Bell Harry Read online

  Mann had his dog with him as the Mozarts appeared up the drive. He made no secret of his delight as a footman opened the carriage door.

  ‘Here you are at last! I’m so glad you could come. It’s lovely to have you all here.’

  ‘Thank you for inviting us,’ said Leopold.

  ‘Think nothing of it. I heard your son play when I was in London. You must be very proud of him.’

  Mann led the way to the house. The Mozarts were impressed. The house was very grand and the grounds were sublime. Nannerl was particularly enchanted by the view across the lake.

  ‘You have a wonderful garden,’ she told Lady Lucy. ‘It’s really beautiful.’

  ‘Thank you. We do rather pride ourselves on our gardens in England.’

  The Mozarts didn’t take long to settle in. English country life was unfamiliar to them, but Bourne was lovely and the Manns were attentive hosts. They did everything they could to put their guests at ease.

  After breakfast next morning, the ladies went for a stroll in the garden. Fetching bat and ball, Horace Mann took Leopold and Wolfgang down to the paddock to have a look at his new cricket pitch. He returned later with devastating news.

  ‘I’m afraid your son will never make a cricketer, Mrs Mozart. He has no eye for the game at all.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Mrs Mozart took the news philosophically. She was just happy that her son was enjoying himself at Bourne. With no performances to prepare for, Wolfgang was off the leash for a while. He was free to be a little boy of nine again, tearing around the garden and waving his arms, throwing sticks, shouting to his heart’s content. He was having a wonderful time.

  Wolfgang had learned some English during his year in London. His favourite words were poo, bum and piss. Nobody was sure if he even knew what the words meant, but he used them all the time. The Manns forebore to comment. What might have been objectionable in an English child was obviously pardonable in a foreigner.

  The Manns were greatly looking forward to the race meeting at the end of the Mozarts’ stay. The racecourse had been built on Barham Downs, the flat pasture where soldiers used to gather to greet the sovereign. The three-day meet at Barham was one of the highlights of the summer calendar in Kent.

  ‘Everyone will be there for it,’ Horace Mann told the Mozarts. ‘Everyone we know. We’re having a lunch party beforehand. I’ve asked our friends here to meet you. We’ll all have lunch at the house and then go on to the races together.’

  The Mozarts were as excited as the Manns at the prospect. It was all very different to what they were used to. The family were in their best summer clothes as the guests’ carriages began to roll up the drive soon after midday. The sun was so hot that everyone went straight indoors for a cooling drink before gathering in the dining room for lunch.

  Among the guests was Mrs Reynard. She had brought her son with her. George was a chubby boy of four, unprepossessing to look at, but clearly the apple of his mother’s eye.

  ‘I couldn’t bear to part with him,’ she told the Manns. ‘You don’t mind, do you? George gets very upset if I leave him with his nurse.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Lucy Mann graciously. ‘George is most welcome. We don’t mind a bit.’

  George was something of an infant prodigy, according to his mother. His first words, his first footsteps, his every new tooth had all been hailed as extraordinary milestones in his development. Mrs Reynard felt that it reflected very creditably on her, having such a remarkable child for a son.

  ‘He’s very advanced,’ she told Mrs Mozart, as they sat together. ‘Extraordinarily so. George is very forward for his age.’

  ‘Is he?’

  Mrs Reynard nodded. ‘He’s wonderfully gifted. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  ‘Gifted?’

  Mrs Reynard nodded again. ‘Quite astonishing. It’s too soon to tell, of course, but I rather suspect we have a young genius on our hands.’

  She dominated the conversation for the next ten minutes, telling everyone about George’s phenomenal abilities. No one else could get a word in edgeways as she prattled on. She was still extolling her son’s virtues when there was a sudden burst of shouting in the garden.

  Mrs Reynard transferred her gaze from her astounding son to the uncouth child on the lawn outside. Wolfgang Mozart was running around the flower beds, yelling obscenities as he beheaded all the flowers with a cricket bat.

