“My memoirs?… Memoirs of what?”
“Of your life with the Duke, of all the people you’ve met, all the gossip and scandal. You’d make a fortune, of course. You’d be wealthy for life.”
“But I thought you already had that fixed and settled? That the Duke of Kent has a pension up his sleeve?”
There was a strange silence, an awkward pause. Then Dodd again, “Of course, that’s all in the air, until the debate is over in the House and we know what’s going to happen. In the meanwhile you’ve everything to gain, and nothing to lose, by getting out a book as soon as possible.”
“With your talent,” said Wardle, “your wit, your charm, your ease of expression, the business would only take you a matter of weeks. Phillips knows a hack who’d pull it into shape. Someone called Gillingham.”
“I’ll be willing to help you myself,” said Major Dodd. “I’ve quite a turn with my pen; my wife used to say if I only had the time I could write a novel. His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent has said the same.”
“Why not write his memoirs, then? They’d sell better than mine. How he first met Madame de Laurent, with all the details. And how the troops at Gibraltar burned him as Guy Fawkes.”
“The object of the book, if you write your memoirs,” said Colonel Wardle, trying to change the subject, “would be, of course, in the main to sully York, but at the same time to attack the present Government. Rake up the private gossip, and so strike a blow for freedom and for all of us.”
“Wash the Government’s dirty linen, and save you the trouble?”
“I’m a busy man. I haven’t the time to write.”
Good God! How she despised the lot of them. Using her as a tool to further their plans. It did not matter how she smirched herself, their hands would stay clean—as long as they kept their distance.
“I tell you what,” she said. “I might write a book on the private lives of all the men I’ve known. Including you, and also Major Dodd.”
“Dear lady, our lives would bear investigation. Ask our wives.”
“All right. What about the pseudonym ‘Mr. Brown’? And the coffeehouse at the end of Cadogan Square?”
Colonel Wardle turned bright puce and blinked his eyes.
“What exactly do you mean?”
“Search your conscience, if you’ve got one. I don’t know. The chambermaid takes tea in the kitchen with Martha. As for Major Dodd, there’s a chophouse in Drury Lane, with a red-haired girl who sits behind the counter. My brother dines there sometimes—he’s fond of the theater.”
Major Glennie tittered. “And what do you know about me?”
“I merely wonder how you wangled your present safe appointment as teacher of mathematics down at Woolwich. I thought all artillery experts were needed in Spain?”
Silence. Then hearty laughter, very forced, and glances at watches—they must all go home.
“If you do think about the memoirs, Mrs. Clarke, then Sir Richard is your man, a very live publisher.”
So live that an ardent request to see her came by the very next post, which proved connivance. She had an interview with Sir Richard in his office in Bridge Street, and looking about her thought of ten years back, when, not in his office but in others similar, she had traded her scraps of gossip to halfpenny pamphlets.
Ten shillings a column those days, for Joseph to sneak round the corner and spend in the taverns. Mr. Jones, in Paternoster Row, “It’s not smutty enough, the public want something that sizzles, to ginger the palate.” But now the red carpet was down and the shillings were thousands.
Sir Richard Phillips began by praising her evidence.
“My dear Mrs. Clarke, you had the whole House at your feet.”
“With the possible exception of the Attorney-General. And the Leader of the House never got to his knees. Nor did I observe the Government benches stripped of sitting figures—they seemed unmoved.”
“But impressed all the same, I assure you. You’re far too modest. Now, what about these memoirs?”
“What about them?”
“Have you anything yet on paper?”
“Not a line.”
“But I understand that before the Investigation, sometime last year in the summer, you made some notes about your recollections of life at Gloucester Place, conversations with the Duke, private matters relating to the royal family, etc., etc. Now that’s the stuff I’m after. Could I see it?”
“That rather depends on what you intend to do with it.”
“Why, publish it, of course, with certain embellishments. Just a master touch here and there by a professional hack, while you supply the material and the letters. Pretty hot, I have no doubt. I know these princes—it’s the German blood, they’ve no idea of restraint. I’d pay you well for the copyright, Mrs. Clarke.”
“I’m not selling any copyright, Sir Richard.”
“Not selling… but what are you after?”
“You can print it, and sell the book as you please, but you stay the vendor. The copyright won’t go out of my possession.”
“In that case, Mrs. Clarke, we can’t do business.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll find someone else, I’m in no hurry.”
She rose to leave but he pressed her to stay a moment. “If I don’t do the book myself I can put you in touch with an excellent man who’s about to become a publisher, a Mr. Gillet, who’s been some time in the trade. As a matter of fact he’s here, I’ll introduce him.” She recognized the racket. Wheels within wheels. There was somebody else who had “just dropped in by chance,” but who had actually waited about for the touch of a bell.
“And as it happens there’s a bookseller here from Kent, with a flourishing business in Maidstone, a man called Sullivan. One glimpse at you, Mrs. Clarke, and he’ll give an order. ‘Strike while the iron is hot’ is my favorite motto.”
