An Experiment in Treason (21 page)

He was quite overwhelmed by her success — that much was evident. As the noblemen and a few of their ladies left the room, he followed them with his eyes, the look in his eyes expressing something of awe, something of longing and envy. I understood for the first time how removed Tom must feel from the great world of London. All he knew how to do was order men about on shipboard. I believe that following that realization I never again envied the fellow. It was only when the last of Annie’s legion of well-wishers had left her that he came forward hesitantly, hoping shyly to be recognized by her.

“Hello, Annie,” said he, “do you remember me?”

“I know I should,” said she, taking a step back that she might better study him. “Oh, I know! Your mother is Lady Fielding, is she not? And I believe — correct me if I’m wrong in this — that you re in the Navy, are you not? Or was it the Army? I confess I have a good deal of difficulty keeping the two apart.”

She was acting, of course, improvising her lines. Of that I was certain, for I had seen the momentary shock in her face when she saw and recognized Tom from the stage. For years he had studiously ignored her, sending no greeting to her in his letters to the rest of us, enclosing no notes to her. This was the punishment she had meted out to him. Had she planned it so? I doubted it, though perhaps in a daydream or two she had enjoyed just such a revenge.

As for Tom, no such possibility as this had ever occurred to him, I am sure. It was simply beyond the laws of chance that one that he had known as a cook would become not just an actress but overnight the toast of London. Yet here she was, his first conquest, apparently unable to recall him clearly, even less did she seem to remember the circumstances and details that he must have known so well. As he had snubbed her for years, she now snubbed him most cruelly and with great effect. He seemed to shrink before our very eyes.

Annie had placed her knife well. She was now to give it a final twist.

A knock came upon the door. In response, Annie called out an invitation to enter. Into the room came a young man of about twenty-five, handsome of countenance and graceful of manner. He was extremely well dressed, yet in a manner more conservative than those who had left but minutes before. He removed his hat, smiled a greeting to Annie, and offered all a little bow.

“Ah, Harry,” said she, “let me introduce you to all here.” She proceeded to do just that, presenting him to us as Harold, Earl of Bardwell.

With that done, he informed her that he had had the coach brought round to the stagedoor.

“Ah then, I take it we must hurry.”

“I fear so. The party is, after all, given in your honor.”

“Then it would be a sin to keep them waiting, would it not?”

He nodded shyly.

“Alas,” said Annie, “I must ask all to leave whilst I change out of my costume.” She gestured to a stern-faced woman who, through it all, had remained at her post beside the dressing screen in the corner.

“This is Mrs. Biggs. She is my dresser, and I fear that in another minute she will take up her whip and drive you all out of the room.” Mrs. Biggs showed no sign of amusement at Annie’s little joke, and she said not a word, so that I half-believed she might do as Annie had said.

There followed a swift round of good-byes, and, in no more than a moment or two, we were all out in the corridor, taking our leave of the Earl of Bardwell.

“Anne speaks so well of you all,” said Lord Bardwell. “And let me say. Sir John, what a pleasure it is to meet you at last after having heard so much about you.”

“Not all of it bad, I hope.”

“Oh, not at all. On the contrary,” said the other most earnestly. “As I grew up, you were held up to me often as an example of just how a public man ought to conduct himself.”

“Well then, I shall return your compliment, for I have heard you discussed, and in the most favorable terms. I believe my informant, who might indeed be known to you, referred to you as ‘the most intelligent young man in the House of Lords.’” Sir John smiled and raised his hand in salute.

“But it is past time that we should be going,” he added. “It was most pleasant to make your acquaintance. Lord Bardwell, specially under such happy circumstances.”

Sir John offered his hand, and the younger man shook it eagerly. With a farewell chorus, we departed down the long hall.

Just outside the theatre we encountered Constable Bailey, whom Sir John had requested to accompany us back to Number 4 Bow Street.

“Been to the theatre, have you, Sir John?”

“We have indeed, Mr. Bailey.”

“And was it a good play?”

“One of the best, truly one of the best.”

“I must try it sometime — going to the theatre, I mean.”

“You’ve never been?”

“No, never. It always seemed to me from what I heard that the stories told in those plays was too far-fetched to really enjoy — just fairy tales, really.”

“Ah, not so,” said the magistrate. “There is little cannot be put forth in whole or in part as possible — from Cinderella to Sinbad the Sailor.”

“Well,” said Mr. Bailey, “I ain’t too familiar with that Sinbad fella, but I know my Cinderella, and it never did seem real to me. Lives don’t change in a night. Not to mention mice into horses.”

Sir John considered this as we walked on. Then, at last, he cleared his throat, and I, expecting a lengthy and well-reasoned pronouncement, was somewhat disappointed when all he said was, “Some lives do.”

The experience of this night worked a great change in Tom Durham. He had little to say of it the next day, and it was only from Lady Fielding that we learned that he had agreed to accompany her on another of her trips north to see her mother. She had, it seemed, been urging him since his arrival to take such a trip with her, yet he had held out until that very day. As she told it, Tom had always been a special favorite of his grandmother, and he had come to the realization that he owed her a visit, since it seemed unlikely she would live long enough to see him at some later date.

All of which may have been so, yet there seemed to be other, more immediate factors which may have brought him round. It appeared to me that he had been driven so low by his meeting with Annie that he needed a few days to recover his self-confidence. Such a trip provided him with just the sort of respite he needed.

Well do I recall the morning of their departure. Not only was I called upon to see them off at the Post Coach House; but, more important, upon my return, the mystery of the missing letters began at last to unravel. Thus it is sometimes so that we recall events of great consequence by their nearness in time to others of comparative insignificance..

