'This quarrel with Lord Derby—'
'How many times do I have to tell you, Mother, that I won't discuss it?'
The wrinkled lip trembled. Eliza eyed it coldly; Margaret Farren had always been rather a ham. 'Surely His Lordship doesn't believe you guilty of any nastiness?' asked her mother. 'I daren't believe he'd cast you off, after all these years, on such a whim. The whole scandal's the fault of that evil woman, besides!'
Eliza couldn't help being drawn in. 'Anne Damer is not evil.' The ring on her little finger seemed to stare accusingly. She remembered, with scarlet shame, pressing her friend's strong mouth to hers.
A rap at the front door and Mrs Farren scuttled down to see whom the footman was letting in.
'My dear,' said the Queen of Tragedy, advancing to take Eliza's hands.
'Mrs Siddons! Do sit down,' said Eliza. Though they'd moved in some of the same circles, her colleague had never called on her before. 'I hope you'll take some tea.'
'We've missed you sorely at Drury Lane,' said Mrs Siddons. 'Your health, I understand—'
'On that topic,' said Eliza, to change the subject, 'I don't believe I sent my felicitations on your confinement.' She couldn't for the life of her remember if this one had been a boy or a girl.
'Ah, yes, my dearest Cecilia—named for Mrs Piozzi's daughter, don't you know. She's almost three months old already! My seventh and, I trust, my last.'
The woman sounded tired; she must be forty by now, Eliza calculated.
'If it were not for financial necessity, how glad would I be to retire from the service of Thespis,' Mrs Siddons confided.
'I understand,' said Eliza with a sigh.
'Our New Drury—for all its glories—is not an easy place in which to perform. If I hadn't made my reputation in a smaller theatre, I doubt I ever would here.'
Eliza nodded eagerly. 'I confess, as the glamour's worn off, I've come to think it a wilderness. A circus tent for giants! Do you notice our costumes are getting gaudier? I have to boom to be heard at all—'
'And I've been obliged to change my whole way of moving,' Mrs Siddons complained. 'Every gesture must be from the shoulder, forceful and unmistakable. To command the attention of almost 4000 people—how it drains one's vital energies!'
Mrs Farren came in with the tea, bobbing and smiling, then excused herself again.
Eliza scissored two pieces of sugar cone into her colleague's cup. She was about to make some light conversation about Sheridan's mismanagement, but Mrs Siddons spoke first.
'Miss Farren, my visit today has a more serious purpose. There is something I would never have dreamed of mentioning to you except that it has come to press upon my conscience. Not,' Mrs Siddons added rather wildly, 'that I have committed any wrongdoing myself, but since man and wife are considered one being—'
What on earth was she talking about? Eliza put her tea down untasted.
'The calumny you have endured this summer past—I know, and you know, its ultimate origin.' Mrs Siddons's cheeks were purpling. 'Many years ago, in a spirit of reckless and drunken levity, my husband composed a certain rhyme—'
'Yes, Mrs Piozzi told me its authorship,' said Eliza to save her from having to spell it out. Silence. I may detest William Siddons, she thought, but at least I'm not yoked to him.
'I have always been sorry,' said the other woman, 'but I thought it best not to pain you further by mentioning it. Now, however, to see you labouring under the weight of this hideous rumour—shrinking from the public eye—and all because of my husband's damnable invention—'
Eliza had never heard Mrs Siddons use a word like damnable.
'I've come not only to apologise on his behalf—since I've failed to persuade him to do so himself—but to encourage you to return to the stage.'
'You're kind,' said Eliza rather gruffly, 'but—'
'Believe me, my dear, I speak from experience. You remember Brereton?'
Meek little Pop Kemble's first husband had tried to throttle her, before being packed off to the asylum where he'd died; of course Eliza remembered.
'Many years ago,' said Mrs Siddons with a shudder, 'Brereton—though a married man—conceived an unholy passion for me. I attempted to distance myself and declined to perform in his Ben. When he tried to do away with himself with a razor, I was widely blamed as the cause!'
'Oh, but that's outrageous,' said Eliza. 'We've all had fools fall in love with us, despite ourselves. Why should your reputation be stained by another's madness?'
