Bruce had been away from England for almost three years – his father hoped he might become a diplomat. In Scandinavia he had met all the princes and nobles, and had instructions from his father to continue onwards to mingle with rarefied society in St Petersburg and Moscow. But he never got there, although he was in Copenhagen in 1807 when Canning gave the order for the British fleet to launch a hasty, unprovoked pre-emptive attack on the city. Outraged, Bruce took the Danish side, and had been the first British civilian to return to the city and give an eyewitness account of the destruction.*
It would emerge that Hester and Bruce were linked, in a roundabout way, through the misdeeds and deeds of men with whom she had been on intimate terms. Her second cousin, Lord Grenville, had been a neighbour and friend of Bruce’s father, and in 1807 had bartered a seat in Ireland to be accepted by Crauford Bruce if he would agree to pay off the present incumbent with the exact amount of the debt (some £2,500) he was owed by a certain Lord Camelford, Grenville’s brother-in-law, who had recently died. That this same Camelford had been Hester’s first lover, Bruce was, of course, unaware.
There were other coincidental crossings of paths. When Bruce’s father saw him off on his travels, bound for the royal courts of St Petersburg and Moscow, he had every expectation that his son would be warmly received by Ambassador Lord Granville Leveson Gower in St Petersburg, to whom he had a letter of introduction.
But the last association could not have failed to make Hester sad. Instead of going to Russia, Bruce had gone to Spain. Towards the end of 1808 he went to the Peninsula, to tour the battlefronts, hoping to present himself as a ‘free lance’ to Sir John Moore, a particular hero of his. Moore had been ‘very civil and kind’ to him at Salamanca, and with the general’s consent, he had made his way to Madrid – alone – just as the French were massing around the city, with the apparent aim of bringing back news of the enemy’s movements. It was obvious nothing could be done to prevent the capital from falling. Just before the attack, in the dead of night, Bruce had walked his way out, covering a distance of twenty-eight miles on foot to reach the safety of Aranjuez. He then retreated alongside Moore’s army to Corunna, an experience that made him deeply bitter. He held Wellesley – soon to be the Duke of Wellington – personally responsible.
Three days before Moore and Charles Stanhope were killed, Bruce had still been at Corunna. Was he present at the battle, or had he managed to avoid it? Had he also met Hester’s brothers? Neither he nor James ever mention this detail; it is safe to assume he stayed out of danger’s way. If he despised Wellesley, he reserved an even greater hatred for ‘Bony’.
It is easy to see that Bruce, with his strong political opinions, would have been immediately disarmed by Hester’s equally confrontational attitudes. Her forthrightness in discussion about the war and military tactics impressed him. Meryon noted that at this time she ‘often mention[ed] Mr Pitt’s opinion of her fitness for military command. Had she been a man and a soldier, she would have been what the French call a sabreur; for never was anyone so fond of wielding weapons and of boasting of her capability of using them as she was.’ Hester boasted to the young man that she liked daggers, but ‘her favourite weapon was the mace’.2 Wilful and independent, with her impressive connections, she immediately signalled a challenge. Her more sophisticated, ironic utterances caused Bruce to question his own, somewhat more woodenly expressed views.
The other dinner guest at the Colonel’s table was Howe Peter Browne, the second Marquess of Sligo. Having only recently succeeded to his father’s title, he was now impulsively in command of a considerable fortune and impressive estates in Ireland. He was embarked on a tour of the Mediterranean, and planned to join Lord Byron, who was, like Bruce, a Cambridge contemporary and friend. The chance meeting with Bruce seemed fortuitous; there was much back-slapping and laughter.
Certainly Hester liked Sligo. At twenty-four, a year older than Bruce, Sligo affected something of the look that would soon become known as Byronic: he had grown his hair so it hung in tendrils. He was fond of quoting lengths of poetry, often in Greek, and forever making allusions to classical literature, but always in a way that seemed wittily louche. There was something very boyish about his soft plumpness and his gleeful humour, despite his evident attempts at corruption, and Bruce’s teasing hints at his promiscuity. He was immediately deferential to Hester, and always aware of her, leaning in close when they sat together. Bruce noticed this from the first, and became more reckless with Hester himself that same evening, teasing her, becoming more animated. When he left that night, he pressed her hand to his lips and looked at her face, touching her cheek gently as he did so.
At what point did the sexual hesitancy of the woman who had begun to believe herself past her prime give way to the passion that she so craved? It came as a pleasant shock to her to discover that she still had power over such a man, especially so deliciously unformed a creature as Bruce.
At thirty-four, Hester looked, in this new climate, younger than when she had set off from Portsmouth. Bruce put her age at no more than twenty-eight. She had cut her hair to shoulder-length, and the ‘cropt’ look suited her; she held the curls back from her face with woven strips of cloth. Her face struck many as enigmatic: she had learned to put on an inscrutable look, a habit, she would say, she got from Pitt. Unless she would have it otherwise, ‘nobody can ever observe in me changes in my countenance; or I will venture, what was in me,’ she said. She was vain enough to know that her looks might not outlast the attraction; she wasn’t deluded about her chances with Bruce.
Still, Hester was falling passionately in love. Powerful restless emotions were brought to the surface. Despair and tragedy had forced her vibrant and impetuous nature underground. But now, the physical attraction gave her an oddly gratifying sensation of danger. Once again, she was on a high wire, hostage to an unpredictable outcome. She was captivated by Bruce’s half-cocked, enquiring smile, the weight of his hand lightly touching her shoulder, the way he turned for a last backward glance as he disappeared out into the night. She did not want to let him go.
Within days of meeting Hester, perhaps trying to out-do Bruce, Sligo committed the extravagance of hiring an armed brig, the Pylades, for six months, and set about outfitting it, hiring some twenty or thirty hands. In his rush to assemble a working crew he chose to ignore the fact that his ablest men were in fact bound to the navy, a key detail he would later come to regret. Both Sligo and Bruce announced independently that they had changed their plans. They agreed that they would travel on together to Palermo: she could consider them her advance guard, for they would send her word on the situation there, as there were rumours that Napoleon’s armies threatened to invade Sicily.
Now James too suddenly changed his plans. It is obvious from later letters that Bruce confessed the ‘connection’ and ‘unguarded affection for his sister’ almost immediately. Although disapproving, James had seemed to accept the liaison, but he had no intention of being around to witness it. Privately, he urged Hester ‘to be prudent, and to lay herself as little as possible to the observation of the world’. On 2 April James received an official letter, which he chose to view as a summons, informing him that the battalion of Guards to which he belonged had arrived at Cadiz and were now readying themselves for the campaign. Although he had been granted permission for six months’ absence and had promised Hester he would accompany her to Sicily, he decided to leave immediately. Nassau Sutton, who was to have been of their party, would go with him.
When it came to saying goodbye to James, Hester could not bear to be the one left behind. When the Colonel informed her that a suitable frigate, the Cerebus, would be sailing for Malta, from which the onward journey to Sicily could be made, she asked him to arrange for passage to be prepared three days ahead of her brother’s departure. On 7 April 1810, stiffly refusing to cry, brother and sister embraced each