Life Mask

by Emma Donoghue

  Sure enough, Lawrence took on a conciliatory tone. 'Come, My Lord, you misunderstand me.'

  'I do?'

  'I only meant to say that the interest of these ... other parties makes me hope that this will be rather an exceptional portrait. Miss Farren's ravishing beauty and expressive charms,' Lawrence murmured, 'have inspired me to new heights, if I say so myself. So I thought, if perhaps you came to see the picture—I've done the face and half the body—you might wish to reward me to the tune of, say, 85 guineas?'

  Derby repressed a smile. My card. 'I've seen it already. I called this morning and in your absence your housekeeper was good enough to show me the canvas.'

  The boy's face contracted.

  'I like the brushwork well enough and the originality of the composition,' Derby went on, 'but there's one thing that won't do: Miss Farren looks far too thin.'

  'I paint her as she is,' said Lawrence, almost growling. 'She is of unusually tall and slender dimensions.'

  'Oh, I know—there's not a woman in England like her,' said Derby, beginning to relax as the game turned his way. 'But the vagaries of fashion are currently against her special charms on this point, so you might plump her up a trifle.'

  This gambit was received in silence. Derby wondered whether he'd pushed things too far; to refuse to raise the price, to criticise the painting and to imply the painter was no gentleman, all in one conversation ... If these other gentlemen were real they might secure, for a mere 100 guineas, what was looking to be one of the strangest, loveliest portraits ever painted. His stomach began to knot. 'But of course you must do as you think proper in these matters. Ah, Bunbury!' he hailed his passing friend to create an interruption.

  The Baronet turned, startled.

  'How was Newmarket?'

  'Rained out, shocking muddy,' said Bunbury, coming over.

  The painter remembered his manners and jumped up. 'I shouldn't keep you any longer, Your Lordship.'

  'Have you met young Lawrence here?' Derby asked Bunbury, deliberately avuncular. 'Only twenty years old, and a rising talent.'

  'Oh, yes? Talent at what?' asked Bunbury, oblivious, and Derby bit down on a smile; it was as if they'd rehearsed the insult.

  'Phiz-mongering,' said the young man drily and took his leave.

  Weakening at the last minute, Derby thought of agreeing to 85 guineas. But no, that would be capitulation.

  ON HER WAY out of the theatre Eliza glanced at the new playbills pasted to the door. Then she stopped and looked more closely. She ripped one off the door and went back into the building. When she swept into the manager's office Kemble was alone, looking over the accounts. He'd recently surprised them all by marrying Pop Hopkins (widow of the poor lunatic actor Brereton), the most prim and undistinguished member of the company. 'Excuse me, Kemble—' Eliza laid the bill on the desk and tapped it at the relevant spot—'but I'm afraid there's been a printing error.'

  The manager scratched his hairline. 'I believe I made an announcement on Monday that players' names will from now on be displayed in order of the characters ranks, with gentry roles first.'

  'Oh, I don't mind that,' she said graciously; 'my role of Miss Tittup is now listed after Mrs Hopkins playing Lady Toss, I see the logic there. But it should say, "and, Miss Tittup, dot dot dot, Miss Farren". Or, "and Miss Farren as Miss Tittup".'

  Kemble cleared his throat. 'There's been a decision to remove the ands.'

  Eliza drew herself up. 'But the and in italics has always been used to mark out a player of particularly distinguished reputation.'

  'Not any longer. It's been agreed that—'

  'Agreed by whom, you and Sheridan?'

  All Drury Lane Players will now be listed the same way on a bill, as colleagues and as equals.'

  'Ridiculous,' Eliza spat. She wasn't behaving like a lady, but she couldn't help it. 'I draw the crowds, not old Mrs Hopkins or Mrs Powell. I'm better known than anyone else in this cast—' Her finger jabbed the playbill.

  'Is this privilege of ands written in your Articles of Bond?' asked Kemble rhetorically.

  'It is a matter of custom,' said Eliza through her teeth, 'and of justice.'

  He looked back at her like a gloomy emperor.

  'Mrs Siddons has always been indulged with the and' she said, 'a lead soprano like Mrs Crouch has, Mrs Jordan has, and I have and I will. It's a simple thing to ask; a few letters, that's all. Unless Sheridan would rather mark my special status by raising my salary from £18 to, say, £20 a week?'

