Memoir of a Lady Pt. 07: Crisis & After

They say all good things come to an end. In the case of Gladstone's Liberal Government, and my husband Fortescue's first outing as a Minister of the Crown, that came in 1874. For all our best efforts, Gladstone dominated the campaign, and despite promising to abolish income tax, he lost to Disraeli. The latter appeared rather surprised, but was happy to become the first Conservative since I was in my twenties to have a parliamentary majority. Gladstone resigned as leader in a fit of pique, and Forty, as everyone called my husband, was awarded a baronetcy in the resignation honours, so he could call himself "Sir Fortescue Chichester-Smythe", and as he was on very cordial terms with the new leader in the Commons, Lord Hartington (not least after the memorable week-end when they had both taken his wife in my presence), he secured himself (and thus me) a place at the top table. He and Harty took my advice and let things be. When the electorate tells you to "fuck off', then fuck off you should. I had no doubt Dizzy would do something to upset someone, and there would be time enough for the Liberals when that happened.

In the meantime, Forty could fuck his whores in Grosvenor Gardens, and my sapphists could gather at Turnberry Pike for week-ends of munching. It was idyllic. Because my sapphic "wife", Kate Derby, was married to the new Foreign Secretary, Lord Derby, I was able to keep my hand in high politics, and since Dizzy liked dining at Turnberry, I hardly missed the drama at the centre of political action. Power was, however, only one of my consuming passions.

Two of my husbands were uninterested in woman, two not, and Forty was as keen a swordsman as there ever was, but I am not sure even he was interested in women except in so far as they contributed to his own pleasure. This, I gather from my female lovers and friends is very common. There wasn't a one of their husbands knew about the love-button, or cared when told. What's a girl to do? Turn to self-help or sapphism if she wants release. So we did.

Four husbands, and yet it was my fifth, and unofficial one, Kate Derby, who gave me the most pleasure; it was, she maintained, reciprocated. One interesting thing about preferring women is that there is no loss of performance as age kicks in. The sapphic stick we used, or truncheon, as some called it, remains firm for as long as a cunny stays moist for it. And if, as tends to be the case as a woman gets older, the natural moisture begins to dry a little, why there is always the tongue - or olive oil, or both. I love the feel of the love-button against my tongue, and the taste of inner lips. As a connoisseur of cunny, I found my expertise much in demand. But Kate was, and remains, the love of my life. All age did for us was to allow us to relish the journey and to worry less about the destination. We knew each other's bodies so well, that it was a joy just to let the tongue and fingers linger where pleasure was to be had. It was, Kate said, the precise antithesis to being with a man. I wanted no one else but her, and gradually our salon dwindled. I was content to let it go. There comes a stage, or at last there did for me, when you know that the one you love is the only one you want. I never imposed, as will be clear, the same condition on Kate.

Forty benefitted in many ways from our marriage. I bankrolled his career, and in return got access to the senior counsels of the Liberal Party. My activities with Molly Hartington also helped Forty. With Gladstone off on a prolonged sulk after losing the election, Lord Hartington led in the Commons. Odd though that sounds to the uninitiated, as the heir to the Duke of Devonshire, Hartington, though a Lord, was eligible to sit in the Commons, and would lose that right only when his father died. The bond forged between him and Forty by their common fucking rights over his wife and my maid, endured into the political sphere. Forty deputised for Harty on the floor of the Commons almost as often as he did in the marital bed. I had hopes that when the day came that the Duke went to meet his maker and Harty was elevated to the Lords, Forty might take his place; but Gladstone loomed large over all of us. He was, Dizzy said, "terrible on the rebound"; so it proved.

Kate and I were breaking our fast in the morning room at Turnberry, having enjoyed a leisurely session of love-making. I could still taste her on my lips, and teased her by licking them sensuously.

"You are a very naughty wife, Frances", she smiled lazily.

"And so, my darling, are you," I shot back. "Wife and wife", I pondered, "that sounds double fun."

"I love you," she said, softly, holding my hand and pouting a kiss at me.

At that point one of the maids coughed:

"Your ladyship, a telegram for her ladyship."

The maids knew what we were and did, and whatever they thought, who cared?

Kate opened the telegram.

"Damn!" She looked annoyed, and not a little discomforted.

"What is it darling?'

"It" as it transpired, was the first sign of the storm that would sweep Whitehall, threaten the Government with ruin, the country with war, and worst of all, herald the revival of the Grand Old Man, as the press had taken to calling Gladstone. The bloody Turks had decided they had had enough of revolts in Bulgaria and allowed their irregular ruffians to massacre a a lot of Bulgars. The press had picked it up and the "nonconformist conscience" had revolted. It would demand action, and across the summer the storm brewed. Eventually it reached North Wales where Gladstone was sequestered, and he put himself at the head of a mighty crusade calling for the Turk to be thrown "bag and baggage" out of Europe.