A shrug, worthy of Cleopatra. 'My point, Miss Farren, is that every celebrated actress has her season of shame. I survived mine, though I scarce believed I would, and you will survive yours.'
26 North Audley Street
My dear A.
—for dear you still are to me, I insist, though your letter suggests you think all my fondness has turned to hate. It made me ay, though I was glad to receive it. I've been wanting to write to you for some time, but was unsure how to begin.
Oh, God! How have we deserved this wretchedness? These are the first tears I've shed in some time & they have relieved my head a little. My father and sister (from whom I've kept all
knowledge of the newspapers as best I can) talk with pleasure of the bustle of the new Season—but to what can I look forward, since all my ideas of peace or comfort in this miserable existence are inseparable from you & our friendship, long the sole solace of my heart, has become as a forbidden fruit?
I do not nor have I ever for an instant doubted the worth of your heart. I confess that for some time in the summer I gave way to suspicions about your intimacy with Miss F., but your letter has set my mind quite at rest on that subject. I would denounce her for her brutal behaviour to you in your time of crisis—except that my own has been no better.
I don't, never will, doubt you, I say. But it can't be between us as it used to be—I mean in the eyes of the World. You must rein in your warmth of heart, my dear. Don't think that I'm proposing some dismal scheme in which we're to be utterly separated (God forbid) but we must learn to live somewhat at a distance. I can't bring myself to see you yet & even when that day comes we must meet less frequently, modify our manners—yours sometimes have too great an air of fervour about them, I must tell you. Your friendship is precious to me, butfor my sake let me have it now upon such limited terms as I can give.
God bless, preserve & support you.
M.B.
A terrible crash from the parlour made Eliza race downstairs. She found Mrs Farren, red-faced, standing over the toppled bust of Thalia. 'Mother!'
'Marble's harder than I thought,' said the older woman, breathing heavily. 'The nose hasn't so much as chipped, though it's left a nasty scrape on the wood.'
'Have you lost your senses?'
'Have you?' she barked back at Eliza.
Only now did Eliza notice the unfolded paper in her mother's hand, the Derby seal. She snatched at it, but her mother whipped it out of the way. 'How dare you?'
'I knew if I gave it to you, I'd never hear a word of what was in it.'
'It's my letter,' Eliza shrieked like a child.
'He'd like to know whether you've been considering his offer,' said Mrs Farren, her face ugly with wrath. 'Whether to give up Mrs Damer in exchange for his solemn word, that he'll make you a countess, or ... how does he put it?' She peered at the page. 'Yes, to cling to your friend—or worse—and bid me an eternal farewell!'
Eliza was suddenly tired to the point of dizziness. She let herself down on a chair, eyes resting on the milky curls of the fallen bust.
'If this were in a play,' said her mother more calmly, 'you'd notice how absurd it was. One of those ridiculous tussles between a courting couple, put in to spin out a thin plot.'
Eliza spoke with difficulty. 'I haven't clung to Anne Damer. I haven't seen her since July.'
'Then tell Derby so, you twit of a girl!'
'It's none of his business.'
'Oh, no? The poor man's been laughed at all over England for
wooing such a cold, queer fish as you.'
Eliza was shaking. 'But it's not his right to tell me what to do.'
'He's going to give you a coronet, isn't he?'
'Only if Lady Derby dies and I wouldn't put it past the old yellow hag to outlive me,' snapped Eliza. 'And only if I accept him.'
'Mother of Christ, if!' roared Mrs Farren. 'If you don't mean to marry him, then what in all the seven hells have we been playing at for the past dozen years, while your youth and fruitfulness have been draining away?'
A sob bubbled up in Eliza's mouth.
'Who'll hire you, may I ask, if the crowd roars Tommy again, or throws eggs? And even if Sheridan keeps you on, what'll you be earning in ten years when you're bony and wrinkled, and playing Third Witch in Macbeth? You know how many actresses go broke and die in squalor, or debtors' gaol; is that your plan for the pair of us?'
'No.' Eliza wept. 'No.'
'Oh, childy, childy, come here.' Mrs Farren enclosed her daughter in a crushing embrace. 'Let's have no more nonsense. Betsy's going to be Countess of Derby and make her old mam proud.'
