To his amazement, Sydney agreed, and soon put his imaginative mind to work. He arrived at their next meeting with the plans for what he was convinced would be a revolutionary invention. The Bachelor’s Helpmate, as he had called it, consisted of a chair designed for lovers of erotic literature, and was equipped with a lectern that automatically turned the pages, allowing the reader to keep both hands free. William could see from Sydney’s detailed drawings that the device came with accessories, such as a small washbasin, and even a sponge, so that the client did not have to interrupt his reading to get up from the chair. Sydney was convinced his product would make their fortune, but William was not so sure: his brother-in-law had clearly confused his own necessities with those of others. However, once William had succeeded in the difficult task of convincing him that his sophisticated seat was not as essential to the Empire as he had imagined, they found themselves without a decent idea to their names.
Desperate, they concentrated on the flow of merchandise coming in from the colonies. What products had not yet been imported? What unfulfilled needs did the British have? They looked around carefully, but it seemed nothing was wanting. Her Majesty, with her tentacular grasp, was already divesting the world of everything her subjects required. Of course, there was one thing they lacked, but this was a necessity no one dared to mention.
They discovered it one day while strolling through the commercial district of New York, where they had gone in search of inspiration. They were preparing to return to the hotel and soak their aching feet in a basin of salt water, when their eye fell on a product displayed in a shop window. Behind the glass was a stack of strange packets containing fifty sheets of moisturised paper. Printed on the back were the words ‘Gayetty’s Medicated Paper’. What the devil was this for? They soon discovered the answer from the instructions pasted in the window, which, without a hint of embarrassment, depicted a hand applying the product to the most intimate area of a posterior. This fellow Gayetty had obviously decided that corncobs and parish newsletters were a thing of the past.
Once they had recovered from their surprise, William and Sydney looked at each other meaningfully. This was it! It did not take a genius to imagine the warm reception thousands of British backsides, raw from being rubbed with rough newspaper, would give this heaven-sent gift. At fifty cents a packet, they would soon make their fortune. They purchased enough stock to furnish a small shop they acquired in one of London’s busiest streets, filled the window with their product, put up a poster illustrating its correct usage, and waited behind the counter for customers to flock in. But not a single soul walked through the door on the day the shop opened, or in the days that followed, which soon turned into weeks.
It took William and Sydney three months to admit defeat. Their dreams of wealth had been cruelly dashed at the outset, although they had enough medicated paper never to need worry about procuring another Sears catalogue. However, at times society obeys its own twisted logic, and the moment they closed their disastrous shop, their business suddenly took off. In the dark corners of inns, in alleyway entrances, in their own homes during the early hours, William and Sydney were assailed by a variety of individuals who, in hushed tones and glancing furtively about them, ordered packets of their miraculous paper before disappearing back into the gloom.
Surprised at first by the cloak-and-dagger aspect they were obliged to adopt, the two young entrepreneurs soon became accustomed to tramping the streets at dead of night, one limping along, the other puffing and panting, to make their clandestine deliveries far from prying eyes. They soon grew used to depositing their embarrassing product in house doorways, or signalling with a tap of their cane on window-panes, or tossing packets off bridges on to barges passing noiselessly below, slipping into deserted parks and retrieving wads of pound notes stashed under a bench, whistling like a couple of songbirds through mansion railings. Everyone in London wanted to use Gayetty’s wonderful paper without their neighbour finding out, a fact of which William slyly took advantage, increasing the price of his product to what would eventually become an outrageous sum – which most customers were nevertheless willing to pay.
Within a couple of years they were able to purchase two luxurious dwellings in the Brompton Road area, from where they soon upped sticks for Kensington. In addition to his collection of expensive canes, William measured his success by the ability to acquire ever larger houses.
Amazed that the reckless act of placing his entire savings at his brother-in-law’s disposal had provided him with a fine mansion in Queen’s Gate from whose balcony he could survey the most elegant side of London, Sydney resolved to enjoy what he had, giving himself to the pleasures of family life, so extolled by the clergy. He filled his house with children, books, paintings by promising artists, took on a couple of servants and, at a safe distance from them now, cultivated the disdain he claimed he had always felt towards the lower classes to the extent that it became contempt. In brief, he quietly adapted to his new affluence even though it was based on the ignoble business of selling toilet paper.
William was different. His proud, inquisitive nature made it impossible for him to be satisfied with that. He needed public recognition, to be respected by society. In other words, he wanted the great and the good of London to invite him foxhunting, to treat him as an equal. But, much as he paraded through London’s smoking rooms doling out his card, this did not happen. Faced with a situation he was powerless to change, he built up a bitter resentment of the wealthy élite, who subjected him to the most abysmal ostracism while wiping their distinguished backsides with the paper he provided. During one of the rare gatherings to which the two men were invited, his anger boiled over when some wag bestowed on them the title ‘Official Wipers to the Queen’. Before anyone could laugh, William Harrington hurled himself on the insolent dandy, breaking his nose with the pommel of his cane before Sydney managed to drag him away.
The gathering proved a turning point in their lives. William Harrington learned from it a harsh but valuable lesson: the medicinal paper to which he owed everything, and which had generated so much wealth, was a disgrace that would stain his life for ever unless he did something about it. He began to invest part of his earnings in less disreputable businesses, such as the burgeoning railway industry. In a matter of months he had become the majority shareholder in several locomotive repair shops. His next step was to buy a failing shipping company called Fellowship, inject new blood into it, and turn it into the most profitable of ocean-going concerns. Through his tiny empire of successful businesses, which Sydney managed with the easy elegance of an orchestra conductor, in less than two years William had dissociated his name from medicinal paper, cancelling the final shipment and leaving London plunged in silent despair.
In the spring of 1872, Annesley Hall invited him to his first hunt gathering on his Newstead estate, which was attended by all of London society, who eagerly applauded William’s extraordinary achievements. It was there that the witty young man who had made a joke at his expense regrettably perished. According to the newspaper account, the ill-fated youth accidentally shot himself in the foot.
It was around that time when William Harrington dusted off his old uniform and commissioned a portrait of himself bursting out of it, smiling as though his unadorned chest were plastered with medals, and greeting all who entered his mansion with the masterful gaze of sole owner of that corner opposite Hyde Park.
This, and no other, was the secret their fathers so jealously guarded and whose air of light entertainment I considered appropriate for this rather wearisome journey. But I am afraid we have reached the end of our story too soon. Total silence still reigns in the cab and is likely to do so for some time because, when he is in the mood, Andrew is capable of daydreaming for hours, unless prodded with a red-hot poker or doused in boiling oil – neither of which Charles is in the habit of carrying around with him. Therefore I have no other choice but to take flight again so that we reach their destination, Mr Wells’s house,