Fifty-seven years old, handsome in that fleshy Virginian planter fashion and the son of perhaps, one of the five wealthiest dynasties in New England, he was vain, thin-skinned and unfussy about letting the truth, or the unimpeachable facts about a given matter get in the way of his take on reality.
His favourite sound bite was: ‘They would say that, wouldn’t they?’
Or: ‘I thought you were too clever to be taken in that easily!’
Lee made Philip De L’Isle’s◦– for his many egregious sins in previous lives, he could think of no other rational explanation, by the Grace of God and the Great Seal of England wielded by his Majesty, King George V, Governor of the Commonwealth of New England◦– blood boil. Whereas, he too was a man born to extraordinary privilege, he had spent his whole adult life in the service of his Monarch, doing his duty; whereas, Lee had never stopped sucking at the teat of wealth and power, never once thinking to actually serve anybody but himself.
Obviously, the Governor betrayed none of this as he rose to greet his visitor that morning.
“What a pleasant surprise, Roger,” he smiled. “I trust Elizabeth and the children are well?”
Lee’s wife was a semi-recluse on the family’s vast Arlington Estate and ‘the children’◦– idle, spoiled brats aged between sixteen and thirty-four◦– the eldest of whom, now an independently wealthy merchant banker, had had very little to do with the patriarch of the Lee clan for years.
“Fine, fine,” the Virginian said curtly.
De L’Isle waved his visitor towards comfortable chairs with a view through the veranda windows of his office to the gardens beyond.
“Always good to see you, of course,” he remarked as the men took their seats, “but your secretary did not give us any indication what you wanted to talk about, Roger?”
As if Philip De L’Isle did not know exactly what the puffed-up overbearing oaf wanted to talk about!
The other man parried the question.
He was accustomed to doing things only in his own good time and that, he determined was not quite yet.
“You must be dreadfully worried about Lady Henrietta?”
“She’s a resourceful young woman. I am sure she will emerge, sooner or later from the imbroglio in Spain.”
“It goes without saying that I and my colleagues in the Virginia Colonial Legislature share your hopes for her safety.”
“Thank you. My wife and I draw great strength from the loyal support of all New Englanders in these trying times.”
It was not as if both men knew that the other would rather be having this conversation in a boxing ring than the urbane, gentrified setting of Government House. Although, in all things involving risk to his person or dignity Roger E. Lee III usually preferred to nominate a second to do his dirty work, take the hard knocks, and if necessary, sacrifice himself to the greater good of the Lee dynasty.
The Governor of New England, a man who had survived any number of ‘close shaves’ in his long and distinguished career as an officer in the Grenadier Guards and bore the scars to prove it, had never sent another man into harm’s way alone and had a truly heroic contempt for moral cowards like the politician sitting smugly before him.
“As distasteful as it is at such a sad time,” Lee prefaced, with every appearance of a troubling existential angst he did not feel, shifting uneasily in his chair more on account of his piles than any qualms of his conscience, “but you will be aware that against my own wishes, the VCL has again voted in favour of the abolition of the Colonial Security Service…”
Matthew Harrison was not even cold in the ground and the bastards were raking over his life’s legacy!
“Yes,” the Governor of New England agreed blankly, “it is distasteful, Roger.”
“I would have preferred to have delayed this interview until after Matthew’s interment…”
“Why didn’t you?” Philip De L’Isle inquired, pleasantly as if he was genuinely curious to know the answer. “Defer this interview until after tomorrow’s funeral?”
“We live in an age when decisions must be made regardless of the sensibilities…”
“That is not my approach to colonial governance, Roger. Nor will it be while I sit in this chair.”
Once, as a very young man De L’Isle had fought a duel against an arrogant, unprincipled charlatan like Lee. Although the blaggard had fired at him before the umpire had dropped his handkerchief, no harm had been done as each party’s seconds had handed their unknowing principals revolvers loaded with blanks. De L’Isle had not exercised his right to◦– notionally◦– gun the bounder down; a man like that was not worth the cost of a single bullet!
“Surely, you cannot consider rejecting a vote of the VCL out of hand, Governor?”
“The VCL speaks for Virginia, not New England, Roger.”
“The VCL is speaking for the rest of the Fifteen…”
The Chairmen of the other fourteen Colonial Legislatures had backed Lee to be their spokesperson not because they thought he was the best man for the job, rather because most of them realised that the job was of that particularly ruinous type whereby any applicant was best advised to drink poison before accepting it.
“You will be aware that the position of Director of the Organisation of Chairmen of the Fifteen has no constitutional under-pinning, Roger,” the Governor reminded his guest urbanely.
He would not normally have cut to the chase so artlessly but it was not as if Roger Lee’s motives were anything but transparent.
“A colony’s rights are inalienable,” he went on benignly, a sympathetic smile playing on his lips, “until such time as it formally surrenders those rights and privileges in combination to a third party. So, if you want to engage me in a conversation about Virginia’s rights after the abrogation of its colonial status well, we probably ought to call in a constitutional lawyer right now.”
The other man objected before he engaged his brain.
“The Fifteen have a legitimate right to seek common ground and to petition the Governor’s Office in respect of its demands…”
Roger Lee flinched the moment he had said it, knowing he had been provoked into intemperance.
“Demands, Roger?”
“I misspoke. Concerns. Yes, that’s the word. Concerns…”
Philip De L’Isle eyed the other man for several long, silent seconds.
“One is always duty-bound to listen to the ‘concerns’ of senior members of the colonial establishment with the due deference they deserve, Roger. That has always been the case. My door is always open to the Governors of His Majesty’s Colonies and the senior representatives of their peoples. In fact, I can confidently claim, that no Governor of the Commonwealth has ever been as willing to listen to the voice of the peoples of New England as I, or the officers of my administration.”
Right from the outset of his time in Philadelphia, De L’Isle had operated under the assumption that while the Colonies had responsibilities to the Old Country, the Old Country had even more responsibilities in the New World. In his father’s day the mandarins at the Foreign and Colonial Office still talked about the ‘White Man’s Burden’, well, nowadays, across an Empire in which at least twice as many of its people were coloured than white, the burden was a profoundly multi-racial, mixed-culture, increasingly less-European-centric contract and he could not see for the life of him how it could be that here, in New England, so many well-educated, otherwise intelligent and hard-working people who liked to believe they were Christians, could be so bloody pig-headed!