Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton (23 page)

The substantial sum of money which she inherited from him was, however, some consolation to her, both as a proof of his esteem and as a means of enabling her to leave London, where her neighbours and in-laws were spreading the most malicious rumours about her.

She was next heard of in Portsmouth, where she set up as the landlady of an inn. What she did in Portsmouth besides innkeeping would be best left to the imagination. Sufficient to say that, after a particularly barbarous highway robbery and murder on the Portsmouth road, she packed up and disappeared from the neighbourhood.

Her next recorded appearance was in Buckingham, and here Mrs Nan Munce, alias Kitty Price, alias Aubrey, alias Rumbold, alias Bellingham, alias Barton, alias Getting, settled down to her mercer's trade and to a life of, apparently, impeccable respectability. She was no longer young and had lost her pretty figure. She had certainly had an adventurous and risky career. It was little short of a miracle that she had escaped wearing a Tyburn tippet. It might easily be believed that she was content to deal in such innocuous wares as point d'Espagne
⁴
and scented gloves for the rest of her life.

True, her more favoured clients were aware that she also supplied on request rare perfumes and unguents for the complexion and the hands; moreover it was whispered that sometimes, after much persuasion, and in consideration of a handsome present, she would provide love-potions or aphrodisiacs for ladies who were plagued with a backward husband or lover, as well as other drugs for ladies who were expecting an unwelcome addition to their families.

Young Lady Skelton knew all this and, thanks to her association with Captain Jackson, who had been a crony of Mrs Munce's, she knew more besides.

And so one gusty day towards the middle of July, Lady Skelton drove over to Buckingham in her chariot, attended by her waiting gentlewoman, a page and two footmen. Her
ostensible reason for this visit to the county town was to replenish her wardrobe, and though Hogarth might secretly grieve that his mistress – over whose newborn soul he watched with the anxious care of a nurse – should still be concerned for the adornment of her perishable body, he was sensible enough to realise that she could only be weaned to a better way of life by gradual stages. Better by far that she should be choosing fripperies at Mrs Munce's shop than committing robbery-under-arms on the King's highway.

Lady Skelton's yellow and black chariot clattered noisily over the cobblestones of the town, crossed the Market Place and entered a narrow street where the eaves of the houses nearly met overhead, and drew up before the small bow windows of Mrs Munce's shop. An elegant gilded sign over the door, depicting a Golden Glove, indicated her wares.

Lady Skelton gave her waiting gentlewoman an ivory tablet on which was written a list of groceries which she was to purchase for her – raisins, blue currants, cloves, prunes, mace, almonds, lemons (she was not to pay more than three shillings a dozen for them), candy sugar and nutmegs – ordered her coachman to wait for her at the inn, and went unattended into the shop.

Mrs Nan Munce, who was embroidering a white satin waistcoat with silk honeysuckle and carnations, rose and curtseyed respectfully at the sight of her distinguished client. She considered Lady Skelton to be one of the most elegant-looking ladies in the county, nay, in Mrs Munce's opinion, she would cut a very modish figure even at Whitehall.

Mrs Munce was stylishly but soberly dressed in black taffety with very fine lace at her bosom and elbows. She
wore a black lace cap on her head, and jet earrings and bracelets. She was a small woman; her figure had spread, but her prettily turned arms and ankles testified to the seductive daintiness that had once made her so dangerously attractive. Her blonde hair was tarnished, but her skin still had the softness of a faded roseleaf. Her eyes were grey. She had a small mouth. At first sight she looked rather a sweet little woman.

‘Good day, milady. It is a long time since I had the honour of your ladyship's custom.'

‘Yes, Mrs Munce. I have been busy.' Lady Skelton seated herself, loosened her hood and placed her satin and beribboned muff on the counter.

Mrs Munce looked heavenwards. ‘Ah, yes, milady, indeed. The cares and responsibilities of a country mansion – ' You would have thought that Mistress Nan Munce had lived the best part of her life in the stillroom and the herb garden.

