Becoming Belle

by Nuala O'Connor

  “I will first read to you the petition for the dissolution of this marriage. ‘This is the humble petition of William Frederick Le Poer Trench, commonly known as Lord Dunlo.

  “One: on the tenth day of July 1889 he was lawfully married to Isabel Maude Penrice Le Poer Trench, formerly Bilton, at the register office in the district of Hampstead in the County of London.

  “Two: that since the said marriage the said Isabel Maude Penrice Le Poer Trench has been daily in the company of Mr. Isidor Wertheimer and has continuously and habitually committed adultery with the said Isidor Wertheimer at Sixty-three Avenue Road, St. John’s Wood, in the County of London and at diverse other places in the said County of London.

  “The petitioner therefore humbly prays that your lordship will be pleased to decree that the said marriage be dissolved and that he have such further and other relief in the promises as to your lordship seems meet. Signed by the petitioner.”

  Mr. Russell once again focused on Belle and continued, his voice more conversational now.

  “Lord Dunlo is a young man; he attained his majority only in December last. Miss Isabel Maude Penrice Bilton, the respondent in this case, is not only his senior in age, it must be noted that she is also his senior in point of experience of the world. She is a lady of considerable attraction as well as of considerable talent, being a doyen of the music hall. The acquaintance between the petitioner and the respondent began in May 1889 in the Corinthian Club and they hastily became intimates, leading to their marriage. Lord Dunlo’s father’s assent was not obtained, as it should have been, the petitioner being under age.”

  Belle watched Mr. Russell as steadily as he watched her. He meant to unnerve her it was clear, but she was determined to appear imperturbable, no matter what he said. Flo had fed her Pepper’s Quinine and Iron Tonic for days and she could feel the vigor it afforded her. Seeing William again had also energized Belle. Yes, he appeared to have been made delicate by his recent illness but he looked older, more manly because of it, too. It had been a wrench to continue to avoid him, but all advice had been in that direction. When she queried Mr. Lockwood, her solicitor, he had been most firm about it.

  People had wrestled with one another to gain entrance to the court and the room was packed. Belle looked around and wondered what spectacle they hoped to witness. The vindication of the aristocracy? Her downfall, maybe? But many of them were surely on her side. She certainly had a loyal following at the theater, but it was hard to know if those people were here. There was a varied crowd, between nobility and pauper. The poor who frequented the theater also loved to gawp at these kinds of cases. They were invariably in awe of the gentry; they aped the rich as much as they disdained them. It occurred to Belle that they might be on Lord Clancarty’s side rather than hers. Belle let Mr. Russell’s speech become a burr outside her ears while she looked around. Did these people of London hope to see her humiliated? Her eye caught on a smart woman in a check suit and it took her a moment to realize it was her mother. Mrs. Bilton nodded. So she had come. What did Mother hope to see and hear? Belle whipped her head away and returned her attention to Mr. Russell, who was now addressing the jury—an unreadable cohort of men.

  “This lady,” he said, “wrote to Lord Dunlo saying that she felt it better, in the circumstances, that he should go to Australia as arranged by his father. ‘Better for both of us,’ she wrote. Better for both of us.” Mr. Russell was skewing Belle’s meaning, taking it out of context; that note had been a test for William but, of course, he had never read it because she had discarded it in his Burlington room. How on earth did it end up here? Mr. Russell shook the papers he was consulting and held them aloft. “The respondent is charged with adultery. It is alleged that she entered into an adulterous relationship with Mr. Isidor Wertheimer, her co-respondent, the son of a well-known bric-a-brac dealer on Bond Street.”

  The word “adulterous” clanged around the room and, Belle thought, it was probably heard along every corridor of the Royal Courts of Justice and out on the Strand, so loudly did Mr. Russell exclaim it.

  “But we must go back now to July 1888 when the respondent was living under the protection of Mr. Wertheimer. During that month, on the twenty-fifth to be exact, she was delivered of a male child. Mr. Wertheimer made arrangements for Miss Bilton’s accouchement. The child was registered as the son of Mr. Alden Carter Weston, then (and now) in prison for fraud. Mr. Wertheimer kept this lady and her child; he saw her constantly, he paid her expenses.”

