The Emperor

Book 11: Morland Dynasty

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

1795: the shadow of Bonaparte has fallen across Europe and touches each member of the far-flung Morland family.
As the century draws to a close, Jemima Morland wearily ackowledges that her life is also nearing its end, but she has scant peace as her unpredictable children behave ever more incomprehensibly: James's marriage to Mary Ann in closer to falling apart; Lucy's marriage de convenance is in the balance – her affair with Lieutenant Watson an open scandal; Mary bears a daughter on board her husband's ship during the battle of the Nile; and William supports a mistress whose marriage cannot be dissolved.
Jemima's death appears to unite the family but, as ever with the Morlands, the future holds more peril than hope.

Release date: August 25, 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 512

Sample

One day in March 1795, Hawkins, the butler at Chelmsford House in Pall Mall, paused on his way through the great hall to speak
to Bunn, the porter.


‘The Countess of Aylesbury is expected today, Mr Bunn,’ he said – ceremoniously, because Bunn’s boy was at his elbow, his
mouth open in wonder.


‘Was hany time o’ day mentioned, Mr ’awkins?’ Bunn replied in kind.

‘His lordship did not specify, Mr Bunn. Her ladyship is coming from Wolvercote today, was all I was told.’

‘I’ll set the boy to keep a lookout for Lord Aylesbury’s travelling chariot, then, Mr ‘awkins,’ said Bunn. The boy, who was
new and had, in Bunn’s opinion, a deal too much of what the cat cleaned her paws with, spoke up shamelessly in the presence
of his betters.


‘ ’Ow will I know the kerridge then, Mr Bunn? Pall Mall is full o’ gentlemen’s kerridges.’

‘Not of travelling chariots, it ain’t,’ said Bunn quellingly. ‘Four ’orses – her ladyship wouldn’t travel with two. Matched,
most like. With postilions an’ prob’ly a couple of outriders, all in the Aylesbury livery. You get out there on them steps,
and when you see that lot a-coming, you sing out.’


‘What colour livery is that, then, Mr Bunn?’ demanded the unquellable boy.

‘Sky blue, o’course. Don’t you know nothing! Get along now. Boys!’ he exclaimed to his superior as the child scuttled off. ‘Don’t know nothing, don’t want to know nothing.
I don’t know what the world’s coming to, straight I don’t, Mr ‘awkins. It wasn’t like this when I was a boy.’


‘It’s the war, Mr Bunn,’ said Mr Hawkins condescendingly. ‘Stands to reason. War changes everything.’

It was hardly the boy’s fault, however, that Lady Aylesbury took the household by surprise, for instead of arriving in the travelling chariot, she confounded everybody by bowling up Pall Mall at a clipping pace, driving herself in
a smart curricle drawn by four enormous York chestnuts, with her maid beside her and her groom up behind.


‘You was right about the four ’Orses, anyway, Mr Bunn,’ the boy piped up, and this time Bunn thought it right to see how far
a clip on the ear would go towards teaching the boy a more respectful demeanour towards his betters.


‘Good morning, Bunn!’ Lady Aylesbury called cheerfully as she entered the black-and-white tiled vestibule, stripping off her
long gloves. ‘How is your leg now? Did that salve do any good?’


‘Yes, your ladyship. Thank your ladyship,’ Bunn replied, blushing with pleasure. Only last year the Countess had been plain
Miss Lucy Morland, and her appearance had hardly changed since then. Her sweet, pleasant face was speckled with mud from the
journey, which mingled with her own natural freckles; her hay-coloured hair, which she wore in a short crop, was a tangle
of wind-blown curls; and her movements were brisk and boyish. She was only sixteen, after all – yet there was a kind of authority
in her bearing which made it perfectly natural for Bunn to bow low to her and call her ‘your ladyship’. He noticed, too, that
Mr Hawkins received her with genuine respectfulness, and Hawkins was capable of a very withering irony towards mushrooms and
nabobs and others he considered not quite of the first consequence.


‘I trust your ladyship had a good journey?’ Hawkins asked.

‘Very pleasant. The road is very good from Oxford – I’m told we are never cut off now, even in the winter. Ah, Charles!’

Her cousin, the Earl of Chelmsford, had come down into the hall to receive her. He kissed her, and then glanced out into the
street, where Lucy’s groom, Parslow, was leading the horses away, and grinned.


