by John Kessel
I crossed to the hotel entrance and stood there, ten feet from the door, prepared to loiter as long as it took until he might appear. As I watched, two men stepped out of the building. One of them hailed a street lad and sent him to fetch a cab. The other man, I saw, was Victor.
They stood together, Victor and the other, who must be his friend Henry. They were elegantly dressed, in dove-gray pantaloons, polished boots, caped greatcoats with high collars, and beaver hats. Though they were dressed for an evening on the town, Victor did not look very pleased at the prospect, unlike Clerval, who chatted ebulliently with him.
My first impulse was to flee. But I checked myself, and instead stepped closer.
“I’m so pleased you have agreed to come along this evening,” Clerval said in French. “We won’t be in London much longer, and it has done you no good to isolate yourself in your room.”
Victor, half-turned away from me, murmured some reply I could not hear. Then the boy came back down the street with a cab. When it pulled to a halt opposite them, Henry gave the boy a coin and began to climb inside. I stepped forward, intending to let Victor get a good look at me so that he might know that he could not escape his promise.
Before I could do so, Victor climbed into the cab and shut the door. I heard Henry say to the cabman, “Cavendish Square, number sixteen,” and the cab rolled away down the crowded street.
I followed, but in seconds it had reached the end of the block and turned.
I stood stupidly in the misting rain on the corner of St. James’s Street and Piccadilly, my satisfaction at finding him dissipated.
Where was Victor bound? What had he accomplished over the last months toward giving me an Eve to my misbegotten Adam? Within me anger swelled, and curiosity. I could do nothing to end my exile this night. I might return to the warehouse and try again tomorrow. I might wander the city streets. I might rob some rich man to augment my dwindling store of money. I stood in the midst of a city of a million human beings, alone.
I struck north up Bond Street in the direction that the cab had gone. As I walked, shoulders hunched, I did not bother to avoid pedestrians on the sidewalk. Let them avoid me, if they hoped to survive the night. It took me some time to find Cavendish Square, but even before I saw the number, it was obvious which of the tall, imposing private town houses that surrounded it was number sixteen.
A party was in progress. The windows were brightly lit, and coaches and drivers were lined up before its portico. Whenever new guests arrived and the broad front door opened, music wafted from inside. The people who entered were clearly persons of importance: members of Parliament, merchants, government officials, noblemen and women of every rank. The women wore elaborate hats. The young women were beautiful, the young men well made; some wore the bright scarlet jackets of the military.
I walked around the square, my eyes fixed on the windows of number sixteen. The rain increased as the night wore on. This served at least to drive indoors or into their coaches any servants who might have taken notice of me.
I lingered there a long time, waiting to for Victor to leave, my rage increasing. I recalled a second passage from that book about man’s creation, where Lucifer the fallen angel spies on Adam and Eve, his heart lacerated by envy:
Sight hateful, sight tormenting! Thus these two,
Imparadised in one another’s arms,
The happier Eden, shall enjoy their fill
Of bliss on bliss; while I to Hell am thrust,
Where neither joy nor love, but fierce desire,
Among our other torments not the least,
Still unfulfilled, with pain of longing pines!
After midnight the guests began to depart. The coachmen of the wealthy grew active, and one by one the chaises and landaus drew up to the door, the guests were helped into them, and they drove off. I could not approach any closer than the nearest corner, and I somehow missed when my creator and his friend left the party. I stood in the rain, a full-out downpour now, water streaming down my face like tears, unable to leave, watching the lovely women, protected by their parents, husbands, and lovers, pause beneath the portico, shivering against the cold, until a proffered hand took their own gloved hands, their privileged, slippered feet stepped up into their coaches, and they left.
THREE
Kitty had schemed for a week to visit the Egyptian Hall without a chaperone. Her argument was that she and Mary would attend at midday, and Mary would serve as chaperone. Mrs. Bennet was willing to grant the favor, but their aunt and uncle Gardiner, while acknowledging that the hall was one of London’s most popular attractions, pointed out that it had gained the reputation of being frequented by the stylish and the vulgar. Mrs. Bennet reminded her daughters that Mr. Collins was visiting that evening, and that Jane and Bingley would be there as well. She wished to conserve her strength for this party and could not go with them. Aunt Gardiner decided to remain at home with her sister-in-law, but her husband agreed to go with Kitty and Mary.