  Mr. Russell cleared his throat and let his latest statement hang in the air. Belle looked at the jury to see how they had reacted to the news of baby Isidor and of Wertheimer’s support of her but, to a man, they remained impassive of expression. She could not divine if this was a good or a bad thing. Her stomach began to babble softly and she put her hand to her abdomen to try to calm the strain there. She felt Flo grapple for her and she took her sister’s fingers and pressed them, unsure who was comforting whom. Belle did not look to where her mother sat.

  “In the late spring of 1889, Miss Bilton was introduced to Lord Dunlo by Lord Osborn, at the Corinthian Club, as we know. But, to Lord Dunlo, Wertheimer was merely a name. He was unaware of the huge importance of this man in the lady’s life. To this day, gentlemen, Miss Bilton is protected by Mr. Isidor Wertheimer. To this day she lives at a house he rents at Sixty-three Avenue Road, St. John’s Wood. Miss Bilton is constantly in the society of Mr. Isidor Wertheimer: he meets her at stage doors, they convene at the house on Avenue Road, he traveled to Manchester at Christmastime to see her perform.” He paused. “They have been watched.”

  Belle conjured the burgundy-suited man who had hovered around Avenue Road for so long. She bent forward in her seat to see Wertheimer, and he grimaced at this confirmation of their being spied upon.

  Mr. Russell swiveled on his feet. “I call William Frederick Le Poer Trench, Viscount Dunlo.”

  William glanced at Belle, rose and went toward the stand. He looked, Belle thought, hunted and gray. When he was settled, Mr. Russell began his questioning. William confirmed where he had met Belle, the date of their marriage and that his father did not know about their union. He acknowledged that he had left for Australia days after the marriage and that Belle had not wanted him to go, but that she gave “a sort of blessing,” knowing if he went that he would return.

  “Lord Dunlo, Miss Bilton earns in the region of fifteen hundred pounds per annum. Would you consider that enough for two, nay three people, to live on?”

  “It is adequate.”

  “Do you have an income, Lord Dunlo?”

  “My father provides for me.”

  Mr. Russell indicated Belle with one hand. “Do you believe the charges contained in the petition against your wife—that she had an adulterous affair with Mr. Isidor Wertheimer?”

  “I have never believed them. I only signed the papers because my father, through Mr. Godley Robinson, insisted.”

  “And yet you did sign them. Of your own free will you put your signature to a petition for divorce that called your spouse an adulteress.”

  “Mr. Robinson worked on me on the voyage we took; he led me to believe at first that my father intended to disinherit and disown me. Later he said if I signed the divorce petition that those things would not occur.” William paused, and Mr. Russell nodded to indicate he might go on. “Robinson pressed upon me that it would be better for my wife also, that she would escape my ‘foolishness’ without blemish. He also said that Papa promised to write off my debts if I consented to sign. I was beginning to get ill, my brain was fuddled. I hardly knew up from down.” William dropped his head, then raised it again. “I didn’t realize either that there would be immediate consequences. Robinson impressed upon me that I had erred in my life and endangered my whole family’s reputation. Who was I to diminish the Le Poer Trench name? I thought. Perhaps, I reasoned, it would be better to set Belle—that is, Lady Dunlo—free.�
��

  A vibration of sweat ran over Belle’s body. Set her free, like some sort of unnecessary encumbrance, when there was so much love between them? It was difficult to listen to William tell how Robinson had cajoled and undermined him. Belle wanted to crush Robinson and shake William.

  Mr. Russell held up a bundle of envelopes. “I have letters here, correspondence from your wife to you while you were abroad. In one she admits she is ‘out with you.’”

  “That may be. We were newly married and I had left her.”

