Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton (31 page)

Maryiot Cells was draped in black from ground floor to garrets. Every member of the household, from Sir Ralph to the youngest scullion or garden-boy, was clad in mourning clothes. Black coaches rumbled up to the door, disgorging relations and friends with drooping faces and lowered voices. The lower regions were filled with the smell of the funeral baked meats and biscuits. Rings, mourning scarves and hatbands were distributed to the gentry, gloves to all the retainers, money to the deserving poor.

And the principal figure in this sombre pageant – Lady Skelton herself? The law decreed that all persons, regardless of rank, should be buried in woollen. But some small but pure spring of generosity and pity welling up in Sir Ralph's heart in this hour of his profound shame and horror, reminded him how fastidious Barbara had always been in her person and attire. The rigid, strange figure lying on the sable draped bed in the sable shrouded room still seemed to him the elusive, unaccountable, but on the whole docile wife of his imagination.

The truth, so savagely incredible, had hardly penetrated yet beyond the outer surface of his shocked mind. He gave orders that Lady Skelton was to be buried in a Brussels lace ‘head',
²
a holland shift, with tucker and double ruffles, and long white kid gloves. The lace and gloves were provided by Lady Skelton's favourite mercer, Mrs Munce of the Sign of the Golden Glove in the town of Buckingham.

The day of the funeral dawned crisp and bright. The haws were scarlet against the pure blue sky. A milky haze veiled the ground. Grasses and brambles were rigid and glittering as crystals in the early sunshine. The woods
were copper bright, but in the distance the slopes melted to a smoky blue. High in the morning sky floated the incongruous and belated moon.

Inside Maryiot Cells all was gloom and blackness, even to the soles of the mourners' shoes, but out of doors the world sparkled with the mellow radiance of early autumn.

They buried her at night in the family vault in the churchyard of Maiden Worthy church. Twenty-two poor women in gowns and kerchiefs headed the procession, then came the household, then the family chaplain and another clergyman, a doctor of divinity, and then the coffin, the pall being borne by six young ladies, daughters of the neighbouring gentry, escorted by six young gentlemen, all with white and black cypress scarves.
³
The family followed and a great throng of relations and of other ladies and gentlemen in mourning. And last of all, a servant led Fleury, the dead lady's favourite horse. All was decent, solemn and in order.

The body of Lady Skelton was met at the lych-gate by the choristers, and borne up the same path which less than seven years ago she had trodden as a young and smiling bride.

Candles, flickering in the draught, pierced the obscurity of the church, casting a pale light on the pale and lowered faces of the mourners. The voice of the family chaplain, as he delivered the funeral sermon, seemed to flicker like the candles in the draught of a nameless spiritual malaise. He praised Barbara Lady Skelton's domestic graces and virtues, her gracious manner, her piety, her charity to the sick and needy, and his praise in its fearful insincerity was more frightening than any condemnation. He said, ‘Her memory
will live among us and breathe a pleasant scent,' and his voice faltered at his own words, and died away.

They shivered in the chill night air as they stood with flaring torches round the door of the vault. There was the shuffle of feet, a stifled sob, faint whisperings. They cast their boughs of rosemary on to the coffin – rosemary for the bride, rosemary for the corpse, symbol of the unity underlying all life and death. Avoiding one another's eyes they quenched their torches in the soil.

Then in darkness and in silence, bearing their smoking torches with them, they walked away believing, in their ignorance, that Barbara Skelton was at rest and would trouble her family and the neighbourhood no more.

Introduction

1
H. Tims,
Once a Wicked Lady: A Biography of Margaret Lockwood
(London: Virgin, 1989), p. 132.

2
F.E. Smedley, ‘Maud Allinghame: A Legend of Hertfordshire', in F.E. Smedley and E.H. Yates,
Mirth and Metre, by Two Merry Men
(London: Routledge, 1855), p. 1.

