The Rise of the Automated Aristocrats (26 page)

A NEW PRESENT

. . . full of presumption, affectation, petty tyranny and ignorance; and the civilised world have confirmed their verdict with the damning epigram that it has fixed to this class that “they are servile to those above, and tyrannical to those beneath them.”

—Karl Marx on the middle classes,
New-York Daily Tribune,
1854

YOUNG ENGLAND, OLD FRIENDS, AND A BROTHEL

AN EXHIBITION OF MECHANICAL WINGS

Hyde Park, Saturday April 15th, 2 p.m.
In which courageous aeronauts will don the newly invented wings, jump from the rotorship
Orpheus
, and fly like birds for your entertainment and wonderment. You will not believe your eyes!

MEN CAN FLY!

“It's atrocious!” Thomas Bendyshe bellowed. “An affront to human liberty! The criminalisation of public protests! By gad, that Disraeli fellow should be kicked in the seat of his pants!”

“I'd happily lend my foot to the project,” Richard Monckton Milnes responded. “The name for his current campaign—
Young England
—originated with me. That it's been so perverted in purpose and application causes me considerable guilt. I only wish I could retract my involvement.”

Sir Richard Francis Burton, sitting cross-legged in a leather armchair with a hookah at his side, exhaled a plume of fragrant smoke and in a drawling tone, his words a little slurred, said, “But it was something else entirely at the time, was it not?”

Monckton Milnes, a tall, enigmatic, and saturnine individual, took a decanter from the sideboard by which he was standing and refilled his wine glass. “Absolutely. The original Young England was founded back in 1840, in the days following the assassination. At that time, Palmerston was attempting to backdate the Regency Act to allow Prince Albert to accede to the throne. Countess Sabina—you remember her? The clairvoyant?”

Burton winced. “Of course I do. She died right in front of me.”

In his mind's eye, he saw the countess, possessed by a
nosferatu
, her head twisting around until her neck snapped. Like so much at present, the recollection felt as if it more properly belonged to someone else. There was no depth of emotion attached to it.

Monckton Milnes continued, “She warned me that, though it might appear a desirable move where the welfare of the country was concerned, Palmerston's intentions were rather more unscrupulous. Aware of the prince's persistently frail health and the likelihood he would die relatively young and without issue, Palmerston was manoeuvring himself into what could easily become an unassailable position of power. He foresaw the empire slipping into republicanism with, in all probability, himself as its president. Countess Sabina warned that his actions would lead to a violent and disastrous revolution such as those that were then brewing throughout the whole of Europe.”

“You told Disraeli?” Burton asked.

“The countess instructed me to do so. Frankly, I was puzzled. In those days, Dizzy was an insignificant politico with the reputation of being an unprincipled opportunist. He didn't strike me as a man who could oppose someone as cunning and influential as Palmerston.”

Doctor James Hunt, seated opposite Burton, removed a pipe from his mouth. “He was considered a radical at the time, wasn't he? Disraeli, I mean.”

“Quite so,” Monckton Milnes agreed. “Though he was standing as a Tory candidate. I met him at one of Lady Londonderry's little soirées. He wasn't much liked. There was considerable prejudice against Jews at the time, and I must confess, I felt a little sorry for him.”

“Hah!” Bendyshe yelled. “If only you'd known then what a loony he'd turn out to be, hey?”

“Great Scott, Tom! Why must you trumpet so?” Sir Edward Brabrooke complained. “You're giving me a blessed earache.”

Burton, Bendyshe, Monckton Milnes, Hunt, and Brabrooke, along with Sir Charles Bradlaugh and Captain Henry Murray, were relaxing in the private chambers above Bartolini's Italian restaurant in Leicester Square. Together, they formed the disreputable Cannibal Club, of which Swinburne—currently absent—was also a member. An offshoot of Burton's Anthropological Society, it had originally been created as forum for dining and discussion but from the outset had proven a better vehicle for drinking and hell-raising. Indeed, its members' tendency to rowdiness—especially on the part of Swinburne and Bendyshe—frequently incited Signor Bartolini to banish them from his rooms, though he always rescinded, usually after being charmed by either Burton or Monckton Milnes.

Last year, the club had taken on a more serious purpose, its dedicated bachelors tasked with finding wives and starting families, so their descendants could assist Burton's expedition as it travelled forward through time. His safe return, which owed a great deal to their success, meant the Cannibals could now abandon the project. It was a confusingly contradictory state of affairs that none of them really understood.

“I rather like the sound of my descendants,” Bendyshe had said, “and shan't deny them the opportunity to exist. I'll continue the search, and one way or another, I shall find my spouse and do the unnecessary.”

Three months of fruitless wife hunting had passed since he'd made that statement.

