She was touched. When people mocked the Prince of Wales as overdressed, overweight and oversexed, they forgot what a passionate patron of the arts he was—like Henry VIII, almost. His succession to the throne, bringing the Foxites to power with him, might usher in a new Golden Age for the arts, as well as all the liberalising reforms he promised.
Anne was about to say that she'd be honoured to carve a piece for him, but he rushed on happily. 'The renovations are such a
slog,
I have to choose everything myself: the colours, the lamps, the design of the pastry scullery, the maids' quarters...'
When he swept Mrs Fitz off to greet someone else, Lady Mary appeared at her sister's elbow. 'Apparently their son's being raised in Spain.'
'Why Spain?' murmured Anne. 'Isn't France the more usual for fostering?'
'It's too close to home—practically our back garden—and the newspapers would be sure to track the baby down.'
Anne winced, considering what it would be like for a mother to send her child to Spain and probably never see him again. She'd never had any maternal sentiment herself, unless she could count her feelings towards her sculptures, and she always made those in order to give away. 'What I can't understand is why they risked that secret wedding; they might have known it would all come out in the end.'
Lady Mary shrugged. 'You've such a cool spirit, sister, you forget how people can act in the heat of passion.'
Anne felt rather stung.
There was a crash of glass; it sounded as though all the champagne glasses had been flung down at once. Startled, she sensed a cool breeze and turned towards it. Ladies began to squeal. There was a gaping hole in the window nearest to Anne—a dark mouth that let in the night air.
'Good God,' a male voice roared.
Outside there was a confused music of voices and the banging of saucepans. Anne realised that she'd been hearing this faintly for some time without paying any attention. While she was staring at the smashed pane, she saw the one beside it break; this time she actually witnessed the explosion, noticed the stone thump on to the boards beside her. She felt no fear, only an acute curiosity. There was something tied round the stone; she bent to disentangle it.
'Quick, this way.' Fox's arms were round her; he was herding people out of the theatre. She went with him, still clutching the stone.
'My dear guests,' Richmond was calling hoarsely over the throng, 'don't be alarmed. I've sent for the constables. Just be so good as to move along the corridor into the main house and our festivity can continue.'
'Is it a riot?' Anne asked Fox. Her fingers scrabbled at the string that tied the paper round the stone. 'Look This says—' She struggled to read while the chattering crowd pushed them along. 'What a curious little couplet.'
'Let's see.' Fox almost snatched the page from her.
God dam the Duke of Richmond and all his works.
We'll put down Luxsury and Extravegance in high life.
'They can't spell,' said Anne, facetious.
'Oh, dear,' murmured Fox, 'I feared as much. Your brother-in-law has become rather
persona non grata
with the lower orders.'
'But—you mean it's a political mob?'
He shrugged. 'Every mob has a bit of politics in it, and a bit of restlessness, and a lot of porter.'
'How dare they!' Anne's eyes were prickling. 'To attack our harmless theatricals...'
'I know, I know.' His voice was soothing and he held her elbow firmly as they climbed the stairs into the main house. 'But they have so little, they spend a third of their wages on bread—did you know that?—and when they gawked in the bright windows of the Richmond House Theatre tonight, what did they see? Lords and ladies dressing up and pretending to be what they aren't, at enormous expense.'
Anne felt rebuked. This stained, rumpled man was her conscience. She recognised Mrs Hobart's shrill voice behind her. 'For this, in Paris, they'd swing from the gallows.'
She turned. 'There's not much harm done, after all. Only a few panes of glass.'
Mrs Hobart, ten rows of pearls round her throat, goggled at her. 'To threaten the person of the heir to the throne—'
'For my part,' Anne told her, 'I delight in our British liberties, even if they lead to occasional abuses.'
'That's the spirit,' Fox told her jovially.
But she was still shaken. She wondered what the constables were doing outside. If one could be hanged for picking a pocket, or burned at the stake for coining like that poor woman last year, then what was the punishment for attacking a duke and his guests? The irony was that ten years ago Richmond had been a radical Reformer who'd gone so far as to argue for
one man, one vote.
; how must he feel, to be so hated by the people now?
