Excerpted from the diary of Daisy, Countess of Evesham, spring 1895.
It is said I am still as perfectly beautiful as ever, yet this only now gives me cause for regret. Whenever I consult my looking glass instead of feeling cheered, I sigh. Why is this? Because instead of myself being the one at which they must all wonder, I am to lead another through Society’s maze. Of course she cannot match my beauty nor my allure, but she is younger than I, much younger, and I have made it my duty to chaperone her. I did this quite purposefully and for very good reason, yet still I have cause to regret it for it means I must in a fashion play second fiddle, which is not a position in life’s orchestra in which I am accustomed to finding myself.
However, there it is. I shall chaperone the gauche and somewhat feral (I believe that is the most perfect word I know to describe the Irish – feral. For without a doubt they are a wild race, even though this girl is only half Irish) Lady Emily Persse through the entire Season because it is in my best interests so to do. But the thought of the boredom of it! Of boring ball after ball after ball! Night after night after night! The notion of it – and this is long before the wheels are in motion – the notion is simply too tiresome for words.
Yesterday I wrote of the anticipated tedium of it all, but of course there is worse. I shall have to watch from the sidelines while my beloved and lovely PP dances with all these younger women. I shall have to sit and suffer in silence while others touch his divinely slim and lovely body and feel his hand in theirs, while he bestows upon them that shy but irresistible smile, while he talks to them and entertains them in his charming modest way, while he gives them all the pleasure of his utterly charming company. And what shall I be doing all this while? All the time this the greatest love of my life is causing all the young and eligible women to fall in love with him? Why I shall be sitting on the bylines on some rickety gilded chair fanning myself and making small talk with some deaf and dreary old dowager.
Mercy, darling journal! The things one does for love!
Of course when I myself came out, when I was the toast of my Season (at what is still considered to be the extraordinarily tender age of seventeen), no-one was able to bear me the slightest comparison. In fact had I been given a diamond for every proposal of marriage made to me I would have been able to fashion myself a complete tiara! And most likely still had some to spare for a pin and a brooch as well!
What a thought – now that I think it. I wonder just how many hearts I did break? What fun. What particular fun when I remember what my rivals that year were called! Daisy’s leavings! Every ball was the same, with all those poor dowdies who had come out my year waiting fearfully for me to say ‘no thank you’ to whosoever it was this time who had daringly waltzed me into the conservatory to propose! Then when they discovered who it was I had spurned, what an amusement to see all those plain and mealy-mouthed desperates throwing themselves at my rejected and dejected swains, knowing as women do (particularly the plainer kind) that a man on the rebound is only too able and willing to propose to the very next girl that he dances with, and my heaven he usually does!
P.S. I wonder who of one’s present acquaintances would be dreary old maids still today? Had I decided to say ‘yes’ instead of ‘no’ to the men who are now boring them into an early grave?????
On reading back what I wrote in here yesterday I have to confess in the interests of utter fairness (me? Daisy Evesham fair? Ha!) that both my own husbands were and are not exactly the sparkiest of fellows. But then dullness in a husband, as everyone knows, is perfectly acceptable providing of course that the said dull fellow is also a stupendously rich dull fellow, which thankfully both my wretches were and are. Even at the start poor silly and dreary old George.
Actually when one stops to think I do find it hard to remember quite how dashing dreary old George once was. Of course I don’t even have his pic. any more (oh the shock on certain people’s faces when they saw how quickly and unceremoniously a certain party – wonder who? – had removed another certain party’s photograph from her dressing table the very morning after that certain party’s year of mourning for her husband was up! Tut tut).
But then it was hardly my fault George had made such a colossal mess of his affairs. That is a husband’s doing, not a wife’s. Nor indeed was it my poor fault that his wretched gun had gone off when it had, just when he happened to have been cleaning it too near his forehead. (Jenkins who found the poor old thing said the mess was quite unbelievable. In fact one had to redecorate the entire room.)