Enter Mr. Gillet and Mr. Sullivan. More flattering speeches were made and tributes paid to her charm, after which they began to scribble figures on paper.
“A first edition of twelve thousand copies, I reckon we’d get that subscribed in a very few weeks.”
“A portrait of the author as a frontispiece? The head by Mr. Buck that was in the papers? And signed, of course—no value unless it’s signed.”
“What about over in Ireland, the Dublin market?”
“The Micks don’t pay so high, but they’d want the book. I’d say Mrs. Clarke would pocket two thousand guineas.”
She listened to them in silence, then put in a question.
“How about some money before the book is started?”
No bids. A deathly silence. Then Mr. Gillet, “It’s customary to deliver the manuscript first,” his protest backed up by the Maidstone hawker and Sir Richard.
“I see. Well, I’d better go home and start to write it.”
Her words brought relief to all concerned. The interview was over, with nothing committed in ink on either side—no signatures to agreements, nothing binding, but a literary future assured and a fortune promised. She’d believe them when she held the cash in her hands; then all their charming speeches might make sense. So back to Westbourne Place and a sheet of foolscap. And then…? Memoirs of M. A. Clarke—would that be the title? It sounded dry as dust, like a teacher’s manual. My Rise and Fall would come more apropos, but the rise would take some telling and cause some flutters. Let sleeping dogs stay put, and draw the veil until the girls were married and George was a general.
My Life with the Duke? It was all in the Minutes already, being pulled about at the moment in the Commons. A lot they wouldn’t find, of course, in that. What he wore (or didn’t wear), his taste in food, the mood at breakfast, the singing in the washtub, the dislike of a warming pan, the midnight yawn. They would say she was lying, no doubt—that was the trouble—and put her into court for misrepresentation. The book, to be really convincing, must give his letters: they couldn’t be denied or explained away. She had them all in that box tied up with ribbon, except the few
she had taken to the House, and the letters were what the public really wanted. Not the billets-doux, like those they had read in the Commons, but the notes where he’d spilled the beans about the Family.
The King playing whist in his dressing gown (nicknamed Snuffy) while the Premier, Mr. Pitt, awaited his audience… The Queen’s determined insistence on protocol, the Household flat on their faces at her approach… The Princess of Wales’s confinement, with strange repercussions… The habits and tastes of his brothers, especially Cumberland, with mirrors all over St. James’s and odd-looking valets…
Yes, those letters were worth a good deal, one way and another, once they’d been bound up in calf with gold lettering proudly displayed. But whether Sir Richard, Gillet, or the hawker of Maidstone would pay quite as much for possession as the royal hand that had penned them was open to question—and to enquiry, too.
It was amusing, the general sense of discomfort that seemed to attack so many of her friends. James Fitzgerald, from Ireland, was one of the most agitated—with reason, what was more, when she thought of his letters. He wasn’t the only one who wrote imploring that if she should ever consider writing her memoirs—the rumor had spread, then, across to Dublin already—she would not, for old friendship’s sake, include him. If his letters had not been burned, would she kindly return them? She couldn’t return them, or burn them, in point of fact. They’d been part of the bundle that Nicols had found up at Hampstead, and were now reposing in the House of Commons.
This news had the result of sending Willie, his son, to her house at six in the morning with tears in his eyes.
“What in heaven’s the matter? Is your father dead?”
Curtains were hastily drawn, the fire kindled, hot coffee and eggs put before him, herself in a wrapper.
“Mary Anne, we’re faced with ruin. Only you can help us.”
“I’ve scarcely got five guineas in the house. I’ll send round to my upholsterer, he’ll oblige me.”
“Not that. Not money…”
“Then what the devil is it?”
He looked like a raving lunatic from Bedlam. He even had straws in his hair (the boat from Dublin), he hadn’t shaved or cleaned his fingernails. “My father got your note five days ago. I’ve come at once… You must get those letters back.”
“How can I? They’re under seal at the House of Commons.”
“You must appeal to Perceval without delay.”
“He wouldn’t listen. He’s probably broken the seal and is reading the lot.”
“Don’t you realize our position if we’re disgraced? My father will never lift his head again, my sister will have to break off her engagement, and as for myself…”
“I know, it is rather distressing. There’s one letter where James asks to be my agent in Ireland, written, if I remember rightly, around 1805, and saying he could whip up the prices for ensigns. It will look rather bad if it’s read before the Committee.”
“You sit there and smile…”
“There’s nothing else I can do. I haven’t the letters. Go and ask Perceval yourself, but he’ll hardly listen to you until the debate is over.”
“Meanwhile, you won’t mention us in your memoirs?”
“Meanwhile, I promise nothing. Eat your breakfast.”
How could she ever have thought him amusing at Worthing? It must have been his youthful blond appearance, coupled with being bored and a hot July.
“I tell you what you can do”—a thought suddenly striking her—“you told me you knew the Earl of Moira well, and the Earl of Chichester too. I met them with you. My name will be mud to them now, but never mind. They’ve long been personal friends of the Duke of York. Put it about that I’m going to publish my memoirs, including all the letters of the Duke, but I might change my mind if somebody cared to persuade me.”
