On the morning after his arrival he felt that he could bear to remain there no longer; yet was plagued by the thought of his duty to Susan. Often enough he had reproached himself for having been such a bad father; and, now that he had the opportunity of repairing his neglect of the girl, he was contemplating leaving her again within a matter of hours.
Then he hit upon a plan that greatly revived his spirits. He meant, in any case, shortly to live again at Thatched House Lodge in Richmond Park, a 'Grace and Favour residence of which Mr. Pitt had given him the life tenancy for his services to the Crown. He would have Aunt Marsham and Susan to live with him there for a while.
That afternoon he told them of his plan. Mrs. Marsham said that such a change would be pleasant, and Susan jumped for joy. Then, struck by a thought, she said, 'But, Papa, we must be back here by mid-December, for Charles will be returning from Eton.'
She had been brought up with Georgina's boy, and knowing their devotion to each other Roger replied, 'Unless his mother has other plans for him, we'll have him, too, at Richmond, and make it a truly merry Christmas.' Half an hour later he had mounted his horse and was on his way back to London.
After riding a few miles it suddenly occurred to him that if the report of his death had reached the Prime Minister, the tenancy of Thatched House Lodge might, by now, have been given to somebody else; so he made a slight detour in order to go there. To his considerable relief he found Dan Izzard, the ex-smuggler who acted as caretaker for him, up on the roof replacing a broken tile. As had always been the case after Roger's long absences, the house and garden had been well cared for and Dan, although now ageing, was still hale and hearty. Since Amanda's death Roger had occupied the house only for brief periods at long intervals, so it had not even occurred to Dan that his master might be dead, and, giving a cheerful hail, the old salt came nimbly down the ladder to welcome him.
Roger stayed only long enough to knock back a noggin of rum with his bearded retainer, and tell him to engage an adequate staff during the coming week; then he rode on in the gathering twilight to Arlington Street.
For the next ten days he took up again the life he normally led while in the capital. It was the dead season, so many of the big mansions in the West End were closed and shuttered, while their owners took toll of pheasants and partridges in the country. But Parliament was in session, the leading clubs: White's, Brook's, Boodle's and Almack's, still had their quotas of gamblers every night, a play at Drury Lane was nightly drawing crowds, there were several other good pieces on and a number of exhibitions.
As Roger and Droopy were both members of White's, they went there frequently, and Roger was soon brought up-to-date with the political scene. Early in 1806, after over fourteen years of unremitting effort by Pitt to check the destruction by the French of the old order in Europe, Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz had broken the Third Coalition and, with it, Pitt's heart. Exhausted and in despair, the great champion of true liberty had turned his face to the wall and died.
His Ministry had shortly been followed by one led by his lifelong rival, James Fox. It had been composed mainly of Whigs and been termed, 'The Ministry of All the Talents'. But it had turned out to be a coalition of weak, discordant men who lacked all initiative in prosecuting the war. Fox's death, that September, had heralded the end of its short life and, for two decades, rule by the Whigs.
In December the Duke of Portland had brought together a Cabinet with Spencer Perceval as Prime Minister. Perceval was a very skilful politician, and a fluent orator, but not a very forceful personality. However, he had George Canning as Foreign Secretary, and Lord Castlereagh as his Secretary of State for War.
At Oxford Canning had been one of a circle of brilliant young Whigs, but his admiration for Pitt brought him over to the Tories. In 1800 he married Portland's sister-in-law, who was a great heiress. He was made Postmaster General, then in 1807 Perceval had given him the Foreign Office.
Castlereagh had made his name as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He had fought hard for Union and Catholic-emancipation; but George III had rejected these measures so stubbornly that, in 1801, Pitt had resigned and Castlereagh with him. In 1805, on Pitt's return to office, Castlereagh had been made Secretary of State for War and, later, under Perceval, again filled that office.
Both Canning and Castlereagh had striven hard to re arouse the determination of the war wear' British people to defeat Napoleon, and had prosecuted hostilities with renewed vigour. The former had been responsible for the cutting out by the British Navy of the Danish Fleet at Copenhagen, thus preventing it from falling into the hands of the French and again giving them near-parity at sea after their defeat at Trafalgar. The latter had initiated the use of fire ships, in an attempt to destroy the great French flotilla at Boulogne, which was being assembled for the invasion of England.
Unfortunately, early in Perceval's ministry, the two had quarreled. On the withdrawal of the British Army from Corunna, after Sir John Moore's death there, Canning had pressed for a renewal of the war in the Peninsula and had sent the able Marquis Wellesley as Ambassador to the Spanish Junta of Insurrection. It was he, too, who had secured the appointment of the Marquess' younger brother, Sir Arthur Wellesley, as Commander of the new British Army sent out to aid the Spaniards. An undertaking had then been given that all the support of which Britain was capable should be used for this campaign. Castlereagh had agreed but, after the British had withdrawn from Copenhagen, sent the troops there to Gothenburg instead, in order to close the Baltic to the Russians. Then, without Canning's knowledge, he had sent a British expedition to the fever ridden island of Walcheren, at the mouth of the Scheldt, where it had failed dismally in its objective of capturing Antwerp.
Angered by this dispersal of troops which he had expected to be sent to reinforce the Army in the Peninsula, Canning had demanded Castlereagh's dismissal, with the threat that otherwise he would himself resign. Neither Perceval nor Portland had had the courage to inform Castlereagh of this situation, so he had not been made aware of it for several months. When at length it came to his knowledge, the two Ministers had quarreled furiously and fought a duel. The first shots of both had gone wide. Canning's second shot had glanced off a button on Castlereagh's coat, and Castlereagh's had slightly wounded Canning in the thigh. Both had then resigned.
The Marquis Wellesley replaced Canning as Foreign Secretary. He had spent a number of years as Governor General of India and proved a most able administrator. It was there, too, that his brother Arthur had made his name, as Commander-in-Chief during several victorious campaigns. Having long ruled over vast territories, when the Marquis returned to England in 1806 his associates found him extremely haughty and self willed. At the Foreign Office he proved the same, rarely bothering to attend Cabinet meetings, and holding the Prime Minister in contempt.
Lord Liverpool had taken over the War Office from Castlereagh, and had followed his policy of greatly increasing the army establishment; so that, including reserves, it now stood at over half a million men. Between them, he and Wellesley had overcome the former considerable opposition to continuing the war in the Peninsula, and were now the strongest men in the Government.
However, the burning question of the hour was a recurrence of the King's malady. Some twenty years earlier his mind had become unstable, which had resulted in George, Prince of Wales, becoming temporary Regent. The King had recovered but, in recent years, had become increasingly feeble both in mind and body. A cataract had made him totally blind in one eye, and another in the other eye had so restricted his sight that he could not recognize anyone at a distance of more than four feet. He had, moreover, recently become quite mad, imagining that he was still King of Hanover, and that the Countess of Pembroke, for whom in his youth he had nurtured a secret passion, was his wife.