Lord Camelford, first cousin of Mr Pitt, brother-in-law of Lord Grenville and near-relative of Sidney Smith, gives much money to the émigré Chouans living in London, particularly to Limoëlan, whom he sees often. His close relationship with these scoundrels gave him the idea that he himself should assassinate the First Consul.23
Yet Camelford was able to save himself by his gift of the gab. When interrogated by Fouché, he presented a passionate case for being an admirer of France, citing his close association with Earl Stanhope and Horne Tooke. Aside from the offending weapon, nothing could be found to support Fouché’s suspicions. Camelford was escorted to Boulogne, warned never to return and put on a ship to England.
Undoubtedly Hester must have seen Camelford. One way or another, her travel plans were put on hold. Whatever occurred at this juncture between them remains a mystery. There had undeniably been an infatuation and most likely a physical affair. But if she had toyed with him as a marriage partner she knew that, despite his wealth, he was full of darkness and rough edges. He drank, fought and was used to bedding the women he came across in ports and brothels. Perhaps the truth can be found in a comment she made many years later, that ‘the violence of my character [is] something like Lord Camelford’s’. Together, they were too volatile and headstrong to last.
On her way to join the Egertons at Dover, Hester stopped at Pitt’s residence at Walmer Castle, with the intention of staying no more than a few days before setting sail. The visit proved to be longer than expected. Pitt had been suffering periodic fits of stomach pains, cramps and vomiting, usually exacerbated by overwork, but this relapse was particularly extreme. She stayed long enough to supervise his recovery, and to demonstrate that ‘I have talents as a nurse’. Pitt was reluctant to see her go.
That October, the Egertons and Hester travelled first to Lyon, where they were met by a very grown-up Mahon. There had been so much anticipation on both sides that the meeting was almost anti-climactic. Hester was anxious to see Mahon’s transformation into a cultured gentleman, but her first impression was somewhat critical. He ‘converses not pleasantly, like a Frenchman out of humour’, she noted, although she was impressed at the extent of knowledge he had acquired, and noticed he studied ‘from morning to night’. At Hester’s urging, they crossed Mount Cenis in the French Alps by mule, undoubtedly a tortuous enterprise for the Egertons.
Brother and sister parted angrily in Florence after an explosive argument. It appears that she had trusted him with a confidence and that he took a vehemently moral stance against her; certainly his subsequent treatment of her suggests he viewed her as a ‘fallen woman’. ‘In truth, his conduct disgusted me extremely,’ she wrote. From this moment on, Mahon’s treatment of his sister was very frosty, even vindictive.
A larger drama was now the backdrop to their travels. War was declared against France in May 1803; the Treaty of Amiens had lasted less than fourteen months. After a winter spent in Naples and Venice, Hester’s patience with the Egertons had frayed too. Mrs Egerton, she noted scathingly, was ‘a fidget married to a fool’. In Germany the Egertons dithered about their itinerary, not wanting to budge from the communities of English expatriates, infuriating Hester by deciding in the end not to go to Vienna or Berlin – or Paris, while the chance still remained. By now Camelford had returned to France, only to be apprehended once again, and incarcerated for a time in the infamous Temple prison, before his release was engineered, no doubt through Pitt’s and Grenville’s efforts.
Hester was away for almost nine months. When she returned to England again in July 1803, Pitt gently informed her that his mother – her grandmother – had died that April. Burton Pynsent had passed to the Chathams. She was not, of course, on speaking terms with her remaining grandmother, Grizel. She was homeless.
* Condorcet would go on to inspire one of the most enduring achievements of the Revolutionary period, the founding of the scientific Institut de France, which replaced the Old Regime’s Académie des Sciences and prestigious Académie Française, which would not be revived until 1815. His friendship with Earl Stanhope was indeed close; he asked the Englishman to become a guardian to his child in the event of his arrest and execution.
† When, in February 1792, Talleyrand – who would go on to become Napoleon’s Foreign Minister – came to London seeking support for the cause, he went directly to the famous Earl, hoping he might act as a mediator with Pitt. It was no good: Pitt curtly ignored them both. Despite this, for the duration of his stay, Talleyrand was the toast of London’s leading revolutionary sympathizers and Dissenters. Stanhope made sure Hester accompanied him to a dinner held in Talleyrand’s honour in Hackney. No doubt he thought she could benefit by observing that not all revolutionaries were unwashed rabble.
* In January 1795, Lord Stanhope’s vote was recorded as being ‘in the minority of one’, after the House was divided 61–1 against his second protest at the interference in the internal affairs of France; the one being himself.
* Jeremiah Joyce had been amongst a band of English and American expatriates drawn to Paris in the winter of 1792, hopeful that the tide would soon turn, and that revolution would come to England. He was a member of both the Society for Constitutional Information and the LCS.
† Horne Tooke was one of the most celebrated radicals to be arrested; his memoirs were a best-seller.
* The Admiralty, whom Earl Stanhope had sufficiently intrigued to part-finance the Kent (on which he had already spent £8,000 of his own money), were waiting to see whether the ship could live up to the claims of its inventor, although they had pronounced steam navigation ‘a wild scheme’. Still, the newly-formed Society for the Improvement of Naval Architecture was so impressed by the Kent they made Stanhope one of their vice-presidents.
† Scientific shipbuilding in Britain was then practically non-existent. When the Kent finally sailed from Deptford on 22 February 1797, reaching Chatham on 1 March, the crew had been placed under instructions not to use the boilers; only Stanhope’s ‘vibrators’ or oars were tested and they were hand-operated and employed only to ferry the ship downstream from Deptford. The official report on the Kent’s performance seems to have been a thinly-veiled stitch-up; ostensibly praising the ship for its speed and weatherability, but evaluating it as though it were an ordinary vessel. By finding one elaborate reason after another not to witness it performing under steam, they would not be in a position to comment on it. The Kafkaesque farce that ensued lasted until the end of the decade. Nor could Stanhope take his invention elsewhere; the deal he had signed with the Admiralty meant they owned the ship’s bond, while he remained responsible for many of its expenses. Finally he was curtly informed that ‘an invention of this kind could never be applied to any advantageous purpose in His Majesty’s Navy’.
* Stanhope’s next invention was the Stanhope Weatherer, which he believed would be the ‘perfect’ frigate, but the Commissioners were as disparaging as before. Yet in 1816, the year Stanhope died, a Captain Tuckey would sail out on a mission to explore the Congo in a new vessel built for the purpose by the shipbuilder Seppings. Called the Congo, it was acknowledged officially as being almost identical in design to the Weatherer. Not long afterwards, the design