The summer of 1814, as the story indicates, was packed with events to celebrate Napoleon’s defeat, although no one at the time believed he would ever escape from his confinement on Elba to organise another army in 1815. Annemarie had partly relied on these hectic celebrations to help her find her mother, thinking that, somewhere in the crowds, there would surely be a sighting. The discontent of the Prince Regent and his unpopularity is no exaggeration, and I chose to pity him rather than to mock, his unloving parents having a lot to answer for in making him the irresponsible man he became. It was part of Annemarie’s transformation to find in him the opposite of what she had expected.
His friend, the Marquess of Hertford, was in many ways the same, living a life of dissipation while indulging in a genuine love and appreciation of art, and Ragley Hall in Warwickshire is now open to the public, still full of the treasures Annemarie would have seen. The Hertfords’ London home is known as Manchester House, though Carlton House was demolished, after all the money spent on it. Brighton Pavilion is still there, thriving, recently renovated and utterly splendid.
Montague Street lies behind the British Museum, which was then a fledgling institute, and the recipient of several collections, including Lord Townley’s and the library of the Prince Regent’s father, George III. In 1814, the British Museum was not quite the thriving organised place I have made it out to be. The public were only reluctantly admitted on certain days and in limited numbers, hustled round by guides far less knowledgeable than those of today. However, it suited my story to endow them with an eagerness to acquire Lord Benistone’s treasures which, only a few years later, they would have deserved.
Lady Emma Hamilton spent some years, on and off, in various debtors’ prisons after the demise of her protector, Lord Nelson in 1805. The story of the publication of letters from him to her is true, though she gained only publicity and scorn by it. But then, I do not believe she was responsible for that catastrophe, except by neglecting to keep them more safely. There is no record of any letters from the Prince Regent to Lady Hamilton; I have invented that because it sounded like a possibility. After the Prince’s death, thousands of trinkets, jewellery, letters and locks of hair were discovered amongst his belongings, most of which were destroyed.
On July 1st 1814, Lady Emma Hamilton and her daughter Horatia escaped by night on a chartered boat to Calais. She died in the following January, penniless and suffering from a debilitating illness.
Lord and Lady Verne’s marriage took place on the same day as that of her elder sister to Colonel Harrow, though it was Annemarie’s son who was born only a month before Oriel’s. The Vernes had two more sons after that.
Marguerite and Lord Bockington married in the following year on her eighteenth birthday, by which time the scandal surrounding the Benistones had been well and truly eclipsed by the Battle of Waterloo and all its repercussions.
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