2. Amelia's tale.
I am known to family and friends as Amelia, Millie to my brother and sisters, but I was born The Honourable Augusta, Caroline, Amelia, Courteney Fox, eldest daughter of Edward Fox, third Baron Holland, and the Lady Caroline Courteney. Our home is Seagrave House, in Leicestershire, not the biggest or grandest of our family homes (that would be Caversham Priory), but the homeliest and most comfortable. My mother treasures her comfort above all, which is a surprisingly good characteristic in a parent.
My family have always gone to London for the season, usually leaving us younger children in Leicestershire. In the winter we go out with the Quorn, and my father has been joint master of foxhounds for most of my life. We used to have the kennels here, which meant a score of lovely, lollopy puppies for us children to play with. Then the kennels were moved to Mountsorrel and now, at the other end of the spectrum, we have favourite old foxhounds with names like Bellman and Toddy to live out their declining years on our hearthrug.
My father has always been a country landowner, taking his seat in the House of Lords when agricultural issues like the Corn Laws came up, and voting loyally in the Whig interest. He was, however, capable of independence, and on one issue I remember, he went against many of his Whig cronies and supported Lord Byron's impassioned and eloquent defence of the luddites. A hopeless cause, but a brave one. Mama was proud of him; her family scandalised.
Father's political hero was his cousin, Charles James Fox, the radical who loved and admired Napoleon and saw the aristocracy principally as a tool to check the power of the Crown. Although father is a quiet, gentle, rather studious man, he holds the same strong radical convictions as his cousin, and, in a more restrained way, as befitted her sex, my mother had been reared in, and holds to, the same principles.
In Father's view, when Fox died ten years ago, the Whigs lost their soul, and he has seethed with resentment under the hand of the Tories ever since. Since Waterloo settled the issue of Europe last June, father has chafed to get into active politics, and join with his cronies, the Greys, the Lambs and the Russells, and firebrands like Sir Francis Burdett, to take up the cudgels. He dreams of a wholesale reform of parliament, a check on corruption and jobbery, and, when the time is right, Catholic emancipation.
It is for this reason that he has taken on a private secretary, and started a voluminous political correspondence. So one rainy day, the chariot of the gods descended and out stepped George M'Crimmond. The servants swiftly and unobtrusively unloaded his luggage, and, after we had welcomed him, the housekeeper, Mrs Ferguson conducted him into the house, and showed him to his room.
With my sisters, huddled under the large umbrella held by John Footman, I looked on as my parents greeted him, and I suddenly realised that I had never until that moment, seen a handsome man. I was, of course, about to have my first London season, and in the past year I had attended dances at the Leicester Assembly Rooms, where I met and danced with the scions of the county families. Of course I knew many of them from the hunting field, and from earlier children's parties, and to me they seemed utterly plain and utterly prosaic.
It is simple, the formula for male beauty. Light sandy hair, with a tendency to curl when wet. Sandy eyelashes framing wide blue-grey eyes. A high brow with the eye-sockets deep set, high cheekbones, a long thin nose, thin red lips above a square jaw. A complexion composed of reds and whites, red cheeks prominent on a white face. A tall slim frame with wide, thin shoulders; the head set on a neck like a pillar in a Norman crypt. Give him a light tenor voice with just the suspicion of a Scotch burr, and you have a pattern. All you have to do is make multiple copies of George M'Crimmond. What a tragedy for me that I would never have the opportunity to make even one such copy.
Nothing of this shewed on my face I am sure. My face was a blank, polite mask. Our brother Edward, now at Eton, has a wild, wicked sense of humour that has entertained his sisters from the cradle. He has a lightning wit, and says the most comical things in a dry, understated way. Unfortunately one of his favourite pranks is to try to make us laugh at inopportune moments, with unfortunate results for us. When he is caught out, he is sent to his tutor for a birching, something he shrugs off as a triviality. When he makes us burst out with the giggles in church, or on a public occasion, we feel mama's ebony hairbrush on our legs.
He has taught us a valuable lesson in self-control. Thanks to Edward, I was able to wear the mask as I fell headlong in love. Stupidly, I never doubted that everyone would find him as handsome, as lovable as I did. A day or two later, I walked into the small saloon where my mother held court, and my sisters and I did our needlework and read together.
