THIRTY

Opening the Junius box returned Umber for the duration of a sleepless night

to a long unremembered past: his past, before Avebury, before the last

Monday in July, 1981. His life had been so simple then, so unfettered. A

sense of that freedom reached him from every eagerly scribbled note, every

neatly labelled batch of papers. They were the work of a younger, keenereyed, sharper-brained man, a man who believed academic zeal was the best

and surest way to prise a secret from its history.

Separate bundles of notes and photocopied documents recalled to Umber the

time and effort he had devoted to each, THE CHATHAM SPEECH. If, as

Junius implied, he was in the House of Lords gallery when Lord Chatham

made a speech attacking Lord Mansfield on 10 December 1770, who among

the Junian candidates did that date and location eliminate? THE

FITZPATRICK CONNECTION. A French spy reported to Louis XVI that

Junius was actually Thady Fitzpatrick, smooth-tongued man about town, an

idea scotched by Fitzpatrick's death several months before the letters

stopped. But who among his boon companions might be a more plausible

suspect? THE GILES LETTER. In December 1771, a Miss Giles of Bath

received an amorous poem from an anonymous admirer, accompanied by a

note of commendation in a hand now commonly agreed to be Junius's,

although the poem itself was in a different, less distinctive hand. With how

many Junian candidates could Miss Giles and her family be linked? THE

HIGHGATE SOURCE. Examination of postmarks revealed that a

significant number of the Junius letters were despatched to the Public

Advertiser by penny post from the Highgate Village post office. Which of

the candidates lived in Highgate or had friends or relatives who lived there?

THE JUNIA EXCHANGE. Goaded by a provocative letter from a woman

calling herself Junia, printed in the Public Advertiser on 5 September 1769,

Junius replied in flirtatious vein two days later, then almost immediately

wrote to Woodfall asking him to print a denial that the reply was his work,

blaming the lapse on 'people about me'. Did this raise the serious possibility

that the letters were collaborative compositions and, if so, could such

collaborators be found among the Junian candidates? THE COURIER

QUESTION. Junius began a letter to Woodfall on 18 January 1772 with the

tantalizing statement 'The gentleman who transacts the conveyancing part of

our correspondence tells me there was much difficulty last night'. Woodfall's

letters to Junius were always left at one of several pre-arranged coffee-house

drops around the Strand. So, did Junius always use the same courier for their

collection? Was that person also responsible for posting Junius's letters to

Woodfall? And, if so, was there any evidence as to his identity? the

Franciscan theory. Would an exhaustive analysis of the known movements

and activities of the hot favourite among the candidates, War Office clerk

Philip Francis, reveal any occasion on which he was quite simply in the

wrong place and/or at the wrong time to be Junius? the amanuenses. What

were…

Ah yes. The amanuenses. They were the point Umber's researches had

arrived at towards the end of the Trinity term of 1981. And there was what

he was looking for, in a clutch of papers labelled Christabella Dayrolles. He

sifted eagerly through them, in search of the notes he knew he must have

made during his inspection of the Ventry Papers, likely repository of any

clue that Christabella Dayrolles had written the letters at Junius's dictation.

But Umber had forgotten less than he thought. He had evidently examined

everything there was to be examined on the uncelebrated doings of the wife

of Lord Chesterfield's friend, godson and confidant, Solomon Dayrolles. The

truth was that this amounted to very little. Christabella Dayrolles had

stubbornly refused to emerge from her husband's shadow. If she was Junius's

amanuensis, he had clearly chosen wisely. Her discretion alone had survived

her.

As for the Ventry Papers, there was the briefest of notes, written by Umber,

it seemed to his older self, in a mood of some exasperation. Staffs Record

Office, 16/7/81. Ventry Papers. Tedious screeds of estate correspondence.

Family refs almost all to Ventry side. Prob a dead end, but worth checking

Kew ref in sister's letter to Mrs V of 19 Oct 1791.

What was the Kew reference? The note did not say. It had not needed to, of

course. Umber had intended to follow it up long before there was any danger

of forgetting it. But eleven days after his visit to the Staffordshire Record

Office, something had happened to put such matters out of his mind. Which

is where they had remained. Until now.

* * *

The choice had been made for him. He had to go to Stafford and nail down

the reference. It might be a waste of precious time, but he could not know

that without going. He had intended to go before now and been sidetracked.

