‘I see no real need for anything except pride in my obvious concern for Portia’s future, and nothing can detract from that. Portia’s future must be assured by the end of the Season or she will start to gather dust on the famous shelf.’
‘Well I too am concerned for Portia’s future, Augustine,’ Aunt Tattie put in. ‘You are not alone in this.’
‘Is that so?’ Augustine wondered with heavy sarcasm. ‘And when did your concern for anyone at all have the least effect, Tatiana? Never.’
‘If that is how you will have it, then yes,’ Portia replied. ‘But Aunt Tattie is right because you will not succeed with whatever you might have in mind, at least not as far as I am concerned, because I shall not use my money to marry for position. If, and I say if, I ever marry I am resolved to do so only for love.’
Augustine Medlar now stared at Portia as if she was deranged, before smoothing her dress down and tilting her hat preparatory to taking her leave. ‘You poor child,’ she said with finality. ‘You poor innocent, simple, misguided child. If you imagine for one moment that it is better to marry as you put it for love, then I regret to inform you that you will be condemned to that most miserable of existences, namely one of perpetual forgiveness. Love, do you see, is born from illusion, and in turn gives birth to disillusion. Better by far to marry for position, that after all one can only improve. And as for any disillusion that may come along afterwards, at least in Society the ability to lie successfully is not only a necessity, it is considered a positive attribute, whereas in love it is considered quite the reverse. In my view to swear someone your eternal love is merely to promise the impossible and anticipate the disastrous.’
Taking the bon mot to be Augustine’s exit line, Aunt Tattie rang the bell for a maid to show her visitor to the door. While they waited, the three women sat in total silence until the servant duly arrived whereupon Augustine Medlar swept out of the house, never to address another word to either Portia or Aunt Tattie for the rest of the entire Season.
* * *
Whatever each and every one of their connections might have told them, nothing could quite prepare Portia, Emily and May for what happened on the day of their presentation at court. Practise the ritual as they might and indeed as they all did – particularly poor unfortunate Emily who reunited with her former tutor Lady Devenish was made to practise the court curtsey and the required backwards walk for an hour every day – and listen as they might and indeed did to the received wisdom of their elders and betters, none of them was in any way at all able fully to conceive the extent of the extraordinary ceremony in which they were all to participate.
Of them all and most probably due to her ritual-filled convent upbringing May Danby found the preparation for the day the easiest. Certainly the curtsey presented no difficulties and she and her adopted mother who was also expert at it (although throughout her life she had found little use for the practice) used to hold competitions between themselves as to who could stay bobbed the longest, May’s young legs invariably winning the day, although only after a prolonged battle in which no quarter was asked and none given.
‘Imagine,’ Alice Danby used to sigh as they both lay collapsed on Alice’s day bed in her boudoir. ‘Just imagine being a courtier and having to spend most of your waking hours curtseying in such a fashion. You would develop calf muscles like an athlete, surely?’
The required backward exit from the Presence also presented no difficulties for May, once she had mastered the knack of catching her train which was quite literally tossed to her by her mother in the style adopted by the page boys at the palace. Alice warned her daughter to be on the look-out for mischief, since the stories were legion about the boys deliberately throwing some young ladies’ trains over their heads or deliberately crossing their trains in order to trip them up.
‘What should I do if such a thing did happen, Mamma?’ May wondered.
‘I’m not altogether sure,’ her mother replied, laughing at the very thought of it. ‘Imagine. I suppose the best thing to do after the wretched boy threw it over your head would be to remove it, hand it back to him and request him to do it again but with care. That way he would be the one who was embarrassed, not you. But if they cross your train and you fall over there’s not an awful lot you can do, is there? Except say Whoops! and continue to slide backwards to the door because remember – and all joking aside now – that whatever happens you must never turn your back on royalty.’
‘I wonder why that is?’ May mused, holding up her beautiful white dress with its required short sleeves and décolletage. ‘I suspect it’s because the Prince of Wales prefers looking at young ladies’ fronts.’
