How had he been able to make the grand gesture of entrusting her with Strawberry Hill, a house like no other, a bejewelled haven in a war-torn world? And he'd given Mary Little Strawberry, just across the meadow, which struck Anne now as being as clear a blessing on the pair of them as they could ever have asked for. The two houses were so near each other, with only grass between them, that the residents would have to be on intimate terms. It was as if, with exquisite tact, Walpole had thought of a way for Anne and Mary to be as close to each other as possible, given that they'd probably never be free to leave their families and live together. Perhaps that's why he thought of me as his heir. He knew what it was to love one's own sex and to be vilified for it, maybe, but not ashamed. She could feel him in the library with her now; she didn't look up.
'Anne? My dear, you must see the state of these curtains.'
'Coming, Mother.'
'Mr Walpole didn't object to dust,' the housekeeper was insisting, 'he considered it Gothic.'
As soon as she could get away, Anne went out into the gardens and surveyed her territory. The grass slid down to the row of lime trees and the blue river. The lilacs were in full bloom, and she saw jonquils, acacias and syringas. Her future spread out in front of her. She'd set up her workshop tomorrow, perhaps in the former printing house. She'd waste no time getting back to her self-portrait again. She needed to get her hands dirty. Work was like the iron blocks in the hull of a ship, for balance: hard and heavy and lifesaving. At Strawberry Hill she would carve pieces so extraordinary that they'd outlive all the scandal of her life; she meant to be remembered as the first serious woman sculptor in the world.
But life wasn't all work. Anne would have dinners, put on plays, perhaps; what about Mary's comedy? She'd take care of this shabby, beautiful little house, in memory of its maker. She'd leave it for the pleasure of coming back to it; she'd spend the worst of the winter in London and travel further, too. She and Mary had promised each other that the day this awful war ended they'd set out for Paris. Perhaps Italy, even Spain. As far as the Pyramids?
She had something in her reticule for Mary: a tiny gold locket. It had a plaited lock of Anne's dark hair inside and for a motto a single word: Fidèle. 'It's not a ring,' she was meaning to say, 'nothing to bind you. Just a gift.' She looked up, now, and recognised the small figure coming across the meadow.
Author's Note
This novel is fiction, but the kind that walks arm in arm with fact. Life Mask began in my head many years ago when I came across a passage in Hester Thrale Piozzi's commonplace book, known as her Thraliana.
Wensday 9 Deer [1795] 'tis now grown common to suspect Impossibilities (such I think 'em) whenever two Ladies live too much together /footnote: 'that horrible Vice ... has a Greek name now & is call'd Sapphism]—the Queen of France was all along accused, so was Raucoux the famous Actress on the Paris Stage; & 'tis a Joke in London now to say such a one visits Mrs Damer. Lord Derby certain insisted on Miss Farren keeping her at Distance & there was a droll but bitter Epigram made while they used to see one another often—
Her little Stock of private Fame
Will fall a Wreck to public Glamour,
If Farren herds with her whose Name
Approaches very near to Damn her.
When every Offence tow'rds God & Reason, & Religion & Nature has been committed, that can be committed, I suppose the World will burn.
In piecing together the intricate puzzle of the three lives that Mrs Piozzi wrote about with such glib relish I've tried to stick to the truth where it seemed to matter most. Apart from some servants, my characters are all historical people who lived and died more or less as I've shown. Almost all the satirical pamphlets and prints mentioned or quoted are real, except for the passages from the fictitious Beau Monde Inquirer. Most of the deliberate changes I've made in order to shape the story are small—a matter of moving events forward or back a few months or occasionally years, or changing a location, or simplifying something complicated (such as the management of Drury Lane). For the private relations between all these people, of course, I've had to rely on educated guesswork.