There was Derby in the corner, the unruffled aristocrat, his face as smooth as an egg. She looked for Eliza Farren, but couldn't see her anywhere.
E
LIZA LAID
her head back on the cracked padding of the hackney cab as it jolted along the Strand.
Her mother, after three glasses of Richmond's champagne, was voluble. 'Well, I call that very strange. My Lord never forgets lending us his carriage at night, unless he's got a prior engagement. Either he escorts us back to Great Queen Street himself or at the very least he lends us the carriage. It's understood, has been for years.'
Eliza's eyes were shut. The upholstery of the cab smelt of something faintly rancid; she tried not to wonder what it might be.
'You say he was fatigued,' Mrs Farren went on, 'but that can't be it. Why, you're fatigued too, after you oversaw the whole performance, with all your responsibilities—and seized with headache, or else you wouldn't have brought us away before the Duke's select supper,' she added a little resentfully. 'I'm fatigued too, come to that.'
Why couldn't her mother just say
tired?
'Was Derby the worse for liquor, I wonder? I didn't notice. But I think he must have been such to have forgot our arrangement about the carriage.'
Eliza snapped into life. 'Since you insist on knowing—I told the driver we wouldn't be needing it tonight.'
Her mother gawked at her. 'Betsy Farren!'
She winced; the name made her fourteen again, with wrists too long for her frayed lace ruffles. 'Don't shriek, the cabman will hear you. I don't want to discuss it.'
'You won't talk to your own mother, who's spent her life watching over you?' Though Margaret Farren's career on the provincial stage had been undistinguished to the point of humiliation, she could still turn on the tragedy voice. 'You won't tell your own mother what shocking thing has happened?'
Eliza sighed loudly. She might as well get it over with, or there'd be no sleep tonight and she had a rehearsal at nine in the morning. 'I was backstage—I don't know where you'd got to,' she added with quiet spite, 'and Derby rushed in and made a proposition.'
'What kind of proposition?'
'Oh, Mother! A proposition to sail to Kathmandu, what do you think?'
The older woman absorbed this in silence and for a moment Eliza thought it was over. Then the real interrogation began. 'Did he lay hands on you, any?'
She shook her head.
'Did he speak obscenely?'
Eliza didn't dignify that one with a reply.
'Did he mention any figure?'
'Mother!' Eliza's head was tight with pain and she had a terrible thirst. The last thing she wanted was to work through the whole tawdry business again in the hackney cab, like a low afterpiece to the main drama.
'One must keep all facts in mind,' said Mrs Farren, knotting her fingers on her lap.
'The facts are these,' said her daughter, turning on her, 'item, the person in question is still married; item, I don't care to be any man's mistress; item, it's therefore irrelevant whether he was about to offer me a house in Hanover Square and £10,000 a year!'
'That's enough items for now,' said Mrs Farren, as if discussing laundry. Then, after a minute, 'Do you think it would be as high as £10,000?'
'Christ!' They both reeled back a little at the curse. 'I won't haggle. I won't sell out. I thought you understood that about me.'
Mrs Farren's eyes were watery. 'I do, I do. You've never been like other girls, you're a cut above. But, and I don't mean to anger you, but it's been years and years, Betsy—'
'Eliza.'
'Eliza, then, it's been near ten years since we came to London and where's your fine principles got us?'
She was watching out for their door on Great Queen Street; she rapped on the ceiling to make the cabman stop.
'You're twenty-four, my dear, and you won't get any, younger,' said her mother, wheedling. 'Maybe now's the time to make the best settlement you can. His Lordship's friends all dote on you since these theatricals; they Wouldn't drop you if there was gossip, or not all of them. The thing could be done decently enough. Just provisionally, like, till the Countess snuffs it and you're free to marry.'
Eliza was fumbling in her net purse.
'Don't forget, Derby's a man, for all he's an earl,' Mrs Farren warned. 'He won't wait for ever.'
She found the coin and looked up. 'We won't speak of this again.'
II. Struts
Narrow pieces of stone, wood or ivory connecting
small, delicate elements or limbs of a statue to
prevent them from snapping off.
