The afternoons are my favorite time of day, spent in gentle contemplation of words and action, locked in my tiny closet, my mind in a different world. My evenings are a more concentrated and exciting version of the mornings. Only this time we are all far more vain, examining the fall of robes in the full-length glass, straightening hair, checking teeth. Mr. Elliston says we should be assuming character when not on stage, but only beginning actors comply with this rule. The rest of us wait until we stand behind the wings, minutes before we are to make an entrance. We spend the time when not on stage informing those not at the morning’s rehearsal of the news exchanged. And every now and again the call boy enters the room, threatening to blow his whistle if we are too slow to respond, calling actors by their characters. For the purposes of Henry VIII I am Anne Boleyn and will be called to the stage with Cardinal Wolsey, Lord Sands, ladies and gentlemen, and the king.
One morning I am called to rehearsal. I arrive early in spite of a bad previous night with my sister keeping me awake after I returned from performing. I take my seat, and before long Elliston announces he will begin with the king and his men. I am left sitting in the dark theater with Mrs. Bland. The theater is much like a family, for where else would one be thrown together with all manner of people of different ages and characters?
Now I have heard many stories of Mrs. Bland. That she does not wash nor brush her hair. That her husband left her and that she works on the streets after our evening performance. That her children have left and no longer speak with her. I believe it is true that Mrs. Bland cannot be relied upon to attend rehearsals and that Mr. Elliston has lowered her pay so he will no longer have to impose fines. When I sit next to her I smell the sourness of soiled linen. Her hair hangs down her back in a long silver plait that is oily and stiff as horse hair. But when I look into her face, I see unbearable sadness.
“Miss Smithson,” she nods her head to me.
“Good morning, Mrs. Bland.”
“Miss Smithson . . . I was young once,” she says. And I do not know how to reply.
“But now I am old and my day is done. I will work ’til I am dead, Miss Smithson.” And at that she clutches her chest and a loud wail emanates from her mouth. Briefly, the men on stage pause and look in our direction. Then they return to their work. I wait for Mrs. Bland to stop sobbing but she does not. After some time, I touch her arm and the skin is all oil like lard.
“Mrs. Bland, may I take you home?” I ask.
“Much obliged,” she sobs.
Mrs. Bland’s lodgings are in Cheapside, a part of London I have never been before and quite far from the center of town. Fares are expensive and it is more usual for me to walk, but with Mrs. Bland’s frail state I pray I have enough coins to pay our journey. In the carriage I try to calculate how much it will cost and whether or not I will have enough money to pay the fare back. If I miss the rehearsal of any of my scenes, I will be fined. Our driver raises his eyebrow when Mrs. Bland gives directions. As we set off, she sobs and moans, “Oh, my pretty. Oh, my pretty.” I wonder what she means and if she remembers I am there. Mrs. Bland reminds me of the ladies I used to visit in Father Barrett’s poorhouse. I tell myself she is not to be feared.
I pay the driver, and he tips his cap in my direction. I jump down the steps to the dusty street and help Mrs. Bland wobble down tentatively, gripping my hands as though I am a piece of wrought iron railing. “Much obliged, much obliged,” she says, and I wonder if it is me she speaks to. Her hands shake so hard that she cannot unlock the door; I take her key and force it to turn. With a great creak I push the door open and we are inside a house that is dark and damp. And then she is making her way up some stairs, gripping the banister and pausing after each step.
“This is the last time I take the likes of you.” I can make out the sharp features of a woman standing in the doorway.
“A quarter’s rent, you owe. And still no thanks. One more month, and if you don’t pay your bed is on the street. If you’d so much as mentioned your profession you would never’ve set foot in my house.”
“Oh, my pretty. Oh, my pretty,” she replies, breathlessly pulling herself up the stairs.
I am struck by the horror of Mrs. Bland’s room. The sheets are gray and crumpled, and when I pull them back to make her bed I see bloodstains like rust. On the carpets there are rotting apple cores, flakes of paint off the walls, and clumps of hair. Large cracks creep down the walls.
“Respect, Miss Smithson,” Mrs. Bland says, remembering my presence and forgetting her own grief.
“If you respect your profession, it will respect you. If not, marry a nobleman and be done with the stage to keep an eye on him. Men must be watched. Mrs. Jordan was a cousin of mine, you know. The great Mrs. Jordan, Queen of Comedy.” She grins as though she has said something clever, and I remember my father speaking of Mrs. Jordan of Drury Lane. “Gave the king ten children and still he would not marry her. One babe a year for ten years and still worked. Paid her own way and more, never met the king’s family. She died alone, you know. In France, hiding from her creditors. Gave her children all she had. Gave her life for those children.”
She sits on her bed and begins undressing. I do not know what more to do for her. I look around the room once more. I wonder whether Mrs. Jordan was ever happy.
“Good afternoon to you, Mrs. Bland.”
“Yes,” she says.
The next morning when I arrive for rehearsal, Elliston hands me a playbill:
On Saturday next
Will Occur
A Variety of Popular Entertainments
THE PROFITS
Of which will be appropriated to the FUND
Now faring for the immediate Assistance of the
EXTREME TEMPORARY DISTRESS
Of several
Provinces of Districts
of
IRELAND
I smile but cannot speak on account of my tears.
