The Stranger From the Sea

  ‘No, I should think not.’

  ‘So therefore it should be first hand. Am I not right? There is really only one person who must hear this report, and that is the Prince himself.’

  III

  As January waned the winter hardened and the Thames froze. The trees around Brompton were stiff with rime. Horses slithered and snorted in the icy lanes, their breath like dragons’ in the sunless air. Birds dropped dead among the apple trees, foxes crept into the corners of the barns for shelter, the pall of London smoke, undisturbed by wind, kept its distance in the east.

  Ross occupied much of his time amending and revising his report so that it should read clearly and without ambiguity. He wrote a third time to Demelza, apologizing for but not explaining the delay. It was a very long letter, the longest he had ever written her, and in it he said quite a substantial part of what was in the report but in more colloquial terms. It helped him, he found, to see it through her eyes.

  In vain he argued with George Canning that even if this meeting, this anomalous meeting, could be arranged, the Prince of Wales would long since have made up his mind from his own ample sources of information as to the advantages and disadvantages of withdrawing from the Peninsula. Ross also pointed out that the Monarch (or his deputy) could certainly invite some statesman to form a government with whose policies he was in general agreement, but beyond that he could certainly not control every item of policy once the Cabinet was formed. Canning retorted that on the contrary Pitt, though a King’s man, had had to resign office ten years ago because he wished to emancipate the Catholics, an act the King vehemently opposed. In other words, no statesman, not even Grey or Grenville, could negotiate peace with France if the Prince Regent did not wish it. Sway the Prince, influence him in his thinking, and you might yet prevent the final disaster.

  And how, Ross asked, did anyone imagine that a single account by a virtually unknown Member of Parliament, sent out to observe the course of the war, would be likely to ‘sway’ in any remotest way the mind of the Heir Apparent? Canning wryly agreed. But drowning men, he said, clutched at straws: was it not worth clutching at this straw for the sake of the cause they all so much believed in? And after all, was there not also another saying, that a last straw could break a camel’s back? Sheridan, for all his old allegiances, was, he now knew, on their side. Lady Hertford also. A great mass of the ordinary people of the country would deeply resent giving in to Buonaparte after all these years of bitter struggle. Did it matter so much if Grey or Grenville took office if, so far as making peace was concerned, their hands were tied?

  Strings, said Ross in wry disgust, who would pull the strings to arrange this meeting? Not Wellesley, said Canning, he was too much an interested party. It must be Sheridan. No one else could contrive it. For it must be done privately so that no one but the Prince’s closest friends knew.

  In the last few days of the month the weather relented, and the ice-bound countryside became a quagmire. Ross went several times to the House when an important vote was pending, and heard Canning speak. Canning had an astonishing mastery of the Commons, one of the most difficult things to achieve, and equally difficult to maintain. A sudden silence fell on the rowdy chamber when a great or influential speaker rose; but what he had to say was subjected to as close a scrutiny as if he were a nobody, and if the subjcct-matter did not live up to his reputation the noisy interruptions would soon break out. Certainly not with Canning this time; he spoke for seventy minutes and received an ovation at the end. Later when Ross moved among a crowd of members to congratulate him, Canning smiled and said in an undertone:

  ‘I have just heard, old friend. Tomorrow evening at seven.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Holland House. Ask first for Sheridan.’

  That would be the 29th. Ross nodded grimly and would have turned away but Canning drew him back into the circle of his friends – Smith, Ward, Huskisson, Bowne and the rest – as if to preserve him from the dangers of pessimism and doubt. Ross had met the heir to the throne twice at receptions in recent years and had formed a very poor opinion of him. The country, he thought, was in a very bad way if it was going to be governed by, or be under a government which depended for its existence on, this fat pompous dandy. He was held up to almost universal ridicule and contempt, and the lampoons printed about him were of unsurpassed sarcasm and savagery.

  Only last week Ross had paid a penny for a pamphlet which ran:

  Not a fatter fish than he flounders in the Polar sea.

  See he blubbers at his gills; what a world of drink he swills!

  Every fish of generous kind scuds aside or shrinks behind;

  But about his presence keep all the monsters of the deep.

  Name or title what has he? Is he Regent of the sea?

  By his bulk and by his size, by his oily qualities,

  This (or else my eyesight fails) this should be the Prince of Whales.

  There were a few, of course, who thought different. In his own arbitrary, haphazard way he had favoured architects, actors and writers more than any other prince in memory; but his spendthrift, dissolute life, the sheer aimless self-indulgence of his existence, offended Ross almost as much as it did the mass of English people. The thought of making his report to such a man seemed to him an essay in the sourest futility.

  The Regency Bill must become law by the fifth or sixth of February. Canning had heard whispers that all was not concord in the Whig camp. Lords Grey and Grenville, having drafted suitable replies for the Prince to make to the resolutions of the House of Commons, found their elegant and sonorous prose discarded, and quite new and almost intemperate replies sent in their place, such as could only have been drafted by undesirable intimates of the calibre of Sheridan and Lord Moira. They had thereupon sent a dignified letter of remonstrance to the Prince, pointing out that, on the eve of their appointment to lead the country, it hardly became him to ignore their counsel and to take note instead of his secret advisers.