3
J.E. Cussans,
A History of Hertfordshire
, vol. iii (1881; East Ardsley: E.P. Publishing, 1972), p. 115.

4
Cussans, p. 115.

5
This account of Katherine Ferrers' life is largely drawn from two sources: C.W. Field,
The Wicked Lady of Markyate: Studies and Documents
(Robertsbridge, East Sussex: 1979); and J. Barber,
The Wicked Lady: The Legend and Life of Katherine Ferrers
(2014). Both are self-published works, though clearly the product of much research, and both broadly agree in their facts and their conclusions about the historical Katherine Ferrers and her connection to the legend. See also John Barber's website:
http://www.johnbarber.com/wickedlady.html
.

6
See Field, p. 3.

7
Ann, Lady Fanshawe,
The Memoirs of Ann, Lady Fanshawe
, ed. H.C. Fanshawe (London: John Lane, 1907), p. 95.

8
Field, p. 6.

9
C. Hole,
Haunted England: A Survey of English Ghost-Lore
(London: B.T. Batsford, 1940), p. 94.

10
I am indebted to Commander Richard Perceval Maxwell for my information regarding the life of his mother, Magdalen King-Hall, and for his hospitality when conveying it to me in person.

11
Her older brother Stephen, served in the navy before becoming an MP and a distinguished print and broadcast journalist, famous for his political newsletter which championed opposition to fascism in the 1930s. Her older sister, Louise (1897–1983), was also a writer, publishing four novels and an edited version of the diaries belonging to her naval ancestors, between 1930 and 1946.

12
D. Wallace,
The Woman's Historical Novel: British Women Writers, 1900–2000
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 79.

13
Wallace, p. 4.

14
Wallace, p. 6.

15
M. Joannou,
Women's Writing, Englishness and National and Cultural Identity: The Mobile Woman and the Migrant Voice, 1938–1962
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 68.

16
Joannou, p. 68.

17
Wallace, p. 5.

18
For Margaret Lockwood, too, the film would prove career-defining. As her biographer notes, ‘the role and the title were destined to become synonymous with her', and ‘[f]rom that time on, for the rest of her days, she would never be allowed to forget that she was
The Wicked Lady
.' See Tims, p. 133.

19
W.B. Gerish,
The Wicked Lady Ferrers: A Legend of Markyate Cell in Flamsted
(Bishop's Stortford, 1911), p. 6.

Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton

Finis?

1
The Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women's Corps of the British Army during the Second World War.

2
Air Raid Precautions, the organisation responsible for preparing for air raids during the war, and dealing with their aftermath. Their duties included maintaining the blackout at night-time.

Part I

1
A reference to 1 Corinthians 13:12: ‘For now we see through a glass, darkly'.

2
From Epistle 27 of the letters of Pliny the Younger, addressed to Licinius Sura. This epigraph comes from the famous translation of Pliny's letters by John Boyle, Earl of Cork and Orrery, which was published in 1751.

Lady Skelton at Home

1
The phrase belongs to Thomas Browne (1605–82), from his
Hydriotaphia
,
Urne Burial, or, a Discourse of the Sepulchral Urnes lately found in Norfolk
(1658), in which he discusses the inconsistency in classical depictions of ghosts, specifically whether they can be harmed by mortal weapons.

2
A skirt with a hem so narrow that it was difficult for the wearer to walk properly, fashionable in the few years leading up to the First World War.

3
Kulanga is a small village in Northwestern Zambia, formerly within the British colonial protectorate of Northern Rhodesia. ‘Ujojo' does not seem
to be the name for an actual tribe or region – it is the Zulu word for the long-tailed finch, sometimes used as a name. The inaccuracy may be part of the satire of Colonel McRoberts as a typically bigoted example of colonial attitudes, insensitive to ethnic difference.

4
A laxative made from rhubarb, ginger and magnesia, named after the British physician James Gregory (1753–1821).

The Reticence of Miss Isabella Skelton

1
From John Milton,
A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle
,
1634
(more commonly known as
Comus
), line 432.

2
A type of bobbin lace (made from braided and twisted lengths of thread, held on bobbins) which originated in Valenciennes in northern France.

3
An apple-pie bed was a type of practical joke – made with one of the sheets folded back on itself so that its occupant's legs could not stretch out.