T
HIS
Paper has received a veritable deluge of letters on the question of Immorality in high life. Our correspondents point out that every vice known to man is presently practised on the dark side of that little moon known as the World. Do we not hear daily of disgusting episodes of Drunkenness, with p-ssings under tables and v-m-tings in the street? Even our P—e M—r himself has been seen to address the H—e of C—ns in an intoxicated state. The Sporting realm, in particular, is known not only for excessive tippling, smoking and blaspheming, but also Gambling, the greatest peril of our age.
As for the gentler sex, they are among the most addicted practitioners of Faro and Roulette, but reserve much of their energies for Tittle-tattle and Carnality. But we do not speak of these matters to cast harsh judgement, as do some pious publications. It is said there is nothing new under the sun and, since Mam was first corrupted by his blushing Eve, has not our race struggled with its Appetites? And if the vices of the great are so prominent, perhaps it is only because they live in the glare of Celebrity, while lesser folk commit their misdeeds behind closed doors.
Is the foremost young gentleman of the land, the P—e of W—s himself, not first among sinners, whether we speak of gluttony, drunkenness, prodigality, gambling, or fleshly passion? No wonder so many say to themselves, whatever our future Monarch does must be right!
—B
EAU
M
ONDE
I
NQUIRER,
June 1787
VISCOUNTESS MELBOURNE'S CONFINEMENT WAS ALMOST OVER
and Anne was taking her first look at the newcomer. The bedroom was hot and musty, since the windows couldn't be opened till the month was up; only faint rattlings of carriage wheels leaked across the courtyard from Piccadilly. Lady Melbourne was in the great pink bed with the floating tester. 'Emily's a good name,' Anne remarked, bending down to the carved rosewood cradle and putting her finger into the tiny creature's grip.
'Isn't it
ravish
,' chimed Georgiana.
The mother shrugged and adjusted her satin wrapping robe round her strong neck. 'It's in the family; Peniston likes it and I picked the last three names, after all.'
Anne hadn't seen Lord Melbourne on this visit, or not that she'd noticed; the Viscount was never more than a smiling ghost in the corridors. He and his wife were so fashionable, they were hardly ever seen together. The baby's cap had slipped sideways now, revealing a lick of dark-red hair. 'She doesn't look very like you,' Anne remarked carefully.
'No. She's the spit of her father,' said Lady Melbourne.
Nothing ruffles her feathers,
thought Anne in rueful admiration.
'And is Lord Melbourne ... happy with the new arrival?' asked Georgiana.
'Perfectly.'
'How well you manage things,' the Duchess murmured, widening her eyes at Anne.
Anne thought about the red-haired Lord Egremont, an intimate at Melbourne House for the last ten years; Lady Melbourne's little twins who'd died at birth had had the same colouring. Emily's brother William, at eight, had dark-red curls too, whereas George, the toddler, was named for his godfather, the Prince of Wales, and had the little pursed royal mouth. Only young Peniston, away at Oxford, had the indolent looks of Lady Melbourne's husband—but he was the heir and so the one that mattered, of course.
Anne found her friend's ménage rather extraordinary; she felt quite at sea when she tried to reconcile the principles of virtue and self-respect with the complexities of Lady Melbourne's private life. But she couldn't find it in herself to condemn it, as it was so evidently harmonious and the lady was never indiscriminate or obvious. Perhaps, Anne thought, Lady Melbourne's long and serene attachment to Lord Egremont should be considered a sort of marriage of the heart, with its own form of honour; it was significant that when he'd tried to form an engagement elsewhere (to Walpole's niece, unfortunately), he'd ended by breaking it off. Viscount Melbourne had his freedom and so did his wife, and the children were well loved; it was a strange arrangement, but it seemed to work.
'So,' said Lady Melbourne, setting down her cup of caudle, 'I heard about your marvellous show at Richmond House.' Anne was about to give her details, but the Viscountess was already listing the parties she'd missed during her confinement, including an assembly at Devonshire House. She'd been most amused to hear that several ladies had bribed Georgiana's seamstress for the secret of her latest design and they'd all turned up in exactly the same costume—which was nothing like what Georgiana was wearing.