For the rest of the week, Molly O’Brien is in my dreams. It is as though she herself arrived in the envelope with her words. At first I dream that I am a child again. We run past Bridie and Mrs. Baird, and they smile and wave to us. Everywhere I look there are familiar faces whose names I have not spoken for ten years. Then I dream of traveling back to Ireland. For days I travel by coach toward Wales, and then I take a sailing ship from Holyhead to Dublin and another mail coach through Limerick to Ennis. After all that traveling I feel as though I have been beaten. Ireland must be the farthest place on earth. And there is Molly, standing in a long cloak, thin hair pulled back and face covered in summer freckles. She is thin with fine bones. She smiles and runs toward me.
I do not perform in the Irish benefit concert. At first when Elliston informs me, I cannot hold back my disappointment. But then he tells me I am to rest that evening and may attend the performance if I wish. I think to myself that the English will give more easily to the poor Irish if they do not have to see one paraded before their very eyes.
There is great excitement at our lodgings as we prepare for the concert. I have two weeks without upcoming performances and feel at liberty to take an afternoon to visit Oxford Street with my mother. I wear one of my white satin gowns for performing and lend a muslin one to my mother. And though it is long since she performed, my mother gives a very good performance of a Lady on a Shopping Expedition, and together we examine the fine shades of satin and the latest styles. Then we find a small fabric shop, dark and dingy, and turn up our noses at the seamstresses there. I select a gold satin and my mother chooses bottle green, which she says is more becoming to a lady of her age. Somehow she has managed to save a few pennies each month, denying herself tea and butter, for an occasion such as this. For five days and as many nights my mother is bent over her sewing until we have beautiful gowns to wear lest anyone accuse us of being poor Irish at the benefit concert.
“Harriet, will you help me dress?” Anne asks.
She has a gown in pale pink that must have been mine once, and I manage to
button and pin it tight enough to fit. I wipe her face with a wet cloth, and the coolness brings color to her cheeks. I ask her to keep still as I pull the rags from her hair. I can feel her softening, warming to my touch.
“Will you try a new style?” she asks. I am inexperienced at arranging the hair of another. I smile. “I cannot be trusted, Anne, but I will try!”
I separate the thick curls into thinner wisps and pin them around her face. The curls framing her face soften her hard and pinched appearance which comes from being so thin. She smiles, and I step back in surprise for I glimpse a woman’s beauty within.
When Joseph arrives home from work there are damp round patches where he has tried to remove the stains from his doublet. My mother refrains from asking him about his recent ventures, and I know this means she intends to enjoy the evening. It is with great lightness that we step from Mrs. Simpson’s lodgings above the apothecary into our awaiting carriage.
It is not often that I am in the audience during an evening performance at Drury Lane. At dress rehearsals we are permitted to sit at the back of the dress circle and observe the entire play, making sure to enter during our own scenes. It is at such moments that the drama really comes to life and we see the play in its entirety, all the pieces slotted together to form a whole. But during dress rehearsals we do not always have the benefit of the full lighting. On nights when I am not required at the theater I prefer to lose myself in a book rather than be reminded of my everyday toil by watching my friends.
We arrive early to avoid the crowds and make our way up the stairs to our box for the evening. I nod to the ushers as we pass. In our box, Joseph and my mother discuss news of Ireland, and before long I am lost. The first play for the evening tells the story of the heroic John Bull. I read on my playbill that this is to be followed by “By way of Epilogue—The Birth, Parentage, Christening, Marriage, and other Family Misfortunes of Denis Brulgruddery, by Mr. Johnstone.” This is a grand epic, complicated and full of characters. The men are rough and stupid, the women whine. It seems that the English will not resist the temptation to laugh at our expense. During this performance I notice that the house is only half full. They will barely cover costs. The poor Irish will receive nothing from this empty gesture.
I close my eyes and fancy that Father Barrett sits next to me, laughing at my father on the stage and holding my hand to make sure I am still there. I do not know if I ever attended the theater as a child. But suddenly I am a small girl again, sitting as tall as I can in Smithson’s theater in Ennis. And there is my father in front of me, clutching his belly in the role of Autolycus the Ballad Singing Peddler in The Sheep Shearing, singing about “the pretty, ugly, black-haired, red-haired, six-feet, three-feet pale-faced, plump-faced, dainty, dowdy ladies that were smitten with his person” to a roaring crowd. And then I am only half present at Drury Lane when someone on the stage begins to sing some of Moore’s Irish Melodies. These take me back to Bridie’s kitchen, and I remember those days when my biggest decision was whether or not I would break off a piece of cake when she turned her back. I know that I have a weak singing voice, and I have never been trained in any other music. I could not read a note if my life depended on it. But as the words to “Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms” flow around the theater, I cannot stop my tears. I wonder if anyone will ever love me as the man in Moore’s song loves his wife. And whether, by then, I will still be young enough to have any charms at all.
