3  

If coming out in society and making a mark in it were part of Morgan’s plan for his daughter, Georgina had already done a great deal to satisfy his ambition. Her voice had carried her into drawing rooms that he would have difficulty in entering on his own merits. He had taken a house in Stratford Place, a small gated cul-de-sac off Oxford Street from which to direct both her affairs and his own. In the country he was a magistrate and a ruthless persecutor of trespassers and poachers. On his own land he set spring guns without the slightest qualm. He had by no means given up hope of a seat in the House of Commons. He was friendless and his relations with his brothers were as strained as ever, but by his own lights the new Mr. Treherne was making progress in the world. He was very deliberately old-fashioned, and there were as a consequence huge gaps in what he knew about the age in which he lived. Style and the surface of things had always meant nothing to him. He was a reactionary and proud of it. In certain circles—say among military men—there was no harm in that. On brief acquaintance and with the addition of only a little humor his position could even seem endearing. He polished a way of expressing himself that he was to use to the electors of Coventry in a famous speech: “I have a thorough and heart detestation of the Whigs . . . I have a parrot at home that cries Damn the Whigs! and although I should be very sorry to use such language myself—even if I do express myself strongly sometimes—I cannot say that my feelings towards the Whigs are more friendly than those of my parrot.”

Georgina was troublesome to him but no more than she had ever been. Although by now she was of an age where he might have expected her to be settled and not emptying his purse running about London as a young lady of fashion, there were some encouraging developments. It was never Morgan’s practice to give a compliment, yet Georgina’s impetuous charm had at least secured the interest of an eminently worthy family like the Schreibers and she had the friendship (or so she claimed) of Lady Constance Villiers, daughter of the Foreign Secretary. From such connections who knew what might follow?

And then the roof fell in.

 

In January 1858 Lady Sudeley gave a ball in Brighton to which Louisa and her daughters were invited. The occasion was a happy one. Lord Sudeley, whose family owned large estates in the town, had just succeeded to the title. It was the first entertainment of the new year, and the 250 guests who assembled in the Pavilion Rooms had another lively topic of conversation, in addition to Lord Sudeley’s good fortune. A few days earlier, amid scenes of incredible pomp and attended by thirteen crowned heads of Europe, the Queen’s eldest daughter had married Frederick, Crown Prince of Prussia. She was seventeen years old. That very Saturday, there had been an immense press of people at a congratulatory Drawing Room, at which the young Princess stood by her mother to receive her guests. Victoria was amazed and delighted at the cordiality shown to the Royal Family in what was for her a watershed experience. (The Princess Royal left England the following Tuesday in a blizzard of snow, attended by immense crowds. At Buckingham Palace the Queen had parted from her daughter in floods of tears, and this mood was communicated to the entire household, who sobbed and wailed as at a funeral. Lady Desart, a lady-in-waiting, said later it was the first time in her memory that Victoria completely lost control of herself.)

There was much to discuss, then. Louisa might borrow a little from the glamour of the royal wedding by having boys at Eton, for the school had telegraphed the happy couple on the day of the wedding and asked permission to drag the honeymooners’ carriage through the streets of Windsor, which they accomplished most gallantly and inexpertly. And of course, since the subject of marriage in general was more than usually on everyone’s lips, did the company know that Georgina, etc., etc.? Nothing had been fixed, no formal announcements had been made, but Merthyr Guest was such a prepossessing young man and seemed so enamored of Miss Treherne, etc., etc. Of course he was very young and had first his career at Trinity to contemplate, but he was a dear kind boy. People who knew the Schreibers rather better than Louisa did might have been startled at this piece of wishful thinking. A really shrewd observer might have looked behind the understandable note of triumph and discovered an ancient doubt: the development of the plot was only so good as the steadiness of the principal character in it, which was to say Georgina. Was she going to do something stupid at this critical moment?

