Will & Tom

There is an unfriendly cackle from the billiard table; off in the shadows, fans flutter open to hide smiles. The cause is obvious. Will sees that he should have given more time to smoothing out his accent and rather less to buffing his buttons.

‘So, Lascelles,’ says one of the gentlemen – another well-fed specimen in a coat cut just like Beau’s but the colour of lemon curd, ‘this must be your cockney project.’

An odd word to select. Will senses an objection building inside him; again, he quells it, keeping his face as blank as he can manage. Project may imply a refashioning, as if he is somehow inadequate in his current form – but it also clearly indicates an intention to invest. Be patient, he instructs himself. Wait for the terms.

Beau is grinning, doubling the number of chins that quiver upon his collar. ‘If you were any less of a philistine, Purkiss,’ he declares, ‘you’d be aware that Mr Turner here, despite being scarcely out of boyhood, had two fine oils shown at the Academy Exhibition, and as many drawings in watercolour. He is a veritable phenomenon.’

‘Four,’ Will corrects – taking care to say forr rather than fowah, as he might in other circumstances. ‘Beg pardon, sir, but it was four drawings.’

Beau pauses for a moment, deciding how much license he will allow. ‘Of course,’ he concedes. He releases Will’s shoulder. ‘Views of Ely Cathedral, if I recall correctly, and quite divine.’

‘Salisbury,’ murmurs Will, but he is not heard; Beau has turned about and is strolling to the billiard table.

‘I found Mr Turner, would you believe, in the house of a mad-doctor – one Thomas Monro, an illustrious fellow indeed within his field. He was prominent among the party of physicians assembled to minister to our King, God save him, during His Majesty’s most recent deterioration.’

Beau’s manner had grown confidential while revealing this sensitive yet impressive detail; once it is out, though, and Monro’s cachet established beyond question, he moves briskly onwards. Discussing the royal travails is not thought patriotic.

‘The good doctor is a collector, and a devoted friend to the arts. He has a villa on Adelphi Terrace, from where he conducts a copying society – an academy, you might call it. On certain evenings, I have seen upwards of a half-dozen young draughtsmen at work in his rooms, setting down their own versions of drawings and prints from Monro’s albums. It is a fascinating undertaking for anyone interested in the visual arts in England, and several noble connoisseurs number among the doctor’s regular visitors. Viscount Malden introduced me there, in fact.’ Beau’s voice becomes mocking. ‘You know Malden, don’t you, Purkiss?’

The gentleman in the lemon-curd coat levels his cue, returning pointedly to the billiards game. His complexion, beneath whatever cosmetics have been applied to it, is pock-marked; the bulb at the end of his nose is cleaved like the cheeks of a tiny bottom. ‘No need to revive that old tale, Lascelles,’ he says, ‘in front of the ladies and all.’

This embarrassment is false. Mr Purkiss is perversely proud of whatever Beau is about to reveal. A lively back-and-forth ensues, drawing guffaws from the other two gentlemen and disapproving sighs from the ladies. Will learns that on one infamous occasion, while staying at Viscount Malden’s country seat at Cassiobury Park, Mr Purkiss embarked on a brandy-fuelled rampage across the formal gardens, under the impression that the peacocks purchased to strut thereabouts were intended to serve as game. The conclusion was predictable: iridescent feathers strewn over the lawn, the Viscount’s young children wailing at windows and a dead bird crushed in a flowerbed, buried beneath their father’s insensible guest.

Will, still standing, is forgotten completely. Mr Cope snags his eye and gestures discreetly to a chair. It is a fancy thing, all scrolls and flourishes, painted a soapy green with cushions of pink satin. Will sits as naturally as he can, flapping up the tails of his jacket. He is close to the lone lady, the one who appears to have deliberately isolated herself from the party. A sidelong glance reveals that she is younger than the rest of them – who range, by Will’s estimate, between thirty and forty years of age – being no more than twenty-five. She slouches in her chair with none of the poise affected by the other women. Her legs are crossed inside her loose fawn gown, a silken slipper dangling from her toe. There is a clear familial resemblance to Beau, the eyes heavy-lidded, the nose straight, with the same generosity of figure; it fits her better, though, Will decides – lending her a sleek, almost classical quality, akin to the larger women of Tiziano, or Peter-Paul Rubens – and she is hugely, aggressively bored. No notice whatever is granted to the artist seated beside her. Will summons his knowledge of the Lascelles family, gleaned from the portrait commissions they have made. This is surely Mary Ann, Lord Harewood’s younger daughter.

