Life Mask
Table of Contents
Copyright © Emma Donoghue 2004
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Published in Great Britain by Virago Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Donoghue, Emma, 1969–
Life mask/Emma Donoghue.
p. cm.
1. Derby, Edward Smith Stanley, Earl of, 1752–1834—Fiction. 2. London (England)—
History—18th century—Fiction. 3. Damer, Anne Seymour, 1748–1828—Fiction.
4. Triangles (Interpersonal relations)—Fiction. 5. Farren, Elizabeth, 1762–1829—Fiction.
6. Courts and courtiers—Fiction. 7. Women sculptors—Fiction. 8. Actresses—Fiction.
9. Nobility—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6054.O547L54 2004
823'.914—dc22 2004003190
ISBN
0-15-100943-0
ISBN
-13: 978-0156-03264-3 (pbk.)
ISBN
-10: 0-15-603264-3 (pbk.)
Text set in ACaslon
Designed by Cathy Riggs
Printed in the United States of America
First Harvest edition 2005
DOC
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Life Mask is dedicated with gratitude
to my three best teachers
of writing and theatre:
Arthur Alexander,
Joan Winston,
and Betty Ann Norton.
How tired I am of keeping
a mask on my countenance.
How tight it sticks—it makes me sore.
There's metaphor for you.
—W
ILLIAM
B
ECKFORD
Lisbon Diary
, 27 M
AY
1787
I. Primary View
The angle from which a sculpture yields
its most pleasing and comprehensive view.
Some sculptures appear fragmentary or implausible
when seen from any angle but the primary view.
S
EVERAL
of our Correspondents have written to enquire exactly what is meant by that familiar phrase, the World. Allow us to reply that those who must ask thè nature of the Beau Monde (alias the Quality, the Bon Ton, or simply the Ton) thereby prove themselves to be excluded from it.
This select band call themselves the World, being convinced that there is no other—or none that matters. Their number is composed of the great and grand: gentlemen and ladies of note (of family and name, of fortune and distinction, of fashion and figure). There are two points of controversy. The first, whether persons of no Breeding, who have achieved high fame and elevated station through their own merits, can be considered members of the World? The second, conversely, whether those members of the higher orders (by which we distinguish the Gentry and the Peerage) who have failed to inherit any of the fortune, elegance or other distinguished qualities of their Ancestors should be considered to have forfeited their membership? To put it in simpler terms, who is the true lady of the Beau Monde: the lovely Miss F-rr-n, whose birth is shamefully low but whose shining talents have won her unfading laurels on the stage of Dr-ry L-ne, or old Baroness Dung-Hill, who starves and mumbles in her brother's west wing and hasn't been to town for a new gown since the last Coronation?
—B
EAU
M
ONDE
I
NQUIRER,
March 1787
THE THAMES WAS LOOSENING, ITS THIN SKIN OF ICE CRACKED
open by thousands of small boats, as if spring were on its way. The carriage with the Derby arms gilded on the side forced its way down Whitehall through a tangle of vehicles and pedestrians. 'The traffic, these days.' The Earl of Derby sighed.
Eliza Farren leaned across her mother to pull open the blue velvet curtain. The sun splashed her face like water. 'The Richmonds must have a marvellous view, right across to St Paul's and south to Surrey.'
'Mm. I'd never choose to live anywhere but Mayfair myself,' said Derby, 'but I suppose, the Duke needs to be close to Parliament.'
Only a few minutes to Richmond House, now; Eliza's stomach was as tight as a nut. Despite the fur-lined mask, her cheekbones ached with the cold; she withdrew into the hood of her cloak and her hands crept deeper into her muff. Had it been a mistake? She'd bought it only yesterday on Oxford Street; it struck her now as ludicrously large, like a fluffy, bloated dog squatting in her lap. Her mother was right that the muff was all the ton, but that didn't mean it would please the people Eliza was going to meet today. How fine the line between fashion and vulgarity and how easy to stray across it. Perhaps she should leave the thing in the carriage.
'Of course, the one I've been longing to have you meet is the Duchess's half-sister, Mrs Damer,' said Derby. 'She's an original; reads Latin better than most of us Etonians. Her parents were enlightened and hired the best of tutors for the girls. I've known Anne Damer all my life and never experienced a moment's tedium in her company.'
On Eliza's other side her mother pressed her lined face to the glass, then recoiled from its bite. The women's feet sat together on the pewter warmer; the daughter's in pointed yellow silks, the mother's in brown leather. Over the years, Eliza had pressed some recently fashionable skirts and bodices on Mrs Farren, calling them cast-offs, but she'd never been able to persuade her to give up her boots. Eliza untied her mask now, tapped her mother's wrist and mouthed the word
mirror.
