Their conversation had somehow strayed on to the one subject that they fought about: France. 'I don't approve of all the changes,' Anne admitted, 'but I applaud the daring spirit of enlightened re-formers such as the Marquis de Lafayette and the Comte de Mirabeau. It's a real revolution, a renewal! This must be the first time in the history of our race that a nation has set out to forge itself anew, according to the highest principles of liberty, equality and fraternity.'
Walpole looked as if he'd bitten into something sour. 'Nothing is good except in moderation, says Horace—not even Reform, say I. Those frantic fools in the Assembly have acted like a man with frost-bitten fingers, who thinks to thaw them by setting his house on fire! In half a year they've pulled down their monarchy, church, nobility, law, army, commerce and manufactures,' he listed. 'What was it Burke called them the other day in the Commons? The architects of ruin!'
It did worry Anne that Fox and his old mentor Burke had had such a public quarrel on the subject of France. 'Come now, he exaggerates and you do too. They're drafting a model constitution, aren't they?'
'While Paris transforms from a theatre of good-humoured gaiety into a scene of squalid bloodshed! Didn't a pack of fishwives slaughter the guards at Versailles? I assure you I love liberty as much as the next man,' Walpole fumed, 'but this is not the way to win it. Too much, too fast, too bloodily.'
'Teething troubles,' Anne soothed him, 'and there's been nothing half as bad as our own anti-popery riots of ten years ago.' She shuddered to remember the week of nightly fire attacks that had left more than eight hundred Londoners dead. 'For France, the worst is over and Madame de Staël in her last letter tells me that one can breathe more freely somehow.'
'Unless one happens to be sentenced to hang for selling a rosette in any other colours than white, blue and red,' Walpole pointed out. 'Cousin, I can't believe I'm speaking to a friend—or should I say a former friend—of Marie Antoinette.'
Anne flushed, but stared him down. 'I wish her no ill; I believe Louis will survive this storm and become a gender, fairer ruler of a better France. Why, he's proud to be seen in the tricolour cockade—'
'My dear, what a political naïf you are!' Walpole's fingers closed round the neck of a Meissen shephertless. 'The émigré nobles arriving at Twickenham tell of riots, murdered priests and burning châteaux all over the country, and the poor are still starving, because natural rights don't fill bellies. Louis and his family are hostages and he's wearing the mask of a tame bear for the moment. It wouldn't surprise me if they banish him and set up an American-style republic!'
'Oh, cousin, don't be silly; no one wants that.'
'Or else Louis will throw down the mask, shake off his chains, turn into the despot of their worst nightmares and it'll come to civil war.'
'You're such a Cassandra!'
He snatched up her fan to cool his cheeks. 'If you'd lived as long as I, my dear Anne, you'd have a nose for such things.'
A faraway gong. On their way down to the dining room he mentioned, 'I invited our dear Miss Farren to join us, as she's not to perform tonight, but apparently she has a touch of headache.'
Anne spoke before she could stop herself. 'Try asking her when I'm not of the party.'
Walpole stopped and turned on the dim staircase, so she almost ran into him. 'Is there some cause of alienation?'
'None that I'm aware of.' Her voice came out rather strangled. 'No quarrel, only a sort of withering away of the friendship on Eliza's side. It's rather mortifying.'
'I should say so!'
'I don't give my affection so easily that I can be blasé when it's thrown back in my face.'
Walpole took her hand in his warm paw. 'My dear! I always thought Miss Farren aware of the honour you did her by befriending her.'
'Oh'—Anne shrugged—'I never considered I was doing her a favour. I thought she liked me. I know she did; she can't have kept up a pretence for so long. And I'm not aware of anything I did to hurt or insult her, so what is it?' She wiped one eye hastily with the back of her hand. 'I know I can be candid to the point of bluntness—and I'm sometimes so wrapped up in my work that I forget the social niceties. Perhaps I was tactless or insensitive?'