When Eliza finally straightened up and mopped at her eyes, her mother spoke calmly. 'I'd take that ring off and send it back to her.'
Eliza nodded. She wrestled with her finger. 'It won't come off.' The ivory eye watched her. She wrenched at it and let out a grunt of pain. 'Wretched thing!'
A jerk of the head. 'Upstairs.' In Eliza's bedroom, her mother rubbed the washball into suds and soaped the hand with the ring on it. 'Nearly done,' she murmured, kneading and pulling. Eliza shut her eyes, feeling like a small child. A slithering sensation, a long pull and the gold chimed against the china.
'MRS DAMER,' said Eliza, as she swept into the study at no. 8 Grosvenor Square.
As she'd meant it to, the formality of the address struck home. Anne's mouth opened and shut; her face looked her age, though her hair still didn't have any trace of grey.
Eliza had decided to begin with a concession, to gain the moral high ground. 'I apologise for losing my temper the last time I was here in July. Given the peculiarly distressing circumstances, for which on mature reflection I don't entirely blame you, I think it for the best that I return this.' With her gloved hand she deposited the tiny gold ring on the secrétaire. Without having looked at the back of it in years, she knew what it said: Preuve de mon amitié. 'Friendship in this world is always subject to difficulties and, in this case,' she wound up her speech, 'I feel the gods have been against us from the start.'
No answer; Anne just looked at her.
Turn round, Eliza told herself, get out now. 'You don't agree?'
A slow shrug. 'It seems cowardly to blame it on the gods.'
Eliza's heart was loud in her ribs. Her mother was right, she shouldn't have come.
Anne rested her knotted fingers on her knees and spoke quietly. 'If you're discarding me out of fear of the World, you might have the candour to say so.'
'Derby demands it,' said Eliza hoarsely. And then wished above all things that she hadn't said those words, like some cowed wife.
'Ah,' said the other woman, nodding. 'So the silly man has mastered you.'
'No!' How dare she quote that back to me?
'You speak like a chattel. I'd been under the misapprehension that you were an independent woman,' Anne baited her, 'but now it's clear you've bound yourself to marry a man you don't love.'
Eliza set her teeth.
'Pigott's dead, did you know that?'
'What?'
'Pigott, who wrote the detestable pamphlet. Here's the comedy of it,' said Anne. 'He died in June, a nasty death in his cell at Newgate, before the thing was ever published; Walpole found that out for me. So all this damage has been done by a ghost.'
'We won't meet again,' said Eliza at the door, a word at a time, to make it real in her own hearing.
NOVEMBER 1794
The first public occasion Anne dared—forced herself—to attend was a breakfast at Chiswick. She fretted all morning over her Grecian dress, one minute thinking it too flirtatiously girlish, the next too severe, almost mannish.
Georgiana was a kind hostess, as always, though her face looked strained; she confided in a whisper that she'd been shattered to learn, in a newspaper, of Charles Grey's engagement to one Miss Ponsonby. What a brute the politician was, thought Anne, not to break the news himself to the woman who'd lost so much by bearing his child! Did love have to evaporate like perfume from an old bottle? Did it always come to weary, squalid betrayal in the end?
Georgiana made a point of strolling arm in arm with Anne through the villa, from one knot of guests to another, as a sign of her protection. Anne clung on, taking one step at a time as if she were seasick; she clutched her open fan like a shield. Several old friends like Fox made a point of shaking her hand; Derby, glimpsed in the next room, stayed out of range. With most people she simply couldn't tell if they seemed less friendly than the last time she'd encountered them. She felt as if she'd lost her ability to read faces.
Anne began to think she might risk sitting down at a table, though she couldn't imagine eating anything from the vast variety of dishes laid out. 'Here's room, now I must find darling Bess,' cried Georgiana, dropping Anne in a chair opposite some Whig ladies clustered in loud discussion of a radical proposal for something called a minimum wage.
Viscountess Melbourne, Mrs Crewe, the Duchess of Norfolk; Anne gave them each the customary bow, but with her eyes lowered. 'But of course Pitiless Pitt will shoot it down in a moment,' Lady Melbourne was saying. As her head turned towards Anne, her features took on a peculiarly blank expression.
