Description

Twenty-eight. Thin, nervous, over-eager. Dresses too carefully. Laughs at jokes a beat too late. Trying very hard to be Surlish and managing only to be off-putting.

He looks at Surlish before he answers any question. At Ashworth’s dinner there is nobody to look at, because Surlish declined and sent him instead.

Background

Junior partner in Surlish’s house. Knows the warehouse operations, the shipping, the consortium’s arrangements and the accounts intimately, because somebody has to do the actual work.

He has no loyalty except self-preservation and has never been tested on it.

Motivations

Proximity to power, which he mistakes for having some. He would like to be Surlish and has not worked out that he would need to be a different sort of man.

What Meg Says

Percy Cartwright is Surlish’s creature. Does what he’s told, echoes what he hears, and thinks proximity to power is the same as having it. Watch him at dinner: he looks at Surlish before he answers any question.

Hook

Tonight he is off the leash and does not know how to behave. With Surlish absent he over-corrects into candour, talks slightly too much about business to make himself interesting, and can be led without any pressure at all.

He would fold immediately if Surlish’s position ever weakened. He could provide documentary evidence of the warehousing irregularities. Approaching him directly risks it going straight back to Surlish, but tonight, at this table, alone, is the one window where that risk is lowest.

Connections

• Hawthorne Surlish — his principal
• Hugh Cavendish — a professional counterpart
• The Strand — the warehouses
• Scene 06 Ashworth Dinner

In Play

Chapter 4, Session 9 (9 October 1814) — the snub, and the seed. He arrived at Garden Reach alone and already half-drunk, and announced without embarrassment that Surlish had not wished to attend and had sent him instead. The room went silent. See Ashworth Dinner Garden Reach.

Seated beside Katherine, he was accidentally candid all evening, and when asked whether Surlish treats him well he answered “better than he treats his wife, worse than he treats his dog.” He drunkenly asked Freddy across the table what the Board of Control had him doing, and cheered the new Charter Act freedoms against Edmund Courtney’s gloom.

Freddy worked him patiently across three courses, planting the idea that a man with proper funding could run his own godown rather than serve a master who treats him worse than a dog. He flickered. He is cracked, not turned.

Appearances

Relationships

• Serves Hawthorne Surlish — Junior partner and creature; defers on everything
• Knows Hugh Cavendish — Opposite numbers in the opium trade