival’s baby, nor that she had taken a vital legal precaution preparatory to her marriage with Gray. And as Stoney solemnly protested complete lack of interest in her fortune, insisting that he would ‘never consider himself in any other light than as my steward’, she had no reason to doubt that he had any motive for marriage other than the genuine desire of a dying man to marry his true love.

So on Thursday 16 January, as Stoney roused himself sufficiently to apply to the Bishop of London for a marriage licence, circumventing the usual need to read banns in church for the next three weeks, Mary enjoyed a convivial last supper with the unsuspecting Gray. That evening, the eve of her anticipated wedding with Stoney, she apparently spent the night with Gray, ‘in one and the same bed, naked and alone’, as court spectators - used to marital fumblings among nightclothes - would later be astounded to hear.
³
The following morning, after despatching Gray in the early hours as usual, Mary dressed for her wedding then walked with Eliza to Stoney’s lodgings in nearby St James’s Street. From here the couple took a chair for the short trip around the corner to St James’s Church in Piccadilly. When the gaunt Stoney clung stubbornly to life as he was carried down the aisle in his makeshift bed, Mary may have tendered misgivings. As Stoney murmured the marriage vows, supported at the altar by his friend and financial advisor William Davis, perhaps she experienced the first cold feelings of foreboding. And when her new husband rallied sufficiently to celebrate the nuptial ceremony with the little gathering that returned to his apartment, she may well have regretted her eagerness to enter wedlock for the second time.

It was not long before her doubts were confirmed. Stoney’s rapid recovery as he welcomed guests to a jubilant levee at his lodgings the following morning was certainly impressive. Dressed in a new scarlet uniform, pampered by his fond great-uncles Generals Armstrong and Robinson, Stoney reclined on a couch - claiming he was still too ill to stand - as visitors flocked by coach and on foot to pay their respects. That evening the bridegroom had revived sufficiently to move his belongings into his luxurious new home in Grosvenor Square. And as the revels continued into the night, with Stoney’s relatives and Irish friends staying to dinner in the sumptuous dining room, Mary was about to discover the true extent of the trap into which she had been lured.