On an April evening in 1779, a woman is shot on the steps of Covent Garden. Her murderer is a young soldier and Church of England minister; her lover, the Earl of Sandwich, one of the most powerful policians of the day. This compelling account of murder, love and intrigue brings Georgian London to life in a spellbinding historical masterpiece.On an April evening in 1779, Martha Ray, mistress of the Earl of Sandwich, was shot on the steps of Covent Garden by James Hackman, a young soldier and minister of the Church of England. She died instantly, leaving behind a grief-stricken lover and five small children. Hackman, after trying to kill himself, was arrested, tried and hanged at Tyburn ten days later. The story was to become one of the scandals of the age.It seemed an open-and-shut case, but why had Hackman killed Ray? He claimed he suffered from 'love's madness' but his motives remained obscure. And as Martha Ray shared the bed of one of the most powerful and unpopular politicians of the day (and one of Georgian London's greatest libertines), the city buzzed with the story, as every hack journalist sharpened his pen.John Brewer has written an account of this violent murder that is as thrilling and compelling as the best crime novel. Atmospheric, beautifully written, and alive with the characters and bustle of 18th-century London, the book examines in minute detail the events of a few crucial moments and gives an unforgettable account of the relationships between the three protagonists and their different places within society. However, the interest in Martha's murder did not end with the Georgians, and A Sentimental Murder ranges over two centuries, populated by journalists, biographers and historians who tried to make sense of the killing. And so it becomes an intriguing exploration of the relations between history and fiction, storytelling and fact, past and present. John Brewer has transformed a tragic tale of murder into an historical masterpiece.
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John Brewer. Sentimental Murder: Love and Madness in the Eighteenth Century
JOHN BREWER. SENTIMENTAL MURDER. Love and Madness in the Eighteenth Century
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
PREFACE
CHAPTER 1 Spring 1779
CHAPTER 2 The Press: A Case of Sentimental Murder
CHAPTER 3 The Killer as Victim: James Hackman
CHAPTER 4 Missing Stories: Lord Sandwich and the Making of a Libertine
CHAPTER 5 Missing Stories: Martha Ray and the Life of the Mistress
CHAPTER 6 Love and Madness, A Story too True
CHAPTER 7 Wordsworth and the Doctors
CHAPTER 8 The Nineteenth Century
CHAPTER 9 The Twentieth Century
CHAPTER 10 History and Telling Stories
INDEX
NOTES
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
Отрывок из книги
Cover
Title Page
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Sandwich knew nothing of these events until some time around midnight. He had waited at the Admiralty, expecting Martha Ray to return for supper after the theatre. As she was late and he was tired, he went to bed at about half past eleven, only to be woken by his black servant James, who told him that Ray had been shot. A distraught James described the scene to Sandwich’s friend, Joseph Cradock, the following day. At first Sandwich did not understand or believe what had happened. He thought James was referring to one of the many scurrilous ballads sung under the windows of the Admiralty. ‘You know that I forbade23 you to plague me any more about those ballads, let them sing or say whatever they please about me!’ ‘Indeed, my Lord,’ replied James, ‘I am not speaking of any ballads; it is all too true.’ Other members of the household then came in; ‘all was a scene of the utmost horror and distress’. Sandwich ‘stood, as it were, petrified; till suddenly seizing a candle, he ran upstairs, threw himself on the bed, and in agony exclaimed, “Leave me a while to myself – I could have borne anything but this”.’
Whether James had been told the news by Caterina Galli or another messenger is not clear – ‘all was confusion and astonishment24’. Galli had fainted25 in the coach when Ray was killed and could not recall what happened thereafter, although we know she returned to the Admiralty in Sandwich’s coach. Sandwich had enough presence of mind to dispatch a servant to the Shakespeare Tavern to watch over Ray’s body and exclude prurient visitors. At seven the following morning he scribbled a hasty note to his friend Robert Boyle Walsingham, an aristocratic young naval officer, ‘For gods sake come to me immediately, in this moment I have much want of the comfort of a real friend; poor Miss Ray was inhumanly murthered last night as she was stepping into her coach at the playhouse door … The murtherer is taken and sent to prison.’