‘And pray what can I show you your ladyship? I have the sweetest collection of lace and frilled pinners here, as worn in Paris, that I would especially commend to your ladyship's attention. A settee or double pinner
⁵
is in the very last degree modish for dressing the head and would suit your ladyship to perfection. I am trespassing on a milliner's preserves, of course, but I cannot remain indifferent to my customers' heads. Heads are of prime importance in a woman of fashion, as your ladyship will agree, and your ladyship has such a
beautiful
shade of hair. What a delight it must be for your ladyship's maid to dress it! Or if your ladyship is interested in new materials, here is a length of incarnadine satin that was surely made for your ladyshi
p. Imagine it trimmed with a silver parchment lace and worn with a cloth of silver waistcoat! Oh, milady, that would be sweetly pretty!'

She babbled on in professional ecstasy.

Lady Skelton fingered the incarnadine satin casually. She said, ‘Yes, I will have the satin and the cloth of silver for a waistcoat too. But I did not come here to buy stuffs.'

‘No, milady? Gloves, perhaps? I have a collection of scented gloves that could not be surpassed by any merchant on the Exchange.'

Lady Skelton smiled gently. She said, ‘No, nor gloves neither. Mrs Munce, it is the secret whisper of some that you keep even more interesting wares than these in your back parlour.'

Mrs Munce folded the satin with expert neatness. She put her head archly on one side.

‘You have been hearing of my complexion milk?'

‘Yes – and other things.'

There was a silence. Mrs Munce regarded Lady Skelton narrowly. Then she said in matter-of-fact tones, ‘Will your ladyship do me the favour of coming to the other room?'

‘Certainly.'

Mrs Munce led the way into a small back parlour. The room itself was dark and pokey, but it looked out into a very pleasant little walled garden with a chestnut tree in it. The greenness and flowery brightness of the closed plot was almost startling in contrast to the sombre little room.

Mrs Munce excused herself for a few minutes, and returned presently with a silver tray and a dish of chocolate which she offered to Lady Skelton.

‘Now, milady, what can I do for you?'

‘I want your help.'

Mrs Munce smiled deprecatingly. ‘My poor services are your ladyship's to command. But is there really anything that I can do for your ladyship? A lady of your exquisite beauty will never make me believe that she is in need of one of my little love-potions!' She scanned Barbara's slender, untroubled figure knowingly.

Lady Skelton rose with a swift and graceful movement and went to a gilt mirror that hung on the wall. Leaning forward, she adjusted the black patch, in the shape of a tiny heart, that she wore near her left nostril. Behind her own reflection she could see that of Mrs Munce.

She said slowly and very deliberately, as she stretched her long neck backwards and tilted up her face, the better to see the patch:

‘No, I do not want anything to draw a man to me, Mrs Munce. I want something to send a man away,
Mrs Price.'

The face behind her in the mirror was the colour of cheese. She heard a rustling sound and turned round in a flash. Mrs Munce's hands were plucking at her taffety skirt, her mouth was working.

She said in a choking voice, ‘I don't understand you.'

Lady Skelton gave a little laugh. ‘Oh yes, I think you do. I want a little powder that would impart a
heavenly
flavour to a possett – or let us say, a
broth.
Do you understand me better now?'

‘…Murder though it hath no tongue, will speak
with most miraculous organ.'
¹

A
FTER THAT LITTLE
jaunt to Buckingham, young Lady Skelton led as blameless, dutiful and dull a life as even Hogarth (or for that matter her most spiteful female friend) could wish. She had always been an indifferent if fairly competent housewife, performing her duties as lady of the manor with a languor that betrayed her boredom, leaving as much as could decently be left to the charge of her capable housekeeper, Mrs Sampson.

Now a transformation had come over her. No more lie-abed habits. She rose at five or six in the morning, and nearly every hour of her day was profitably employed. With a lace apron tied over her gown, her chatelaine of keys jingling from her waist, she spent many hours in the stillroom, distilling fragrant perfumes and essences – elder flower water for sunburn, rosemary to wash the hair, pastes for whitening the hands, red rose-water for medicinal purposes, and the more homely wines, ginger, elderberry, currant and cowslip. She supervised more actively than heretofore the work of the buttery, dairy, laundry, poultry-yard, flower and herb garden. A housemaid or laundrymaid, engaged in her morning's work, would be aware of a
shadow falling across the threshold of the room and, looking up, would be startled to see young Lady Skelton standing there, watching her with her strange green eyes. At the time this had seemed no more momentous than a spur to a flurried display of industry, but in years to come it was something to tell their grandchildren by the winter fireside.