4
A decorative certificate or scroll, probably on calf-skin vellum, to commemorate the occasion of their marriage.

5
An ulster is a thick overcoat, made of durable material such as tweed. Traditionally, in the Victorian period, it would have featured a cape around the shoulders, though in the twentieth century the cape disappeared.

6
A dolman is a wide cape or mantle worn as an outer garment by ladies, often folded over the arms in place of sleeves. It was particularly fashionable in the 1870s and 1880s, exactly when this chapter of the novel is set, so this is another instance of King-Hall's very detailed and accurate depiction of period fashions.

7
Frederic William Farrar (1831–1903) was one of the most prominent Church of England clergymen in late-Victorian England, rising to become Dean of Canterbury. He had earlier been a teacher at Harrow School and Headmaster of Marlborough College, before entering the church. His renown derived partly from his power as a preacher, and spread more widely due to his prodigious output as a writer; he was an author of fiction (particularly children's fiction) and a prominent philological scholar, as well as a theologian. Highly progressive for his time, he became a friend of Charles Darwin and argued that the church should have no theological objection to Darwin's theory of evolution, in principle, though he was not himself entirely convinced by Darwin's evidence.

Lady Sophia Met Her Match

1
Like the epigraph to the previous chapter, this is from John Milton's
Comus
(1634). In fact, it comes from line 434, a mere two lines later than the previous quotation.

2
A slightly mysterious reference, as there is no record of an actual architect by this name. The name is suggestive of Josiah Wedgwood (1730–95), the renowned eighteenth-century potter, although he was not an architect. Wedgwood's contemporary (and fellow innovator in design and marketing), the cabinet-maker Thomas Chippendale (1718–79), did take on many commissions for aristocratic patrons, helping them to redesign and furnish their grand stately homes with custom-made furnishings. ‘Josias Wedgeworth' may be King-Hall's fictional merging of these two preeminent figures of Georgian interior design.

3
The Ionic order is one of the three orders of classical architecture, the others being Doric and Corinthian. The Ionic order originally dates back to Greece in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, the political and cultural high-point of classical Athens. It is associated with slender columns, with a distinctive scroll-like volute or capital at the top of each column, and was a popular feature of neo-classical architecture in the eighteenth century.

4
‘Some foolishness'.

5
Literally, ‘duck', but it can also mean a ‘false rumour', as it does here.

6
‘It matters little to me; I don't care'.

7
‘Se'ennight' or more commonly ‘sennight' is another term for a week – ‘seven nights'. It has fallen out of usage, though we retain the related term ‘fortnight'. In this sentence, ‘Monday se'ennight' means ‘a week on Monday'.

8
A ‘drum' – also known as a ‘kettle drum' – was a large, informal tea party, held in the afternoon, at which tea, cake and sandwiches would be served. They were popular in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Guests would dress for daytime visiting, rather than in formal evening attire. The name possibly derives from the tea party's colonial origins in parts of the British Empire such as India, when officer's wives would host such parties in military camps, and regimental kettle drums would be used as substitute tables.

9
An archaic spelling of ‘sat'.

Part II

1
The English Rogue
, by Richard Head (1637–86) is one of the earliest examples of prose fiction in English, and one of the very first English works to be widely translated on the continent. A bawdy, picaresque account of the often criminal adventures of its protagonist, Meriton Latroon, it was initially denied a publication licence in 1665 for being too indecent, but became a bestseller when Head tempered its contents a little. The popularity of the work, when it was finally published in 1667, led to the production of several sequels or further volumes of the work, some of
them authored by the bookseller Francis Kirkman. This chapter epigraph is taken from the frontispiece of the fifth volume, published in 1688, with the full title
The English Rogue, Containing a Brief Discovery of the Most Eminent Cheats, Robberies & other Extravagancies, Committed by Him.
This volume is really little more than an abridged summary of the previous four books. None of this volume was written by Head, who had died two years earlier. The presence of the epigraph suggests King-Hall's knowledge of a long tradition of English and European fiction about criminals and highwaymen, and her desire to relate her novel to this.