Jane Austen Mysteries 10 Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron (12 page)

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"I
T WAS THE WORST SORT OF HUMILIATION
, H
ENRY
,
TO
see that perfect flower of a girl bound over as chattel to an odious old man, who might easily have been her grandsire!" I fumed, as we mounted the stairs to our bedchambers at the Castle some hours later. We had contented ourselves with a moderate dinner in the publick coffee room, the better to restore ourselves and prepare for the Regent's reception, to which we were bid at eight o'clock. "Only conceive of the domestic picture! Little Catherine, huge with child at the tender age of sixteen, and her toothless husband laid up with the gout, from a constant overindulgence in Port! It should certainly drive the poor girl mad--or to publick ruin."

"She's not
quite
bound over to this fellow, however," my brother said thoughtfully. "There was no mention made of a formal engagement. Do not despair, Jane. Miss Twining, recollect, is not without alternatives. Byron may yet prevail!"

"Henry! Do not even joke of such a thing!"

He grinned at me heartlessly. "I should not put it past a girl of Miss Twining's mettle to escape her father's plots; she cannot be
entirely
without friends."

"She has no mettle at all!" I gasped. "I never knew a more shrinking child. It is clear she has been beaten into conformability from the time she could toddle. But perhaps we may contrive--perhaps the counsel of a friend ..."

"Jane, do not involve yourself in the girl's affairs," my brother cautioned. "Recollect how her father meets opposition--with the back of his hand. You would not wish to
heighten
Miss Twining's misery."

"No," I agreed, "but I may yet stand her friend. If our intimacy should progress, I could perhaps invite her to accompany us to Chawton, for a visit of some weeks. She might then escape Lord Byron's notice--the General's wrath might cool--and his incomprehensible desire to shackle her to a dotard might dissipate. Excellent Henry! You have put me in mind of the very thing!" I seized his coat excitedly. "For you will not mind a third in the curricle, I am sure, when we quit this place at the end of a fortnight. It should not be so terribly uncomfortable. We are both of us slender ladies, after all--and you are remarkably fit for a widower of advancing years."

"Such a crush is not to be contemplated," Henry retorted firmly, "and if you think for a moment that I shall assist you in carrying off that girl, whose father has not the
least
inclination for our society, you've more hair than wit, Jane. I will undertake nothing of the sort. If your heroine is to escape the misery of her unnatural marriage, she shall have to shift for herself. I predict that an ardent young swain will soon appear, desperate to prove his honourable intentions. Allow
him
to rescue Miss Twining, I beg."

"Abominable!"

"But unanswerable," he concluded fondly. "Lie down a little while on your bed; take a glass of the excellent claret I have had sent up to your room; and be ready at my knock to storm the Marine Pavilion. I am sure its magnificence will put the Cheltenham tragedy of Miss Catherine Twining entirely out of your head."

T
HE
P
RINCE
R
EGENT, IT IS SAID, FIRST VISITED THE SMALL
village of Brighthelmston around the year '83, when he was a handsome youth of one-and-twenty. He was urged into Sussex by his doctors, who thought the sea water might ease the ominous swelling of certain organs in the Royal neck; being as yet unacquainted with the vastness of the Prince's appetites, they apparently mistook the thickening of his person for a more sinister disorder. Whether he dipped his head in the sea or not, remains a question for posterity; but certain it is he dipped his wick--as the Vulgar would say--in every unprotected maiden the surrounding country offered, until the reputation of Brighton, as it came to be known, was too black for any decent lady to contemplate. The Prince sampled every possible pleasure the watering place could offer, from horse racing to card playing to the wines of the King's Arms--and was led in dissolution by the example of his uncle, the notorious Duke of Cumberland. The Duke held the lease of Grove House, on the Steyne; his nephew enjoyed every freedom of the place, and its raffish circle; and within a few months of his coming of age, hired a modest farmhouse from the principal landowner in these parts--one Thomas Kemp.
9