And so Mr. Gardiner and his nieces found themselves on a cold Tuesday in March on their way to the celebrated hall. As their cab made its way down Fleet Street, Mary was excited at the prospect of seeing the Annings’ ichthyosaur, said to be on display there. She did, however, wonder why Kitty wanted so badly to be unchaperoned. When they were girls, she would have understood it instantly as characteristic of Kitty’s and Lydia’s rebelliousness and therefore not in need of any explanation. But Kitty had sobered a great deal since then, and governed herself much better than she had at seventeen.
Bullock’s hall had been constructed in the Egyptian style popularized in the last decade, with massive post-and-lintel arches over the doors and windows, two huge human figures in Pharaonic dress above the entrance, and hieroglyphics on the facade.
Though at first sullen about the presence of their uncle, Kitty brightened as they joined the crowd of people at the entrance. “Please, if you would, Mary, converse with Uncle while I peruse the exhibits? I do not have much conversation in me today, and you seem to know how to speak with him so much better than I.”
It happened that Mary had a matter she wished to raise with their uncle, so she was glad to be able to speak with him while Kitty flitted ahead, hardly pausing to examine one exhibit before moving along to the next.
The sisters’ reactions to being in London in these earliest days of the season could not have been more different. Kitty’s spirits had risen every mile on the way from Lyme Regis to the city. Mary had suggested to her mother that she would be happy to return to Longbourn to tend to their father, who had not been well through the winter and had only recently resumed his station in his library, by his fireside, amid his books.
Woodleigh had written Mary upon his return to Exeter, a letter of apology for his questioning her faith, with a discussion of some new fossils that had been described in the latest number of the journal of the Geological Society. Mary did not know how much to weigh that final unpleasant evening against the interests they shared and the slim prospect of her ever meeting another man whom she might realistically imagine asking for her hand. His apology was well written and seemed sincere, even going so far as to moderate his opinion of Mary Anning and recommend that Mary take the time to see the ichthyosaur at the hall.
Mary supposed she could carry on a correspondence with him as well from the Gardiners’ home in London as from Longbourn, but she would have preferred not to be compelled to attend the balls and card parties that occupied so much of people’s time here. She had no desire to visit other ladies every morning or spend endless hours at the milliner’s when she would much rather be in Lackington and Allen’s bookshop. But Mrs. Bennet insisted that Mary remain in London, if only to provide a confidante for Kitty.
The citizens who had come to the hall on this day varied greatly in their deportment. Those few among them with the look of breeding were outnumbered by the common and the crass, by young men and women more interested in flirting than in the exhibits, by wits who demonstr
ated the truth that Londoners, in the public pursuit of indulgence, were no better than they ought to be.
Though he had made his fortune as a goldsmith, Mr. William Bullock fancied himself a naturalist. Among an excess of flummery, fraud, and bad taste, his hall offered some exhibits of natural history, including items collected by Captain Cook on his Pacific voyages. One room held a menagerie of exotic taxidermy: an elephant, two ostriches, and a zebra, beneath palm trees and tropical plants. Mary saw less to interest her there than in the side room that displayed the fossil that Mary Anning and her brother had discovered four years earlier. There, laid out on a table, were the four-foot-long skull of the creature and an almost complete skeleton, labeled CROCODILE IN A FOSSIL STATE. Mary examined it carefully, thinking of Anning standing in the street throughout the Lyme winter. She was probably at her table this very moment, seeking to sell some Dudley Locusts to tourists.
The vast majority of this day’s visitors were drawn by the latest attraction, the subject of many drawing-room discussions: a hall full of wax figures fashioned by a Frenchwoman, Madame Tussaud. The likenesses were primarily of French notables whose names were known to the common Englishman, and whom Tussaud might actually have seen in person in Paris, among them the writers Rousseau and Voltaire and the American genius Benjamin Franklin.