Alice laughed, genuinely amused as always by her adopted daughter. ‘It’s not just the young ladies, darling girl,’ she said. ‘Even I am required to wear a dress with a low neck and short sleeves. Even elderly dowagers are required to do so, so it cannot solely be to do with his Royal Highness’s fondness for the female form.’
‘Don’t you believe it, Mamma,’ May replied. ‘They make it a rule for every woman so that no one suspects it’s really because the prince just wants to ogle the younger women. After all, Mamma, he is rather famous for it.’
‘I for one will not have it,’ Aunt Tattie announced as she and Portia were rehearsing their rituals. ‘I am far too old to be given the glad eye by the Prince of Wales and there’s an end to it.’
‘You are not old, Aunt Tattie,’ Portia sighed from the lowest point of her curtsey. ‘You are not even remotely old. Besides which you have an extremely good figure, due to your strict diet and your love of walking.’
‘Even so I will not be ogled at. I find it most unbecoming whoever the ogler may be. Which is why I have already lodged my doctor’s certificate in the Lord Chamberlain’s office, which declares that I have a small patch of eczema which I feel sure his Royal Highness would rather not see.’
‘You don’t have a thing on you, Aunt Tattie!’ Portia laughed as she stood up once more. ‘Your skin is completely unblemished.’
‘I will not be ogled at even so, dearest girl,’ Aunt Tattie insisted, ‘and that is that. I shall be wearing the sort of dress any woman my age and disposition should be wearing, one with a modestly high neck and sleeves of a sensible length. Now you must practise walking backwards some more, dearest, because you still will keep looking behind you now and then which is simply not allowed. You must glide backwards, with your eyes demurely lowered, as if you were on perfectly oiled wheels. So.’
‘You will not even need a train to trip over, you duffer!’ Daisy scolded Emily. ‘Your great feet seem to suffice well enough! I fear you might even trip going into ve drawing room let alone coming back out of it!’
‘If I may say so, Lady Evesham, Lady Emily has nowhere near as many mishaps when you are not present,’ Lady Devenish said. ‘I really do think you make her even more nervous.’
‘You may fink what you like, Lady Devenish, but vis is not your protégée we are looking at. I had high hopes for vis young woman at ve outset, but now I declare I am in despair. I am quite sure if Lady Emily here were to ride into ve Presence on horseback and ride out again vare would be no mishaps whatsoever because it seems vat is ve only place where she is safe from disaster. And believe you me, young lady—’ Daisy came forward to wag a slender finger under Emily’s nose. ‘If vose evil-minded little page boys at ve palace get ve slightest wind of your clumsiness vey will make your life hell, I promise you! You will be publicly humiliated and if you are, ven so too will I be! And I will not have it, d’you hear! Not in front of his Royal Highness ve Prince of Wales! Not on any score! So make ve most of vese remaining two days to get your performance impeccable. Even if it means going wivout sleep, d’you understand me?’
‘Yes, Lady Evesham, I understand you all too well,’ Emily replied, matching Daisy glare for glare.
‘I fink,’ Emily said, perfectly mimicking her patron once she and her tutor were sure Daisy had gone, ‘I fink vat I would
rarver be unhorsed and buried up to my neck in some Oirish bog begob van to be learning how to walk backwards wivout trippin’ over.’
‘And I am quite sure,’ Lady Devenish said, refusing to give in to her former pupil’s wicked mirth, ‘that if you can learn to mimic quite so wickedly well you can quite easily learn to walk backwards without falling over.’
* * *
They all of course wore white, including unmarried women such as Aunt Tattie who were presenting girls while any woman in attendance who had recently been married wore her wedding dress. It took the three girls well over two hours just to be dressed, as indeed it took their two hundred and thirty-three other co-debutantes, dressing to begin no later than half past six for all parties must be out of their houses and in their carriages by nine o’clock in order to be at the palace well before eleven a.m., so jammed would the traffic become in the Mall on days such as these.