Mrs Farren fished it out of her skirts, as blank-faced as a pickpocket. Head turned away from Derby, Eliza checked her face in the small oval of glass. Had she rouged a trifle too high for three o'clock? The handkerchief was ready in her mother's hand. Eliza gave each cheek a quick wipe.
Her stomach made a discreet grumble; she'd had nothing since her morning cup of chocolate, though her mother had brought up toast, devilled eggs and cold beef on a tray. Eliza, who had the benefit of her mother's constant service and company, often reminded herself to be grateful. Mrs Farren had seen two daughters in the grave already; fifteen years ago she'd thrown in her lot with Eliza, the one with a chance of making the family's fortune. Peggy, the other surviving daughter and a toiling actress up in York, quite understood.
Derby was still singing the praises of the Honourable Mrs Anne Seymour Conway Damer. 'They say she's the first female ever to take up sculpture in a serious way. Did you see her gorgeous spaniels in the last Exhibition? You're both such geniuses, I'm rather hoping you might become great friends.'
Eliza smiled, doubting it. She'd always been too busy for intimacy. Besides, she wasn't driving to Richmond House to make friends, exactly, but to step into a magic circle of protection. To spin herself a tough and glittering web.
Today was work, though the kind for which it was impossible to name a fee. In their initial interview the Duke of Richmond had murmured something about a recompense for Miss Farren's expertise, for the great deal of time she would be missing from Drury Lane. But Eliza's instincts hadn't let her down; she'd looked mildly offended and changed the subject. This had clearly gratified the Duke—a big spender with a frugal streak. So today she would step over the threshold of Richmond House not as a hired theatre manager but as a lady; she could mix with these tides and Honourables on equal terms, knowing that she hadn't been paid, and that they would know it too. Derby hadn't mentioned the matter—money was taboo between them—but she guessed he would be pleased.
Over the years she'd got to know some of the Earl's more easy-going friends—Party men like Fox and drinking companions from Brooks's Club—but the ladies were a different matter. When the very word
actress
still carried murky associations, how was someone who earned her living on the stage to shake them off? The thought caused Eliza a prickle of something like shame, which was ridiculous; wasn't she proud of having clawed her way up from her father's strolling troupe to reign as one of the three Queens of Drury Lane? The problem was her colleagues, that whole slipshod line of them stretching back more than a century to Nelly Gwyn.
Take Mrs Robinson, for instance, who rode around town in her own carriage with an invented coat of arms on it these days; when the Prince of Wales had offered an annuity of £500 a year, hadn't she given up the stage as quick as a blink, as if she'd only chosen it in the first place as a vast shop window where she could show off her goods to the bidders? And even more genuine talents, like Mrs Jordan—much as Eliza disliked her rival, she had to grant that the woman knew how to deliver a line—Dora Jordan, too, lived with a man who enjoyed only the courtesy tide of
husband.
Actresses, apart from the odd drab wife or spinster—and, of course, the sternly virtuous Mrs Siddons, Queen of Tragedy—all had keepers; it was the done thing.
Eliza's objection wasn't a moral one. She rarely concerned herself with the state of her soul, or anyone else's, but what did matter to her was her dignity. She knew she was widely respected for her character as well as her professional talents; she'd carved herself a place in London society with considerable effort and she didn't mean to lose it.
This winter at last the Richmond House theatricals seemed to present the perfect opportunity for Derby to introduce Eliza to some of his oldest connections, letting her penetrate a closed circle of the well-born and well-bred. Everything depended on whether she could charm the Richmonds and their friends close to; her future might turn on what kind of a welcome she won herself today. Derby would present her to his friends with the most respectful delicacy—but then,
Derby is still a married man.
No, it wasn't shame Eliza felt there, and certainly she had nothing to reproach herself with, but the fact remained. It irritated her stomach like grit in an oyster, half pearled over by the years.
The carriage had stopped; Eliza glanced through the window at the imposing pediment of Richmond House. Derby jumped down and his thin shoes slithered on the icy cobbles. He came round to the other door, which the coachman was already holding open. Below her, Derby looked like a thickset midget, got up in impeccable grey silk. When this young coachman had first entered the Earl's service—replacing his father, whose sight had gone—he'd tried to hand Eliza into and out of the carriage himself, as convention dictated. She'd been amused to watch Derby make it quite clear, without words, that when he was present no one should help Miss Farren except himself. Eliza took the Earl's hand now, exchanging a brief heat through the kid of her glove.