Mrs. Fitzherbert was swiftly installed at a neighbouring villa; and within a few years, the architect Mr. Henry Holland was tasked with transforming the farmhouse into a neoclassical Pavilion, complete with a domed rotunda and numerous columns. Christened the Marine Pavilion, it soon acquired two wings, clad in cream-glazed Hampshire tiles, and a conservatory jutting from the rear. Some eight years ago--so Henry informs me--the riding school and stables were begun, structures so vast as to dwarf the Pavilion itself, and constructed quite curiously in the Indian stile. The Prince was three years building these, and his debts mounting all the while. Happily for His Highness, however, he had by this time taken his detested cousin Caroline of Brunswick in marriage, got an heir to the throne, and been accorded a handsome independence by Parliament; and could thus afford to be careless of money matters.
10

"Sixty horses," Henry muttered as we crossed the short distance between the Castle and the Royal abode. "
Sixty horses
the Regent houses in that stupendous block of stalls, Jane. He has a passion for prime cattle--and for racing, of course. Yet they say he's grown so fat, he finds it difficult to spring into the saddle. Requires the assistance of
four grooms
, two at each Royal leg."

"More of a
heave
than a
spring
, I collect."

We were arrived at the gate, joining a throng of other finely dressed and coiffeured gentlemen and ladies; in any other town a line of carriages and teams, with shouting flambeaux-bearers, should have rolled up to the Pavilion doors; but in Brighton there are few who bother to drive the short distance between one house and the next--even when the house in question is royal. Most of the Regent's guests have only to step across the Steyne, like ourselves, in their slippers and shawls.

I could not allow myself to regard the finery all about me; I should suffer a pang of mortification at my own simple black silk, which appeared as incongruous amidst the paler colours of May as a vulture got among turtledoves. More than one of our fellow guests looked askance at Henry and me--as tho' we could not possibly be wanted here, and must be forcing ourselves on the Regent's notice. I knew none of them, and cared less for their opinion; and my brother's arm supported me the length of the gravel sweep. After an interval, we achieved the front portico under its imposing dome; the massive doors were propped open to permit a flood of lanthornlight to spill out upon the marble steps; and we joined the throng of the Select who trod slowly past the line of footmen arrayed in buff and blue.

Henry presented his cards of invitation coolly enough; an august personage took them in one gloved hand; and before I had time to entirely collect myself, "Mr. Henry Austen, Miss Jane Austen," were announced to the milling crowd.

What is there to say of the Marine Pavilion, that has not been said by others more intimate with its glories?

The interiors are very fine, in the classical manner, with much gilt and paint picked out a la Robert Adam; the furnishings, too, are of the latest mode--with winged gryphons and curving swans at the corner of every console table; and the walls of a certain gallery are remarkable for their hand-painted Chinese wallpaper, so intriguing and exotic in the boldness of its colours, and the strangeness of its figures, as to transport one to an Oriental clime. Here there are bamboo sophas, and japanned cabinets; Ming porcelain, and pagodas; and most startling of all--statues of fishermen dressed in Chinese silk, large as life and posed in niches built to purpose. The Regent, it is said, has a passion for the Exotic, and for the acquisition of fine things; for pictures in oils brought from every corner of Europe, and for snuffboxes, enamels, clockwork birds--for jewels of exquisite craftsmanship, which he bestows as the merest baubles on the ladies who excite his favour. The Pavilion, therefore, is less notable in its mere mortar and paint than for the objects placed in profusion on every surface: one could wander among them a se'ennight, and not be satisfied in their study.
11

One
might
wander, I should say, if one did not swoon within a quarter-hour from the excessive heat of the Pavilion itself. The Regent abhors a chill; and requires his rooms to be as raging as a blast-furnace at every season of the year. There are fires in each of the principal rooms, and braziers of hot coals line the long passages; add to this a crowd of some two hundred of Brighton's Fashionables, and the resulting swelter is easily credited. I was soon wilting from the heat, the mixture of perfumes and pomades, the scents of warmed wine and of hothouse flowers, which were massed at every side; the odour of humanity in too close proximity; and the smells of food: pineapples and fish soup and the tiny, fragile figures of roasted ortolans--

"There is George Hanger," Henry murmured in my ear as he handed me a glass of champagne. "What an old villain, to be sure! You will know him by his hook of a nose, his lean frame, and his inveterate look of a satyr. They do say as it was
he
who arranged the illegal marriage of the Prince and Mrs. Fitzherbert seven-and-twenty years ago--procured the priest, and held the branch of candles at the midnight service!"