Of course ‘they’ all blamed it on my extravagances. Not that I minded, nor did I mind that no-one exactly hurried to my defence. Poor old George would have done of course, had he been there to do so, but then because shooting was about the only thing he was good at he saw to it there was no chance of his still being around just when I needed him. Of course this doesn’t make much sense, or does it? Now that I come to reread it. Because if George had not shot himself no-one would have blamed his death on me! No matter – the point I am endeavouring to make is that the one thing George loved besides shooting was defending beloved Daisy’s reputation. Would you believe it? But he was oddly proud of my ‘infamy’!
No no, darling book of mine – I have to tell you that it was not my fault that George was such a poor gambler. And it was his weakness for baccarat more than anything else that forced the sale of my precious house, of darling most beautiful Wynyates. Do you know I still miss the place? I still long to be there, so much did I love the great house? Now I learn it has been sold on yet again, to some money-lender they say (imagine?), who they also say is so busy installing bathrooms everywhere that no-one will ever again recognize it for the typical great English country house it once was. Instead it has become a flash parvenu’s residence. Bathrooms indeed. A man can only ever bath in one bath at a time, can he not?
From yesterday (continued):
The truth is as everyone knew at the time, poor dear George when alive was a dead bore. And since bores always finally bore themselves, even if he had not got himself so horrendously into debt then he might well have bored himself to death instead of blown out his brains. Most certainly his death had nothing to do with my association with Tum-Tum. As I said, George was rather proud of the fact.
For my own part I could not bear the thought of my darling Capt. PP even so much as kissing another woman let alone making love to her. Thank heavens too that he is not in any way dull (at least in no way that I have yet discovered . . .). In fact he is the very opposite because he is a delight to be with and a delight to behold (so handsome, delicious and dashing! In fact whenever I think of him or write about him I have to stop and lie down and think of something quite, quite cold and put my hand on my placey-thing to stop anything too sensational happening to me . . .). He has the most kissable and sweetly curved mouth, and such a look of innocence in those big blue eyes! Such a contrast to my present husband old E, with his thin, dry lips and hooded vulture’s eyes. Oh those eyes! The way he watches me for all the world as if I were a horse in the parade ring and he a racegoer in two minds whether or not to back me.
Happily ‘backing me’ is about the very last thing he is capable of, thank God! Those days are long over. Yet it has not mitigated his feelings of jealousy one whit. Hence this absurd agreement I was forced to sign when he married me. That I am not to have a ‘relationship’ with any but married men. It is hardly possible to believe – yet he is convinced that were I to take an unmarried lover I should leave the old fool. Darling book, since no-one knows of you, and since you have a lock – I shall tell you. The old fool is right. Were I to take the capt. into my bed I should never get out of it except to sign the divorce papers! There now! Back you go under lock and key until tomorrow.
More thoughts on the Old Fool. He is such an arrant snob that just owning me, I the former first favourite and still the darling of the Prince of Wales, that is quite enough for the Earl of Evesham. I knew this from the start of course, but needs must, as
I believe the lower orders are so fond of saying (at least Jenkins most certainly is and they hardly come lower than Stickypin). I was perfectly aware that when the Old Fool married me I was just another possession, to go with the Old Fool’s fine paintings, all his houses and racehorses and his great and grand yacht in the south of France.
Yet I must confess, dear diary, to you in private, that I had not accounted for meeting someone so beloved as my darling Capt. PP. I now regret the arrangement I was forced to make deeply. Foolishly I had imagined I could content myself with flirtations with other women’s husbands, forgetting that the heart has a mind of its own (quite a clever turn of phrase do you not think? Upon reflection?). But then – and this is what occasions me to sigh whenever I think on it – if I hadn’t signed that ridiculous agreement before I married the Old Fool then I would not be quite so ridiculously rich now, and able to go to Mr Worth and have him make me not just some new ball gowns and day dresses, but an entire new wardrobe of afternoon dresses, opera gowns, theatre dresses, cloaks and whatsoever and whichsoever I wish in any and every fabric and colour for this Season’s events, should I? So really I must secretly confess that I ought really to be feeling rather more content than not. Which in one way I do and in another way I do not.
