Life Mask

by Emma Donoghue

  'Come now, you know I don't open the post; it would take up too much of the day.'

  She wasn't in the mood for bons mots.

  'My dear Miss Farren,' said Sheridan with a flicker of his famous charm, 'pray excuse my surliness. You see, I haven't had so much as a glass of Madeira yet today and it's past noon.'

  She found herself beginning to smile.

  'You know, I have under me a company,' he went on, 'which consists of forty-eight actors, thirty-seven actresses, twenty dancers—two of them children, what's worse—thirty dressers, fourteen doorkeepers, seven box keepers, seven office keepers, four lobby keepers, three messengers, three box inspectors, two numberers, two pensioners, two prompters and one treasurer. That's not including the musicians, porters, scene builders, candle trimmers, fruit-sellers ... Need I go on?'

  'You may if you like, but it's not to the purpose'—and Eliza took the crisp manuscript out of her pocketbook.

  He put up his hands like a shield. 'I give you my full endorsement to talk to King about it.'

  But the poor old manager had little power at Drury Lane. 'Couldn't you mention the matter to Cumberland, playwright to playwright?' she asked flatteringly.

  'Did you hear about the time he brought his children to see my School for Scandal' Sheridan asked, 'and when they laughed he called them little dunces? It was rather unfair of him, for I'd just been to see one of his tragedies and laughed from beginning to end.'

  Eliza let out a giggle, despite herself. And Sheridan had his hand in the small of her back, and she was outside the door and the key was twisting in the lock.

  By the time she met Cumberland in the Green Room for the appointed private rehearsal, she'd decided to lose her temper. 'No, I haven't forgotten to learn my lines, like some neophyte,' she told the playwright, thrusting the script into his hands. 'I've informed Sheridan that I have no intention of performing your Lady Rustic.'

  Cumberland's sprouting eyebrows shot up. 'Do I need to remind you, madam, how much glory has been showered on you for acting in my other plays?' His voice was at its most chillingly refined and she remembered that he was a Cambridge-trained scholar. 'Wasn't it in my West Indian that you made your début nine years ago? And didn't you shine as Lady Paragon in my Natural Son?'

  'Lady Paragon was a shining part,' she snapped. She struck an archly menacing pose and quoted, "' When love holds the whip, reason drops the reins!'

  The playwright's mouth twitched with pleasure.

  'Write me more good lines, sir, and I'll win you more glory.'

  'You argue like a spoiled child, Miss Farren, if I may say so.' He closed her hands over the script.

  She slapped the air with the pages. 'Lady Rustic is a prudish simpleton squiress. She's entirely devoid of wit and sparkle.'

  Cumberland sighed. 'No character played by the famous Miss Farren can ever lack those charms.'

  'Flattery's a weak currency in this establishment,' she told him, letting her eyes scan the drab walls. 'We hear a lot of it and find it won't pay the rent. Why don't you ask Sheridan to give this part to Mrs Jordan?' she added cuttingly.

  Cumberland snatched the pages back from her. 'All right, then,' he growled. 'What would you have me do to my poor play?'

  'Move my introductory scene to Act Two, where it'll stand out more, and polish up my exchanges, that's all,' Eliza ordered, sweeter now. 'Write me an epilogue too, won't you? Give me some memorable sallies, a few tags I'll hear quoted at parties.'

  'Oh, that's right, you move in exalted circles nowadays,' he said coldly. 'She-manager at the Richmond House Theatre, aren't you, and always hobnobbing with the Beau Monde?'

  A cold thought struck Eliza on her way out of the room. Once Derby's friends knew that he was alienated from the actress, why would they take any further interest in her? Mrs Damer will, she comforted herself.

  In the dressing room Sarah Siddons was sitting with her face in her cupped palms. 'What is it?' asked Eliza. Could one of the actress's children have died?

  'I am perfectly well,' said Mrs Siddons, looking up owlishly, 'merely gathering my forces in preparation for performance.'

  Eliza repressed a retort. She thought of herself as a serious, hard-working performer, but sometimes Siddons made her feel like a mere fan flutterer.

  'There's a message for you,' said her mother eagerly, fishing an envelope out of her work-basket.

