Read Life Mask Page 33


  But enough of this & perhaps too much already.

  We three Berrys are all well & enjoying Paris. The strangest things have changed since our last visit; the carriages of the nobility all have their coats of arms painted over, for instance. We purchased tickets to the Assembly at a very high price & heard a lively debate on the draft Constitution, during which the President had to ring his bell to try to hush the Comte de Mirabeau—a vast, shaggy bear of a man. Don't tell W., but Ag. and I have bought ourselves some tricolour bodices & iron bracelets, which are somewhat like light shackles. Things made of poor stuff like iron and cotton are all the rage here, it's the Democratic look.

  Remember your promise, cara anima (yes, I carried your words away from North Audley Street, hidden in my ear) & write to me often. Write to me always candidly upon the subjects uppermost in your mind, be they what they may. It may bring you some relief to express yourself to one who, though she may sometimes reprove, will always sympathise. I hardly need to assure you that despite all the slings & arrows of outrageous fortune, I'm honoured to count myself

  your friend,

  M.

  Anne read it through three times, her face flushed with relief. This was more than she had hoped for. How bravely Mary was grasping the nettle! And how mature she sounded—no trace of the humble protégéé about her.

  The rain began to spatter on the parlour windows. Anne wished she were in France herself, where everything seemed new-made. Or in Italy. If she stayed here all winter she'd go as pale as a maggot.

  She flicked through the post on the salver. Various invitations to musical soirées and routs to launch the Season. She really had to say yes to three of them—her sister's, Georgiana's and Lady Melbourne's. (Though the two of them were no longer intimates, Anne was still on the invitation list for large events.) She thought of what she might wear—who else might be there—the acceptance cards she had to send as well as the polite refusals. An enormous weariness was creeping over her. To live in the World was a full-time activity; how did anyone find time to do anything but socialise? Coming out at seventeen, hundreds of wedding visits, the elaborate protocol of mourning clothes—each stage of life brought new obligations. So many things one had to remember, and do, and buy, and say, and not say: a tiny universe of rules and whispers.

  NOVEMBER 1790

  'Aha,' said Derby when the black footman showed him into the parlour at no. 8 Grosvenor Square, 'I can tell by the trunks in the hall and the rolled-up carpets that I've caught you just in time.'

  Anne grinned as she shook his hand. She was looking well; her mouth had lost that melancholy line it had worn on the last few occasions he'd glimpsed her. 'You know what it's like, trying to pack in the middle of farewell visits. I was meaning to call on you, if I found a moment.'

  He wasn't sure he believed her. 'I won't keep you long,' he said, accepting the chair the footman brought to his side. 'Actually, I don't know what it's like, though. I haven't been abroad since I was a boy.'

  'Derby!' She moved from her paper-choked secrétaire to a plump silk chair beside his.

  'Oh, I admit it's a scandal, especially for a man of my political sympathies. I haven't the least prejudice against foreigners—I pride myself on being cosmopolitan—but I prefer to meet them in Mayfair.' She laughed. 'It's Lisbon you're off to, I hear? "O Portugal," he quoted the famous tag from The Wonder, "thou dear garden of Pleasure—"'

  She capped it. '... inhere Love drops down his mellow fruit, and every bough bends to our hands and seems to cry, "Come, pull and eat."'

  The line sounded mildly licentious. 'Do you know anyone there?'

  'No,' said Anne, 'which is one of its attractions.'

  He grinned at her. 'Well, if you really want to strike off from the familiar route, you could cross into Spain—explore the whole peninsula.'

  'Oh, I'd like nothing more,' she said, 'but my parents are fretting about the risk of war over this Nootka Sound business—'

  Derby shook his head a little smugly. 'I've just come from the Privy Council and I can tell you in confidence that's quite blown over; the Spanish have submitted to British terms.'

  'How marvellous! Well, maybe I'll see the Alhambra at last.' Her eye fell on the long strip of paper in her hand. 'If I ever get through my list, that is. Letters of introduction, bankers' instructions,' she read at random,'portable writing desk, mouse-proof hamper, bedding, dictionaries, hot-water bottle, chess set, cushions for Fidelle, stick and gun...'

  'Oh, yes, where is the clever creature?'

