I MARRIED YOUR mother, so I suppose you have every right to know about me.
I’ve no doubt you’ll have heard bad things about my life, for I’ve made many enemies in my day, and though I note that you look askance at this dwelling – and the single, miserable maid we have – you should be made aware that we have seen better days. In my heyday I moved among giants. There was a time when that old shyster lawyer Abe Lincoln sought my advice – though, admittedly, he failed to take it. Honest Abe! How he could be called that, with that light-fingered, shop-obsessed wife of his, I’ve never fathomed. And before I went to America I was on the point of being knighted, as Solicitor General, before that pompous prig Prince Albert poked his proboscis into my affairs. I think he was annoyed by the sparkle in little Vicky’s eyes when she spoke to me that day in the Blue Room at Windsor. Because I always did have a way with the women, I admit. Even if, as it’s been rightly said, I have the features of a battered bare-knuckled prizefighter.
But there you are: I took after my mother, you see.
And though you’ll be aware I eke out a meagre living now, giving legal advice here and there in London, I’ll have you know there was a time when I was the highest paid Queen’s Counsel in the land. One of my jealous enemies remarked maliciously that I made my name only in cases involving the reputation of actresses or horses, but that wasn’t so. Name a big case, and I was retained as counsel. Palmer the Poisoner? I was briefed by the Treasury but they hanged the saintly Billy in spite of his weeping mother’s protestations, but that was old Campbell’s doing. A hanging judge if ever there was one. The Duke of Gloucester, when he was caught exhibiting his erection in the window of his house in Horse Guards Parade? I was on hand to collapse his construction in court. I was the one who proved that the rumours regarding the Bishop of Birmingham – that he shagged young girls while confirmin’ ’em – were untrue. And then there was that scandalous matter of the rocking gondola in Venice: I got Admiral Codrington’s errant wife way out of her depth over that little fling of hers. And we won’t even talk about Lord Cardigan’s creaking britches and cracking boots when I told the court about the private detective who was hiding under the sofa on which the hero of the charge of the Light Brigade was cavorting with someone else’s wife.
No, the indisputable fact is that I was once sought by all, lionized by Society, £5,000 a year was the remuneration I earned at the Old Bailey and I was made welcome at the greatest of houses: Disraeli’s, Earl Combermere’s, Lord Lucan’s, Lady Holland’s. Never Gladstone’s, of course – we had a spat when I suggested in court that he’d acted like a pimp after Lord Lincoln had eloped with the Duke of Newcastle’s wife and put her in the pudding club. Gladstone took the comment personally, got into a huff, demanded an apology, but dammit, it was just advocacy, you know? And I obtained substantial damages for the grocer I was representing, so.…
But there were hundreds of other hearings: you can read them for yourself in back copies of The Times. So it wasn’t all just a matter of actresses and horses, though ironically enough, that’s how it all started. Over a horse, I mean. The beginning of my rise; and in a sense, the commencement of my fall.
It was in 1844. The horse was called Running Rein.