But the chief allurement was her depiction of the Reign of Terror. Tussaud claimed she had been assigned by the regicides of the French Revolution to document the executions of the aristocracy, and so she had created death masks from the severed heads of both Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. The tomblike Great Room of the Egyptian Hall displayed KING LOUIS XVI OF FRANCE AND HIS FAMILY AT DINNER. The king and his wife as they were in life, dressed in finery, sat at a table with their children.
Mary and her uncle stood amid the onlookers, reduced to some quiet as they considered the poignant scene: Antoinette, her older, dignified husband, their daughter, and their son, the unfortunate prince Louis-Charles, who, though he did not lose his head in the revolution, died in captivity at the age of ten—all of them so real that that they might almost be alive.
But not quite, Mary thought. Something of their skin, their glass eyes, their dead hair, made it impossible to mistake these creations for human. She was impressed by the skills of the artisan who had created them, but she wondered at the reports people had given that these models were indistinguishable from life. It showed that people could convince themselves of things that, in a sober moment, they would recognize were not true.
Mary found herself, with her uncle, in the sort of privacy one might enjoy in a room surrounded by strangers. Uncle Gardiner had made his fortune in importing and owned a warehouse not far from his home in Gracechurch Street, but as a young man he had read law. His knowledge of tariffs and his connections in government served him well, as did his reputation as a man whose word could be trusted.
His broad acquaintance with men of business and law in London went back many years. Mary took this opportunity to ask him if, in his dealings, he had ever encountered Mr. Woodleigh.
“Woodleigh? I believe I have heard this name.”
As they strolled from the royal exhibit to one of the others, Mary said, “He worked in the exchequer’s office in Mr. Pitt’s first term.”
“Ah, yes,” said her uncle. “I recall hearing of him, though I never had any business with the gentleman. Mr. Woodleigh seemed more a politician than a man of the law. I do believe he made a goodly fortune for himself through some Irish business venture.”
He cast a penetrating eye on Mary. “This is, I believe, the gentleman of whom your mother has spoken? You made his acquaintance in Lyme? He has written you, I believe?”
“He has.”
“Well, I cannot judge his character, my dear, except as I have heard him spoken of by others. It is not unheard of for a politician to make his fortune based on the privileges available to one who holds office. In the case of Mr. Woodleigh, I do not know the details of his business arrangements, but I have never heard anything that would stamp him other than an honest man.”
“But absence of a bad report is not the same as a good one.”
“True enough.” They had come to a likeness of Lord Nelson. Mr. Gardiner gazed at the wax figure, a handsome man in the uniform of an admiral emblazoned with decorations, a red sash crossing his breast. The right sleeve of the figure’s blue jacket was pinned up, indicating his lost arm. “If you wish me to do so, I shall inquire among my acquaintances. I should be able to tell you more about his public reputation. But as for his personal qualities—that is something you must judge for yourself.”
Mary did not know how to judge. Her mother, despite the rough seas of their dinner in Lyme, was happy to call him a match for her—whatever his failings as a suitor, Mary was lucky to attract any interest at all. Regardless of the name of the groom, Mrs. Bennet would be eager to consider what she might wear to Mary’s wedding.
“Thank you, Uncle,” said Mary. “If you would make such inquiries, I would be grateful.”
“Nothing is easier,” Mr. Gardiner said, smiling. “Now, let us move on from these sad scenes. I confess that the sight of so many people cut down before their time conjures up melancholy thoughts. Where has Kitty got to?”
Mary and Uncle Gardiner moved to the next room, and the one after, but did not find Kitty. Uncle Gardiner suggested that Mary might return to the main hall while he looked in at the smaller rooms.
Back in the chief exhibition hall, Mary wove between the groups gathered around each display of wax figures. As she circled around two dandies commiserating with two young women over the madness and cruelty of the French revolutionaries, she spied Kitty in a corner speaking with a gentleman. It was Jonathan Clarke, Kitty’s suitor from eight years before.