‘Don’t tell me you drove yourself in that thing! Yes, I can see from the mud on your face that you did. You really are a shocking
girl, Lucy! And laying out your horses as if you were at Newmarket, I dare say. Is this your maid? She looks scared half to death.’


‘This is Docwra – she’s new since Christmas,’ said Lucy, turning to smile at the maid, who came into the hall, pushing back
the hood of her cloak to reveal a face snub-nosed, rather grim, and very pale. She began to regain some natural colour now
that she was on terra firma.


‘To be sure, me lord, her ladyship’s a very fine driver. Indeed she is. I’ll soon get used to it,’ she said with more determination
than conviction, and a broad Irish accent.


‘I told her she could come with the luggage if she liked, but she wouldn’t have it,’ Lucy said.

‘ ’t’wouldn’t do for you to be travelling alone, my lady,’ Docwra pronounced firmly.

‘She fears for my reputation,’ Lucy said with amusement as they started up the stairs. ‘I told her that since I dressed up
as a boy and ran away to sea when I was fourteen I had no reputation to lose, but she wouldn’t believe it.’


‘You delight in being shocking,’ Charles said, looking her over with amusement. ‘Are you never going to grow your hair again?’

‘It’s comfortable like this,’ she replied. ‘Besides, Mother says that now it is growing out curly, it suits me better. You
can’t imagine what a comfort it is to be able to ride fast without shedding pins everywhere.’


‘I like long hair in women,’ Charles said mildly, and Lucy snorted.

‘You men have no notion of discomfort. Besides, it’s very modish to crop. They call it à la guillotine, but I think that’s rather horrible.’


‘And you have another new maid. That must be the fourth in a year. What happened to the one you had at Christmas?’

‘Oh, you mean Penney? She gave me notice. I never liked her. She disapproved of me, you know, Charles. Those expensive lady’s
maids always do. She told Flora’s maid, Mrs Phillips, that I was more in need of a keeper than an abigail. She said I behaved
like something out of Bedlam.’


‘So you do,’ Charles agreed. ‘How do you know what she said to Phillips, anyway ?’

‘Parslow told me. It went all round the servants’ hall. But I think Docwra will stay. She’s of a very different breed. The poor thing almost starved to death in Ireland before she got
passage to England. She came from a poor family – eleven brothers and sisters – and worked her way up from kitchen skivvy
to abigail.’


‘In that case, she must be tough enough to endure life with you, even if you do make her travel in an open carriage! But why
didn’t you come in the chariot? Would it not have been more comfortable?’


Lucy shrugged. ‘I was perfectly comfortable, thank you. Besides, Chetwyn has the chariot. He has gone up to Morland Place
again, to visit Ned.’


‘And you did not wish to go with him? After all, we saw you at Christmas, and we ought not to be selfish, if you wanted to
go home for a visit.’


‘Oh Charles!’ Lucy laughed. ‘Calling it home, when I have been married more than a year! Wolvercote is my home now, and Chetwyn
my husband – though I confess he seems much more like my brother,’ she added, perhaps a little unguardedly.


Charles said curiously, ‘Don’t you mind that Chetwyn spends more time with your brother than with you? You could have gone
to Morland Place with him, or he could have come to London with you.’


‘Don’t be so Gothic, Charles. I know you and Flora like to spend all your time together, but you will never succeed in making
it fashionable. Chetwyn couldn’t live another minute without seeing Ned and Mother and Morland Place, but I had a lot of shopping
to do, that’s all. I’m bound to go up to Yorkshire in the summer, so they won’t miss me. Where is Flora, by the way?’


‘She’s in her room,’ Charles said. ‘I don’t know how it is, but she has not been just quite well since Christmas. I have persuaded
her once or twice not to get up in the mornings. The rest seems to do her good.’


‘What is the matter with her?’ Lucy asked with quick concern. All her life she had been interested in medical matters, and
it was when she had discovered that women could not be doctors that she had determined to dress as a boy and run away to sea,
to be a ship’s surgeon.


‘I don’t know, except that she seems unable to digest her meat properly,’ Charles said. ‘She has bile and sickness, and sometimes
cramps in the stomach. Dr Abse has been dosing her, but it seems not to have helped very much.’


Lucy looked grim. ‘I told you before not to have Dr Abse in. He is the most abominable quack that ever lived. Don’t you remember
what he put in that remedy he gave Horace last autumn? Powdered mummy!’


