Sight Unseen

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, keener-eyed, 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.'