Our policy since the 1830s had been to defend the Ottoman Empire against Russian aggression. We had even fought the Crimean War for that purpose. The more Russia advanced south, the closer she got to our Indian Empire. Russia claimed the right to protect the Christians of the Ottoman Empire, and in pursuit of that goal, they wanted to exact vengeance on the Turks for the massacres. Our usual argument for helping the Turks - protecting India - was trumped by Gladstone's moral case for helping "our fellow Christians."

Dizzy and Kate's husband, the Foreign Secretary, Edward Derby, found it increasingly hard to maintain the traditional policy in the face of an uproar which saw mobs smashing windows in the streets of London, and Gladstone demanding that no action should be taken against the Russians. Thus encouraged, the Russians declared war on the Ottoman Empire. By December they were in reach of Constantinople, and whilst a cease-fire was brokered, well into 1877 the chance of a renewal of hostilities remained.

Kate sought my advice, which was to encourage Edward to stand firm, and to make common cause with her former stepson, Lord Salisbury, now Secretary of State for India, in blocking Dizzy from any adventurism. I was able to ensure that Hartington and Forty did not go the "full Gladstone" line of supporting the Russians, but no Liberal could actively support the Turks. Our policy was paralysed.

I saw both sides of the hill, so to speak, and was able, via Kate, to let Dizzy know what the Liberals were up to, and, via my husband, to counsel the sensible Liberals in order to try to isolate Gladstone on the extreme wing of his party; but he was a protean force. I began to worry, not only about our foreign policy - another war with Russia, only twenty years after the mess in the Crimea would do no one any good - but also about my darling Kate. Never what you might call curvaceous, she began to become what seemed to me dangerously thin.

As the autumn session of 1877 came to an end, and before she departed for Christmas in the north-west, I invited her down to Turnberry. Forty was spending the week-end in London with his whores, and that meant we could have the place to ourselves.

I was shocked when I saw her. There were great bags under her eyes, her hair seemed greyer, and though she did not have it to lose, she seemed nonetheless to have lost weight. She was uncharacteristically silent, and though I tried to coax her out over supper in the drawing room, she seemed preoccupied. It was only when we retired for a drink that she began to open up.

"I am sorry, Frances, I am the worst of company, you deserve better than me!"

That was said with a weight of feeling and a sigh which suggested she was not speaking about her taciturnity. I put out my hand, squeezed hers, and looked at her tenderly.

"My darling Kate, what is it?"

"You will hate me, Frances."

I could never imagine doing so, and told her that emphatically.

"Wait until I have spoken, then if you can still say so, I shall be better; but be honest."

As she knew, I was always honest with her. In a life lived with so much necessary subterfuge, there had to be one person with whom I could be frank, and that was my Kate. I told her to do her worst.

As she unfolded the story, I could see why one of her moral code would take on as she had, but there was nothing in it which changed my love for her. Indeed, as I assured her at the ending of it, I was not sure anything in this world could do that.

As we lay together in my bed, warm in each other's arms, we talked it through.

There were two parts to her anxiety. The first concerned her step-son, Bob Salisbury, Until now he had been a key part of our policy of retraining Dizzy, whom he hated. In a Cabinet divided seven ways, the fact that he, Edward Derby and Lord Carnarvon, the Colonial Secretary, all opposed threatening Russia if she did not back away from advancing toward Constantinople, had stopped Dizzy from making such threats. But she had it from a most confidential source, that Bob Salisbury was considering turning his coat.

This was shocking enough, but even more shocking was the source of her information. It came via the Russian ambassador, Count Peter Shuvalov. I asked how on earth she had been entrusted with such information. She hesitated, she turned white:

"Because, oh God Frances forgive me, because he is tupping me!"

I admit, I was shaken.

"Does Edward know? How on earth?"

"Do you hate me Frances?"

I pulled her to me in the warmest embrace I could contrive. Stroking her hair and holding her to my breast I said:

"Never, oh never say that word Kate. I love you. But does Edward know and how did it happen?"

She explained that Edward, of course, did not know. She doubted that anything short of her being taken in front of him would make him see it; after all, he didn't know we were lovers. As for Shuvalov, well as the wife of the Foreign Secretary she often met him at dinners and events, and following my lead, she had sought to use private conversations with him to pump him for information. Instead, she was the one who had been pumped. One day he had simply taken her into his arms and then taken her elsewhere.