  This had not at all pleased the Prince, who was very unused to remonstrance. However, there was little Prinny could do about it now. He had made it quite impossible for himself not to get rid of the present government and there was no one else. Lansdowne – Canning said – was too young and had no experience of office, Tierney was quite unreliable, Sheridan a drunk, Ponsonby a nonentity. The Prince would have to suffer the lectures and make do.

  ‘I’d like you to stay till the Bill becomes law,’ Canning went on. ‘Not respecting what happens between you and the Prince. It is a crisis, Ross, that transcends the pettiness of some of the people taking part in it. There is even a week yet for the King to recover! When it is over, when it is all done, when we have lost the day, then you may return to your Cornish acres, and I will undertake to make no further claims on your friendship for a twelvemonth! Will you agree?’

  Ross smiled. ‘It is not my Cornish acres I am anxious to see but my Cornish wife.’

  ‘Well, you can be with her by mid-February – scarcely more than three weeks’ time. You will come to the Duchess of Gordon’s next Friday?’

  ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘It’s her soirée at the Pulteney. All the leading people will be there, both in government and prospective government.’

  ‘I’m not one of the leading people.’

  ‘I think it’s important you should be present. Disagreeable though social events may be, they do fulfil an important function in the governance of this country.’

  ‘By then,’ said Ross, ‘I may be in disgrace.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Who knows? Not keeping a civil tongue in my head to his Royal Highness? Assaulting one of his flunkeys? Wearing the wrong colour cravat?’

  ‘The last is the worst offence,’ said Canning. ‘I’ve known men languish in the Tower for less.’

  IV

  Seven o’clock seemed an unpropitious hour, but presumably it was considered better if he presented himself after dark. God only knew, he thought, w
hy there should be any need for secrecy: he was not carrying some private communication from the Czar of Russia. Presumably during this crisis everyone would be scrutinized and his influence weighed, even to the butcher carrying meat in at the back door.

  The butcher, come to think of it, was likely to be of much the greater influence, since he ministered to the royal stomach.

  Exactly on seven Ross was shown into the magnificent waiting hall by a blue-and-gold-liveried manservant, his cloak and hat taken, a glass of fine canary put in his hand. The great room was empty, and he stared unadmiringly at its rococo decoration. The Prince, a florid man, clearly had a taste for the florid in architecture. Like the later kings of France. Was there to be a parallel here?

  The squeak of a door announced a stout elderly man who weaved unsteadily towards him, heels clacking on the polished floor.

  ‘Captain Poldark? Good day to you. I’ll take ye in in a matter of minutes. The Prince is with his secretary attending to a communication he has just received.’ They shook hands.

  ‘Correspondence greatly increases when the throne is so near.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The weather is milder, praise be to God. The cold touches up my liver confounded hard.’

  They stood in silence. The older man coughed in an infirm manner.

  ‘A drop more canary? Or would a brandy suit ye better?’

  ‘Thank you. I’m more than accommodated.’

  Another silence. ‘The Prince is very much set about with business, as you’ll understand. He would, I assure you, have been much happier if his father had recovered.’

  ‘So should we all, Mr Sheridan.’

  ‘Well. Ah well. All the same, those are not sentiments I would recommend ye to express in this house, or not perhaps sounding so heartfelt about them.’ Sheridan steadied himself against a chair. ‘Tact is of the essence, Captain Poldark. Tact. I have already built up your reputation as a military strategist, so I’m relying on ye to be a social one too!’

  Ross smiled. ‘The first’s quite undeserved, so I don’t know how I shall measure to your standards in the second . . . But if you’re busy pray don’t wait. I can keep my own company until sent for.’

  ‘No, no. No, no, no. But if I may I’ll join ye in a glass.’

  It was ten minutes more before Ross was ushered into the presence. The Prince was in a smaller room, sitting at a richly veneered table examining a snuffbox. He was wearing a dressing-gown of olive green silk embroidered with silver thread; under it a white cravat, brilliant canary waistcoat, white silk breeches. Although a year or two younger than his visitor he looked an old man by comparison, an elderly hen as compared to an eagle. Everything about his face, the lines, the pouches, the pitted skin, showed the evidence of soft living and self-indulgence.

  Ross bent over the jewelled hand.

  The Prince grunted.

  ‘My father,’ he said, ‘is a great collector of snuffboxes. I thought to give him this one. It might comfort him in his affliction. They say it belonged to Henry of Navarre.’ There was nothing Ross felt like saying in comment on this, so he did not speak.

  ‘Perhaps, Captain Poldark, you are not a collector? Or perhaps only a collector of information?’

  ‘Your Highness?’

  ‘I understand you are recently from Portugal, to which certain ministers in my father’s government elected to send you to obtain an independent picture of conditions there.’

  ‘That is correct, sir.’

  ‘And you have a report to make?’

  ‘I thought your Highness had already seen it.’

  The Prince of Wales looked up for the first time. His eyes, though swimmy, were shrewd and assessing. And not altogether friendly.

