Chapter 2 - 1852 - funeral of William Hall

ACT I, Scene 2

The date is October 5, 1852.

The scene is outside the Holt St. Unitarian Church, in Everton, near Liverpool. The service is over, and Charley Cox, Charles Walker and Emily Lomax are standing together on the corner of the stage. We don’t see the other mourners - but these three are looking at a scene we can’t see, just off stage right. There are several benches, just behind them.

They are all dressed in black, and the men have top hats.
 

Charley: Who’d have thought the first time we three witches would meet again would be at a funeral, just like you prophesied, Charles.

Charles: Well, I kept trying to make arrangements to get to Liverpool last year but things got in the way, and we all just missed each other at the Great Exhibition. Thank you again, for loaning me the five pounds. I wouldn’t have been able to attend it twice like I did, without your help.

Charley: Don’t think of it.

Charles: And this is the first time I can apologise to you, Eliza, in person, for presuming that you might have an interest in me. And to congratulate you two on your forthcoming nuptuals. Have you set a date yet?

Eliza: We think a year from next summer. Charley’s father will make him a partner in the firm then, and we can get our own house. My mother wanted me to wait until I am 21, but I won’t quite be that by then.

Charles: Doesn’t she approve then?

Eliza: She just thinks that it is best that we wait awhile, and that is fine with us.

Charley: Did you hear Lindsay has a girlfriend now too?

Charles: He sort of suggested in his last letter that he was interested in someone but didn’t go into great detail.

Eliza: She’s lovely, Emily is, but she has quite a determined way about her. They won’t be getting married for quite awhile yet. I wonder what difference Mr. Hall’s death is going to make to Lindsay.

Charley: There he is. Lindsay! (he calls out. Lindsay, looking very somber as befits his father’s funeral comes over into the group. They all shake hands with him)

Charles: We are very sorry for your loss, Lindsay.

Lindsay: Thank you. And thank you all for being here. You especially, Charles, for coming all the way back for this. Poor Father will have company in Heaven with the Duke of Wellington dying just now too. The papers are full of nothing but plans for his funeral. At least we didn’t have that big an event to organise.

Eliza: Well, I suppose it wasn’t as if you didn’t know it was going to happen, Lindsay. He has been ill for some time now.

Lindsay: It has been months since he got out of bed, and he was an old man after all. So we were prepared.

Charley: There are lots of people here that I have never seen before. Who are those people? That old man looks very important. I saw his carriage arrive, and he even had a footman.

Lindsay: That’s Sir John Hall, the 5th Baron of Dunglass. He was my father’s second cousin or once removed or something. I can never keep those genealogy things straight. That’s his wife, Julia, and his young son, Julian Hamilton, only 15, who will inherit the title not many years from now, I would guess.

Charles: Who is that other old man over there talking to him?

Lindsay: That’s his brother, George, one of the other six children who didn’t inherit the title, but he did alright for himself. He owns property in Jamaica. He is just here by chance.

Charles: A slave owner, I would imagine.

Eliza: Don’t you dare start that again here, Charles. It is not the right time or place.

Charles: It’s never the right time or place to own slaves.

Eliza: I never would have taken you for having famous relatives, Lindsay. You are so down to earth. Oh, look, there is Alison.
Maybe she will come over here now she has seen us.

Alison: (dressed in black dress with a veil covering her face, comes over.) Thank you for coming.

Charles: (bowing and kissing her hand) We are very sorry for your loss. Please have a seat. (She sits on one of the benches and Eliza joins her.)

Alison: Thank you Charles. We knew it was coming, and it was a relief when he finally died. I suppose I shouldn’t be saying that, but I spent a lot of my time nursing him, and he was in such pain. Death was a great relief to us all.

Charley: What will you do now, Alison? Have you thought about it?

Alison: Well, knowing this was coming, I have a plan in mind - to go to my eldest brother in Montreau.

Eliza: Goodness. We didn’t know you had another brother.

Alison: Oh, yes, we were a large family. You know that I was born in Charleston, where my mother was from, and when we moved back to England we came first here to Liverpool, when Robert was born, and then spent a few years in Edinburgh - which is where Lindsay was born. But at the same time, our oldest brother Basil went off to France to set up his own business with importing and was very successful. He now has a house in Montreau, and he has said I can live with him.

Charley: When you were living in Edinburgh, I dare say you got to know Sir John and his family a bit better. Did they treat you like poor relations?

Allison: No, Father was very close to both John, and George and also their brother Basil. I expect you have heard about him, Captain Basil Hall, the Naval captain who toured the world and wrote books. He is our second cousin too. He commanded a series of vessels involved in exploration, scientific and diplomatic missions. He interviewed Napoleon, on St. Helena in a1817. Napoleon had been an acquaintance of Basil’s father, Sir James Hall, who was another interesting character.

He was encouraged by his father to keep a journal, and this provided the source for Basil’s many books describing his travels. His best known work was The Fragments of Voyages and Travels.

Charles: I’ve read that, and a jolly good book it was too, but never did I think that he might be your relative, Lindsay. I’ll have to read it again now, and look at it with new insight.