She was. The officers of the 18th Hussars, who were in barracks at Preston Park, had been invited to the Sudeley Ball. The 18th was hardly a very fashionable regiment: it had only recently been reconstituted, and of the officers there was not a title among them. It was true that General Scarlett, the hero of Balaclava, had himself served as a cornet with the old 18th; one of the present cornets had the honor to have been born under a gun at Waterloo. But the regiment was originally raised in Yorkshire and re-formed there; and though it had taken part in the festivities surrounding the royal wedding, it was too new to have fought in the Crimea or to have had any part in the putting down of the infamous Mutiny in India.

Among those of the regiment who accepted for Lady Sudeley was a young lieutenant named Harry Weldon. While he cut a fine figure in patrol uniform and was reputed to ride well, his experience of soldiering was practically nil. Like many of his troopers, he came from Yorkshire. He had the languid manners appropriate to a junior officer and was good-looking in a stock sort of way, but he was shockingly provincial, for whom the past glittering month or so—of Brighton and London—had been bewitching. His expression was frank and open, and he was altogether the sort of boy you might entrust at a ball to fetch an ice or search for a shawl, but one whose name you asked only to forget. He was twenty years old and in the present company, a spear-carrier, an extra. If Morgan Treherne, M.P., had searched the Army List for a week, he could not have come up with a less appealing candidate for Georgina’s attentions.

To his stupefaction, therefore, a day or so after the ball this young man, this whippersnapper, this uniformed nothing, rode out from Preston Barracks to Mayfield on his horse, Multum. Flakes of snow fell romantically about his head: when the butler asked him his business, he explained he was there to see Georgina. Antonio (who may have been impressed at a wearisome journey undertaken in vile weather, but knew his master’s temper only too well) went off to see Morgan. Morgan sent back word that the gentleman was not to be admitted. The suitor—for that was the purpose of his visit—turned his horse’s head and set off on the long ride back to barracks. Georgina was summoned and closely questioned. A slow thrill of horror began to run through both parents.

Lieutenant William Henry Weldon was the son of a coal merchant from the Sheffield area. According to Georgina, writing in later years, old Mr. Weldon actually delivered coal in sacks on a horse and cart, a piece of spite that may or may not have been true. Harry’s father died when he was a child, and his mother now lived in a two-bedroom cottage in Beaumaris. There was a grandmother still alive from whom he would inherit, and he claimed to be coming into a trust fund two months hence when he reached his majority. In letters that he had the extreme impertinence to send Morgan, he diminished the value of this fund’s income from the £2,000 that he may have boasted of to others. In fact, he halved it, perhaps out of prudence or maybe as a demonstration of his good faith.

If he hoped to impress his prospective father-in-law by such honesty, the plan backfired badly. When he offered to have his solicitor write to clarify matters further, Morgan ordered the long-suffering Antonio to reply to the letter, not deigning to take up his own pen. Unfortunately, Harry Weldon either was having trouble reading these signals or had badly misjudged the fanatically snobbish Trehernes.

Ten days after he had first been shown the door, Louisa burst in on her daughter while she was still in bed. “Here’s a letter from that blackguard Weldon. And look what he’s written! Oh the vile swindler! A thousand a year when he’s twenty one on the 8th of April. Another £2000 when his 84 year old grandmother dies and another two thousand when his mother dies. And she’s still young—what is it, hardly forty! Oh, I’m very happy he doesn’t have two thousand a year now—you’d be mad enough to want to marry him! Two thousand a year is beggary, but a thousand a year is starvation, it’s to die of hunger!”

If Louisa really spoke these words, she stands accused of the same mania that afflicted her husband. Georgina may have recalled the conversation precisely because it threw a bad light on a snobbish and not very worldly woman. What alarmed and infuriated her mother, however, were the circumstances that had led to the letter. They took some explanation. It is unlikely (a crowded ballroom being what it is) the two had passed more than twenty minutes in each other’s company unchaperoned. What, then, had been said? The question was not one of Harry’s income, but of Georgina’s common sense. He had met and been smitten by a pretty girl. Of all the things she may have told him about herself, it would seem the one thing she had not mentioned was the situation with regard to Merthyr Guest. Nor the volcanic temperament of her father.