  ‘You are primarily a soldier, Poldark, a man of action rather than a man of letters? I found your report interesting but not at all well written. I flatter myself I am some small judge of style in literature. However, I am told that you talk more easily and perhaps with a better sense of the use of words.’

  ‘I’m not an orator either, sir. I can only hope to add a few observations to what is already set down – and of course to answer any questions you may see fit to put.’

  The Prince still fingered the snuffbox.

  ‘At least you don’t promise too much. That’s something. The older I get the more I’m surrounded by people who promise too much. It’s the disease of the courtier, a curse bestowed upon kings and princes.’

  Ross again held his tongue.

  ‘D’you know, I too would have wished to be more a man of action than I have been allowed to be. D’you know that? This war – this war has dragged on . . . When it began I was a young man. Nothing would have pleased me more than to have led an army in the field – to have taken some active part in a campaign.’ He contemplated the thought with satisfaction, nodding his big head in agreement with the words. ‘I’m not a coward. Good God, I’m not a coward. Nor is my family without military antecedents. But – because I am heir to the throne I am allowed no active part at all! I must be – cocooned like some expensive and irreplaceable silkworm, so that when my father eventually dies I am available to take his place: to sign documents, to appoint ministers, to help preserve the body politic of England! But personally, for myself, as a human being, I am deprived of the satisfaction of achievement to further the greater good – or at least the greater stability – of the nation. And although you may envy me the luxury of my sheltered life, Poldark; indeed you may; I envy you the freedom of being what in fact you are – a soldier, a politician, a man of action; we might even say, using the word in its less offensive sense, an adventurer.’

  ‘I adventure on my own behalf only in mines, sir,’ Ross said drily. ‘As for the rest, through my life, occasions have presented themselves.’

  The Prince yawned and stretched his fat legs. He was wearing silver buckle shoes and white lisle stockings with openwork inserts.

  ‘And now you have been presented to me, eh? When did you first meet Lord Wellington?’

  The question was sharply put. Ross hesitated a moment. ‘Wellington? . . . After Bussaco, sir. But briefly. He had much to occupy his attention.’

  ‘You must have met him before?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘And Wellesley?’

  ‘I have seen him at receptions. Once we exchanged a word in the House. Until last week. Then I presented this report to him.’

  ‘And Canning?’

  ‘Oh, Canning I know well, sir. Have known for seven or eight years.’

  ‘Yes, so I thought. So I thought. This – all this – has very much the smack of Canning’s contriving.’

  ‘All . . . this, your Highness?’

  ‘Yes, and do not look down your long nose at me. You know what I mean. Canning should be called Cunning! He considers himself too big a man to be out of government, so when he is out he constantly tries to interfere and run a little government of his own. What possible other purpose could your visit to Portugal have had when the government is receiving its own perfectly adequate accounts of all that is going on there?’

  ‘I asked that, sir, before I went.’

  ‘Oh? And what were you told?’

  ‘That an independent report might be of value by someone who has nothing to lose or gain and who, rightly or wrongly, has earned some reputation over the years for – impartiality.’

  The Prince turned the snuffbox over and ran his finger along the bottom. ‘It has been repaired – but skilfully. I don’t think my father would notice, do you?’

  Again Ross did not reply.

  ‘You have a stiff back, Captain Poldark.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I say you have a stiff back. Don’t pretend you don’t understand me . . . Well?’

  ‘Well, sir?’

  ‘Well, sir, say what you have to say. Elaborate on this report. Tell me what you saw, what you found, and what you deduced. Pray give me a sample of your eloquence.’

  Ross swall
owed. It was in his mind to bow and excuse himself and stalk out. To hell with this fat fop and his dandified manners and his lisle stockings and his snuffboxes. If this was the future King of England, then God help England. This interview was taking its predestined course.

  But . . . this was not a personal matter on which he was being granted an audience. If he walked out, it was not he who lost. If he stayed, if he persevered in face of this discourteous invitation, nothing would be won, surely nothing could be won from this paunchy prince; but he would have done all that could be done. He could not reproach himself later – as he had a number of times in his life, when his pride – perhaps a false pride – had induced him to act in a way that cut out any hope for the cause he was promoting. It was not a time now to consider personal inclination. The issues were too large.

  He began to speak – awkwardly, haltingly, at first looking at the Prince, who continued to finger the snuffbox – then away from him, at a statue to the left of the sofa on which his Highness was sitting. It was a statue of some Greek god; probably Titan, he guessed from the beard and the horn. He tried to forget the living man, who might or might not be listening, and address the man in stone.

  He talked for perhaps ten minutes, barely pausing; and during the last five with some feeling as the subject took hold of him. He eventually stopped and looked down. The Prince had put the snuffbox away, and his head was on his chest. His breathing was steady. Ross stared at him with growing anger and contempt. The other man opened his heavy lids and sighed and said:

  ‘Is that the end?’

  ‘That is the end . . .’

  ‘They were right, Poldark, you do talk well once you’re started. It helped me to a pretty nap.’

  Ross swallowed, trying to contain himself.

  ‘Then, sir, I have failed as I expected to fail. If I may now have leave to withdraw . . .

  ‘No, you may not.’