It won’t do to sit there mutely. Will knows that he has to talk; to ingratiate and flatter. He draws breath, makes an introduction and asks Miss Lascelles if her father is at home. She says that he is not, and nothing more – neatly snipping this first, somewhat feeble line of discourse and dropping them back into silence.

Will girds himself to try again. The library is growing quite dark now, but he opts nonetheless to undertake an assessment of the paintings displayed above the bookshelves and in other suitable places. These are Grecian in character, simple decorative pieces done without use of local colour or atmospheric effect; hack work, basically, and too late he realises that he must admire them, yet cannot hope to sound remotely sincere whilst doing so. He is growing tongue-tied when Miss Lascelles interrupts him.

‘You are well used to praise, aren’t you, Mr Turner? You rather expect it, I think.’

Her voice, in contrast with her careless pose, has a tart refinement, suggestive of governesses and tutors, private balls and carriages, the best of everything. Will begs her pardon.

‘Just then, when you were talking to my brother – he called you a phenomenon, for goodness sake, and you gave next to no reaction. You are accustomed to people falling at your feet. Lauding you to the heavens.’ She looks away. ‘I would worry, if I were you, that it had made me proud.’

A bristling heat blooms across Will’s face and closes around his throat; he turns a little in his chair. There are no thoughts or words within him, only a sense of having reached a boundary beyond which he cannot proceed. He feels the usual impulse to retreat, to plan and prepare, to seek the advice of more experienced men. This can’t be done, of course. He needs to meet this bizarre slur with modest good humour, a deferential quip; but the precise remark required, the sentiment he has to frame, eludes him utterly.

Someone enters the library and begins to speak over the billiard-table prattle in the assertive yet respectful tone of a senior servant. It is Mr Noakes, resplendent in livery of emerald green and gold, the tie-wig from his basement office perched atop his head, come to announce that dinner is served. The ladies rise, the gentlemen lay down their cues and an informal procession saunters off into the palatial hallway. Will lifts himself from the soap-green chair, his shirt peeling clammily from his back. He glances out at the blue shadows of the park with vague longing; then he mops his brow on his sleeve and falls in behind.

*

The dining table is oblong, with a chair at one end and four down each side. Beau claims the head with a swagger and beckons for Mr Purkiss to sit at his right hand. The others slot in around them, in seconds it seems, leaving but one place vacant. It is as far from Beau as the arrangement will allow.

Mary Ann is opposite. Her appeal, Will finds, has quite vanished; slovenly is the word that comes to mind now. The blankness that beset him in the library has also gone. He itches to tell her that he has never, never once in his life, received undeserved praise, and name some of the notable connoisseurs and newspaper critics who have singled out William Turner for special attention. But, thinking of Father, he holds his peace. It would become an eruption, for certain; and an eruption at Harewood, directed at a member of the baron’s family, would do him no favours at all.

The candles have been lit, perhaps three dozen of them – grouped along the table, set before massive, gilt-framed mirrors, positioned upon every available surface. This creates an extraordinary level of illumination, and makes the dining room disagreeably warm and airless despite its cavernous size. Beau orders the windows opened, admitting a barely perceptible breeze; and, soon afterwards, a horde of biting insects. During the entrée a papery moth hurtles in, butts against a candle and bursts into flames, prompting shrieks and exclamations as its smoking, flapping body spirals to the tablecloth. At once, a servant is on hand to dispose of it.

Will eats mechanically, scarcely registering the series of fussy, Frenchified dishes that are placed before him. Burying his puzzlement, he thinks only of the conversation he might make. Nothing comes, though: no topics, no opportunities. The company moves seamlessly from one society scandal to the next, an animated parade of disclosures, dropped names and allusions, interspersed with peals of nasty laughter. He forces a grin at a couple of Beau’s jokes, and even at one of Mr Purkiss’s – feeling a pinch of self-loathing as he does so.

Across the table, Mary Ann sets about her dinner with gusto, but otherwise manages to sustain her air of disconnection and ennui. This is not permitted for long. Her brother and his comrade begin to goad her, prodding and jibing, trying to draw her out by recounting details of nocturnal antics back in London.