  The paper was creamy, expensive, and the red wax was sealed with a strange blunt mark, like a nail. Eliza cracked it.

  8 Grosvenor Square

  My dear Miss Farren,

  It was so delightful to meet you by happenstance this morning.

  Perhaps you might give your bergère its first airing at my house

  on Wednesday at five? An intimate little dinner; just half a

  dozen of our mutual friends.

  Did that mean what Eliza thought it meant: Derby? How crafty Mrs Damer was. No, Eliza couldn't go, it was impossible. The awkward conjunction of it, the mortifying feelings on both sides...

  I remain always your admirer & obedient servt,

  A.D.

  IN HER HOUSE on Grosvenor Square, the sole Sculptress of Renown in this or any nation (as a newspaper called her recently, not that Anne cared for flattery and she loathed the word sculptress) had been up since six, wearing a plain skirt and jacket like some washerwoman. She had to rise at such an unfashionable hour to get any work done, before the danger of unexpected calls. Not that visitors ever minded finding her in her filthy old dress and apron; indeed, they were usually charmed to come into her workshop and watch her go to it with vigour, so long as they could be accommodated with a dish of tea, the dust being so very parching, and might they trouble her to explain the mythological significance of the wreath, and the purpose of those little holes she was boring, and however did she manage to lift such heavy tools? Anne could always have Mrs Moll tell a mere acquaintance that the lady of the house wasn't at home, but friends and family (who knew her daily regime) were not so easily put off. She'd tried hinting that she worked best alone, but her intimates—one and all devoted connoisseurs of virtu and the beaux arts—took no notice.

  Fidelle danced around the workshop like a butterfly in the form of a dog. 'No scrabbling in the wet clay,' Anne warned her. 'And I'm not modelling you today, so there's no use your curling up on the stool so becomingly.' She considered the half-blocked-out marble of the Countess of Ailesbury on the high table and compared it with the fired terracotta model. Her mother had been a famous beauty, but today, as Anne examined the lines of the jaw (simplified somewhat in the modelling, to bring out a timeless classicism) she was struck by a tough, steely quality. She'd have to be careful to soften the lines a little in the marble version; she didn't want to disturb her parents with a hatchet-faced bust for the stairwell at Park Place.

  Anne always found it so distracting to have to worry about the feelings of her model, when she should be serving nothing but art. In some ways it would be easier to use strangers—hired paupers, even—as models, but she knew that she wouldn't be half so impassioned about doing a portrait if she didn't care about its subject. For instance, Richmond wanted her to model his favourite foxhound 'before he's obliged to cross the Styx', as he put it gruffly, but Anne meant to find some excuse, as she had in the case of Walpole's appalling Tonton, who was always leaving messes on sofas; she wasn't in the business of grinding out cats and dogs to order.

  She checked a pointing mark and picked up a claw chisel. Now, what had she been trying to do with the angle of her mother's left eyebrow?

  In the back of her mind, as her hammer tapped, Anne fretted over the preparations for today's dinner party; servants always forgot something if one didn't check every little detail oneself. She dearly hoped she was doing the right thing. When Eliza Farren had revealed her estrangement from Derby, Anne had shied away from interrogating her for details. As for Derby, old friend though he was, Anne had always found it difficult to persuade men to talk about their innermost f
eelings. (Even her beloved Walpole had a habit of leaping brilliantly from the personal to the general.) The actress's relation to the Earl was mysterious to Anne, but she knew she wished them—and whatever there was between them—well. So she'd decided to take action in the form of a little dinner, which would bring them face to face. Though now she came to think about it, how could their dispute be cleared up over a noisy table? Oh, dear. Still, it was all she could think to try.

  Concentrate, Anne rebuked herself as her chisel skidded on a thread of metal in the marble. Strike for seven, rest for four.

  Many hours later Lady Mary picked her way through the workshop unannounced. 'Why, you've not even begun dressing yet,' she scolded smilingly.

  Anne felt that surge of sullenness known by all younger sisters. 'It's not three yet, is it?'

  'Five past! What astonishing filth,' said the Duchess, holding her Chinese silk skirts off the floor and revolving to show off her little bustle.

  'Well, stay outside then,' muttered Anne.

  'That reminds me, I've brought you a marvellous new goose grease and almond salve for your poor fingers; our Mrs Butchet cooked it up in the stillroom at Goodwood.'