Three days on (a small chill, I think):
While I lay sick I decided to waste no more time sitting about and dwelling on the insufferable clauses and catches in my marriage contract with the Old Fool. Better by far to get my darling PP married off quick as poss. to the feral Lady Emily so that he and I may together look forward to satisfying our mutual ardour each and every afternoon in the library (or some such place). I do so hate wasting valuable time in idle hypothesis (or does one hypothesize?) when I could be putting my time to really bad use, such as planning some wondrous social coup, or the unexpected social downfall of some lame idiot who has wounded or upset me, or arranging a delicious snub on someone (shall we ever forget eeh-bah-goom?!!).
At this very moment I am wondering what to do with Jenkins who is driving me more insane than ever. She is either never about when I want her or else she is eternally hovering. I do so hate a hoverer. They unnerve me. Particularly a miserable hoverer like Stickypin. I think she might have to go. Really I do (not that anyone of class would want her).
Today for an instance. There I was left standing in my shift, uncorseted and with my hair as yet unpinned, even though it was nearly quarter to eleven of the morning. When finally Stickypin decided to answer my summons, I wondered aloud what she thought she might be doing, leaving one in one’s underpinnings on a winter’s morning with my chocolate half drunk and no answer to my bell. Oh, she said, all innocence about her. Have you forgot, my lady? Do you not remember you sent me down for some fresh chocolate and a bon-bon for my lady because my lady was having sad thoughts? Does my lady not remember so instructing me? (You can gather, darling journal of mine, from the excessive use of ‘my lady’ the tone of her enquiry.) I never did any such thing. The wretch took it into her head to take herself on some errand or other and clean forgot about me, I swear it, and then remembering she had left me not yet dressed, tried to fool me by bringing me up some fresh chocolate – as if I had requested it! I really think she will have to go.
I hinted as much – and oh! If you had seen the look in those little beady eyes! She was just fetching me one of my new embroidered petticoats and as she was dropping it over my head I said I had it in mind to talk to Lady Medlar’s maid, to see if she was still of the same complexion as she was last time we spoke. At that moment the petticoat fell into place and there were these two little beadies staring at me as if I had just signed her death warrant! What delight! Serves the lazy wretch right. She is always trying to sneak away when a job is only half done, leaving me to find a glove, or pick up my hat or somesuch. I really will not have it. So I let it be known that Augustine Medlar’s maid was thinking of leaving her mistress because the atmosphere at the house has become quite unbearable by the fact of John Medlar’s still not talking to his wife. What do you think of that, Jenkins? I asked her. Do you not think the girl would fancy that a position here would be considerably more lively?
Of course poor Stickypin was involved in bringing the Medlars’ marriage to the non-speaking state it is now so famously in, for it was to Stickypin that I entrusted the letters I had found written to my own boring old George (of all people!) by Augustine Medlar (can you imagine such a couple? I cannot. But then as Jenkins is so fond of saying, there is no accounting for taste). And it was Stickypin who on my precise instructions passed the letters on to Dillington, Augustine Medlar’s personal maid and the girl to whom I have just referred. Knowing how ‘the Pin’ loves a bit of gossip, particularly so I am informed anything of a salacious nature, in fact I made her help me choose the most compromising letters out of the bunch I found carelessly thrown by poor old George at the back of one of his closets along with a whole sheaf of gambling IOUs. Careless old fool that he was. Anyway, we chose most especially the letters Augustine Medlar had written to him which made particular fun of her husband’s difficulties in the bedroom, knowing that these would surely displease the wretched man most. Well of course they would! After all, there surely is no man alive who would wish to know that his wife likened the most precious part of his person to – fie! I can hardly write such a thing! But it most certainly was far from flattering . . .
