Cloud Ten (Nailed It!

Book 1) Fearne Hill

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CLOUD TEN
NAILED IT!
BOOK 1
FEARNE HILL
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Fearne Hill
CHAPTER 1
LYSANDER
 BOARDROOM APRIL
Ninety minutes into the April board meeting, and not only did I
feel like a stranded fish but breathed
like one too. I had not comprehended a single detail of the fiscal
reports bandied back and forth.
Words like capital ratio and stagflation ping-ponged across the
table; complicated graphs in a blur
of pretty colours swerved out from the page in front of me,
making my temple throb. As a family
member, and a direct descendant of the founder, no less, a seat
on the board was my automatic right.
Yet I’d never felt more of an imposter, a fish flopping around on
land. Fish die out of water. I’d
attempted in vain to explain this to Daphne. And sophisticated
life forms only evolved by leaping out
of their comfort zones, she firmly replied.
Nobody at Cloud Ten Construction messed with Daphne, which
was how I found myself shaking
hands with each of my assembled relatives, then unobtrusively
slipping into a vacant chair halfway
down one of the long sides of the glass-topped table. I filled the
short wait for the meeting to get
underway wishing the rectangular thick glass sheet would
miraculously transform into a deep
swimming pool so I could hurl myself through it and float away.
A year ago, my father had stepped down from chairing the
family firm and moved to Portugal to
concentrate on his golf handicap. My half-sister Daphne had
stepped up to replace him, much to the
chagrin of my Uncle Paul. Under her watchful eye, according to
helpful Cousin John, Cloud Ten had
ratcheted from a benign dictatorship into a full-blown autocracy
virtually overnight, and the money
had filled the family coffers even quicker. Daphne’s mild beige
husband, Gerald, plodded through the
 company accounts as if reading a shipping forecast covering
every square inch of ocean. He could
account for every penny of our vast profits down to the very
last…well, penny.
Cousin John, seated on my left, who had treated me to a cynical
running commentary under his
breath throughout, gave me a nudge and a sympathetic smile.
“I’ve been coming along to these for five
years, mate. Didn’t have a fucking scooby what they were
waffling on about for the first few months.
Still don’t, half the time. Just relax, imagine how you’ll spend
your dividends, and enjoy the show.
We’re getting to the good bit.”
The thing was, John didn’t understand because he couldn’t be
bothered to listen. If he had made
the effort, he’d possibly be sitting in Daphne's place now: at the
head of the table in the comfiest
chair, running the show. To be fair, any of them could be. Their
combined IQs, with a few noughts
added on, rivalled the company’s bottom line. In my case,
though, Gerald could explain how company
accounts worked in one-syllable words for three weeks, and I’d
still not get the gist to stick in my
thick skull.
Without warning, Gerald came to an end. Daphne cleared her
throat with purpose and thanked him
for his diligence, and everyone sat up a little straighter. Daphne
treated all the assembled relatives,
AKA the Cloud Ten Board of Directors, to a steely look, then
cleared her throat once more and rose
to her feet. “What comes to mind when you visualise manual
workers on a construction site?”
Evidently a rhetorical question, as no answers were
forthcoming. Cousin John, his sharp blue
eyes gleaming, leaned forward, while Uncle Paul leaned back,
pretending to disinterestedly examine
 his nails. Seated at Daphne’s left was his soon-to-be-divorced
and estranged wife, my Aunt Pauline,
who maintained her habitual expression of a bulldog eating a
wasp. Beige Gerald rearranged his
financial report papers, while all three Scottish cousins, huddled
together at the far end, studied the
tabletop.
After a suitable pause for dramatic effect, Daphne continued.
“For many, a job in construction too
often still conjures up an image of a paunchy man in a hi-vis
jacket, wearing his trousers slightly
lower than he should. White, male, middle-aged, and able-
bodied. Tell me if any of you disagree.”
Couldn’t say I’d given it a great deal of thought, but I daresay
she was right. Daphne always was.
She paused again, making eye contact with every single family
member as the weight of her words
took effect. Opposite me, Uncle Paul exhaled loudly through his
nose, as though he’d heard it all
before, and smirked. Swap his tailor-made suit for luminous
waterproof yellow and her description
sketched him perfectly.
“And dust and smoke and dirt,” she added. “Blocked roads,
traffic jams. Delays. Frustration.
More delays. And more filth.”
Again, something I’d never considered, probably because I’d not
long moved back to London
from the US. An exaggerated eye roll from Uncle Paul
accompanied a pointed check of the time on his
watch.
“Here we go,” murmured Cousin John with a glimmer of
excitement. “Pistols at dawn.”
For a so-called silent partner, Cousin John had an awful lot to
say.
“Is there something you wanted to add, Paul?” Daphne asked
Paul sharply. My uncle shook his
 head. Giving him a baleful look, she continued. “You may be
interested to know that ten per cent of
British carbon dioxide emissions come from the construction
industry, a number rising to forty-five
per cent when taking into account the whole of the built
environmental sector.”
Whatever the fuck that meant. But everyone else was nodding
knowledgeably around the table, so
I nodded too.
“A fascinating statistic, I think you’ll all agree.”
More murmurs of assent from Charles, Alison and Robert, the
Scottish cousins; from everyone, in
fact, except Uncle Paul, who performed an exaggerated yawn.
I repeated the stats in my head, trying to process them into
making sense. Fascinating would be
stretching a point, but the environmental stuff piqued my
interest. Back in California, where I’d been
mostly living for the past fifteen years, the renewable energy
agenda was a daily good news story. If
we pretended LA didn’t exist, obviously.
Uncle Paul muttered something under his breath and, next to
me, John sniggered.
“Sorry, Paul,” said Daphne. “I didn’t quite catch that. Would you
like to share?”
If looks could kill, the remainder of the board meeting would be
spent choosing Uncle Paul’s
coffin handles.
“I said,” Paul looked back at Daphne defiantly, “you’re like a
stuck record. You’re going to start
banging on about ‘chicks with bricks’ next.”
His soon-to-be ex-wife, Pauline, glared at him with venom. Even
Gerald tutted. Charles, Alison,
and Robert seemingly huddled even more tightly together,
emitting a collective Scottish gasp of shock.
As Alison spluttered, Daphne raised a hand to shush her. Charles
stroked Alison’s arm.
 “Thank you for prompting me, Paul,” Daphne continued
smoothly. “But we’ll leave that for next
month’s board meeting. We don’t want to overload your
neanderthal brain with too much new-fangled
nonsense. As an aside, I’ve seen our latest figures, and on the
building sites themselves, ninety-nine
percent of our workforce are still male. Ninety-nine per cent!
Cloud Ten is not unusual in that regard.
I’ll remind you the construction industry as a whole only has an
eleven per cent female workforce,
and they’re all in the offices.”
“Where they belong,” grunted Paul.
“Yikes,” murmured John.
My Aunt Pauline interrupted with a dainty cough. “And if they
can’t be found in the offices,” – an
icy wind gusted in the direction of her soon-to-be-ex-husband,
“that’s because they have made their
way into our marital bed. Isn’t that true, Paul?”
We all uttered a collective gasp. Even from the other side of the
Atlantic, I’d known Uncle Paul
had been having an affair with his PA, Natalie.
“Natalie has always provided me with a fully comprehensive
service,” snapped Paul, “Which is
more than you ever offered, Pauline.”
“How jolly dare you!”
A chorus of sharp intakes of breath ran around the clan. Not
even attempting to hide a gleeful
cackle, John rubbed his hands. Beige Gerald placed calming
fingers on Pauline’s arm. Scottish
Charles rubbed Scottish Alison’s back in a soothing manner.
Scottish Robert stroked her hand, then
reached around to stroke Charles’s, too. Which was a little…
peculiar.
Eventually, the murmurs died down. Daphne, the only person at
the table completely unruffled,
 waited patiently. I had the distinct impression this spectacle
wasn’t new to anyone except me.
“Now, now, now. Let’s remind ourselves why we’re here. I want
you all to tell me, with one
united, St. Cloud family voice, because the St. Clouds are a
united voice—" she threw a special side
eye to Uncle Paul, "—what is the Cloud Ten family ethos?”
“Not just a career but a way of life!” Each and every one of
them returned the answer, albeit with
varying levels of enthusiasm, aside from me, who hadn’t known
it.
“Good.” Daphne nodded approvingly. “Everybody around this
table has a common goal.”
“To make even more dosh,” whispered John.
“And that goal is not only to make money,” she continued
smoothly. “We have made enough. For
the length of my tenure as CEO, responsible stewardship of
millions of acres of land will be our
primary objective. And thus, we will lead the way for other
construction companies to follow our
green agenda.”
“Climate change is the new rock and roll,” agreed John in a
sarcastic tone.
“Yes, it is, John.” Daphne gave him a hard stare. “I couldn’t
have put it better myself.”
Daphne flicked a button on her laptop, and the screen behind
her lit up.
“Fucking marvellous,” John moaned. “Death by fiscal reports
followed by death by PowerPoint.”
“In case you haven’t guessed already, the remainder of this
meeting will focus on our green
agenda. More specifically, our lack of it and how we are going to
rectify that.”
The screen behind her filled with a single statement.
Lead the scene and keep it green.
 I read the slogan twice while endeavouring to ignore John’s
sniggering, so I nearly missed
Daphne’s next words.
“With the interesting statistics you’ve just heard, and all the
additional ones you have had ample
opportunity to peruse since I sent you the papers, we can all
agree reducing our company’s carbon
footprint is morally and culturally the right thing to do.”
At this, Paul actually fucking growled. “Could I remind you at
this juncture that we’re a FTSE Top
500 business? A profit-making construction business? We’re not
in charge of fucking Greenpeace
here, Daphne.”
“Well done for mentioning that, Paul. Because there is also an
impressive business case for
improving our green standing. You are all aware of what
happened to Shell when they chose to ignore
the Paris Agreement on climate change.”
I wasn’t, but I nodded anyhow.
She gave an approximation of a smile. “I strongly believe that in
all of our activities going
forward, at the forefront of our minds we should never forget:
forests are the lungs of our land,
purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.”
“Franklin D. Roosevelt, circa 1930,” piped up Aunt Pauline.
“No one likes a teacher’s pet, Pauline,” snarked Uncle Paul. “Or
smart arses.”
“Just young, pert arses, it would seem,” she snarked back,
vibrating with hatred. Scottish Alison
whimpered, and Scottish Charles resumed the back-rubbing.
Scottish Robert had his hands draped all
over both of them. Arms and hands snaked everywhere. Even
fucking weirder.
