‘Well,’ she said, ‘he is so often in Leicestershire, Nellie, and that’s a great distance away, you know.’
Such nonsense. Anyway, Tommy put his signature to the document without agonizing too long over the sacrifice. Then, almost immediately, he thought better of it. He said Sir Herbert had placed him under unfair pressure to sign at once or the offer would be void. Day after day he wrote, arguing his case and seeking another interview with Sir Herbert. He received no reply.
I saw the toll this took on Garth.
He said, ‘I must see him settled. I can’t be long for this world and I must know Tommy is provided for. This house will be his when I’m gone, but there’ll be little else.’
I said, ‘Perhaps he should work for his bread instead of begging it? How does he think others live?’
He looked at me, perplexed. It was a reminder of what different worlds we came from.
I said, ‘He could go to India. I’ve heard that’s one way young men solve their difficulties.’
‘But Nellie,’ he said, ‘he does have a claim, as you well know. And then, there’s Lady Astley. She may have acted rashly, leaving her home, but a lady cannot be blamed for being seduced. We must think of her. What if a child were to be conceived?’
It was the closest I ever came to quarrelling with Garth. Wearing himself to a shadow over that thankless rip. I had little sympathy for Tommy and I raged against Ernie Cumberland who came out of it all too lightly. I raged on behalf of Sofy who could not condemn him and Garth who would not.
One afternoon when I arrived at Grosvenor Place I found Garth in a kind of fever.
He said, ‘I’ve made a decision, Nellie. I’ve sent for Tommy.’
He had papers, bundled on his table and tied with a string. Over the next hour we sorted through them and put them in some kind of order. Singly they were just letters, jottings, a few receipts, but together they told a story: that Tommy’s father was the Duke of Cumberland. When Tommy came the next day Garth put the papers in his hands. He believed they would help bring Sir Herbert to heel and persuade him to tear up the promise Tommy had signed in haste.
He said, ‘I should have done it sooner, Nellie. Those papers have hung about me like a millstone. I’m relieved to be rid of them.’
I said, ‘But what about Sofy? Tommy doesn’t have your niceness. If he allows everything to be generally known it will be terrible for her.’
He said, ‘I wish Her Royal Highness no ill, but she has ever protected Cumberland’s name. So let them sink or swim together. Herbert Taylor’s a cunning fellow, though. If he settles reasonably it need never come out. Tommy can use those papers to secure his future. Indeed I hope he writes to Taylor this very evening. The sooner this is tidied away the sounder we’ll all sleep.’
But Tommy didn’t apply directly to Sir Herbert. He went instead to Mr Westmacott, the proprietor, editor and chief gossip merchant of Miss Tod’s Sunday extravagance, a news sheet called The Age. And upon hearing this Sir Herbert Taylor became suddenly available to meet Tommy or his counsel and to reconsider the bargain that had been struck.
35
From April until September I hardly saw Sofy. Ernie Cumberland was in town and a frequent caller at Kensington Palace. I had no wish to be in his company. The reason put about for his return to England after so long an absence was the Catholic question. Ireland was boiling with rebellion and it was said Catholics must have the vote or there would be war but the King, who had seemed sympathetic to the idea, began to waver. The Duke of Cumberland had come to put some spine into him, to warn him that if the Catholics were indulged the shade of old King George would surely rise from its Windsor vault to haunt him. So Ernie divided his time between Windsor, where he urged the King to grind Ireland under his heel and save us all from Popery, and St James’s, where he could keep a discreet eye on the case of Tommy Garth.
Sir Herbert put a fresh offer to Tommy: his debts cleared and three thousand pounds a year for life in exchange for surrendering the documents Garth had given him. An agreement was reached but before the capital fund was set up Sir Herbert insisted that the papers be sealed and lodged in a safe place. Garth suggested the chambers of Tommy’s counsel in Lincoln’s Inn but Tommy, put too much at his ease by the thought that his money troubles would soon be over, preferred to deposit them at Mr Westmacott’s bank. He was given no receipt.
Through the summer of ’28 I was Garth’s daily companion. ‘Nellie!’ he’d call, when he heard me at the door. ‘Come in and divert an old fool.’
To be with him was as easy as slipping into a pair of old shoes. But I could see that his anxiety over Tommy was robbing him of his health. First, Tommy was called out by Lady Astley’s aggrieved husband. When Garth heard about it he reported the challenge, hoping to have Tommy arrested before a shot was fired, but by the time the meeting place was discovered and the constables had arrived Tommy and Sir Jacob had kept their appointment, shot wide and managed not to kill each other, and had both left the scene. There was worse to come. Sir Herbert Taylor seized on a providential opportunity.