  'Under your chair.'

  He fished out the tiny greyhound and inspected her paws before lifting her on to his grey silk breeches.

  'I'm determined to manage with only two servants. I've dreamed of going alone—just myself and dog,' said Anne with a touch of self-mockery. 'Has any lady ever travelled without servants, I wonder? I imagine it would be exhilarating to be driven along through the mountains, quite solitary and undisturbed...'

  'Ah, but who'd lay out dinner when you were hungry?'

  'And even more to the point,' she said ruefully, 'what if I needed a man to go into a tavern on my behalf and I couldn't find one who spoke English? That wouldn't be freedom but its opposite.'

  'Well, I'm sure you'll have a memorable winter. You'll be much missed by your many friends.' The pause stretched. That wasn't the best-chosen phrase, Derby thought.

  'Well,' said Anne. 'I wouldn't say they're many, but the ones I do claim are loyal.'

  'And I hope I'll always be counted among their number,' said Derby, ridiculously awkward. What he really wanted to ask was, What in all the hells happened between you and Eliza? He'd raised the matter with the actress once or twice now, in a tactful way, and she'd pretended not to understand his questions. He didn't like to go asking a third party behind their backs. No, really the only person Derby could dream of asking was his old friend Anne. Come on, he told himself, she's about to leave the country.

  'While—'

  'I think—'

  They both stopped short. Derby apologised and urged her to go on; Anne insisted it had only been the most trivial of observations.

  'Well, then,' said Derby, 'what I was going to say was, while we're on the subject of friendship—I must just say, I'm heartily sorry that you and, ah, Thalia aren't on the terms you once were.' There was a heavy silence. He groaned inwardly. Plain statements were so much easier in male company. Sometimes he felt as if the sexes spoke different languages; a fellow could so easily commit the equivalent of double entendre. Like the story of the English débu-tante at the end of a Parisian banquet who loudly claimed to be pleine, she meant full but what the other guests understood was pregnant. Derby rushed on, now. 'I know it's not my place and I wouldn't dream of intruding on your privacy'—wouldn't he? What else was he doing at this minute?—'but I must admit the thing mystifies me.'

  Her face was closed.

  'Was there some ... misunderstanding?' he asked feebly. 'Or a quarrel? A political matter, even?'

  Her mouth twitched, perhaps in derision. 'No, no quarrel.'

  'Anything a mutual friend could help with at all?'

  'I don't think so,' said Anne at last.

  Was she in the grip of anger? he wondered. It looked almost like embarrassment, but what had she to be embarrassed about? It was Derby who was blundering crassly, ripping open old wounds. He'd never have made a diplomat. 'It's just that I have the greatest of respect and ... and liking for both of you.'

  'Thank you. These things happen,' she said bleakly.

  'Oh, yes,' he assured her.

  'Friendship isn't always a hardy plant. But there are no hard feelings,' she added after a second, 'at least on my side.'

  'Excellent,' he said foolishly.

  'I really do appreciate your visit, Derby,' said Anne, getting to her feet, which told him it was over.

  FEBRUARY 1791

  Eliza was in the dressing room, eating a hot veal pie her mother had brought in and glancing through her lines for
The Country Wife. Sarah Siddons entered and sank into a chair. 'How was your tour?' asked Eliza politely.

  'It is not for nothing,' said Mrs Siddons sepulchrally, 'that Leeds is known as the actor's Botany Bay.'

  She was still looking pale and swollen after her long absence from Drury Lane. According to Mrs Piozzi—whom Eliza continued to see from time to time, but without enthusiasm—the horrid husband had infected Mrs Siddons with an unmentionable disease and the cure was almost worse; the actress's mouth was one mass of sores. But last night as Isabella in The Fatal Marriage—a favourite part she'd refused to play again till Sheridan handed over her arrears—she'd moved Eliza, and several thousand other Londoners, to tears.

  'Didn't the Northerners like the Scottish play, then?' Eliza wasn't superstitious herself, but she knew what a fuss it would cause to say the word Macbeth within these walls.

  The tragedienne laid the back of her hand against her forehead. 'The theatre was so crammed and overheated, Miss Farren, I began to suffer from a dreadful thirst, and between the third and fourth acts I entreated my dresser to send a boy in haste to fetch me some beer.'

