The Methodist Ghost

[the Victoria and Baltick Coffeehouse where Gerard and Barnaby hold their business presentation was the forerunner of the Stock Exchange]

‘Brother, well met,’ cried the wholesaler Barnaby Jones, his rotund cheeks ruddy in the wintry wind. ‘You’ve come a ways.’

‘Afternoon, Mr. Jones,’ responded Gerard Andrieu the silk weaver, touching the rim of his cap. ‘Felicity,’ he nodded to the gentleman’s wife, who was Gerard’s sister. Their relatively new bonds of kinship were not yet warm enough to render the encounter comfortable. ‘Indeed, there were no carriages; we had to walk from Spitalfields, but this was not to be missed. I venture that all of London must be out today. Even Her Majesty the Queen is here, they say, over that way, participating in an archery match.’

Felicity remained completely silent, colouring prettily, and tucked even further into the shelter of her husband’s portly side.

‘Come now, come now,’ Jones blustered, his round belly shaking with good will, as if the very chaleur of his personality could soften the ice beneath him. ‘Let’s have no more of this ‘Mr. Jones’ business. I’m Barnaby to you, good man, and that’s the end of it. You know, I’m doubly indebted. Not only did you give me your angel sister in marriage, but your exemplary diplomacy paved the way between our two families. And our mutual trade goes from strength to strength. We’ll have nothing but happiness now.’

‘Well, Barnaby,’ Gerard replied, ‘who could resist being happy today? Just look at all this—it’s like a second Christmas.’ He turned from side to side, surveying the Thames River beneath their feet, frozen from one bank to the next. Young people careened on ice skates; vendors had erected stalls and tents selling mugs of chocolate, gingerbread, gin and other delicacies; boys pulled boats across the ice on ropes; courting lovers strolled hand in hand as if posing for a Christmas card. ‘Someone said they saw an elephant on the ice,’ Gerard continued. ‘The circus and Christmas rolled into one.’

‘Where is the good wife, Anne-Marie?’

‘Waiting for me at the new bridge. I’ve bought her these sugar buns. Will you have one?’ He held the neck of the bag in front of his sister, who looked tempted by the sweet, warm aroma of the currant-dotted brioches coming from within, before her husband’s response stopped her.

‘No, no, you must save them for your tryst.’

‘Tryst? Really, Barnaby…’ Felicity ventured, giggling.

He continued. This man was never to be deterred. ‘It’s too special a day. Make the most of it.’

‘Well, our compliments to Mistress Anne-Marie. I’ll see you next week, Gerard. Don’t forget our meeting at the Baltick. I’ll need all your production figures to present to the moneyman.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll have them ready. I’ll bring the samples, too.’

‘Especially the brocades. We mustn’t lose out to the Flemish. The high end, that’s the silk market.’

‘So, you always say.’

The three bowed politely to each other and went off in separate directions, Gerard toward Westminster Bridge, as yet halfway built, Barnaby and Felicity toward the stalls on the banks, Barnaby hoping there to obtain delicious comestibles for himself and his bride, but mostly for himself.

Gerard smiled. His congenial brother-in-law had reverted to being his congenial wholesaler. But that was by no means an unpleasant state of being. Through Mr. Jones’s patronage Gerard had risen in rank at the mill from journeyman to overseer, and he had liked the big man for years as their business relations blossomed. When the rich merchant began paying court to his pretty sister, he couldn’t have been more pleased.

Their aging mother, too, was satisfied, as all mothers are when their daughters marry into money. She nevertheless had a word or two of caution. ‘His world will be very different from yours, dear. Make sure you don’t get lost in it. And steel yourself. Not every word you hear will be congratulation.’

Her words were prophetic. Exemplary or not, Gerard’s diplomacy was not sufficient to ease the road for the nuptials. You see, Felicity was not Barnaby’s first wife. His two sons from his widow, James and John, were grown, aged 16 and 14 years. They were learning the wholesale silk trade of their father and lived under the same roof as the new couple. The boys were not pleased with their father’s second marriage, and even less pleased with his marrying down.

Though Gerard and Barnaby had business dealings with each other sometimes as often as once a week, it was not often now that Felicity saw her family. She chose the day she knew the menfolk would be at the Baltick to order a second carriage to take her to Spitalfields.

‘I wanted to see just you, Mother and Anne-Marie, as women,’ she announced.

As Anne-Marie set out the tea things, Mother said, ‘So, daughter, how is married life?’

Felicity took a long sip of tea before answering.

‘Barnaby is wonderful. He treats me like a princess, and I love him more every day. But James and John are a trial.’ She sighed. ‘If Barnaby is at home, he makes enough noise chatting and chuckling to keep everyone amiable. But when he’s not there…’

‘Do they insult you?’ Anne-Marie inquired.

