Chapter 24 Home Thoughts From Abroad

After that last assignation with Paloma and Lillian I gave myself a rest – in any case Paloma had gone to Brighton to view property and Lillian was engaged for several days, and nights, with the bishop she had entertained on the third day of Christmas.

I thought over Paloma’s business offer, and decided to move my £3000 from the Honourable East India Company and invest in the Pleasure Dome venture. However, I would be in Italy when my dividend was paid, and would need a proxy to attend to the legal and financial transactions.
My brother Isaac, although a ninny in many ways, was an accomplished lawyer, and I had full confidence in his ability and integrity – he also knew if betrayed I had a short temper and a sharp blade.
His chambers were in the Middle Temple of the Inns of Court, which I visited in preference to his house. He and his wife Minnie had an arrangement where each was free to indulge in extramarital activities so long as discretion was assured. It appeared she practised a smidgen of discretion but none of moderation, and I would sooner step into a nest of vipers than appear in her home. She carried out her affairs in the comfort of her boudoir, and any man foolish enough to step over her threshold was dragged up to her lair and ravaged.

I was shown into Isaac’s chambers by his chief clerk, a fellow stooped and pale, prematurely aged by years of peering at dusty documents in stale aired offices. I thanked G — no, not that figment of man’s imagination — fate, I had been caught poaching, and so escaped such a miserable life.
Isaac looked in far better health than when I last saw him, and had regained some of his bulk. His mistresses, usually young and voluptuous actresses, were not as voracious as his wife, and allowed him periods of rest and recuperation after a galloping, something denied him by Minnie.
After I explained the reason for my visit he vowed to personally oversee the transfer of funds, and also put himself forward as my advisor when it came to drawing up and signing contracts. Isaac was now an Assize Judge and was becoming quite a star in the legal profession. He travelled his circuit, with an accompanying mistress, dispensing justice, while Minnie remained in London, filling her time by filling her madge. Those who occupied Minnie’s madge were usually men helpful to Isaac’s career, so everyone involved was well served and satisfied. I suppose my brother could be considered a legalistic pimp.

I declined his offer of lunch at Middle Temple – too much time spent in Isaac’s company gives me the feeling of being in a cesspit.
Isaac is my brother and I love him, but I find the further from him the easier it is to love him.

After taking my leave of Isaac I called in to John Stafford’s office in Scotland Yard. John welcomed me with an offer of a glass of Madeira, which I accepted although would have preferred a tankard of Old Peculiar.

“Have you gleaned any useful information from the Italian reports?” I asked.

“Not as yet. It is slow work, and Cameron is making heavy weather of it.” He gave me a calculating look. “We are short handed in the office at present, and as you have a lawyer’s skill of quickly perusing documents would you be up to the task of scrutinising these files yourself?”
As he had done me a favour by obtaining the documents from the Foreign Office I agreed to his suggestion. It was the least I could do.

Early the next morning I reported to John Stafford’s office. I had slept the clock round, recovering something of my strength, and now judged myself able to exam in detail the huge numbers of files and documents from the Foreign Office.
The reports and letters ranged from lengthy and rambling to short and succinct. Several times a particular sentence or phrase would catch my eye, giving cause to think them a clue on Becky’s whereabouts, but it was reading the tittle-tattle tales of a certain Mrs Hyacinth Marjoribanks-Bouquet I felt I might have picked up Becky’s trail.

Mrs M-B had travelled to Naples in June of the previous year, 1821, and had met the Greek revolutionary Prince Alexander Mavrocordato – Mrs M-B was an ardent Philhellene. She had written to her Godson, a clerk in the Foreign Office, that the Prince frequently met ‘the dissolute poet Lord Byron’ – Mrs M-B was no fan of Byron’s. She noted Byron was often accompanied by two women during meetings with the Prince. One was a his mistress, a fair haired Italian ‘concubine’, as Mrs M- B referred to the female, whom Byron addressed as ‘Teresa’, and the other was ‘a fair haired and blue eyed English girl who Byron’s concubine addressed as ‘Becca’. Mrs M- B’s letter then went on at great length about the doings and sayings of the noble Prince Mavrocordato, and it was only a sentence at the end of her letter which drew my attention. She had written, ‘on the day Byron and his Italian concubine returned to Ravenna there was a tearful farewell between the two females’.
I knew I was grasping at straws, but an English girl named ‘Becca’, who had some acquaintance with Byron, could possibly be Becky.

Due to their radical ideas, Percy Shelley and Lord Byron were under constant surveillance in Italy, and the names of those British people they met and mingled with were notified to the Foreign Office. When Becky was Byron’s mistress and a friend of the Shelleys her whereabouts could always be ascertained, even if she had not been in contact with her family and friends in England. However, after Byron left her in Venice and went off in pursuit of another woman Becky was no longer ‘a person of interest’, and it was only via a ‘tittle-tattle’ letter from Lady Windermere to her nephew in the Foreign Office which revealed the altercation between Byron and Becky at Ravenna in 1819.

I had no idea why Becky would be in Naples – if indeed it was she – or why she would be on such friendly terms with Byron’s current mistress. Could she be in ménage à trois with Teresa and Byron – in which case why did she not leave with them? The answer could be that she resides in Naples.

I went back to search the reports from the British representative in Naples.
I admit not taking too much care in reading them previously, believing Becky to be in Northern Italy rather than in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The kingdom was reputed to be the most corrupt and depraved in Europe, although the administration, and the army, of the kingdom were currently under the control of the Austrians, who had returned King Ferdinand I to his throne after a popular uprising had sent him packing.

Britain does not have an ambassador as such in Naples, but does have a Minister and Envoy Plenipotentiary by the name of William Hamilton; not the Sir William Hamilton who had been in the same post when Nelson sailed into Naples Bay in 1797, and then subsequently sailed into Sir William’s wife, Emma. This William Hamilton was a noted antiquarian, who spent most of his time grubbing about in the ruins of Pompeii; consequently, his reports were short to the point of being abrupt. Fortunately, his assistant, William Hickey, was a frequent writer of tittle-tattle letters to his brother at the Treasury in Westminster, and these had been passed to John Stafford via the Foreign Office.
Mr Hickey was both loquacious and gregarious, and was present at practically every soiree and gathering the Great and the Good of Neapolitan society attended.

There are many who dispute the Great of Neapolitan society were ever good, but I will not make comment.

The garrulous Mr. Hickey wrote several letters to his brother extolling the virtues, if that is the correct term to use, of what appeared to be an establishment similar to the proposed Pleasure Dome of Sir Boris and Paloma. This house of pleasure in Naples, named Cleopatra Palace, included a ballroom, gaming tables, a restaurant, and rooms available for hire by the hour — useful for those gallants who were sparking married women with observant servants/husbands, or had no bed to call their own. William hinted there were other, more salacious and wicked, entertainments available for those awarded special status, of which he was not one. To his chagrin one person who had special status was a certain Giuseppe di Campania, who was present at all the events William Hickey attended, and whom William Hickey heartily detested.
Reading between the lines of William’s letters the reason for this detestation was due to one of the Seven Deadly Sins, that of Envy. Whatever the occasion, Giuseppe di Campania was always accompanied by a bevy of young women – his harem – as Willian noted sarcastically. According to our frustrated onlooker, one of the young women was ‘a typical English rose in colouring, with golden hair, cornflower blue eyes, and pale complexion, who spoke Italian with an English accent.’ His sense of outrage, that a supposed Englishwoman might be a mistress of a Neapolitan, was palpable, even on the written page.