  “Yet, she gave her blessing to your journey. Do you see the contradictions here, on both sides?” Mr. Russell opened one envelope and took out the pages. “Let me read an extract for the court. This is the voice of Miss Bilton, I remind you, gentlemen: ‘Wertheimer is the last person in the world I would misconduct myself with, you know that. And, for the sake of the tongue waggers, I am only ever with him on the street. I do hope, William, that you are as true to me as I am to you.’ But was Miss Bilton not spied under many a roof with Mr. Wertheimer? Should Lord Dunlo and his father, the Earl of Clancarty, suffer in silence while Miss Belle Bilton, a dancer, struts around all London and beyond with Mr. Wertheimer? I say no, they should not.” He threw down the letter. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

  Mr. Lockwood, representing Belle, stood.

  “Lord Dunlo, is Miss Bilton excessively fond of Mr. Wertheimer?”

  “She has told me he pesters her with his affections, but she likes him nonetheless.”

  A ripple of laughter from the public gallery made Belle glance that way.

  “Did you know that Wertheimer had offered to marry her?”

  “Yes, I knew that. It was a long time ago; he meant it to help her out of a poor situation.”

  “And when did you offer your hand to Miss Bilton?”

  “Ever since I met her.”

  More laughter.

  “Did some of your friends try to discourage the marriage?”

  “Some of them; they hinted that she had been living with Mr. Wertheimer. They told me about Mr. Weston.”

  “I have a letter here that you wrote to Miss Bilton from Sydney, Australia. You say, I quote: ‘Now, Belle, I don’t believe a word of it.’ This was in relation to the rumors of her intimacy with Wertheimer?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Lord Dunlo, was it your father who gave instruction for the commencement of this suit?”

  “Yes.”

  “You never gave any instructions for its commencement?”

  “I did not.”

  “Did you believe the charges made against your wife?”

  “No, never.”

  “Did you know that when you signed the papers your father says he began to pay off your debts?”

  “No. Through Mr. Robinson he said he would help with my debts, but I was not sure if I believed it. That is, I wanted to believe this, but my mind was rather addled. I could not think clearly.”

  “Do you owe a lot of money?”

  “My debts are, unfortunately, as plentiful as the hairs on my head.”

  “So you signed the papers?”

  “I was confused. I did not realize that the papers would be acted upon at once. The divorce papers and the debts became entwined in my reason. Mr. Robinson led me to believe I would be imprisoned; he talked of the debtors’ jail. My position was not clear to me.” William rubbed his forehead with one hand. “I was muddled, my mind was agitated.”

  “Is it true that you were in fact coming down with a serious illness, perhaps already severely tainted by it?”

  “I contracted malaria on my travels, yes.”

  “Lord Dunlo, has your father, in fact, cleared the monies you owe?”

  “Not to my knowledge, no.”

  Mr. Lockwood smiled, a small curl of the lips. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

  A TIP

  Belle stood outside the Royal Courts of Justice, watching the dark rags of jackdaws being tossed up on the wind above the building’s turrets. It’s a castle of a place, she thought, and quite as imposing as one. How often had she passed it and admired its long, fortresslike stance? Little she knew then of the painful stories that unfolded behind its gates. Walking through the gothic vault of the Great Hall early that morning, the space looming above her grand as any cathedral, she had felt like a condemned queen stepping toward her execution. She did not share the thought with Flo who, she guessed, would have pooh-poohed such morbid fancies.

  “A wearisome day,” Flo said now, standing by Belle outside the court, while Wertheimer flagged down a hansom.

  “We will all three fit,” he assured the ladies.

  A cab, Belle knew, would be tight with three in it, but it would get them away quicker than a coach, for the cabdrivers liked to move fast, to dip and dodge around larger vehicles. She did not want the faces from the public gallery gawking at her afresh on the street.

  Belle kept her eyes on the doorway of the courthouse, hoping that William would step out and speak to her. But, as she watched, Mrs. Bilton emerged on a tide of stragglers; she stopped in front of her daughters.

  “Florence,” she said, nodding to Flo, before turning to Belle. “Isabel.”

  “Mother. You are here.”

  “I am, Isabel. And now that it appears you have a child of your own, you surely understand why I came. Children pull on their parents. I am drawn to you, despite everything.” Mrs. Bilton adjusted her parasol. “I may never have been a model mother to you, Isabel, but I can no more turn from you than scrape the marrow from my bones.”

