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CHAPTER TEN
'And now,' a
The tour of the castle had been hurried and incomplete. Cordelia sensed that the sun-warmed terrace beckoned and that the thoughts of the party were less on Ambrose's treasures than on their pre-luncheon sherry. But there were treasures, and she promised herself that if she had the chance she would enjoy later and at leisure what was a small but comprehensive museum of the artistic achievements and spirit of Victoria's long reign. The tour had been too rushed. Her mind was a confusion of form and colour; porcelain, pictures, glass and silver jostled for place: pottery exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851, jasper, Grecian ware, terracotta, majolica; cabinets of painted Wedgwood dishes and delicate pâte-sur-pâte made by M.L Solon for Minton; part of a Coalport di
Clarissa had floated on ahead waving her arms and producing a stream of doubtfully accurate information. Ivo had lingered when he was allowed to and had said little. Roma stumped behind them with an expression of careful uninterest and from time to time made an acid comment about the misery and exploitation of the poor represented by these glittering monuments to wealth and privilege. Cordelia felt some sympathy with her. Sister Magdalen, who had taught nineteenth-century history at the Convent, hadn't shared the views of some of the sisters that since the pleasures of the world were to be rejected so might some of its vicarious sorrows, and had attempted to instil a social sense into her privileged pupils. Cordelia couldn't see a picture of that pudding-faced matriarch with her plain, discontented-looking children around her without seeing also the wan, aching-eyed seamstresses working their eighteen-hour day, the factory children half-asleep at their looms, the bobbin lace-makers bent double over their cushions, and the steaming tenements of the East End.
Cordelia had found more to interest her than to admire in Ambrose's collection of pictures. Everything that she most disliked in high Victorian art was here, the strained eroticism, the careful naturalism which had nothing to do with nature, the vapid anecdotal pictures and the debased religiosity. But he did have a Sickert and a Whistler. As they passed along the gallery Roma said to her:
'There's a William Dyce in my room called "The Shell Gatherers". Not badly painted, rather good, in fact. A crinolined group of ladies examining their finds on a Kentish beach. But what's the reality? A group of over-fed, over-clad, bored and sexually frustrated upper-class females with nothing to do with their time but collect shells to make their useless shell-boxes, paint insipid water-colours, entertain the gentlemen after di
It was while she and Roma were standing in front of a Holman Hunt, neither of them finding anything to say, that Ambrose had come up to them.
'Not perhaps one of his best. The Victorians may have got their money from the dark satanic mills but they had a passionate craving for beauty. It was their tragedy that, unlike us, they understood only too well how far they fell short of achieving it.'
The tour was now almost at an end. Clarissa led them down a tiled passageway to Ambrose's business room. Here, apparently, was the promised Chamber of Horrors.
It was a smaller room than most in the castle and looked out over the lawn which faced the eastern entrance. One wall was hung with a framed collection of Victorian popular gallows literature, the crudely printed and illustrated broadsheets which were sold to the mob after a notable trial or execution. Roma seemed particularly interested in them. Murderers, looking remarkably slim and elegant in their breeches, sat pe
'Meet my notorious murderers and murderesses. That pair are the infamous Maria and Frederick Ma
Leaving the business room, they paused at two elegant rosewood display cases which stood one each side of the door. The left-hand one contained a clutter of small objects Which were all neatly labelled; a doll and a solitaire set with small coloured marbles, both of which had belonged to the Queen as a child; a fan, early Christmas cards, scent bottles in crystal, silver gilt and enamel, and a collection of small silver objects, waist hook, chatelaine, prayer-book and posy-holder. But it was the right-hand case which drew their eyes. Here were less agreeable mementoes, an extension of Ambrose's museum of crime. He explained:
That tag end of rope is part of the executioner's rope which hanged Dr Thomas Neill Cream, the Lambeth poisoner, in November 1892. The stained linen nightdress with the broderie anglaise frills was worn by Constance Kent. It's not the nightdress she had on when she slit the throat of her small stepbrother but it has a certain interest all the same. That pair of handcuffs with the key were used on young Courvoisier who murdered his master, Lord William Russell, in 1840. The spectacles are a pair which belonged to Dr Crippen. As he was hanged in November 1910 he's really nine years out of my period but I couldn't resist them.'
Ivo asked:
'And the marble of a baby's arm?'
'That hasn't any criminal interest as far as I know. It should be in Memento Mori or in the other cabinet but I hadn't time to rearrange the exhibits. But it doesn't look out of place among the props of murder. The man who sold it to me would approve. He told me that he kept imagining that the limb was oozing blood.'
Clarissa hadn't spoken and, glancing at her, Cordelia saw that her eyes were fixed on the marble with a mixture of fear and revulsion which none of the other exhibits had evoked. The arm, a chubby replica in white marble, lay on a purple cushion bound with cord. Cordelia herself thought it an unpleasant object, sentimental and morbid, useless and undecorative, and to that extent not untypical of the minor art of its age. Clarissa said:
'But it's perfectly hateful! It's disgusting! Where on earth did you pick it up, Ambrose?'
'In London. A man I know. It may be the only extant copy of one of the limbs of the royal children made for Queen Victoria at Osborne House, said to be by Mary Thornycroft. This one could be poor Pussy, the Princess Royal. It's either that or a memorial piece. And if you dislike it, Clarissa, you should see the Osborne collection. They look like the remnants of a holocaust, as if the Prince Consort had descended on the royal nursery with a machete, as he may well have been tempted to do, poor man.'