He was not about to let himself be sidetracked again. Waldron had probably

glanced at the contents of the box and decided he could safely ignore them.

It would be good to prove him wrong.

In attempting to do so, Umber was also trying to prove himself right. Junius

was unfinished business in more ways than one. His instinct was to pursue

the Ventry lead to the finish. Too often in the past he had failed to follow his

instincts. This time would be different. It had to be.

* * *

He caught an early enough train from Euston next morning to be in Stafford

by nine o'clock, booking a second night at the Travel Inn before he left. Lack

of sleep caught up with him disastrously somewhere around Watford,

however. He did not wake until the train was pulling into Crewe, the stop

after Stafford, two hours later. He then had to wait another hour for a train

back to Stafford and did not arrive at the County Records Office until gone

eleven o'clock.

It was an infuriatingly bad start. But the staff at

the Record Office were soothingly efficient. The Ventry Papers were in his

hands within half an hour.

They had been bound in several marbled leather volumes by a Ventry of the

Edwardian period, who had added a comprehensive table of contents. Umber

steered a straight course through boundary disputes, rent-rolls and local Hunt

politics to the letter of 19 October 1791.

It was written by Christabella Ventry's younger sister, Mary Croft, from her

home in London. She dwelt on family affairs that would be known to both

parties: cousins, aunts, uncles, in-laws. There were several references to

their 'dear departed mother' (Christabella Dayrolles), who had died two

months previously. And then came the reference to Kew.

The depth of feeling expressed by so many since Mother's passing is a

testament to the nobility and generosity of her character. I was more affected

than I can say to receive a letter this week past from her dear and troubled

friend at Kew, who confesses himself sorely afflicted by the loss of her

counsel and acquaintanceship.

That was it. There was nothing else. A friend at Kew, known to both

daughters. It amounted to hardly anything. Yet there was just enough, in the

description of the friend as 'dear and troubled', in the mention of their

mother's role as his adviser, in the faintly suspicious way that Mary Croft

avoided naming him, to draw Umber in.

* * *

There was no quick or easy way to follow it up, however. Umber admitted

as much to himself as he sat aboard the lunchtime train back to London. That

was probably why he had made no immediate attempt to do so in July 1981.

An unnamed man living in Kew two centuries before was effectively

untraceable. Logically, Umber would have to search for him by indirect

routes — exploring any connections with Kew, however apparently tenuous,

that he could find in the affairs of Lord Chesterfield and Solomon Dayrolles.

But such researches could last for weeks, if not months. Umber had two

days, not even enough time to scratch the surface. It was, quite simply, a

hopeless task.

* * *

A powerful sense of that hopelessness clung to Umber when he got off the

train at Euston. He did not know what to do or where to go. He had very

little time to act in. And no idea what action he should take. Largely by

inertia, it seemed to him, he drifted down into the Underground station. And

there he bought a ticket to Kew.

* * *

On the Tube, Umber tried to apply his mind to the problem like the historian

he had once been. What did he know about eighteenth-century Kew? Not

much. But not nothing either.

It was a place with royal connections. George II, when still Prince of Wales,

lived at Richmond Lodge, which he retained when he became king. His son

Frederick, the next Prince of Wales, settled with his wife Augusta at Kew

House, just to the north. After Frederick's death in 1751, Princess Augusta

pursued his ambition to transform the estate into the famous botanical

gardens. Frederick's son, the future George III, grew up at Kew under the

combined influence of his widowed mother and her trusted adviser, the Earl

of Bute. Junius reserved a particular venom for both parties, insinuating that

they were lovers and cruelly relishing the news when it came of Augusta's

fatal throat cancer.

It had not occurred to Umber until now that Junius's loathing of Augusta and

Bute might have been heightened by their being, as it were, his neighbours.

His knowledge (and disapproval) of George Ill's upbringing could then be

seen, if the point was stretched, as the fruit of personal experience.

* * *

But it was a stretch, as Umber well knew. He walked out of Kew Gardens

station that afternoon into the heart of a Victorian suburb that had not existed

when Mary Croft wrote a letter to her sister in October 1791. His own

previous trips to Kew had either been to tour the Gardens or to visit the

National Archives, which had been massively and modernistically extended

since 1981, to judge by his glimpse of the riverside complex from the train.

