Life Mask

by Emma Donoghue

  'Not a bit of it, she's too short by a foot.'

  Sheridan identified a certain woman as the famously expensive Mrs Merchant and ran off with her outermost veil; she chased him round the room.

  Fox had declined to come tonight. Derby thought of him at home in St Anne's Hill, his face buried in Liz's lap. In her day she'd been the belle of just this kind of party; strange how people changed. Derby strolled around the outside of the cluster of ladies, thinking how convenient a mask was, because you didn't have to smile all the time.

  When at least half a dozen gentlemen had claimed to be certain about their captives and were demanding that the veils be lifted, the doors burst open. In filed the ladies they knew, barefaced: Mrs James, Mrs Merchant and the others. The gentlemen reeled back. Sheridan pulled the veil off the woman he'd picked out as Mrs Merchant and a broad stranger's face grinned back at him.

  'They're our maids,' shrieked Mrs James, helpless with laughter. 'It was Mrs Debralle's idea. They're all common servant girls and none of you idiots knew the difference. Ha ha!'

  In all the hilarity Derby slunk away through the corridors. It had been a clever trick and it left him oddly uneasy. If he could only find a footman and get his greatcoat, hat and cane, he could go home to Derby House.

  There was a shape ahead of him, moving fast. Something about the tall silhouette struck him; a fluid grace of moment. 'You,' he called, mannerless. 'Come here a moment.'

  The girl stopped and moved towards him cautiously. Not yet a woman, he thought; something indefinably young about her, though he could see nothing of her face through the Turkish draperies. He took her by one gloved hand.

  'Sir—' The voice came out high-pitched. He couldn't tell much from one syllable. With her other hand she reached up to pull off her veils.

  'No,' he said in a hiss, 'leave them, leave them. Please.' She was tall and moved gracefully, those were the only similarities. He knew that if she lifted her veil she would prove to be no more like Eliza Farren than ash was like wax. But she wouldn't lift her veil, she wouldn't do that to him, not tonight, not when he was so tired and confused and swollen and desperate for a little sweetness.

  The girl who was not Eliza let him lead her into an empty room, and sat down on a divan. When she was still she could be anyone; she smelt like young women did. Derby knelt down, like King Cophetua proposing to the beggar maid in the story. He turned her over, this girl who was not, could not, could never be Eliza, and kept his eyes on the fabric that covered her thick hair. He lifted all the layers of silk skirts in one bunch and took her hard. He worked fast; he wanted it to be over.

  IV. Cire Perdue

  From the French, meaning lost wax, a technique

  for casting by means of a wax model dissolved

  away by molten bronze.

  OUR forebears sang paeans to religion, to honour or to patriotism, but our softer generation knows no higher title than that of Friend. Even Love is not so highly rated by this paper's many correspondents, viz., love is cruel but friendship kind, love is quick but friendship lasting, love is a sharp arrow and friendship a caressing plume, love humiliates and friendship exalts, et cetera. However, of all that has been said in the praise of Friendship—that smokeless flame, that rose without a thorn—we respectfully submit that nine tenths is nothing more than HUMBUG.

  In the World today true friendship is as rare as a black swan. Among gentlemen, it is generally mere bottle friendship, a jesting, back-slapping sort of intimacy in which the parties spur each other on to new heights of profane filthiness. Among the female sex, where friendship has reached its zenith of romantic idolatry, it is all too often hypocritical and fleeting. That lady who boasts that she would sacrifice her life for her alter ipse, her other self, proves unwilling to give her a favourite fan, let alone surrender a lover. Even that much-vaunted quality of the fair sex, Sensibility, is friendship's enemy, as when Mrs Whatsit falls into illness, grief, or financial embarrassment, and her soi-disant friend Lady Who sends a note to say, My dearest, I would fly instantly to your side, were I not too prostrated by sympathetic distress to rise from, my bed.

  As for claims of platonic friendship between the sexes, they are chimerical; in such cases friendship is but a mask that passion wears to delude the World and sometimes even itself.

