How did this come to pass? My regular physician, the good Dr Pike, visits my mother to be informed of what ailments afflict me; he then attends to me in order to pronounce her diagnoses and lay out her suggestions for treatment, a regime that has not troubled me much in the past. However, Dr P has been laid low by dropsy, and he sent a new sawbones in his place, a much younger man. The fellow is as tractable as his predecessor but, in this case, he attended me without first hearing my mother’s recitation of what treatment I required. I was thus able to drop into his mind the utter necessity for me to decamp to a warm, dry climate to strengthen my chest. This was a feat I take some pride in, given the balmy summer weather Kent is presently experiencing.

Poor Mrs Jenkinson! She loathed our last trip abroad – and that was in the winter months. I did suggest that we find a younger and sturdier travel companion for me, but my mother would not countenance this.

So we travelled via packet-boat to Calais, and then by coach to Paris. And now I must confess to you the full extent of my crimes. Prepare to be shocked, and do not judge me too harshly. My mother recently had the family jewellery appraised and, for once, I paid attention. As you know, it is no boast but mere statement of fact to attest to my considerable wealth. Yet vast acres, rents, and an army of faceless clerks who ensure that tradesmen’s accounts are settled do not translate into the jingle of cash in the pocket. And I am learning that it is not buildings and crops, but banknotes and coins that translate into opportunities for freedom. So once my rings and fobs and what-nots were returned to me after the notaries had departed, I selected the smallest and ugliest trinkets and sewed them into the hems of my garments, a trick I garnered from a rather gaudy romance. Let it not be said that novel-reading is not instructive.

Once arrived at our lodgings in Paris, it was a moment’s work to release the jewels and gold. Then came the more delicate business of finding a buyer or pawnbroker to receive them. I had no choice but to enlist the aid of the proprietor and staff – but with the strictest of injunctions to secrecy. I made it clear I was prepared to pay handsomely for discretion, and indeed the French are accustomed to such requests – in the turbulence following the Terrors, many distressed gentlefolk had to parlay small items of value into the means of keeping a roof over their heads.