Or maybe she did—maybe riding over to Mayfield was for him the romantic equivalent of the forlorn hope, beloved of gallant (and suicidal) officers in every army of every epoch. Maybe she did tell him that her father would have him for breakfast, and the sheer thrill of that was enough for him to volunteer himself. He knew next to nothing of society, had no connections of any kind, and in every sense had nothing to lose: why not make his play for her in as gallant a way as he knew how? Proposing to pretty young women was not a crime, and Georgina’s father was hardly likely to shoot him from an upstairs window. (Luckily for a great many people in the nineteenth century, Morgan and firearms seem to have been strangers. That is, among his own kind. Poachers in Mayfield spoke darkly of his use of spring guns, aiming to blow the head off anyone daring to take a pheasant on Treherne land.) There was one further possibility. Maybe Harry saw her, was bowled over by her, and what Mr. Treherne interpreted as confounded impudence was an advanced form of lovesickness. He must have that girl or destroy himself in the attempt.

Morgan came up with a sobriquet for the unfortunate Hussar. He was swiftly known over the Gate House breakfast table as Ananias, the foolish man who lied to God and paid the penalty. The story comes from the Bible, Acts 5:1–6:

But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession, and kept back part of the price . . . and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles’ feet. But Peter said, “Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land? Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.” And Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the ghost: and great fear came on all them that heard these things. And the young men arose, wound him up, and carried him out, and buried him.

In later life and in the full knowledge that Harry would read her words, Georgina declared the nickname well merited. If she thought so at the time, it throws a lurid light on the whole Treherne family. Was Morgan really to be compared to the apostle Peter or to God? And had it escaped all of them that a little while after, Sapphira followed her husband into the same grave?

In the short term the problem resolved itself. The 18th Hussars were ordered away back to Yorkshire. If it had been a case of lovesickness, the traditional cure seems to have worked. Harry Weldon reflected without bitterness that though he had lost this particular skirmish, he had hardly lost the war. In April he came into his trust money, which had appreciated to £7,500. He was young and good-looking, and the world was filled with more or less beautiful women. Were he to stay in the 18th, he might become at the very least a major. If he exchanged into an Indian regiment, he might one day have his own command. Instead, according to Georgina, he went through the whole of his inheritance in eighteen months, which hardly bespeaks a broken heart. He was easygoing and venal in just the right proportions; a model of a certain kind of junior officer who might continue exactly as Georgina had discovered him: a supernumerary at balls and banquets, a cheerful card player, and a modest rake. But if he thought it was all over, he was wrong. Thackeray at his most cynical could not have dreamed up a better twist to the plot.

In May, Merthyr Guest came to his mother and wished her permission to propose to Miss Treherne. Lady Charlotte was startled, for it seemed to her that Georgina was no more than a friend to him and a cruelly joshing one at that. Merthyr explained otherwise. He confessed that he had been seeing Georgina and corresponding with her for much longer than his mother suspected: in fact, since the winter of 1856. He could not now contemplate life without her. Charlotte Schreiber did everything she could to dissuade him. The first favorable impressions Georgina had made had begun to wear off, and while Lady Charlotte enjoyed her chats with Tennyson, the rest of the coterie at Little Holland House filled her with the deepest suspicions. However, her own second marriage placed her in a weak position. She grudgingly gave her consent to an engagement, on condition that it remain secret for a while and that Merthyr not attempt to marry without her permission.

Overjoyed, Merthyr went down to Mayfield to ask Morgan for his daughter’s hand. He was hardly greeted with open arms. As soon as he left, Morgan began bombarding the Schreibers with letters that did not waste time on felicitating the young couple. He wished to know the exact extent of the fortune involved. So far as Morgan was concerned, this was the best offer he was going to get for his daughter, and it merely remained to settle terms.

