The Secretary (28 page)

“And how are my Michaelmas babies?” she asked, embracing the twins. “How does it feel to be six?”

“The same as it did yesterday,” Henry said.

“I’ll tell you tomorrow,” Eloise joked.

“You know, Henry,” Anders said, “You can go wherever you choose. Both of you. As long as you do what makes you happy, your mother and I will always be proud of you.”

“What would make me happy right now is a piece of that cake!” Henry cried.

Clarissa came to stand beside Anders as Nora gave the twins each a slice of the birthday cake. “Well,” she said, “I think we’ve succeeded.”

“Oh, no,” Anders said, pressing a kiss to her temple, “We’re only getting started.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Natural law and the exploration of the rights of man enjoyed a heyday in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Great thinkers such as James and John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, and Richard Cumberland influenced the debate about what was right and wrong, and they did so through discussions about the natural state into which man was born. Science and philosophy went hand-in-hand, with many people conducting experiments to discover the nature of man’s soul and mind. But many of the legal constraints that govern the scientific world today did not yet exist. Many authors have explored the murky corners of experimentation and scientific exploration, and while this story only touches the edges of that realm, it is not outside the bounds of possibility that what happened to Clarissa might have happened to a real child.

The slave trade was officially abolished in England in 1807. However, the Slave Trade Act of that year did not do enough to entirely curb the buying and selling of human beings. The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 did a great deal more, but still did not completely end the practice of slavery in England and its colonies. Two more laws (the Trade Acts of 1843 and 1873) were passed before slavery was finally ended in the British Empire. The Slavery Abolition Act was repealed more than a hundred and fifty years later, replaced by broader conventions protecting all human rights.

Many of the characters in this story were real people who helped to bring about the end of slavery. They were also human beings with real foibles and idiosyncrasies, which I do not pretend to have captured with accuracy. They help to make up the backdrop of a fictional story about two people who were involved in the struggle to defend the rights of all people.

Clarissa’s other beau, Richard Whibley, the Clerk of the Works, was a real person. In 1834, he was a central figure in the Burning of Parliament, which was caused by the overloading of the Westminster incinerators with tally sticks leftover from the days when the clerks of the Exchequer were illiterate. Much of the Palace of Westminster was destroyed and the building we know today erected in it place.

I have attempted to depict the world of the British Parliament as realistically as possible. I had a great deal of help in accomplishing this from the excellent online record of the Official Report of the debates in Parliament, the Hansard, which is available at hansard.millbanksystems.com.