'A vastly elegant assembly, but such a stifling crush,' Anne told her. 'I couldn't get near the supper room and I confess I came home early. You're just too popular,' she told the Duchess.
'You didn't miss much, the desserts were paltry,' said Georgiana with a little grimace. 'I've been trying to retrench my expenses, don't you know, since my last talk with Canis, when he was
so kindy
about my debts and agreed not to go through with the separation.'
'Splits and divorces are far too common these days,' said Lady Melbourne, smoothing her sheets. 'The art of marriage has been quite lost.'
Not in this house,
Anne thought with dark amusement.
Lady Melbourne reached for their glasses. 'Have some more caudle while it's hot.'
Anne could never tell if she liked the drink or not; the spiced wine was good in itself, but the gruel and honey made it oddly cloying.
'Delish,'
said Georgiana. 'Was the birth vastly gruelling?'
'No worse nor better than usual,' Lady Melbourne answered with a shrug. 'I know of no less perilous way of bringing the creatures into the world. I always ensure my Will is up to date and leave letters of advice for the children, just in case.'
'I've been starving myself for a fortnight,' said Georgiana, 'but I can't resist your plum cake.' Reaching for the plate again, she offered it to Anne, who shook her head.
'You run too much into extremes, my dear; if you weaken your constitution how will you ever do your duty by the Duke?' asked Lady Melbourne.
'Oh, I know, I know, that's what Bess says,' mumbled Georgiana through a mouthful of cake. 'Since the little girls I've miscarried time and time again—tried electric shocks and milk baths and Dr Graham's frictions—and still Canis's beastly family accuse me of deliberately thwarting their hopes for an heir, when it's all I wish for!'
'Poor darling—but you've only just turned thirty,' said Anne. Her eyes moved to the picture in the top left-hand corner of the bedroom: the whimsical painting of the three of them as witches that Daniel Gardner had painted in the '70s. Herself in black, with a pointed hat and a wand to echo her sharp features, guarding the steaming cauldron—and Georgiana and Lady Melbourne, in creamy satin draperies, descending from the sky with handfuls of herbs for the brew. How unmarked they all looked on the glossy canvas and how merry.
'I spent my birthday in self-examination,' Georgiana assured her. 'I'm sick of my wild and scrambling life—dress, gambling, admiration, gorging—and I'm giving up all my follies. My beloved Bess has promised to watch me like a strict but tender mother. I hardly buy any lottery tickets and I only play for shillings now.'
Lady Melbourne's eyebrows shot up. 'I thought you'd sworn off gaming.'
'Well, only whist, commerce, that kind of thing—no faro or roulette, no games of chance at all,' Georgiana told her weakly.
'I simply can't understand why, with your financial embarrassments—'
'Oh, that's all very easy to say,' interrupted Georgiana, chewing her pretty lip. 'Canis and Racky and my mother and sister play; everyone plays. People expect one to play, and play high; they protest it looks eccentric or priggish if one doesn't and they never believe one isn't rich as Croesus's wife.'
'Gambling's a strange passion,' said Anne.
'A scourge, more like,' pronounced Lady Melbourne.
'It leaves me unmoved,' Anne told her, 'but I know a dozen people who need it like salt.'
'I don't
need
it, exactly,' protested Georgiana and Lady Melbourne rolled her eyes at Anne. Was the Viscountess one of the many friends who'd lent Georgiana money and would never see it again?
'How's the Duke of Dorset?' asked Lady Melbourne.
'Oh, perfectly well,' said Georgiana blandly.
'Isn't he our ambassador in Paris these days?' asked Anne.
'Well, yes, but he often comes to London; it's an easy journey.'
Was that an indirect admission? Anne wondered.
'I don't know why so many women find Dorset irresistible,' remarked Lady Melbourne.
'Don't chide me, darlingest,' said Georgiana, 'I hardly see the fellow except in company. He does have the most charming, almost melancholy manner.'
Lady Melbourne gave a tight-shouldered shrug. 'Be careful, that's all I say. It was Dorset who ruined Lady Derby for one and a few years ago he did your dear Bess's reputation no good either.'