The tone of these letters was deeply offensive to Lady Charlotte. It seemed her son had been trapped by an adventuress. At Exeter House there were tears and recriminations, Georgina first saying she must obey her father’s wishes and in the next breath saying she must marry Merthyr or perish. A good-hearted compromise was worked out, without Morgan’s knowledge. No decision of any kind would be made until Merthyr came of age in January 1859. Then, if the two young people were still of the same mind, matters could be straightened out with the ogre of Mayfield. Meanwhile, they might continue under the tacit understanding of an engagement. This seemed to please Georgina and it delighted Merthyr. It was the summer vacation, and Ivor Guest invited his brother to accompany him to Scotland. Georgina was annoyed at this and tried to prevent Merthyr from going. They parted acrimoniously.

Only a month after Merthyr’s interview at Mayfield and while he was still in Scotland with his brother, Lady Charlotte paid an afternoon visit to Little Holland House, probably to check up on one of her daughters, a young woman who had also been taken by the free and easy atmosphere of the house. Instead of her daughter, she discovered Georgina “closeted alone with Lord Ward in Watts’ studio, Watts being absent at Bowood.” The location was shocking in itself—nobody but the painter crossed the threshold of the red baize door, unless by invitation. The two might as well have been discovered in Mrs. Prinsep’s bedroom, so great was the impropriety. The identity of the man found with Georgina was the second awful surprise. William Ward was twenty years older than she and an enormously rich widower. Whatever Lady Charlotte saw when she burst in on them—and it cannot have been innocent—it was enough to persuade her son to disengage himself at once from any undertaking to marry.

Lady Charlotte dropped Georgina and all the Trehernes forthwith. Nothing was said, nothing needed to be said: Georgina made no attempt to defend herself. It was disaster. She had recklessly thrown away connections she and her parents had striven for over four years. Word of Georgina’s betrayal of her hospitality got back to Mrs. Prinsep, and she was dropped there too. Watts’s prophecy had come true: the Bambina had made the wrong choice, and her wildness had gone beyond what was permissible even in the easygoing ambience of Little Holland House. Maybe it would have been seen differently if Georgina had had some offsetting talent, some serious application to an art or to a cause: that might have mended fences with Mrs. Prinsep. But, stung, Georgina now began to make blustering and unpleasant remarks about her hostess. Watts knew what side his bread was buttered on. She lost his friendship too. The end came on June 28, as recounted in Lady Charlotte’s diary:

I had thought it my duty last week to write and tell Merthyr how Miss Treherne was going on with Lord Ward, and how she went about telling everybody that her engagement to Merthyr was at an end. I, this morning, heard from Merthyr in reply, greatly grieved, poor fellow. He mentioned having written to her and to Mrs. Prinsep for an explanation and I was anxious to hear from the latter what sort of reply she intended to make to him. I did not now find her at home . . . and so the next morning I went again to Little Holland House and had a long interview with Mrs. Prinsep. Her opinion was that Miss Treherne cares nothing for Merthyr, but would gladly marry Lord Ward if she could accomplish it.

Morgan must take some of the blame. His dealings with the Schreibers and with Mrs. Prinsep had been peremptory in the extreme. In other circumstances, Charlotte Schreiber would perhaps have felt it her Christian duty to rescue Georgina from the clutches of such a monstrous father. Toward her own children she showed an almost supernatural solicitude. (When her fourth son, Montague, embarked with his regiment at Gravesend, en route for India, she left Wales, where she had been staying with the ironmaster Talbot, and traveled for eight hours by train, only to find the troop convoy had left. Distraught, she tried to persuade the Custom House to let her follow the fleet downstream, where she was convinced they would remain at anchor until dawn the following day. She was at last dissuaded and got home to Roehampton at one in the morning utterly exhausted.) Though she did not much like Georgina, she would have exerted herself on her behalf in the same way, if it were not for one thing: Georgina herself had flung away the prize. Ward was almost old enough to be her father, and though he was amazingly wealthy, he was never a serious lover—and she knew it. She had indulged herself with a man for the sake of momentary pleasure. She was brought back to Mayfield in disgrace and more or less made a prisoner of her father’s. He forbade her hardly to leave the house.