‘His reputation is very high,’ Charles said feebly in self defence. ‘All the people of fashion swear by him.’

‘All the people of fashion die by him, and the more fool them! If I had my way, I’d tie him to a bed and dose him with his
own filth until he choked on it. The harm such people do is not to be believed! Spirits of lead and powdered dung and ground
woodlice; blistering and fomentations and bleeding; all the old witches’ brews and hocus pocus! Oh, why didn’t God make me
a man?’


It was her old cry, and Charles could only pat her arm and say, ‘I really can’t imagine.’

‘You must promise me you won’t have Abse in again, Charles. I’ll do what I can for Flora. If Abse has not poisoned her, Docwra
and I will make up something for her, and we’ll have her on her feet in no time. Docwra is the greatest help to me, you know.
She had the doctoring of all her brothers and sisters in Ireland, and brought her mother through the childbed fever. And when
I had to pull a tooth last week – one of the housemaids at Wolvercote, and, Lord! you would think I was going to murder her,
the noise she made – Docwra held her down for me. It is a knack, you know, Charles – not everyone can do it.’


‘I begin to see her attraction,’ Charles smiled. ‘Penney was right about your not needing an abigail.’

They arrived at the door of Flora’s room. Charles scratched upon it, and they went in to find Flora lying on the day-bed by
the window. Lucy was shocked at the change that had occurred in her in the two months since she had last seen her; but Flora’s
face lit up at the sight of Lucy, and she began at once to get up.


‘Dear Lucy, I knew you would come. Now I shall be comfortable again!’

*


A few days later Lucy’s elder sister, Mary Haworth, arrived at Chelmsford House, on her way back to Morland Place from Portsmouth.
She had just had three days’ blissful reunion with her adored husband, George Haworth, who was a sea officer, commanding His
Majesty’s ship Cressy. The Cressy had put in for some necessary refitting after eighteen months at sea, and had now gone back to resume her task of bottling
up the French ships in their harbours.


Mary and Flora were old friends, for Flora had been brought up with the Morland children before Lucy was born. When Flora
married Charles in 1782, Mary had gone on their honeymoon tour with them as bridal companion, and thereafter had made her
home permanently with them, until her own marriage two years ago.


Mary presented a very different picture from her younger sister, for where Lucy was only quite pretty, Mary was truly beautiful.
Introduced by Flora into society, she had become a leader of the ton, and had had scores of suitors of the greatest eligibility. Barons and earls had been dying for love of her, but she had led
them all a dance and remained provokingly heart-whole, so that Flora began to fear that she would end as an old maid. Then
when she was almost thirty, and more beautiful and sought-after than ever, Mary had fallen in love almost at first sight with
a very unremarkable sea-captain, a friend of Flora’s far more dashing naval friend, Hannibal Harvey.


Marriage and motherhood had not diminished Mary’s beauty nor affected her style. She arrived at Chelmsford House with all
the dignities of a post-chaise, a maid and a man, and a suitable quantity of luggage; wearing moreover an extremely modish
pelisse of bleu celeste velvet and carrying an enormous muff of black sable. Her gloves were of French kid, and her glossy dark curls fell from beneath
a perfectly distracting Russian hat of the same fur, decorated with a red-and-white hackle.


‘I hope you can stay for a good, long time,’ Flora said. ‘Apart from my party to celebrate the Prince of Wales’s marriage,
which I must have you for, you know that Louisa is in Town, with John, to shop for her confinement, and I know she would value your opinion on what to buy.’


‘She had far better ask yours, ma’am,’ Mary smiled. ‘After all, you are her mother; and besides, your budget is closer to
hers than mine is. I am only a poor sea-captain’s wife: I can’t afford to patronise the shops you and Louisa go to.’


‘How can you say that, when you arrive in the most delicious hat I have seen all winter?’ Flora said. ‘Where did you get it?’

‘I designed it myself, and Farleigh made it up. She is wonderfully clever with her fingers.’

‘You and Lucy have maids perfectly suited to your needs,’ Charles remarked. ‘Farleigh dresses hair and makes hats, and Docwra
dresses wounds and holds down patients.’


‘Hush, Charles! You will stay, won’t you, Mary? Louisa’s John will beg off my party with some excuse about being needed at
the House, unless I tell him you are to be there.’


‘I’ll stay with pleasure, if you think I won’t spoil your numbers,’ Mary replied, wisely ignoring the last part.