TRAVELING TO LONDON presents an opportunity to renew my friendship with Eliza O’Neill. After a number of messages back and forth, my mother and Mrs. O’Neill manage to arrange a Sunday evening for us to visit the O’Neills.
“What is Eliza O’Neill really like?” Anne asks shyly in the carriage that afternoon.
“She is very kind, Anne. You shall like her.”
“But—is she not conceited at all? All of London is in love with her.”
We are greeted by Mrs. O’Neill who first kisses my mother.
“Marvellous to see you again, Hetta. And Anne, how much you have grown. Harriet, you have become even more lovely. Please do come in.”
The moment I step in the door it is as though I have traveled back to Dublin. The O’Neills have transported everything of home with them, and I note the same reading chairs and piano, the same bookcase.
“Sit down,” Mrs. O’Neill says. “The two Johns and Marcus will be in later. Eliza is in her room. Eliza! Your friends are here.”
When Eliza emerges from the corridor, I know immediately that something is wrong. She has grown pale and thin, she walks slowly and unsteadily.
“Harriet! It is so good to see you!” She smiles and leans over to embrace me. I am afraid that when I let her go she will fall.
“Eliza. What has happened? Is something—”
“I have been ill, but I am much better now. The doctor says I shall be able to return to the stage in a week or two. I am much stronger. Really.”
“She is better for seeing you folk,” her mother grins. “Will you take tea?”
After the meal, my mother remains talking with Mr. and Mrs. O’Neill in the kitchen while the rest of us retire to play charades by firelight. John and Marcus are particularly accomplished at this game. John wears a dour expression while Marcus shows a look of joy; they join their arms together in a frame. Eliza laughs and shouts, “The masks of tragedy and comedy!”
It is late in the evening when we return to our lodgings. With a little difficulty, for she is growing heavier, I carry my sister to bed and kiss her. “Good night, Mouse. See you in the morning,” I whisper.
I find my mother boiling the kettle over the coals.
“Mother, what has happened to Eliza? Did they tell you?”
“Harriet, it was a tragedy. A real tragedy. She fell in love with a young Englishman, an earl living in London. A very handsome young man, according to her mother. They became engaged to marry, and the young man’s father insisted on a year-long engagement while the man traveled abroad. During this time they were not permitted to correspond.”
“Not even letters?”
“No. And after some time, Eliza began to hear rumors about the earl’s behavior. Marcus and John accompanied her to Paris where they discovered him living a debauched life. Women, drink, gambling. Well, Eliza took to her bed immediately, and it was all they could do to get her home. For some days she was delirious with fever. Now she is slowly regaining her strength. Mrs. O’Neill said she had to lock her husband in the house to prevent him traveling to Paris with a knife. At least they discovered what that man was, Harriet, before it was too late. Breeding cannot buy propriety, remember that.”
SOME MONTHS LATER, Eliza returns to the stage at Covent Garden and I visit her there. I am young and quiet enough not to arouse suspicion, and the chaos backstage during performance is such that my presence remains largely unnoticed. Sometimes we have the entire first comedy during which to share our news or play cards. On one such evening a number of ladies of the company receive an invitation to perform with some of the local gentlemen.
Acting is a very fashionable pastime with gentlemen of the upper classes. The performances are strictly amateur, but since they do not wish their women to be exposed to the lower echelons of the acting world, actresses are frequently required to act alongside the gentlemen. They are usually well rewarded for their efforts and provided with a lively audience consisting mainly of the actors’ friends. The audience also includes wives of the less trustworthy gentlemen.
On one of these evenings Eliza O’Neill performs with Lord Wrixon Becher, MP of Mallow, County Cork. The play is the comedy The Belle’s Stratagem by Mrs. H. Cowley. The role of Letitia Hardy, one I have frequently had occasion to play myself, allows Eliza O’Neill to display her varied powers. Mrs. Cowley’s play gives the young woman the opportunity to woo the man of her choice, an unusual state of affairs. And I wonder whether it is Lord Becher’s decision that Eliza O’Neill should play Letitia Hardy to his Doricourt, thus
allowing him the pleasure of dancing with the foremost tragedienne of our time.
I observe the weakness of Lord Becher’s performance during one of the early rehearsals. I confess I take some pleasure in realizing that fortune cannot buy genius, and I wonder at Eliza’s patience as he forgets lines, makes gestures at the wrong moments, shows his back to the spectators, and trips over his bootlaces. Yet Eliza is tender with him as though he is a small child, smiling all the while and offering the gentlest advice. And while Eliza never says so, I wonder whether her treatment of Lord Becher is motivated by something other than loyalty to her profession, for her father is getting old and she herself is stiffer than she was in earlier youth. She is nearing thirty, and I believe her family is growing anxious about her future. I have heard rumors that John O’Neill asks a high price for the professional services of his daughter, and he is highly skilled at making the most of every opportunity.
It is some time before I am in a position to discuss Lord Becher with Eliza; I long for the intimacy we enjoyed in Dublin. I watch him garland her with flowers and small gifts. It is near impossible to guess Eliza’s interest for she is a very good actress with a genuinely kind heart. I stop attending backstage at Covent Garden for my presence is little noticed even by Eliza herself.
Ophelia's Fan Page 12