Eclipse (27 page)

His behaviour may have been barbarous, but the guards officer's fear of highwaymen was not exaggerated. If you travelled regularly in the eighteenth century, you had to accept that there was a high chance of getting robbed. ‘One is forced to travel, even at noon, as if one was going to battle, ' Horace Walpole wrote. His friend Lady Browne observed, ‘We English always carry two purses on our journeys, a small one for the robbers and a large one for ourselves.' Andrew himself, a regular commuter between Cannons and his late uncle's house in Piccadilly, became a victim when his chaise was stopped by two footpads, uttering ‘violent imprecations'. Andrew defied them, drawing his sword. One of the thieves tried to shoot him, missed, and the pair ran off. By the time Andrew had roused help at the next turnpike, the thieves had got away.

That was in 1793. Seven years later, at eight o'clock on the evening of 3 December 1800, it happened again, but with three attackers. Having held up the carriage, Robert Nutts stood by the two horses, while James Riley opened the chaise door and threatened to blow Andrew's brains out unless he handed over his money. Andrew thought better of raising his sword this time, and gave up some cash. The thieves, dissatisfied with the modest sum, suspected that he was carrying – as recommended by Lady Browne – a larger purse as well, so Nutts came back and searched him, joined by the third thief, who extracted £50 in banknotes from Andrew's breeches. With that, the footpads made their escape. But a constable, Nibbs, had witnessed the robbery, and ran to the nearby Adam and Eve pub, where he enlisted four men to help. Nibbs and his posse caught up with Nutts and Riley, who ineffectually fired their pistols before being arrested. Their companion, who was never identified, got away. Nutts and Riley were
convicted of highway robbery, and hanged at Newgate on 24 June 1801.

As the 1790s progressed, the complications in Andrew's life multiplied, bequeathing us a collection of family papers peppered with convoluted references to financial and legal disputes. Correspondents claim not to have been paid, or send impenetrable reports of their transactions. Every O'Kelly property is subject to complex mortgage and leasing arrangements; every deal includes conditions or provisos or insurance clauses. Bailiffs arrive to remove furniture; a tenant charges that Andrew intercepted him on the road and taunted him with the words, ‘The bailiffs are coming, the bailiffs are coming.' At one time, Cannons had liabilities attached to it of some £30, 000. Andrew aroused distrust and made enemies, such as an anonymous correspondent who wrote to Andrew's friend, Lady Anna Donegall: ‘Beware, O'Kelly is not the man he appears. Duplicity is the chief part of his composition. His first aim is to have the reputation of receiving your favours; his second, to continue to pay his expenses from your husband's pocket. Before the death of Lord Donegall's father he and his family were in the greatest distress. Charlotte Hayes was in the Fleet. I thus have cautioned you, wishing to protect innocence, beauty and virtue.' Lady Donegall paid no attention to this warning, and remained on warm terms with Andrew. So, according to the evidence in the files, did Lord Donegall – a baffling show of loyalty, as the two men spent most of their adult lives suing each other. However, contrary to what the anonymous letter writer implied, it seems to have been Andrew who was the financial loser.

George Augustus Chichester, second Marquess of Donegall, was an inveterate spendthrift and gambler. He first did business with the O'Kellys in 1794, when, aged twenty-five and carrying the title Lord Belfast, he visited Cannons and picked out some horses. Already, he had a significant flaw as a business partner: he
was an inmate of the Fleet debtors' prison, though allowed out under the day rules.
¹³²
The contract he struck with Andrew's father Philip involved a post-obit: a commitment to pay a sum on the death of his father, the Marquess. Five years later, the Marquess obligingly died, and his son took possession of his title, along with a substantial chunk of what is now Northern Ireland. It would be a long time, however, before he paid his O'Kelly debts.