Two hundred years previously, documents now stored at meticulously

maintained levels of temperature and humidity would have been mouldering

in a Chancery Lane cellar. Such was the scale of all the changes through

which Umber knew it was fanciful to suppose he could somehow thread a

path.

He wandered into a bookshop that caught his eye as soon as he left the

station and bought a pocket history of the area: The Story of Kew. He leafed

through it over a cup of coffee in a cafe a few doors along, lingering on the

chapters devoted to the Georgian period. The account of the origins of the

Botanical Gardens held no surprises. Nor did much of what followed

concerning the persistent rumour that George III, while still Prince of Wales,

had secretly married a Quakeress called Hannah Lightfoot and fathered by

her a son, who should legally have counted as his heir but was instead

banished to South Africa. The theft of the parish registers from St Anne's

Church, Kew, in 1845 was held to be related to this, though oddly the stolen

registers did not cover the period of the alleged marriage, which would

obviously not have been recorded anyway. The motive for the theft was

therefore a mystery.

Then, as Umber turned the page, a name leapt out at him from the print. Dr

James Wilmot was the clergyman supposed to have solemnized the

marriage. And Dr James Wilmot was on the long-list of Junian candidates.

There was a connection between Junius and Kew.

It was a frail one, however. As far as Umber could recall, Wilmot was never

a serious contender, his candidature resting on airy claims made by a niece

after his death. What Umber could not recall was any suggestion of a link

between Wilmot and the Chesterfield-Dayrolles clan. Besides, Wilmot had

never been Vicar of Kew, no matter what marriage ceremonies he may have

conducted there. He could not have been the friend of Christabella Dayrolles

referred to in Mary Croft's letter.

Umber left the cafe and headed towards Kew Green. A map of 1800

reproduced in The Story of Kew showed the whole area east of the Gardens

as fields. There were only two small areas of housing: one centred on the

Green, at the northern end of the Gardens, the other lining the opposite bank

of the Thames either side of Kew Bridge. Logically, Christabella's friend

had to have lived in one of these locations.

* * *

It could not have been the Green. Umber sensed rather than deduced this as

he prowled across it, scanning the elegant Palladian frontages of the

surrounding houses. In 1791, they would have been the residences of princes

and princesses — George Ill's aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters — plus

assorted hangers-on. Surely Christabella's friend could not have dwelt

literally amongst them. To fit Umber's hazy image of him, he needed to be at

one remove — an observer from a safe distance.

* * *

Umber crossed Kew Bridge and turned right along Strand-on-the-Green, a

riverside path running east round a curve of the Thames past well-kept

fishermen's cottages and gentlemen's villas clearly dating from the

eighteenth century. This, he reckoned, was more like it. Humbler than Kew

Green, but still smart enough, and within easy reach.

But it was only a hunch, of course. He was in no position to back it up. He

would have to probe the history of every house if he was to mount a serious

search for Christabella's friend. Even then he might fail to find him. It was

academic in any case. There was simply not enough—

Umber came to a sudden halt on the path and stared at the building in front

of him. It was a small yellow-brick cottage squeezed between two grander

residences. The front door was undersized, accessed by a short flight of

steps. It looked as if the entrance had been modified as a precaution against

flooding, which Strand-on-the-Green was presumably prone to. Above and

to one side of the door was a stone-carved likeness of a mythical beast,

acting as a lampholder. The creature had the wings and head of an eagle, set

on the body of a lion. It was a griffin.

* * *

Umber pressed the bell, staring into the stone eye of the griffin as he did so.

He had no idea what to expect if and when the door opened. He had no

expectations of any kind. He could only let chance and circumstance take

their course.

* * *

'Good afternoon.'

The door had been opened by a tall, lean, weather-beaten man of sixty or so

with wavy grey hair and a ruggedly handsome face. The chinos and

guernsey he was wearing gave him a maritime air, suggesting his stooped

posture had been acquired from long acquaintance with cramped ships'

cabins, his squinting gaze from the scanning of many horizons.

'Can I help you?'

'I…' Umber did not know what to say, or at any rate how to begin to say it.

'I'm looking for… a Mr Griffin.'

The man smiled. 'Well, you've found him.'