Punctuality was of the essence as indeed was the entire order of the day, because everything had to be absolutely perfect, more so it seemed than for a wedding day, for this was a presentation to the royal family and to a young woman no honour came higher than that. No detail was overlooked, from the styles of their skilfully coiffured hair to the perfection of the flowers they carried in their lavish bouquets, the fitting of their over-the-elbow white kid gloves, the length of their trains, the adjustment of their sleeves to the required length and their décolletage to the stipulated depth, down to every stitch, fastening and detail of their exquisite hand-made white gowns, and up to each and every feather in the three ostrich plumes the presentees were required to wear fixed to the back of their heads so that, as etiquette now demanded, they can be clearly seen on approaching the Presence.
Not that it seemed the presentees would ever be ready for even as they waited in the unmoving line of carriages stretching down the Mall, under Admiralty Arch and back into Trafalgar Square and round again into Piccadilly, adjustments were still being made and not only to the young ladies’ gowns. For as they sat becalmed the court hairdresser carriage-hopped, putting what he hoped were his finishing touches to the debutantes’ coiffures and even to their feathers, much to the great and vocal amusement of the huge crowd which had collected to watch one of their favourite annual pantomimes. Emily found the ribald comments of the cockney onlookers hugely amusing and had she been allowed her head would have given back as good as she was getting which would have delighted the crowd even more because a section of them had already chosen her as their favourite and were following her carriage up the Mall asking for kisses and names and addresses.
Prevented from an exchange of pleasantries in return Emily nevertheless waited to smile secretly at them and when her patron wasn’t looking blew fairy kisses to the little boys who were running alongside the horses whenever the carriages rolled a few yards on, and all this before Monsieur Pierre the hairdresser was granted entrance to their carriage to check his favourite client the so-famous Lady Lanford, his assistant standing at the ready on the stilled carriage steps holding up the combs and brushes for his use.
‘You are the most beautiful of all the ladies today, as always, Lady Lanford,’ he purred as he prinked her hair still more perfectly around her blinking, winking tiara, and performed the same service for Emily, although all the while still flattering his most famous client. ‘You will always be the most beautiful of all the ladies waiting in the Mall to see the Queen, always, always, always.’
Thinking of May and her unmatchable beauty, Emily smiled but resisted the temptation to beg to differ, instead saying nothing, remaining content after Monsieur Pierre’s administrations merely to stare down the Mall to the wonderful spectacle in front of them.
In terms of popularity with the crowds, Portia fared equally well, not only because of the sweet and open smiles she bestowed on her new admirers but also because of Aunt Tattie’s refusal to stand on any sort of ceremony whatsoever. As a consequence what started off as mockery on the part of some of the onlookers turned into a good-natured dialogue as Aunt Tattie explained to them how excruciatingly boring the ritual was and how after the ceremony was over they might not even expect any food or drink whatsoever.
‘Garn!’ one of the women said who had listened avidly to every word of Aunt Tattie’s. ‘You’d be better orf comin’ ’ome to tea with us, lovey. We don’t stint on the grub round our table. Long as you don’t mind crusts on your bread ’n’ drippin’.’
‘On the contrary, dear lady,’ Aunt Tattie replied clearly and in perfect truth. ‘I love bread and dripping, and whenever I eat it I actually prefer it with the crusts on. And if there wasn’t so much traffic I’d order Plumb to turn us about and take you up on your invitation.’
‘Yeah!’ the woman called up as the carriage moved on. ‘I bet you would an’ all, same as my farver is the King of Mesopotamia! Never mind, even so, God bless you, love! An’ your smashin’ dorter!’