‘Not directly. I might actually prefer that. I could issue some response. Every little jibe is subtle and indirect…For example, they’re fond of using high-falluting vocabulary in my presence, as if to imply an inferior education.’ The already shy young lady seemed to shrink in stature as she confessed this to her mother and sister-in-law.

‘Your education is nothing to be ashamed of. You’re as well read as is your brother,’ said Mother. ‘You could try answering with even bigger words?’

‘That’s an idea. I might try that. I’d have to tread delicately, though. I don’t want to fight with them.’

‘Apart from your stepsons, how are you coping with running the household?’ To commemorate his marriage, Barnaby had sold his old estate and bought a fashionable new townhouse on Hanover Square.

‘That’s much better,’ she replied, sitting up tall again. ‘It’s wonderful having servants. Of course, they look down upon me as much as the boys do, but I don’t need to mind what they think. Barnaby has given me a free rein to decorate the house, so as well as a cook, a housekeeper, a housemaid and a butler, I have at my beck and call wallpaperers, painters, furniture makers…I’m even having some of Gerard’s silks on the walls.’

‘You must invite us to come see it,’ both women enthused.

‘Indeed, we’ll throw a dinner when it’s all finished.’

‘So, Felicity, do you know anything about this big meeting Gerard has gone to at Threadneedle Street?’ asked Anne-Marie.

‘A big merchant has come from Manchester to view Gerard’s silks. If Barnaby makes this sale, it will mean prosperity for both our households.’

‘Let’s wish our men well, then,’ she said, passing Felicity a plate of cake.

Gerard’s presentation was conducted at Virginia and Baltick Coffee House. This was not a venue for social interaction, but rather for business. Merchants, ship owners and freight traders, as well as manufacturers, wholesalers and buyers like Gerard, Barnaby and their prospective customer, sat at tables discussing freight contracts, agreements, and prices.

The noise was deafening. ‘The noisier the room, the better the deal,’ Barnaby believed.

One by one, from a large box at his feet, Gerard pulled out swatches, letting Barnaby do the talking. First, he pulled out habotais, satins, taffetas and dupions, then, black alamodes, renforcez and lustrings, later producing the delicate chiffons, charmeuses, organzas and crêpe de chines and brocades embedded with gold and silver threads.

‘My brother-in-law’s looms have been producing these fine fabrics for 70 years.’

‘What about materials?’ the customer wanted to know.

‘That’s my department,’ Barnaby answered. ‘I supply the mill with the finest Italian raw mulberry silk.’

The wholesale prices were pencilled in on the back of the swatches, over which the customer and Barnaby haggled for an hour or so. The customer chose well over half the fabrics presented, and the three men shook hands on the deal. Barnaby had been right; it was the more expensive ones he wanted. ‘Why wear silk,’ he often said, ‘if you don’t wear the finest?’

The happy wholesaler clapped both Gerard and their customer on the back, shouting, ‘Now, for the gin!’ He raised his arm in the air to call over a serving girl.

As the years progressed, relations between the brothers-in-law, and their mutual prosperity, grew, and the mill continued to ship to merchants in London and Manchester. Gerard even had convivial business dealings with James and John, but the stepsons never fully warmed to their father’s bride. The arrival of offspring didn’t help matters, though fortunately it was a girl; a boy would have threatened their inheritance. Gerard and Anne-Marie, also, were blessed with a boy.

Who would have thought that it would be a matter of religion over which family strife would erupt?

Leaving behind her native Calvinism, Felicity had been willing to espouse her husband’s faith and regularly attended the Anglican Church of St George’s on his arm.

Gerard and Anne-Marie, also, had strayed from the faith. Gerard, in the course of his business dealings, had encountered men with freethinking ideas. He was a man of progress, and he was attracted to this. Upon the urging of some of these men, he joined the Freemasons. A certain preacher was much talked of, and he and Anne-Marie visited the Moravian Church at Aldersgate to hear a sermon.

The reading was from Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans, and the sermon was on the subject of sanctification and the transforming effect of faith upon a Christian. Gerard listened avidly. Toward the end of the long sermon, at a point when the preacher was talking about ‘new birth’, a shaft of light from the sunset fell from the plain glass window above and focussed itself on Anne-Marie’s lap. Gerard was entranced, and kissed his wife’s cheek reverently.

‘When I saw you illuminated by that sunlight,’ he later told her, ‘at that moment I felt that Christ had taken me away from the law of sin and death.’

Several weeks after this epiphany, Anne-Marie became certain that she was again with child. The couple took this circumstance as a sign from God. They began to attend Methodist ‘revivals’ led by George Whitefield, held in the out of doors as the congregations were too large for a church building. Anne-Marie worked with other Methodist ladies to raise funds for Whitefield’s orphanage for Negro children in Pennsylvania.

