But the voyage had been a trial. Summer had already begun before they took the packet which sailed, in company with several other ships and a naval escort to protect them against French privateers, across the Atlantic to London. Her husband was a wonderful sailor. The weeks on the ship didn’t seem to bother him at all. Whether it was drinking in the great silence of the night sky under the stars, or weathering a squall while the ship pitched and tossed, she’d never seen him happier. James, on the other hand, would sit for hours on deck, staring gloomily at the Atlantic Ocean as if it were his personal enemy; and in rough seas, while his father was cheerfully up on deck, James would stay miserably below and think bitterly that if he drowned, it would all be his father’s fault for dragging him uselessly on a journey where he never belonged in the first place. To her husband, when he complained that their son wouldn’t speak, she said: “It’s just his age, John, and being cooped up on a ship.”
“I think he blames me,” John remarked sadly.
“Not at all,” she lied. But she hoped very much that James might cheer up in London.
They had no sooner arrived at the London waterside than a pleasant, middle-aged man, with the bluest eyes she’d ever seen, came forward with hand outstretched to greet them.
“Mr. Master? I am Arthur Albion, sir, at your service.” And within moments, he had them all in his carriage, with two boys loading their luggage into a cart behind. “I have taken the liberty of procuring you some lodgings,” he announced, “not far from those occupied by another distinguished gentleman from the American colonies, though he is away from London at present.”
“Indeed?” said John Master. “And who might that be?”
“Mr. Benjamin Franklin, sir. I dare say he’ll be back in London soon.”
But if there was no sign of Ben Franklin in the weeks that followed, it hardly seemed to matter. For London was all that Mercy had hoped, and more.
It wasn’t long before John told her he was satisfied that Albion’s were one of the best trading houses in London. They were solid, and well trusted. Arthur Albion was a member of one of the best city guilds. “As for our friend Albion,” John declared with a laugh, “he’s a most gentlemanly fellow. But if there’s a chance to turn a pretty penny, I’ve never seen a man move quicker in my life.”
He proved to be a perfect guide. Though he was a merchant and a city man, Albion came from an old family of landed gentry down in the New Forest, and through family connections, and his own courtly manners, he had access to a number of London’s aristocratic houses. His wife came from an old family of French Huguenots. “Silk merchants and jewelers,” she told Mercy cheerfully. What better person could there be to guide her round the fashionable shops? They were fast friends within a week. Hats and ribbons, silk dresses and shoes, not to mention the daily delicacies to be found in Fortnum & Mason the grocers—they sampled them all. Since servants were needed to wait upon them in their handsome lodgings, the two ladies interviewed them together.
Best of all, Mercy could buy things for her husband.
She could see at once that Mr. Albion, though he dressed quietly, had a perfect sense of fashion. John dressed well. And London fashions reached New York quite quickly. But there was a certain style, a special look, hard to define but unmistakable, in a London tailor. She had Mr. Albion take John to his tailor and his wigmaker before they’d been there a week.
Then there were the other things, that she and Mrs. Albion could buy for him together. The silver buckles for his shoes, a fine new watch, a sword, a sword knot, linen for his shirts. She even bought him a silver snuffbox. The fashion for snuff had come to New York, of course, and several American tobacco merchants had started manufacturing it. But if John Master smoked a pipe now and then, he drew the line at the snuffbox. “If I start snorting snuff, I’ll sneeze over you all day—and all night too,” he promised cheerfully.
John Master was enjoying London very much indeed. Albion had chosen their lodgings wisely—just off the Strand, in the thick of everything. In no time, John was frequenting some of the best coffee houses, where you could find the newspapers and the Gentlemen’s Magazine, and strike up conversations with all kinds of interesting fellows. The theaters showed comedies that were to his taste. To please Mercy, he even sat through a concert of Handel’s music—and quite enjoyed it.
But their great relief was James.
John Master could remember his own youth only too well and what a disappointment he’d been to his own father. So if he often made plans for James, it was only because he hoped that his son might do a little better than he had himself. If in New York he’d thought James should learn about fellows like Charlie White, here in London, the opportunity seemed entirely different. Here was a chance to acquire, at the empire’s fountainhead, all the history, knowledge of law and manners that a gentleman should know. Before they had sailed, he’d written to Albion, asking him to find James a tutor. He hoped this wasn’t going to make James even more morose. But to his great relief, it was soon clear that Albion had chosen well: a bright young fellow recently down from Oxford, who could give James some companionship as well.
“The first few days,” the young fellow announced, “I think I’d better show James round the town. I can give him some history lessons as we go.” And it seemed to work. A week later, when Master went across to Westminster with his son, he was quite astonished at how much of the history of the British Parliament James knew. A few days after that, James even corrected him, politely but firmly, upon a point of grammar. “Damn your impudence,” his father cried. But he didn’t mind at all.