The screen flicked to the next slide. “Emphasis on increased
collaboration between the public
 sector and the construction industry and the objective to embed
social value in the procurement
process is a sign of the direction of travel for the future.”
Christ, that was a mouthful. My headache zinged.
“Hear, hear, well said,” stated John. “Can we go to the pub
now?”
In reply, Daphne flashed up another slide, this one a cartoon
sketch of a loudhailer. “The intent to
step up our green agenda must be backed by vocal leadership
from the top. While many businesses
have well-intentioned initiatives and policies in place, the
industry is missing a joint and cohesive
response. Because much of our project work is sub-contracted,
pinpointing who is responsible for
promoting the green agenda across our corporation is very
difficult. And so is making the necessary
changes to lessen our carbon footprint. Today, I want to discuss
how the members of this board can
show their support for the green initiatives we’re promoting.”
Uncle Paul put up a hand. “Daph, love, I’m not swapping my
Natalie for a grass-eating, clog-
wearing, hairy, vegan eco-warrior, just to make the numbers
look good.”
John sniggered.
“I doubt there’s a grass-eating, clog-wearing, hairy, vegan eco-
warrior out there that would want
you, Paul,” responded Pauline icily. “Not with your… ahem… little
problem.”
“Didn’t you have a vegetarian girlfriend once, John?” Paul flicked
the ‘V’s at her. “How about we
find her a hard hat and invite her to the new site in Shoreditch,
to share a bit of grub with the lads?”
“I’m not entirely sure that’s what Daphne has in mind,” John
responded diplomatically. “She’s
thinking bigger, aren’t you, Daphs?”
 “You’ll lose Paul, then,” sniped Pauline. “He hasn’t a clue what
‘big’ looks like.”
Scottish Alison whimpered again. Scottish Charles handed her a
tissue. As if for the first time, I
glanced around the table at my endlessly warring yet close-knit
(and the Scottish threesome were
awfully close) extended family. Some of them could be quite
peculiar and quite unpleasant, which I
hadn’t appreciated until witnessing them in work mode.
“Daphne,” interrupted Scottish Robert, with more nerve than I’d
ever seen him display. “Could
we just get to the point?”
“Yes.” Scottish Charles nodded rapidly. “Totally. What Robert
says.”
The screen flashed again, and my own bloody face filled the
entire slide. My heart plummeted to
my boots. What the fuck? Daphne smiled at Robert. “Yes, let’s
get to the point. And take this
opportunity to formally welcome my dear brother Lysander into
the fold.”
Some half-hearted clapping and hear-hears. Daphne threw me a
beaming smile. Oh fuck, I knew
that look. It mirrored one my father used when he was about to
get his way. My life was just about to
turn to shit.
“As you all know, Lysander has finally seen the light and
returned from the US for good. Needless
to say, we’re delighted to have him with us at last, just as he’s
thrilled to be finally joining the family
team here at Cloud Ten.”
Thrilled was putting the case a little strongly. Coerced, backed
into a corner, fleeing a life I no
longer recognised as my own would be a more accurate
assessment of my current state of wellbeing.
“And we all agree that he’s going to be the perfect fresh face to
spearhead our environmental
 campaign.”
More enthusiastic clapping, although it hardly registered. My
stomach had flipped up into my
mouth. Spearhead? Lead a campaign? And did she say…face?
Nine sets of way-too-intelligent eyes
lasered on me, and I physically cowered. Spearhead? Lead? Oh
my god, I couldn’t lead myself out of
a paper bag.
John snorted. “Good luck with that, mate.”
“I hate to point out the bleeding obvious, Daph.” Paul gave me
a once-over, as if we’d only just
met and he hadn’t helped teach me to ride a bike without
stabilisers all those years ago. “But on the
subject of construction, Lysander is… um…totally, like, naive
himself?” He gave a little chortle.
“Some might say… green?”
I was; I truly was. Thank God someone had noticed I wasn’t fit
for purpose. Yes, all of that. Thank
you, Uncle Paul. Thank you. I was saved.
“I know,” replied Daphne simply. “But he’s family, and I don’t
trust anyone not family on the
board. This initiative needs to have representation at board
level, ergo Lysander. And it won’t require
a huge amount of b…”
She hesitated delicately. Brains? Was that what she was about
to say? That I was thick as pig shit?
For a moment, she’d almost forgotten I was in the room. She
collected herself rapidly. “The role of
promoting our green agenda will be extremely visible and thus
requires a youthful, and, dare I say,
attractive figurehead. And our Lysander is extremely well-versed
with managing the media, aren’t you
Lysander? He’s had a plenty of practise. You will be perfect for
the role, won’t you?”
My face had taken on the frozen horror of a deer caught in the
middle of a road who thought the
 best way of tackling the approaching headlights was to stare at
them really hard, in the vain hope they
might go away. No such luck. And anyway, I wasn’t facing one
set of headlights. I was facing nine.
I didn’t stand a chance.
CHAPTER 2
FRANKIE
“Listen to this.”
Impatiently, I waited for my sister to unglue her face from
Darren’s, then grabbed my window of
opportunity. “‘ Ninety-four per cent of personal assistant and
secretarial roles in the UK are
occupied by women.’ Ninety-four per cent! ‘ Dismissed as ‘pink
collar’ jobs— OMG, I love pink
collars! —both candidates and employers collude to resist men
working in these vital corporate
roles. A campaign has been launched this week to encourage
men into administrative assistant
roles, entitled ‘Not Just A Girl's Job. ’”
I paused for breath, fully aware I sounded like I was channelling
Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells.
My sister casually glanced at her phone while Darren’s tongue
slurped a slow path from her ear to the
tip of her jaw, leaving a glistening snail trail in its wake. Like a
pampered kitten, she snuggled even
further into his ample lap.
“Hello! Anyone listening? Or are your phone and Darren’s
apparent mission to coat your entire
face in saliva more interesting? On second thought, don’t
answer that. I don’t want to know.”
“Yeah, I’m listening.” Maddie lazily tilted her neck so he could
gloss her collarbone in spit, too.
A nauseatingly dreamy expression settled on her face. “I
needed to check we were still in the third
decade of the twenty first century, that’s all. And not been
teleported back to the 1950’s. Christ,
 Frankie! How recent is that article?”
“From last month’s Guardian!”
As I resumed reading, Darren resumed shoving his meaty
fingers down the waistband of Maddie’s
jeans, eliciting a repulsive moan of pleasure from her.
“Ugh. There’s a bedroom with a perfectly decent bed, like, ten
feet away, guys.”
“Yeah, we know.” Darren grinned wolfishly. “I destroyed your
sister in it half an hour ago.”
Dear God, please rescue me from other people’s unadulterated
lust. Adjusting my chair to face
away from them, I continued reading.
“And listen to this! Oh my, it gets worse. ‘ One job recently
advertised by a Mayfair investment
firm asked for a candidate with ‘a bubbly personality, able to
deal with the male banter and be
sociable but not distracting. Suitable candidates are lured with
Jo Malone goodie bags stuffed
with nail varnish and moisturiser.”
The goodie bags sounded divine.
“I get that it bothers you, Frankie. But let’s face it. Only you
would choose one of the few career
pathways everyone knows is dominated by women and then
moan that it’s dominated by women! And
you’re not exactly going to garner much sympathy, to be
honest. Not when educated women in the
twenty-first century are still more likely to be offered corporate
jobs polishing glass ceilings rather
than breaking them.”
Huh. Smart arse. To be fair, she had a point.
“What do you think, Tris?” I turned to my brother. “Tell me you
are suitably outraged on my
behalf. With those sorts of statistics being bandied about, it’s no
wonder I’m struggling to climb the
greasy pole.”
 “I don’t wanna hear about your sex life, Frankie,” cackled
Darren around a mouthful of my sister.
“Hah! But apparently, me hearing and seeing yours is perfectly
okay?”
Tristan, my youngest sibling by sixteen whole minutes, stared at
some shitty daytime antiques
programme as if I hadn’t spoken. He’d muted the television, and
subtitles tracked along the bottom of
the screen. Separating herself from Darren for a nanosecond,
Maddie threw me an anxious look.
“He’s not wearing his hearing aids.”
“I know.” She shook her head. “He does that a lot these days,
don’t you think?”
I did think. Frequently. Tristan had gradually retreated into his
shell over the last few months, with
no sign of coming out. While we had an idea what bothered
him, Maddie and I were at a loss to know
what to do.
“We should tell Mum and Dad.”
“They’ll only worry. And drop everything to come and visit.”
“Let’s give it another month. Perhaps his new job will buck him
up a bit.”
Speaking of new jobs…
“Oh my god, this advert here. Seriously, this is, like, my dream.”
Scrolling down, I read out again
excitedly. “Cloud Ten Construction is looking for an experienced
PA to join the exec team based at
our flagship offices in Canary Wharf. He or she (spoiler alert,
guys, it will be a woman) will work
closely with Lysander St. Cloud, one of our progressive new
senior executive directors. Together
you will focus on the development and promotion of our Cloud
Ten Environmental Programme:
Scene to be Green. Oh my god, that’s wonderfully cheesy . I’m
in love with this company already.”
 “Cloud Ten are contracting for all the development work down in
Shoreditch at the moment,”
observed Darren. “Near Brick Lane. You see their vans
everywhere. They’re the white ones with the
pale green cloud logo.”
Putting my phone aside, I flipped open my laptop and navigated
to the Cloud Ten ‘About us’ page.
Smart-suited execs, wearing suitably serious but approachable
expressions, lined the top row of
photos, each with a brief resumé underneath. A family-run
company, I surmised, unless all of them
sharing the St. Cloud surname was a happy coincidence. A
blank space where a photo of the newest
exec, Lysander St. Cloud, should have been teased me. All the
existing execs were middle-aged, with
a well-fed, rich sheen and shiny white teeth. Like a glossy
vampire family tree. No doubt the new guy
would be equally staid and old.
“It’s a more progressive construction company than most,” I
pointed out. “Look, there are three
female execs, for a start, out of a board of ten. The CEO is
female. You never know. Maybe they’ll be
receptive to employing a male PA.”
“Having three women on the board fulfils their commitment to
the FTSE 500 30% Club,” stated
Darren.
I blinked a few times and shook my head. When he wasn’t
sucking on my sister’s uvula and other
parts of her anatomy I shuddered to imagine, that child came
up with some extraordinary snippets of
knowledge.
“What about the existing PAs? Any male or nonbinary?” Maddie
demanded.
Hum, as expected. “Not obviously. All bloody women. So much
for being progressive. Even the
female execs have female PAs. What is that all about?”
 “Cos they live with men and know that we’re crap at organising
stuff. Women are much better.”
Just to flummox me even more, Darren frequently followed
moments of startling insight with
