The Voyage of Promise (4 page)

E
ven before the final agreement was reached, Henrietta Stevens had strutted about crowing like a rooster over the high society marriage she had single-handedly arranged for her daughter.

“A
Lord
!” she exclaimed to everyone who would listen— and to many who would not. “My daughter will be
Lady Charlotte Witherham!
”

She kept up the boisterous talk until her own family threatened to tie a cloth over her mouth.

“Jealous is what they are,” Henrietta gushed to Charlotte. “Imagine, my daughter, what life will be like with a true aristocrat for a husband! You, my darling, will divide your time between his lavish estate in Northamptonshire and a sumptuous house in London! Oh, Charlotte, I am absolutely
ecstatic
with anticipation over the life we shall lead!”

Henrietta caught herself, but not soon enough. The “we” was already out of her mouth. And she could see from Charlotte’s face that her daughter had not missed the slip.

But in fact, the “we” never came about. After all her plotting and planning, after all her lavish promises and reluctant
compromises, Henrietta Stevens had the frightful misfortune to fall victim to consumption. She tried every remedy suggested to her. Eliza Hauley swore by snails boiled in milk—a quarter of a pint of milk to an ounce of snails. So desperate was Henrietta that she doubled this vile treatment. The Methodist leader John Wesley recommended cold baths for the ailment, so she shivered through that therapy as well. But all to no avail.

When her only child officially became the wife of Lord Reginald Jacob Langdon Witherham IV, Henrietta Stevens lay locked away in an isolated sickroom. After the wedding, Lord Reginald sent her away to the country where, he assured Lady Charlotte, her mother would receive the best of care. No expense would be spared. He added an injunction that his wife was to have as little contact with her mother as possible. “For your own good, my dear,” he said. When Charlotte opened her mouth to respond, he said firmly, “I have spoken.”

Lord Reginald took it upon himself to speak equally firmly to Charlotte on a number of issues concerning his expectations of her. “You have the potential to become a lady of great charm and beauty,” he began most gallantly. “Your silken skin is as fresh as an April morning. Never mind your hair. With the assistance of a good hairdresser and a darkening agent, you can very nearly become a first-class beauty. You need none of that awful ceruse on your face, my dear, for you come by the comely look of fragile porcelain quite naturally.”

Here his affability failed him and his smile faded. “Your carriage is another matter entirely. It does pain me to be forced into so unpleasant a discussion, but here it is: I am most distressed to see you walking about like a chambermaid. I do not want to be indelicate, Charlotte, but must you move from place to place with great heavy horse steps? Look about you and you will see that to glide to and fro without the jolt of
noticeably lifting one’s feet is a far more appropriate approach to movement in your new station of life.”

Charlotte looked down at her tiny feet covered in finely woven white silk stockings and petunia-pink brocade silk slippers, but all she saw was clumsy horse hooves. She blotted her eyes and vowed to do better.

Benjamin Stevens, Charlotte’s father, had not been invited to any of the wedding parties, nor even to the wedding ceremony. Reginald declared that it would be “most awkward for all involved”—which, simply put, meant Benjamin Stevens failed to measure up to his standards. He embarrassed Reginald, so Reginald forbade his inclusion.

“Your father has been in Africa for so many years, my dear Charlotte, that I fear he has all but become one of… one of
them
. I am, as you well know, a charitable man, so I am willing to overlook your questionable upbringing. But as you are to be a member of the greatly respected Witherham household, you absolutely must conduct yourself in a manner worthy of that name and standing.”

“Why, it does sound as though you are about to offer me a position as a parlor maid!” Charlotte allowed herself to exclaim.

“Nonsense!” Lord Reginald sniffed with an irritated wave of his hand. “I am simply making it clear that whilst I am willing to make allowances for your background, I cannot allow a slave trader to mix freely with my social acquaintances and business associates. And as we are on the subject, I must insist that you never speak to anyone of your connections to Africa.”

“Really, Reginald, I—”

“I have already thoroughly discussed this matter with your mother. She understands my position completely. I assure you, my dear, you will be much happier if you put all that
past out of your head and simply enjoy your new position as a Witherham.”

Position!
Charlotte actually shuddered on her wedding day.

The Witherham Larkspur Estate in London truly was breathtaking—fireplaces of jade marble; walls covered with silk damask; a grand room, trimmed in gold and hung with a fortune in artwork, large enough for a party of three hundred people to move about and enjoy one another without feeling squeezed or crowded together.

Certainly, parties had always been a part of Charlotte’s social life. No one enjoyed seeing and being seen more than her mother, and wherever Henrietta Stevens went, Henrietta made certain her daughter went along. But never had Charlotte experienced parties on so grand a scale. At a Witherham party, it was not just the perfunctory dancing and feasting, but gambling tables in the parlor and even exotic fireworks displays in the gardens. “We must never have it said that anyone gives a better party than we,” Reginald cautioned his new wife. Charlotte was certain the danger of anyone murmuring such an insult did not exist.

Only in her private chambers did Charlotte dare cling to a touch of her past. There, in a flash of defiance, she ordered that the walls be hung with the silk hand-painted foreign scenes that were all the rage in London. But instead of choosing Indian or Chinese motifs, she selected views of the African countryside—jungles with great cats lurking in the trees, rivers with half-submerged hippos, and here and there, black Africans picking brightly colored flowers. Actually, Charlotte had no idea what Africans did outside her father’s slave-trading compound. She knew what went on inside the compound, but she refused to include scenes of miserable
black people chained to walls, or lines of captives herded into slave ships. These would not fit in her bucolic landscapes.