Within a few years of meeting, Andrew and the newly created Marquess – whose conduct, according to one of Dennis's friends, was ‘most atrocious' – were in disagreement about their finances, while continuing to operate as a team. They may have tried to use the partnership to circumvent authority, as for instance in the case of a horse called Wrangler, listed in the
Racing Calendar
for 1801 under Andrew's name. Two Middlesex sheriffs, Perring and Cadell, seized Wrangler while he was on his way to Newmarket, in execution against the chronically indebted Donegall. Andrew protested that Wrangler was his, and sued, with Sir Charles Bunbury turning up at court to swear that he had sold the horse to him. Donegall, who had leased Cannons from Andrew earlier that year, testified from the stand that Wrangler was not his, but Andrew's. Another witness supported this statement by saying that he had observed Andrew making a match for Wrangler, at a race meeting where Donegall had ‘damned [Wrangler] for a bolter,
¹³³
and said he would have nothing to do with him'. So far, so good; but then Andrew's case collapsed embarrassingly. A groom confessed that although he had been paid by Andrew, Wrangler was stabled with other horses belonging to Donegall; and another groom, asked to name Wrangler's owner, replied, ‘The Marquess of Donegall.' One would like to have seen Andrew's and Donegall's faces when those words were uttered. Before a crowded court, the judge dismissed the case – which had
surely been a ruse to reclaim a horse that Andrew and Donegall had owned jointly.

Over the next eighteen years, Andrew and Donegall were in and out of court, lobbing claims and counter-claims at each other, all the while offering assurances that it was nothing personal. In 1814, Andrew wrote to Donegall, who was then in Ireland, to remonstrate with him about reports that he and his father Philip had taken ‘improper advantage of your lordship'. Donegall replied, ‘I beg leave to say that I never fabricated such reports and that they are altogether void of truth, as to the bills filed in chancery against your father and yourself … they were contrary to my approbation and without my consent, having always lived on the most intimate footing with you and conceiving you to be a man of the strictest honour and integrity and which was the general opinion of the world when I first had the pleasure of your acquaintance.' This was courteous. The fact was, however, that Donegall owed Andrew some £37, 000, from total debts amounting to an eye-watering £617, 524 – about £33 million in today's money. Among financial profligates of the era, only the Prince of Wales could rival him. Eventually, Donegall acknowledged the sums he owed Andrew, although whether he followed up the acknowledgement with any cash is not clear. Certainly, in 1819, Andrew's cousin Philip Whitfield Harvey wrote to Andrew from Dublin: ‘Lord Donegall is in great distress for even £100. Lady D, that was, is determined to proceed to London immediately without a guinea or even a carriage. She will not allow her noble spouse to quit her apron strings, fearing that he might tie himself to some more deserving object.'
¹³⁴

Whether or not the author of the warning letter to Lady Donegall gave a fair report of Andrew's character, he was well informed about Andrew's finances. Dennis's will had implied greater wealth than he really possessed, and his estate turned out
to be insufficient to pay his debts and legacies. To compensate, Andrew borrowed money, took out mortgages, and rented properties. But the late eighteenth century was not a good time to stretch your finances. There was revolution in France, followed by European war, and soon everyone was feeling the pinch. From 1787, the year of Dennis's death, to 1800, Philip and Andrew advertised regularly in the
Racing Calendar
that all the thirty-plus mares at Cannons, with their foals, were up for sale. Many of the foals found buyers; but, in those straitened times, no one wanted to pay the high prices that the O'Kellys were asking for the mares.
¹³⁵
Meanwhile, the value of the O'Kelly stallions was falling. By the turn of the century, Dungannon and Volunteer were covering mares at a modest ten guineas each – fees suggesting that there was not a great deal of confidence in their ability to get outstanding racers.

Charlotte Hayes was another encumbrance on Andrew. She was as scattily profligate as ever, and in 1798 she got herself committed again to the Fleet debtors' prison.
¹³⁶
Andrew's subventions to her at this time included the hefty sum of £728 to satisfy a debt to one Thomas Pilton, a Piccadilly upholsterer, and £105 to buy her the right to the Fleet day rules, allowing her to live outside the prison walls. The next spring, when Charlotte was released, she satisfied further debts, to Thomas and Mary Potts (£48 15s), and to John Thomas (£235 14s). She and Dennis's brother Philip had already agreed that, in the light of the money that Andrew had raised following Dennis's death, Andrew should be granted sole right to property worth that sum. Now Charlotte signed, in her scratchy hand, a document releasing to Andrew all her portion of the estate, with the exception of her £400 annuity. The good news for her was that she would no longer be responsible for the upkeep
of the horses – though no doubt she had never assumed that responsibility anyway.