  As her sister dug the little pot out of her hanging pocket, Anne closed her roughened hands over each other. It was as if her half-sister and she were of different species. Everything Anne found a struggle came easy to Lady Mary: marriage, for instance, or the endless social round, or the running of a great house. Griefs and frustrations never seemed to stick to her sister; they glided right off.

  'What are you wearing for dinner?'

  'Just a white lustring chemise with a plain muslin fichu,' said Anne a little defensively, 'and a yellow sash.'

  'Yellow, interesting,' said her sister neutrally. 'So who's coming? No bores, I hope.'

  THEY WERE ten to dinner. Derby was one of them, to his own surprise, because despite the probable humiliation of seeing Eliza, he hadn't been able to resist the invitation. At a quarter to five, when he went round the corner of Grosvenor Square to the narrow town house at no. 8, his stomach was clenched like a fist. (It was rare for him to walk much these days, except in his own long gallery; quite apart from the filth of most streets, Londoners were so fiercely assertive of their liberties that the Earl had once had a sailor refuse to give him the wall.)

  There was the actress in Mrs Darner's parlour, looking more beautiful than Derby remembered, in a straw milkmaid hat the width of a tea table, hung with lace. Less than two months since he'd seen her: it felt more like a year. Beside her sat her mother, gazing in satisfaction at the chandelier. Half the Richmond House Players were there: Mrs Hobart, Dick Edgcumbe, Sir Harry Englefield, with the Richmonds as Honorary Players, according to Mrs Damer, and her cousin Walpole to leaven the mix.

  Derby handed Mrs Hobart in to dinner. Mrs Damer waved him to a seat on the same side of the table as Eliza—so that he wouldn't have to meet or avoid her eye? he wondered. The sculptor didn't entertain very often, but when she did she ordered a good dinner: never less than a dozen dishes to each cover and nothing cheap or paltry. Derby cast his eye over the entrées spread out for the first cover: he spotted a lobster au gratin, a sauté of mutton with gherkins arranged with elegant geometry, some fricassées decorated with flowers, a soupe-maigre and three or four other side dishes, including baked tomatoes—a brave choice, since old-fashioned people still called them noxious to the health. Derby knew he was hungry, having ridden to Chiswick and back since breakfast, but the presence of the actress was causing a sort of blockage in his throat.

  Mrs Damer, at the head of the table with the Richmonds (as the highest-ranking guests) on either side, let her manservant pour her a glass of claret—a good expensive château claret, Derby noticed, tasting it. He liked to see someone of her sex enjoying a fine wine; most ladies drank only light things like peach ratafia or almond orgeat.

  The servants were carrying each dish round to offer it to the ladies. Derby picked up the one nearest him and peered at it. He had to say something to the actress, just to get it over with. 'Miss Farren, may I help you to what looks like a fricassée of duck?'

  'Capon, I believe,' Mrs Damer corrected him, smiling. Her eyes flicked up and down the table as he passed the dish to the actress. 'So. Our little theatre, or I should say yours,' she addressed her brother-in-law.

  'Without the Players,' said Lady Mary, 'what would it be but an empty building?'

  Mrs Hobart simpered and fanned herself.

  'I hear there's a play being written about you all,' remarked Walpole. 'No, no roast beef for me,' he told the whispering servant, 'my gout forbids it.'

  'That's right,' Edgcumbe chipped in, 'a farce, to be called Private Theatricals.'

  'Oh, yes, that's coming up at Covent Garden,' said Eliza, 'but I hadn't realised we were the butts of it.'

  'The best riposte,' suggested Anne Damer, spooning sauce on to her plate, 'might be for us to put on another show, even more successful than the last...'

  She caught Derby's eye. 'Richmond,' he asked, on cue, 'would you consider letting us mount another play next year?' He spoke a little hoarsely, afraid that Eliza might think his request was a way of procuring her company.

  'I don't see why not,' said Richmond, 'as the first was a success—'

  'A glittering triumph,' Walpole corrected him.

  '—apart from that pack of malcontent jackals outside, who cost me so much in plate glass.'

  Murmurs of embarrassed sympathy.'Belua multorum capitum, as Horace would say,' contributed Edgcumbe.