All through her growing-up years, every other year Charlotte and her mother had made the long, arduous trip across the ocean to visit her father in Africa. Reginald could forbid her to speak of it, but he could not erase her past from her mind. She would never, ever forget Africa.

More and more, Charlotte chose to close herself away in her private chambers and contemplate the life that stretched out before her. Indeed, that was where she was and what she was doing while her husband paced back and forth in front of the marble fireplace in the parlor and energetically aired his grievances before Simon Johnson and Sir Geoffrey Phillips.

“ ‘Liberty, equality, fraternity’ indeed!” Lord Reginald declared in disgust. “The French are fools! Evidently it is not humiliation enough that they lost their most important sugar colony in the West Indies to a slave revolt. It seems their monarchy is determined to lose control of the entire country as well. Even now, mobs of peasants sweep unrestrained through the streets of Paris.”

Slender build, femininely delicate features, pale complexion, curling hair. Who would imagine that a man so seemingly fragile as Lord Reginald Witherham could contain so much fiery passion?

“Although it is indeed a blessed wind that blows our way, I should say,” Simon Johnson pointed out. “For we no longer need seek protection from cheap French sugar.” He crossed his stubby, silk-stockinged legs, one over the other, and, with a firm grasp on his clay pipe, folded his hands over his paunch of a belly that obviously had no more need of sugar, cheap or otherwise.

“That is not at all the point, Mister Johnson,” Lord Reginald replied in a voice strained with exasperation.

“I should say not,” agreed Sir Geoffrey in his ever-affable manner. “The argument is actually against the right of the monarchy to rule the people, is it not?”

“First the American colonies, and now the French,” said Lord Reginald. “And it is we, society’s finest and best, who in the end must pay the price for such ill-conceived rebellions.”

“And pay we certainly do,” conceded Sir Geoffrey. “A triumph over privilege—that is their boast.”

“Over
privilege
!” sneered Mister Johnson. “Such sentiments constitute a direct attack on
us
, the aristocracy. And more than that, an attack on our place in society. Indeed, on our entire way of life!”

“Absolutely! Most certainly!” Lord Reginald agreed. Each time he turned on his heel and retraced his steps, his agitation grew. “Making a declaration of equality is but one step away from wrenching our birthrights directly out of our hands—along with our profits, by the way—which is precisely why the masses must be kept in their rightful place. They are what they are, just as surely as we are what we are. The aristocracy has a most time-honored purpose for maintaining its exalted position in society—”

“For maintaining its
God-given
position in society!” Simon Johnson interjected, punctuating each word with a thrust of his long-stemmed pipe.

“Indeed!” said Lord Reginald. “For maintaining the position afforded us by the Almighty God himself for the purpose of maintaining a civilized and honorable society in this fair country, and establishing a wise and profitable order abroad.”

“Hear, hear!” called Sir Geoffrey Philips. “Well said, sir! Well said indeed.”

Not everyone in London saluted society’s status quo, however. Englishmen such as Thomas Paine and Jonas Blake, who insisted the situation in France was the first step back to a state of human perfection, did not. Nor did Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson, who formed an Abolition Committee and swore their allegiance to fight for an end to the slave trade. Certainly not those who belonged to the Society of Friends—the Quakers—who had long faced persecution for their belief that everyone, including Africans, was equal in the sight of God.

Even as Lord Witherham ranted in his parlor about God-given rights, a clutch of Quakers stood together on the London docks—two women and four men, crushed together in the bustle of the world’s busiest port. For eleven miles, a continuous succession of hectic wharves stretched out along the mighty Thames River. The dockside—noisy, filthy, and rife with thieves—was a most unpleasant place to make a stand for the abolition of slavery. Yet the Quakers chose it precisely because it was so appropriate, considering the preeminence of British ships in the slave trade. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder, they held their pamphlets close to their noses so they could read from them in the heavy fog, then in an impassioned chant they raised their voices together:

Forced from home and all its pleasures

Afric’s coast I left forlorn,

To increase a stranger’s treasures

O’er the raging billows borne.

Men from England bought and sold me,

Paid my price in paltry gold;

But, though slave they have enrolled me,

Minds are never to be sold…

Peddlers halted their pushcarts, sailors ceased repeating their sea tales, officers paused in their patrols to gawk at the well-dressed gentlefolk who dared brave the docks for no reason other than to plead the case of faraway Africans.

“What can the plight of them slaves possibly matter to ye?” called a woman selling mackerel from a cart.

“If ye wants a black slave, git yerse’f one!” shouted another. “If ye don’t want one, leave ’im be.”

Several grunted their agreement.

The Quakers, undaunted, continued with the verses of William Cowper’s poem, only now they heightened it with emphasized pathos. More people drifted over to see what was going on as the group chanted:

… Is there, as ye sometimes tell us,

Is there One who reigns on high?

Has He bid you buy and sell us,

Speaking from his throne, the sky?

Ask him, if your knotted scourges,

Matches, blood-extorting screws,

Are the means that duty urges

Agents of his will to use?

“Now, that be too much!” a man yelled out. “How dare ye have the gall to speak fer the Almighty hisself? Why, I shan’t wonder if He should strike ever’ last one of us dead on the spot!”

“The Almighty ain’t about to trouble hisself with no African slaves, that’s fer beastly sure!” another chimed in.

Not that everyone objected to the Quakers. Quite the opposite was true. A sizable crowd had assembled and most people actually paid thoughtful attention to the words of the poet. The chant continued:

… By our blood in Afric’ wasted

Ere our necks received the chain;