  Mrs Reynard watched him sourly. She felt all the satisfaction of a mother mentally comparing her own little angel to somebody else’s perfectly ghastly small boy. Then she remembered her manners.

  ‘What about your son, Mrs Mozart? I hear he plays the piano?’

  ‘He does. He composes as well. As a matter of fact, the Queen…’

  ‘George will play the piano too when he’s older. He’ll delight us all with his wonderful music when he’s grown up. Won’t you, pumpkin?’

  The infant prodigy beamed at his mother.

  ‘Poo, bum, piss,’ said Mozart.

  Chapter Eighteen

  John Adams, Future U.S. President

  Boston, Massachusetts was a foot deep in snow on the night of 5 March 1770. There were no streetlights, but the moon was out as a gang of unruly Americans headed towards the British army post near the Custom House on King Street. There were at least a dozen of them, mainly apprentices or young thugs armed with cudgels, and they were spoiling for a fight.

  Trouble had been brewing ever since the British government sent troops to Massachusetts in an attempt to enforce law and order. The sight of Redcoats on the streets had only inflamed the situation. The people of Boston didn’t like the idea of a standing army on their soil. They didn’t like the soldiers supplementing their pay by taking part-time jobs from local people. And they certainly didn’t like them picking up American girls in their fancy uniforms.

  ‘Let’s get them,’ the Americans told each other, as they arrived in King Street. ‘Bloody lobsterbacks. Let’s find a few of the bastards and beat them up.’

  The only soldier in sight as the gang closed in was Private White of the 29th Regiment. He was on sentry duty outside the Custom House, where the tax revenues were kept. The Americans surrounded him at once and began to taunt him.

  They provoked him into swinging his musket and hitting one of the apprentices on the side of the head. The boy reeled in pain. His friends immediately began to pelt White with stones and snowballs, challenging him to come out of his sentry box and fight like a man.

  White loaded his musket in self-defence and ostentatiously fixed the bayonet. The Americans, more than fifty of them by now, jeered. They knew White wouldn’t dare fire. One of them told him he would be hanged for murder if he did.

  ‘Damn them.’ White glared at the gang. ‘If they molest me, I’ll fire all right.’

  ‘Go on, then!’ the Americans yelled. ‘Fire, damn you! Fire!’

  ‘They’re only boys,’ an onlooker advised White. ‘Just kids. They won’t hurt you.’

  ‘Kill him,’ the gang shouted in response. ‘Kill him. Knock him down.’

  White banged on the Custom House door, but couldn’t get in. He yelled for help, calling for the main guard down the street to come to his aid. At the same time, a church bell began to ring, the signal for a public emergency in the streets.

  The people spilling out of their houses at the sound were quickly drawn to the commotion at the Custom House. Before long, a crowd of several hundred had joined the gang around Private White. His life was clearly in danger as his officer, Captain Preston, dithered about how to save him.

  Preston was an Irishman and a good soldier, but he was hampered by the law. Troops were forbidden to quell civil disturbances without a specific request from the civic authority. There would be outrage if he ignored the law and fought the mob without an order from a magistrate. But White would be killed if he didn’t.

  Preston didn’t hesitate for long. Summoning the only available troops, he went to White’s rescue. Six privates
and a corporal formed up with their muskets at the shoulder and followed him as he led the way along the street to the Custom House.

  The soldiers were heavily outnumbered when they arrived. The same man who had advised White not to fire now came out of the crowd again and warned Preston not to either.

  ‘For God’s sake, take care of your men,’ he told him. ‘If they fire, you’ll all die.’

  ‘I’m aware of it,’ Preston replied.

  White was rescued. Turning his men around, Preston marched them back towards the main guard post beside the State House. A howling mob threw rubbish at them and tried to block their path. The troops had reached the State House when Preston told the crowd to disperse. The crowd dared him to open fire in return. They knew Preston would never give the order.