The only transfer that had taken place before this was of ‘a very extraordinary and rare bird called Parrot gifted with extraordinary powers of speech and song'. But Polley was to live for only another few years. In October 1802, Philip O'Kelly had sombre news to give to his son, in a letter (original spelling preserved) hinting that Charlotte was a constant worry: ‘Polley was taking ill on Saturday night last with a purging and bloody flox and all things that was fit for her was got. She died on Sunday morning. Dr Kennedy go her to have her stuffd so she is no more. Charlett is in the same state as ever. 'The death, which sounds unpleasant, was a traumatic family event. A family servant, signing herself E.Wilson, wrote to Andrew: ‘My trouble was so great at the death of the bird and I did not know what I was doing, the loss of my children never afflicted me more. I am truly sorry and surprised to hear you attribute to my neglect or want of care her death, as it was impossible if my life was at stake to be more attentive than I was. I could not keep her alive no more than I can my good self when it shall please God to call me.'

Polley got the tribute, surely rare for a bird, of an obituary in the
Gentleman's Magazine
, which reminded readers of her skills: ‘Died, at the house of Colonel O'Kelly, in Half-moon-Street, Piccadilly, his wonderful parrot, who had been in his family 30 years, having been purchased at Bristol out of a West-India ship. It sang, with the greatest clearness and precision, the 114th Psalm, “The Banks of the Dee”, “God Save the King!” and other favourite songs; and, if it blundered in any one, instantly began again, till it had the tune complete. One hundred guineas had been refused for it in London. 'The magazine made the double mistake of announcing that Polley would be interred alongside Eclipse at Cannons. In fact, as Philip wrote, she was stuffed, and continued to reside at Half Moon Street; and Eclipse's skeleton at this time was at a small, private museum in Mayfair.

Charlotte appears to have been willing to give up the annuity bequeathed to her by Dennis as well. Lawyers raised objections, however. One told Andrew, who was hoping to sell Cannons, that any deal should be subject to the £400 yearly charge, ‘as [Charlotte] has very much encumbered it and may create some difficulties in the title'. A man called Brockbank held the same view, to Charlotte's dismay – which she expressed to Andrew in one sprawling, minimally punctuated (and, again, idiosyncratically spelled) sentence constituting the only letter of hers we have.

February, 1801

My dear Colonel, I am very sorry to find that Mr Brockbank makes any objection to my giving you the releace for my annuiteis and the acknowledgement of the other sums mentioned in it that you and your father have paid and secured to be paid for me but I am not surprised at aney thing that such a man as Mr Brockbank should say or do after the manner he has conducted himself towards me and you – unjust advantage he is attempting to take of you against my wishes or concent – if you or any other person has the smallest doubtes of the justness of what is contained in the releace I shall be ready at any time to com forward and make an affidavit of those circumstances which Mr Brockbank must be perfectly well acquainted with as I have at different times stated to him monies that you have paid for me and I have give him money to keep the transactions of my selling my annuities from your knowledg and am my dear colonel yours sincerely C. O'Kelly.

The annuity was still attached to Cannons when Andrew at last sold the estate, to Sir Thomas Plumer, in 1811. Charlotte is described in one document as a ‘spinster' (another hint that she never married, although the term may be applied loosely) ‘who is now advanced in years'; in another, she is living on the Cannons estate (though not in the mansion house) and ‘aged about 85
years'. Plumer, who was the solicitor general, indemnified himself against paying her any money. Cannons cost him £55, 000.

It is not certain how many further payments Charlotte claimed. E. J. Burford stated that she died in 1813, though on unclear evidence. She does not appear in the Middlesex burial records that contain Dennis O'Kelly, Philip (who died in 1806) and Andrew; and I could not find her in the Westminster archives either. Her death is as obscure as her birth. But this is not the obscurity of poverty and disease that a huge majority of her fellow prostitutes suffered. Surviving into at least her mid-eighties, and doing so, in spite of her various setbacks, in comfort, Charlotte Hayes achieved an impressive transcendence of her background – thanks to her business flair, and thanks as well to Dennis O'Kelly and Eclipse.