I had several occasions to enjoy an afternoon with Annie, she of the flawless figure. After every occasion, Vivian would drag me back to the bed. Those were long days, first the explorer of sensual pleasure, then the master, each woman exacting her tribute of my performance. I could complain, but it would be a lie. Some few months later, Lady Sussex was engaged to a Bavarian prince. If the army of guard was alert before, now the continent joined in. I never had another opportunity to see Annie. Lady Warren of course could call on her and did, instructing her in the ways of appearing virgin in her wedding bed. It must have worked since there was never a breath of scandal.
Some weeks after Annie’s marriage, a young lady appeared at Vivian’s door, sent by Annie. I cannot even to this day expose the lady’s name for she was of the Royalty. She had known Annie as a Lady in Waiting. They had talked, as girls are wont to do, of sex. Annie let the girl know how she might redress her ignorance, for no one at the Palace would address such topics.
Vivian worked her magic and I was brought in to meet her. Again I used the ring to allay her fears and we enjoyed several meetings, while the girl learned what she wanted. It was unusual for me, since I had little actual desire for the girl, so high above my station. It was almost a sacrilege. I did my duty for flag and Queen.
Never had I enjoyed such a highborn woman. I can also say that once unclothed, there is no difference between the highest born and the lowest. I will admit that the girl was delightful, full of humor and passion as the occasion warranted. She was not unattractive, and like all young women once her clothes were off, she aroused my baser instincts immediately. She seemed to enjoy our few times together. Because of her position, our times together were few.
Having some experience in trade, many men would seek my counsel on such business matters as came up, especially those involving foreign trade. I was thought to be unbiased having no direct business in the Kingdom. Little did these gentlemen know that I was learning a great deal of the behind the scenery machinations of the government and the large trading firms. As they would say in America, the game was rigged.
That the game was fixed did not deter me. I saw great opportunity in Northern Ireland, knowing that the game was fixed. I simply had to be on the side with the advantage. You see in Northern Ireland the people were kept backwards by their leaders in the religious ferment of the counter reformation. The Protestants and Catholics of Northern Ireland were kept waging a war that had been over for three hundred years by the ruling class of English Lords and Scottish businessmen who created a religious hobgoblin, the Pope, and handed him up to the workers as the Anti-Christ. Now how anyone of sound mind could believe an Italian Pope in Rome had anything to do with working conditions in Ireland, confound me to explain it, but the religious and business leaders kept the Protestant populace under an iron fist with this hobgoblin.
In so doing, the wages were lower than any other industrial center in Europe. Any hint of labor unrest or unionization and the hobgoblin of Catholics taking jobs was rushed out, causing the idiot Protestants to retrench as though under attack. I had little truck with the whole insane thing, but could not deny the prospect of above average returns on investment in the situation. While many Englishmen were avoiding that province as backwards and irrational, which it was, I began investing. I was handsomely repaid on the backs of the idiot Protestant workers.
My commercial ties now stretched from Boston, to Charleston, to Belfast, with subsidiary ownership round the world. I was fast becoming not only wealthy, but noticeably wealthy. As such, I attracted too much attention. I began to make it a practice, which I have followed to this day, to hold many investments in other names, and in other countries. This has cost me a few times as some country or another has nationalized some industry, but it kept me from notoriety, more important than the occasional loss. And being diverse in my investments has handsomely repaid me many times, as well as saved taxes from the rapacious claws of politicians.
So my life in London was one of ease, with occasional bouts of business activity. But I pursued the carnal delights with increasing interest. With age, my appetite did not flag. I assume the power of the ring was responsible for the prolonged virility. I now had no doubt of the ring’s power having long exceeded the normal span of a man, unless you consider the Biblical accounts as accurate, and my apparent age was perhaps of a strong man in his mid-thirties, that is the prime of life, even though my real age now exceeded one hundred fifty years.
In addition to the occasional virgin sacrifice provided by Vivian, along with meeting her needs, I frequented Whitechapel, where women were always available. I had joined a gentleman’s club which of course provided such entertainment as gentlemen required on premises as well. And last, I used the ring on occasion. I might meet an exceptionally lovely shop girl and ‘persuade’ her to lunch and then to my house. In all, my appetites were well fed.
I might still be there in London enjoying the young girls if not for an unfortunate occurrence. Ah me. I knew, as did Vivian, that upper class girls would not talk about their experiences, since to do so would mark them as fallen and unfit as proper wives. This was true, for almost all.
Vivian and I had the misfortune of meeting a girl most indelicate, frankly, I think because of a lack of innate sense. She was, to use a phrase that I heard much later and so is anachronistic in this setting but most appropriate, dumb as a box of rocks. This lady, Yvette, Lady Coring, told her mother of her adventures with Lady Warren and myself. Her mother, obviously of the same inbred stock as her daughter, instead of protecting the virtue of her daughter and hushing the stupid girl, told the girl’s father who, in a fit of pique, insulted me at a lunch in a public restaurant.