'On the contrary, you're the soul of sensitivity,' said her godfather. 'Could it be that you're brooding unnecessarily, in fact? Perhaps Miss Farren really is snowed under with work. A woman who labours for her bread, if I may spell it out so tastelessly—'
'She had time for me before, no matter how busy she was,' Anne interrupted, her throat tight. 'She spent all those afternoons sitting for her portrait bust and now she can't find the time to pop round the corner for a dish of tea.' That prompted another painful thought: when Anne had last made the mistake of paying a spontaneous visit to the house on Green Street she hadn't seen the Thalia displayed in the parlour or the dining room and Eliza had muttered something about keeping it upstairs to prevent accidents. As if marble would shatter at a touch! All that beauty, hidden away from view. I could have kept it for myself she thought.
MARCH 1790
'Mr Lawrence,' said Eliza, rushing into the studio on Jermyn Street, a little breathless from the damp cold. 'Enchantée.'
The young painter kissed her hand; he had a soft, effeminate look, but his pink lips were very firm on the back of her gloved fingers. People said Tom Lawrence was a better portraitist than even Sir Joshua had been at his age.
'Will you be so very good as to excuse my lateness?' asked Eliza, as he bowed to her mother. 'Piccadilly's all slush and two coaches have smashed into each other at the corner.'
'There's nothing to excuse,' said the boy with a succulent grin. He had long curls at the sides of his face. The studio reeked of paint; Eliza rather liked it. She pulled off her muff to hand to her mother; she tugged off one glove and reached to unclasp her fur-lined pelisse. Lawrence raised one finger. 'Don't do that.'
'I beg your pardon?'
'Stay as you are.' He was holding his hand up as a frame.
How commanding he was, the young pup. 'Mr Lawrence, if I might just take my heavy things off—I've worn the plain white muslin you asked for—'
'Lord Derby said he'd leave all the details of the picture up to me,' said the painter, snatching up a stick of charcoal and using his foot in its red-heeled shoe to pull his easel nearer. 'So it strikes me that I'll paint you just as I see you now, Miss Farren.'
Eliza smiled through her irritation. 'I haven't even tidied my hair.'
All the better,' he told her, engrossed in his sketching.
'Well, where should I sit?'
'Stay standing, if you please.'
'Should I lean on something?' She looked around for a plinth or some other bit of scenery to drape herself against, but saw nothing suitable. 'Where should I put my hands—either end of my fan, or crossed over at my waist?'
'No, no, just stand like that, sideways on to me,' he muttered. 'Don't pose.'
She gave him a sharp glance, but his eyes were on the paper. 'You're to paint me, sir, so it follows I must pose.'
He looked up and grinned. 'Granted, but I don't want it to look like a pose. Do what you did when you came in—your right hand bare, at your throat, opening your cloak, with a bit of fur showing inside the white satin. Your glove and muff in your left hand, dangling. But don't stiffen, I beg you; you must look as if you've only paused for an instant and you're about to rush away.'
That was exactly what Eliza felt like doing. Mrs Farren had found a stool in the corner and tucked herself away, her eyes, roaming across the studio in fascination.
'Do you know why Lord Derby sought me out, Miss Farren?' Lawrence asked suddenly.
'No, but I suppose he likes to encourage the young.' That should put him in his place. 'And you've been much talked of since you burst on the scene in the autumn when Queen Charlotte sat to you,' she added more kindly. 'Was Her Majesty an entertaining model?'
He gave her a glum look. 'I think you can imagine the answer. As soon as I'd sketched her face,
she sent a lady-in-waiting with quite a different figure to pose as a replacement. Then the King refused to buy the picture, because I'd left off the cap the Queen always wears!'
'They're calling you a sort of infant prodigy, you know.'
Lawrence drew himself up. 'I am twenty years old, madam.'
'Exactly.'
'If I say so myself, I do have a knack for catching a likeness,' he murmured. 'Especially the eyes. Lord Derby said to me, "Sir, you paint eyes better than Titian."'
'I'm delighted to see you don't suffer from underconfidence.'
'Nor do you, Miss Farren, judging from your air as you strut on stage.'
Eliza choked. 'Strut, sir? I've never strutted in my life. You must be thinking of a fighting cock.'
'One of the famous Knowsley Black-Breasted Reds, perhaps?'