A sermon by Whitefield was one a person rarely forgot. He combined fervent theology with drama and passionate hand gestures and a hefty helping of British patriotism. Gerard felt even more invigorated than he had been at the Frost Fair on the Thames a few years earlier.

He spoke to his sister and brother-in-law about his conversion experience, and though they never braved a revival, they were not in the least unsupportive. The family strife was not over theology nor over sectarianism. It was over—a ghost.

Barnaby and Felicity’s girl, Emilie, and Gerard and Anne-Marie’s children, David and Fleur, had grown up to follow their respective parents’ churches, as was usual. James and John had married, moved into their own houses and started their own families, interacting with their father mainly at work and finally allowing Felicity the Hanover Square house to herself.

It happened at a certain house on Cock Lane near Smithfield Market, a short walk from St Paul’s Cathedral.

The wife of a usurer named William Kent had died in childbirth, and he had taken up ‘in sin’ with her sister Fanny, taking lodgings on Cock Lane, in a property owned by a Richard Parsons. After Fanny died, Kent and Parsons were embroiled in extensive litigation, souring the resolution of Fanny’s will. Then, residents of the house began hearing noises, claiming it was haunted by Fanny’s ghost, and visitors reported seeing a white figure on the stairs.

Parsons approached Methodist John Moore, rector of St-Barthomew-the-Great in West Smithfield. This happened to be the parish church of Gerard’s family. Parsons and Moore held seances purporting that the ‘ghost’ of ‘Scratching Fanny’ accused Kent of poisoning her. Seances sprouted all over London. Caught up in the hysteria, Anne-Marie and her daughter Fleur, she whose conception had been, according to Gerard, a miracle from God, attended one of these.

A commission of serious men including dictionary author Samuel Johnson determined that the ghost had been a fraud perpetrated by Parsons’ daughter Elizabeth. A number of congregationists from St George’s Anglican Church were members of this commission, including, as it happened, Barnaby’s son John. The Methodists protested, cherishing their supposed evidence of the afterlife, and the incident left many raw nerves in both churches.

‘You’re a smart girl, Fleur,’ Barnaby scolded. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you susceptible to this kind of nonsense.’

‘I agree,’ concurred her father, ‘Anne-Marie, is this the sort of experience with which you educate our daughter?’

‘You should have heard it, Uncle Barnaby. It sounded just like a cat scratching a chair.’

‘And the answers,’ her gullible mother added, ‘one knock for yes, two knocks for no. It was very credible.’

‘Honestly?’ John scoffed, ‘You Methodists are ready to believe any old hocus-pocus. Poltergeists, witches, ghosts, what’ll it be next?’

‘No need to be insulting their faith, my boy,’ cautioned Barnaby.

But the young man did not stop. ‘How about snake prophesy? And living in sin? With your sister’s husband? You’ll be scratching your own f…?’

‘John, it is time for us to take our leave.’ Uncharacteristically angry, Barnaby grabbed his son by the collar and made for the door.

Fleur said later to her brother David, ‘I don’t care what John and Dr Johnson say, I still believe in the ghost.’

‘Me, too,’ he agreed. ‘I’d like to see John scratching.’

His clever Methodist sister said, ‘That gives me an idea.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘Yes, you know where his desk is at the Jones Company offices?’

‘Sure.’

‘Mother would never let me out, but you could go by there surreptitiously on your way home from school.’

‘And?’

‘Find some occasion when he’s left his coat over the back of the chair, and sprinkle some itching powder on the inside of his coattails. I’ll make you some.’

‘Why is that?’

‘The powder will fall down into the seat of his breeches. It will make him scratch his f…well… scratch his backside.’

David was all in.

The children gathered rose hips from autumn rosebushes and carefully dried and ground them to powder. The resulting substance contained tiny prickly hairs which clung to anything they came in contact with. Fleur borrowed from her mother’s dressing table a pair of gloves for David to use in the application thereof.

Twice in the subsequent week and once in the week after that, he managed to find John’s coat unaccompanied across his chair. He only regretted that he had to sneak quickly away and was thus unable to stay to witness the scratching. On the third occasion, he deposited a note on the desk, penned by his sister: ‘Are you a no-good, lying Anglican? One scratch for yes, two scratches for yes, I am.’

Unfortunately for the young conspirators, in an environment where even Anne-Marie and other Methodists were beginning to rue their gullibility, and in a family where it was perfectly obvious to everyone who the culprits were, especially as Fleur’s handwriting was easily recognised, they were quickly caught.

They had to publicly apologise to their cousin and were required to carry John’s waistcoats and breeches to and from the launderers for a month.

‘Scratching Fanny’ was unavailable for comment.