sweeping generalisations.
I deliberately ignored him; he was wrong anyhow. I had a Y
chromosome, and I could organise
the shit out of anyone. Tabulate, catalogue and alphabetise
were my middle names. Deciding to blank
the teensy issue that, apparently, my gender had no place
within Cloud Ten’s shiny corporate
hierarchy, I continued reading.
“The chosen candidate must be proficient in blah, blah, blah and
fully embrace our blah blah
blah core values.”
“What, like working fifty hours a week, an expensive rail
journey, unpaid overtime, and a toilet
that doesn’t flush properly? Those core values?”
Okay. So my last dream job had turned out a bit shit.
Maddie adopted her best cockney accent, which was fairly crap.
“Oh, and Frankie, mate, can’t
you be, like, a bit more, like, a girl, mate?”
Okay. So the last job had turned out very, very shit. The look of
dismay on my previous boss’s
face discovering the temp agency had sent a man lasted for the
entire period of maternity leave I’d
been paid to cover. Nevertheless, by the end of it, his office and
business diary were virtually
unrecognisable from the shambles they had been prior to my
arrival, and he was on his knees and
begging me to stay. However, his body odour and
aforementioned lack of decent sanitation meant I
was once again perusing job adverts long before he could
pronounce the words ‘bigoted narrow-
minded wanker’, never mind spell them.
 “Shouldn’t that be Cloud Nine?” Darren furrowed his perma-
tanned brow. Perma-tanned was
generous—it was closer to orange. “Not Cloud Ten?” With a
flourish, he wiped his mouth clean of his
and my sister’s mingled saliva.
“Gosh, the boy speaks and everything. Here’s me thinking
Maddie had found herself a randy set of
tentacles held together by a tongue.”
Maddie, my older sib by eight minutes (and didn’t I bloody know
it), gave me a withering, older-
sister sort of look. “Pay him no attention, Darren. What does it
feel like, Frankie, to be undesirable
and constantly eaten up by jealousy?”
Siblings: the only people who would insult you for no reason at
all, yet poke the eyes out of
anyone else who tried to do the same. Crossing my eyes at her
unattractively, I carried on. “Cloud Ten
Construction: reaching through the clouds and beyond! ”
“Isn’t that Buzz Lightyear’s line?” Darren interrupted. My turn
for a withering look.
“Cloud Ten: Working for Cloud Ten is not just a career—it’s a
way of life! Oh my god, I’m
falling more and more in love with this company by the second!
Who writes this stuff? Would you like
to hear their Cloud Ten Core Values ?”
Maddie sighed. “Not especially. Do we get a choice?”
“Nope.” I straightened up. “Number one: open, honest
communication.”
“Job’s yours, mate,” interrupted Darren. “You never stop bloody
talking. A load of shite, mind.”
“Thank you, Darren dearest, for that marvellous insight into my
character. Number two:
customer-driven goals. Whatever. Number three: sustainability.
Oh, wow! Check out that office!”
I brandished my phone in Maddie’s direction. Floor-to-ceiling
windows showcased the city
 stretched out below, framing the acres of serene floorspace
within, dotted with shiny green pot plants
and ergonomically designed chairs. I mentally slotted myself
into the picture, perched behind the
sturdy steel desk full of empty drawers waiting for me to fill
them with highlighter pens, paperclips,
staplers, and fresh blocks of dazzling white printer paper. Subtle
wall-mounted uplighters cast the
whole domain in a warm, enticing glow. Heaven.
“My willy’s tingling just looking at it.”
Darren rolled his eyes. “Are you sure that’s not an STD?”
“Unlikely, Darren, but I appreciate your concern. As Maddie has
so sympathetically alluded to,
I’m currently in the midst of a lengthy sexual drought.” I
resumed reading. “It says here that every
single item of office furniture, from the chairs to the light fittings
to the bog rolls is…”
“Does it really say bog rolls?” Finally, I’d impressed Darren.
“No, of course not. I’m paraphrasing. From the chairs to the
light fittings to the cleaning
products, every single item is sourced from reputable,
sustainable blah blah sources. Oh my god, the
vegan menu options in the canteen go on for two pages!”
“You’re not vegan,” Maddie pointed out.
“So? I could easily encompass veganism into my core values.
Just because I like bacon
sandwiches doesn’t automatically make me a bad fit. This job
ad was created with me in mind!
Especially with a juicy brand-new exec to whip into shape!” My
two favourite pastimes rolled into
one—driving a desk and copiloting someone else’s. Frankly, I’d
be game for a whipping too, if it got
me the job. “Number six: a member of the office maintenance
and domestic staff reports directly to
the board of non-exec directors. Wow!”
“Hang on, where were numbers four and five?”
 I shrugged. “Who cares. They were dull, all about maintaining
client confidentiality and stuff.
Number seven: flattened hierarchies; each employee has an
equal voice. Yikes! On the hottest days
last year, all office workers downed tools and went outside to
enjoy organic strawberries and ice
cream because they believe in valuing their staff. This job is so
giving me a stiffy, right now.”
“Darren too.” Maddie giggled, a coquettish sound I hadn’t
realised she knew how to make. The
class of eleven-year-old terrors she ruled with a rod of iron
would be petrified to hear it.
“That’s not the job advert, babes.” Darren made a sucking
squelchy noise on my sister’s neck.
“We should get ourselves some ice cream.”
“Moving along,” I interrupted briskly. “Number eight: pension,
yeah, dull. Number nine:
treating all staff as we wish to be treated ourselves; unkindness
has no place in our organisation.
Very cool. Number ten: we strive, above all, to be the UK’s most
forward-thinking, diverse, and
equal opportunities construction company.”
And…Yeah, right. All those shiny female PAs smiled up at me
from the laptop.
I threw my phone onto the coffee table with more force than
necessary. “Diverse and equal until a
candidate with a Y chromosome applies for a PA job, because,
you know, wealthy, loyal cishet clients
and the cishet blokes who make up most of the senior
management prefer, you know, to have a dolly
bird tottering about the place. Welcome to the modern world
and fuck my life.”
Even Darren recognised this wasn’t the time to take the piss. My
career up until now had been a
series of short-term placements interspersed with promises of
substantive posts that never
 materialised or jobs I really, really didn’t want to accept.
Recently, Maddie hinted that I give up
trying to be a PA, and concentrate on rising to a position to one
day employ my own PA, and make
sure it was a damned bloke.
But I didn’t want to. I was a fucking fantastic executive
assistant, despite possessing a (currently
hibernating) penis. I loved my job and, what’s more, I was
fucking good at it. Nobody managed
diaries, arranged travel, and liaised with corporate clients as
well as me. Or navigated their way
around an Excel spreadsheet. I had discretion, tact, adaptability,
and diplomacy coming out of my ears
(unless my sister and Darren were around). Nobody told dental
receptionists they should have a crack
at pulling teeth, did they? Or advised air stewards to pilot the
plane?
I glanced once more at the open laptop, at the gleaming row of
execs and the glossy photos of
their smug PAs underneath. “I’ll willingly bet all the gold in the
medallion swinging from Darren’s
tree trunk neck that if I apply, Cloud Ten will shortlist me.”
There lay the beauty of anonymised application forms—no
gender, no name, no ethnic
background. Merely a list of my qualifications (a degree in
English from a Russell Group uni, a
Professional Executive Diploma with distinction), experience and
references (ample). I’d be invited
for interview, at which they would try exceedingly hard to hide
their disappointment, shower me with
positive feedback, and then offer the fucking job to a very nice
blonde lady with half my experience
and ability. Who flaunted her two X chromosomes as if they
were badges of merit.
“You could always pretend to be a woman.”
 A quiet, softly spoken voice floated from the other side of the
lounge. My brother Tristan shakily
rose to his feet, using the arms of the chair for support. Pausing
to centre himself, he grabbed his
sticks, then wobbled his way over to us. Slightly protruding from
under a mop of straw-coloured hair,
identical to my own, were his ears and two brown circular discs,
like chocolate buttons.
Automatically, I stood, ready to catch him should he lose
balance as he manoeuvred into the seat next
to Maddie and Darren. Darren reached for the cushion behind
his own back and wordlessly offered it
to Tristan, who ignored it, like the dickhead he was.
“You could pretend to be a woman,” he repeated, almost too
loudly this time. After not wearing
his implants, his volume control took a while to reset. “At the
job interview.”
I snorted. “What? Wear a frock and slap on a bit of lippy?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Maddie remarked reasonably.
“Drag night at G.A.Y. and displaying my knowledge of software
packages during an interview
with the Head of Personnel at the UK’s largest privately owned
construction company are hardly
comparable, Maddie.”
“And you dressed up with stockings, a corset, and the whole
school uniform shebang for Oliver’s
twenty-first birthday,” Tristan added. “You fooled his cousins.
You made a very convincing Britney.”
“It turned me on,” Darren piped up.
“Nude mannequins in shop windows turn you on, Darren.”
“You were a rather fetching Juliet in the sixth-form play, too.”
Tristan gave me a shaky grin, the
first for a while. “Had Mum in tears, anyway.”
“For many, many reasons.” Maddie nodded. “So many reasons.
A master class in how to skip the
awkward coming-out-to-your-parents chat in one easy lesson.”
 “I was an excellent Juliet,” I agreed. “How was I to know they’d
planned to surprise me
backstage? And anyhow, that wasn’t acting. That was actual live
footage of me swearing my undying
love for Daniel Higginbottom.”
“Undying love for his wanger, at least.” Maddie smirked at
Tristan.
Darren looked confused. “I thought Juliet was in love with
Romeo?”
“He’s married with two kids now,” said Tristan. “Lives in
Rickmansworth, works as an
accountant.”
How did someone who hardly ever left the house know this
shit? “Bloody hell, Tris, twist the
knife a little further, why don’t you?”
“No, he doesn’t,” Darren disagreed. “Romeo tops himself at the
end of the film. I saw it on
Netflix, with Leonardo whatshisface.”
Sometimes, I thought Darren’s sole purpose in life was to wind
me up. “Don’t you have some
scaffolding poles to erect somewhere?”
“Already erecting one, babes.” He smirked, flicking his eyes
down to his crotch and back. Oh my
god, note to self: never use the word erect in conversation with
Darren.
“Darren, did you purposefully become a scaffolder in order to
make that joke?”
“Yeah. And to legit perv into bedroom windows.”
Like Maddie’s.
Six months ago, twenty-year old Darren Everard (nominative
determinism at its finest) shrouded
our block of flats in a trellis of steel poles, caught sight of my
sister brushing her teeth in her
winceyette jim-jams, and invited himself in for a cuppa. The
roof repairs took a week. Darren never
 left, and the rest, as they say, is history. My sister adored him;
Tristan and I found him peculiar yet
endlessly fascinating.
