Wedlock (9 page)

Growing tall amid the fertile countryside which nourished the family’s livestock and crops, Robinson - as he was known within the family - took little interest in the daily tedium of farming. Ambitious but lazy, intelligent but scheming, young Stoney could barely wait to escape the familiar Tipperary landscape, with its mountain borders to the south and west and its snaking Lough Derg to the north, or his father’s restraining authority. Robinson lorded it over his brothers and sisters, who arrived in swift succession almost year on year, and probably bullied his siblings and his cousins; certainly they deferred to him meekly in later life. As future acquaintances would discover, their strapping elder brother could swiftly change from being friendly and charming one minute to vindictive and sadistic the next, and they quickly realised it was better to be on his side than against him. Leaving the farmyard chores to his brother Thomas, a year his junior, Robinson ran rings around his indulgent, adoring mother and his overworked father.

A well-educated man with simple tastes, who enjoyed country pursuits like hunting, fishing and the typically Irish sport of hurling, George Stoney could never get the measure of his eldest son. His natural hopes that his heir, the future head of the household, would develop into a relentless worker and dedicated family man like himself were abruptly disappointed. Instead he found Robinson conniving and manipulative when he wanted something, arrogant and defiant when he was spurned. George Stoney’s surviving letters and two diaries record his incomprehension, despair and ultimate helplessness at his eldest son’s increasingly wayward behaviour.

George Stoney’s earliest diary in 1765 - none survive from his son’s childhood - reveals a careful, parsimonious businessman, who recorded the farming accounts in diligent detail and noted debts from friends for as little as sixpence. With his farm and large labour force to run, as well as managing lands for his relatives serving in the army overseas, it was an arduous, time-consuming business. Up one morning at five, for example, it took him six hours to herd livestock to a county fair, which he left for the six-hour return journey at nine that night. With cattle to tend, sheep to fleece, hops to pole and corn to thresh, there was little time for leisure. As the family grew - ultimately there would be five sons and six daughters - the farm and domestic labour increased and profits were stretched increasingly thin. Among other necessities, all six daughters would require generous portions if they were to secure advantageous marriages. So while his wife and daughters mixed in genteel county circles, Farmer Stoney worked long hours and worried over the price of bullocks, his own indifferent health and his implacably unruly eldest son.

Although George Stoney evidently cared deeply about his family, employing a tutor for the younger children and fretting when they caught the inevitable childhood diseases, he was a distant, sometimes cold, father who showed little affection to his offspring, much in the manner of most Georgian parents. As the head of the family, he demanded unconditional respect and compliance from his wife and children, yet frequently showed himself ineffectual at engendering such authority. One of his brother-in-laws on one occasion remarked pointedly that Thomas, the second eldest, was ‘a very promising boy’ who took a keen interest in farming, but added, ‘his Father does not encourage him as he ought’.
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Although he may have been stern when the children were little - it was commonplace for Georgian fathers to beat their sons - any discipline on his part seems to have been frequently reversed by Mrs Stoney who spoiled the children and countermanded her husband’s orders. Certainly in later life he would become bitter and resentful over what he regarded as his wife’s indulgence and children’s indolence. Such inconsistency between parents may perhaps have been one of the explanations - though not sufficient excuse - for their eldest son’s later conduct.

As the putative heir of his father’s successful farming business and the family seat of Greyfort, young Robinson could have counted himself lucky in expectation of a comfortable, if dull, future as a country gentleman. Yet although he enjoyed a privileged, if not pampered, upbringing, Robinson soon became aware that he would never achieve the opulent lifestyle he so obviously desired if he remained in rural Ireland. His best chances of the money, power and influence he craved lay, he knew, across St George’s Channel. Since it was plain to both his parents that their eldest son displayed neither the inclination nor the application to run the family estate, his father grudgingly groomed young Thomas, a keen and able worker, to take over the farming duties. No doubt his parents were optimistic that by enlisting in the army, Robinson would distinguish himself and rise through the military ranks just like his illustrious ancestors. Secretly, his father probably also hoped that some military discipline would knock his quick-tempered son into line.