‘Oh no, as to that, I shall invite Lord Tonbridge for you. He has not courted any woman since you refused his offer, you know.
Everyone says he stays single for love of you.’


‘Everyone?’ Mary queried with a wry smile.

‘His mother,’ Charles elucidated. ‘It will be most cruel of you to invite him to have his heart broke all over again, my love,
for Mary is prettier than ever. And it will do nothing for your numbers, because you will have to invite his mother too. She
certainly won’t let him come without her.’


‘Never mind,’ Flora said peaceably. ‘I shall ask Horace to bring along some single men. There are some quite respectable officers
in his regiment.’


‘I should think there may be!’ Charles exclaimed, amused at this slight upon the Prince of Wales’s own regiment.

‘And Hannibal shall bring one of his fellow admirals. I’m sure there must be plenty of them in London, for one cannot walk
down Bond Street without bumping into half a dozen. It makes me wonder who there can be at sea.’


‘It’s a good system, which allows for keeping the bad sailors on shore while the good sailors command at sea,’ Mary said from the depths of her two-year acquaintance with matters nautical. ‘But you must be so pleased that your friend
is raised to flag rank at last.’


‘Indeed I am,’ Flora said. ‘Now he will be able to pay his account at Fladong’s. I never knew anyone build up debts so fast!
If he did not eat here three days of the week, I am sure he would starve to death. It is a very good thing, you know, Mary,
that you did not accept him, because I am sure you would not have been happy, though I thought otherwise at the time.’


Mary looked mystified. ‘At what time, ma’am? How could I accept Captain Harvey when he never offered for me?’

‘Oh, as to that, I expect he meant to,’ Flora said, and Mary, catching Charles’s eye, could not prevent herself from laughing.

Later that day, Mary found Lucy alone in the library, searching for a medical book to read.

‘Nothing but novels,’ she said with a sigh as she looked over her shoulder to see who had entered.

‘Oh, don’t!’ Mary begged. ‘You sound just like James’s wife. There is nothing wrong in reading novels.’

‘Of course not,’ Lucy replied, ‘if that is what you like. It’s just that I never have time for them. Does Mrs James say they
are bad, then?’


‘Oh no. If she would only say so, one could argue with her. But whenever she sees me reading, she is bound to ask me what
book I have, and when it turns out to be something jolly like The Recluse of the Lake or The Mysteries of Udolpho, she turns up her nose and says ‘Oh, a novel!’ as though I had done something vulgar; and then she takes up a piece of sewing
from the poor-basket, or a book of sermons. She only asks me to make a point of her own superiority. There’s no bearing it.’


‘Poor Mary. And poor Mrs James, too,’ Lucy added thoughtfully.

‘I notice you haven’t gone home with Chetwyn, for all your sympathy,’ Mary said caustically.

‘As to that, I think Chetwyn prefers it when I don’t go with him. And there’s nothing much for me to do there, with you out
visiting your friends, and Ned and Chetwyn and Mama out around the estate all day, and James – God knows where! Probably in
the Maccabbees Club; and that leaves me all alone with Mrs James, and I’ve nothing in common with her. All the same, I can’t
help feeling sorry for her. You know and I know, Polly, that James only married her out of duty, and he is not the sort of
person to make the best of things.’


‘You mean he only married her out of spite, because he couldn’t have Héloïse,’ Mary amended, ‘and he’s not the sort of person
to forgive her for not being the woman he loves.’


Flora and Charles had no children of their marriage, though Flora had two of her first marriage, her daughter Louisa, now
married and expecting her first child, and a younger son, Jack, who was serving in the navy aboard her brother William’s ship.
The heir to Charles’s title and estate was therefore his half-brother, Horatio, who was a Captain in the 10th Light Dragoons,
a very smart and fashionable regiment, permanently safe from actually having to go abroad and fight, because the King refused
to allow the Prince of Wales to risk himself in active service.


Horatio had married Lady Barbara Rushton, the daughter of the Duke of Watford, and now that she had presented him with a son,
Marcus, the line seemed to be secured. Horatio had removed from Chelmsford House after his marriage, and set up his household
in Park Lane. It had been something of a relief to Flora, who could never quite convince herself that Horatio was not simply
waiting and hoping for Charles to die; though she acknowledged to herself that the feeling was probably unreasonable, and
that her dislike of Horace’s pale, protruberant eyes and white eyelashes had prejudiced her.