  —BEAU MONDE INQUIRER, May 1789

  ANNE RODE EVERY DAY IN HYDE PARK, BUT LIKED TO VARY her route there and back. Today she headed up North Audley Street; this north-west corner of Mayfair had only been developed in the last few years, since the government had ended indecorous public executions at Tyburn. Walpole was always marvelling at the speed with which a village in the middle of green fields (as he remembered his childhood Mayfair) had been transformed into a chessboard of mushrooming mansions and shining terraces; he declared there'd soon be one continuous street from London to Oxford.

  With a touch of her heel Anne turned her horse down Green Street and when she came to the Bow Window House she looked up at the parlour window. The sunlight was white, obscuring the glass, but she gave a little bow, just in case; sometimes Eliza would be sitting by the window, learning her lines. On Park Lane Anne followed the wall that blocked off Hyde Park; some of the more discerning residents were beginning to replace their sections with railings, she noticed, so they could admire the view. She rode in through the dilapidated Grosvenor Gate. 'Come,' she said to the stallion with a kick.

  She loved a canter; the jolt and flying of it, the air in her face. She'd go as far as Bugden Hill today, then sweep round by the Reservoir. The skies were clear; to the west she could glimpse a village that must be Kensington and Hampstead stood on its prominence to the north. Anne knew she was a creature of the city, it was the hub of everything that mattered, (art, politics and theatre, her friends, her independence), but sometimes she itched for real countryside. Not just some pretty green prospect, but a river without scum or dead cats floating in it; a mountain that took a day to climb; a wood large enough to get lost in.

  She was sweaty and breathless, in her tight cotton riding habit, as she brought the horse back to a trot. Turn home now, she rebuked herself, you've work to do. She went through the day in her mind: wash, breakfast, at least two hours of carving, then have her hair done and dress for an early dinner; afterwards she'd read or study one of her languages.

  An hour later, in her workshop, she was lining up her gleaming tools. The three kinds of chisel—the pointed punches, the claws with their fine teeth, the flats—and a gouge and a rounded bullnose for tricky details. The lump hammers, the rasps, the tiny files for crevices. Because stone dust got everywhere she wore a shabby wrapping gown, a big apron, soft boots and a huge mobcap that enclosed her hair. Fidelle was snoozing under an old blanket at her feet.

  On her left was the fired terracotta head of Eliza Farren as Thalia, finished in Roman style, with the draped and rounded-off bosom on a square socle over a waisted pedestal. Below the tide the inscription was simple: Anna.Damer.Lond.f.1789. On her right, clamped to a small, heavy table, was the marble block. One could find coloured marbles, but Anne disliked the distraction. This block was pure white statuary marble from Carrara, the quarry Michelangelo had used and the great ancients before him. Her old acquaintance John Flaxman in Rome had picked it out to her specifications; when she tapped it with her hammer she heard the clear bell tones that proved it sound. Flaxman was a fine sculptor; Anne thought it such a shame that he had to earn his living by overseeing the team who adapted ancient friezes for Wedgwood's china factory. She'd always "been grateful that her own talent was untrammelled by commerce.

  In the early days of Anne's career she'd limited herself to modelling in wax and clay. Even that was considered downright unfeminine; she'd lost count of the number of dowagers who'd told her it was messy, heavy work and wouldn't she be better off doing portraits in pastels (using holders so as not to dirty the hands), or painting flowers on ivory? She thought of her tutor Ceracchi, a Roman in London, and the day he told her she was rea
dy to pick up a chisel. How she'd shaken all over at the thought of wrecking that expensive, translucent cube of stone, though she'd paid for it herself with her widow's jointure. 'I can't,' she'd told him; 'I'm not strong enough.'

  She smiled now at the memory of her timidity. 'The great Michelangelo,' her tutor had told her, 'was no taller than this'—and he marked a line on his own chest, barely five feet off the floor. Then he'd put the chisel in her hand and closed her fingers round it. 'It's not a matter of the strength of the blow,' he went on, 'but the right way of holding the chisel.' He'd shown her how to place the edge and hit it decisively with her hammer, going with the grain, so the stone flaked off like butter, as if it wanted to fall.

  Anne closed her eyes for a moment, now, and told herself she could do this. Perhaps it was the deadline that was making her stomach so tight; she'd promised Agostino at the Royal Academy that she'd send Miss Farren's bust in for the Exhibition by the middle of June. She played for time, now, giving her flats an extra sharpening by wetting the York stone and pushing them along its length.