  Kemble pretended he hadn't heard that. 'My dear Miss Farren, you know I have an infinite respect for your talents. To shield myself from the tempest of your displeasure'—oh, how he liked his metaphors, she thought—'I would have been happy to give way on this point if it were only a matter of my own whim. But this is now the policy of His Majesty's Theatre and must be applied fairly to one and all. Including, may I add, myself and my sister.'

  She gave him a long, frigid look.

  'And remember, Miss Farren, you're so very celebrated, so graven on the heart of every member of the audience', he added, 'that you hardly need italics to mark out your name.'

  She wasn't going to win this one, she knew it in her bones. Better to keep her dignity. 'You're too kind,' she said and turned on her heel.

  The Bow Window House, Green Street

  My dear Mr L.,

  You'll think me the most troublesome of beings I dare say, but my friends whove seen the fainting (of which you've not yet allowed me a glimpse) tease me to death about looking so narrow as to seem likely to crack in two & insist on my writing to beg you to make me somewhat more substantial. For that pound of flesh I will be eternally

  your grateful servant,

  E.F.

  When she arrived at Lawrence's studio he wasn't there; his housekeeper showed Eliza in to wait, and offered to bring some wine and cake.

  'No, nothing just now.'

  Only after the woman had left did Eliza realise something: she never thanked servants any more. In her early years in London she'd done it all the time—partly because she couldn't get used to being waited on by strangers, but also as a sort of superstition. She'd feared, in some crevice at the back of her mind, that if she proved arrogant and ungrateful all this luxury would be snatched away like a carpet from under her feet. Whereas now ... Eliza was changed, but when had it happened? she wondered. That was the kind of detail left out of the silly verses and pamphlets that memo-rialised her rise to fame. Little by little, Eliza had come to feel entitled to a life of ease. Or habituated, at least. The only person she still thanked for small services was her mother—when she remembered. Mrs Farren wasn't with her today, for once, being bedridden with an inflamed toenail. How astonished the lanky Betsy banging the troupe's drum would have been if a fortune teller could have shown her this future in a cloudy glass ball: a celebrated lady, flattered and feted on all sides, with little to worry about except whether she seemed too thin in a portrait...

  'Have you seen yourself?'

  She spun around. Tom Lawrence was at her shoulder; how had she not heard him? 'Good morning,' she said prettily. 'You didn't answer my note.'

  'I've spent the last three days doing the landscape. People think me a careless dandy, but the truth is I work like a dog; I'm as much a slave to each painting as if I were chained to it.' He seemed in a strange humour today; could he be drunk? 'I think you're ready to face your audience.' Lawrence turned the easel round and whisked off the dust cloth.

  Under brooding aquamarine clouds and low dark trees spread a carpet of moist grass and summer flowers; the effect was both blooming and menacing. There stood Eliza, pale in muslin under her furs, shrinking back as if the warm air were her enemy. With her bare hand she clutched her white satin cloak round her neck, its fur edge and ties hanging; in her other hand, gloved in reddish leather, dangled a huge fur muff. Lawrence had added a limp blue ribbon to the muff, Eliza noticed; it picked up the sky and her eyes. This wasn't Miss Farren of Drury Lane, this was a p
rivate person, rushing across a summer landscape in winter clothes. How had Tom Lawrence seen such tentativeness in Eliza's eyes as she posed for him in his studio with a worldly confidence? How had he glimpsed the fears that she carried around like tiny pebbles in her mouth?

  'Well, Eliza?'

  'I look so ... vulnerable,' she said, realising a second too late that he'd had the cheek to use her first name.

  'Mm,' he said, standing close to her, drinking in the picture.

  For once, she wished her mother were here; she felt oddly unchaperoned. 'And where's my extra pound of flesh?' she asked, trying for flippancy.

  Lawrence turned and looked into her eyes. 'I won't change a thing. You couldn't be more beautiful,' he said fiercely and she didn't know whether he meant her or the Eliza in the picture. 'This image will unnerve its viewers, grab England by the throat and make me nearly as famous as you. It'll be copied in watercolours and engravings within a week of the Exhibition. In every drawing room in the land your beauty will make other women tremble.'