His was a raddled and dissipated face, much cragged and lined; he was famous for his patronage of the Fancy--the sport of boxing--for his military service during the late war in the American colonies; and for his general lack of sense. As I watched, one crabbed hand reached for the delicate pink silk of a lady whose rump was turned towards him, entirely ignorant of it; he pinched some portion of her flesh, and I observed the poor creature to jump out of her skin.

"Keep your distance, Jane," Henry chortled. "I doubt even the weeds of mourning would preserve you from such a roue!"

"Henry," I said faintly, "is there any purpose to this soiree beyond standing about and sampling the overwhelming expanse of food? Is there to be singing? I
had heard
the Prince was fond of playing the violincello with his orchestra. Or do we sit down to cards, perhaps? Is there to be an address by the Regent? Is His Highness anywhere within sight?"

"Not that I can observe," my brother replied. "I suppose we might make a push to see the other rooms--it
is
the Marine Pavilion, after all, and one ought to explore the length and breadth of it when such an opportunity offers--I cannot imagine we shall ever set foot within the place again!"

"You go," I urged him. The heat was proving more than my black silk or the beaded band of ribbon about my carefully dressed curls could support. I was certain I felt a drop of moisture working its way down one temple--and I would
not
be discovered by a member of the
ton
in a red-faced state of vulgarity. "I shall endeavour to find a cooler spot, perhaps by a window--tho' none of them appear to be open."

Henry surged off through the crowd, his champagne glass held high; and as my eyes followed his course, I thought I glimpsed Desdemona, Countess of Swithin--in animated conversation with a lady I did not recognise. She looked cool as September in transparent gauze, and I swear her underskirt was dampened so as to cling to her skin--her form might almost have been etched in marble for every eye--but I credited her for the canny preparation borne of past experience: in the heat of the Marine Pavilion, one might as well arrive already drenched. I debated approaching her, but a tide of humanity, swelling and lapping about the tables of food, separated us; I must hope to meet with the Countess at a more propitious hour.

"Miss Austen, this is a pleasure indeed!"

I turned with difficulty--being caught in a crush between a lady with three ostrich plumes waving on her head, and a corpulent gentleman whose broad stomach, expensively clad in white satin breeches and embroidered waistcoat, permitted him no movement at all--and discovered a beaming Lord Moira before me.

I had come to know the Earl in London, where he formed one of Eliza's court; and the mix of sympathy and delight in his notice at the present moment recalled her immediately to mind. I offered him my hand; he bowed over it and muttered some words regarding our dreadful loss--that no amount of time should reconcile us--that Heaven had acquired a hellion, or Hell its first real angel--and I found myself smiling back at him with a curious sensation of relief. The Marine Pavilion, and Brighton itself, could not be so awful when Lord Moira moved in their midst.

My brother enjoyed Lord Moira's patronage at his bank; but the Earl had also been an intimate of Lord Harold Trowbridge, during a period of high intrigue among the Whig Party, at whose centre Lord Harold always had been; and from this cause of friendship alone must remain an object of my regard.
12

"And how do you do, my lord?" I enquired. "You are in excellent health, I hope? Does the sea air of Brighton agree with you?"

"Not at all, my pretty--not at all! I am never so bilious as when I am by the sea. But the Regent, you know, must have his household about him; and where His Royal Highness commands, I know my duty. I shall be playing whist for five-pound points until August at least, when the shooting season releases us all to the North. But enough of me! This is your first visit to Brighton, I collect? And have you been presented to the Regent?"

"Sir ... I ..." The words were stuttered in confusion. It was not enough that I was clad in dreary black, of which His Highness is said to have the greatest abhorrence; nor that I am well past my bloom, and could not excite admiration with the freshness of my looks; only add to all this, indeed, the profundity of my contempt for the man--who treats all women, particularly his wife, with a publick disrespect and callous conceit not to be borne--and you will understand the desperation of my desire to avoid the Regent's notice.