Alison: He spent one Christmas with Sir Walter Scott and penned an account of his domestic life. He also contributed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica and wrote scientific papers on subjects as diverse as trade winds, the geology of Table Mountain and a comet he observed in Chile. But he died some time ago - in 1934. But I was old enough to remember him when he came on a visit just before he died.

Charley: Why didn’t you tell us, Lindsay, that you had such erudite forebears. What’s this about the father being important too.

Lindsay: Sir James, the 4th Baron of Dunglass. He was noted for his practical research in the field of geology. He was convinced of the involvement of heat and pressure in the formation of igneous rocks, and undertook various experiments involving the melting and cooling of rocks and thereby established the composition of whinstone and basalt lava. He invented a machine for regulating high temperatures, which was described posthumously to the Geological Society in London by his son, Basil. He also determined that limestone could form marble without decomposition, if subjected to considerable pressure while being heated. He published many scientific papers on geology, but also an Essay on the Origin, Principles and History of Gothic Architecture.

Charley: I can’t get over the fact that you didn’t tell us all of this before.

Lindsay: I expect the subject never came up. (sees a girl in the crowd). Excuse me a moment. I will be right back. There is someone I want you to meet, Charles. (He goes off.)

Alison: I had best be going back to see to the guests. It will be a very busy time for me over the next few months, sorting out the house and such. And of course, Robert and Lindsay will have to find alternate accommodation too, when the house is sold.
 
Father’s will has specified that it must be sold and the profits distributed between the three of us. Our brother in France has enough of his own. (She goes off back into the crowd)

Charley: Here comes Lindsay back with Emily. Isn’t she a looker? You might have had a chance with her, if you had been here. But Lindsay was so smitten with her that he learned to play the piano and speak German, just so he would be more comfortable with her family.

Charles: Are they Germans then?

Eliza: No, her father is Jakob Zeugheer Herrmann, the conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic. Surely you went to concerts at the Philharmonic Hall when you were here, Charles.

Charles: No, music isn’t really one of my abiding interests. I went to many plays, however.

Eliza: Well, Mr. Herrmann came here from Switzerland in about 1827, and met and married her mother, Anna, who is such a sweetheart, when his violin quartet was playing in Ireland. They were married there. Anna’s mother came over too and still lives with them.

(By this time Lindsay and Emily have come back and rejoined the little group)

Lindsay: Emily, I would like you to meet my other best friend from our apprenticeship days. You know Charley, of course, and Eliza, his betrothed, but this man with the funny wire spectacles, is Charles Simpson Walker, to give him his full name. I am sure he will be very important one day. He certainly is the one of us with the most ambition and the one to tell everyone else what to do and what to think!

Emily: (rather shy and very pretty 18 year-old curtseys to Charles, who takes off his hat and bows deeply.) How do you do?

Charles: Pleased to meet you Miss Herrmann. Lindsay has written to me of your beauty and I must say, he was not exaggerating.

Emily: Oh. (Very embarrassed and not knowing what to say). How kind you are.

Lindsay: Emily comes from a huge family - and they are such fun. I do have a great time when I visit at their house. When you are here for a longer time and at a more auspicious moment, you must go and meet them all.

Eliza: Charley and I went to the Philharmonic and heard your father with the Glee and Madrigal Union last week. Charley splashed out and we had seats in the gallery. Five shillings each they were.

Emily: Yes, there were very big crowds. And last week Lindsay and I went to hear Mr. William Makepeace Thackeray talk at the Philharmonic. Did you go Charley?

Charley: We did indeed. We heard the one about The Humorous Writers of the Last Century. I really enjoyed what he said about Jonathan Swift. Which one did you hear?

Lindsay: We went to the ones about Vanity Fair, and Pendennis. But he was such a good speaker. I wish I had had the time to go to all of his lectures. But cheapskate that I am, we sat in the gallery for one shilling six pence.

Charles: I am very sorry to not have been here for that. I wonder if he will have Worcester on his touring schedule. I will certainly go if he does come.

Charley: Well, Emily, you won’t know it, but the last time we three friends met was at Charles going away party back in August, 1850 - two years ago. We made a joke of pretending to be the three witches from Macbeth when we were doing charades - and Charles here, prophesied that when “We Three” should meet again, would be at weddings and funerals. But so it has turned out. We haven’t seen this chap for these two years, and here we are now. So I can rather guess when the next meeting will be - at our wedding. We are roughly planning it for the summer of 1854, so keep your diaries free, as we would like you all to be there.

Eliza: Oh yes, please do. You will enjoy the countryside around Llangllon. And Charley would not find it was a real wedding if you two were not there to stand up with him.

Charles: I will put the summer of 1854 on hold in my diary and hope you will confirm the date before I have to turn down too many other exciting engagements.

Eliza: Of course we will, Charles.

Lindsay: Well, I must go off and see some of the others here. It is nice that George Holt and his family came. Did you hear that his father gave him his shares in the Emma. He has promised me a sail in her one day. I shall certainly take him up on that. Anyway, if I don’t see you again, thank you again, all for coming today. It means a lot to me, having you here.

Charles: I’m sorry our reunion should have such sad overtones, and I very much hope our next will be for longer. Goodbye, Lindsay, and please do keep writing to let me know how you are getting on, when all the dust settles after this.

(The men all shake hands very seriously, and the curtain comes down.)