That surely was fair enough, and left every door open.
And during those weeks in March, while the debate continued, day after day, with long, interminable speeches—the For, the Against, the Praise and the Slander, the lauding to heaven and the hurling in the mud—the chief witness for Wardle’s charges scribbled in notebooks; confessions, impressions, digressions, and everything else. There was no time for any intrusion, not even for the children (who were safely away in the country with her mother), not a moment either for Bill, over at Uxbridge, tending his elderly father seized with a stroke.
Only once in a while did she pause—when his Radical Lordship, hot from debate in the House, paid a clandestine call. Then she heard all the news. How the war of ideals was progressing, how someone had called her a witch and another a wanton, and a third a poor woman misjudged who craved mercy from heaven.
“Who’s winning?”
“It’s close.”
“Will it be neck and neck at the finish?”
“No, a Government lead, with a margin they won’t care to look at.”
“Which means?”
“Resignation.”
“For whom?”
“For your gallant Commander-in-Chief.”
She had no moment of joy, no elation, no sense of triumph—only a pain in the heart and a feeling of shame. I will repay, saith the Lord—so the words ran in her mother’s worn Bible; but all that revenge had achieved was a taste in the mouth.
“Can I stay?”
“If you like.”
And even that was indifferent, a tribute unwanted. The same old experience shared without fervor or folly.
The House sat through the night of March the 16th, before they came to division and the heads were counted. The debate that had lasted three weeks was wound up at last, and the concluding speeches showed how the House might divide.
First the Leader of the House and the Attorney-General gave it as their opinion that no necessity existed for removing His Royal Highness from the station he held at present, which he was so well qualified to fill. Could Mrs. Clarke be believed, then the charges were proved, but her testimony had appeared a tissue of fabrication. It was the duty of the House to acquit him of the foul charges that had been made against him.
Sir Francis Burdett, for the Opposition, said he had been astonished to find the Leader of the House, Mr. Perceval, who also held the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Vicary Gibbs, the Attorney-General, and all the Crown lawyers, whose duty it was to punish public delinquencies, arraying themselves this time upon the side of the party accused.
The principle had been to do away with the evidence of Mrs. Clarke, but the amazing thing had been the truly consistent manner in which she had given it. All those who endeavored to trap her, or make her discredit herself, had found themselves constantly foiled. His Majesty’s Attorney-General had been continually defeated.
As to the Duke of York’s high principles, he had felt no remorse in shaking off his mistress, and exposing her to poverty and infamy. The annuity, when applied for, had been refused, which spoke much for royal promises. The high rank of the Prince was immaterial in this case. For the case was the justice of England, and the people of England looked to the House for justice. It seemed to him impossible, after all that had been heard during the past weeks in the House of Commons, that the Duke of York could retain his situation at the head of the Army.
Amid scenes of intense excitement the House divided, and the result was as Lord Folkestone had prophesied. Although the Duke of York was acquitted both of personal corruption and of connivance, the majority in his favor was no more than eighty-two.
On paper, and in terms of figures, the charges had been disproved; but in the eyes of public opinion the Duke of York had been convicted, and the result was a triumph for the Opposition.
When the news became known on the Friday evening there was shouting and rejoicing in the streets of London. Colonel Wardle became a national hero, Mrs. Clarke a benefactress to the British people, and instead of the street boys throwing bricks at her drawing-room window there was now a mob from the back lanes of Chelsea and Kensington waiting for her to appea
r on her doorstep and smile at them.
That night she attended the Opera House in the Haymarket, where a benefit performance was being given for the actors and actresses of Drury Lane. Charley was with her, May Taylor and Lord Folkestone; and when they came into the box and were seen by the audience cheers and loud applause rang out through the theater.
“This makes up for what you went through with the Attorney-General, doesn’t it?” whispered Charley.
His sister smiled, and bowed, and waved her hand in acknowledgment to the crowd. “No,” she said, and smiled and waved again.
“What will you try for next, then? A public apology?”
She laughed. “I shall bide my time,” she answered. “You wait and see. One of these days I’ll get even with Vicary Gibbs.”
“If you get these tributes now,” murmured Lord Folkestone, as the clapping died away and the audience settled, “what will it be when you bring out the promised memoirs?”
“An author is read, not observed,” whispered Mary Anne. “Besides, it’s very possible I won’t publish them.”
“But you must…” He looked astounded. “I heard through Sir Richard Phillips that the whole thing was settled. The book will put another spoke in the Government’s wheel and bring more popularity to the Opposition.”
Mary Anne shrugged her shoulders. The lights went dim.
“If you think I care a damn for either side,” she said, “you are mistaken. Fight your own quarrels.”
“Then what has the battle been for?”
“My children’s future.”
The curtain rose and a hush came over the house. The title of the piece was Honeymoon. The audience rose and shouted halfway through when one of the leading actors, concluding a speech, was obliged to say, “It will be rather awkward, to be sure, to resign at the end of the month, but like other great men in office I must make the most of my time, and retire with a good grace to avoid being turned out.”