  She stared at the lovely milky mass of the marble, covered in faint black lines and pocked with holes. She'd already done the trimming with a wide pitcher chisel, and the pointing too. The terracotta model bore the black pointing marks at all the crucial places: temples, brows, corners of eyes, bridge and tip of nose, top and bottom of ears, jaws and chin. She always enjoyed the task of transferring the proportions to the marble, using a measuring frame and callipers and drilling to the exact depth needed. (Sam the footman came in to hold the cord drill steady while she pulled on the straps.) Then she'd done detailed charcoal drawings on every side of the block to guide her hand. Now it was only a matter of letting the chisels cut away the extraneous stone to reveal the goddess hidden inside.

  Today she'd start the blocking out—a satisfying, deep, cutting motion. Many sculptors found this task tedious and called in professional statuaries to do it. But Walpole had warned his goddaughter early on that she'd better do all the work herself, or risk accusations that she relied on male ghosts. She'd taken his advice; in her early years she'd sometimes used a fellow called Smith, but only for the menial tasks of lifting heavy things, wedging clay to get the air out and cleaning tools. No, she was better off quite alone.

  It had been many years now since she'd ruined a marble—breaking off Fidelle's slim, quivering paw—and had to start all over again. Stone was brittle and unforgiving. This was ridiculous, was Anne trying to scare herself? She'd learned anatomy as well as carving; she wasn't some untrained dabbler like the women one heard of, every now and then, for their minor achievements in wax or plaster; your Imitatrixes, as Walpole called them. She'd exhibited at the Royal Academy on four previous occasions. There was no reason for her spirit to quail.

  She set her punch to the spot that would become the crown of the head. Strike for seven, rest for four, that was the tradition; it saved one from having to think. She struck.

  ELIZA WAS being wooed in a rather overwhelming fashion. At first meeting Mrs Hester Thrale Piozzi had determined that they should be bosom friends. It was not a gradual sinking into intimacy, as with Anne, Eliza found; it was more like being tugged into a rapid gavotte. Short and plump, her face still handsome at almost fifty, Mrs Piozzi was a whirlwind. Despite having no advantages of birth, connections or fortune, she'd achieved a measure of fame as a lady of letters. She knew things about people. 'I write everything down in my commonplace book, that's the trick,' she boasted. 'I defy even your dear Mr Walpole to out-remember me.'

  She and Eliza were sitting in the Piozzis' comfortable three-storey brick farmhouse at Streatham, looking out across Tooting Common. Behind them her young second husband, Signor Piozzi, her caro sposo, played some delicate Gluck on the pianoforte. They were talking—as everyone was these days—about France, where the furious professional men of the Third Estate had renamed themselves the Assemblée Nationale. 'When the deputies found themselves shut out of their meeting place on the King's orders,' reported Eliza, 'they held their meeting in a tennis court and vowed not to disperse until their work's done.'

  Mrs Piozzi's lips twisted. 'The French nation was never a favourite of mine; the lower ranks are ignorant and the higher arrogant. As for selling them the 20,000 sacks of flour that Monsieur Necker's demanding—why, we may need it ourselves. Already this summer my own countrymen in Wales have been driven to riot over the price of bread!'

  Eliza was taken aback. 'But don't you think the starving, subjugated masses in France are worse off, having none of our British liberties?'

  'On the topic of liberty, I remember Doctor Johnson once said to me...' Sooner or later Mrs Piozzi always circled back to her late lamented friend. Eliza let her mind wander. 'Oh, yes, the wits of today seem a shabby race to one who was privileged to know Johnson and Garrick,' murmured Mrs Piozzi. 'But now the time has come, I feel, for the women to shine,' she added, brightening. 'Here we have you, Miss Farren; and dear Sally Siddons, at the very peak of your genius—and Madame Kauffmann, of course, the only woman painter who's dared to tackle monumental historical subjects. Mrs Inchbald's witty plays, and Mrs Cowley's—'

  'Your own books,' suggested Eliza.

  The old woman flapped her fan at her coyly. 'Some critics may sneer, but how can the exhibition of a God-given talent be unfeminine?'