It was Uncle Robert, by now a regimental colonel, who secured his nephew a commission as an ensign in the King’s Own in November 1764, initially without pay.
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After kicking his heels on the farm over the winter, Stoney said goodbye to his then eight siblings the following spring and set sail to join his regiment in England. At first the military life appeared to suit him. Relating news of his enrolment that July, one of his uncles reported that ‘General Armstrong and Col. Robn give very good accounts of him’. With two such powerfully placed great-uncles keeping a paternalistic eye over his progress, Stoney was set for a medal-encrusted military career. The first signs of tension surfaced just two months later. Colonel Robinson, stationed in Southampton, wrote to tell George Stoney that he planned to buy his great-nephew a promotion to lieutenant as soon as an opportunity arose but added ominously, ‘I mean to tell him that it will be done only on condition of his
making good progress at the Academy
.’
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Evidently, Stoney’s record so far left room for improvement.

By June the following year, serious concerns had erupted over the behaviour of the young ensign who appeared resistant both to army discipline and to common etiquette. Now billeted in Plymouth, Stoney had been reprimanded by several senior officers for his insolence, bad temper and debauched lifestyle in addition to running up debts amounting to £40. Precisely what this dissipation comprised, and where the £40 had been expended, were not revealed although later events would suggest that the money had been squandered on drinking, gambling and women. So seriously was his conduct viewed that Lieutenant Colonel George Maddison, commanding officer of the regiment, felt moved to complain to the regiment’s formal colonel - essentially an honorary figure - the MP Robert Brudenell. ‘He’s very averse to taking advice,’ wrote Maddison, ‘and I assure you both [Captains] Boarder & Henderson have taken great pains with him, with such little effect that they have given him up.’ Although Maddison had ‘taken him in hand once or twice myself pretty strongly’, he concluded: ‘He does his duty, but not with seeming pleasure a boy of his age ought to do, and he’s a very Indifferent Temper.’
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While army discipline in the eighteenth century was notoriously lax, with soldiers who had been lured into enlisting with cash or alcohol frequently deserting or defying orders, these were stern words with which to describe a commissioned officer. They had little effect on Stoney, however, who would always baulk at authority and prefer to command his own actions.

By the following month, July 1766, Stoney was back in Ireland, sent home in disgrace in the vain hope that his father might tackle his recalcitrant behaviour. Seemingly his great-uncles had intervened with the regiment to save him from a worse fate. Writing from Dublin, General Armstrong - Uncle Bigoe - informed George Stoney gamely: ‘No doubt you will be surprised at your son’s arrival in Ireland. It is an expedient thought of by Col. Robinson (& approved of by his Colonel) to get him away from his Regt for a few months, that he may be under your eye, and they hope that you will be able to break him of that idle extravagant turn he has taken.’
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His poor father’s heart must have sunk; he knew only too well that he had long since lost any gainsay over his arrogant nineteen-year-old son.

Yet for all his misbehaviour, when occasion demanded the young ensign possessed a magnetic charm and disarming amiability that could win him friends and patrons who were often older and more senior - and should have been wiser - than he was. Despite conduct apparently so disruptive that even the army had failed to whip any sense into him, he had somehow ingratiated himself with his superior officers, as Uncle Bigoe made plain. ‘He is very sensible and smart,’ he pleaded in his favour, ‘and I make doubt but that he will in a little turn out a clever fellow.’ Indeed, young Stoney was already a clever fellow. For, as the general reported, Colonel Brudenell himself had taken ‘a very great liking’ to the junior officer who presented such an apparently poor role model to the platoon under his command. Like Stoney’s easygoing uncles, no doubt Brudenell regarded the ensign as a spirited but generally loveable rogue and excused his behaviour as youthful exuberance. After lending his great-nephew ten guineas, which Uncle Bigoe fully expected to see again, he added: ‘He desires you will send Horses for him as soon as you can.’

How George Stoney greeted his prodigal son went unrecorded but one thing is certain: any harsh words or discipline that he may have meted out had utterly no effect. When Stoney returned to England to rejoin his regiment in time to begin a long march northwards in February 1767, his extravagant tastes and bullish self-confidence remained intact. And as he marched through the arched gate into the bustling city of Newcastle at the head of his platoon on 8 May, the nineteen-year-old ensign held his head high.