Augustine M. was, I have to admit, particularly amusing about the difficulties encountered by her husband and the devices called upon to overcome the handicap. Two or three letters even contained some hand-drawn illustrations, albeit rather badly executed, but added to the mockery contained in the prose the whole thing was surely too much for any man with any pride to bear. And bear it John M. most certainly did not, once he had found them where Dillington had instructed his valet to place them (mercy! the things one’s servants may do for ‘shekels’!), namely on his bedside table beside his nightcap, and having read them he was left with little choice. Either he divorced Augustine and thereby caused a great scandal, or he would remain married to her in name only and never address another word to her either in public or in private.
Which is what he did! And how very chilling it has been! What a sentence to impose on any woman who has to appear quite so constantly in public with her husband – that same husband! For who could not notice someone like Lord M. addressing his every command to his wife through a servant or a third party? Everyone in Society noticed, as they were indeed meant to do, and everyone in Society stood warned, for few members of London Society have not at some time or another committed the greatest indiscretion of all, which is to commit our indiscretions to paper!
Still it was justice, however rough, for after all it was Augustine who had stolen John Medlar from me in the first place. But more of that anon. I am tired now, after my chill, and think I shall sleep now, dear diary. Good night!
Anon: Sweet is revenge, especially to women, said darling Lord Byron. And how right! Twelve years might seem a long time, but the wait was worth every delicious minute. Poor Augustine must have so hoped that she had got away with her knavery and that I myself, safely married to rich (boring) old George and having born a son and heir, would have forgiven and forgotten. Ha! As everyone who knew us knew, John M. and I had been all but betrothed since we were babies, to the approval of both our families.
Although they do say, I gather, that our expected marriage was enough to spur Augustine on to do what she did. And of course she must have had the help of her mamma who was such an old friend of the royal family, because how else could she have engineered it? How else to explain how her mother could have gone to the Prince of Wales (of all people!) and insisted that her daughter had been compromised by John in the garden of a certain country house one weekend, and that nothing less than a proposal of marriage could satisfy Augustine’s family or protect their daughter’s honour and reputation. Ha I say again! And again – ha!
As for dear Tum-Tum, well – he
must have had too much wine, or been too busy relishing his teatime lobster salad, because silly ass that he was he duly swallowed the whole story lock, stock, and barrel! And only went directly to his godson that very evening and ordered him to do his duty by Augustine. Poor John had no choice. Who would? Reproached by the prince for compromising an unmarried lady’s reputation, innocent as he was (A. later readily confessed to me she had enticed him into the garden that afternoon specifically to compromise him) he had no option but to propose marriage, a proposal which naturally Augustine found no difficulty at all in accepting.
So all in all Augustine M. earned my revenge. Yet I wonder why I write about it now? I suppose it must be the advent of yet another Season that brings back these memories, that and the fact that I am busy plotting a brand new scheme which, although it does not concern revenge in any way, if all goes well should result in an even greater sense of satisfaction, satisfaction of quite a different sort! I dare hardly dwell on such thoughts, because they enthral me too terribly, so instead I will turn my mind specifically to Emily Persse and what to do with her and her wild Irish ways and her quite unacceptable brogue.
What to do, what to do.
I have decided. I shall be far too busy with my own arrangements to take Emily directly in hand so the sensible solution is to send the wretched girl down to the Old Fool’s house at Ascot where she will be placed directly under the tutelage of the O.F.’s impoverished cousin Lady Devenish. She can and will teach her how to appear to be a proper young lady, and not an Irish hoyden. She can and she will because if she does not I shall see that she is kicked out of Sunning Lodge without another penny. Good. A most excellent solution.
Extracted from the journal of a lady’s maid, one Edith Jenkins, spinster and servant to the second Countess of Evesham, spring 1895. London.
A compliment. Told today that I still know how to present my mistress. Said (for once) without sarcasm neither.
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