The slush left a little tidemark on the toe of her shoe. 'My dear, you forgot your muff!' Her mother hurried up the steps to hand over the enormous ball of fur. Eliza suppressed her irritation and gave her a gracious smile, practising.
A
NNE
D
AMER
, at a second-floor window at the back of the house, was looking across the sloping lawns to the ballustraded terrace and the Thames. She lifted off her huge hat and handed it to the footman; she shook her curls, making a faint cloud. Under the powder, her hair was still chestnut brown, though she was thirty-eight. She didn't know, yet, what part she was to play, but she hoped it would be something to get her teeth into.
The balding Duke of Richmond came in with his wife on his arm. She spun to meet them. 'Let the games begin.'
'Very classical, my dear Anne,' said Richmond.
'And very prompt.' Lady Mary kissed her sister, cheek to powdered cheek.
'I'm the first, then?'
Lady Mary's ivory fan made a sweeping gesture at the empty chairs lined up against the pea-green papered walls.
'I thought perhaps you'd had each of us shown into a different room.' Anne laughed. 'So as to engorge our lines before the rehearsal.'
'Oh, we're only your hosts, we'll leave everything to your manager,' said Richmond.
'It'll be the first time we've ever had an actress in the house,' said Lady Mary with a sidelong smile, 'but really, as I was telling Mother the other day, Miss Farren and Mrs Siddons are the two exceptions to the rule. Their natural delicacy and good connections have somehow kept them out of the mud.'
After almost a decade of watching her from the Richmond box at Drury Lane, Anne thought of the actress as
Farren,
as the newspapers called her; not so much a woman as a muse or a goddess. She and Jordan were called the two Queens of Comedy, but to Anne's mind there was no comparison; Dora Jordan made a good show in broad humour and breeches parts, but she couldn't rival Farren when it came to fine lady roles and the kind of elegant comedy that combined pathos with laughter.
'Yes, Richmond's only job is to admire and pay,' said Lady Mary and the Duke grimaced.
'But what can cost so much,' asked Anne, 'since none of the players is hired?'
The Richmonds rolled their eyes in tandem. 'Your sister has the unworldliness of the true artist,' the Duke told his wife. 'Why, everything costs, my dear Anne; the scenes, the costumes, the musicians, and as for Wyatt's plans for our little theatre itself—you must look over them later, lend us your exquisite eye—why, the decorations alone will run over £500.'
Anne sucked in her upper Up; she could live on that for a season. 'I thought we were to make do with the saloon.'
'The sightlines were impossible,' said Lady Mary.
'There'll be no
making do,'
said Richmond with melancholy pleasure. 'Whatever it costs to raise a little private temple to the Muses of Theatre I sacrifice on their altar.'
'The centrepiece will be a Diana that Sir William Hamilton picked up for us. Do you hear from him often, Anne?' asked her sister.
That one slid in like a knife in the ribs. 'No.'
'You must visit him again. Such a treasury of antiquarian knowledge and you like a warm climate,' said Lady Mary disconnectedly.
'Not that warm,' lied Anne. For God's sake, it had been two years since her last visit to Naples; what was the point of these little hints? Once a proposal had been turned down it should be buried in oblivion. When a widow had passed thirty-five, shouldn't her friends give up all attempts to marry her off again?
A footman announced the Earl of Derby, with Miss Farren and Mrs Farren. Anne spun round. The actress was a tall doll with a mask for a face. Her hands were untying a ribbon behind her head as she walked across the room; the fur mask fell. The perfect features were so familiar, but Anne had the strange sensation of never having seen this woman before; Eliza Farren had such a liquid, protean beauty that it transformed itself from portrait to portrait, from role to role. She had to be in her mid-twenties at least, but today she had the air of a girl as she undid the ribbons that held her kid gloves above her elbows, shedding her layers for the waiting footman to catch. She was a shining cloud of blonde hair, two cheeks faintly pink from the warmth of the mask, her body one long serpentine line from the pale fingernails to the furred hem of her cloak. She smiled and her lips parted like cut glass.
'Derby,' said Anne, recovering herself and shaking his hand. Though the papers called him the ugliest peer in England, Anne usually thought of her friend as the pleasant-faced, curly-haired Utile boy of her childhood. But she had to admit that in his early thirties his small eyes had receded and so had his hair, leaving him with the large waxy face of a broad bean. And today, beside the long-necked Miss Farren, he looked like a Velazquez dwarf.