  ‘Put your weapons down and fight us,’ they mocked him. ‘Go on. Either fire at us or fight.’

  Preston knew better than to be provoked. Unfortunately for him, someone came out of the darkness and hit Private Montgomery with a heavy club. The soldier slipped on the ice and fell over. Another missile hit him just as he was getting up.

  ‘Damn you,’ Montgomery shouted. ‘Fire!’

  He took his own advice, but the shot didn’t hit anybody. There was a brief, shocked silence before the rest of the soldiers opened up as well. They all discharged their muskets and reloaded at once. By the time they had finished firing, five people in the mob that had been taunting them a minute earlier lay dead or dying in the snow. The rest were running away.

  Preston was appalled. ‘Stop it,’ he ordered his men, as soon as he got the chance. ‘Stop firing. Who told you to start firing?’

  ‘You did, sir.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Someone did. We heard someone telling us to.’

  There was no use arguing about it. The damage had been done. Five Americans had been killed by the British army. Nothing would ever bring them back. The bodies lying in the snow were eloquent testament to that.

  The mob returned cautiously after the shooting had stopped. The crowd doubled in size as the news spread, but there was no more trouble that night. Massachusetts’s Lieutenant-Governor addressed the people from the balcony of the State House and told them all to go home quietly. He promised them that the soldiers would be put on trial for the shooting and he would see to it that justice was done.

  The Lieutenant-Governor was as good as his word. The soldiers were arrested at once to await trial for murder. They would be sentenced to death if they were found guilty.

  Nobody wanted to defend them when they came to court. Every lawyer in Boston knew that it would be commercial death to take the case. It might be real death too, if the lawyers’ houses were burned down by an angry crowd or they were physically attacked in the street.

  In the end, John Adams, a lawyer with political ambitions, reluctantly agreed to lead the defence team. He didn’t like it any more than anyone else, but he was a lawyer first and foremost. Men standing trial for murder were entitled to a fair trial. That meant having a lawyer to defend them.

  ‘It’s in Magna Carta,’ he told his critics, when they accused him of lacking patriotism.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The right to a fair trial. No free man shall be seized or imprisoned except by the lawful judgment of his peers. It’s in Magna Carta. The bedrock of justice.’

  Tempers had cooled by the time the trial took place. The Americans killed in the so-called Boston massacre had been asking for trouble when they deliberately provoked the troops. They had gone out looking for a fight that night and they had found one. Adams had little sympathy for them as he addressed the jury.

  ‘They were a mob,’ he told the jurors. ‘In plain English, gentlemen, a motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes and mulattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tars. Why should we scruple to call such a set of people a mob?’

  Adams warmed to his theme as he defended the soldier who had fired the first shot.

  ‘In regard to the soldier Montgomery, the evidence is clear enough that he had been assaulted and knocked down before he rose and fired. How much was he supposed to bear before retaliating?

  ‘When the multitude was shouting and huzzaing, and threatening life, the bells ringing, the mob whistling, screaming and rendering an Indian yell, the people from all quarters throwing every species of rubbish they could pick up in the street, Montgomery in particular smote with a club and knocked down, and as soon as he could rise and take up his firelock, another club from afar, struck his breast or shoulder. What could he do?’

  Adams told the court that the British had only fired in self-defence, and then only by accident. A jury packed with Crown loyalists agreed. They found two of the soldiers guilty of manslaughter, to be branded on their thumbs as punishment. The rest were found not guilty and walked free.

  Adams’s career didn’t suffer as he had feared. Instead, his insistence on upholding the law against his own inclinations increased his standing in Massachusetts. He became one of his country’s founding fathers when he signed the American Declaration of Independence. He later went to France as one of the American representatives negotiating the Treaty of Paris that brought the war with Britain to an end in September 1783.

