Resolution by A. N. Wilson

Author:A. N. Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books

So they saw England as strangers see it. Before their arrival, his mind having mysteriously blotted out the Letter to Lord Sandwich and its impassioned, intemperate words, George had supposed that it would be a month of glad reunions. The frostiness of Mrs Cook was, however, a harbinger of cold weather to come. An audience between Forster the world-encircler and the Prince of Wales had been petitioned for, pre-booked and arranged. When George and Humboldt arrived at St James’s Palace at the appointed hour, however, they were told that His Royal Highness was not, after all, available. They did visit Mr Dalrymple at the Admiralty – Mr Alexander Dalrymple, the hydrographer who had accompanied Cook on the first voyage to Tahiti to observe the transit of Venus in ’69, and who was an employee of the East India Company much of his life, an organization with which he had a stormy relationship. In a breezy way, Dalrymple was friendly enough, gave the two men dinner and spoke incessantly, in part, which was of absorbing interest to them both, of astronomy, and in part, which was a little baffling to them, of the trial of Warren Hastings which had been taking place, with long intervals, over the last couple of years in Westminster Hall. Hastings, the Governor General of India, had been brought home and impeached, subjected to furious denunciations by Edmund Burke, accused of personal corruption and maladministration. Dalrymple, a plump fifty-something man whose tongue and teeth appeared too large for his mouth, poured out scorn for the Council of the East India Company, recounted how badly they had behaved towards himself ever since he’d arrived in Madras in ’52. Neither Forster nor Humboldt could fathom the interstices of legal argument; nor, next day, when they went to Westminster Hall to witness the cross-examination of ‘Lord’ Hastings as they wrongly supposed him to be named, did they feel much the wiser, though the spectacle was an absorbing one – the Lord Chancellor in his wig and robes, the Speaker of the Lower House, also in a wig, the heralds in bright tabards, emblazoned with heraldic arms, resembling the Knave of Hearts on playing cards. A ruddy-faced man with sharp nose, ironical mouth and dark eyes was addressing the assembled Parliamentarians on the cruelties perpetrated upon the natives of Bengal. It was Burke himself, the famous radical orator, who had called for the abolition of slavery, defended the American colonists’ right to independence, and now denounced the cruelties and corruptions of the English in India. Alexander, who could read English with fluency, could not really understand it when spoken, and it was faith alone rather than judgement which acceded to George’s excited assurance that Burke was the great orator of the age.

—The accent I could detect – is that Cockney? Scottish?

—He is an Irishman – ah, Nally! – which is what gives him his total independence of outlook! How I long to hear him speak on the French Revolution! What prose

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