But of course it was May Danby who won every heart in the Mall. While other young ladies were being jeered at and teased for being toffee-nosed and horse-faced by lads who even dared to jump up on the running boards on many of the carriages to hurl their ribald comments at the occupants before ducking away from the coachmen’s long horsewhips, May’s carriage was being mobbed by a following of men of all ages. Urchins, young tradesmen, old men, they all followed to stare at her, and they were not alone, for so too did many of the womenfolk all of whom were transfixed by the apparition smiling back down on them from her carriage. Most of the men if they were lucky enough to get alongside the coach whipped off their caps and hats and a look came into their eyes as if they were in the presence of something divine, becoming quite tongue-tied at the same time.
The crowd around her carriage steadily grew as it became held up in the worst of the traffic, at one point remaining completely stationary for nearly a quarter of an hour. While it was, the children at the back of the crowd were hoisted onto their fathers’ or their older brothers’ shoulders so that they might catch sight of the face of an angel. Even young women begged their beaux or their fathers or their brothers to lift them up bodily in their arms in order to catch a glimpse of the beauty passing them by, while others more adventurously climbed the many trees lining the Mall and those near the palace gates to try to see someone who was being described as avowedly the most beautiful girl anyone surely had ever seen as she was making her slow progress towards the royal palace.
At the palace the waiting was as bad as it had been in the Mall, as those to be presented were sorted out and then shepherded through a succession of rooms known, Aunt Tattie told Portia en route, not without good reason as the pens. Like all the other presentees Portia was too nervous to take much notice of her palatial surroundings and too concerned with the state of her train which again like everyone else she was forced to carry over one arm not unlike a pile of washing. Finally everyone gathered outside the door of the audience chamber itself and at once set to yet again to make another series of final adjustments to their gowns and their general appearance.
‘Be careful most of all, Emily, of not leaning too far forward wiv vat bosom of yours,’ Daisy warned her protégée sotto voce, having circumvented the final waiting in front of the palace, because she had the entrée to the private door by courtesy of the Queen herself. ‘Ve year I was presented ve girl before me did precisely vat and bofe her breasts fell out, much to ve delight of all ve gentlemen. And do try to carry yourself somewhat straighter. At times you resemble noffing less van an old woman who has been delivering firewood to a large estate all her life.’
As Emily checked her dress to make sure everything was as it should be, Daisy eyed the ever-growing crowd of young women to sort out the opposition.
By this point in the Season all the beauties had been identified as had all the no-hopers, although there were as usual some latecomers, American girls mostly, who hoped their late entries onto the scene might make up for any other shortcomings they might have. She soon noticed Portia who to Dais
y’s surprise because she had already categorized her as no great beauty was beginning to stand out in a crowd. Her astonishment was however mitigated by the fact that she saw no visible sign of her arch rival Augustine Medlar, an absence for which Daisy, for once, was quite unable to account.
Of the famous Danby girl too she could catch no sight, a failure which irritated Daisy because she had already heard the girl was present and looking, so they said, even lovelier than ever, a rumour which Daisy chose to ignore since she considered it her right, in view of her own undoubted fame, to be the best and most reliable judge of great beauty, and until she gave out her opinion on the matter people might be allowed to think what they liked but what they thought would have no validity whatsoever, as everyone knew.
She could not know it, but the reason Daisy was unable to catch sight of May was because she was being deliberately hidden from her. Alice Danby had taken the precaution of making sure that she and May kept their distance from the Evesham faction, having been so advised by letter by Herbert Forrester. To his mind, he wrote, there was nothing such a woman would not stoop to, and if she considered May to be in any way a threat to her or her faction she could well be capable of causing her some sort of harm or arranging some kind of trumped-up disgrace. He was most particular about the day of her actual presentation which he wanted to go without a hitch. He also wanted both May and Alice to steal thunder, which was why he had secured the loan from a gambling acquaintance of some fabulous jewels and a tiara which was rumoured to be even more stunning than Daisy’s own. His acquaintance who was holding them as collateral for a series of unpaid gambling debts was only too willing to help his friend Herbert Forrester, having been financially stood up by the late George Lanford who had failed to honour some sizeable baccarat liabilities.
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