James was getting along famously with his young tutor. When the Albions introduced him to rich London boys of his own age, he found them not so different. Indeed, the young bloods of New York had taken up the nasal drawl of London’s upper class when they spoke, and James knew how to do it. It was agreeable to find that these English boys accepted him as a good fellow like themselves. Albion’s own son Grey, who was three years younger than James, obviously looked up to him, which raised his spirits further, and soon the Albions’ house by Lincoln’s Inn became his second home.
And flushed with this new confidence, James also began to seek out his father.
John Master knew that boys of this age needed the company of their father, and he had been wanting to take his son about in London. What he had not foreseen was that it would be James who took him.
Every day or two they’d set off from their lodgings near the Strand to explore the wonders of London. A short walk to the east lay the lovely site of the old Knights Templar, where the lawyers had their quarters now. Beyond that, the busy printers and newspapermen of Fleet Street worked under the shadow of St. Paul’s on the city’s ancient hill. They went to the Tower. And Albion took them both, together with Grey, to the Royal Exchange and the port.
Or turning west along the Strand, they’d saunter down Whitehall to Westminster, or enter the Mall on their way to the royal palace of St. James, and stroll up to Piccadilly. At least once a week, James would come eagerly to his father with a suggestion of some kind. Should his father like to go to Tyburn, where they’d hanged a highwayman last week? Or the pleasure gardens at Ranelagh, or take a boat downriver to Greenwich, or up to Chelsea?
It touched John so much that his son wanted to share these things, and although he didn’t tell the boy so, these were some of the happiest days of his life.
Strangely enough, it was Mercy who became uncomfortable.
Arthur Albion had invited the Masters to dine with a number of merchants, lawyers and clergymen. He knew men of learning, writers and artists too, but he’d correctly judged that John Master was not anxious to discuss the merits of Pope the poet, or even Fielding the novelist, or meet the formidable Dr. Johnson, who was preparing his great dictionary nearby in his house off the Strand. He had introduced them to several Members of Parliament, though, and before the month of September was out, they had attended dinners or small receptions in a numb
er of handsome houses. But there was one other class of person whom his visitors had yet to encounter. This was to change in the first week of October.
“My dear,” John announced to Mercy one day, “we are invited to Burlington House.”
Mercy had seen the great houses of London from the outside. She passed the huge facade of Northumberland House on the Strand every day; and there were at least a dozen other great establishments that had been pointed out to her. She knew that these great enclaves, closed off behind their gateways and walls, belonged to the highest noblemen in England. But since some of these buildings extended a hundred yards or more along the street, she had assumed that they contained all kinds of places of business, or possibly government offices, around their internal courtyards.
As they all went together in his carriage to the evening reception, Albion explained what they were about to see.
“It’s not really a private party,” he said with a smile. “I should think the nearest thing in New York would be a governor’s reception. There will be a great crowd of people there; we may, or may not, have the honor of meeting our host. But you’ll have the chance of seeing the greatest people in England.”
Burlington House stood on Piccadilly, not far from Fortnum & Mason. Mercy and Mrs. Albion had used the same dressmaker and hairdresser; and a quick inspection had assured her that John was perfectly turned out in a similar manner to Albion. But as they entered the huge courtyard, glanced at the massive colonnades and saw the great sweep of steps to the doorway ahead of them, she couldn’t help feeling a trace of nervousness. The front facade of the Palladian mansion resembled nothing so much as a Roman palazzo. Flanking the impressive doorway were rows of liveried footmen. She heard her husband ask a very reasonable question.
“What’s this huge place used for—its daily business, I mean?”
“You do not understand, my friend.” Albion smiled. “This is a private residence.”
And then, for the first time, Mercy felt afraid.
She had never seen anything like it before. The great rooms and halls with their coffered ceilings were so large and so high that the biggest mansion in New York could have fitted into any one of them. Even the scale of a church like Trinity looked puny by comparison. America had nothing like this, imagined nothing like this, and would not have known what to do with it. How modest, how insignificant, how provincial even New York’s greatest mansions must look to the men who lived in such palaces. All over Europe, an entire class was accustomed to live in this way—a class of whose very existence, she suddenly realized, she was almost entirely ignorant.
“Such wealth,” she heard her husband remark to Albion, “must confer enormous power.”
“It does. The Duke of Northumberland, for instance—whose London house is bigger than this—comes from a feudal family who ruled like kings in the north for centuries. Today, the Duke has dozens of Members of Parliament who vote exactly as he tells them to. Other powerful magnates do the same thing.”
“We have no feudal families like that in the colonies.”
“The proprietors of Maryland and Pennsylvania still possess land grants which give them feudal powers,” Albion pointed out.
It was perfectly true that the seventeenth-century grants made to a few families like the Penns, and indeed the land grants of the great patroons up the Hudson River—grants given them to develop what was then empty territory—had left these magnates with almost feudal powers.
“They don’t build palaces, though,” John said.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Albion was whispering in Mercy’s ear.
“There’s the Duchess of Devonshire. They have another house like this just along the street. There’s Lord Granville. And oh my, there’s Lady Suffolk. You don’t often get the chance to see her.”
“Who’s Lady Suffolk?”