She turned her head and looked him straight between the eyes. What was she thinking of, sparring like this with a young man she'd only just met? 'I'm sitting for this portrait as a favour to His Lordship, but that won't induce me to put up with any impudence.'
'Oh, there'll be no sitting involved,' Lawrence muttered, sketching rapidly. 'I intend to keep you on your toes.'
Eliza thought of several possible replies to that. The minutes went by. The painter's girlish curls and rounded lips might suggest a certain propensity, as Mrs Piozzi would no doubt call it; Eliza didn't like to follow that train of thought. But then again, if she wasn't mistaken he'd been flirting with her just now.
In the corner, her mother yawned covertly. 'Are you quite comfortable, Mrs Farren?' murmured the painter.
'Oh, yes, sir.' She blinked. 'Don't mind me, it's an honour to be here.'
After a while he remarked to Eliza, 'You don't twitch. That's a help.'
'Well, I have been much painted,' she pointed out, playing the woman of the world.
'Oh, I know. Dreadfully.'
She stared at him.
'Eyebrows back in their places, please, while I'm sketching them,' he murmured. 'Yes, I thought Zoffany's recent effort was particularly poor.'
'That canvas was found universally pleasing.'
Lawrence nodded. 'A sure sign of mediocrity.'
'What—'
'That's why old Zoffany specialises in theatrical scenes,' he interrupted, 'because all he can do are costumes and props. Oh, he got your green satin dress and your black Spanish hat well enough—he's a sound drapery man—but where was the woman inside them?'
The cheek of this plump-faced Ganymede took her breath away.
'I always wanted to be an actor,' Lawrence remarked, 'but my father thwarted my ambitions.'
'Did he mean you to follow him in his own profession, then?'
Lawrence snorted. 'He has none. He failed as a lawyer and ended up as a publican.'
She felt a strange pang of sympathy for the boy. Her mother's father had been a Liverpool publican; she might have mentioned it, if Mrs Farren hadn't been sitting there. 'Well, the theatre has its longueurs too; rehearsals can be a bore.'
'I imagine they must be much like sessions with a sitter,' he said. 'Frequent and arduous, but necessary if the work's to be brought to perfection. Oh, and you'll have to leave your muff with me,' he mentioned without looking up, 'for closer study.'
THE PORTRAIT sittings at Jermyn Street were frequent, but not particularly arduous, Eliza found. Tom Lawrence was a good listener and had a fund of gossip, especially about the art world. Poor Sir Joshua Reynolds was going blind, he told her as he pricked and squeezed a little bladder of paint, and Romney was a soft-hearted fool who never asked for cash up front.
She couldn't resist asking. 'Has Lord Derby paid you in advance, then?'
'Only half.'
How much was that? she wondered. Reynolds charged 200 guineas for a whole-length, but surely this newcomer couldn't ask a fraction of that—50 guineas perhaps?
'For a man of such infinite riches,' he murmured, 'the Earl's tight with his purse.'
She wondered whether to protest. 'No doubt that's how the riches stay infinite.'
'Did he give you that little ring, Miss Farren, the one with the ivory eye?'
Lawrence was unnervingly observant; she supposed it came with his trade. 'Sir, you overstep your mark.'
'Not again,' the boy cried. 'I seem to do that every time we meet.' He smirked a little, wet the tip of a brush in his stained mouth and dabbed at the canvas.
Eliza found herself gossiping shamelessly about her colleagues. 'I hear the Duke of Devonshire's managed to persuade his brother-in-law to call off his crim con action against Sheridan.'
'Isn't Mrs Sheridan seeking a separation, though?'
'Well, she's said to have forgiven his affair with the lovely Harriet—but last week at Crewe Hall he was caught in a bedchamber with the governess! Mrs Sheridan has all my pity,' said Eliza, shaking her head. 'I suppose she knows it's not in his nature to reform.'
'Nor in any man's,' joked Lawrence.
She gave him a severe look. 'Your sex boasts of its weakness, but I'd call it self-indulgence.' She was rather surprised at herself to be discussing such indecencies with a young man she hardly knew, but there was a strange intimacy about sitting for a portrait for hours on end at such proximity. She slid one eye towards her mother, to gauge her disapproval, but Margaret Farren was fast asleep on her stool in the corner.