On fine days, with a lace veil over her face to keep off the flies, Lady Skelton stood patiently with her maids among the currant bushes, gathering the bead-like fruit. On wet days she entered in a vellum bound book a number of prescriptions that she had collected or that had been thrust upon her by elderly relations. For a quinsy – ‘Take a silk thread dipped in the blood of a mouse, and let the party swallow it down…' Against bubonic plague – ‘Take half of a handful of rew, likewise of madragories, featherfew, sorrel, burnet and a quantity of the crops and roots of dragons, and wash them clean and seethe them with a soft fire in running water…'
²

And needlework. Her fingers were seldom idle. Even on sunny days she strolled no farther than the pleasure ground or paradise, as it was called, where, seated in an arbour, her nimble fingers made the piece of satin or canvas on her lap blossom into a mimic garden of silken flowers.

Apart from these housewifely preoccupations she showed, to Hogarth's gratification, active signs of her changed heart. She became assiduous in her devotions, attending church twice a day as well as family prayers. As she knelt on her dark red velvet cushion, hardly more conscious of the chaplain's prayers than she would have been of the droning of bees on a summer's day, she was aware that her sister-in-law Paulina, that silent, self-contained girl, was
watching her with a quizzical, perhaps cynical curiosity. Barbara did not care. She had no wish to win Paulina's affection or esteem. She seldom thought of Paulina, except to wonder how soon she would marry (for her presence in the house, unobtrusive though it was, somehow irked her) and was indifferent to Paulina's opinion of her. But when Hogarth gave her a commending glance from beneath his shaggy eyebrows she experienced a real glow of satisfaction.

To Hogarth, Lady Skelton's very appearance testified to the improved health of her soul. Since she had given up her evil way of life she had acquired a new bloom, a glossiness and an air of soft youthfulness that even the austere Hogarth could not help but find appealing. Indeed, after the strain, feverish excitement and late hours of the last few months, Barbara did not find this period of enforced repose unwelcome.

It happened that this was the time of year when, with Hogarth's aid, she was accustomed to look into the household accounts, or rather that part of them that came into her province, a long and tedious business. Accordingly she summoned him to the little wainscot room and, seated at a gate-legged table, allowed him to lead her, docile and bewildered as a child, through a maze of figures (for her early education had been concerned more with lute playing, needlework and Italian sonnets than with mathematics) – the wages of the female servants, from the majestic Mrs Salmon and Lady Skelton's own waiting-maid, to such lowly figures as Joan-about-the-house or Mag-in-the-kitchen; the money spent on groceries, tea, coffee, and sweetmeats, on yards of holland for sheets, on aprons and tippets for the maidservants and frieze for their cloaks, on ‘women's triflings', combs, pins, laces, thimbles
and the like, bought from itinerant pedlars, and on silk for a quilted carpet for the table in the withdrawing-room, pintado printed with oriental scenes for the bedchambers, and green leather gilded hangings for the winter parlour.
³

After a while Lady Skelton would say, ‘Enough, good Hogarth. Enough for today. My head is wonderfully heavy, yes, and my heart is heavy too. Hogarth, I feel myself much sunk at present under the hand of Providence. Sometimes I wonder if Heaven will indeed overlook my past sins and keep me from the sad end that I deserve.'

Hogarth was not immune from the besetting foible of his sex – vanity. In his case it took the not ignoble form of believing that it was his special gift and mission to save errant souls. He could therefore no more remain indifferent to such an appeal than a hound could ignore the huntsman's horn. Laying down his quill pen he strove with all the eloquence and earnestness at his command to dispel Lady Skelton's doubts, begging her not to put her trust in her own repentance however lively (this would indeed be a most dangerous conceit), but to seek grace from a Higher Source. ‘I would not have you abate your penitence by one thought or sigh, my lady,' he assured her, ‘for this is a sweet-smelling ointment that you can offer to your Maker, but neither would I have you indulge too much in despair, for despair is of the devil.'