The Age was known to be solid in its opposition to the Catholic vote. So was Ernie Cumberland. This was important common ground between adversaries, and when a matter of great national importance is at stake the influence of a royal duke is far more important than passing loyalty to a royal bastard. Charlie Westmacott, owner of The Age and custodian of Tommy’s vital papers, was bought.
The King and Parliament battled all through that year. Whenever the Catholic question was raised he’d threaten to leave England to the priests and go to Hanover, but it was an idle threat. He could never have travelled so far. There were many days when he didn’t leave his couch. Breathlessness deprived him of the pleasure of racing at Brighton, kidney pain kept him from watching the chases at Goodwood, and when Vicky Kent’s daughter, Feodora, was married at Kensington Palace dyspepsia prevented him from leading her in, as he had promised to do.
Feodora’s husband was Prince Ernst, a Hohenlohe relative of Billy Clarence’s wife, Adelaide. It was reckoned to be a good match. Prince Ernst was apparently free of the worst vices and his estates were in Langenburg, which removed Feo from the English stage. She was a very pretty girl and there had been a growing concern that she would out-dazzle Victoria. I couldn’t see the difficulty, myself. Victoria had other qualities, far more useful in a future queen. She was strong and healthy and she had just the right endowment of wit; enough to deal with politicians but not so much that she’d find court life unendurable. In any event Feodora was apparently happy to marry Prince Ernst and Victoria’s champions were relieved to see her go. She was to be a neighbour of Royal, though not for long. Royal died in October, drowned by her own dropsical waters. She was buried in the vault at Ludwigsburg.
As Sofy said, ‘And then there were four. Royal and Amelia.
Our bookends are gone, Nellie.’
She didn’t mourn. Actually, she seemed quite gay, for she believed Sir Herbert had tidied away the problem of Tommy, and John Conroy could be depended on to find diverting new projects for whatever was left of her money. Rather I was the one touched by death. I came home from Kensington one afternoon and found Miss Tod, composed but lifeless in a fireside chair. She was a very great age, for she had remembered the old King’s grandfather, who was George II.
Sally said, ‘Now you must come to us. This house is too big for one.’
I said, ‘Then you move in with me.’
‘Henry won’t,’ she said. ‘He likes to be over the shop and Annie’s closer to her work. It’s easier for one to move than three.
She was right, but I had no appetite for any more changes. My mind was entirely on Garth. I knew I wouldn’t have him much longer. First our walks ceased, then our conversations dwindled. Often he would doze while I sat beside him and read, but if I got up from my seat and tried to slip away without waking him he would sense it and catch my hand to keep me there. I took him beef tea, I had Henry make him egg custards, but nothing tempted him.
‘Waste of rations,’ he’d joke. ‘Broken down old nag. I don’t merit my oats, Nellie.’
He seemed tired of life and yet did not know to quit it. I believe he clung on hoping to see an end to Tommy’s difficulties, but Tommy was in a worse state than ever. He had received none of the funds Sir Herbert had promised and the papers, his great bargaining weapon, were in the hands of a turncoat. Westmacott held the receipt and the key to the safebox and would not surrender them. There could be no clearer sign of Tommy’s desperation than that he had applied to Chancery for relief. The Court of Chancery was and is a graveyard for litigants and a screw press for filling lawyers’ pockets.
Spring arrived and with it returned Ernie Cumberland, twirling his moustachios. He said he had come to dissuade the King from caving in to the Catholic faction, but he had other business. When he wasn’t at Windsor browbeating the King, he was in town conspiring to silence Tommy Garth. Everywhere there was talk of the action Tommy had begun in Chancery, and whispers about a scandalous secret he threatened to reveal. Sofy’s name wasn’t spoken but the hints were heavy. In The Age Westmacott wrote in defence of his new master. Gossip about the Duke of Cumberland, he claimed, was a vile falsehood put about by those who feared defeat of the Catholic Bill. The Standard asked, ‘Who is this Captain Garth? The Duke of Cumberland knows nothing of him.’ The Times published the figure of £3000 a year, promised by Sir Herbert in exchange for the contents of a certain box.
As Henry Topham said, ‘Three thousand a year. I wish I had such a secret to sell.’
I feared Garth would be dragged into the affair and called to give evidence and I said as much when Tommy came to Grosvenor Place one afternoon.
He said, ‘He won’t be troubled. I have such damning letters. York knew the whole business. The Queen knew. And it wasn’t just my mother, you know? Princess Amelia made allegations too.’
I said, ‘But York is dead, and so is the Queen and so is Amelia. Who does that leave? Sofy mustn’t be shamed to get you your annuity. And Garth mustn’t be questioned. It would kill him.’
‘What’s that to you?’ he said. ‘He can’t live for ever.’
He wanted me dismissed while he talked to Garth but Garth wouldn’t have it. He said, ‘You can speak freely before Nellie. She is my dearest friend. We have no secrets.’
