The Damnation of John Donellan (9 page)

As early as 1774, however, the
Lady's Magazine
railed against sending a girl away to be ‘educated' in this way: ‘Nothing can justify such monstrous indifference! What is called a genteel education by
some, which is very different from a good one, can only prepare a young person for an early defeat.' In the same vein, it struck out against vacuous preening, as opposed to skills: ‘She never hears a syllable about her understanding, judgement, or mental endowments.' Proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft went further: ‘[Girls] are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler
ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact respect
.'

It was an age of the kind of display of which Wollstonecraft despaired. Lord Chesterfield, writing to his illegitimate son Philip Stanhope, in
Letters to His Son: On the Fine Art of becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman
(1749), while insisting that Philip should be of a responsible, serious frame of mind, nevertheless encouraged him to develop a certain artful playfulness, the code by which high society operated. He repeatedly recommended ‘graces' that a gentleman should refine. Quoting the philosopher John Locke, he advised, ‘You will find the stress that he lays upon The Graces, which he calls good breeding … Study hard; distinguish carefully between the pleasures of a man of fashion, and the vices of a scoundrel; pursue the former and abhor the latter, like a man of sense.' Theodosius's behaviour fell very short of that.

Chesterfield's opinion of women, however, was low. ‘Vanity is their universal, if not their strongest passion,' he wrote. Money was not to be wasted on educating them or sending them on the Grand Tour; they were only important as introductions into the
beau monde
and, as such, they had to be flattered and cajoled into acting with sense.

Girls like Theodosia usually ‘came out' into society aged about fifteen or sixteen, sometimes younger (in Eliza Haywood's didactic novel
The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless
(1751) the heroine's adventures begin when she is fourteen). In the 1720s Daniel Defoe had already sneered at the ‘daughters of the gentry carrying themselves to market',
¹³
while Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's description of Sir John Vanbrugh's attempts at finding a wife in 1713 is not flattering: ‘I believe last Monday there were 200 pieces of Woman's Flesh, both fat and lean.'
¹⁴
Some writers, like Mary Wollstonecraft in her 1792 pamphlet
A Vindication of the Rights of Women
, condemned
the flagrant sexual parading of single women and their mothers: ‘What can be more indelicate,' she asked, ‘than a girl's coming out in the fashionable world?'

Young women were certainly preyed upon at public gatherings, and a mother had to distinguish between the admiration of a gentleman and the leering advances of an adventurer. Society in Bath was no exception. Tobias Smollett's character Matthew Bramble complains that it was crowded with ‘Vulgars … a very inconsiderable proportion of genteel people are lost in a mob of impudent plebeians.'

At least Anna Maria had relations in Bath on whom she could rely: her sister and brother-in-law, the Shiptons. And Bath
was
exciting, compared to Warwickshire. The city was in communication with a wider world: coaches ran daily to all the major areas of population. The place was buzzing with entertainments; beside the regular assemblies, parties and balls the
Bath Journal
in the 1760s advertised such delights as a ‘Troop of Equestrians in Egyptian Pyramids', stage plays at the Lower Rooms and the Theatre Royal, a display of ‘Fireworks by Signor Invetto', ‘Dancing Displays by Master and Miss Michael', and ‘Miniature Portraits Painted by a certain Mr Lightfoot' (‘whose performances need no comment'). There were all kinds of things to lavish money on, too: from gold and silver writing pens, harpsichords and Dutch tulips to the more mundane ‘elastic saddles' and ‘shamoy leather socks for the prevention of chilblains'.

It is quite probable that Anna Maria and Theodosia also visited London; the season began in the New Year and went on until the end of April or so. It was considered that any gentleman of note had a ‘town house' and a ‘country house'. The Shukburgh side of the family certainly had a place in London; and in later years Theodosia herself would live in Portland Street and her cousins the Rouse-Boughtons in Devonshire Place during the season.

