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“Do you wish me to use my influence with my brother?” I asked.
“Have you any?” James Tilson enquired flippantly. “I assure you I have not, and we have been friends and partners these many years. Nor can I bring Eliza to the point; she is persuaded that all ma
“This troubles you, Mr. Tilson,” I said, “and I am sorry for it. It is not like Henry to cause anxiety in the breasts of those he loves.”
“Henry has no children,” Tilson observed ruefully, “while I am possessed of more than enough for both of us; naturally I am the more provident, having so many mouths to feed. I leave it to you, Jane — and will cease to worry the matter. The musicians have arrived!”
THEY APPEARED AT EXACTLY HALF-PAST SEVEN o’clock, in two hackney coaches hired for the purpose: a harpist with her instrument, bulky in fla
“Miss Jane Austen!” she cried, as though we two were met on a desert shore, the wreck of all hope tossing in the sea behind us. “How well you look, I declare! Town bronze, I believe they call it! You have certainly acquired that polish!”
“Miss Maria Beckford,” I returned, and accepted her hand with real cordiality. “And Miss Middleton! Your father told me you were in London for your come-out!”
“We have taken a house in Welbeck Street,” Miss Beckford replied, “and I serve as Susan’s chaperone to all the smart affairs! You must certainly pay us a call. I long to hear all the Chawton news!”
Miss Beckford manages the household of her late sister’s husband, Mr. John Middleton, who is my brother Edward’s tenant at Chawton Great House— and thus my neighbour, when I am at home. She is a formidable woman, spare and abrupt and sensible, with a fund of learning and an enviable want of foolishness. I have long admired her ability to accommodate herself to circumstance. Lacking a husband, she entered instead her dead sister’s household — and reared Middleton’s children. She lacks for no comfort, is esteemed by all, and merits the respect due to an independent woman — without the necessity of submitting to a husband. I quite like Maria Beckford.
Her eldest niece, however, is another matter: a stout, well-grown girl of sixteen, who curtseyed with civility enough; but I detected boredom in all her looks, and guessed that to be dragged in her aunt’s company to a Musical Evening — in a quarter of Town too far west to be considered fashionable, among a parcel of dowds — was to her an indignity tantamount to torture.
“It seems but a few months ago that you were playing in the long grass at Chawton,” I told Susan, “and here you are, a Beauty in her First Season!”
She smirked, and muttered a nothing, her fingers plaiting the pink ribbons cascading from her bodice; an awkward child, with dull brown hair and coarse features, who will be dreaming of balls and private masques, of the assemblies at Almack’s and the afternoon ride through the Park. But Susan, I fear, is destined for disappointment: Neither her fortune nor her beauty is great enough to figure in London. Almack’s, and the breathless notice of the ton, will be denied her — as it was denied me.
“I must introduce you to my cousin, Mr. Henry Walter,” I said, taking her hand firmly. “He looks as though he were in need of a dance.”
My unfortunate cousin was engrossed in a discussion of Theosophy with Mr. Guillemard and Mr. Wyndham Knatchbull, a clergyman — and barely disguised his outrage at being so imposed upon, as to be forced to trade insipid nothings with a child. The harpist striking up an air at that moment, however, my cousin was spared the duty; and Miss Beckford and I left Susan in his orbit. She might, perhaps, serve as Mr. Guillemard’s latest flirt. We retreated to the passage, so as to achieve the maximum degree of coolness with the minimum of crowding, and composed ourselves to listen.
ELIZA COULD TAKE PLEASURE, ON THE MORROW, IN the fact that the last of her guests did not quit her house until midnight, and that the evening was deemed such a success — so much of a crush, in fact, an intolerable squeeze — that it merited a notice in the Morning Post. No less a personage than Lord Moira, the Regent’s crony, condescended to grace Sloane Street with his presence; and it was thanks to the Earl that all my suspicions regarding Princess Tscholikova’s end were animated long into the night.
“I own to some delight at Lord Castlereagh’s discomfiture,” his lordship confided to a group of five gentlemen arranged respectfully around him in the interval between Miss Davis’s Airs in the Italian and the performance of Mozart upon the pianoforte. “There will be no talk of the Tories forming a government now.”
“But it can never truly have been under consideration,” Mr. Hampson — the Republican baronet— protested. “The Regent is known to espouse the most radical principles! As his intimate these many years, my lord — and a partisan of the Whigs yourself — you can only have expected His Majesty to approach Lords Grey and Grenville for his Cabinet! This Tory posturing is all rumour, with the paltry object of disconcerting the Regent and elevating the star of Mr. George Ca
“Hear, hear,” Mr. Guillemard intoned.
“Damn me,” Captain Simpson exploded, “that’s treason!” He lurched a little, as tho’ he felt the roll of a deck beneath his feet. It must be said that the good captain — who had disconcerted me earlier in the evening with the news that my sailor brother, Frank, was superseded in his command — had been drinking deep of
Henry’s claret. “Would you have us turn over the Kingdom, aye, and all the Continent, to Buonaparte and his crew? That’s what a Whig Cabinet will get ye!”
“Naturally I would have us do so, if it meant peace,” Mr. Hampson rejoined equably. “The cost of this war — ceaseless and senseless as it has been — is bleeding the country and the poor to the point of a
Lord Moira raised his glass in approval, but a heated argument immediately broke out, as to the merits of Tory governance, which should stand firm against France to the dying breath, versus the Whig desire to conciliate the Monster and withdraw Lord Wellington from the Peninsula before the rout of French troops should entirely be achieved. There was mention of our ally, Russia, and the clauses of treaties published and secret; and while I lingered near Fa