Authors: Matthew Plampin
The gallery extends over the whole west end of the house, a long chamber of splendorous emptiness. Will looks down it, ignoring the stucco, gilt and marble, his eyes picking out a second canvas hanging above the southern door. He strides over, through the warm, slanting bars of early evening sunlight that fall across the polished wooden floor. It’s a second portrait by Hoppner, another lady, of the same dimensions and even the same heavy golden frame as Mary Ann’s. They were plainly commissioned together. This one is more favourably positioned, however, and painted with a lighter palette; and as Will approaches he sees that it is a far more typical example of the portraitists’ art. The lady’s gown is an iridescent lavender. Its arrangement, the way it flows around her slender limbs, holds a clear echo of the Sistine Chapel. Her face is a perfect oval, the even features regarding the viewer with serene elegance. Will squints at the label, but it is too high up for him to read.
‘Mrs Henrietta Lascelles, by Mr Hoppner of London. Principal painter to the Prince of Wales.’
The servant, the corpulent under-butler Will had followed inside when he first arrived at Harewood, is standing in the doorway beneath the painting. Ellis is his name; appointed to dress Will for the ball, he has overseen a bath, the supply of fresh hair powder and a clean stock and shirt, the extensive brushing of the Vandyck-brown suit and the polishing of the evening shoes, which he has also somehow cured of their squeak. His supervision, in general, has been extremely close. Only a last-minute absence to resolve some confusion over wine glasses enabled his charge to slope away.
‘Indeed,’ Will mutters, a trifle embarrassed to have been thus discovered. ‘Most fine.’
‘She is the wife of Henry, Lord Harewood’s second son. They reside presently at Buckden, sir, in Huntingdonshire, with their two infant boys.’
Ellis’s voice has a pained, stilted quality to it. The servant obviously suspects an ulterior motive for Will’s presence on the state floor and intends to stress this by pretending the opposite: that it was driven solely by an overpowering curiosity for Harewood and its treasures. Accordingly, he embarks upon a great long list of facts about the gallery’s other ornaments and items of decoration, in which Will is obliged to feign interest.
‘What, though,’ he manages to ask, after the subjects of the hack paintings fitted into the ceiling have been exhaustively detailed, ‘of that other portrait down there? Above the other door?’
‘That is Miss Mary Ann Lascelles,’ comes the flat reply, ‘Lord Harewood’s youngest daughter.’
Will pauses. ‘Yet—’
The under-butler resumes his list, requesting that Will give his attention to the curtain pelmets, which, despite their luxurious appearance, are in fact made from wood, ingeniously carved and painted in the workshops of Mr Chippendale of London. Will obeys, noting the evasion, and is looking up at the ruby-red folds, marvelling at both the illusion and the pure aristocratic strangeness of the idea, when he sees movement through the tall windows behind. Past the flower garden, over the hedges, a procession is starting up from the stable block.
‘The carriages,’ pronounces Ellis. ‘Come, Mr Turner. Mr Lascelles will be expecting you in the hall.’
The chattering mounts as Will is ushered across the dining and music rooms, rising from a distant murmur to a muted roar; then the final door is opened and it engulfs him completely. He halts, quite oblivious to Ellis’s efforts to nudge him further forward. His mouth goes suddenly dry; a cool droplet of sweat breaks free of his armpit and races down the side of his ribcage. There are fifty of them at least, heavily scented and powdered, dressed to their best and in a state of high excitement. Beau is somewhere by the main doors, more audible than visible; but Mary Ann is nearby, only five yards to the left, surrounded by the same young ladies who were with her in the flower garden. They stand in a circle before a bronze Bacchante, daintily lifting the hems of their gowns to compare shoe-roses. Will recalls the portrait’s flabby, vacant visage; the actual woman is so much livelier, so much
finer
, that his teeth grind at the injustice of it.
A single, tentative step is taken; and the carriages cut fast along the northern façade, drawing up at the main entrance. This sight – the colours of the speeding conveyances, the discipline and co-ordination of the horses, the smart uniforms of the coachmen – prompts an immediate shift towards the doors. Will is steered out into the twilight by the house servants. Casting about for further guidance, he spies a thin ribbon of white smoke, winding around one of the stone sphinxes that are set on either side of the steps.