Georgian society was quite different in character from the public restraint and industry of the Victorians, and the hub of it all, London, was a very seductive lure for minor gentry from the provinces, male and female alike. At the head of London society was the
Prince of Wales, son of George III; by the time he had reached the age of eighteen in 1780 he had already set the tone for gambling, whoring and drunkenness. By the mid-eighteenth century London society was gripped by gambling fever: fortunes were both made and lost at pharaoh, quinze and piquet – thousands of guineas changing hands every night. The prince also led by example when it came to women: he publicly frequented brothels and early in his life had affairs with other men's wives, the Duchess of Devonshire and the Countess of Salisbury among them. Following his example, male members of the aristocracy frequented prostitutes as a matter of course.

But Anna Maria would not have taken Theodosia to London just to see and be seen; she would have been looking for a wealthy man for Theodosia to marry. London was the heart of government, and the aristocracy had a stranglehold on public finances and appointments. By 1720, a quarter of the peerage held government or Crown office, and being appointed to public office made the fortunes of men like Marlborough, Cadogan and Sir Robert Walpole. James Brydges made a profit of £600,000 from his time in the post of Payments General of Forces Abroad from 1705 to 1713. Anna Maria may have seen that there might be rich pickings to be had, and she would have leapt on invitations to dine and socialise, if only in the cause of a good marriage for her daughter.

If this was her aim, however, it fell rather short. In the season of 1777, it did not reach the peerage. It fell instead on a lowly commoner, although a glamorous one. Into the Boughtons' world stepped Captain John Donellan, Master of Ceremonies at the fashionable Pantheon Assembly Rooms in Oxford Street. He was a man of the world who had returned from soldiering in India with a reputation for both bravery and fortune-hunting. He was about to use both attributes to devastating effect.

‘Money's a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet.'

Henry James

‘LONDON,' WROTE THE DIARIST BOSWELL
in December 1762, ‘is undoubtedly a place where men and manners may be seen to the greatest advantage. The liberty and whim that reigns there occasions a variety of perfect and curious characters …' If London was driven by liberty and whim, and populated by curious characters, John Donellan must have felt quite at home. Not that he wanted to stand out as a curiosity; rather that he was perfectly placed to take advantage of the time and the place. A former officer in the Indian Army, he still went by the title of captain when he met Theodosia. She and her mother would have seen a man in the prime of his life: slim, handsome, sociable, a ‘gallant', a man of the world. And, if his stories were to be believed, an outstandingly brave one, too, who had gained a reputation for courage in the service of the East India Company.

John Donellan was also a good storyteller – and he had to be. Back in England in the mid 1760s, he had had to fight for his entire reputation. Having served in the Indian wars with the French, he had argued his case against a court-martial ruling made against him
for accepting bribes for passing on looted goods that had resulted, according to Donellan, from a chain of misunderstandings.

In his evidence to the directors of the East India Company,
¹
he presented a version of the battle of Masulipatnam in the Indian province of Golconda in 1759 – and, tellingly, a version that appears in no other record of the event – that showed him in an extraordinary light. He had, he said, rescued his commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Forde, from a tight spot during the battle and then had, with the aid of a French spy, entered the French headquarters and single-handedly persuaded its commander, the Comte de Conflans, to surrender.
²
Donellan admitted in his statement to the court that his version might sound immodest – ‘how ill a grace [is] a man who is the blazoner of his own deeds,' he acknowledged, ‘but there are occasions where modesty would be culpable and silence an injustice to oneself.'

His story was not just immodest, it was unbelievable. But then Donellan was nothing if not imaginative – inventing and reinventing himself was one of his major skills. His version of events was not quite the one that made it to the history books. The battle was a decisive victory for the English, after which Forde negotiated with the Indian ruler, the Nizam of Hyderabad, to maintain the territory free of French troops in return for an annual income of 400,000 rupees. The region thus secured, the English went on to win the Siege of Madras, and the French were subsequently driven from India, allowing the English Crown to seize this massive and lucrative subcontinent.

In his evidence to the directors, Donellan undoubtedly felt that he ought to be given considerable credit for the victory, and was evidently prepared to face down any gasps of astonishment. ‘Mr Donellan,' he said, referring to himself in the third person and as Mr, not Captain, ‘cannot but consider this important service as principally resulting from his presence of mind.'

He then went on to justify his subsequent actions, for which he had been brought to court. He and some fellow officers had commandeered a large cache of valuables and ‘were proceeding to turn them to best account for their employers [i.e. the East India
Company] when they received a verbal order from the Colonel to deliver certain black merchants such effects as they should claim for their property.'