'Tish tush, there was nothing in that,' Georgiana protested. 'People are so mean about my lovely Racky. Her life's been such a difficult one and every time she so much as smiles at a fellow she's been abused for it.'
Lady Bess Foster's name had been linked with several other gentlemen's as well as the Duke of Devonshire's, Anne knew. It was rumoured that the real reason for her prolonged trip to Italy, two years ago, was the birth of one of Devonshire's by-blows. Some said the Duke and Lady Bess took shocking advantage of the naive Duchess, but to Anne the triangle seemed another of those peculiar arrangements people made for their own happiness. No, what puzzled her was Georgiana's insistence on the innocence of her beloved. Perhaps all she meant was that Lady Bess was good at heart?
'You misunderstand me, my dear Georgiana,' Lady Melbourne was saying with a smile. 'I don't care in the least about Lady Bess's conscience—that's her private business. But the look of things—one's reputation—is in the hands of society. Discretion is the tax we pay the World, or suffer the consequences.'
'I know, I know.' Georgiana sighed. 'But sometimes I feel like declaiming that famous line of Mrs Freelove's from
The Jealous Wife.
Do you remember?'
'Of course,' said the Viscountess. She quoted grandly,'
My rank places me above the scandal of little people, and I shall meet such petty insolence with the greatest ease and tranquillity
.' She leaned back against her pillows and suddenly changed tack. 'Now you, my dear Anne, with your ascetic disposition—'
Anne stiffened; what was Lady Melbourne going to say about her reputation?
'It's lucky you've avoided the whole business of breeding, so far at least.'
Anne preferred to think of herself as a woman of sensibility;
ascetic
seemed a rather unfeeling word. What had her sister called her that night at the Richmond House Theatre?
A cool spirit.
'So far?' she echoed. 'I'm thirty-eight.'
The Viscountess shrugged. 'Lady Louisa Parchett dropped her first at forty-three.'
'My statues are my progeny.'
'Did you and Damer have no ... near misses, even?' enquired Georgiana, taking a long swallow of caudle.
'None.' Anne was going to let it go at that, but the other two were looking at her with lazy anticipation. 'The truth is—there was really no question of any of that. After the honeymoon, well, John and I had so little in common,' she said awkwardly.
'Had he mistresses?'
Lady Melbourne's bluntness sometimes embarrassed Anne. 'I think so. The late Mrs Baddeley, the actress—'
'Oh, yes, Sophia Baddeley never could resist a hug and a bracelet.'
'Of course, that's what leads to dying of the pox at thirty-seven,' said Georgiana sympathetically. 'I was just reading her memoirs the other day, in the carriage coming down from Derbyshire; terrible trash, but amusing.'
'I don't know if I ever told you, Anne, but my husband had a lapse in taste and kept Baddeley himself for a while in the '70s.' The baby started to cry and Lady Melbourne reached for a bell-pull on the wall. 'It led to an amusing incident: once, a superb diamond necklace he'd bought her was delivered here by mistake. I put it on for dinner and thanked him kindly for the present.'
Georgiana whooped with laughter.
Anne had to admire her old friend's verve. 'Perhaps, if I'd been as pragmatic as you I'd have made John Damer a better wife.'
Lady Melbourne shrugged. 'One can't conquer one's nature. Could one of you pass the baby?'
Georgiana leapt to scoop up the wailing infant, whose skirt was folded over her feet to make a compact bundle. She gave her to the Viscountess in the high bed, who rocked the child and planted a kiss on the little red curl.
This reminded Anne, for some reason, of her eagle. At the Academy, I'm showing the osprey I saw your gamekeeper catch at Brocket Hall.'
'Mm,' said Georgiana, 'I hear your pieces are all marvellous, oo
cweverfing!
I long to see them myself, but I just haven't had a
mo.'
'We must pop in as soon as I've got my figure back,' Lady Melbourne told the Duchess.
'How's the original?' asked Anne.
The wet-nurse hurried in just then, curtsied and took the screaming baby.
'Did His Lordship ever manage to tame it, or did he let it fly?'
'What? Oh, no,' said Lady Melbourne, calling up the details, 'the bird got a moult, I'm afraid, and died in a fortnight.'