A week earlier, the Bennets and Gardiners had been invited to a card party, and had been surprised to find when they arrived that Mr. Clarke and his wife, Margaret, were also in attendance. Kitty seemed to accept his presence with equanimity and had shared a table with Margaret Clarke during the evening with no sign of distress. Mary had been impressed by her aplomb. On the carriage ride back to Gracechurch Street, however, Kitty complained of not being warned of their attendance, and of the humiliation of having to pretend she felt nothing. She had given Mary the impression that Clarke would be the last person on earth she hoped to see again.
Mary stood at a distance, observing them. Clarke spoke to Kitty with some urgency. Kitty’s head was bowed, her back half-turned to Mary. Clarke’s hand rested fleetingly on her forearm. She looked up into his face. He finished what he was saying, touched her cheek, and strode away.
Kitty watched him leave. After a moment she put her hand to her cheek, sighed, and turned. She saw Mary and went pale.
She collected herself and approached.
“Wasn’t that Mr. Clarke?” Mary asked.
Kitty looked Mary in the eyes. “Yes, it was.”
“This is the height of recklessness. What possible reason might you have to speak with him that would require such an assignation?”
Kitty laughed shortly. “Assignation? I met him by chance. We merely talked.”
“About what?”
“Good Lord, Mary. No one seeks to ruin my reputation.”
“We must govern our impulses, Kitty.”
“Govern our impulses? You sound like Lizzy. ‘Be less impulsive,’ she tells me. ‘You don’t wish to end up like Lydia.’ ”
“It is good advice.”
“Lizzy has a husband; she can afford to sit back and judge the character of the men she thinks appropriate. In a month I will be thirty years old.”
“There is no future in your keeping company with a married man.”
“No. I suppose I must keep company with Mr. Collins,” Kitty said. She tugged at the button on the wrist of her glove.
Mary was struck by the injustice of Kitty’s words. At least Lizzy and Jane had taken an interest in Kitty; they had brought her into the
ir homes for months at a time, and put her in the way of any number of eligible men, while they were content to let Mary live at Longbourn, the sole object upon which their mother might inflict her nerves. As far as Jane and Lizzy were concerned, Mary might retire into spinsterhood without a sigh.
“You think me a fool,” Kitty said, more softly. Her eyes were an appeal.
“You are my sister,” Mary said. “And I understand how lonely one can get.”
Before Kitty could respond, Uncle Gardiner bustled up to them.
“There you are,” he said. “My lovely nieces. I don’t know how I would have explained to your mother had I misplaced both of you!”
The rapidity with which Kitty composed herself made Mary’s head spin. Kitty took their uncle’s arm. “I am sorry, Uncle. There is no cause whatever for worry.”
“No worry, my dear.”
“We should go now,” she said. “Mother will want us at home.”
“Have we seen a shilling’s worth of wonders yet?” he asked.
“At least a shilling’s worth,” said Mary.
Lord Christopher Henry’s ball was one of the first great displays of the season and would be attended by two hundred persons of significance, including Robert Sidwich of Detling Manor, who possessed a fortune of six thousand pounds a year, and toward whom Mrs. Bennet directed Kitty’s attentions as Wellington had aimed his cannon against Napoléon’s marshals in the Peninsula.
The weather was not promising. The leaden skies pressed down like a lid over London’s coal smoke, with no hint of the coming spring. In the carriage from Aunt Gardiner’s home, Mrs. Bennet insisted that Kitty take the lap robe against the chill. Despite the fact that it had begun to rain, they arrived at number 16 Cavendish Square at precisely the ideal fifteen minutes after the eight p.m. beginning of the ball.
A servant in livery took their coats, and Mrs. Bennet, accompanied by Kitty and Mary, entered the long drawing room on the second floor, where Lady Henry and her daughters greeted them. The carpets had been removed and the polished wood floors gleamed. Three large chandeliers hung festooned with candles. A fireplace with an ornate mantel of green marble centered one long wall. Around the perimeter of the floor, chairs were arranged. The orchestra of pianoforte, two violins, cello, and bass viol occupied a rear corner, partially screened by potted plants. Adjoining the ballroom were a sitting room for refreshments and a library for cards and other entertainments for the older guests.