He was certainly an ideal guest for her dinner party, for he was a personal friend of the Prince himself, and had been present
at the wedding ceremony, and so could furnish all the details that everyone would be eager to hear. He brought with him on her request two other Dragoons officers: a Mr Danby
Wiske, an extremely fashionable younger son of a Yorkshire family, and a Mr George Brummell, whose father had been a Treasury
official and much valued by the King.


The small dining parlour, with its sea-green draperies and peacock-blue upholstery, and the handsome mahogany table which
just held fourteen to a nicety, was as comfortable as it was elegant. Dinner advanced with the afternoon, and the candles
and the dessert were brought in together, the curtains drawn to cut out the grey twilight, and the atmosphere set for a little
cosy scandal.


‘Is it true that the Princess never washes? And that Lord Melbourne had to tell her to change her linen when they were on
the boat coming across?’ Lucy wanted to know.


‘Who could have told you that?’ Charles asked, amused.

‘Chetwyn, of course. And he said that the Princess’s father, the Duke of Brunswick, told Melbourne that she was mad and ought
to be locked up.’


‘I don’t suppose any of those things is true,’ Flora said hastily, seeing Lady Tonbridge looking disapproving.

‘At all events, it seems that the Prince does not mean to give up Lady Jersey,’ said Lucy.

‘He never did,’ Charles said. ‘Princess Caroline was told from the beginning that Lady Jersey was to be a Lady of the Bedchamber.
What is more surprising is that Lady Jersey should ever have ousted Mrs Fitzherbert. I for one always thought that she was
permanent.’


‘There’s plenty of precedent for it, after all,’ Mary said unconcernedly. ‘Kings have always made their mistresses serve in
their wives’ households, and the wives have simply had to put up with it. We learned that in history.’


‘I have always thought,’ Lady Tonbridge said, addressing the air with massive disapproval, ‘that education of that sort ought to be confined to boys. It was never considered in my dear father’s household that education contributed to that
delicacy of mind which one looks for in females. My sisters and I were taught to be accomplished, not learned, and we all
made extremely good matches. That was my dear father’s plan for his daughters.’


A brief silence followed this unanswerable remark, while Lord Tonbridge looked unhappy and embarrassed at his mother’s suggestion
that the Morland girls lacked delicacy. Lady Tonbridge had been infuriated at what she considered Mary’s presumption in making
her son fall in love with her, and had been triumphant when she married an obscure man of neither fortune nor family; and
not all the evidence to the contrary would convince her that it was Lord Tonbridge who had pursued Mary, or that she had chosen
Captain Haworth of her own free will.


Flora rescued the conversation. ‘You were in the escort which was sent to meet the Princess at Greenwich, were not you, Mr
Brummell?’ Mr Brummell bowed assent. ‘I believe the coach was much delayed – was that Lady Jersey’s doing?’


‘No, your ladyship,’ said Mr Brummell, ‘though I believe Lady Jersey would be glad to take the credit. When the coach did
arrive, she demanded to be allowed to sit beside the Princess, instead of taking the backward seat.’


‘Claimed it made her sick, riding backwards,’ put in Mr Wiske.

‘Dear me! What did the Princess say to that?’ asked Flora.

‘Oh, she was not obliged to notice it,’ Brummell said. ‘Malmesbury told Lady Jersey that if riding backwards really made her
sick, she should have refused the position of Lady of the Bedchamber, since taking the backward seat was one of its duties.
After that, her ladyship could not argue further. She vented her spleen by criticizing the Princess’s clothes and appearance
in a very audible voice.’


‘The poor Princess,’ said Louisa. ‘I feel so sorry for her. I should hate to travel hundreds of miles from a foreign land,
all to be insulted by Lady Jersey.’


‘Indeed, ma’am,’ Mr Brummell said with a droll look, ‘you need not put yourself at so much trouble. You might go tomorrow
only to Carlton House and be insulted by her there.’


‘It’s Mrs Fitzherbert I feel sorry for,’ Lucy said. ‘To be put aside like that, after ten years’ service, is very hard.’

‘Mrs Fitz will be all right,’ Horatio said. ‘She has moved into a very nice house in Tilney Street, just round the corner
from us, and there she sits, all right and tight, out of the way, but not too far to be called back.’


