four.'
There would be fifteen or more other Midshipmen aboard… HMS Aeneas, was it? No one would expect too much, right off, of a 'Johnny New-Come' in such a large mess. And if Aeneas was down for Channel Fleet, she'd most-like serve on the blockade of France, far out to sea with a squadron of line-of-battle ships, not close inshore with the frigates and sloops, in almost constant risk of going aground, or much in the way of fighting, either. The lad might never hear a gun fired in anger! Which fact settled Lewrie's fears, somewhat.
Now, what Anglesgreen, his neighbours, and his family and in-laws would make of it was another matter. They would naturally decide that he'd deliberately sent Sewallis to sea, the facts bedamned!
He looked back to his father's letter, noting that Sir Hugo had urged Sewallis to write and confess it all, to be a man about what he had done. That'll be a wonder, when it comes, I'd wager, Lewrie told himself with a cynical snort.
As for other matters (his father continued) your Property is still in negotiation, with Phineas Chiswick unwilling to pay more than Ј1,000, though I hear that he intends to garner Ј4,000 when he sells to the Trenchers. We hold out for Ј1,500.
My pardons if the subject is still Grievous, but you mentioned one Sir Pulteney Plumb and his wife, Lady Imogene, whom you said had been of great Avail when you amp; your late Wife fled Paris, and France, shortly after the Services. After consulting DeBrett's, I could find no evidence that a man of that Name has ever been Knighted, nor any Plumb, for that matter.
A fortnight ago, though, I attended a new Theatre in the Hay Market with Brigadier Heathcote, a friend at Horse Guards, and who should be the Owner, and lead Actor in the Sketches but one Pulteney Plumb, assisted by his йmigrй Wife, Imogene? While not a Garrick, this Plumb was quite impressive at Comic turns, but a few seconds behind a Screen where coat or wig changes transformed him to half a dozen roles amp; the same for his Wife! Their entire Show is a series of Entre-Acts employing Jugglers, Mimes, and scantily-clad girls as well as Song amp; Dance turns.
Heathcote, of an Age with me, was All-Amort, for he remembered an Ensign Pulteney Plumb, then in his late Teens, on the Staff of 'Gentleman Johnny' Burgoyne round the time of that worthy's Defeat and Surrender to the Yankee Doodles at Saratoga. Heathcote, a Lieutenant then, further recalled to me that this Plumb fellow was appointed more for his theatric Abilities than his Martial skills, Gen. Burgoyne famed for his own amateur Acting and Play Writing. There was some Scandal anent Plumb, who sold up his Commission before a Court-Martial could be Convened, though after 25 Yrs. the Particulars escape Heathcote's Memory. If ever back in London, you might attend, for the Girls are quite Fetching, and… Obliging, ha! The man must have Prospered nicely, for Plumb owns the Theatre, a Townhouse, and a retreat out in Islington as well as several other rental Lodgings, I have learned…
Lewrie felt a fresh shudder of dread to think that he had put his life in the hands of a comic, quick-change artiste, a mountebank, and an utter fraud! It could have gone a lot worse!
'The Yellow Tansy, mine arse!' he gravelled, picking up another letter. 'Hello! A Captain Speaks? Oh, yes,' he muttered, breaking the wax seal and opening it, relieved that Speaks, whom he had replaced in command of HMS Thermopylae, had survived his pneumonia.
Sir,
There were four coal-burning Franklin-pattern stoves when you relieved me of Command, Stoves which I had Purchased with my own Funds for the Comfort amp; Health of my Officers amp; Men. Where the Hell are They? I am unable to contact the Purser, Mr. Pridemore, as to the Whereabouts amp; can discover no trace of them with shore Authorities at Chatham or Sheerness when Thermopylae was laid up In- Ordinary.
They are quite Valuable. I would not like to entertain the Notion that a Post-Captain amp; Commission Sea Officer so Distinguished could be so remiss as to lose them, or sell them for Personal Gain, but… do you know their Whereabouts, I urge you to discover it to me by the next Post, else I shall press a suit in the London Court of Common Pleas to recover the Stoves, or their Value!'
'Oh, Christ,' Lewrie said with a disbelieving groan. 'Another bloody court appearance?' It was too silly to be countenanced. He called for his steward.
'Aye, sir?' Pettus replied.
'My shore-goin' rig,' Lewrie said, shovelling that letter into a desk drawer… for much later. 'Right away, sir!'
I've earned it, I'm due it, Lewrie told himself as he rose to dress; I'm goin' ashore, and get very, very, very bloody-drunk!
After the initial sense of relief the English people felt when told of the Peace of Amiens, they soon realised that there really was no living with an expansionist, republican France, or Napoleon and his ambitions, and that the war would re-erupt sooner or later. When it did start again, they were mad for it, volunteeering by the hundreds of thousands for the Army and Navy. The Addington goverment was pressured from the sidelines from the outset by Lord Grenville, Windham, the ousted William Pitt, and later by the king himself, to goad the French into taking the blame for it by the means described in this tale.
And when the Crown finally sent Napoleon an ambassador, their pick was the haughty, supercilious, top-lofty Lord Whitworth, who with his wife, the equally insulting Duchess of Dorset, could piss off just about anyone, from boot-blacks to saints, most especially the touchy Napoleon Bonaparte!
There are two very good books I can recommend to readers with a desire for more background; Napoleon by Vincent Cronin, a wonderful biography, and The War of Wars by Robert Harvey, which covers all the events of the French Revolutionary War and the Napoleonic War, from the start of the Revolution to Waterloo, providing even more insight into Napoleon's life.
It was not Napoleon's short stature that formed his psychobabble 'Napoleon Complex'; most people were short in those days. His insecurity came more from a lifetime of being the perennial outsider, and a poor one at that. More Italian and near-peasant Corsican than a Frenchman, even if the Buonapartes were very minor aristos in their provincial hometown of Bastia; jeered at for his olive complexion, his grammatical errors when speaking or writing French that wasn't pure Parisian; his simple tastes in food and wine, and his utter shyness at his schools. He might've only had one testicle, too, and if the provenance of the physical remains of his privates are true, he could have been cruelly teased as 'Pinky-Finger the Flea F_er' by prostitutes he hired, or early lovers he attempted to woo.
Once in a position of power and wealth-recall he was Corsican, born to the vendetta, the 'Get Even'-he trusted his (untrustworthy) kinfolk who were just like him, rather than more sophisticated and more capable people than himself.
One of the things that really got up Napoleon's nose were the British papers, and the caricatures of him which depicted him as an African, an Arab after his failed Egyptian Campaign, a wee fellow with a big nose and a yellow complexion (think Homer Simpson), and he truly didn't understand that the Crown could not censor or stifle those caricature artists, essayists, and editorialists like he could any French paper that did not please him.
Napoleon could make himself Consul for Life, crown himself the Emperor of the French, form a Bonaparte dynasty with his brothers and sisters to rule the rest of Europe, with all the trappings of a Roman emperor, yet never understood why the world treated him like a boorish nouveau riche parvenu!