‘Four o’clock in morning, was it, before the fair Miss Lascelles deigned to return to Hanover Square? And was she really quite alone?’

‘Indeed she was, dear Purkiss – and what’s more, her gown appeared to have lost a number of, ah, crucial components over the course of the evening’s revelry. Why, it was hardly sufficient to cover her person. Some slight recompense for the coachman, I suppose!’

Mary Ann merely rolls her shoulders like a sulky cat, much to her tormentors’ amusement. Then a lady’s voice bids Beau to leave her be – and reminds Mr Purkiss, none too fondly, that he is a guest at Harewood. The speaker, who has contributed little up to this point, is sitting further down the table on Will’s side. He tilts back in his chair for a surreptitious survey. Although leaner and a shade more severe, she too is plainly a Lascelles. Will gathers from the gentlemen’s apologies that this is Frances, the baron’s eldest child. Mary Ann is annoyed by her sister’s intervention; she lays a fork down noisily on her empty plate.

Will watches a spindly insect drift over the central candelabrum, lifting an inch or two in the flames’ heat, and fits together a theory. The younger daughter is in disgrace. There has been a liaison during the spring, a grave blunder on her part, and it has ended badly both for her and her family. She is at Harewood as a punishment, under Frances and Beau’s wardship, exiled so that memories of her misadventure can fade. This would account for her demeanour – and for her harsh treatment of wholly innocent house guests. Why her brother would refer to this matter before him, however, and these others to boot, and so lightly, is past Will’s comprehension; unless, like so many of his type, Beau Lascelles has simply never learned to think better of a bit of drollery.

Firmly, Frances moves them on – asking another of the gentlemen, a slim, bland-looking fellow who Will perceives is her husband, to tell the table of an encounter he’d had the previous week with the Prince of Wales. The gentleman, addressed by all as Douglas, is glad to co-operate. It was at Almack’s, he reveals – where, during a conversational hand of piquet, he informed the prince of his connection with Harewood and its family.

‘His Majesty gave a laugh, looked to his friends and declared, in that winning way of his, that the last time he’d heard the name Lascelles it was being mistakenly applied to him.’

The similarity said to exist between Beau and the prince is quite famous. Will has observed George on two occasions, waddling around the Academy Exhibition; their likeness, in his view, is one only of overfed complacency. Beau, though, grown loud with wine, cannot conceal his pleasure. The prince remembers his name, who he is! To enjoy such an association with royalty, to edge past obeisance towards proper familiarity, is the fervid dream of every aristocrat – especially those lodged on the lower rungs of the noble ladder, as the Lascelles undoubtedly are.

The company – Mary Ann excepted – attempts to be impressed by Douglas’s tale. An awkwardness persists, however; and before ten more minutes have passed, Frances gathers in her silken shawl and rises from her chair, giving the ladies their cue to depart. Her sister is away immediately, rushing around the table in a wide circle and off through a door at the back of the room. The two other women follow at a more leisurely pace, arms linked, sharing a whispered joke that Will suspects is at Mary Ann’s expense. Frances is equally unhurried, but she sweeps rather than strolls – stopping by a sideboard to murmur an order to the ever-present Mr Cope. He bends down to offer his ear, then nods once in obedient understanding.

The door closes behind her, to a collective release of breath. Costly jackets are removed, wrapped into balls and hurled aside; waistcoats are unbuttoned; sweat-sodden shirt-tails are wrenched free from breeches. Servants bring in crystal brandy decanters, large tumblers and trays of sweetmeats, folding back the tablecloth to set them upon the polished wood beneath. Intrigued, Will leans forward to scrutinise the jewel-bright confections – selecting one that is a rich raspberry red and moulded in the shape of a conical sea shell. He gives the point a cautious nibble; the soft, jellied flesh dissolves instantly, flooding his mouth with a taste of summer fruit so succulent and intense that he nearly blurts out an oath.

Beau wishes to clear the air. ‘Gentlemen,’ he says, ‘please tell me that you are far too wise to pay any mind to that saucy talk concerning my younger sister.’ He props a foot on the empty chair to his left. ‘None of what we said was of any consequence. God knows, Mary Ann has had a miserable time of it lately. I’m sure you’ll have heard the rumours – the scurrilous stories that swirl about London. It was not gallant of us to wave it before her up here as well.’