  'How indeed?' said Eliza. 'My dear Mrs Damer often comes under fire for her high ambitions in sculpture—as if the shaping and polishing of marble weren't a perfect womanly art.'

  'But you, my dear, now you really are the most fascinating creature in London,' gushed Mrs Piozzi, seizing her hands.

  Eliza had to deflect many of her new friend's questions, for instance, about her childhood; she didn't fancy having the whole shameful narrative recorded for posterity in the commonplace hook. But above all, Mrs Piozzi was enthralled by the Derby connection. 'Only you, in this tarnished age of scandal, seem capable of inspiring such a pure devotion...'

  Eliza thought of the Earl, backstage at Richmond House two years ago, pebble eyes bulging, stuttering out his hopes of some kind of arrangement. 'Speaking of scandal,' she said to change the subject, 'could it possibly be true about Lord Bolingbroke?'

  'I believe so,' hissed Mrs Piozzi, unable to resist the bait. 'Fled to Paris—with his half-sister, who's in a certain condition—and not for the first or second time, either!'

  'No!'

  Mrs Piozzi sucked in her lips to form a tight seal. 'Female punctuation forbids me to say more, as Mrs Malaprop would say.'

  Eliza tried to imagine what it would be like to stagger outside the magic circle of the World; to make yourself an outlaw, or worse, a monster.

  But Mrs Piozzi had the mind of a terrier. 'What a repellent contrast with your own platonic friendship with Lord Derby,' she murmured. 'You are all man desires in woman, but of a type so refined that the desire itself becomes ethereal.' With a modest expression she mentioned that she'd written a poem on the subject of her new friend's charms. It was in Italian, the language of the heart. 'Oh, but don't you read Italian? What a shame; do you hear that, caro sposo?' she threw in Gabriel Piozzi's direction. 'I suppose Miss Farren's never had the leisure for concentrated study, but you must converse with her sometimes in your beautiful tongue.'

  The English translation arrived at Green Street before supper; Eliza marvelled at the energy of Mrs Piozzi, who managed to run a household, write books, quarrel with her daughters and still find time for fripperies. She read it aloud to her mother.

  Lines on 'La Farren'. From the Italian.

  In that roguish face one sees

  All her. sex's witcheries;

  Playful sweetness, cold disdain

  Everything to turn one's brain,

  Sparkling from expressive eyes...

  'Why, it rhymes as good as if it was English in the first place,' marvelled Mrs Farren. 'But she does gush on, rather.' Eliza resumed satirically.

  Sure destruction still we find,

  Still w
e lose our peace of mind,

  Touched by her half-trembling hand,

  Can the coldest heart withstand?

  Her mother's forehead was wrinkled. 'One would think it from a gentleman, it's so very ardent.'

  'Oh, that's just what poems are like, Mother. It's far smoother than the ones I've ever received from men, I must grant Mrs Piozzi that. I suppose the polite thing would be to reply in verse,' Eliza added grimly.

  'Very true, but don't look for any help from me,' said Mrs Farren, ringing for the maid to clear away the game pie.

  Eliza groaned. 'I find anything more than a couplet a strain. I'll have to pop over to Grosvenor Square and throw myself on Anne's mercies; she can improvise in iambic pentameter.'

  'Between all your fine friends,' said her mother, 'no wonder you can't find an evening to sit down with me and learn your lines.'

  Something sharp in the tone made Eliza look up, but Mrs Farren was gazing out of the window at the late afternoon sun.

  JUNE 1789

  The Damer carriage rattled down the Strand and stopped at the great pillars of Somerset House. Sam the footman got down and opened the door of the Royal Academy. Anne told him to wait with the driver; she needed no escort here.

  The square entrance hall was guarded by plaster casts of Apollo, Hercules, the Centaurs and Minerva with her spear entwined with snakes. Anne nodded to the porters and walked past the Life School; she'd never been let in there, of course, because of the nude models. She gathered her skirts at the bottom of the elliptical staircase. Men tramped past her, carrying vast canvases, or hauling them up through the stairwell on ropes. 'Stand back, madam, if you please.' 'Mind the lady!'

  She met the head keeper on the second floor. 'Mrs Damer, always a pleasure,' he said, inclining his pointed head. 'May I offer a catalogue?'