“I’m serious, Frankie,” Tristan persisted. “I’ve seen you try on
Maddie’s stuff. The girly stuff. I
bet you could get away with it.”
Actually, they’d both seen me actively choosing to slob around
in it on some days, and bless them,
never questioned it, just accepted it as part and parcel of the
annoying, full-on Frankie package.
“He’s got a point.” Maddie nodded slowly to herself. “I bet you’d
get away with it as well.”
“Er…no, he hasn’t? Not to mention it’s probably illegal to lie
about gender on a job application
form. Never mind at interview.”
Maddie shrugged. “It’s also illegal to discriminate against you
because you’re a man. They won’t
look very forward-thinking, diverse, or inclusive if they fought
you over that at an industrial tribunal,
would they? Core value number ten, I believe. Just imagine it—
PA to the new head of the progressive
environmental programme fired for pretending to be a woman,
in order to get ahead in the least-
progressive profession ever?”
Three sensible (okay, two, excluding Darren) people regarded
me as if they actually believed I
could get away with this. Maddie and Tristan, although
frequently irritating as hell, weren’t stupid.
Over the last few weeks, the daily battle to be treated as an
equal had ground me down to a husk. So
much so, I was contemplating taking Maddie’s advice and
throwing in the towel. But, as a last hurrah,
how fucking satisfying would it be to get one over a bunch of
arrogant, corporate cishet clichés? To
hoodwink a senior executive on the board of one of the UK’s
biggest construction firms?
 “Listen,” Maddie continued, “even better. You don’t need to lie at
all. The application form will
be generic. So, for the gender question, you tick the ‘prefer not
to say’ box. And then, if you get as far
as an interview, just make yourself look the more feminine
version of you—shouldn’t be too tricky.
That’s all. If they make incorrect assumptions, then it’s up to
them, isn’t it?”
“It’s not like you to shy away from a challenge, Frankie. Aren’t
you supposed to be the daring one
of the three of us?” I hadn't seen Tristan this animated in days.
“You should do it.”
Maggie wriggled on Darren’s lap. “Yes. You should. Buy some
smart clothes or have a rummage
through mine, do your eyes and nails, carry on growing your
hair. What’s the closing date for the
completed applications?”
I scanned through my phone. “Three weeks from now.
Interviews three weeks after that.”
Tristan gave me a nudge. “Plenty of time for you and Maddie to
put a few outfits together. And
practise.”
Darren threw me an unsettling leery wink. “You’ve already got
the undies.”
What the fuck? Had he been through my drawers? In both
senses of the word?
“I’d run out of socks,” he explained carelessly, as if that excused
everything. “I liked your pink
lacy jock thingy with the …”
“Can we just leave it there, Darren?” Oh my god, my siblings
didn’t need the inside track on all
my foibles. So what if the idea of putting on a skirt for work
thrilled me more than it should? That
was my business, no one else’s. Nor were my underwear
choices. A man was entitled to private
things, wasn’t he?
Another random document with
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the rabble, as he runs by the monarch’s side, has wit enough to think
—‘There goes my royal self!’ From the most absolute despot to the
lowest slave there is but one step (no, not one) in point of real merit.
As far as truth or reason is concerned, they might change situations
to-morrow—nay, they constantly do so without the smallest loss or
benefit to mankind! Tyranny, in a word, is a farce got up for the
entertainment of poor human nature; and it might pass very well, if
it did not so often turn into a tragedy.
We once heard a celebrated and elegant historian and a hearty
Whig declare, he liked a king like George III. better than such a one as
Buonaparte; because, in the former case, there was nothing to
overawe the imagination but birth and situation; whereas he could
not so easily brook the double superiority of the other, mental as well
as adventitious. So does the spirit of independence and the levelling
pride of intellect join in with the servile rage of the vulgar! This is the
advantage which an hereditary has over an elective monarchy: for
there is no end of the dispute about precedence while merit is
supposed to determine it, each man laying claim to this in his own
person; so that there is no other way to set aside all controversy and
heart-burnings, but by precluding moral and intellectual
qualifications altogether, and referring the choice to accident, and
giving the preference to a nonentity. ‘A good king,’ says Swift, ‘should
be, in all other respects, a mere cypher.’
It has been remarked, as a peculiarity in modern criticism, that the
courtly and loyal make a point of crying up Mr. Young, as an actor,
and equally running down Mr. Kean; and it has been conjectured in
consequence that Mr. Kean was a radical. Truly, he is not a radical
politician; but what is as bad, he is a radical actor. He savours too
much of the reality. He is not a mock-tragedian, an automaton player
—he is something besides his paraphernalia. He has ‘that within
which passes shew.’ There is not a particle of affinity between him
and the patrons of the court-writers. Mr. Young, on the contrary, is
the very thing—all assumption and strut and measured pomp, full of
self-importance, void of truth and nature, the mask of the characters
he takes, a pasteboard figure, a stiff piece of wax-work. He fills the
throne of tragedy, not like an upstart or usurper, but as a matter of
course, decked out in his plumes of feathers, and robes of state, stuck
into a posture, and repeating certain words by rote. Mr. Kean has a
heart in his bosom, beating with human passion (a thing for the great
‘to fear, not to delight in!’) he is a living man, and not an artificial
one. How should those, who look to the surface, and never probe
deeper, endure him? He is the antithesis of a court-actor. It is the
object there to suppress and varnish over the feelings, not to give way
to them. His overt manner must shock them, and be thought a
breach of all decorum. They are in dread of his fiery humours, of
coming near his Voltaic Battery—they chuse rather to be roused
gently from their self-complacent apathy by the application of
Metallic Tractors. They dare not trust their delicate nerves within the
estuary of the passions, but would slumber out their torpid existence
in a calm, a Dead Sea—the air of which extinguishes life and motion!
Would it not be hard upon a little girl, who is busy in dressing up a
favourite doll, to pull it in pieces before her face in order to shew her
the bits of wood, the wool, and rags it is composed of? So it would be
hard upon that great baby, the world, to take any of its idols to
pieces, and shew that they are nothing but painted wood. Neither of
them would thank you, but would consider the offer as an insult. The
little girl knows as well as you do that her doll is a cheat; but she shut
her eyes to it, for she finds her account in keeping up the deception.
Her doll is her pretty little self. In its glazed eyes, its cherry cheeks,
its flaxen locks, its finery and its baby-house, she has a fairy vision of
her own future charms, her future triumphs, a thousand hearts led
captive, and an establishment for life. Harmless illusion! that can
create something out of nothing, can make that which is good for
nothing in itself so fine in appearance, and clothe a shapeless piece of
deal-board with the attributes of a divinity! But the great world has
been doing little else but playing at make-believe all its lifetime. For
several thousand years its chief rage was to paint larger pieces of
wood and smear them with gore and call them Gods and offer
victims to them—slaughtered hecatombs, the fat of goats and oxen,
or human sacrifices—shewing in this its love of shew, of cruelty, and
imposture; and woe to him who should ‘peep through the blanket of
the dark to cry, Hold, hold.’—Great is Diana of the Ephesians, was
the answer in all ages. It was in vain to represent to them, ‘Your Gods
have eyes but they see not, ears but they hear not, neither do they
understand’—the more stupid, brutish, helpless, and contemptible
they were, the more furious, bigotted, and implacable were their
votaries in their behalf.[43] The more absurd the fiction, the louder
was the noise made to hide it—the more mischievous its tendency,
the more did it excite all the phrenzy of the passions. Superstition
nursed, with peculiar zeal, her ricketty, deformed, and preposterous
offspring. She passed by the nobler races of animals even, to pay
divine honours to the odious and unclean—she took toads and
serpents, cats, rats, dogs, crocodiles, goats and monkeys, and hugged
them to her bosom, and dandled them into deities, and set up altars
to them, and drenched the earth with tears and blood in their
defence; and those who did not believe in them were cursed, and
were forbidden the use of bread, of fire, and water, and to worship
them was piety, and their images were held sacred, and their race
became Gods in perpetuity and by divine right. To touch them, was
sacrilege: to kill them, death, even in your own defence. If they stung
you, you must die: if they infested the land with their numbers and
their pollutions, there was no remedy. The nuisance was intolerable,
impassive, immortal. Fear, religious horror, disgust, hatred,
heightened the flame of bigotry and intolerance. There was nothing
so odious or contemptible but it found a sanctuary in the more
odious and contemptible perversity of human nature. The barbarous
Gods of antiquity reigned in contempt of their worshippers!
This game was carried on through all the first ages of the world,
and is still kept up in many parts of it; and it is impossible to
describe the wars, massacres, horrors, miseries and crimes, to which
it gave colour, sanctity, and sway. The idea of a God, beneficent and
just, the invisible maker of all things, was abhorrent to their gross,
material notions. No, they must have Gods of their own making, that
they could see and handle, that they knew to be nothing in
themselves but senseless images, and these they daubed over with
the gaudy emblems of their own pride and passions, and these they
lauded to the skies, and grew fierce, obscene, frantic before them, as
the representatives of their sordid ignorance and barbaric vices.
Truth, Good, were idle names to them, without a meaning. They
must have a lie, a palpable, pernicious lie, to pamper their crude,
unhallowed conceptions with, and to exercise the untameable
fierceness of their wills. The Jews were the only people of antiquity
who were withheld from running headlong into this abomination; yet
so strong was the propensity in them (from inherent frailty as well as
neighbouring example) that it could only be curbed and kept back by
the hands of Omnipotence.[44] At length, reason prevailed over
imagination so far, that these brute idols and their altars were
overturned; it was thought too much to set up stocks and stones,
Golden Calves and Brazen Serpents, as bonâ-fide Gods and
Goddesses, which men were to fall down and worship at their peril—
and Pope long after summed up the merits of the whole mythologic
tribe in a handsome distich—
‘Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust,
Whose attributes were rage, revenge, or lust.’