I pulled Kate to me, kissing her full on the lips, and then rolled on to her, my titties pressing into her much smaller ones, our nipples rubbing. Her breathing became more intense. My fingers feathered a track down her stomach until they encountered her thicket. She needed to be relaxed, so I spent time caressing her with my fingers, massaging her love button until I felt a familiar wetness well up from her cunny. Lubricating my fingers with it, I pressed them through her petals until I felt the warmth of her love tunnel, which I proceeded to take - first slowly and hesitantly and then, when I could hear her squishing, faster. My thumb massaged her love button and my mouth fastened on her left nipple, sucking it out so that I could scratch it with my teeth, just hard enough to hint at pain, but not so hard as to cause any. I delayed what she wanted.

"When did you last climax my darling Kate?"

"When I was last with you, my love."

"And your Russian lover?"

At my mentioning him, she gasped, pushing herself down on my questing fingers and onto my thumb.

"Are you a bad girl Kate, lowering your drawers for the Russian bear? Does he take you hard and fast?"

"Oh God, God, Frances, ohhh how, how can you know?"

"Does he treat you like a slut Kate, just taking you as he wants?"

She moaned louder, and I could feel her cunny begin to squeezes my fingers.

"Are you his English whore Kate? Has Russia conquered you and taken your virtue?"

She pressed and squeezed, moaning to a gigantic orgasm which splashed onto my hand and the bed below. The maids would have fun guessing, I thought.

I felt her relax after her climax, and lying down myself, I pulled her to me.

As she recovered her senses, she felt my breast and asked:

"How did you know Frances? Is there a spy in my bedroom too?"

"No, my darling," I reassured her, "I know my Kate and what she likes."

"And really, you really don't mind? It was all so unexpected, he just, well, he just took me and I didn't want, don't want, to resist him. Edward suspects nothing."

We rested in each others arms and were not parted all night. Only death could do that. But politics took a decided turn for the worse.

There followed, even by Whitehall standards, much dirty work. Just at Christmas 1877 I had an alarmed letter from Kate, who said the Queen had warned her, via the Dean of Windsor, that she should be careful about her "Russian contacts." I told her to rebut the implied allegation. She did, but to no effect.

Edward Derby had arranged with Bob Salisbury and Lord Carnarvon to make a united stand if Dizzy tried to threaten war, but when the moment came, Bob did nothing; and Edward and Carnarvon resigned. Kate and I were furious, but the reason soon became clear - Dizzy made him Foreign Secretary in Edward's place. He was now, suddenly, the obvious successor to the ailing Prime Minister.

It was a wretched winter and spring.

With Gladstone's campaign making him de facto leader of the Liberals, Harty and my husband were pushed into the shade, and with Bob Salisbury firmly in place as Dizzy's successor, my contacts in high places there came to an end. I felt the loss of power. But what's a girl to do when she knows the game is up? Make love to her wife, in my case.

There was no war with Russia. The Tsar knew he could not afford one, so the whole thing was settled with a grand Congress in Berlin. I wished I had been able to go, it would have been the crowing moment of my long career behind the scenes; but it was not to be. Dizzy came back proclaiming "Peace with honour" and Bob Salisbury, who had made one name for himself calling the old Jew an opportunist without principles, made himself another by praising him to the skies - which showed he'd learned his lessons well.

The one consolation was that it gave Kate more time to be with me here at Turnberry.

Forty spends most of his time in London with his women. He knows, and if he doesn't I do, that he lacks the drive to get to the top. He and Harty let Gladstone push them aside, and but recently, with an election due, the old man has been up in Scotland stirring up the "nonconformist conscience" against Dizzy. Harty and Forty may be leaders, but it is name only.

Do I miss being at the centre of power? I do. But I have been close enough to see it is Dead Sea fruit. Who really has it when public opinion can turn on a sixpence and when someone like Bob Salisbury can betray all he once stood for to get high office? Much good will it do him. All political careers end in failure; his will be no different. Mine did, but I had a good run for my money. And when the fat lady sings, the thing a girl's to do is curtsey gratefully and leave the stage. I had come a long way from my origins, and to end as I did was no accident. I am a self-made woman, proud of the results of my labours. I love my Kate.

Of late my energy has begun to lessen. Well I am nearly sixty and have deserved a rest. The day will come, I know it, that women will be able to take a lead openly in politics rather than do what I have had to. Myself and Kate were much more able than the men through whom we had to work. I hope when that day dawns, it will come with an acceptance that women can love each other as Kate and I have, and that the love that cannot speak its name will do so freely. But that day is not this day.

And here, looking across the drawing room at my beloved Kate, I put my pen down and end this memoir. I shall seal it away in the archives here, and maybe one day it will see the light and show the hidden history of our time. Ave atque et vale, as they say in Oxford.

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And here the manuscript ends. Lady Frances died just short of her sixtieth birthday, and with her went that breath of the Regency she carried to the end. Kate outlived her by two decade. Bob Salisbury was Prime Minister four times between 1885 and 1905. A fictional character you say? She is actually a composite of two women, and the "hidden history" remains to be unearthed.