Eighteen fifty seven had not been a good year for Missus Amanda Williams.
In February, her husband Samuel had left her. Not just left her for another woman, but of all people, an actress of twenty something. Whilst losing her husband was hard to take, for a woman rapidly approaching forty, the fact that he opted for a young thing was devastating to her.
Then in July, her father had died from a massive heart attack. Being in London when that happened, it was impossible to get home to the family plantation Selby Bluff in Meldrim near Savannah, Georgia for the funeral. Now, though, two months later, after settling her affairs in London, she was about to set sail from Bristol in the West of England to Norfolk, Virginia.
Amanda and her father George had never been close, in fact since she was in her teens they had only seen each other a few times. Her mother had been the family, her father was the plantation. He ran it well with a military-like precision and efficiency, which ensured that it made loads of money and was one of the most successful in the Savannah area.
Whilst the slaves were, of course, treated very strictly, 'as you had to otherwise they would be lazy,' they were certainly better off at Selby Bluff Plantation than many others in Georgia. George La Salle recognised that even slaves responded to fair treatment and that it was in his and the plantation's interest for them to be well motivated. He achieved that, and thus greater productivity than most plantations, by finding a good balance between fair treatment and strict sometimes harsh physical discipline.
Despite having been brought up surrounded by slaves, Amanda found the whole slavery ownership of human beings hard to take or accept.
It was her mother, Florence, who had been the driving influence in Amanda's life. A Yankee from Boston, she was well educated and well read. Why on earth she had moved from the sophistication of Massachusetts to the cultural wastelands of Georgia was a question that always fascinated Amanda, but had remained unanswered right up until her mother's death a few years ago.
She had ensured that both Amanda and her year younger brother, Adam, had received excellent educations, something that her father felt was a waste of time, particularly for women.
Whereas her brother went to Harvard, Amanda never did get to university, or to the finishing school in Europe that Florence had intended. On a weekend trip to New York from Boston where she had been visiting Adam when she was twenty-three, she met Samuel Williams. Amongst other things, he was a professional gambler and simply swept her off her feet. The next weekend he took the train to Boston and not only captivated her again, he swept her into his bed at the original hotel in Copley Place, The Belvedere.
Pregnant, she married him a month later at a dazzling wedding in Manhattan, paid for by Samuel. Her father and most of her family apart from Florence and Adam refused to attend. Losing the baby after a few months and being unable to have further children was a heartache Amanda constantly struggled to come to terms with.
Unlike most gamblers, Samuel was shrewd. Every time he won, he gave a quarter of his winnings to Amanda and invested another quarter in longer-term, difficult-to-sell investments. One of these was in a theatrical company owned by a descendant of David Garrick, a massive name in the American and English theatres. That investment grew rapidly and provided Samuel and Amanda with a steady income from both the New York and, particularly, the London businesses.
"Let's go and live in London, Mandy," Samuel said one night as they lay in bed, still sweaty and panting from their lovemaking, which as usual had been spectacular.
They talked about it for some time, with Amanda becoming increasingly more excited at, and interested in, the idea of living in the greatest city in the world, at that time, Queen Victoria's London.
Whilst Samuel's gambling increased in London, where big poker games, roulette and Chemin De Fer were all the rage, his main occupation gradually became a theatrical impresario. He loved setting up the plays and music halls, negotiating the deals, motivating writers and, as Amanda found out later, fucking the young actresses.
London had been fantastic. Samuel had been fabulously successful as a theatrical producer and latterly as a theatre owner. That had opened doors to so many circles that their five years in England was a whirl of social engagements which reached right up to the level of the Prince of Wales, Queen Victoria's eldest son.
They lived in a mansion near to Piccadilly and had an estate in the country in Berkshire, not far from Windsor Castle where the royal family spent much of their time. They travelled frequently visiting the major cities in Europe, even going as far as to sailing down the Nile in Egypt.
In many ways it was an ideal life.