The others indicate that they understand Beau and Mr Purkiss spoke only in jest – Douglas adding that his wife was damnably prone to over-reaction where her sister was concerned. Will, for all his theorising, has heard none of these rumours about Mary Ann. Keen to learn more, he wonders how best to assure his host of his discretion.

Mr Purkiss is watching him, his pocked face heavy with contempt. ‘An appropriate moment for you to withdraw, Mr Turnbull, wouldn’t you say?’

Will looks to Beau. He is swilling brandy around in a tumbler; he makes no objection, not even to the error regarding Will’s name. A silence settles upon the dining room. These fine gentlemen will say nothing else while the painter is present. He is being dismissed.

There is a second or two’s numbness while Will fully apprehends what is happening – and then a jolt of furious, dizzying energy. Lips pursed hard, he clambers from his chair like a man dismounting a difficult horse. The plum waistcoat has gone awry and one of his stockings is coming loose from his breeches. He doesn’t attempt to adjust them. Drawing himself up, he announces that he will retire for the evening – adding, a little more pointedly than is politic, that he has much work to do. A cursory bow and he is off across the carpet, accelerating shoe-squeaks marking his progress to the door.

The music room beyond is far darker, lit by only a triple-stemmed candelabrum placed atop a pianoforte. Will slows, feeling a gummy sensation in his right palm: the remainder of the shell-shaped sweetmeat, carried with him from the table, is starting to liquefy against his skin. All appetite gone, he looks about distractedly for somewhere to dispose of it.

His mind teems with unpleasant questions. Was he asked here specifically to be mistreated? It’s beginning to feel deliberate. Has he perhaps offended Beau in some way, or connected himself inadvertently to an enemy of the Lascelles? Is this all, in short, a trick? Have they dragged him out to Harewood in order to avenge a slight received during the season, in a London drawing room or pleasure garden? Will has grown up listening to the ton talk in Father’s shop, gossiping unguardedly while they were shaved. He knows very well how they delight in their cruel games and obscure vendettas – in wreaking precisely this kind of humiliation. The only rational course for him is to leave, at first light if not that same evening. He makes for the hall door.

‘Mr Turner.’ It is Mr Cope, back at the entrance to the dining room. ‘One moment, if you please.’

Beau saunters through. He glances at his valet with mild resentment, like a man forcibly parted from his brandy and the company of his friends; but, nearing Will, he plasters on a rueful smile.

‘My apologies for Purkiss, Mr Turner. The fellow is brusque as a baboon, really he is. And I am sorry, also, if I have appeared inattentive – not the case, I assure you. It has been a trying day for everyone at Harewood. Relocation, on the scale that we must perform it, is so very taxing. The clothes alone, great Jupiter …’ He sighs, weaving drunkenly into a window alcove. ‘I have been busy these past months, furthermore, in the auction rooms – specimens of finest porcelain, you understand, cast in the workshops of poor King Louis and several of his departed courtiers. Nothing that would be of interest to you, I daresay, but it must all be unpacked under close supervision. The servants simply cannot be relied upon to—’

Will has had enough. ‘I want my terms, Mr Lascelles. Your letter let me believe that it was drawings you were after, drawings of your house. So I want my terms, sir. What views you’d have me do, and the money involved.’

Beau is blinking, amazed, as if he is entirely unused to being addressed in such a direct fashion. It is an act, deliberately unconvincing. ‘Well, of course, Mr Turner. I suppose we have not … I mean to say, I am aware that we—’

Mr Cope intervenes. ‘Mr Lascelles desires four views of the house, two close and two distant – you may select the orientation – and two other subjects of your choice, taken from the estate. For these six drawings, delivered in a complete condition to Lord Harewood’s residence on Hanover Square, he will pay you sixty guineas.’

Will pauses, then nods; it’s a solid contract, half the winter’s work right there, not to mention the valuable additions he might make to his sketchbooks in the valley and woods around the house. But things still don’t seem right. He’s being dispensed with. This is not the manner in which commissions should be made – laid out by a businesslike valet whilst his lord sways in the background.

Now, though, Beau is walking towards him with disconcerting purpose. ‘There are your terms, my solemn young sir,’ he proclaims. ‘I trust that they are to your satisfaction.’