It was thought a bold stride to divert the course of our imaginations,

the overflowings of our enthusiasm, our love of the mighty and the
marvellous, from the dead to the living subject, and there we stick.
We have got living idols, instead of dead ones; and we fancy that they
are real, and put faith in them accordingly. Oh, Reason! when will
thy long minority expire? It is not now the fashion to make Gods of
wood and stone and brass, but we make kings of common men, and
are proud of our own handy-work. We take a child from his birth,
and we agree, when he grows up to be a man, to heap the highest
honours of the state upon him, and to pay the most devoted homage
to his will. Is there any thing in the person, ‘any mark, any
likelihood,’ to warrant this sovereign awe and dread? No: he may be
little better than an ideot, little short of a madman, and yet he is no
less qualified for king.[45] If he can contrive to pass the College of
Physicians, the Herald’s College dub him divine. Can we make any
given individual taller or stronger or wiser than other men, or
different in any respect from what nature intended him to be? No;
but we can make a king of him. We cannot add a cubit to the stature,
or instil a virtue into the minds of monarchs—but we can put a
sceptre into their hands, a crown upon their heads, we can set them
on an eminence, we can surround them with circumstance, we can
aggrandise them with power, we can pamper their appetites, we can
pander to their wills. We can do every thing to exalt them in external
rank and station—nothing to lift them one step higher in the scale of
moral or intellectual excellence. Education does not give capacity or
temper; and the education of kings is not especially directed to useful
knowledge or liberal sentiment. What then is the state of the case?
The highest respect of the community and of every individual in it is
paid and is due of right there, where perhaps not an idea can take
root, or a single virtue be engrafted. Is not this to erect a standard of
esteem directly opposite to that of mind and morals? The lawful
monarch may be the best or the worst man in his dominions, he may
be the wisest or the weakest, the wittiest or the stupidest: still he is
equally entitled to our homage as king, for it is the place and power
we bow to, and not the man. He may be a sublimation of all the vices
and diseases of the human heart; yet we are not to say so, we dare
not even think so. ‘Fear God, and honour the King,’ is equally a
maxim at all times and seasons. The personal character of the king
has nothing to do with the question. Thus the extrinsic is set up over
the intrinsic by authority: wealth and interest lend their countenance
to gilded vice and infamy on principle, and outward shew and
advantages become the symbols and the standard of respect in
despite of useful qualities or well-directed efforts through all ranks
and gradations of society. ‘From the crown of the head to the sole of
the foot there is no soundness left.’ The whole style of moral
thinking, feeling, acting, is in a false tone—is hollow, spurious,
meretricious. Virtue, says Montesquieu, is the principle of republics;
honour, of a monarchy. But it is ‘honour dishonourable, sin-bred’—it
is the honour of trucking a principle for a place, of exchanging our
honest convictions for a ribbon or a garter. The business of life is a
scramble for unmerited precedence. Is not the highest respect
entailed, the highest station filled without any possible proofs or
pretensions to public spirit or public principle? Shall not the next
places to it be secured by the sacrifice of them? It is the order of the
day, the understood etiquette of courts and kingdoms. For the
servants of the crown to presume on merit, when the crown itself is
held as an heir-loom by prescription, is a kind of lèse majesté, an
indirect attainder of the title to the succession. Are not all eyes
turned to the sun of court-favour? Who would not then reflect its
smile by the performance of any acts which can avail in the eye of the
great, and by the surrender of any virtue, which attracts neither
notice nor applause? The stream of corruption begins at the
fountainhead of court influence. The sympathy of mankind is that on
which all strong feeling and opinion floats; and this sets in full in
every absolute monarchy to the side of tinsel shew and iron-handed
power, in contempt and defiance of right and wrong. The right and
the wrong are of little consequence, compared to the in and the out.
The distinction between Whig and Tory is merely nominal: neither
have their country one bit at heart. Phaw! we had forgot—Our British
monarchy is a mixed, and the only perfect form of government; and
therefore what is here said cannot properly apply to it. But Might
before Right is the motto blazoned on the front of unimpaired and
undivided Sovereignty!—
A court is the centre of fashion; and no less so, for being the sink of
luxury and vice—
——‘Of outward shew
Elaborate, of inward less exact.’

