Wilful Impropriety (3 page)

Smith presented Mr. Nightingale to the company with quite an introduction.

“I told you I would go out hunting and fetch you the most promising buck of our generation!” Smith cried, standing upon a chair in a box seat. “Nightingale here will surprise you, and the world. You just wait. We’ll make history, friends.”

Her new company looked at her appreciatively, both the boys and the girls, and she got the distinct impression she was being flirted with by both sexes. Since she had arrived as Mr. Nightingale, she was sure to give the women more attention from the first. This wasn’t difficult, as she’d always tended to seek more female company—men got the wrong ideas and assumed actresses were quick to lie flat on their back at the least advance.

The rehearsal process was smooth. Any English actor worth their salt could offer up Shakespeare in their sleep, and Smith was just inventive enough in his staging and interpretation to be interesting. He worked with them from a theatrical box reserved for wealthy patrons, pacing the velvet-lined stall and occasionally exclaiming random truths and new interpretations. His carefree, quirky nature infused all of them with a youthful sense of play.

And the audiences
loved
them. They
particularly
loved Mr. Nightingale. The papers were full of praise.

Mr. Nightingale’s performance as Sebastian was refreshingly genuine and particularly moving. A compelling young face one finds it hard to look away from. Here we have a young man of the stage Mr. Henry Irving himself would kill to have in his company.

—
The London Times

Mr. Henry Irving. No faint praise. Portia had thought about seeking out the most successful actor of the age in hopes of working at the Lyceum. But Irving was quite the man for a special effect at the cost of his castmates. Sparks literally flew from his sword-fighting scenes, and she just didn’t know if she had it in her to be on the receiving end of the electrical charge as she stood on a metal plate. Acting for a passable wage was one thing—allowing England’s foremost actor to sizzle you with an electric shock was another. Still, having one’s name associated with Irving’s in a review was money in the bank.

And the next week, at the next theater, the press was similarly glowing.

Miss Nightingale’s Viola lit the stage with luminous charm and beauty. Easy on the eyes and ears, we find ourselves her new devotees. Considering last week’s production featured a Mr. Nightingale, perhaps, dare we hope, that there is a new theatrical dynasty that has emerged?

—
The Evening Standard

It was the week
after
that they realized the two performances were the same person. The question then rippled through London—who was Nightingale?

Growing up backstage hadn’t prepared Portia for the limits and contradictions of the world offstage, and Smith hadn’t prepared her for the scandal. But he did at least try to cover both their behinds.

Smith published a brief letter to the editor of the
Standard
.

I understand there is some confusion as to my two Nightingales. The Nightingales are twins, one boy and one girl. I’ve a certificate to prove it, lest anyone court libel or say that the law should come down upon my company. But even if there were only one Nightingale, what law could stop him? Her? The fact that a Nightingale is a damn fine actor is the only law of my land.

—Mr. Smith, theater manager, director, visionary

The fact that the Nightingales were never seen together meant the public didn’t believe in any such certificate. They preferred to embrace the scandal. Soon schooled in the fickle, forked tongue of the press, what to Portia and Smith was playing a bit of a game, it seemed that to London they had struck a deeper chord. .

It’s a positively shameful scandal, this confusion of identity. It is sacrilege,
unnatural
that someone should be paraded about, no matter how talented they are, as fluid between two sexes. I realize the theater is perverted, but this spits in the very face of our refined, civilized culture. This stunt of Mr. Smith’s company makes fun of what it is to be British, that is, entirely self-possessed and proud men and women of the Empire who present themselves as God intended.

—
The Pall Mall Gazette

Scandal, of course, was phenomenal for business.

The dinners and the intrigues soon followed.

If she thought the theaters were grand, they were nothing compared to the homes in which she was entertained. She tried not to make her awe evident, but she was still young and her wealthy benefactors seemed to find her wonder an additional charm.

Countless patrons and endless flirtations, from men and women, were laid at Portia’s feet like bouquets, each trying to draw her out. Each sure that they had her pegged.

“Ah, but look at how he carries himself—a woman could never hold that sort of bearing and piercing stare. Why, look at how he doesn’t even blush or bat an eyelash as he gazes upon me,” flirted countesses and merchants’ daughters in husky voices dripping with need, daring Portia to look them straight in the eye and mouthing behind their fans an invitation for a secret rendezvous. Portia did not take them up on it. But she did return their stares. Hard.

“Ah, but see the artful cheek, her delicate ringlets, the demure tilt of her head—why, the fairer sex, the
gentler
sex, it is positively written all about her!” cried aristocrats and Members of Parliament who stood too close and “accidentally” brushed their hands across her to search out her most obvious feminine parts, murmuring indecently in passing that she could reveal herself to them, that they’d never tell . . . She knew enough of the average man not to trust them as a species. The many layers and starched fabrics she put on, large and lavish dresses she’d never have dreamed of being able to wear were they not a part of Smith’s costuming for her life, made it impossible for anyone to come away with a physical impression.

But it seemed that the mystery made her all the more appealing to each, and men and women, boys and girls fought over her as if she were a prize, sometimes forgetting she was a human being in the room with them. Not a toy. Not a theory. A person.

As the weeks went on, she wondered if she’d transcended humanity and become an idea instead—one of Shakespeare’s pants roles like Rosalind’s or Viola’s disguises come ludicrously to life and trapped in a cycle of a madman’s making, wondering who would write “The End.”

No one ever touched her true contours. Only she did, when she bathed. She was the only one who knew her most private, and now most sought-after, secret. Well, and God. She supposed “He” knew. She could not have predicted how shatteringly lonely this life soon became.