  It was remarkable, thought Eliza, how grandiloquently the Kemble family could pronounce a word like beer.

  'The fellow failed to return before I had gone on stage again. It was the celebrated sleepwalking scene; I was, as always, so immersed, so caught up, so transported by my role, that I knew not who I was if I were not Lady—' She stopped herself. 'I need not say the ill-omened name.'

  Eliza repressed a sigh of impatience and set down the remains of her pie.

  'Well. As I thrust out my hands before me, straining to scrub from them all trace of murderous gore, on comes the creature.'

  'No!'

  Mrs Siddons nodded. 'He may have been slow-witted; his instructions had been to deliver the drink to me and he followed them to the letter. He trotted up and offered me the foaming mug. At first the audience were confused and thought it an addition to the play. Grandly and darkly—in the very manner of the Scottish usurpress herself—I waved him away, as if to signify that I was so steeped in crime that no mere human beverage could pass my lips.'

  Eliza started giggling; she could just see it.

  'Thrice the lad offered the mug and thrice I waved him away, till the whole house was hooting with laughter.' Mrs Siddons's neck was flushed with remembered shame. 'Finally I roared, "Leave my presence, churl" whereupon the demon ran off, slopping beer on the stage. And that,' she concluded, 'is why I will never, never, never return to Leeds.'

  'Well. At least,' Eliza told her, 'you can be sure that your career has passed its nadir.'

  'Somehow, I don't feel consoled.' After a moment Mrs Siddons added, 'What about you, my dear Miss Farren, have you experienced a performance of which you can say this is the worst of my life?

  A boy ran in then, to tell Eliza she was wanted for a words-and-business rehearsal of The Rivals on stage.

  'No,' she said drily, getting up, 'I suspect my darkest hour is yet to come.'

  Mrs Siddons gave her a meaningful, sympathetic nod.

  Dora Jordan too had bounded back to Drury Lane this week, after giving Mr Ford a third bastard. She seemed bolder as well as fatter; she'd somehow talked Kemble into taking on her useless brother to play Sebastian to her Viola and by waving a rival offer from Covent Garden, it was said, she'd forced Sheridan to raise her salary to an undisclosed but much guessed-at sum. All this Eliza could have borne if the management had followed the usual practice of casting the two Queens of Comedy in different plays, so each could shine alone. But Sheridan had decided to get up his old comedy The Rivals again, as a sure-fire earner that would keep his creditors at bay—and he insisted that Eliza play the elegant, drooping Julia opposite Dora Jordan's scatterbrained Lydia.

  Considering that the action of the play covered only five hours in Bath, this rehearsal of the first scene felt as if it was lasting for ever, mosdy due to Kemble's fusses over pronunciation and gesture. Eliza finally made her Scene Two entrance and Mrs Jordan rushed at her. 'How unexpected was this happiness!' she cried, engulfing Eliza.

  'If Julia could respond to her cousin a little more warmly?' suggested Kemble.

  'She would, sir, if I had any room,' Eliza said sharply. 'Mrs Jordan so smothers me in her fichu...'

  'I beg your pardon, Miss Farren, I'm sure,' said Mrs Jordan, now holding Eliza by the shoulders as one would a naughty child. 'How unexpected was this happiness!' she repeated with a look of shock.

  'True, Lydia—and our pleasure is the greater Eliza smiled past her glassily.

  She knew they were being ridiculous, and predictable. Sheridan was already capitalising on their mutual dislike; paragraphs in his trademark style had started to appear in the more vulgar newspapers, announcing a deadly feud between two actresses known only as the Rivals. Eliza would have liked to confound his off-stage choreography by maintaining the most amicable relations with Mrs Jordan—but the woman's vulgarity made that impossible.

  The role of Julia, to make matters worse, was the only unfunny one in the play; Eliza had to keep coming on in anxiety, suffering in silence through painful misunderstandings with her fiancé, then exiting in tears. And as for the dress—

  'My costume's so démodé, they'll howl with laughter,' she told Kemble in his office.

  'You exaggerate, Miss Farren.'

  'I don't. When you began your tenure as manager of this theatre two years ago you vowed to improve the stock.'