The goods of fortune, the baits of power, the indulgences of vanity,

may be accumulated without end, and the taste for them increases as
it is gratified: the love of virtue, the pursuit of truth, grow stale and
dull in the dissipation of a court. Virtue is thought crabbed and
morose, knowledge pedantic, while every sense is pampered, and
every folly tolerated. Every thing tends naturally to personal
aggrandisement and unrestrained self-will. It is easier for monarchs
as well as other men ‘to tread the primrose path of dalliance’ than ‘to
scale the steep and thorny road to heaven.’ The vices, when they have
leave from power and authority, go greater lengths than the virtues;
example justifies almost every excess, and ‘nice customs curtsey to
great kings.’ What chance is there that monarchs should not yield to
the temptations of gallantry there, where youth and beauty are as
wax? What female heart can indeed withstand the attractions of a
throne—the smile that melts all hearts, the air that awes rebellion,
the frown that kings dread, the hand that scatters fairy wealth, that
bestows titles, places, honour, power, the breast on which the star
glitters, the head circled with a diadem, whose dress dazzles with its
richness and its taste, who has nations at his command, senates at
his controul, ‘in form and motion so express and admirable, in action
how like an angel, in apprehension how like a God; the beauty of the
world, the paragon of animals!’ The power of resistance is so much
the less, where fashion extends impunity to the frail offender, and
screens the loss of character.
‘Vice is undone, if she forgets her birth,
And stoops from angels to the dregs of earth;
But ’tis the fall degrades her to a whore:
Let greatness own her, and she’s mean no more.
Her birth, her beauty, crowds and courts confess,
 Chaste matrons praise her, and grave bishops bless.
In golden chains the willing world she draws,
And hers the Gospel is, and hers the laws.’[46]

The air of a court is not assuredly that which is most favourable to

the practice of self-denial and strict morality. We increase the
temptations of wealth, of power, and pleasure a thousand-fold, while
we can give no additional force to the antagonist principles of reason,
disinterested integrity and goodness of heart. Is it to be wondered at
that courts and palaces have produced so many monsters of avarice,
cruelty, and lust? The adept in voluptuousness is not likely to be a
proportionable proficient in humanity. To feed on plate or be clothed
in purple, is not to feel for the hungry and the naked. He who has the
greatest power put into his hands, will only become more impatient
of any restraint in the use of it. To have the welfare and the lives of
millions placed at our disposal, is a sort of warrant, a challenge to
squander them without mercy. An arbitrary monarch set over the
heads of his fellows does not identify himself with them, or learn to
comprehend their rights or sympathise with their interests, but looks
down upon them as of a different species from himself, as insects
crawling on the face of the earth, that he may trample on at his
pleasure, or if he spares them, it is an act of royal grace—he is
besotted with power, blinded with prerogative, an alien to his nature,
a traitor to his trust, and instead of being the organ of public feeling
and public opinion, is an excrescence and an anomaly in the state, a
bloated mass of morbid humours and proud flesh! A constitutional
king, on the other hand, is a servant of the public, a representative of
the people’s wants and wishes, dispensing justice and mercy
according to law. Such a monarch is the King of England! Such was
his late, and such is his present Majesty George the IVth!—
Let us take the Spirit of Monarchy in its highest state of exaltation,
in the moment of its proudest triumph—a Coronation-day. We now
see it in our mind’s eye; the preparation of weeks—the expectation of
months—the seats, the privileged places, are occupied in the
obscurity of night, and in silence—the day dawns slowly, big with the
hope of Cæsar and of Rome—the golden censers are set in order, the
tables groan with splendour and with luxury—within the inner space
the rows of peeresses are set, and revealed to the eye decked out in
ostrich feathers and pearls, like beds of lilies sparkling with a
thousand dew-drops—the marshals and the heralds are in motion—
the full organ, majestic, peals forth the Coronation Anthem—every
thing is ready—and all at once the Majesty of kingdoms bursts upon
the astonished sight—his person is swelled out with all the
gorgeousness of dress, and swathed in bales of silk and golden
tissues—the bow with which he greets the assembled multitude, and
the representatives of foreign kings, is the climax of conscious
dignity, bending gracefully on its own bosom, and instantly thrown
back into the sightless air, as if asking no recognition in return—the
oath of mutual fealty between him and his people is taken—the
fairest flowers of female beauty precede the Sovereign, scattering
roses; the sons of princes page his heels, holding up the robes of
crimson and ermine—he staggers and reels under the weight of royal
pomp, and of a nation’s eyes; and thus the pageant is launched into
the open day, dazzling the sun, whose beams seem beaten back by
the sun of royalty—there were the warrior, the statesman, and the
mitred head—there was Prince Leopold, like a panther in its dark
glossy pride, and Castlereagh, clad in triumphant smiles and snowy
satin, unstained with his own blood—the loud trumpet brays, the
cannon roars, the spires are mad with music, the stones in the street
are startled at the presence of a king:—the crowd press on, the
metropolis heaves like a sea in restless motion, the air is thick with
loyalty’s quick pants in its monarch’s arms—all eyes drink up the
sight, all tongues reverberate the sound—
‘A present deity they shout around,
A present deity the vaulted roofs rebound!’

What does it all amount to? A shew—a theatrical spectacle! What

does it prove? That a king is crowned, that a king is dead! What is the
moral to be drawn from it, that is likely to sink into the heart of a
nation? That greatness consists in finery, and that supreme merit is
the dower of birth and fortune! It is a form, a ceremony to which
each successor to the throne is entitled in his turn as a matter of
right. Does it depend on the inheritance of virtue, on the acquisition
of knowledge in the new monarch, whether he shall be thus exalted
in the eyes of the people? No;—to say so is not only an offence in
manners, but a violation of the laws. The king reigns in contempt of
any such pragmatical distinctions. They are set aside, proscribed,
treasonable, as it relates to the august person of the monarch; what is
likely to become of them in the minds of the people? A Coronation
overlays and drowns all such considerations for a generation to
come, and so far it serves its purpose well. It debauches the
understandings of the people, and makes them the slaves of sense
and show. It laughs to scorn and tramples upon every other claim to
distinction or respect. Is the chief person in the pageant a tyrant? It
does not lessen, but aggrandise him to the imagination. Is he the
king of a free people? We make up in love and loyalty what we want
in fear. Is he young? He borrows understanding and experience from
the learning and tried wisdom of councils and parliaments. Is he old?
He leans upon the youth and beauty that attend his triumph. Is he
weak? Armies support him with their myriads. Is he diseased? What
is health to a staff of physicians? Does he die? The truth is out, and
he is then—nothing!
There is a cant among court-sycophants of calling all those who are
opposed to them, ‘the rabble,’ ‘fellows,’ ‘miscreants,’ &c. This shews
the grossness of their ideas of all true merit, and the false standard of
rank and power by which they measure every thing; like footmen,
who suppose their masters must be gentlemen, and that the rest of
the world are low people. Whatever is opposed to power, they think
despicable; whatever suffers oppression, they think deserves it. They
are ever ready to side with the strong, to insult and trample on the
weak. This is with us a pitiful fashion of thinking. They are not of the
mind of Pope, who was so full of the opposite conviction, that he has
even written a bad couplet to express it:—
‘Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow:
The rest is all but leather and prunella.’

Those lines in Cowper also must sound very puerile or old-

fashioned to courtly ears:—
‘The only amaranthine flower on earth
Is virtue; the only lasting treasure, truth.’

To this sentiment, however, we subscribe our hearts and hands.