They were rich and successful and both had interesting work. Amanda had used some of the gambling money from Samuel to open a publishing company and as a hobby had started writing books, under a nom de plume of course. Her description of her writing as 'Jane Austen with red blood' meant that under no circumstances could they be associated with her!
That was her secret occupation, even from Samuel. The string of houses of ill repute he owned were his secret from Amanda. As time went on, the brothels became not just a business for him, but also a hobby.
It had taken Amanda, and Samuel come to that, to understand and adapt to the 'standards' of Victorian England. In America such aspects of life as etiquette, dress codes, manner, behaviour and morals were clearer and more straightforward than they were in Britain where everything appeared to one thing, but turned out to be something else. For some reason, probably the personality of the thirty eight year old Queen Victoria, social and family life was conducted with such a degree of prudishness that on the surface everything appeared to be of very highly morale values. But scratch that surface and all manner of double standards with pornography, prostitution, opium smoking, mistresses and lovers, kept women and gargoyles quickly emerged. In many ways this suited the liberal, easy going relaxed thinking and loose standards that Samuel, particularly and Amanda to a lesser, but nevertheless meaningful degree held.
They were both fairly heavily involved in charity work, having befriended the Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, who was the leading philanthropist of the time. Amanda worked closely with him and Florence Nightingale, a nurse who Anthony supported. Samuel had a great interest in boxing and worked closely with the father of John Chambers who went on to develop the Queensberry rules.
Overall it was a very heady time. But as Amanda came to learn, nothing is perfect, no couple's life is ideal, and there are always problems of one sort or the other either existing or just round the corner.
London in mid-Victorian times was similar to the revolution in the nineteen sixties; it was 'swinging London,' but without the Beatles. With their various interests, Samuel and Amanda were right at the heart of the swinging scene. As usual with most 'swinging scenes,' sex featured strongly and Victorian London was awash with the desires of the flesh.
Infidelity was rife among the upper classes, generally and, particularly, within the 'arty' set that Samuel and Amanda frequented.
Most men had mistresses and many 'highly respectable' women found nothing immoral in having a lover. The difference between the genders was that men tended to have a series of mistresses, sometimes several at the same time whilst 'respectable' women generally had one lover, preferably lasting some time. The established pattern worked well, though naturally it was never discussed, apart from between very close friends.
The whole rather sordid way of life was 'brushed under the carpet.' Pornography was rife and on the increase, with brothels and streetwalkers seemingly everywhere. Not much different to later years, really.
Samuel had always been a ladies' man. The tall, slim and muscular long, dark haired man had a highly fashionable, heavy black moustache tinged with grey. His piercing blue eyes seemed to permanently sparkle and, when looking at ladies, appeared to have x-ray abilities that seemed to send his gaze right through their clothing. For the first few years of their marriage, Amanda had believed his flirting was just his way.
But slowly, it dawned on her that it was more than that.
She never, of course, confronted him with her suspicions, but as time went on and their position in London became more deeply involved with the liberal life-style of theatre folk, her reservations turned into convictions.
It hurt at first. She found it demeaning, annoying and frustrating to wonder who, sitting around her table at a dinner party for instance, was being shagged by her husband, or which one of this week's cast was he putting up in a hotel away from the rest so he could pop round for 'afternoon matinees.'
After a period of heartache, she gradually came to accept that was just how things were in upper class London. What was good for the goose was good for the gander, she eventually decided, responding to his infidelity by taking her own lover or, more accurately, lovers.
After several meaningless, but nevertheless sexually satisfying flings, Amanda settled down with her long-term lover, Sir Bernard d'Argent. Into his fifties, the grey haired man was a scholar, being very versed in early psychology and as a playwright and author. Amanda thought he was the most intelligent man she had ever met; and a good mind had always been far more likely to get her juices flowing than mere good looks.
After meeting him at the premiere of a play produced by Samuel, his intellect took just a few weeks not only to get inside her bloomers, but to get them, together with every other piece of her clothing onto the floor of his London apartment in Dover Street.