  The treaty was very favourable to the United States. Recognising the inevitable, the pragmatic British offered generous terms in return for commercial arrangements that would benefit both sides. If they didn’t own the colonies anymore, the British could still make money by trading with them. The Americans could pay their own defence costs against the Redskins from now on.

  The peace was signed in Paris on 3 September. Adams immediately began to plan a trip to England to explore the trading possibilities. It was safe for him to visit at last, now that the two countries were no longer at war.

  He was greatly looking forward to the trip. Despite everything that had happened, England was still the mother country. English law, English language, English literature. English ideas and inventions. Adams knew where his ancestors had come from. He didn’t want to die without seeing England first.

  His wife Abigail was home in America, but his son, John Quincy Adams, was in France. The two of them went to England together.

  ‘We’ll stay the night at Abbeville,’ Adams told his son, as they left Paris. ‘We’ll go on to Calais and sail from there to Dover.’

  The passage across the Channel lasted eighteen hours. Adams and his son arrived dreadfully seasick in the small hours of 24 October. They were taken through the darkness to the Royal Hotel at the foot of the Dover cliffs and collapsed thankfully into bed. It wasn’t until much later in the day that they surfaced again and were able to take stock of their new surroundings.

  Adams was appalled at the sight of the cliffs above his head. So high and perpendicular. He wondered if parts ever broke off and destroyed the houses below.

  He and his son decided to explore them. They climbed the coach road to the top of the cliffs. It was a foggy day, but they still had a good view of the harbour from the heights, and the nearest of the ships out to sea. What impressed them most, though, was the size of the sheep on the clifftops. They had never seen such fat sheep before, or such green grass.

  ‘They’re enormous.’ John Quincy Adams could hardly believe it. ‘Much bigger than anything in France.’

  ‘It’s the grass. England has the climate for sheep. The Speaker in the House of Lords sits on a big sack of wool to remind him where the country’s prosperity comes from.’

  It wasn’t until next morning that Adams and his son set off for London. They travelled in a post chaise and pair and made their first change of horses at the coaching inn in Canterbury. The tower of Bell Harry was the first thing they saw of the city as they came in along the Dover Road.

  ‘I wonder what that is,’ said John Quincy.

  ‘It’s the cathedral tower. Canterbury is the chief see in England.’

  ‘Can we go see it?’

  John Adams shook his head. �
��There isn’t time. We have to get to Dartford tonight.’

  They stayed at the inn only long enough to change horses and use the chamber pot. It seemed a shame that they didn’t have a chance to look around at all. There was a lot to see in the cathedral.

  ‘Hey, landlord,’ said John Adams.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Can you tell me something about the cathedral? Am I right in thinking that they keep a copy of Magna Carta in there?’

  ‘King John’s Magna Carta?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Oh, bless you, sir. I believe they did have a copy years ago. I think it got damaged in a fire.’

  ‘So it’s not there anymore?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Someone took it away.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ said Adams.

  He and his son returned to their post chaise and continued to London. A few months later, once he was settled in the capital, Adams sent for his wife from America. Abigail came soon afterwards, arriving at Deal on 20 July 1784.

  She too admired the sheep as she travelled inland. But Abigail Adams, wife of one future American President and mother of another, wasn’t particularly impressed by her first sight of a cathedral city. She told her sister so in a letter home:

  Canteburry is a larger town than Boston, it contains a Number of old Gothick Cathedrals, which are all of stone very heavy, with but few windows which are grated with large Bars of Iron, and look more like jails for criminals than places designd for the worship of the deity.

  One would Suppose from the manner in which they are Gaurded, that they apprehended devotion would be stolen. They have a most gloomy appearance and realy made me shudder.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Napoleon’s Troops in the Precincts

  One of Napoleon’s invasion barges had just been captured. It had been intercepted in the English Channel and towed in to Deal, complete with soldiers and crew. The Frenchmen didn’t look happy as they floated fifty yards offshore, while everyone stared at them from the beach.