He seizes Will’s hand, as if to seal their agreement with a shake – but instead turns it in both of his, examining it closely. Will stiffens, acutely aware of the sweetmeat still stuck to his palm. Beau makes no comment, brushing the ruby-red stub onto the carpet; then he isolates the thumb and holds it up for his valet’s inspection. Will is dragged to Beau’s side – pressed against the damp, voluminous shirt and the slippery flab beneath.

‘See here, Jim, look at that nail! A proper talon it is! Why, the damn thing must be half an inch long. The scraper, I believe they call it. Distinguishes the true watercolour man, the true artist, from the mere dabbler.’

Released abruptly, Will stumbles and almost falls to the floor. He regains his balance to find the two men contemplating him. Mr Cope is inscrutable, a towering silhouette in the bright dining room doorway; while Beau stands beside him in a boozy contrapposto, one hand on his hip, that oversized, florid face split by a sardonic grin.

‘Did I not say that our Mr Turner was the genuine article?.

*

Two days at most, thinks Will, hopping from the bottom step back onto the service floor. Two days to sketch this pile, and some bridge or lake in the vicinity, and I’ll be gone. The fat villain can rot out here with his fine French china and troublesome sister and idiot idler friends – and that unaccountable valet, that Jim, stuck barnacle-like to his master’s bloated hull. Their crude efforts to intimidate him, to humble him, won’t be successful. He vows it.

A cockney project indeed! The genuine article! Will suddenly wants to break something, to kick in that door panel, to rip the buttons from his new brown jacket and send them skittering down the corridor. But instead he stops; swallows hard; loosens his stock. He has been undervalued before. He has known every sort of maddening condescension. It is nothing to him. All that matters is work, and finally he has his terms. So, two days of diligent sketching – and then away again into the hills and woods of England, never to return. It’s not late. The studies could be started that same evening. Will is confident that he can recall enough of the house to lay in the beginnings of a close north-eastern view. He needs candles, though; he searched his bedchamber earlier and found none. The still room, Mr Cope said. Will corrects his waistcoat and stocking and sets off.

Few servants are about. Will reaches the middle of the floor, the bare vaults beneath the main hall, before he encounters anyone – a boy in an apron propped against a pillar, polishing his way through a sprawling herd of boots. This boy’s directions take him past a dining room, where footmen and maids sit at separate tables, eating quietly in close rows. Mr Noakes stands beside the plain fireplace, still in his tie-wig and livery, detailing the day’s lapses with stern, priestly disappointment. Will hurries by.

The still room is on the building’s western side, off to the right at the end of a passage, the door wedged open at the bottom with a split log. Beyond is something between a well-stocked laboratory and a back-alley curiosity shop. Sturdy shelves hold a great archive of jars, bottles and drums; bushels of dried herbs, earthenware dishes and copper jelly-moulds hang across every remaining inch of wall. It is stiflingly hot, the single high window firmly shuttered. The smells are many, mingled and layered; vinegar, cloves, baked fruit, lavender, some kind of roasted meat. A low stove supplies the only light, washing the room’s brown shadows with red and ochre, and adding a lambent edge to glass and tin. Will thinks of the Dutch paintings he has seen, at the houses of his London patrons – the cluttered huts and stables of Rembrandt or David Teniers. He walks in.

Mrs Lamb stands past the window, at a workbench invisible from the doorway. She has her back to Will, angling herself to catch the firelight, but has noticed his entrance. This, he sees, is her domain. It seems obvious now; the basket of purple berries, the interest in the gardener, the knowledge of the house’s fruit stocks. She is Harewood’s still-room maid. Her mob-cap is off and her hair unfastened, the tangled curls a vital, absolute black.

‘You’re down early, Mr Turner,’ she says, turning slightly, showing a cheekbone and a curving eyelash. ‘Supper was cleared but fifteen minutes ago. Did you not care to converse with Mr Lascelles and his friends?’

‘I’ve work to do, madam. I need rest.’

‘Such dedication.’ Will can feel the spread of her smile; she’s guessed the truth. ‘Few men would walk so willingly from Mr Lascelles’ table. He’s on familiar terms with royalty, you know. Frequently mistaken for the Prince of Wales.’

‘It was mentioned.’

Mrs Lamb faces Will now and he is struck anew by the fullness of her, her height and bearing, the span of her hips – a sheer womanly presence that dwarfs and bewilders him. She’s grinding peppercorns in a pestle and mortar, twisting her wrist with slow strength.

