“Even his efforts to unseat Lord Castlereagh, behind that gentleman’s back?”
Mr. Chizzlewit laughed. “Oh, well— If you would speak of politics!”
“Do not the laws of honour apply, in the House of Commons and Lords? I was assured that was why Lord Castlereagh felt no compunction in challenging his enemy to a duel — and humiliating him before the world. He did but defend his honour. It has been suggested to me that Mr. Canning, in fact, was so reduced in his public stature that he has an interest in revenge — and that in Princess Tscholikova he found his tool.”
The solicitor was standing near Eliza’s fireplace; he thrust his hands in his pockets, and turned his head to stare broodingly into the flames. I said nothing further, allowing him time for thought.
“You would have it that Canning deliberately created an aura of scandal around Castlereagh, through the publication of the Princess’s letters, and her subsequent appearance of suicide,” he said at length. “For that to be true, the Princess must have been in his power — or intimate to a degree we cannot have understood. How else can he have obtained what was private correspondence?”
“She refers to Canning at least once in her journal, which I have had occasion to read. She also mentions Julia Radcliffe — and is determined, but two days before her death, to warn the girl. I use the word because the Princess chose it.”
“Warn Miss Radcliffe? Against whom? I find the notion fantastic!” Mr. Chizzlewit cried. “Could Canning have both Tscholikova and Miss Radcliffe in keeping? And if the Princess was as deep in love with Castlereagh as her letters suggest — how should she have come to entertain Canning’s schemes? She must have known him for his lordship’s enemy.”
“You go too swiftly, Mr. Chizzlewit, in assuming that Mr. Canning is the sort to show his hand! What if he were to employ an intermediary — a gentleman long known to Princess Tscholikova, one she has reason to trust? A man known equally well to Julia Radcliffe … and a man Canning has often employed before?”
He looked up from his contemplation of the flames. “D’Entraigues?”
“I knew we should return to Emmanuel presently,” Eliza said comfortably. “For how else could we come to the jewels? Julia Radcliffe got them somehow!”
“But why should d’Entraigues steal them?” Mr. Chizzlewit argued. “It should be the height of folly to do so!”
“He needed something to lay as tribute on the Radcliffe altar,” Eliza suggested reasonably. “You told us yourself — the world entire is showering that girl with baubles and frivolities! And poor Emmanuel has not two guineas to rub together! But how diverting that his tribute should come directly back to his wife!”
The solicitor shook his head. “D’Entraigues is too old a man of the game to preserve so dangerous a piece of evidence as that treasure. If he stood behind the Princess’s death, he must certainly deny all knowledge of her. The jewels alone might hang him.”
“Then how came they to Julia Radcliffe?” Eliza demanded.
“Is it not obvious?” I looked from my sister to Mr. Chizzlewit. “Princess Tscholikova gave them to her.”
Chapter 23
Willoughby’s Shade
Monday, 29 April 1811
ELIZA’S FRIEND, MRS. LATOUCHE, IS A FAIR-HAIRED and plump little woman with protuberant blue eyes, who dearly loves to talk a good deal of nonsense about her health, her clothes, and her acquaintance among the ton. Born Mary Wilkes in Kingstown, Jamaica, she embarked at seventeen upon a storied career: marrying first Mr. Edward East, a widower with several children, to whom she dutifully presented two more, before his taking off with a fever peculiar to those island parts. In the handsome swell of her twenties, she bestowed her hand, her surviving child Miss Martha East, and her late husband’s considerable revenues from the production of sugar, upon Mr. John-James Digges-Latouche, also of Jamaica. Mr. Latouche eventually rose to such distinction as a Governor-Generalship of that island; when he died, his widow determined to sell her holdings and her slaves, and decamp for England — the better to puff off her daughter in a respectable marriage. But Miss East did not “take,” and the hopes that buoyed her first Season in the year 1798, have long since gone off. Like me, she is now firmly upon the shelf, and appears to find that it quite suits her — a spinster lady of some five-and-thirty years, established in all the style and comfort of Portman Square. As she may expect to inherit her mother’s fortune when that lady’s aches and nerves put a period to her existence, Martha East is hardly to be pitied.
She is decidedly unlike the round little Dresden doll that is Mrs. Latouche, being tall and angular, with what one must presume are her father’s sharp features. Moreover, Miss East is of a bookish disposition, quite formidable in her understanding — and has taken to wearing spectacles and a cap. In honour of Sunday dinner among friends, it was a lace cap; and Miss East looked very grand last night in her amber-coloured silk. She might almost have been headmistress of a school for girls, and her mother her incorrigible pupil.
I am chiefly useful to Eliza on such evenings in monopolising Miss East’s attention, so that my sister might have a comfortable coze with Mrs. Latouche — and canvass all the latest spring fashions. Miss East, I observed, was armed and ready with conversation from the moment of our arrival in Portman Square, for she held in her hands a volume of Mary Brunton’s Self-Controul.[23]
“What do you think of this novel, Miss Austen?” she cried as I advanced with words of greeting unspoken on my lips. “It is everywhere praised as a piece of perfection; and tho’ I would hope I am more exacting in my tastes than the common run of humanity, I will own there is much to admire in the heroine — for rather than self-control, the author would champion self-reliance; and thus in Laura every woman must find a salutary model, do not you agree?”
“I regret to say that I have not yet had the pleasure of reading Mrs. Brunton,” I said, “being unable to locate the set of volumes in my last expedition to Lackington’s. But how happy for the author that you find much to admire!”
“The author?” Miss East repeated, as one amazed; “I confess I never think of the author when reading a book — my mind is wholly given over to the conduct of the characters, to the representation of life as one finds it for better or worse portrayed; I am wholly given up to the situations presented. The author never enters my consciousness — except, of course, when I am reading Scott.”
“Indeed! I do not think Sir Walter Scott may be barred from anywoman’s consciousness,” I returned.
“Only consider what perils to mind and virtue Laura must withstand!” Miss East shook her volume with enthusiasm. “First made the object of a rake’s unwelcome attentions — escaping seduction by a hairs-breadth — refusing marriage from that same disreputable (tho’ very dashing) gentleman when he sees the error of his ways — she attempts, as so many of us must, to live upon her own resources — and yet finds not a single lover of art willing to sell her paintings in the entire Metropolis! I am only just come to the part where she must escape the savage horrors of America in a canoe; but the whole is of the deepest moral instruction, I assure you. I should not hesitate to press it upon any young girl of my acquaintance, as a warning against the bitterness of the world.”
I eyed the book somewhat dubiously, and wondered what best to say; but was happily forestalled by a bustle of arrival in the front passage.
“That will be the Count. How tedious the interruption! But we shall talk more of literature later, I hope.”
23
Mary Brunton (1778–1818) published