As could easily be imagined by any but the overly inbred Corings, the news flashed through society. The Lady Coring was an object of pity, for being abused by a faithless scoundrel, me I suppose, and scorned for having surrendered her virtue. Vivian was outcast as was I; she as a pimp, me as her gigolo. Frankly, society, at least the men were much kinder to me than were the women to Vivian and Yvette. Vivian fled to Paris, then on to Budapest, a beautiful city in the Hapsburg Empire, where no one knew her. I lost track of her and never heard what became of Lady Vivian. I owe her much pleasure. The Lady Yvette never did find a suitable husband and remained unmarried and dumb as a rock her entire life and probably blaming me instead of realizing half the girls had done the same; they simply kept quiet!
I suppose I could have survived the incident. Half of the men hated me as an irresponsible raconteur, half admired me as a gifted seducer, privately. And that is what determined me, that they would admire me privately, while denouncing me publicly. I let it be known that such hypocrisy was shameful, not that it mattered except to me, and boarded a ship back to America.
Fleeing the stigma of London by way of the new steamship, I put in at New York. I knew the city had changed since I had last seen it during the rebellion, but I could not imagine the scale of it until I saw it myself. It had become a great modern city. London was a great city, but it had a long history of building. New York seemed as if sprung up all at once, a great city.
I had intended to continue on to Boston, but that harbor changed my intent. I settled in New York, taking a place in Manhattan, the center of the city. New York buzzed with a tension and activity. As I had noted before, these Americans had a confidence that was contagious. This was a country on the verge of greatness, as yet unaware of its latent power. But I sensed it, and with my long term horizen could wait for fruition. I have to admit I had no idea of how much the positions of the old world and new would change over the next half century. No one, I think, could have foreseen the monumental change that would occur.
I had, previous to this sojourn, little time for the pursuit of the arts, having always been pursuing either wealth or women. I suppose neither of those pursuits is terrible. At leisure in New York, I came to appreciate the arts as I never had before. New York had a first class band and with the money pouring into the city, they had the funds to import the best of European conductors to lead it. I had the pleasure to hear a Russian, Pyotr Tchaikovsky and a Bohemian Antonin Dvorak among many others. Later, the orchestra was under the baton of an Austrian, Mahler. His conducting was thrilling, making concerts almost life and death struggles.
Vast fortunes were being made in America and that wealth was used to bring the art of the old world to the new. A museum of art, The Metropolitan, housed the gifts of many wealthy individuals who would often donate their entire collections to the museum. It rivaled many continental museums in the quality and size of its collection.
And last, I came to know the place called simply by a street, Broadway, the Great White Way, for the millions of lights advertising the theatres in the area. It was here, I began to spend time, first watching the productions, then underwriting them. Yes, the farm bred Englishman became a Broadway producer, though that was less renowned then it would be now, and the profits, if any, were much less than now.
I was able to pursue my passion for beautiful women easily in New York. With so many actresses trying to get the part in my plays, and the teeming people, many immigrants, clusters of many cultures crowded together in such a small place, the normal cultural barriers quickly broke down. Young girls worked in shops and were free to see men if their fancy took them. In the old country, they could not even talk to men. They took this freedom gladly, and I, a rich and eligible bachelor, caught many eyes. And those I didn’t catch, well, the ring was always on my finger.
I began to search for women from countries I had never experienced, then cities I had never had a girl from that city, even neighborhoods within a large city. So many women…
In 1898, these so confident Americans entered the world stage with an amazing victory over an established European power, routing Spain and taking their two most prized possessions, Cuba and the Philippines, in an almost bloodless war. The American Navy sailed the world’s oceans and the European powers took notice. But even then, they still did not see the future.
I foresaw a little. The easy confidence of these people and the ease at which they defeated a great European nation startled me. As I thought about it, I remembered my own thoughts back seventy years before. I realized that a sea change had truly occurred in commerce. I sold off all of the land of the Barony in England, the Fines and Recoveries Act making it possible to break the Fee Tail locking up the land. All of that money, I invested in American companies of all kinds. The Barony now existed on paper only. I was still a Lord, and entitled, but the wealth was no longer the land. I wish I could say I was prescient and knew that Britain would soon be ruined in two wars, then impoverished by the socialist economic policies of the Labour Party after the second war, but I wasn’t. I was simply lucky on the one hand and conservative on the other, a welcome combination.
I also began scaling back my Continental holdings, moving them to the Americas, not just the United States, but the other countries of the Americas where vast reserves of minerals were being found and exploited by American companies. By 1910, I had moved most of my investments to the new world. I did not abandon the old, but I was ready for the expansion I thought would come. I had no idea how long it would take, but I knew I had many years, so waiting was not a concern.
It turned out I had not long to wait.
Copyright Rod O'Steele © 2007, 2011