“Indeed?” I murmured with an air of surprise. “From your appearance, Mr. Hinton — so much the Sprig of Fashion! — I should have thought you aspired to the Dandy Set.”
The gentleman dropped his quizzing glass as tho’ struck to the quick.
“I observe Mr. Papillon is arrived,” Miss Beckford supplied quickly. “If you will excuse me—”
She moved off, with a nod for Mr. Hinton that flavoured strongly of contempt; but the gentleman did not seize the opportunity to follow her, as I might have expected. Miss Beckford was as a fly he swept aside with a careless hand.
“Violence is quite foreign to those who truly love this country, Miss Austen; and certain it is that a corpse should never have been discovered in Widow Seward’s cottage,” Mr. Hinton observed. “But she was most truly the lady in all respects. I need hardly add that the presence of Dyer’s labourers would not have been necessary prior to her forcible eviction. She saw no reason to complain of the cottage’s arrangements.”
His implication was clear: we Austens had brought this trouble upon the village ourselves, and we Austens alone must bear the burden of its disgrace. I flushed in the sudden heat of anger — which discomposure was undoubtedly Mr. Hinton’s object — but any words I might have uttered were overborne. The bell was rung, the ladies’ hands disposed among the gentlemen — and we were all sent in to dinner.
Letter from Lord Harold Trowbridge to Charles, Earl Grey, dated 2 June 1791, one leaf quarto, laid; no watermark; signed Trowbridge under a black wax seal bearing imprint of Wilborough arms; marked, Personelle, Par Chassure Exprès, in red ink.
(British Museum, Wilborough Papers, Austen bequest)
Rue de Varennes, Paris
My dear Charles—
I thank you for your last, and am most happy to know that you perceive a change in the political fortunes of our party in coming months. If the Duke of Devonshire will lend his weight where weight is necessary, anything may happen; and your good angel, my beloved Georgiana, may yet effect the necessary push. Canis will not act, as we know to our misfortune, and the Duchess does not will it; but her affection for yourself and her high courage shall see us all through.
I dined with Jouvel in the country near Versailles last evening, and he begs to be remembered to you. He has a very pretty daughter of but fifteen, and were I in the habit of carrying off girls half my age, I should be sorely tempted; but as it is, I must direct my energies elsewhere. I am charged with no less, and the stakes — as we used to say at Brooks’s — are murderously high.
You will be pleased to know that the difficulties attendant upon Revolutionary fervour that you and I foresaw, in Cornwall this spring, are already anticipated among our friends on this side of the Channel. I stand ready to ship any number of “wine casks”
and “horses of racing blood” in the small vessels you have promised to have ready off Marseille, and have found a likely lad to help me in the transport. His name is Geoffrey Sidmouth, and he is tied by blood to any number of people we esteem and value; he is a handy fellow with the management of ships, and is in good heart. I will send word when the need arises; I hope it may not for some time, but I fear that my hope is false. I remain, my dear Charles—
Trowbridge
Chapter 12
The Devil in the Cards
6 July 1809, cont.
As evening parties go, ours was more generally unequal in its composition than most. We were treated to Miss Benn’s simplicities and vague utterances, which had the appalling habit of falling directly into such lapses in the conversation as must make them the most apparent. Lady Imogen Vansittart, on the other hand, deigned to speak to no one not of her intimate party and at her end of the table — that is to say, no one other than Major Spence or Mr. Thrace; while Henry, who was positioned at the table’s centre, spent the better part of the evening attempting to catch the conversation proceeding above him, while evading the notice of those conversing below. The Prowtings were divided between volubility and silence, with Catherine — who was placed next to Mr. Hinton — staring painfully and self-consciously at her plate. I several times observed Mr. Hinton to speak to her in a low and urgent tone, but she repulsed the gentleman’s attempts at conversation. Her earnest gaze was more often fixed upon Julian Thrace, but what attention he could spare from Lady Imogen was entirely claimed by Ann Prowting, who had been placed at the Beau’s left hand.
Ann’s devoted efforts at new-dressing her hair had certainly achieved a degree of novelty: the girl’s golden curls were gathered in a rakish knot over one ear, with a few tender wisps straggling to her nape. A quantity of white shoulder was exposed, as was an ample décolleté; and I might almost have suspected Ann of dampening her shift beneath the white muslin gown, in order that the thin fabric should cling to her limbs. She sat opposite to Henry, but succeeded in ignoring my brother completely. With a Julian Thrace at hand, who could spare a thought for an aging banker?
The young man who aspired to an earldom was the picture of easiness. Thrace could flirt with Ann Prowting, reduce a quail to bones with graceful fingers, listen to Lady Imogen with every appearance of interest, and address an amusing story to his host. Had I yearned to converse with him, I was placed at a disadvantage. My seat was towards the lower end of the table, next to Mr. Prowting; but I was able to observe the Beau’s artful swoops from one conversational plane to another, and decided that it was all very well done.
He had claimed my attention first by declaring, with affecting candour, that he had never before found an occasion to witness a coroner’s inquest — and had discovered the experience to be infinitely diverting.
“As a man raised for much of my life on the Continent,” Thrace explained to the table in general, “I am not so familiar as I should like with the conventions of English justice. To observe your yeoman class, displayed on a hard wooden bench and endeavouring to do their utmost in consideration of the Departed, was as instructive as a treatise on philosophy should be. I admired the succinctness and learning of Mr. Munro, the subtlety with which he asked his questions, and the respect with which he treated high and low alike.”
“I wonder,” the exquisite Mr. Hinton replied with a curl of his lip, “that you can reap so much benefit from so vulgar an episode. I could only endure the two hours I spent in the George, by resolving never to be found there again!”
Mr. Thrace smiled at the gentleman. “But perhaps, sir, you had not the peculiar interest I felt in the man’s demise. When I consider that had I left Middleton but five minutes earlier that evening, I might have saved the labourer’s life — or, heaven forbid! — met a similar fate at the hands of his murderer, I could not be otherwise than compelled by the coroner’s proceeding.”
A storm of questions greeted this pronouncement, with Mr. Thrace throwing up his hands in protest as the ladies all demanded that he explain himself.
“There is no mystery,” cried he. “I dined alone on Saturday with our excellent Middleton, Spence being absent from Sherborne St. John on a matter of business in Basingstoke, and Lady Imogen being as yet in London.”
“We sat in conversation so long,” Mr. Middleton added, “that it cannot have been earlier than midnight when you quitted the house, tho’ I pressed you most earnestly to remain, and should have summoned the housemaid to make up your room, had you allowed it. But you would not put me to the trouble, and rode out directly, the moon being nearly at the full, and the road well-illumined.”