“Why, the king’s old mistress. A very kind lady, much respected. And look over there.” She indicated a handsome lady to whom everyone was bowing. “That’s Lady Yarmouth, the king’s present mistress. The most important lady at the court.”
“The king’s mistress is important?”
“Of course. After the queen died she became, you might say, the royal consort.”
“And before she died, what did the queen think of her husband’s mistress?” Mercy asked wryly.
“Oh, they were great friends. They say the king consulted the queen closely on how to woo Lady Yarmouth. See to her left, that’s Lord Mansfield, very influential.”
But Mercy didn’t look at Lord Mansfield. She was still grappling with the notion of the royal mistress. How could it be that the ruler of the country, the head of the Established Church, could not only take mistresses, but that these women were honored like honest wives? New Yorkers, heaven knows, were no strangers to immorality, but her Quaker soul was offended by this official acceptance of public vice.
“Does everyone at court keep a mistress?” she asked.
“Not at all. Lord Bute, the king’s closest adviser, is a religious man of unimpeachable morals.”
“I am glad to hear it. Doesn’t private vice make a man unworthy of public office?”
And now kindly Mrs. Albion looked at Mercy with genuine astonishment.
“Well,” she laughed, “if it did, there’d be no one to govern the land.”
Mercy said nothing.
And now, by the door, there was a stir. A name had been announced and the crowd was parting. She looked to see who it was.
The young man was about twenty. A big, ungainly boy, with bulging eyes and a small head. He looked a little shy. But as people bowed, she realized who this must be.
Prince George was the king’s grandson. But since his own father’s early death, he’d become the heir to the throne. Mercy had heard that he took a keen interest in agriculture, and that he meant well. From the smiles that accompanied the bows and curtsies, it seemed that people liked him. So this was the Prince of Wales.
But as she watched his progress round the room that evening, and observed his simplicity of manners, she wondered whether when he became king, he would do anything to change this world of aristocratic excess and immorality. Somehow, she doubted it.
Ten days later, the Albions took them on a journey to the west. James came too, and young Grey Albion. It was a pleasant party, all the more so as Mercy had the chance to observe her son and the Albion boy. Young Grey had a very sweet nature, and it was clear that James quite enjoyed acting the elder brother to him. They went down to the New Forest, where the Albion family came from, and across to Sarum and Stonehenge. They enjoyed the ancient intimacy of the forest, and admired the huge agricultural estates around Sarum. Albion also told them much about the improved farming methods and machinery that were bringing England an ever increasing prosperity. From Stonehenge they had gone to Bath, and spent several delightful days in the fashionable Roman spa.
It was here, in the pump room one morning, that Albion encountered a friend. Captain Stanton Rivers came from an important family. The captain was a slim, graceful man in his late thirties, and his father was a lord. But it was his older brother who would inherit the title and estate, and so the captain had to make his way in the world. “Any officer in the British Navy longs for war,” he told them with a pleasant smile, “for it brings the hope of prize money. We navy men are just glorified privateers, you know. And here at Bath,” he added frankly, “there are always plenty of officers like myself hoping to find an heiress or a rich widow. But at present,” he announced, “I have another prospect in mind. I’m thinking of going to America.”
“And what do you mean to do there?” Albion asked with some amusement.
“I’ve received word, Arthur, from a friend in Carolina that there’s a widow there, without heirs but of childbearing age, who possesses two excellent plantations, and who hopes to marry again. She wants a gentleman of good family. He sent me a miniature of her, and assures me that despite telling her every fault in my character that he can think of, he
has not been able to deter the lady from considering me.”
“You mean to go to Carolina?”
“I have already discovered what I can about plantations. I believe I could learn to manage one. I intend to make a tour of the colonies, and visit New York as well,” he said. “Carolina widow or not, I mean to learn as much about our American colonies as I can.”
A glance from Albion indicated to John Master that his host would like him to oblige his friend. He needed no further hint.
“Then I hope you’ll do me the honor of staying with us in New York,” he said. “I should be delighted to be of service to you.”
From Bath they went to Oxford. Here their journey took them on smooth turnpike roads—a far cry, Mercy was forced to admit, from the rutted tracks of New England—and they made the seventy-mile journey in a single day. Oxford, with its cloistered colleges and dreaming spires, charmed her. But before returning to London, Albion had taken them to see the country house of the Churchill family, at nearby Blenheim Palace.
And here, as she had at Burlington House, Mercy received another shock. The country villas she knew back at home were handsome houses. But nothing could have prepared her for this. A park that stretched as far as the eye could see. A vast mansion, stone wings outstretched, that was half a mile across. It was a quarter-mile from the kitchen to the dining room. The library, which to her should be an intimate haven, was sixty yards long. The cold, baroque magnificence of the mansion was stupefying. And while Albion took them proudly round, and her husband and the two boys stared at everything in awe, her quiet Quaker intelligence saw the grandeur for what it was. This was not the pride of wealth; nor even the arrogance of power. The message of the Churchills was as simple as it was outrageous: “We are not mortal men at all. We are gods. Bow down.” The crime of Lucifer. And Mercy felt a sinking of the heart.