The Shadow of Great Britain

167: Chapter 121: Lady Ormac VII (4K4) 167: Chapter 121: Lady Ormac VII (4K4) West London, Bayswater, 36 Lancaster Gate opposite Hyde Park.

Through the gaps in the maple leaves and the glass of the white fluttering casements, one could see a man dressed in a brand-new tailcoat sitting in front of a desk on the second floor, reading documents in his hands.

A gust of wind blew past, opening the slightly ajar window, and also lifted a scatter of parchment bags and a pile of documents and old news clippings on the desk.

Arthur did not look up; he simply pinched the edge of a document bag that was about to fly out the window’s edge and pulled it back in with two fingers.

He stood up, closed the window again, and the returning Red Devil finally got a clear view of the titles of several documents on the desk.

Amelia Stewart, Sarah Villiers, Emily Cowper, Mary Molyneux, Countess of Sefton, Clementina Drummond-Burrell, Theresa Esterhazy, Dorothea Lieven.

Perhaps this jumble of dazzling names might seem confusing at first glance, but if one were to convert them into the common appellations of socialites, these ordinary-looking names would instantly be endowed with a rich plethora of meanings.

They were respectively the Viscountess Castlereagh, the Countess of Jersey, the Countess Cowper, the Countess of Sefton, the Countess Drummond-Burrell, Princess Esterhazy, and the Countess Lieven.

These were the identities and names of the seven main patrons of “Almack’s Club”, the social club that dominated access to London’s most prestigious social circles.

In the past, personal identity information like this would have taken Arthur less than half a page to fill out, but for these seven ladies, even a whole page might not be enough to clarify their titles and social relationships.

Take Viscountess Castlereagh, Amelia Stewart, for instance, this lady hails from Britain’s noble Hobart Family.

Her father is John Hobart, the 2nd Earl of Buckinghamshire, and her brother Robert Hobart had successively served as Governor of Ireland, Secretary of State for India, and, after returning to the country in 1812, was promoted to one of the three Commissioners of the Board of Control for India Affairs of the Colonial Department.

And her husband was none other than Robert Stewart, who held the dual aristocratic titles of Marquess of Londonderry and Viscount Castlereagh.

As a politician with a significant mark in British history, Viscount Castlereagh, in his decades-long political career, had served as Chief Secretary for Ireland, Minister for the Army and the Colonies, and Foreign Secretary.

Domestically, Viscount Castlereagh played a role in pushing the “Act of Union with Ireland”, integrating Ireland formally within Britain’s map.

In foreign affairs, Viscount Castlereagh successfully established a four-nation alliance with Britain, Austria, Russia, and Prussia, laying a solid foundation for the victory in the Battle of Waterloo.

After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, he exerted his influence to bring about the signing of the “Treaty of Paris” and represented Britain in leading the process at the Congress of Vienna, setting the framework for the European Concert system for other continental nations.

Unfortunately, perhaps because of too much accumulated stress over the years,

or because he had supported Lord Sidmouth’s bloody suppression policy during the Peterloo Massacre in 1819, which led to vicious attacks by society’s opinion leaders and liberal writers such as Shelley and Byron, Viscount Castlereagh soon developed a severe mental illness and ultimately committed suicide by slitting his throat with a letter opener.

Though her husband’s death greatly reduced Lady Castlereagh’s influence in the social circles, her prestige, built up over many years, secured her a stable position on the committee of female patrons of Almack’s Club.

Among these seven hostesses, aside from homegrown ones like Lady Castlereagh, were also foreign figures like Princess Esterhazy and Countess Lieven.

From the title Princess Esterhazy had one could see that she came from royal nobility—she was a member of the fabulously wealthy German state’s princely family “Thurn und Taxis,” and her husband, Paul Anton Esterhazy, was an Austrian Prince serving as the envoy to Great Britain.

As for Lady Lieven, while she might not have credentials as impressive as Princess Esterhazy’s, her background was nonetheless not to be underestimated.

Lady Lieven’s husband was the Tsarist Russian envoy to Britain, Count Lieven, and her father was even more prominent.

Because Lady Lieven’s father was none other than: Tsar Alexander I’s close confidant, the German Russian military officer of distinction in the anti-French wars, the iron-fisted feudal lord who suppressed the Decembrist uprising, who, lacking tanks, could only deploy Cossack cavalry, the apparent head of the Third Section of His Imperial Majesty’s Own Chancellery, the shrewd mind behind the Tsarist secret police rule, a beacon for Scotland Yard, envied by French gendarmes as undefeatable, the elder of Chun Doo-hwan, the guide for Pinochet, who always thought monitoring thoughts to be bothersome, so he preferred physical elimination—a belief of the Russian cavalry general, Count Alexander Khristoforovich Benckendorff.

As they say, heroic fathers have brave sons, and beautiful mothers have lovely daughters.

Lady Lieven not only fully inherited her mother’s excellent lineage, resulting in a delicate and lovely visage but also surpassed her father’s expertise in espionage work.