In the Navy
Copyright© 2005/2020 to Argon
Chapter 48: A Gentleman of Leisure
February 1811
Tony woke up from the rays of a wintry sun filtering through the drawn curtains of the bedroom. Looking to his right, Harriet was asleep, breathing regularly. The bedroom was still feeling unfamiliar to Tony. During his earlier stays in London, he and Harriet had used Harriet’s old rooms on the opposite side of the 1st floor. Their new bedroom was in fact the one her first husband, the hateful Rupert Palmer, had occupied.
During the latter part of Tony’s posting to the Mediterranean Sea, Harriet had called in builders, painters and paperhangers to remodel the entire 1st floor to her and Tony’s tastes, frequently asking his opinions in her letters and mostly receiving non-committal answers from a husband who understood less than half of her descriptions. Lying in bed and looking about, Tony decided that it had been a wise move on his part to not meddle in matters of furnishings. He liked the style of their bedroom, he enjoyed the newfangled shower bath in their dressing room, and he liked the view from the bedroom windows over the small garden behind the house.
To be honest, he would have liked any bedroom that Harriet shared with him. After three weeks of living together again, his resolve to eschew seagoing commands for the foreseeable future had not weakened. Few captains had as many hostile engagements on their records as Tony, and of those who did, even fewer had escaped unscathed. True, he had suffered a severe leg wound in the battle against the Aigle, and it had bothered him for a year and more whenever weather changes loomed, but even those pains had passed away over the years. Compared with that wounding, the cut he had suffered in the duel with Selkirk and the bruised foot he had suffered in a botched landing operation were transient discomforts, and he was as healthy as any man aged 32 years had the right to be.
Now Harriet was stirring and Tony watched with fondness as her eyelids began to flutter and her slender body started to stretch. Then her eyes opened fully and a smile spread over her face.
“Good morning, my love!”
“Good morning, my gorgeous wife,” Tony smiled back at her. “Have I told you how endearing you look when you are sleeping?”
“I didn’t snore, did I?” Harriet asked with a worried frown.
“Only a little,” Tony conceded.
“You snored a lot in the first days, but it’s become much less over the last weeks. You must have been exhausted.”
“I probably was. The last time I’ve been without a command was when I was waiting for that court of inquiry, and I was not at ease at that time.”
“But now you are, aren’t you?”
“Absolutely. I am where I want to be, I do what I want to do, I sleep for as long as I need, and I only have to turn to see the woman I covet. Nobody makes demands of me either.”
“That may just change,” Harriet giggled. “I received an invitation to tea and I accepted on our behalf. It’ll be this afternoon. Tomorrow, we’ll have an appointment with Elizabeth to fit you with civilian coats and trousers. It’ll be a welcome change to see you in colours other than blue.”
“What if I don’t want to have tea or get new coats?”
“Consider my words as orders,” Harriet laughed. “My husband, I want to show you off, now that we are reunited. We haven’t attended any social functions since leaving Barbados.”
“There was the dinner with the Fannings, and we attended receptions in Gibraltar and Kingston...”
“Pish! You were commanded to attend those, and now I command you to take me out to other functions. What’s the difference?”
“Well, for one, the other orders came from superior officers. You are my wife, not my admiral.”
Harriet’s hand sneaked under the cover and under his shirt, getting a firm but gentle hold of Little Tony.
“What if I make it worth your while?”
“Now you are making sense,” Tony grinned. “Who invited us?”
“Missus Anson, you know, the former Miss Maynard, who wrote that beautifully worded account of Mister O’Shaunessy’s sham trial. She has been married to Captain Anson for a few years, and they asked us to visit.”
“Anson, Anson ... I believe I’ve heard of the man. Jeremiah Anson, right?”
“Yes, he is the chief of staff for the First Naval Lord. He came up with the plan to harass the French with amphibious landings in the build-up to the peninsular campaign.”
“Did he pick Keller as squadron commander, by any chance?”
“No, silly! That idiocy was committed by others. He’s a veteran of Trafalgar, just like you, by the way.”
“I know. That’s why the name was familiar to me. He was badly wounded as I recall.”
“He lost his left hand, but he’s coping rather well. He also found a gem of a wife in Missus Anson.”
“I don’t recall having heard of her?”
“She had been a mute since childhood, but being wooed by Anson stimulated her to find her speech again. Anita took her under her wings and gave her speech training. When we visited Anita to ask her to join our campaign, she was present. Listening to Siobhan’s account of the events, she sat down that very afternoon to compose the wonderfully worded and witty account of O’Shaunessy’s case. She is also a published writer, by the way, and she’s completely overcome her muteness. You’ll find her an astonishing woman.”
“How can I refuse to meet such a marvel?” Tony asked with a smile. “Let’s visit them for tea.”
The Ansons’ London home was in Old Church Street, in the newly fashionable Chelsea district, and only a stone’s throw away from Anita’s house. It was rather on the small side, but it looked comfortable enough. Captain Jeremiah Anson was three years Tony’s junior in rank, but of the same age, and he greeted Tony and Harriet with open friendliness. From what Tony knew, Anson was the natural son of a Berkshire squire and rather well connected in the Commons through his father and his brother-in-law.
The young woman at his side seemed to burst with vitality. She was smaller than Harriet, with rich, chestnut hair and an adorable face. She greeted Harriet like a friend and regarded Tony with interest.
“Oh, dear,” she said. “I had imagined you to be quite a bit older, given all the tales about your deeds.”