Those same three months—it was now June 1861—had seen Burton at a loose end. Stripped of his role as the king's agent, he had no idea what to do with himself. None of his unfinished writing projects interested him—not
The Thousand Nights and a Night
, not
The Kama Sutra of V
ā
tsy
ā
yana
, not even
Vikram and the Vampire
, which required only a little attention before it could be considered complete. Whenever he considered them, he experienced the inexplicable sensation that the work was already done, that whatever he wrote would simply reiterate what already existed, not by virtue of being translations, but rather because—

And here he stumbled. Because what?

Why did everything—
everything
!—give rise to a haunting déjà vu, yet at one and the same time, strike him as bizarrely unfamiliar? It made no sense. And why, too, his permanent suspicion that he'd forgotten something?

He was flummoxed, restive, and irritated, and had in consequence so far called five meetings of the Cannibals in order to drink his uneasiness into submission. The previous four occasions had seen him achieve a thorough state of inebriation. On this fifth, he was dedicating himself assiduously to the same end.

He wasn't there yet. Only two hours had passed since the club convened—it was close to midnight—and the time had thus far been spent discussing the extraordinary policies the prime minister was rushing through Parliament. In a matter of weeks, Disraeli had taken the empire in a whole new direction, with Gladstone's opposition party offering a baffling lack of resistance.

“So following your advice,” Burton said to Monckton Milnes, “Disraeli founded Young England?”

“He did. I funded it and suggested the name, following the pattern of Young Ireland, Young Italy, and Young Germany, all similarly nationalistic groups. Together with four aristocratic young gentlemen—George Smythe, Lord John Manners, Henry Thomas Hope, and Alexander Baillie-Cochrane—and supported by John Walter the Second, who was then the proprietor of the
Times
, as his son is now, Dizzy mounted a devastating attack on Palmerston, exposing him as a dangerous megalomaniac and ruining his political credibility while, incidentally, raising his own game to such a degree that he was elected head of the Conservative Party and, soon afterward, prime minister. As you know, Palmerston went barmy, attempted an armed insurrection, holed up in secret chambers beneath the Tower of London, and in October 1841 was flushed out, tried as a traitor, and hanged.”

“Bloody hell!” Bendyshe thundered. “Dizzy owes his career to you. Perhaps I should apply my boot to
your
pants!”

“I suppose he does and maybe you should,” Monckton Milnes ruminated. “Though once Palmerston was defeated, I withdrew my support.”

“Why?” Burton asked.

“Simply because there was no further requirement for it.”

“And what of Young England?”

“It continued for a while, its new intention being to promulgate the notion of
noblesse oblige
, the idea that the landed gentry has a duty to fulfil social responsibilities, that it must earn its privileges by working to improve the lot of the lower classes, rather than seeking ever more influence, as Palmerston had done. However, by the mid-forties, Dizzy's political jiggery-pokery made it apparent that he actually supported the unbridled power of the aristocracy, which so badly damaged Young England's credibility that the group disbanded and that was the end of that.”

“Until three months ago,” Brabrooke observed. “Why resurrect it?”

Monckton Milnes shrugged. “It's the same name and the same core group of people—less George Smythe, who died a few years ago—but the rationale appears to be the opposite of the original. This new Young England is pursuing a course by which peers are more greatly separated and insulated from the masses than ever before. The common people—or, to be more specific, the middling sorts—are fast becoming the subjects of a cold-hearted plutocracy, with all the legal routes of opposition to it being fast removed.”

“I'll say!” Bendyshe put in. “These new laws of his are oppressive to an extreme. The right to detain individuals without charge. The militarisation of the police. Outrageous! The people are being denied their freedom. Dizzy has become little better than a dictator.”

“As our friend Algernon is making very plain,” Monckton Milnes noted. “He's treading a perilous path with his latest work. John Walter the Third is vilifying him in the
Times
on an almost-daily basis. The paper has dubbed him the ‘Rabble-Rousing Rhymer.' I'm happy that Algy has found a purpose, but I worry that he's pushing harder than the authorities will allow. There are rumours that lawsuits are being prepared against him and that he'll be accused of sedition, libel, and obscenity. Already, his poems ‘A Song in Time of Order' and ‘A Song in Time of Revolution' have been suppressed and all published copies burned. You need to calm him down, Richard. Tell him to keep quiet and lie low for a while.”

“I've not seen him for some weeks,” Burton countered.

“Probably because he's sobered up and you've gone the other way,” James Hunt observed. “I mean no offence—Lord knows, we all know how to down a few—but, you must admit, you've been hitting the bottle rather hard of late.”

Burton sighed, put aside the hookah, picked up a glass half filled with brandy, and emptied it in a single swallow. “Frustration, James. Raghavendra and Krishnamurthy have been missing for over twelve weeks, Scotland Yard has no leads, Trounce's attempts to investigate have been blocked by Chief Commissioner Mayne, and I'm prohibited from looking any further into the matter. Even were I to ignore that ban—which I do—I have no notion how to proceed with the investigation.”