Lawrence scrubbed some paint off the canvas with a rag and began to hum a tune under his breath.
'Please,' said Eliza, 'if you want this sitting to continue a moment longer don't hum that wretched song.'
He stopped, then laughed. 'Oh, yes, it's Little Pickle's, isn't it?'
'How Mrs Jordan has won such unconscionable fame by portraying a small boy who ties people's clothes together for a trick,' she said, 'I can't imagine.'
A little later, to her consternation, Eliza found herself dropping the name of Anne Damer into the conversation like a baited hook. She put it all in the past tense; she was talking about the Richmond theatricals.
Lawrence didn't look up from the gaudy palette round his thumb. 'She turns all you ladies to stone,' he remarked. 'That bust of you she showed last year? Rather beautiful in a cold kind of way, but it wasn't you. Some anonymous goddess who'd taken possession of your skin.'
So what am I like? she wanted to ask him. She thought of the Thalia, which stood in the shadowy niche on her upper staircase at Green Street and reproached her silently whenever she went past. Am I sillier than that? Plainer? Less like a goddess? 'I scarcely see her these days,' she put in, a little hoarse, and then she felt a stab of guilt.
'Gorgeous animals, though, so furry and alive,' he conceded. 'I've a spaniel at home, I'd like to see what Mrs Damer could make of him. Not that she ever takes commissions, of course; these genteel amateurs wouldn't soil their hands with cash,' he said satirically. 'Actually, you might know, Miss Farren, is it true she uses ghosts?'
Eliza blinked at him. 'You mean ... spectres?'
Lawrence let out a roar of laughter. 'No, I mean men to help her on the sly. At the Academy, some of my teachers called her a fraud—swore a woman couldn't carve marble all by herself.'
'I've watched her do it,' said Eliza frostily. 'If there are ghosts, they're invisible.'
'Oh ho,' he said, 'what an eloquent defender of your sex! A man must watch his tongue, in these days of égalité, or female tempers will run as high as French ones.'
Let it drop, Eliza told herself, let it drop. It looked bad that she got so fired up in defence of a woman who wasn't a close friend of hers any more. The important thing was that Tom Lawrence hadn't said a word against Mrs Darner's personal reputation.
But then, would he, considering that Eliza herself was implicated by that dreadful epigram?
DERBY BROUGHT the painter into the Club. He always found this helpful when negotiating with men of business; the severe architecture and atmosphere of exclusivity intimidated them. After the beefsteaks he faced his guest squarely. 'Now, what's all this about the price?'
'It's gone up,' said the boy, sipping the excellent claret.
'Has it, indeed,' Derby scoffed. 'If my memory serves, I commissioned the picture at 60 guineas—a very good rate indeed for such an untried talent.'
'Well, I'd been thinking of painting Miss Farren before that, Your Lordship,' said Lawrence, 'so I don't know that I'd call it your commission, exactly.'
What strange times these were. Derby was all for Reform and a more equal society, but really, had it come to this, that a young commoner could defy an earl?
'Besides, as I said in my note,' said Lawrence, 'these two other gentlemen dropped into my studio, and offered me a hundred for the picture.'
'Which gentlemen?'
'Oh, I don't think I ought to mention their names without permission,' murmured the painter, bashful.
Derby's teeth were clamped. He reads me like a book, this sinister, ringlettedpup. He sees my weakness. He hopes, by his talk of imaginary gentlemen, to make me pay a ludicrous sum for a picture of the woman I adore. He relaxed his jaw and took a sip of claret. 'Well, in that case,' he said lightly, 'I won't stoop to squabbling.'
'You mean—' Lawrence's long lashes batted with excitement.
He thinks I'll pay a hundred or more. Time to call his bluff. 'Since you choose to break your word as a gentleman,' said Derby, 'far be it from me to prevent your turning a profit from these other gentlemen.'
The painter sat back, registering the insult. But it was safe enough, Derby knew. If he'd said the same thing to a man of birth, or even a fiery fellow from the professional classes, a challenge to a duel might have followed (and Derby preferred to let his birds fight for him). But it would probably never occur to the son of a tavern keeper.
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