It was at about this time, when the eldest son Ivor came into his majority and Canford became his, that Georgina first met the Schreibers. In the winter of 1856, Lady Charlotte and nine of her ten children crowded into a house at Marine Parade, Brighton, while a search was made for suitable and more permanent accommodation in London. Not until April of the following year did they find Exeter House in Roehampton, standing in sixteen acres. During their stay in Brighton they became acquainted with the Trehernes, in the general sense of being present at the same ball or party and included on the same subscription lists for concerts. The fourth son of the family was a boy called Merthyr. He was a year younger than Georgina, a restless and under-achieving student at Trinity College, Cambridge (where his brother had taken a first). Very comfortingly and after only a few meetings, he declared himself infatuated with her. When the family moved to Exeter House, Georgina was soon invited there by Lady Charlotte. She also saw her from time to time at Little Holland House, where Merthyr’s mother was wont to engage Tennyson in conversations about the Arthurian legends. She had no knowledge of the depths of her son’s feeling for the pretty and amiable Miss Treherne. For the time being, Georgina said nothing to enlighten her.
If coming out in society and making a mark in it was part of Morgan’s plan for his daughter, Georgina had already done a great deal to satisfy his ambition. Her voice had carried her into drawing-rooms that he would have difficulty in entering on his own merits. He had taken a house in Stratford Place, a small gated cul-de-sac off Oxford Street, from which to direct both her affairs and his own. In the country he was a magistrate and a ruthless persecutor of trespassers and poachers. On his own land he set spring-guns without the slightest qualm. He had by no means given up hope of a seat in the House of Commons. He was friendless and his relations with his brothers were as strained as ever but by his own lights the new Mr Treherne was making progress in the world. He was very deliberately old-fashioned and there were as a consequence huge gaps in what he knew about the age in which he lived. Style and the surface of things had always meant nothing to him. He was a reactionary and proud of it. In certain circles – say among military men – there was no harm in that. On brief acquaintance and with the addition of only a little humour, his position could even seem endearing. He polished a way of expressing himself that he was to use to the electors of Coventry in a famous speech:
I have a thorough and hearty detestation of the Whigs … I have a parrot at home that cries Damn the Whigs! and although I should be very sorry to use such language myself – even if I do express myself strongly sometimes – I cannot say that my feelings towards the Whigs are more friendly than those of my parrot.
Georgina was troublesome to him but no more than she had ever been. Although by now she was of an age where he might have expected her to be settled and not emptying his purse running about London as a young lady of fashion, there were some encouraging developments. It was never Morgan’s practice to give a compliment, yet Georgina’s impetuous charm had at least secured the interest of an eminently worthy family like the Schreibers and she had the friendship (or so she claimed) of Lady Constance Villiers, daughter of the Foreign Secretary. From such connections who knew what might follow?
And then the roof fell in.
In January of 1858, Lady Sudeley gave a ball in Brighton to which Louisa and her daughters were invited. The occasion was a happy one. Lord Sudeley, whose family owned large estates in the town, had just succeeded to the title. It was the first entertainment of the New Year and the 250 guests who assembled in the Pavilion Rooms had another lively topic of conversation, in addition to Lord Sudeley’s good fortune. A few days earlier, amid scenes of incredible pomp and attended by thirteen crowned heads of Europe, the Queen’s eldest daughter had married Frederick, Crown Prince of Prussia. She was seventeen years old. That very Saturday, there had been an immense press of people at a congratulatory Drawing Room, at which the young Princess stood by her mother to receive her guests. Victoria was amazed and delighted at the cordiality shown to the Royal Family on what was for her a watershed experience. (The Princess Royal left England the following Tuesday in a blizzard of snow, attended by immense crowds. At Buckingham Palace, the Queen had parted from her daughter in floods of tears and this mood was communicated to the entire household who sobbed and wailed as at a funeral. Lady Desart, a Lady-in-Waiting, said later it was the first time in her memory that Victoria completely lost control of herself.)
There was much to discuss, then. Louisa might borrow a little from the glamour of the Royal Wedding by having boys at Eton, for the school had telegraphed the happy couple on the day of the wedding and asked permission to drag the honeymooners’ carriage through the streets of Windsor, which they accomplished most gallantly and inexpertly. And of course, since the subject of marriage in general was more than usually on everyone’s lips, did the company know that Georgina, etc., etc? Nothing had been fixed, no formal announcements had been made, but Merthyr Guest was such a prepossessing young man and seemed so enamoured of Miss Treherne, etc., etc. Of course he was very young and had first his career at Trinity to contemplate, but he was a dear, kind boy. People who knew the Schreibers rather better than Louisa herself might have been startled at this piece of wishful thinking. A really shrewd observer might have looked behind the understandable note of triumph and discovered an ancient doubt: the development of the plot was only as good as the steadiness of its principal character, which was to say Georgina. Was she going to do something stupid at this critical moment?
She was. The officers of the 18th Hussars, who were in barracks at Preston Park, had been invited to the Sudeley Ball. The 18th was hardly a fashionable regiment: it had only recently been reconstituted and of the officers there was not a title among them. It was true that General Scarlett, the hero of Balaclava, had himself served as a cornet with the old 18th; one of the present cornets had the honour to have been born under a gun at Waterloo. But the regiment was originally raised in Yorkshire and re-formed there; and though it had taken part in the festivities surrounding the Royal Wedding, it was too new to have fought in the Crimea, or to have had any part in the putting down of the infamous Mutiny in India.
Among those of the regiment who accepted for Lady Sudeley’s ball was a young lieutenant called Harry Weldon. While he cut a fine figure in patrol uniform and was reputed to ride well, his experience of soldiering was practically nil. Like many of his troopers, he came from Yorkshire. He had the languid manners appropriate to a junior officer and was good-looking in a stock sort of way, but he was shockingly provincial, and the past glittering month or so – in Brighton and London – had bewitched him. His expression was frank and open and he was altogether the sort of boy you might entrust at a ball to fetch an ice or search for a shawl, but one whose name you asked only to forget. He was twenty years old and in the present company, a spear-carrier, an extra. If Morgan Treherne had searched the Army List for a week he could not have come up with a less appealing candidate for Georgina’s attentions.
To his stupefaction, therefore, a day or so after the ball this young man, this whippersnapper, this uniformed nothing rode out from Preston Barracks to Mayfield on his horse Multum. Flakes of snow fell romantically about his head: when the butler asked him his business, he explained he was there to see Georgina. Antonio (who may have been impressed at a wearisome journey undertaken in vile weather, but knew his master’s temper only too well) went off to see Morgan. Morgan sent back word that the gentleman was not to be admitted. The suitor – for that was the purpose of his visit – turned his horse’s head