There is nothing truly liberal but that which postpones its own claims
to those of propriety—or great, but that which looks out of itself to
others. All power is but an unabated nuisance, a barbarous
assumption, an aggravated injustice, that is not directed to the
common good: all grandeur that has not something corresponding to
it in personal merit and heroic acts, is a deliberate burlesque, and an
insult on common sense and human nature. That which is true, the
understanding ratifies: that which is good, the heart owns: all other
claims are spurious, vitiated, mischevious, false—fit only for those
who are sunk below contempt, or raised above opinion. We hold in
scorn all right-lined pretensions but those of rectitude. If there is
offence in this, we are ready to abide by it. If there is shame, we take
it to ourselves: and we hope and hold that the time will come, when
all other idols but those which represent pure truth and real good,
will be looked upon with the same feelings of pity and wonder that
we now look back to the images of Thor and Woden!
Really, that men born to a throne (limited or unlimited) should
employ the brief span of their existence here in doing all the mischief
in their power, in levying cruel wars and undermining the liberties of
the world, to prove to themselves and others that their pride and
passions are of more consequence than the welfare of mankind at
large, would seem a little astonishing, but that the fact is so. It is not
our business to preach lectures to monarchs, but if we were at all
disposed to attempt the ungracious task, we should do it in the words
of an author who often addressed the ear of monarchs.
‘A man may read a sermon,’ says Jeremy Taylor, ‘the best and most
passionate that ever man preached, if he shall but enter into the
sepulchres of kings. In the same Escurial where the Spanish princes
live in greatness and power, and decree war or peace, they have
wisely placed a cemetery where their ashes and their glory shall sleep
till time shall be no more: and where our kings have been crowned,
their ancestors lie interred, and they must walk over their grandsire’s
head to take his crown. There is an acre sown with royal seed, the
copy of the greatest change from rich to naked, from ceiled roofs to
arched coffins, from living like Gods to die like men. There is enough
to cool the flames of lust, to abate the height of pride, to appease the
itch of covetous desires, to sully and dash out the dissembling
colours of a lustful, artificial, and imaginary beauty. There the
warlike and the peaceful, the fortunate and the miserable, the
beloved and the despised princes mingle their dust, and pay down
their symbol of mortality, and tell all the world, that when we die our
ashes shall be equal to kings, and our accounts shall be easier, and
our pains for our crimes shall be less. To my apprehension, it is a sad
record which is left by Athenæus concerning Ninus, the great
Assyrian monarch, whose life and death is summed up in these
words: “Ninus, the Assyrian, had an ocean of gold, and other riches
more than the sand in the Caspian sea; he never saw the stars, and
perhaps he never desired it; he never stirred up the holy fire among
the Magi; nor touched his God with the sacred rod, according to the
laws; he never offered sacrifice, nor worshipped the Deity, nor
administered justice, nor spake to the people, nor numbered them;
but he was most valiant to eat and drink, and having mingled his
wines, he threw the rest upon the stones. This man is dead: behold
his sepulchre, and now hear where Ninus is. Sometime I was Ninus,
and drew the breath of a living man, but now am nothing but clay. I
have nothing but what I did eat, and what I served to myself in lust
is all my portion: the wealth with which I was blest, my enemies
meeting together shall carry away, as the mad Thyades carry a
raw goat. I am gone to Hell; and when I went thither, I carried
neither gold nor horse, nor a silver chariot. I that wore a mitre, am
now a little heap of dust!”‘—Taylor’s Holy Living and Dying.
 ON THE SCOTCH CHARACTER

(A Fragment.)
The Liberal.]
[1822.

The Scotch nation are a body-corporate. They hang together like a

swarm of bees. I do not know how it may be among themselves, but
with us they are all united as one man. They are not straggling
individuals, but embodied, formidable abstractions—determined
personifications of the land they come from. A Scotchman gets on in
the world, because he is not one, but many. He moves in himself a
host, drawn up in battle-array, and armed at all points against all
impugners. He is a double existence—he stands for himself and his
country. Every Scotchman is bond and surety for every other
Scotchman—he thinks nothing Scotch foreign to him. If you see a
Scotchman in the street, you may be almost sure it is another
Scotchman he is arm in arm with; and what is more, you may be sure
they are talking of Scotchmen. Begin at the Arctic Circle, and they
take Scotland in their way back. Plant the foot of the compasses in
the meridian, and they turn it by degrees to ‘Edina’s darling seat’—
true as the needle to the Pole. If you happen to say it is a high wind,
they say there are high winds in Edinburgh. Should you mention
Hampstead or Highgate, they smile at this as a local prejudice, and
remind you of the Calton Hill. The conversation wanders and is
impertinent, unless it hangs by this loop. It ‘runs the great mile, and
is still at home.’ You would think there was no other place in the
world but Scotland, but that they strive to convince you at every turn
of its superiority to all other places. Nothing goes down but Scotch
Magazines and Reviews, Scotch airs, Scotch bravery, Scotch
hospitality, Scotch novels, and Scotch logic. Some one the other day
at a literary dinner in Scotland apologised for alluding to the name of
Shakespear so often, because he was not a Scotchman. What a
blessing that the Duke of Wellington was not a Scotchman, or we
should never have heard the last of him! Even Sir Walter Scott, I
understand, talks of the Scotch novels in all companies; and by
waving the title of the author, is at liberty to repeat the subject ad
infinitum.
Lismahago in Smollett is a striking and laughable picture of this
national propensity. He maintained with good discretion and
method that oat-cakes were better than wheaten bread, and that the
air of the old town of Edinburgh was sweet and salubrious. He was a
favourable specimen of the class—acute though pertinacious,
pleasant but wrong.[47] In general, his countrymen only plod on with
the national character fastened behind them, looking round with
wary eye and warning voice to those who would pick out a single
article of their precious charge; and are as drawling and troublesome
as if they were hired by the hour to disclaim and exemplify all the
vices of which they stand accused. Is this repulsive egotism peculiar
to them merely in their travelling capacity, when they have to make
their way amongst strangers, and are jealous of the honour of the
parent-country, on which they have ungraciously turned their backs?
So Lord Erskine, after an absence of fifty years, made an appropriate
eulogy on the place of his birth, and having traced the feeling of
patriotism in himself to its source in that habitual attachment which
all wandering tribes have to their places of fixed residence, turned
his horses’ heads towards England—and farewell sentiment!
The Irish and others, who come and stay among us, however full
they may be of the same prejudice, keep it in a great measure to
themselves, and do not vent it in all companies and on all occasions,
proper or improper. The natives of the sister-kingdom in particular
rather cut their country like a poor relation, are shy of being seen in
one another’s company, and try to soften down the brogue into a
natural gentility of expression. A Scotchman, on the contrary, is
never easy but when his favourite subject is started, treats it with
unqualified breadth of accent, and seems assured that every one else
must be as fond of talking of Scotland and Scotchmen as he is.
 Is it a relic of the ancient system of clanship? And are the Scotch
pitted against all the rest of the world, on the same principle that
they formerly herded and banded together under some chosen
leader, and harried the neighbouring district? This seems to be the
most likely solution. A feeling of antipathy and partisanship, of
offensive and defensive warfare, may be considered as necessary to
the mind of a Scotchman. He is nothing in himself but as he is
opposed to or in league with others. He must be for or against
somebody. He must have a cause to fight for; a point to carry in
argument. He is not an unit but an aggregate; he is not a link, but a
chain. He belongs to the regiment. I should hardly call a Scotchman
conceited, though there is often something that borders strongly on
the appearance of it. He has (speaking in the lump) no personal or
individual pretensions. He is not proud of himself, but of being a
Scotchman. He has no existence or excellence except what he derives
from some external accident, or shares with some body of men. He is
a Brunonian, a Cameronian, a Jacobite, a Covenanter; he is of some
party, he espouses some creed, he is great in some controversy, he
was bred in some University, has attended a certain course of
lectures, understands Gaelic, and upon occasion wears the Highland
dress. An Englishman is satisfied with the character of his country,
and proceeds to set up for himself; an Irishman despairs of that of
his, and leaves it to shift for itself; a Scotchman pretends to
respectability as such, and owes it to his country to make you hate
the very name by his ceaseless importunity and intolerance in its
behalf. An Irishman is mostly vain of his person, an Englishman of
his understanding, a Frenchman of his politeness—a Scotchman
thanks God for the place of his birth. The face of a Scotchman is to
him accordingly the face of a friend. It is enough for him to let you
know that he speaks the dialect that Wilkie speaks, that he has sat in
company with the Author of Waverley. He does not endeavour to put
forward his own notions so much as to inform you of the school in
politics, in morals, in physic, in which he is an adept; nor does he
attempt to overpower you by wit, by reason, by eloquence, but to tire
you out by dint of verbal logic; and in common-places it must be
confessed that he is invincible. There he is teres et rotundus. He
fortifies himself in these, circumvallation within circumvallation, till
his strong-hold is impregnable by art and nature. I never knew a
Scotchman give up an argument but once. It was a very learned man,
the Editor of an Encyclopedia,—not my friend, Mr. Macvey Napier.
On some one’s proposing the question why Greek should not be
printed in the Roman type, this gentleman answered, that in that
case it would be impossible to distinguish the two languages. Every
one stared, and it was asked how at this rate we distinguished French
from English? It was the forlorn hope. Any one else would have
laughed, and confessed the blunder. But the Editor was a grave man
—made an obstinate defence (the best his situation allowed of) and
yielded in the forms and with the honours of war.
A Scotchman is generally a dealer in staple-propositions, and not
in rarities and curiosities of the understanding. He does not like an
idea the worse for its coming to him from a reputable, well-
authenticated source, as I conceive he might feel more respect for a
son of Burns than for Burns himself, on the same hereditary or
genealogical principle. He swears (of course) by the Edinburgh
Review, and thinks Blackwood not easily put down. He takes the
word of a Professor in the University-chair in a point of philosophy
as he formerly took the Laird’s word in a matter of life and death;
and has the names of the Says, the Benthams, the Mills, the
Malthuses, in his mouth, instead of the Montroses, the Gordons, and
the Macullamores. He follows in a train; he enlists under some
standard; he comes under some collateral description. He is of the
tribe of Issachar, and not of Judah. He stickles for no higher
distinction than that of his clan, or vicinage.[48] In a word, the Scotch
are the creatures of inveterate habit. They pin their faith on example
and authority. All their ideas are cast in a previous mould, and
rivetted to those of others. It is not a single blow, but a repetition of
blows, that leaves an impression on them. They are strong only in the
strength of prejudice and numbers. The genius of their greatest living
writer is the genius of national tradition. He has ‘damnable iteration
in him’; but hardly one grain of sheer invention. His mind is turned
instinctively backward on the past—he cannot project it forward to
the future. He has not the faculty of imagining any thing, either in
individual or general truth, different from what has been handed
down to him for such. Give him costume, dialect, manners, popular
superstitions, grotesque characters, supernatural events, and local
scenery, and he is a prodigy, a man-monster among writers—take
these actually embodied and endless materials from him, and he is a
common man, with as little original power of mind as he has
(unfortunately) independence or boldness of spirit!
The Scotch, with all their mechanical, wholesale attachment to
names and parties, are venal in politics,[49] and cowardly in
friendship. They crouch to power; and would be more disposed to fall
upon and crush, than come forward to the support of, a sinking
individual. They are not like La Fleur in the Sentimental Journey,
who advanced three steps forward to his master when the Gens-d’
Armes arrested him: they are like the Maitre d’ Hotel, who retired
three paces backwards on the same occasion. They will support a
generic denomination, where they have numbers to support them
again: they make a great gulp, and swallow down a feudal lord with
all the retinue he can muster—the more, the merrier—but of a single
unprotected straggler they are shy, jealous, scrupulous in the
extreme as to character, inquisitive as to connections, curious in all
the particulars of birth, parentage and education. Setting his
prejudices of country, religion, or party aside, you have no hold of a
Scotchman but by his self-interest. If it is for his credit or advantage
to stand by you, he will do it: otherwise, it will go very much against
both his stomach and his conscience to do so, and you must e’en shift
for yourself. You may trust something to the generosity and
magnanimity of an Englishman or an Irishman; they act from an
impulse of the blood or from a sense of justice: A Scotchman (the
exceptions are splendid indeed) uniformly calculates the
consequences to himself. He is naturally faithful to a leader, as I said
before, that is, to a powerful head; but his fidelity amounts to little
more than servility. He is a bigot to the shadow of power and
authority, a slave to prejudice and custom, and a coward in every
thing else. He has not a particle of mental courage. Cæsar’s wife was
not to be suspected; and it is the same with a Scotchman’s friend. If a
word is said against your moral character, they shun you like a
plague-spot. They are not only afraid of a charge being proved
against you, but they dare not disprove it, lest by clearing you of it
they should be supposed a party to what had no existence or
foundation. They thus imbibe a bad opinion of you from hearsay, and
conceal the good they know of you both from themselves and the
world. If your political orthodoxy is called in question, they take the
alarm as much as if they were apprehensive of being involved in a
charge of high treason. One would think that the whole country
laboured, as they did Sixty Years Since, under an imputation of
disaffection, and were exposed to the utmost vigilance of the police,
so that each person had too little character for loyalty himself to run
any additional risk by his neighbour’s bad name. This is not the case
at present: but they carry their precautions and circumspection in
this respect to such an idle and stupid excess, as can only be
accounted for from local circumstances and history—that is to say,
from the effects of that long system of suspicion, persecution and
surveillance, to which they were exposed during a century of
ridiculous (at least of unsuccessful) wars and rebellions, in favour of
the House of Stuart. They suffered much for King James and the
Good Cause; but since that time their self-love must be excused to
look at home. On my once complaining to a Scotchman of what I
thought a dereliction of his client’s cause by the counsel for the
defendant in a prosecution for libel, I received for answer—That ‘Mr.
—— had defended the accused as far as he could, consistently with
his character,’—though the only character the Learned Gentleman
could boast, had been acquired by his skill, if not his courage, in
resisting prosecutions of this kind.
The delicate sensibility (not to say soreness) of the Scotch in
matters of moral reputation, may in like manner be accounted for
(indirectly) from their domiciliary system of church-government, of
Kirk-assemblies, and Ruling Elders: and in the unprincipled
assurance with which aspersions of this sort are thrown out, and the
panic-terror which they strike into the timid or hypocritical, one may
see the remaining effects of Penance-Sheets and Cutty-Stools! Poor
Burns! he called up the ghost of Dr. Hornbook, but did not lay the
spirit of cant and lying in the Cunning North!
Something however, it must be confessed, has been done; a change
has been effected. Extremes meet; and the Saint has been (in some
instances) merged in the Sinner. The essential character of the
Scotch is determined self-will, the driving at a purpose; so that
whatever they undertake, they make thorough-stitch work, and carry
as far as it will go. This is the case in the pretensions some of their
writers have lately set up to a contempt for Cutty-Stools, and to all
the freedom of wit and humour. They have been so long under
interdict that they break out with double violence, and stop at
nothing. Of all blackguards (I use the term for want of any other) a
Scotch blackguard is for this reason the worst. First, the character
sits ill upon him for want of use, and is sure to be most outrageously
caricatured. He is only just broke loose from the shackles of
regularity and restraint, and is forced to play strange antics to be
convinced that they are not still clinging to his heels. Secondly,
formality, hypocrisy, and a deference to opinion, are the ‘sins that
most easily beset him.’ When therefore he has once made up his
mind to disregard appearances, he becomes totally reckless of
character, and ‘at one bound high overleaps all bound’ of decency
and common sense. Again, there is perhaps a natural hardness and
want of nervous sensibility about the Scotch, which renders them
(rules and the consideration of consequences apart) not very nice or
scrupulous in their proceedings. If they are not withheld by
conscience or prudence, they have no mauvaise honte, no
involuntary qualms or tremors, to qualify their effrontery and
disregard of principle. Their impudence is extreme, their malice is
cold-blooded, covert, crawling, deliberate, without the frailty or
excuse of passion. They club their vices and their venality together,
and by the help of both together are invincible. The choice spirits
who have lately figured in a much-talked-of publication, with ‘old
Sylvanus at their head,’—
‘Leaning on cypress stadle stout,’—