  Belle eyed her mother, tried to digest her words. “I had no notion of your coming, Mother. Of your hearing everything.”

  “Nor I,” Flo muttered.

  “When do you take the stand, Isabel?”

  “I know not. I simply have to wait my turn.”

  “Be plain. Be truthful. You can do no more.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “You have always had an elastic disposition, Isabel. No doubt you will survive this. And prosper.”

  Wertheimer stepped forward. “Ladies, our hansom is waiting.” He lifted his hat to Mrs. Bilton. “Madam, may I offer to hail a cab for you?”

  “I wish to walk,” Mrs. Bilton said and, without offering a farewell, she turned and set off down the Strand, her august carriage causing other pedestrians to make way for her.

  “The woman is astonishing,” Flo said, as Wertheimer helped her into the cab. “As impudent as a goat. She is ‘drawn’ to Belle! What about bloody me? I put up with plenty from her, too.”

  Wertheimer held Belle’s hand while she climbed up, then got in himself. “Perhaps, Flo, if you generated a bit more theater in your life—off the stage, of course—your mother would be equally drawn to you.”

  “Oh do be quiet, Wertheimer,” Flo said, but she smirked at him and he smiled.

  Belle laid her head on Wertheimer’s shoulder. “I’m glad that part of the day is over, at least.”

  Wertheimer lifted the trapdoor in the roof. “Drive on, man!” he shouted, and the hansom lurched forward.

  * * *

  —

  Jacob let them in at Avenue Road and, when they were settled in the smoking room, Wertheimer ordered him to bring tea. “And tell Rosina we need cake. Shall we have some wine, too?”

  “Neither you nor Belle should get tipsified this week, Wertheimer. Keep your heads clear.”

  “True. No wine, Jacob. Tea and cake.” Wertheimer nodded and the page boy left, leaving the door hanging open.

  Flo closed it and plunked into an armchair. “Your Master Baltimore has something of the scamp about him. There’s disquiet lurking there.”

  “Jacob often speaks in a way too large for his position,” Belle said. “Isidor lets him forget who he is.”

  “He’s a fine fel
low—leave him be.”

  “Isidor,” Belle said, “might you bring Pritchard to me? I want to see his sweet face.”

  “Of course.” Wertheimer rang the bell; by and by Jacob returned. “Miss Bilton wants her canary in here. Fetch the cage from the parlor.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jacob was back moments later; the bird flitted mightily, disordered by the movement of his home.

  “There you are, Pritchard,” Belle called, and she waggled her hand to have Jacob bring him to her quickly. Jacob set the cage on the floor beside her. “But I can’t see him properly,” she said.

  “Put the cage on a table,” Wertheimer said. “Come along, boy.”

  Jacob lifted a table to set beside Belle’s chair and once again scooped up the cage. Belle watched him for signs of his usual audacity of manner, but Jacob benignly obeyed his master. When the canary was ready before her, Belle pressed her face to the bars of his blue home. Pritchard hopped from perch to mirror to bell.

  “What do you seek, little one?” Belle said. “You’re upset from being tussled about, isn’t that right?” She whistled to him, a roll of notes meant to soothe him.

  “‘A whistling woman and a crowing hen are neither fit for God nor men,’” Flo said.

  “Ah, but ‘Be she old, or be she young, a woman’s strength is in her tongue,’” Belle replied. “Mother was fond of that saying, too, Flo.”

  “She was when it was her own tongue.”

  Wertheimer sent feathers of smoke ceilingward where they joined to form a wispish cloud; he threw back his head, making the tassel of his smoking cap swirl over one eye. He puffed on his cigar and watched the smoke whorl away from his mouth.

  “Your mother is a very fine-looking woman. You’ve led me to expect a crone.”

  “Don’t be fooled by her grand exterior, Wertheimer,” Flo said. “She’s sly as a badger. And has the entirety of Hampshire in her lap, convinced she’s a marvel. Meanwhile, at home, it is nothing but peppery exchanges and raised fists.”