Donellan claimed that these men were not Armenian traders caught in the conflict, as Forde suggested, but French in disguise. He refused the order. ‘A warm altercation ensued', and it became obvious that the ‘order' was a ruse by the Bannyan
³
and the ‘merchants' to obtain the booty. Nevertheless a written order came back from the colonel, and vast amounts of loot, ‘some marked with the cipher of the French East-India Company, and chests of treasure', were taken away.

In court Donellan protested that this was an outrage; to make things worse, Forde would not speak to him. Although the goods were returned to the merchants, Donellan accepted £50 from them for his trouble. It was for this that he was being court-martialled. He could be forgiven here for feeling that he was being unjustly treated – the booty of war was considered fair game for the badly underpaid British army officers in India.
⁴

Donellan then testified to a really extraordinary twist of events. The defeated French general, Conflans, apparently asked him to join his own army. Conflans made ‘many tempting offers and opened to him the most alluring prospects', Donellan insisted, but despite all the injustices he had suffered, he stayed loyal to the British Crown. He paints a noble picture of himself: ‘But neither the resentment for the wrongs that had been heaped upon him – over-looked, degraded, every studied indignity thrown upon him – could make him for a moment forget his duty to the Company or his allegiance to his natural Sovereign.'

Donellan, along with several other officers, was found guilty and stripped of his rank. Although the others were later reinstated to their rank, Donellan was not. He returned to England. For a while he nursed his ‘injustices' – for, it would appear, at least eight years – but then he decided to try for a commission in the cavalry in 1767 or 1768. He could not, however, obtain this without a clean bill of military health. The East India Company sent a verbal message that his conduct had been considered blameless in India.
His commission was returned; however, he still needed his commanding officer Forde's ‘certificate of good behaviour'. He wrote to Forde saying that he hoped ‘a trifling misconduct would not bar his advancement in life'. But Forde refused to endorse him.

It would not be the last time that Donellan pleaded his innocence in the face of intransigent authority.

Donellan was put on the half-pay list and for ever afterwards referred to himself as captain; but he never completely removed the stain to his character. Forde, in opposition to his senior commanding officer, Lord Clive, would not say outright that Donellan's behaviour was unacceptable; but neither would he put pen to paper to agree that Donellan had been ‘courageous'. (Clive, at least, did send a letter to Donellan in September 1761 saying that he had showed courage in an expedition to Golconda.) There is no evidence that Forde ever supported Donellan, or even forwarded the verdict of the original court martial at Masulipatnam to the East India Company. As a result, Donellan did not apply for another military posting: his career as a serving officer was over.

He was now forced to apply his talents in another direction.

John Donellan had been born on 6 November 1737 in County Clare, Ireland, the illegitimate son of Colonel Nehemiah Donellan who was the commanding officer of the 39th Regiment. The O'Connor Donellan estate papers of County Galway list the family pedigree: one James Donellan was Nehemiah's father, and Nehemiah himself pursued an active military career, having been wounded at the battle of Fontenoy in May 1745 in the War of the Austrian Succession. John Donellan was acknowledged and treated well by his father, who obtained him his post in the East India Service.

A surviving print of Donellan, drawn at the time of the Boughton trial, with the title ‘Published as the Act directs, 1st May 1781 by I. Walker' shows him in profile: he has a clean-shaven and youthful face, with a high forehead, and he is wearing a fashionable cutaway coat and a white stock with a small frill at his throat. Another penand-ink drawing shows him facing the artist with a rather bemused smile. Donellan looks like an intelligent, even kindly, person. In
1882 Edward Allesley Boughton Ward-Boughton-Leigh, Theodosia's grandson, described him as a ‘good-looking man … very handsome'. Another print, currently in the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale University, of the Pantheon Assembly Rooms shows a figure leaning on a column in the left foreground who is generally believed to be Donellan. Rather shorter than average and slight in stature, he stands with one hand slightly behind his back and the other in his breast pocket, reminiscent of popular depictions of Napoleon. He is looking towards a couple who are talking to his left; his air is proprietorial, and he has the same slight smile on his face.