In the case of each of my three protagonists I drew on one extremely limited or outdated biography: Percy Noble's Anne Seymour Darner: A Woman of Art and Fashion, Millard Cox's Derby: The Life and Times of the 12th Earl of Derby and Susanna Bloxam's Walpole's Queen of Comedy: Elizabeth Farren, Countess of Derby. The sources I found far more useful were the surviving published papers of the three, as well as those of many of my other characters, and contemporaries such as Edward Jerningham and Thomas Creevey. I owe a great deal to three brilliant biographies: Fintan O'Toole's A Traitor's Kiss: The Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Amanda Foreman's Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and Stella Tillyard's Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox 1740–1812. The best scholarly investigation of Anne Damer is a chapter in Andrew Elfenbein's Romantic Genius: The Prehistory of a Homosexual Role; her art is documented in a 1986 Ph.D. thesis by Susan Benforado. The Lewis Walpole Library in Farmington, Connecticut, gave me a fellowship that allowed me to spend a wonderful week there studying Anne Damer's notebooks (which proved to be composed of excerpts from Mary Berry's letters) and their collection of Walpoliana. I'm also grateful to the staff of Strawberry Hill, the British Library, Cambridge University Library, the Robarts Library (University of Toronto) and the Weldon Library (University of Western Ontario).
AND WHAT happened next, you may ask?
The twelfth Earl of Derby remained a passionate supporter of Fox, though his background role meant that he barely earned a mention in the history books. After a four-year secession, Fox roused his energies to return to Parliament and, on Pitt's premature death in 1806, he finally got into power as Foreign Secretary in the short-lived Ministry of All Talents, with Sheridan, Grey and Fitzpatrick. He managed to set in motion the abolition of the slave trade, but died of cirrhosis of the liver within the year, before he could achieve his second goal, peace with France (which would take another eight years). Derby was one of a stubborn handful of Whig peers who kept the flame of Foxite liberalism alive; well into the nineteenth century he was signing protests in the Lords on the subjects of Ireland, Catholics, peace and France. When George III went mad again, Prinny came to the throne as regent, then as king, but never invited his old Whig friends back into government; a Re-form Act wasn't passed until the reign of his brother William IV (Mrs Jordan's former keeper, the Duke of Clarence) in 1832, when Grey was Prime Minister.
Though Derby's long-awaited second wedding in 1797 produced a brief flurry of dirt-digging pamphlets, none of them mentioned the Sapphist rumours that had dogged Eliza on and off between 1789 and 1794; clearly, by marrying Derby she had restored her sexual reputation. The couple had their first baby (stillborn) ten months after the wedding and Mrs Farren died later the same year; of the three children born to them in the next three years a girl and a boy died at ten and seventeen respectively, and only Lady Mary Smith-Stanley (later Countess of Wilton) survived to adulthood. At Knowsley the couple had a busy country life with their children and grandchildren, local politics, charity, sport and entertaining on a grand scale (a hundred to luncheon every Monday, according to one report). Their many guests described the marriage as a very happy one. The Countess, it was said, never liked to be reminded of her former career, but she didn't forget old friends; when Jack Palmer died on stage, for instance, she sent £50 (about £3000 in today's money) to his widow and children. Eliza died in 1829, at the age of sixty-six, and her epitaph—as if to silence all the old sneers—said She kept herself unspotted from the world.
Derby lived five more years, cared for by his daughter Mary, long enough to see his eldest grandson, Edward Geoffrey Stanley (later the fourteenth Earl) launched on a brilliant career as a Whig politician—but not long enough, luckily, to see him change sides and become Tory leader from 1846 to 1868 and three times Prime Minister under Victoria. According to one story, on Derby's deathbed at the age of eight
y-one he had his favourite cocks brought into his bedroom for-one last fight. It would probably have gratified him to know that his name would live on, worldwide, as that of a horse race.
Anne Damer, too, outlasted her tormentors and seems to have found happiness. She settled in Strawberry Hill with her mother, and there she and Mary Berry staged Mary's play, Fashionable Friends. In 1802 they went to Paris during the Peace of Amiens and met Napoleon. Anne published at least one novel, Belmour, anonymously, while Mary's work on Walpole's papers launched her career as a woman of letters. In 1811, unable to afford the upkeep of Strawberry Hill, Anne passed it on to Walpole's relations. Living near each other in Mayfair, Anne and Mary remained close for the rest of their lives and though the painter Joseph Farington in his diary sneered at their intense intimacy, they seem to have avoided any further public scandal, or damage to their hectic social lives. Anne was now carving proto-Romantic busts of her male heroes and friends, such as the one of Fox she presented to Napoleon; she exhibited at the Royal Academy till she was sixty-nine. She died ten years later, in 1828, still sculpting; on her orders, all her papers were burnt, except for. the notebooks containing passages from Mary's letters.