‘Thought she’d turn up at the wedding,’ Mr Wiske remarked. ‘Lady Jersey did.’

‘I believe the Prince was drunk?’ said Flora.

‘We all were – as wheelbarrows,’ said Mr Wiske. ‘Can’t think why royal weddings are always put on so late in the day. At Carlton
House we are always three parts foxed by that hour.’


‘Lord Melbourne said that the Prince looked like Macheath going to his execution,’ murmured Mr Brummell. ‘A man doing a thing
in desperation.’


‘He’d had several glasses of brandy, according to Bedford,’ Horatio admitted, ‘but, damnit, a man must get his courage up
for a thing like that. I could have done with a glass or two myself, just to get through that tedious long ceremony.’


‘And the Archbishop did nothing to shorten it,’ Mr Brummell said innocently, ‘lingering as he did over the passages which
refer to lawful impediments to marriage. I wonder what he could have been thinking of?’


‘Mr Brummell, I do believe you are very wicked,’ Flora said approvingly.

‘Dashed good fellow, George,’ Mr Wiske remarked to Lucy, who was his neighbour, in what he evidently thought was an undertone,
‘only, too particular about his waistcoats and neckties and such. As good a fellow as ever lived. True as turnips.’


And Lucy, liking him both for his loyalty to his friend, and for the unexpectedly rustic simile, bestowed on Mr Wiske a smile
that made him first blink, then blush.


In the drawing-room, Lady Tonbridge was soon wanting whist, and Horatio and Lady Barbara hastened to oblige her, for she was
a notoriously bad player who nevertheless liked to play high, and Horatio was not so plump in the pocket as to be able to
resist such easy prey.


John Anstey and Charles retired to a table where the newspapers were spread, and discussed politics. Flora and Hannibal Harvey
took possession of one sofa, and soon had their heads together in the old manner, while Mary good-naturedly took Louisa to
another and let her talk about babies and confinements. This left Lucy to entertain the three unmarried gentlemen, and the
division seemed natural enough, despite her being a married woman. She had been brought up with her brothers, and her weeks
in the wardroom of the Diamond had taught her how to converse with men on equal terms. Their group was the liveliest in the drawing room.


They had been talking of hunting, and Lucy had noticed that Mr Brummell’s face was fixed in an expression of ironic disapproval.

‘Do you not hunt, Mr Brummell?’ she asked.

‘I fear I am obliged to, your ladyship,’ he sighed. ‘When society is so misguided as to go out of Town in the middle of winter,
one is obliged to follow, whatever the inconvenience.’


‘Do you mean you don’t like the country? Why ever not?’ Lucy asked in astonishment.

He gave a delicate shudder. ‘It is cold, Lady Aylesbury, and wet, and muddy. I am a hothouse creature, I cannot bear discomfort;
and yet in a country house I am obliged to creep from one inadequate fire to another, across the seas of icy draught, and
to spend a great part of each day in severe discomfort slaughtering birds and beasts to whom, really, I wish no harm at all.
How could civilization have gone so far astray?’


‘What would you consider a civilized occupation?’ Lucy asked.

‘To spend my time in well-heated, well-lit rooms,’ he said promptly, ‘with elegant surroundings, beautiful women, and witty
conversation.’


Lucy glanced at Danby Wiske. ‘He is so different from you, sir. How came you to be acquainted?’

Mr Wiske entirely missed the implied insult, which made Mr Brummell smile, and replied, ‘We were at Eton together, ma’am.
George and his brother William and I all entered in ’86, and lodged together at Dame Yonge’s’


‘Such lodgings!’ Mr Brummell exclaimed. ‘Forty boys with beds for twenty, food for fifteen, and coals for ten. Eton was such
a perfectly barbarous place that I do not think I shall ever be able to forget it’


‘Really, sir?’ Lucy laughed.

‘Really,’ Mr Brummell affirmed. ‘Not only were we starved, but we were beaten – flogged, my dear Lady Aylesbury, like dogs,
upon the most frivolous of pretexts, positively in batches! I remember on one occasion, the headmaster gave ten strokes a-piece to seventy boys, after which he was confined to bed for
upwards of a week, with such pains in his arm and shoulder he could scarcely sit upright.’


‘I wonder you survived it,’ Lucy said, her eyes alight.

‘It don’t do to take him too seriously, ma’am,’ said Mr Wiske. ‘Beatings were as common as blackberries at Eton, but I don’t
r