Tom is leaning against the front of the sphinx’s plinth, his pipe in his mouth. Like Will, he has no formal hat and is again wearing his one acceptable suit of evening clothes, brushed clean but still rather too plain for the occasion. London sparrows, Tom and me, thinks Will with some gladness; then he notices the new silk waistcoat beneath Tom’s jacket, pristine white and of the highest quality, and the golden watch-chain that loops over it. His shoes seem different too, better made, and his stock as well. The suit, in actual fact, is the only constant component.
‘I knew it.’ Tom’s voice is huskily quiet and his breathing shallow, as if there is barely space for air to be drawn into his body. ‘I knew that you’d have to see the thing for yourself.’
Will grunts; he adjusts his cuffs. ‘Keeping watch on me now?’
Tom’s reply is lost in coughing, which he tries to smother in his sleeve. The evening is balmy – by Yorkshire standards, at least – yet he appears distinctly cold, his long arms crossed tightly.
‘Are you well, Tom?’
Tom takes a pull on his pipe; he looks away. ‘It’ll pass.’
Will turns to the flight of steps and the noisy cascade of revellers that is rolling slowly down them. ‘Did you know of this before, at the rocks? This … dance?’
Tom is unrepentant. ‘Beau wanted you to come.
I
wanted you to come. Is that so very strange?’
‘It was a lie, then. As good as.’
‘Christ in Heaven, Will, it’s one evening only. And it’s a
dance
. An entertainment.’ Tom spits something on the gravel. ‘Familiar with the idea, ain’t you?’
There is a great hoot of laughter from the steps as a young gentleman, giddy with Harewood champagne, stumbles midway and ends up sprawled upon the drive. Will is about to state that he sees no entertainment here, none at all; but Tom manages to pre-empt him.
‘Rich men will be present. Console yourself with that. It’s a public ball, and among the guests will be many from outside the Lascelles’ acquaintance. People they’d usually have little to do with. Patrons, quite possibly, who might be inclined to offer us better terms for our labour.’ He uncrosses his arms; he weighs the watch-chain in his fingers. ‘Whose wealth ain’t drawn from such a polluted well.’
A public ball.
Instead of supplying reassurance or provoking curiosity, Tom’s words serve only to deepen Will’s dread of what lies before him. He’s made a very determined point of avoiding balls and dances of every description, believing them to be for the moneyed, the idle and the vain, and no place whatsoever for an artist of any seriousness or ambition. He considers flight, hiding away in the flower garden or the stables, or just bolting into the park. Tom has begun to wheeze like a man several times their age, but Will can’t help regarding him with a measure of envy. This affliction of his would surely be enough to excuse a fellow for the night, should he wish it. Might they be permitted to retire together, perhaps, with Will playing nurse? He’s seen Tom weather similar episodes, after all. He’s pondering how best to propose this when Tom overcomes his difficulty and speaks again.
‘Would that damn Hoppner have painted her with a beard, I wonder, or tentacles in place of arms, if Beau Lascelles had given him enough gold?’
The portrait. ‘It’s odd. I grant you that.’
‘It ain’t odd in the least. It’s
despicable
.’
Will sighs. ‘Who can say what really occurred. A painter and his patron – and the sitter as well – it’s a complicated—’
Tom won’t hear this. ‘The villain was humiliating her for his sport. That’s what damn well
occurred
, Will.’ He pulls himself up and knocks out his pipe against the plinth. ‘See there. He’s doing it right now.’
The party has started to disperse – to locate their carriages and climb aboard. Beau stands by the three large vehicles that belong to Harewood, their panels painted ivy green, which have been brought up for the family and those among their guests who lack conveyances of their own. He looks remarkable: sleek and huge in a coat of rich russet, hat set just so upon his powder-dusted hair, an unmistakable member of England’s very first rank. Adopting an air of patriarchal sternness, he sets about extracting Mary Ann from the company of her female friends, ordering her to Frances’s side and into the lead carriage. She obeys, walking over with a shuffling, reluctant quick-step, her head bent down in an attempt to hide her infuriation.
This matter dealt with, Beau’s gaze alights on his painters. Tom clears his throat and straightens his back, masking all sign of infirmity as he returns their patron’s hail. It’s hidden from them, Will thinks, as best as he can do it. It’s hidden along with everything else.