But Mary saved and published much of their correspondence. Addressing her dead friend, she referred to her own entirely widowed Soul that has thus long survived Thee, wandering through the world Mary lived another twenty-four years with her sister Agnes, achieving celebrity as a sort of salon hostess, and they both died in 1852.
Thomas Lawrence's portrait of Eliza Farren hangs in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Anne Darner's busts of Eliza Farren and Mary Berry stand in the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Dramatis Personae
The following are the real people who appear or are referred to more than once in Life Mask. Important characters are highlighted in bold.
Signor Agostino, head keeper at the Royal Academy of Arts.
Caroline Campbell, Countess of Ailesbury, mother of Anne Damer and Lady Mary, wife of the Earl of Ailesbury, then Field Marshal Conway.
Major William Arabin, involved in the Richmond House theatricals.
Mrs Elizabeth 'Liz' Armistead, courtesan to many including the Duke of Dorset, Derby, Prinny; lover and then wife of Fox.
Mr John Bannister (the Younger), actor.
Mr Charles Bannister (the Elder), actor.
Mr William Beckford, MP, traveller, writer and collector.
Duke of Bedford, Foxite Peer, landlord of Drury Lane. Sometime lover of Lady Melbourne.
Miss Mary Berry, elder sister of Agnes, later a woman of letters.
Miss Agnes Berry, younger sister of Mary.
Mr Robert Berry, father of Mary and Agnes Berry.
Mrs Bruce, involved in Richmond House theatricals.
Mrs Blouse, involved in Richmond House theatricals.
Sir Thomas Charles Bunbury, former husband of Lady Sarah Lennox (sister of Richmond). Former MP, president of the Jockey Club.
General John Burgoyne, playwright, uncle of Derby, Foxite MP.
Mr Edmund Burke, sometime Foxite MP, orator, writer.
Busley, cock feeder to Derby.
Princess Caroline of Brunswick, wife of Prinny.
Queen Charlotte, wife of George III.
William, Duke of Clarence, later William IV, younger brother of the Prince of Wales, lover of Mrs Jordan.
Mr George Colman the Younger, playwright, proprietor of the Little Theatre (summer seasons) at the Haymarket.
Philip Columb, valet to Walpole.
Mr William Combe, journalist and satirist.
Field Marshal Henry Seymour Conway, father of Anne Damer, husband of Lady Ailesbury, cousin of Walpole. Former Leader of the House of Commons, Secretary of State, Commander in Chief, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Governor of Jersey.
Mr Richard Cumberland, playwright.
The Honourable Mrs Anne Seymour Conway Damer, widow of the Honourable John Damer, half-sister of the Duchess of Richmond, daughter of Field Marshal Conway and Lady Ailesbury, cousin of Walpole. Sculptor, honorary exhibitor at Royal Academy, sometime Foxite campaigner.
Edward Smith-Stanley, twelfth Earl of Derby, separated husband of Lady 'Betty' Derby, former lover of Mrs Armistead. Foxite peer, Privy Counsellor, Lord-Lieutenant of Lancashire, sportsman.
Elizabeth 'Betty' Hamilton Stanley, Countess of Derby, separated wife of Derby, sometime lover of several including the Duke of Dorset.
Georgiana Spencer Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, wife of Devonshire, sister of Lady Duncannon, sometime (possibly) lover of Fox, the Duke of Dorset and Charles Grey, companion of Lady Bess Foster. Foxite hostess and campaigner.
Mr John Downman, artist and scene painter at Drury Lane.
William Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire, husband of Lady Georgiana Spencer, lover of several including Lady Bess Foster, brother-in-law of Portland. Foxite peer.
Duke of Dorset, sometime British ambassador to France, sometime lover of many including Lady Derby, Lady Bess Foster, Georgiana.
Harriet Spencer Ponsonby, Lady Duncannon, later Countess of Bess-borough, sister of Georgiana, wife of Lord Duncannon, sometime lover of several including Sheridan.
The Honourable Mr Richard Edgcumbe, involved in the Richmond House theatricals.
Sir Harry Englefield, involved in the Richmond House theatricals.
Miss Elizabeth ('Eliza') Farren, daughter of Mrs Farren, sister of Peggy. Actress.
Mrs Margaret Farren, widow of George Farren, mother of Eliza, Peggy and two dead daughters, one called Kitty. Former actress.
Mrs Peggy Farren Wright, sister of Eliza, actress.