  Derby translated for the ladies' benefit: 'The mob is a many-headed monster. Is that boiled salmon, Sir Harry?' he added. It wasn't done to ask for a dish, but one could always throw out a hint.

  'Mm and very good it is.'

  One of the footmen scurried to bring it round to him. It was tasty but lukewarm, as always on these occasions; Derby had a fussy preference for hot food and when dining at home in Derby House he always had each dish carried up under a metal cover. (He'd given up the attempt at Knowsley, where the kitchen was ten minutes away from the dining room.)

  'We'd need tighter security next time,' Richmond went on. 'I'll hire a team of private police to patrol the building.'

  Lady Mary patted her husband on the cuff. 'Also, better ventilation.'

  'Yes,' said Eliza, 'it was rather hot.' She shook her head at the pommes de terre au gratin Dick Edgcumbe was holding out.

  'Stifling!'

  'The fieriest circle in Dante's Inferno,' contributed Walpole.

  'My paint melted into my eyes,' Mrs Hobart assured them.

  'Ventilation, certainly,' said Richmond, nodding, 'and I think I'll have Wyatt design a special little box for our royal visitors. Next time, perhaps the King and Queen will grace us with their presence.'

  Then Prinny couldn't be invited, Derby thought wryly; they could hardly coop Their Majesties up with their most rebellious child out of the whole thirteen and his unlawfully wedded wife. He could just imagine the monarch muttering through the performance in his twitchy way, going what what what? eh eh?.

  'What a tip-top plan,' cried Dick Edgcumbe. To his left, Mrs Margaret Farren produced a gappy smile.

  'Of course, it all depends on our manager,' Richmond said, turning to the actress. 'We can hardly demand the gift of her time and energies again—'

  'I do believe you can,' said the actress, laughing. Watching that perfect face, Derby felt slightly breathless. Did this mean he would have to do the gentlemanly thing and withdraw from the proceedings, claiming pressure of Party business? Or that she intended to treat him as any other of the Players? Or—could it be—that she had slightly softened towards him during their long parting?

  'Dare we face the public again, and the critics?' wailed Mrs Hobart.

  'Tish, tush,' said Lady Mary, 'you all loved it.'

  'Oh,' said Mrs Damer, 'but that review that said I moved my face too much...'

  'Nonsense, my child,' Walpole told her, 'you were as expressi
ve as the role demanded.'

  'Now you all know what it's like to be prey to the whims and megrims of the press," said Eliza.

  'I don't know how you bear it,' Derby told her. She looked back at him briefly, but her eyes were unreadable.

  'Have any of you read Cumberland's nasty piece in the European Magazine?' asked Walpole.

  'No, but I quarrelled with him only the other day,' said Eliza.

  'He mocks people of breeding for their feeble attempts to play at being actors—'

  Mrs Hobart let out a yelp of protest.

  '—and he deplores the hiring of professionals as managers, which is clearly a hit at you, dear Miss Farren,' said Walpole regretfully. 'Cumberland claims that when a lady of fashion is coached in all the trickery and airs of an actress whose own job is to ape ladies of fashion, the result is only the facsimile of a facsimile.'

  'I think we've heard quite enough of the playwright's malice,' said Mrs Damer, signalling to the servants to swap the first cover for the second.

  Over a selection of savouries and sweets, somehow they got on to the old debate about whether Woman's intellectual properties were as different from Man's as her physical ones. 'I don't mean inferior, exactly,' Dick Edgcumbe insisted, 'only distinct.'

  'In what ways?' asked the hostess.

  'Well—'

  Richmond stepped into the breach. 'She thinks, but he meditates. She improves, but he creates. She feels, but he acts.'

  'What balderdash,' said Mrs Damer, which caused a little hiatus.

  'Asparagus, madam?' Derby, not fancying the look of the pale peeled spears, limp on their bed of soaked toast, offered the dish to Mrs Hobart—and she accepted with enthusiasm. Mrs Damer could do with some more expert service, he thought; that was three times now that he'd been offered the same cod purée.

  'I hear William Beckford is back in England,' remarked Sir Harry Englefield.

  'The cheek of him!' Mrs Hobart fanned so hard that her front curls bobbed.