It was Sir John’s custom to have the day’s newspaper read to him first thing in the morning. I was frequently the reader, though more often it fell to Mr. Marsden to perform the task. Since Mr. Marsden himself was absent, his “influenza” (as he now called it) still troubling him, I brought with me the day’s copy of the London Chronicle from my trip to the Post Coach House, and sought out the magistrate. I found him in his chambers, and, at his invitation, I sat down before him, opened up the newspaper, and began searching it for items, announcements, and stories in which he might be interested. A word should be said about that, perhaps: Sir John had little interest in those that had naught to do with the law and its enforcement, the judicial process, or its legislation in Parliament. Comment upon these subjects absorbed him only insofar as the commentator did. If his views agreed with Sir John’s preconceptions, then the magistrate would give him his attention; if not, I would be instructed to move on quickly to something else. I know not how it was with Mr. Marsden, but when I read the day’s newspapers to him. Sir John was ever accusing me of fastening upon those items which interested me alone and not him, and ‘wasting’ his time with them.

There was just such a story in the Chronicle that morning, and I half-expected him to stop me as I began to read it aloud. Since I no longer have a copy of the text that I might insert it here, I shall be forced merely to describe the contents of the piece.

It was a report from the Chronicle’s Boston correspondent upon a remarkable meeting of the Massachusetts assembly, at which excerpts from a packet of letters were read out to the members of the body. The letters, which numbered about fifteen, were an exchange between Thomas Hutchinson, now governor of the colony (appointed by the king himself) Andrew Oliver, the lieutenant governor (and Hutchinson’s brother-in-law), and the late Thomas Whately, a member of Parliament and an author of the Stamp Act so hated by the colonists. Though the letters were written between 1767 and 1769, they were as relevant and alarming to the colonists as they would have been had they been written but a day before.

What frightened the citizens of Massachusetts was the cavalier manner in which all three of the correspondents were so willing to dispose of the rights the colonists enjoyed as free-bom Englishmen — should they continue to behave in a manner as fractious as in the past. In the most frequently quoted letter, that which was written and sent by Governor Hutchinson to Thomas Whately, it was said by him: “I never think of the measure necessary for the peace and good order of the colonies without pain. There mujt be an abridgement of what are called Engluh liberties.” No matter how much pain this would have caused the governor, it would have caused the colonists a good deal more.

I read to the end of the item, expecting to be cut off by Sir John. Yet not to the very end, for when I was near it, I looked up to catch his reaction to what I had read thus far. I saw him leaning forward and eagerly taking in each word I said. Was he truly so excited? Yes, I believe he was, for in a few moments more I finished my reading, and he did indeed jump up from his chair in his excitement.

“That’s it!” He fairly shouted it out. “That’s it!”

“What do you mean, sir? “

“Do you truly not see? Those are the very letters that were stolen from Lord Hillsborough.”

“But … but are you certain? How can you be sure?”

“Of course I can’t be certain — not as you mean it, yet I would wager any amount of money that I am right in this.”

“How can we confirm it? “

“Why, I don’t know,” said he. “I can’t imagine how one would go about it.”

“Can no one be charged?”

“You mean Franklin? No, not on such grounds as these.”

“What about Arthur Lee?”

“Because he was rowed out to a ship sailing for Boston to deliver a package? No, I fear not.”

“So we are no farther along than we were weeks before.”

“No, we’re a bit farther along. Now, at least, we understand what it was had been stolen.”

“Well,” I said after thinking upon it for a time, “can we not bring in Dr. Franklin that you might interrogate him for a bit?”

“No, still it would be un-wise to tip our hand. It is best to wait.”

Events moved swiftly. Followng a good deal of impassioned rhetoric in the newspapers (“we shall not countenance,” etc.), a shocking bit of news came to light. William Whately, brother to the late Thomas who was one of Hutchinson’s correspondents, took it upon himself to defend his brother’s reputation, for there were some who believed Thomas Whately to be the source of the letters. In doing so, William accused John Temple, a minor government official, of stealing the letters. True, Temple had been granted access to Thomas Whately’s papers and had examined them, yet he insisted that no such letters were among those he had gone through. Nevertheless, William Whately continued to point his finger at Temple and accuse him publicly of theft. John Temple saw no solution but to challenge him to a duel.

It was fought in early December in Hyde Park, and was fought in deadly earnest by both men. They hacked away with swords, one at the other, till Whately fell, too badly wounded to continue He was carried from the field, vowing to continue the fight as soon as he was physically able.

All this was reported in most, if not all, of London’s newspapers and became widely known. What became even better known was a short notice that appeared in one newspaper alone — and that was the London Chronicle. Well do I recall returning from Covent Garden with the copy of the Chronicle I had purchased from the news vendor there. Once settled in Sir John’s chambers, I commenced reading the notice to him before ever I had noted its author. This, then, is what I read, under the heading “Public Statement on the Hutchinson Letters.”

“Finding that two Gentlemen have been unfortunately engaged in a Duel, about a transaction and its circumstances of which both of them are totally ignorant and innocent, I think it incumbent on me to declare (for the prevention of farther mischief, as far as such a declaration may contribute to prevent it) that I alone am the person who obtained and transmitted to Boston the letters in question. — Mr. W[hately] could not communicate them, because they were never in his possession; and for the same reason, they could not be taken from him by Mr. T[emple]. — They were not of the nature of
“private letters between friends.”
They were written by public officers to persons in public station, on public affairs, and intended to procure public measures. Their tendency was to incense the Mother Country against her Colonies, and, by the steps recommended, to widen the breach which they affected. The chief caution with regard to Privacy, was, to keep their contents from the
Colony Agents,
who the writers apprehended might return them, or copies of them, to America. That apprehension was, it seems, well founded; for the first Agent who laid his hands on them, thought it his duty to transmit them to his constituents.

[signed] B. Franklin, Agent for the House of Representatives of the Massachusetts Bay.