Mr William Augustus Fawkener, former husband of Georgiana 'Jockey' Poyntz, quarter-nephew of Walpole. Sometime diplomat, Clerk of the Privy Council, sometime lover of several including Lady Jersey.
Lord Edward Fitzgerald, nephew of Richmond, cousin of Fox, a founder of the Friends of the People, sometime lover of Mrs Eliza Sheridan, husband of Pamela Égalité, Irish revolutionary.
Mrs Maria Smythe Fitzherbert, wife of the Prince of Wales.
Colonel Richard 'Dick' Fitzpatrick, Foxite MP.
William Wentworth, Earl Fitzwilliam, sometime Foxite MP, sometime Pittite Cabinet Minister and briefly Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.
Dr George Fordyce, doctor to Anne Damer.
Lady Elizabeth ('Bess') Hervey Foster, daughter of the Earl of Bristol, separated wife of Mr John Thomas Foster, companion of Georgiana, sometime lover of many including Devonshire and Richmond.
Mr Charles James Fox, nephew of Richmond, sometime lover of Mrs Robinson and (possibly) Georgiana, lover and then husband of Mrs Armistead. MP, former Foreign Secretary, former Lord of the Admiralty, leader of the Foxite (Whig) Party.
George III, King of Great Britain and Ireland, Canada, Gibraltar, Sierra Leone, parts of India, much of the West Indies. Former king of America. Husband of Queen Charlotte, father of thirteen princes and princesses, including the Prince of Wales, Duke of York, Duke of Clarence.
Mr Charles Grey, sometime lover of Georgiana. Foxite MP, a founder of the Friends of the People.
Sir William Hamilton, archaeologist and collector, British envoy at Naples from 1764, later husband of Miss Emma Hart (Nelson's Emma).
The Honourable Mrs Albinia Hobart, Pittite campaigner, involved in Richmond House theatricals.
Mr Thomas Holcroft, radical playwright.
Mrs Elizabeth Hopkins, mother of Mrs Priscilla 'Pop' Kemble, mother-in-law of Kemble. Actress.
The Reverend John Home Tooke, radical MP.
Mr David Hume, Scottish philosopher, sometime secretary to Field Marshal Conway.
Frances Villiers, Countess of Jersey, sometime lover of many including Devonshire, Fawkener, Prinny.
Mrs Dorothy'Dora'Jordan, sometime lover of Mr Richard Ford and the Duke of Clarence. Actress.
Mr John Philip Kemble, brother of Mrs Siddons, husband of Mrs Priscilla Hopkins Brereton. Actor, sometime manager of Drury Lane.
Mrs Priscilla 'Pop' Hopkins Brereton, later Kemble, daughter of Mrs Hopkins, wife of Brereton, then of Kemble. Actress.
Mr Tom King, actor, sometime manager of Drury Lane.
Thomas Kirgate, secretary and printer to Walpole.
Mr Thomas Lawrence, painter.
Baron Loughborough, sometime Foxite peer, then Pittite Lord Chancellor.
Louis XIV, King of France.
Marie Antoinette, Queen of France.
Lady Elizabeth Milbanke Lamb, Viscountess Melbourne, wife of Lord Melbourne, sometime lover of the Prince of Wales, Lord Coleraine, Lord Egremont, Earl of Bedford. Foxite hostess.
General Charles O'Hara, natural son of Lord Tyrawley. Lieutenant-Governor and later Governor of Gibraltar.
Mr John 'Plausible Jack' Palmer, actor, and proprietor of short-lived Royalty Theatre.
Mr Charles Pigott, radical journalist.
Mrs Hester Thrale Piozzi, widow of Mr Henry Thrale, wife of Signor Gabriel Piozzi. Writer.
Mr William Pitt (the Younger), Prime Minister.
William Cavendish-Bentinck, Duke of Portland, brother-in-law of Devonshire. Collector, Foxite peer, nominal leader of Opposition, then leader of 'Portland Whigs', then Pittite Cabinet Minister.
Mr William Powell, under-prompter and stage manager at Drury Lane. Prompter from 1793, husband of actress Mrs Jane Farmer Powell.
George, Prince of Wales, later George IV, known as Prinny, son of George III and Queen Charlotte, sometime lover of many including Mrs Robinson, Mrs Armistead, Lady Melbourne, Lady Jersey; husband of Mrs Fitzherbert, then of Princess Caroline.