 

Most visitors assailed for the first time by the overcrowded tenements, heaving quayside and noisome street markets wrestling for space within the medieval walls of mid-eighteenth-century Newcastle recoiled in disgust. ‘The town of Newcastle is horrible, like the ways of thrift it is narrow, dark and dirty,’ complained Elizabeth Montagu on her first trip to the city which had helped make her husband’s fortune. The streets were so narrow that her carriage scraped the walls as it passed while the goods from the shops swung so far outwards that she could only marvel that ‘I have not yet caught a coach full of red herrings’. For another visitor, newly wed Sophia Curzon, first impressions of the town exceeded ‘all the horrible discreptions’ she had already heard. ‘I really thought when we enter’d the Town that we was going into the deepest & darkest Pit ever heard off, as it was hardly possible to breathe for want of air & the horrid stink of the Tan Yards,’ Sophia informed her aunt.
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With its large and predominantly poor population densely packed between the tanneries, tenements and the fish and flesh markets near the quayside, there is no doubt that Georgian Newcastle exuded a pungent stench. But as he marched past the slum housing, the rowdy taverns and overflowing street stalls, Ensign Stoney could detect a sweeter smell. It was the smell of money.

Billeted in a tavern or private house within the town walls, for the army had no barracks to call its own, Stoney no doubt enjoyed the seamier pleasures that the city had to offer. Cock-fighting and even bull-baiting were popular in the warren of streets leading up from the ‘Keyside’ and stakes could be heavy now that the warmer weather marked the revival of the coal trading season. With almost the entire town’s economy dependent on the fluctuating fortunes of the coal business, the winters - when no ships could sail - were frequently long, bleak and hungry, while the summers - when hundreds of colliers shuttled the coal from the Tyne to the Thames each week - brought ready money for all. Having lived most of the winter on credit, the pitmen, sailors and keelmen, who navigated the coal-bearing boats downriver to the estuary, were impatient to spend their long-awaited wages and the shopkeepers were eager to serve them. So as Stoney made his first forays into the town that spring, the ale-houses would be crammed, as would the brothels, clustered in the steep, stepped alleys or ‘chares’ which climbed up from the quay. Judging from his conduct so far, both kinds of establishment would find a willing customer in the young officer. But Stoney soon set his sights higher - literally - for the source of the money now rapidly changing hands at the teeming riverside all flowed from the grand houses up the hill. It was here, in the wide and pleasant streets such as Westgate, where Hannah lived, that those who had made their fortunes from the coal business resided. And with the hectic summer social season about to begin, Stoney lifted up his eyes in anticipation.

He did not have long to wait. From the traditional Ascension Day festival at the end of May to the anniversary of the King’s accession to the throne in October, the Newcastle populace celebrated every conceivable religious, royal and civic occasion. The troops of the King’s Own were only too eager to help, providing regimental music, drinking their royal patron’s health and firing volleys into the sky at every opportunity.
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And while the regiment’s rank and file caroused merrily with the townsfolk, its officers became acquainted with the civic worthies and dignitaries at a packed calendar of balls, assemblies and musical soirees. According to Mrs Montagu, feeling rather better disposed to the city by 1760, the social life was relentless. ‘I was at a municipal entertainment yesterday morning, at a concert last night, at a musical entertainment this morning,’ she boasted to her friend Lord Lyttelton. ‘I have bespoken a play for to-morrow night, and shall go to a ball for choosing a Mayor on Monday night.’ Although the northern diversions were admittedly ‘less elegant’ and the conversations ‘less polite’ than their southern equivalents, she had to confess that the ‘desire for pleasure and love of dissipation rages here as much as in London’.
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It was at just such an event that Hannah Newton first set eyes on the swarthy, good-looking junior officer with the penetrating stare.
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Tall, lean and with a soldier’s upright bearing, Stoney exuded the kind of confident, easygoing manner that made him popular with men and fatally attractive to women. Although later caricatures would show him as hook-nosed, double-chinned and bug-eyed, these were plainly crude exaggerations, for women would always be drawn to Stoney, some of them desperately so. Certainly Jessé Foot, his surgeon, friend and biographer, would insist that Stoney presented a handsome face with a ‘captivating’ manner. ‘His speech was soft, his height was more than five feet ten, his eyes were bright and small, he had a perfect command over them, his eye brows were low, large and sandy, his hair light, and his complexion muddy, his smile was agreeable, his wit ready.’
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Only one flaw marred the young Stoney’s good looks, described by Foot as ‘something uncommon in the connexion of his nose with his upper lip’ which meant that whenever he talked his nose ‘moved ridiculously’. In order to avoid this comical trait Stoney was forced to lisp when he spoke. Lisping or not, in his imposing officer’s uniform with its white breeches, knee-length red coat and black boots, his sword swinging from his belt and his tawny hair pulled tightly back in the regulation braid or ‘queue’, Stoney cut a dash at the city’s assembly hall. Hannah soon fell under his spell.