‘They’re ambitious,’ she says, ‘this new branch of the family. Baron in’t sufficient. Less than two years since they inherited and they already see themselves at the big palace, dining with King George. Half a dozen more mansions like this one affixed to their name.’

Will looks at the stove, at the pans bubbling gently atop it, and is unable to stop the thought of patronage entering his mind. Do good work, whispers Father’s voice, and this family will surely use you again. ‘Well,’ he says; then nothing.

‘Candles, is it?’ Mrs Lamb asks, putting down the pestle and mortar. She opens a drawer and reaches inside. ‘These was dipped only last week. Should burn decent enough.’

The candles are tallow, tapered and dirty grey. Shaped from animal fat, they smoke copiously and are prone to sputtering – and their light is poor, barely adequate for reading, let alone making a sketch. Will thinks of the candles that shone so brightly in the dining room upstairs: finest beeswax, white as milk and a clear foot long, superior even to those that he has Father buy back in Covent Garden.

‘Ain’t there nothing else?’ He hears the curtness in his voice, the flat twang of London streets; immediately abashed, he wants to apologise, to revise his query, but can’t locate the words.

Mrs Lamb, wrapping a dozen of the candles in a thin sheet of paper, appears unperturbed. ‘There’s no beeswax below stairs, sir,’ she informs him, ‘if that’s your meaning. The cost, see. Our good steward has them locked away in his office.’

Will’s incredulity overtakes his embarrassment. ‘But Lord Harewood is one of the richest men in England.’

‘Oh, Mr Turner.’ Mrs Lamb walks over and presses the packet into his hands, holding them just an inch before her bosom. ‘Don’t you know the nobility at all?’

‘But—’

‘These are a special recipe of my own. They may surprise you.’ She is near, disconcertingly so; she smells of orange peel and fresh pepper. Her expression is dryly sympathetic. You are strange, it seems to say, but I like you nonetheless.

Will tucks the packet under his arm and bids her goodnight. His smile is faint; remarkable enough, though, after the day’s myriad confusions and annoyances. It lasts almost the whole way back to the building’s eastern side – when he lights one of the candles at a wall-bracket and knows at once that Mrs Lamb’s creations are no better than any he’s encountered before. The nimbus hardly seems to cover the length of his arm as he bears it to his chamber. He sets the candle in a saucer upon his chair, sooty smoke streaming from the flame like steam from a kettle. If three or four of the wretched things were grouped together, he thinks, there might just be enough light to work by. He starts to unwrap the rest of Mrs Lamb’s packet – and sees that something is printed on the inside of the paper, a diagram of some sort. He shakes out the candles and unfolds it.

A cargo ship is shown from several different angles – profile, elevation, cross-section – each one packed with tiny forms, serried rows of supine human beings. The printing is rudimentary, yet care has been taken to render every individual body; there are so many, however, and laid so close together, that Will’s eye struggles to separate them in the low light. He recognises it, of course. These sheets were ten a penny a few years ago, nailed up by the Abolitionists in certain coffee shops or taverns. For a time they were much discussed; then, gradually, they weren’t, the attention of London shifting elsewhere. He didn’t even register their eventual disappearance from view.

Will sits slowly on his bed, staring at the image. This is trouble. The wellspring of the Lascelles’ fortune is no secret: their West Indian holdings pay for it all, from the seats in Parliament to the gold buckles on the footmen’s boots. Any material pertaining to Abolition will be contraband under their roof. If he’s discovered with such a thing in his possession, it will surely be taken as a grave affront. He’ll be dismissed. Word will get about – a reputation swiftly acquired. This crude print could well harm his standing with an entire stratum of London society. He has to rid himself of it at once.

Yet he does not move. His mind, quite involuntarily, has started to generate a picture. Chained Negro captives, children and adults alike, wallowing in gloom and filth. The dead left among the living – mothers with daughters, husbands with wives, sisters with brothers – their naked limbs entwined in lamentation. White lines of sunlight slanting in hard through cracks in the deck, tormenting the multitudes entombed below. Parched mouths gaping open in hoarse, hopeless cries.

He recoils sharply; the paper crumples in his hands. It can’t be done. The misery is too great. Too vivid. As he looks away, he notices the diagram’s heading – concise, descriptive only, yet loaded with outrage.

Stowage of the British Slave Ship ‘Brookes’ Under the Regulated Slave Trade.