The Price of Glory (45 page)

The events in London during Part Two are based in part on the love letters of Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay, though I have juggled a little with the dates. Celebrated as a pioneer feminist and the author of
A Vindication of the Rights of Women,
Mary went to France in 1792 to write about the Revolution. Here she met the American writer, Gilbert Imlay, and fell in love. They were married by the US ambassador—in a ceremony of dubious legality—and in May, 1794, Mary gave birth to their daughter, Fanny. Imlay then left her in Le Havre to pursue various interests in England and elsewhere, but when she joined him in London the following spring she found he was having an affair with an actress. She tried to kill herself by taking an overdose of laudanum; Imlay came back in time to save her.

Despite her entreaties, however, he continued to see his actress and she made another attempt on her life, which I have described in the book—with some added details of my own, William Blake being one of them. Blake did, in fact, work with Mary on a book of fairytales—she wrote the copy, he did the illustrations—but I made up the story of his seeing her on the waterfront shortly before she jumped off Putney Bridge. And, of course, the presence of Nathan and his mother is entirely fictitious. But the rest of the story is based on the known facts—she
was
saved by a member of the newly created Royal Humane Society who happened to be at the pub at the time and had just learned how to perform artificial resuscitation. The suicide letter I quote is the real one she left at her lodgings.

As for Imlay, I made up quite a lot about him, but then he made up quite a lot about himself. History knows him as an officer in Washington's army during the American War of Independence, an explorer of the American frontier and the writer of
A Topographical Description of the Western Territory of North America
as well as a novel,
The Emigrants
. But he was much more than that. His own family thought he was a traitor—a British agent—but there is reason to suppose he was working secretly for General Washington: what we would now call a double agent.

After the war, Imlay became involved in various land speculations on the frontier. Then he disappeared for a while. Some believe he fled to the Spanish territory in the south-east to avoid his creditors; others that he became a Spanish agent in the Floridas and New Orleans. He may even have been continuing to work undercover for Washington, now President, who maintained his own secret service, answerable only to himself. I have seen documents in the National Archive in Havana including a confidential report from the Spanish governor of New Orleans to his superiors in Madrid.

Then on the eve of the French Revolution, Imlay turned up in Paris. With France at war with most of Europe, he operated as a shipping agent, running goods past the British blockade—but he seems to have had many other interests. In the Paris Archives des Affaires Étrangères, Louisiane et Florides 1792-1803, there are two documents entitled “Observations du Capitain Imlay” and “Memoire sur la Louisiane” relating Imlay's plans for the invasion and conquest of Spanish Louisiana and New Orleans, written during the time of the Terror and submitted to Lazarre Carnot, the military expert on the Committee of Public Safety. (This forms the basis for the plot of
The Tide of War
.)

In the summer and early autumn of 1795, Imlay was definitely in London because we have the evidence of Mary's letters to him there, but after that, he disappears again. His appearance in Provence in the spring of 1796 is, I am afraid, pure invention but it would not have surprised anyone who knew him. He had fingers in a lot of pies—in France, England, Scandinavia, Kentucky and Louisiana, Florida, New England and the Caribbean. He is buried, for some reason, in Jersey, on the Channel Islands. Or at least there is a grave there with his name on it.

The activities of Napoleone Buonaparte in Paris in 1795 are almost as incredible, but most of what I have written is based on contemporary accounts. He arrived in the French capital, broke and unemployed, in the spring of that year and embarked on a series of bizarre adventures mainly directed towards finding a job and a wife. In the course of these endeavours he wrote a romantic novel and kept a notebook with his peculiar jottings—including the observations about great men with three testicles. The scandalous adventures of Thérésa, Rose and Fortune Hamelin are also well documented, though I have to admit there is a strong suggestion of the prurient about the accounts of their more outrageous activities—especially in the memoirs of Paul Barras. You could say the same for what I've written here, but in my defence it
is
a novel and I hope my admiration for all three women comes through strong and clear. Good luck to them. I wish they'd been more like Mary Wollstonecraft in their politics but you can't have everything and they probably had a lot more fun.

Which brings us to Nelson. The account of his relationship with Adelaide Correglia is recorded in detail by Thomas Fremantle in his diaries including the surprising information that she went to sea with him and acted as his hostess. Fremantle called her “Nelson's dolly.” The fact that she doesn't appear in most accounts of Nelson's life is probably because she was overshadowed by his affair with Emma Hamilton—which was so public it could not be hidden. Also, I suppose if historians had included Signora Correglia in the story of Nelson's rise to greatness, he might have come over as a serial philanderer, which would not have suited the Victorians at all. In fact, he was no better or worse than most naval officers of the time. Nelson's “band of brothers” reflected the social and sexual mores of the Age of Scandal—but they were “cleaned up” for the more guarded, less open, period that followed. Significantly Fremantle's diary was destroyed in the middle of the 19
^th
century, when Nelson's status as a national hero was positively godlike, but a copy had been made of part of it—and in any case the
Signora
is mentioned in despatches—or at least, letters, from Admiral Jervis.

The remarkable story of the Casa di San Giorgio is based on various documentary sources. The bank played a secretive but key role in many of the events of early modern Europe, funding Columbus's expedition to the Americas, the Spanish Armada, and much of the expansion of the Spanish Empire. In the process it established its control over the Republic of Genoa and built its own empire through the eastern Mediterranean, the Aegean and the Black Sea, even establishing colonies in the Crimea: an early example of a bank controlling a sovereign state. Certainly it was too big to fail and when it did, it brought down the Republic of Genoa with it. When Buonaparte occupied the city in 1797 the vaults were, indeed, found to be empty, but I have taken liberties with the story of the chalice.

I have used an accurate account of its reputed history as the Holy Grail—it was found by Genoese soldiers during the First Crusade and belonged to the bank for many years—but it was taken from Genoa by the French much earlier. They were forced to restore it after Napoleon's defeat but someone dropped it while packing it up for transport and it was discovered to be made of glass, not emerald. It was put together again, bound in silver filigree, and is now displayed in the Cathedral of Genoa.

The story of the secret talks between France and Spain over the future of North America is true. The vast territories of Spanish Louisiana—the whole of the present-day USA west of the Mississippi and from Canada to Mexico (828,000 square miles) were ceded to the French but when Napoleon sent an army to take possession in 1801, it was defeated by a series of intrigues by Anglo-US agents (probably Imlay again). So Napoleon cut his losses and sold the whole area to the US for $22 million in 1802. Known as the Louisiana Purchase it was the biggest real-estate deal in history and now comprises fourteen US states and two Canadian provinces.

The End

Seth Hunter
is the pseudonym of the author of a number of highly acclaimed novels for adults and children. He has written and directed many historical dramas for British television, radio, and the theatre. He lives in London. Visit him on the web at
www.nathanpeake.com

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