Showalter had at long last won himself a seat in the House of Commons, a couple of years back, and was quick to inform Lewrie with some glee that he’d just been re-elected by an even greater majority on the hustings. Lewrie recalled that Showalter had spoken of being married with children long before, but still lodged at the Madeira Club when Parliament was in session, leaving wife and children back in his home borough.
“It took a bit of doing, but I finally got strong enough to do without, thankee,” Lewrie informed him, looking about for a seat close to the fire. One of the club’s waiters in breeches, a livery-striped waistcoat, and white apron, came over at once, dragging another leather wing-back chair for him, and taking his order for a wee pot of very hot tea, with a dollop of rum.
“Healed up and fit enough to seek a new ship, are you, sir?” Mr. Giles good-naturedly asked. “Well, that’s grand. Can’t allow a fellow such as yourself to be idle and out of the game for too long.”
“My thoughts exactly, Mister Giles,” Lewrie agreed as his tea was quickly fetched to him. “What’s been acting in London in my absence? Anything good at the theatres?”
“Well, I’m not all that much a patron of the stage,” Showalter told him, “not like our former member, Major Baird, haw!” he added, pulling a face. Before he had finally found a suitable wife, Major Baird had haunted Covent Garden and Drury Lane, in search of covert, upright, and oral sex from the orange-selling theatre girls. “I favor the symphony, myself, and I heard a good’un two nights ago. That Austrian fellow, Beethoven? He named it the Eroica. It plays through the month…”
“Dedicated to the Corsican Ogre, Napoleon Bonaparte,” Giles grumbled, working his mouth in distaste, “damn his eyes.”
“Re-dedicated to Admiral Nelson, as the programme declared when I attended,” Showalter corrected. “And rightly so.”
“Amen,” Lewrie agreed, thinking that he would take it in.
“And, Baird’s still a member, though he don’t come by half as much as before,” Giles supplied. “A man needs good company and a fine meal every now and then, finer than what his own household can offer, I’d expect. Get away from wife and kiddies?”
“Pilkington is still with us,” Showalter told Lewrie. “Still as much a Cassandra as ever. Gloom, doom, and the ruin of trade.”
“Perhaps not a true Cassandra, sir,” Giles quibbled. “Mind, she was always right in her dire predictions, quite unlike Pilkington.”
“The Berlin Decrees have Pilkington nigh-wailing and wringing his hands,” Showalter said with a laugh.
Mustive missed somethin’ in the papers, Lewrie thought; What the Devil are the Berlin Decrees? Should I admit my ignorance?
“I recall readin’ something of ’em in the papers,” Lewrie carefully said with a dismissive shrug. “After Christmas, I think?”
“Yes, after Napoleon finished off the Prussians,” Mr. Giles said, nodding in agreement. “The Ogre said he’d make economic war as well as the regular sort against us. Now he’s taken most of Europe and set up his so-called Confederation of the Rhine, he decreed that every port under his control will deny any British goods, and forbid anyone in Europe to have truck with us, cutting us off from any and all of their goods.”
“Yes, and any neutral ship that’s put into any of our ports to be inspected for contraband, he’ll seize,” Showalter huffily stuck in. “The nerve of the man! If the Americans, for example, obey our Orders In Council and call in Great Britain first, they’ll be banned to land their goods in Europe. If they sail direct for the Continent, despite us, our Navy can seize them, so God only knows what the neutrals will do. Caught ’twixt the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, what? I did hear that the Americans might just embargo all European trade altogether!”
“Tosh!” Lewrie exclaimed. “Sharp-practised Yankee merchants to just give up trade? That’s inconceivable.”
So that’s what it’s all about, he assured himself.
“It’ll never work, you know,” Mr. Giles pooh-poohed. “There’s Portugal, there’s still the great trade with Russia, with us getting all her hides and timber, Sweden and her iron ore, there’s our goods going to the United States, and so many ports still open to us in the Mediterranean … and, our avid and able smugglers.”
“And the Danes,” Showalter reminded them.
“Why, the leather trade’s never been better!” Mr. Giles boasted. “Austria, the Russians, as they rebuild their armies, their orders for boots, shoes, and soldiers’ accoutrements have never been higher. Do mark my words, sirs … Napoleon’s much-vaunted Continental System is more-like to result in the utter economic strangulation of France!”
“And, pray God, sir, all Napoleon’s allies,” Showalter gravely said with a firm affirmative nod of his head.
“Wool’s high, too,” Mr. Giles ruminated, looking sage and content. “Mister Meacham … you haven’t met him yet, Lewrie, he’s new to us, from the Midlands … was in town a month ago to contract with agents for foreign buyers of his goods, and was positively exultant with the results! So much so that he contemplated opening an entire newer and larger mill, due to the great demand.”
“Almost every member I’ve spoken to here with any ties to the manufacturing or export trade still seems to be doing extremely well,” Showalter contributed with a grin. “That’s not to say that it’ll last, but for now, Bonaparte’s edict is toothless. And, as Mister Giles believes, it’ll hurt the French much more than us. We’ve the whole world for our market, our colonial possessions aside, with the largest fleet of merchantmen, and the Royal Navy to protect them. And what do the French have? Blockade, laid-up ships, grass growing on the piers, and grinding poverty.”
The Madeira Club had been founded by Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby, Sir Malcom Shockley, and four or five other gentlemen, most of them in trade. Sir Malcom and Lewrie’s father could have joined one of the more esteemed gentlemen’s clubs like Boodle’s, Almack’s—well, in Sir Hugo’s case, that might’ve been a stretch since he had been tainted with the tarbrush of a rogue ever since the Hell-Fire Club had been exposed—but it had been Sir Malcom’s, and the bulk of the original founders’, idea that there must be a place where sober and industrious men who’d made themselves, and made large piles of money in trade and manufacturing, could commingle, lodge comfortably when in London, dine extremely, well, and enjoy a fine wine cellar. Such men might be bags wealthier than the members of the prestigious gentlemen’s clubs, but they were in Trade, did not own great country estates, had not attended Oxford or Cambridge, and did not live on their rents and the produce of their lands. It was good odds they would be rejected if they tried to apply.
Lewrie couldn’t have cared less whether they were secret Druids. The Madeira Club offered clean, comfortable rooms, good meals, and a very extensive selection of wines—they even managed to stock some of his favourite aged American corn whisky!—and he would be the last person to denigrate someone else because he was not titled or one of the great, landed Squirearchy. His own knighthood and baronetcy was a bitter joke to him, already, awarded more, he suspected, for political ends to drum up patriotism during the run-up to the re-start of the war with France in 1803. Besides, it had cost the life of his wife, Caroline, shot down on a beach near Calais, a shot meant for him, as they had fled Paris during the Peace of Amiens.
Commercial sorts the bulk of the members might be, but most of them were decent company, during the rare times when Lewrie was not at sea and back in London. The only thing that irked him was the demand for proper decorum and quiet in the wee hours. He could never bring a woman up to his rooms on the sly, and riotous hoo-rawing, loud music and song, and flung rolls at meals were right out, too! The club members liked to go to bed early, sleep soundly, and rise too damned early for Lewrie’s likes, but …