  'Great strides have been made—'

  'Oh, yes, I've noticed some marvellous new things,' Eliza said furiously. 'Mrs Jordan, as Lydia Languish, will be gorgeous in a white satin wrapping gown caught up with pink bows, while I as Julia must drag myself across the stage in a hooped sack-gown with filthy grey ribbons from the play's first production sixteen years ago—an eternity in fashion.'

  Kemble chewed his thumb. 'It could be worn without a hoop, perhaps, like a chemise gown?'

  She gave a sharp sigh to let him know how little he understood female underclothes. 'That would look even worse.'

  'It's more silver than grey, I believe,' he offered. 'You look delightful in it.'

  'If so,' she barked, 'then the credit is all mine, because it's a rag! A scullery maid wouldn't use it to scrub a floor.'

  'Perhaps one of the dressmakers could freshen it up for you.'

  'That would be to throw good thread after bad.'

  'Mr Sheridan has vetoed all additional expense,' said Kemble grimly. 'The whole point of this production is to earn money, not spend it.'

  'So he'd have us make an omelette without breaking eggs?'

  The manager's eyes lit up. 'Perhaps you'd like to choose something of your own?' he suggested. 'You're widely celebrated for your fashionable wardrobe...'

  'I don't wear my own clothes on the public stage,' she told him coldly. Some actresses liked to receive an allowance as part of their salary and buy their own costumes, but to Eliza that seemed unprofessional; it smacked of the days of Nelly Gwyn, when women turned to the stage to display their wares to the highest bidder.

  'What's the matter, dear?' asked Mrs Farren as the carriage bumped and skidded through the icy ruts on Long Acre.

  'I fought with Kemble over my costume,' said Eliza through her teeth. 'I'm not going to give in, not this time. I've had enough of being treated like the dirt under Dora Jordan's heels.'

  'Oh, I know, I know. But—'

  'It's the only thing for it. I'll announce I've been taken ill.'

  Mrs Farren made a little sound of shock and covered her smile so her missing tooth wouldn't show.

  My dear Miss Farren, came Kemble's civil reply the next afternoon,

  I am so sorry you feel indisposed. No doubt it will take an effort of heroic proportions for you to be at the theatre at six o'clock to play your part, but given the importance of the occasion, & the full house we expect, I am sure you'll feel amply rewarded, not least by the gratitude of

  your humble servant,
/>
  J. P. Kemble

  She consulted her mother on the wording of the reply. 'Should I tell him I've discovered from Jack Palmer that Jordan now gets a full £5 a week more than I do?'

  'No, no, don't muddy the issue with money,' said her mother. 'But dear, now you've given Kemble a fright, don't you think you'd better play tonight after all? He does speak of his gratitude; he'll owe you a favour.'

  'He owes me a new dress.'

  Her mother was nibbling a thumbnail. 'It's always risky to defy management.'

  Risky for a fourth-tier actress like you were, Eliza was tempted to say, but for a self-respecting Queen of Comedy, it's sometimes the only thing to do.

  She got her mother to take down the next letter.

  My dear Mr Kemble,

  Would that it were, indeed, possible for me to struggle up from my sickbed & take part in tonight's performance! Left to myself, I would make that extraordinary effort, no matter how injurious the consequences to my constitution, for the sake of the Theatre—but my physician forbids it & my dear mother (who is writing this note at my dictation) prevents it.

  Yours sorrowfully,

  E. Farren

  Kemble's reply came back at ten past five.

  Miss Farren,

  I have announced The Rivals on today's playbills & it's too late to change. If I may say so, your sickness bears all the hallmarks of whim & spleen. I won't be dictated to any further: forgive the unaccustomed coarseness if I say that you'll act Julia in your shift, if you don't like your gown, & I won't hear another word on the subject.

  Your Manager,

  J. P. K.

  'You'll have to go in now,' said Mrs Farren, tutting over the scribbled lines. 'Shall I have the manservant call a hackney?'

  Eliza shook her head and took another slice of cold beef. 'Kemble's borrowed Sheridan's tough talk, but he doesn't have the charm to pull it off. If he thinks to achieve by thuggishness what he failed to do with flattery and whining—'