  'Mr Lawrence,' she began, stepping away.

  His mouth was a pale red pout. 'And that fabulously wealthy Whig grandee who poses as your sincere admirer informs me that 60 guineas is high enough, he won't go up to 85!'

  'The price is nothing to do with me.' Eliza's pulse was thumping in her neck. She couldn't bear this haggling. Eighty-five, that's not so very much, for Derby, she thought, why would he balk at paying eighty-five?

  Tom Lawrence's mouth was on hers before she knew it. His breath, his tongue burnt her. His hands were under her cloak, his legs seized hers. He was wrenching away her muslin fichu; only when his fingers plunged into her bodice did she manage to move. She shoved him away so hard that he staggered into his easel and the portrait fell face down on the smeared floor.

  They stared at each other. Not so frail and brittle now, she thought. Not a poor lost girl shuddering in the breeze.

  'I beg your pardon,' said Lawrence.

  'I don't grant it.'

  His eyes were full of wonder now. 'You're not cold, like they say. Not cold at all.'

  Eliza shook out her cloak and put her hands in her muff, before she walked out through the door.

  She was feverish with fury as she sat back in the Derby carriage and let it carry her up Dover Street towards home. The naïveté of the fellow, to think that she'd preserved her virtue for so many years, through all trials, only to give it up to a nobody like him! She examined the tear in the neck of her dress and her cheeks scalded. She couldn't remember how to be indifferent. She found a smear of green paint on her left nipple, drying to a scab.

  MAY 1790

  Anne woke at dawn and pulled back the curtains of her blue tester bed. On the pale-green wall opposite hung the plaster life mask of Eliza Farren. She'd put it concave side out, so it showed the smoother shadow face. It hurt her to look at it. One of these days, she thought, I shall really have to have it taken down.

  Today was Opening Day at the Royal Academy Exhibition. She'd come up from Park Place to show the marble version of the bust of her mother; she was glad of the excuse to get away, since Lady Ailesbury was going through a period of nerves. Anne had never been clear whether her father was really oblivious of his wife's depressions—could that be true of a man so interested in the arts, so respected for his military and political achievements?—or merely pretended to be. And Lady Mary, despite her endless fund of good nature, was neglectful; she sent their mother occasional notes from Richmond House and threw out hints of visits to Park Place, which put the Countess into a flurry of anticipation, then never turned up. It was up to Anne to step in as Lady Ailesbury's younger and unmarried daughter, she knew that without being told. But her own nerves were so unreliable these days that she found her mother's company unendurable.

  Anne had been sleeping badly for months now. She blamed the weather; her constitution needed winter sun and if it weren't for the troubled state of France she might have thought of going on one of her trips. Mayfair was too small. A week couldn't go by without Anne either riding past the Bow Window House on Green Street, or seeing Derby's open phaeton skim along Grosvenor Square, with the two Farrens clearly visible opposite the Earl. She'd glimpsed the party recently at the Grosvenor Chapel, one of the many private chapels in Mayfair with celebrated visiting preachers, where the pew rents were a shocking £15 per year. The actress, entering on Lord Derby's arm, with her mother hovering behind her, had appeared not to see Anne's face in the crowd, at first, and then had offered her the pleasant nod of an acquaintance. It was a strange performance and it gave Anne the giddy, nauseous feeling that the whole friendship had been a figment of her imagination.

  Derby had nodded to her very warmly, but that wasn't much comfort. On the rare occasions when she encountered him on his own they talked of politics, or art, or philosophy. She didn't know how to raise the topic of Eliza; though she was very fond of the Earl, she wasn't used to speaking to him of matters of the heart. He mentioned the actress, of course, but in his usual rattling manner—how well she'd played some new role, or looked in the latest style of hat.

  By now, all Anne's intimates knew that the friendship was at an end. Walpole had quietly cut Miss Farren from his list. Some, like Lady Mary, assumed that it was Anne who had tired of the actress's company. The idea wounded her, but it was too humiliating to explain the truth. Non finito, she thought, remembering the old phrase: a sculpture interrupted, left unfinished.