“I do not feel that young anymore, Missus Anson,” Tony smiled wryly. “When I regard my mirror image, I always expect it to speak to me in my father’s voice.”
“I propose we move to the tea room,” Captain Anson offered with an ironic smile. “It will be so much more comfortable being interrogated whilst sitting. My wife is very much taken with naval matters.”
After a maid took their coats and hats, they were shown to a lovely room overlooking a small garden. Tony picked up the thread of the conversation after they were seated.
“Is that so, Missus Anson? Of course, I am also blessed with a wife who is knowledgeable and appreciative of our service.”
“I know,” Missus Anson beamed. “She has given me so much insight. I recognised her name from the newspaper articles that described her own and Lady Maynard’s feats. Naturally, I had to interview her in depth.”
“It was a stimulating conversation to be sure,” Harriet smiled. “Have you made progress with your next book?”
“Only a little, and I may even abandon it. I’ve written myself into a corner, so to speak, and I begin to find the whole plot stale.”
After that, they moved the topics of their conversation to less personal issues, such as the newly established Regency, the quasi-war with Sweden, but also the prospects of the Royal Navy to finally conquer Isle de France, or Mauritius as the British called it, the last remaining overseas base for French ships. Anson was of course well informed, being a senior staff officer at the Admiralty, whilst Tony had to realise that he was hopelessly behind with his knowledge of current affairs.
Of course, Harriet and Missus Anson also exchanged some gossip, and again, Tony knew not half of the persons and personages about whom the women talked. A look at Anson showed him that their host was a little better informed, but obviously not very interested.
On the whole, it was an entertaining afternoon, and the Carters issued a counter invitation to the Ansons, planning to invite Anita Heyworth but also the Wilkes to join them. Returning to their house, Tony commented favourably on their hosts.
“Interesting people, the Ansons.”
“Oh, yes, they are. Of course, they are far more involved with society. She is a frequent visitor in all the important salons.”
“I can imagine that. Well, let’s have them for dinner next week.”
They left it at that and enjoyed a quiet evening at home, going to bed early. The next day, after breakfast, Tony and Harriet set out for Bond Street and Wilson’s House of Fashion, as Elizabeth’s shop was now named. Of course, Elizabeth had been forewarned of their purpose, and she received them together with a smiling Inez, with a male tailor, Mister Dumas, and with Tony’s old tailor’s dummy. Mister Dumas quickly took Tony’s measurements and compared them with the dummy. It was decided to enlarge the dummy to account for Tony’s wider shoulders and chest.
Then, two clerks carried cloth bales into the fitting room. Conferring with each other and ignoring Tony entirely, Harriet and Elisabeth sorted through the colours and decided on cloths in bottle-green, tan and grey, and on a dark blue moleskin.
Breeches and stockings were still acceptable, but long, tight trousers, which covered his entire legs and were held by loops under his boots, were more fashionable and preferred. Shirts, too, had to be made, with ridiculously high collars, held in place by voluminous bow ties. Tony groaned inwardly at the folly of having costly clothes made that would likely fall out of fashion ere the year was over. He blamed all this nonsense on that dandy, Beau Brummel, a favourite of the Prince Regent, and the self-appointed, ultimate arbiter of all things fashion.
Still, knowing Harriet’s feelings about such matters, he kept his peace, had himself measured, nodded judiciously to all suggestions, and resolved to foot the bills. It was slightly unsettling to think that the five or six ensembles he would order cost over £ 55, an amount with which a skilled workman had to keep his family in food, clothes and lodging for a year.
When all had been settled, Harriet and Tony took Elizabeth to have a meal in a fashionable eatery in Burlington Gardens. They spent almost two hours catching up on each other’s lives. Elizabeth and Missus Archer were doing a brisk business with their fashion house, and they were expanding. Elizabeth was saving her surplus for the purchase of her own house, which she planned to share with her brother. Young Wilson had passed the lieutenant’s exam two years earlier, and Elizabeth had secured a flag lieutenant’s position for him, under Rear Admiral John Barlow, who also served on the Admiralty staff, and whose wife was a patron of Wilson’s House of Fashion. Apparently, Lt. Samuel Wilson was involved in the gathering of intelligence from Navy officers’ reports but also from a vast network of spies. Tony realised with an inward smile that Elizabeth had succeeded in getting her brother out of harm’s way with that posting.
In turn, Harriet and Tony related their experiences over the last two years, ever since they had sailed for Cartagena. Elizabeth had liked the young Princess Isabella, and she was elated that the young woman had evaded the arranged marriage with the Conde. It was with regret from all sides that they had to end their meeting as Elizabeth had a fashion house to run, and Harriet wanted to return to their house to spend some time with their children.
Arriving at their house, Tony found a billet from his father-in-law, inviting him to dine with the admiral in one of the newer gentleman’s clubs, the St. Croix, owned and operated by a French émigré, the eponymous Marquis de St. Croix. The club boasted an excellent cuisine it was said, and although it had opened only two years earlier, it already had a distinguished clientele. Tony was looking forward to the experience.
Since his new civilian coats would not be ready for some time, he met Sir Richard wearing captain’s uniform. A finely dressed servant led Tony to a splendid dining hall and to a corner table where the old admiral was already sitting.
“Anthony, have a seat!” Sir Richard offered, shaking his hand with obvious pleasure. “You look splendid. You’re back to being a captain?”
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