Clearly, thought Portia, detaching herself from among lush dinner arguments over her body parts, those who waged war over her identity as if it was something that touched on their own pride, hadn’t been around enough actors. She knew men who could pass as very convincing young women. It was, after all, the theatrical tradition in Shakespeare’s day, when women weren’t allowed on stage. But the former was something a man did in utmost secrecy, and the latter had been an accepted custom of previous centuries. What
she
was doing—what Smith was doing to her—was unprecedented.

From Romeo to Juliet, from Lysander to Helena, from Ophelia to Hamlet—oh, yes, they tempted the favor of the theater gods even with the melancholy prince himself—Portia began to feel that she was as much one sex as the other. Each of her two sets of behaviors came organically from within her, and she lost herself in the trappings of the clothing she stepped into, her body’s mask.

Never had it been so glaringly proven to her that people believed only what they wanted to believe. She heard them arguing after every show as she retreated into the shadows, their ardent suppositions about her hanging in the air like moths to the footlights.

Smith was ever present during the company fetes, a mischievous, delighted soul who needled on each side until opponents were nearly frothing at the mouth in indignation for their “cause” of proof of her gender—he was a mad scientist adding his powders to an impassioned brew. All that ever seemed to incite Smith in turn was a good analysis of a well-made play. He clearly enjoyed sitting back and watching the distinct yet utterly titillating unease his Nightingale’s unconfirmed presence had on everyone. And to Portia, Smith remained an enigma. She wondered if he’d ever loved, had family, or other professions—she knew nothing about him other than his unfaltering belief in her.

Which was the only anchor she had in a life of secrecy.

Portia had been instructed to always dress at her apartments—mysterious lodgings that changed constantly and that no one but Smith knew the location of. She hadn’t seen the sense of this at first, but it wasn’t long before castmates were bribed exorbitantly to spy upon her changing rooms, and certain patrons felt they had the right to charge backstage and see if they could intercept Portia to see for themselves.

She started to fear for her safety. But Smith was ever on guard, which calmed her. Still, she wondered how long before paying audiences, press aside, were fed up with her too.

That question was answered when an angry mob burst into their rehearsal of
Lear
, on stage at the Savoy. She was Edmund at the moment, the bastard. Next week she would take up Cordelia. Edmund’s glory in the base and unnatural was an uncanny herald to the evening.

The leader of the protesting mob, a stout, scowling man in a bowler and fastidiously trimmed mustache, called for an end to their nonsense, that it was a bad influence on London.

“It will corrupt our sons and daughters, this charade of yours,” he said, huffing like a walrus. “The youth will think they can play games with what makes the world turn—men and women in their proper place. We here have an injunction—”

Smith appeared from his usual place in rehearsal, popping out from the shadows in one of the front boxes—he liked to be above things, and he leaned down to examine the mob of ten buttoned-up men and sour-looking women, his loose cravat hanging low over the gilded railing.

“Oh,
you
. You of the
striving
classes. You’ve the most to lose and the most to gain, which means you are
always
tense. You want your world ordered and methodical, full of rules so that you may advance properly when you understand the formula. My Nightingale is every freedom you feel threatened by.”

“You, Smith, just who do you think you are?”

He shrugged, grabbing onto the rail and shaking it. “Just a madman in a box! You give me too much credit! It’s the
idea
that has caught hold! The
idea
that has London on fire. The idea that life is nothing but costuming and choices! It can be rewritten as we choose! It is our right! That all the world is indeed, one big, bloody stage!”

At this, the mustachioed leader produced his legal document and began to recite his indictment on numerous moral grounds. In response, Smith pulled out a revolver from the breast pocket of his long coat. Everyone, including the stunned company on the stage, screamed.

The crowd dispersed with harrumphs and threats. Smith trailed them with the barrel of the pistol until they were out of the stalls and into the street.

He clicked the gun and a kerchief spat out. Smith giggled. His company stared up at him, wondering just what he’d gotten them all into, and none so much as Portia. “It isn’t
real
, of course.” He waved the gun. “I abhor violence,” he said, horrified that anyone should think otherwise.

“You know, Mr. Smith,” came a commanding voice from the back of the house, stepping from the shadows into the blazing gaslight. He was tall, auburn-haired, hazel-eyed and devilishly good-looking, and he strolled down the red velvet center aisle in the finest of new suit fashions from Paris. “The small-minded have to put people in boxes in order to understand them. They do not like it when you defy their constraints.”

“I
am
in a box,” called Smith, challenging the newcomer with a grin. “Do you understand me?”

“Not in the least, Mr. Smith,” the man replied.

Smith laughed. “Good, then. I like you. Who are you?”

“My name is Lord Rothschild, and I’ve just sponsored your company indefinitely. I think you, and particularly Mr. or Miss Nightingale—
whoever
this songbird may be—are the finest actors that have ever lived, and damn anyone who tries to ruin your sacred and daring mystery. Don’t worry about the injunction. I’ll have my lawyers dismiss it before you can say ‘To be, or not to be . . .’”

The company applauded.

That night, they were feted at Rothschild’s grand London apartments, and Portia fell swiftly for her host, feeling her body waken, tingle and ache in ways that were utterly foreign to her. This, she knew, was a profound development. Her physical body complicated her mystery. And her mystery was her survival. The loneliness reared an ugly, desperate head. But she maintained her exterior cool, even if her insides roiled with heat.

She was dressed as a male that evening, and she and Rothschild, who was six years her senior, struck up an immediate rapport. It was the sort of kinship that felt fated, as if they had always been bosom friends and it just took their meeting to confirm what they’d always been waiting for—a certain missing piece.