Anne let her eyes meet her former friend's. The two of them and Georgiana had been giddy brides together in the '60s. They'd all three known disaster and scandal; Lady Melbourne had been linked with one lover after another and accused of poxing the heir to the throne. If anyone was tolerant, unshockable, it should be she.
'Ladies. Shall we?' The Viscountess rose. Three fans went up like disdainful peacocks' tails. The women glided away from the table.
Anne sat very still with her tongue clamped to the roof of her mouth to prevent herself from bursting into tears. She should have known; she should never have hoped. It was all about surfaces, not substance; the reputation, not the heart. What was it Lady Melbourne used to preach to her? Discretion is the tax we pay the World, or suffer the consequences. The Viscountess probably didn't care whether Anne Damer was practised at Sapphic vice, or any other kind; all that mattered was that the World had pronounced its judgement.
Anne only let herself fall apart in the curtained privacy of her carriage. By the time she reached Grosvenor Square she'd mopped her eyes and rearranged her hair.
Which was just as well, because the Duke of Richmond was waiting in her parlour, flicking through a volume of Sir William Hamilton's drawings of ancient vases. 'Dear Anne,' he said, enclosing her hands in his, very much the paterfamilias. 'How are you?'
'Well,' she managed.
'I was just telling Walpole how much good sea bathing at Felpham did you after your accident.'
'He claims he's too old to try such a novelty himself,' said Anne, trying for a touch of flippancy.
Richmond's face stayed compassionate. 'Your sister's really not at all well these days; she'd love you to come down. I crave a retired life myself, if only affairs of state and war didn't press upon me so.'
'Well, Goodwood is so very comfortable.'
'Exactly! It's a perfect refuge from the hugger-mugger of city life,' Richmond told her. 'It can provide all the necessities and luxuries too: spacious accommodations, a reliable staff, cordial neighbours, riding, boating, the hunt, a fine art collection...'
She was rather puzzled by this hymn to his own house.
'In fact, Lady Mary was only saying the other day how much you seem to enjoy your visits.'
'I do,' she said, wary as she glimpsed what was coming.
'We were thinking, she and I, that you might consider making yo
ur home with us—which would be delightful, needless to say. In middle age one requires peace, doesn't one?' he pushed on. 'Stability, and calm, and a compatible little family, instead of the glittering throng.'
Anne thought of Georgiana's breakfast at Chiswick; the ranks of black suits and white dresses, the fans flashing like knives. 'You're very kind, brother,' she said haltingly, 'but I feel no desire to leave London.'
That wasn't strictly true; there was something undeniably tempting about the image of Goodwood. She could drive down with Richmond this afternoon and set up a workshop in some unused room within the week. She could hide away down there; she never need risk hearing the name Miss Farren, or being cut by Lady Melbourne, or any member of the glittering throng, ever again. This was exactly what Richmond had done for his wild sister Sarah, when she'd run away from her husband, Anne remembered suddenly; he'd negotiated her settlement and built her a house on his estate. A refuge for a fallen woman.
'Quite sure, hm?'
For an awful moment she thought the Duke was going to refer to the events of the summer, the mortification she'd caused her relations. To forestall him she insisted, 'I do very well here. I have my friends. My work. I'm grateful for your offer, of course—'
'Oh, well, bear it in mind, that's all,' Richmond said graciously and consulted the gold watch that hung from his fob.
After he'd hurried off to a Cabinet meeting, Anne stared out of the window at the noisy traffic of Grosvenor Square. Another bridge burnt, she told herself. She was doing very well here in London, was she?
She'd read somewhere that there were 278 papers and periodicals published in this country. Even common labourers began the morning by going to a coffee house to read the latest news. Anne had no way of telling whether the people she met over the course of a day—stable boys, confectioners, marble merchants, literary ladies, country gentlemen—knew all about her monstrous reputation, or had forgotten it already, or had never heard about it in the first place. She couldn't know whether their polite masks covered sympathy or disgust. She would have to live with that, if she stayed in London. It's a light, she thought, a hard light trained on my face that won't burn out till I die.