  Anne couldn't stomach any breakfast today. She got to the Royal Academy early to beat the crowds. For several minutes she stood staring up at a canvas in the Great Saloon. The brilliant newcomer, Tom Lawrence, was showing no less than thirteen portraits, as if to make a point of outdoing poor old Reynolds, and this one was the best. The pose was startlingly spontaneous; there stood Eliza Farren with one glove off, as if interrupted in the middle of a rapid journey. She was as thin as a silver birch sapling; Lawrence had caught all her serpentine grace. The sun was shining through turquoise clouds and the colours sang, but she shivered in her enveloping cloak; it made one want to take her in one's arms and comfort her. The brushwork was dazzling; Anne knew enough of painting to judge that. She stood there rigid with jealousy.

  At this Exhibition, only a year ago, she'd given the actress the little gold ring with the ever-watching eye. Now she could hardly imagine calling her by her first name. Somehow the most rich and confiding friendship of Anne's life had slipped through her fingers. Only dignity had prevented her from walking up to the house on Green Street, banging on the door and demanding an explanation. She'd searched her conscience, over the long months of their estrangement, and could only conclude that she'd been found disposable. Her memory conjured up a line from The Way to Keep Him Surely never was an unhappy woman treated with such cruel indifference. And another, even more pointed: To win a heart is easy; to keep it the difficulty. Strange that such a lovely face as Eliza Farren's could veil such a dark and tricky heart.

  'What an engaging expression,' said a man to a woman behind her. 'So arch, so spirited. It's the Farren to a tee!'

  Anne moved off to one side as fast as she could without drawing attention to herself. She glanced down at her catalogue: Mr Lawrence. Portrait of an Actress, it said.

  'Signor Agostino,' she addressed the keeper, spotting him a few minutes later, 'did Lawrence choose the tide for his picture of Miss Farren?'

  Covertly he bent to her ear. 'On the contrary, Mrs Damer. The young man has made a dreadful fuss. The tide he submitted was Portrait of a Lady, but a gentleman on the Hanging Committee said that wouldn't do, because she is a woman of no birth.'

  'How dare they?' snapped Anne. 'Portrait of an Actress sounds as if she's no better than any other strumpet who ever walked the stage. They might at least have added an adjective: Distinguished, or Celebrated. Look,' she said, tapping the page with her finger, 'even Sir Joshua's picture of Mrs Billington is called Portrait of a Celebrated Singer.'

  'I know, it's a shocking busi
ness,' the Italian assured her, 'but nothing can be done until the catalogue goes to be reprinted. Ah, here's the lady herself,' he said, smiling past Anne's head.

  She turned and there was Eliza, dressed to echo her portrait; the same gloves, the same dress and a lighter summer version of the same fur-edged pelisse. There was a little storm of applause; the actress scattered smiles and curtsies in all directions. Beside her, dwarfed by her as always but holding his right arm high to support her hand, walked Derby. His face was inscrutable, but Anne could read its private pride.

  She couldn't bear it, couldn't steel herself to go and greet the happy pair as if she were yet another acquaintance. They were hemmed in by admirers and she was bone-tired. She slipped off to the little sculpture room, which held only a few stragglers, and they soon drifted off without paying much attention to the Marble Bust of the Countess of Ailesbury. Anne stood looking at her mother's severely handsome features; she clasped her hands and tried to calm herself. She fingered the little chip of stone from the Bastille that, she wore on a chain round her neck under her fichu.

  'My dear!'

  She spun round. Eliza, with her doll smile painted on. She didn't know I would be here so early in the day, Anne thought. She doesn't know what to call me. 'Why do you say that?' she asked in a low voice.

  The actress blinked.

  'Does that word dear signify anything to you? Do I? If not, why say it?'

  Eliza had her hand against her mouth. 'I don't know what you mean.'

  'You know too well.' Anne's voice surprised her by its rage. 'I no longer claim any right to your company, or your affection, God knows'—she swallowed a sob—'but it's the inconsistency that I find outrageous. You spurn my invitations, leave my letters unanswered, cut me in the street—and then sidle up and call me dear!'

  The younger woman's cheeks were scarlet. 'Must I remind you we're in a public place?'

  'I'd have been glad to speak in private,' snarled Anne, 'but I haven't seen you in months.'