in their ‘pious orgies’ resemble a troop of Yahoos, or a herd of

Satyrs—
‘And with their horned feet they beat the ground!’—

that is to say, the floor of Mr. Blackwood’s shop! There is one other
publication, a match for this in flagrant impudence and dauntless
dulness, which is the John Bull. The Editor is supposed, for the
honour of Scotland, to be an Irishman. What the Beacon might have
proved, there is no saying; but it would have been curious to have
seen some articles of Sir Walter’s undoubted hand proceeding from
this quarter, as it has been always contended that Blackwood’s
Edinburgh Magazine was too low and scurrilous a publication for
him to have any share in it. The adventure of the Beacon has perhaps
discovered to Sir Walter’s admirers and the friends of humanity in
general, that
 ‘Entire affection scorneth nicer hands!’

Old Dr. Burney, about the middle of the last century, called one
morning on Thomson, the Author of The Seasons, at a late hour, and
on expressing his surprise at the poet’s not having risen sooner,
received for answer,—‘I had no motive, young man!’ A Scotchman
acts always from a motive, and on due consideration; and if he does
not act right or with a view to honest ends, is more dangerous than
any one else. Others may plead the vices of their blood in extenuation
of their errors; but a Scotchman is a machine, and should be
constructed on sound moral, and philosophical principles, or should
be put a stop to altogether.
 MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS

The Liberal.]
[1823.

My father was a Dissenting Minister at W——m in Shropshire; and

in the year 1798 (the figures that compose that date are to me like the
‘dreaded name of Demogorgon’) Mr. Coleridge came to Shrewsbury,
to succeed Mr. Rowe in the spiritual charge of a Unitarian
Congregation there. He did not come till late on the Saturday
afternoon before he was to preach; and Mr. Rowe, who himself went
down to the coach in a state of anxiety and expectation, to look for
the arrival of his successor, could find no one at all answering the
description but a round-faced man in a short black coat (like a
shooting jacket) which hardly seemed to have been made for him,
but who seemed to be talking at a great rate to his fellow-passengers.
Mr. Rowe had scarce returned to give an account of his
disappointment, when the round-faced man in black entered, and
dissipated all doubts on the subject, by beginning to talk. He did not
cease while he staid; nor has he since, that I know of. He held the
good town of Shrewsbury in delightful suspense for three weeks that
he remained there, ‘fluttering the proud Salopians like an eagle in a
dove-cote; ‘and the Welch mountains that skirt the horizon with their
tempestuous confusion, agree to have heard no such mystic sounds
since the days of
‘High-born Hoel’s harp or soft Llewellyn’s lay!’

As we passed along between W——m and Shrewsbury, and I eyed

their blue tops seen through the wintry branches, or the red rustling
leaves of the sturdy oak-trees by the road-side, a sound was in my