They are directed, with Beau’s compliments, to one of the other Lascelles carriages, further from the house. As they move through the remains of the party, Will overhears its whispers – many of which are so vocal and indiscreet that they scarcely deserve the term.
‘Of course, she is under their supervision. Their guardianship, I suppose. They are putting a brave face on it, but the situation is most lamentable. So upsetting for them all.’
‘I could provide a name – the author, so to speak, of Miss Lascelles’ distress – but I fear dear Beau would not be forgiving …’
‘Extraordinary, really, that the girl is not confined to the house. Were she
my
responsibility, I’d have her shut up in a tower somewhere, like a maiden of old.’
It occurs to Will that Tom has said nothing about Mary Ann’s eventful London season. He decides that he will ask him about it now, and learn how it might fit into his strident account of the young lady’s hardships. Tom is some yards ahead, however, his passage through the Lascelles’ milling guests proving rather easier than Will’s; and the next minute he is against a span of green-gold spokes, looking up at the carriage, introducing himself to the ladies and gentlemen already seated within. Before Will can speak, or reach out to tug at his coat, he has mounted the iron steps and ducked in through the door.
*
Will and Tom are placed on different ends of the same seat. Between them is a garrulous, bovine lady who talks without interruption to those opposite – a well-to-do couple in early middle age and an elderly gentlemen with a clerical bearing – about coiffure and costume, the particulars of dance steps and who else might be present at the ball. Any communication between the painters is impossible. Tom opens his window an inch or two and seems to concentrate on his breathing, while Will does his best to ignore his fellow passengers and savour each moment of the drive, each moment that is
not
the Crown Hotel at Harrogate. He studies the cottages and country churches; the roadside taverns and the shabby gaggles who come out to watch them pass; the fields that dip and rise in the diminishing glory of the dusk. Within a few miles, however, the scattered farmsteads and hamlets start to coalesce. Houses grow higher and group together into terraces of dark stone. Lanterns appear at corners, or suspended over doorways. Next there is a common, a broad blue expanse criss-crossed with paths; then the streets and sloping lanes of a prosperous market town; and finally, across a loose, leafy square, the façade of the Crown Hotel, a queue of carriages coiled before it.
The Lascelles’ carriage is waved to the front of the line, Beau emerging to a round of welcomes so effusive it sounds almost like an ovation. Tom’s door is nearest to the hotel and he is out the instant they stop. Will sets off in pursuit; he climbs into the street, strides around the rear wheels and makes for the entrance, joining the small crowd that is filing inside after the Lascelles.
The hallway beyond is dim and packed with people. Neither Tom nor any member of the family can be seen. The heat is staggering, rather like being slowly poached within your clothes; a salty human mist clouds the air and the very walls are stippled with moisture, as if they are sweating along with the multitude they contain. This suffocating atmosphere positively throbs with flattery and forced laughter. The Lascelles are much discussed. Will hears a great deal of admiration for Beau, the bachelor heir – for his person, his aristocratic mien, his tailoring – and at least three breathless accounts of his association with the Prince of Wales, who he resembles so closely (it is asserted) that even George’s intimates struggle to tell them apart. The scandalous Mary Ann proves an equally irresistible topic. It is noted how her brother and sister appear to be warding away introductions, more or less, ensuring that the girl’s invitations to dance will be non-existent. An ignominious night for
her
, certainly, but who’d want to risk offending Lord Harewood’s son?
Distracted by all of this, Will’s search wanders off course. He becomes wedged in a corner – stuck in a still pool at the margins of a wide, wallowing river. At his back is a sooty painting of a prize pig; while enclosing him to the front and side are infantry officers from some local regiment, resplendent in the sashes and baubles of their dress uniform. Blatantly bidding for female attention, they are engaged in a shouted exchange about the state of the war with France – the deplorable stalemate, the cowardice of Austria, their longing for action. Will addresses them, requesting his release. The officers respond with supercilious glares, as if an awful liberty has been attempted. Like many others in the hotel that evening, they seem to take him for a tradesman or clerk, presumptuously using a public ball to move among his betters, and will afford him no courtesy.