They were laughing, now, though the air was bitter with smoke.
ANNE AND MARY were reading in the tiny, plain-panelled library at North Audley Street. They liked to sit opposite each other, so that either of them could look up at any time and tell the other some stray thought. Anne's eyes were resting on Mary, who glanced up. Her hand went to the bridge of her nose. 'Is it very red, today?'
'Not at all, it's fading,' Anne assured her. 'But all damage leaves its tool mark.'
'Like a chisel?'
'Exactly! Time's signature,' Anne suggested. They grinned at each other. 'By the way, I got four subscriptions for myself and you Berrys for the Haydn concerts.'
Mary clasped her hands in excitement. 'You shouldn't have. Oh, but I can't wait. To hear the great man conducting his own new symphonies—'
'Where's Agnes this morning?' Anne asked.
'Father took her shopping on Mount Street. She fancies a turban for evening wear, with one of those aigrettes with paste jewels bobbing on tiny wires.'
'Since your tour I believe I notice in your sister a desire to shine.'
Mary nodded, smiling. 'At Pisa she was quite the queen of our little circle—especially when I smashed my nose—and she discovered she rather liked it.'
'Don't we all? According to my father, even Walpole primped and preened in the glass in his day. By the way, I believe you've persuaded him to start writing his memoirs?'
'Well, only by demanding tales of bygone days, till he decided it would be easier to write them down. He has some notion of making me his literary executrix,' Mary mentioned.
'He couldn't choose better,' said Anne, feeling only a slight pang of jealousy. 'You're a discerning, diligent, literary lady: you'll be his ambassador to posterity.'
'Oh, tush. I may do it, but behind the cover of my father's name.'
Anne frowned; she didn't approve of women hiding their lights under bushels. 'I called at Berkeley Square this morning, but I was refused. Walpole had shut himself up in his study with the post and told his footmen he wasn't to be disturbed. No doubt he's getting into one of his grand fusses.'
'Over what?'
'Who knows? When you were away, I noticed a rather comical peculiarity in him,' said Anne.
'Only one?'
She chuckled at that. 'He was always perfectly communicative with regard to your letters, or Agnes's—he'd read me parts of them, or let me read them myself—and he'd boast, with the insolence of a lover, of having received three letters in as many days. But if ever I tried to tell him anything you'd written to me he turned deaf—despised any information I had to offer—could never suppose I might know your date of return before he did, for instance.'
'How diverting,' said Mary a little uneasily.
'Isn't it? The child has a tendency to being fretful when you're not here to keep him in order...'
The library door flew open and they jumped. There stood Walpole, his face a mask of tragedy.
'What is it, sir?' Mary rushed to take his arm. 'No one came to announce you.'
'You mustn't call me that. It's no longer my name.'
She glanced at Anne, her eyes wide.
Was he losing his wits, all at once, as the King did? 'What is it, coz?' asked Anne soothingly.
'From plain Mister,' he said, 'I am elevated to His Lordship.'
They blinked at him. 'Your nephew?' said Anne.
'The poor young lunatic has died,' he spelled out, 'and I stand before you now, fourth Earl of Orford.'
Anne couldn't help giggling.
'It's hardly a laughing matter,' he protested, while she and Mary were leading him over to the comfortable chair by the fire and lifting his bad foot on to a stool. 'I'll be the poorest earl in England; Houghton Hall brings nothing but debts and draughts.'
'Congratulations,' said Mary, with a little curtsy, 'and commiserations too, if you like, Your Lordship.' Then even Walpole cracked a mournful smile.
ANNE AND ELIZA were at the nuts-and-oranges stage of a post-theatre supper at Green Street. The parlour was freshly hung with a stylish striped paper, Anne noticed; the actress had an eye for these details. It amused her to note all the differences between this smart town house and the plainer, calmer décor of the Berrys round the corner on North Audley Street. A nagging thought struck her: her two closest female friends hadn't met yet. She hadn't deliberately kept them apart, but nor had she brought them together since the Berrys' return. The occasion had to be right; she feared they mightn't take to each other at once.
'My Thalia looks very well in her new position,' she remarked, gesturing at the bust on the column in the corner.
'Doesn't she?' said Eliza, grinning back at her.
'I'm worried about my cousin Walpole,' said Anne, cracking a hazelnut, 'his new earldom's proving nothing but grief to him.'
'I've noticed you don't call him Orford!
'Oh, it would seem unnatural. He complains it's the worst of times to come into a tide; breeding's all gone out since the French had their Revolution and nobody asks Who are his people ? any more but, What is he worth?
Eliza laughed at the exaggeration.
'Also, after twenty years away from Parliament, he hasn't the slightest desire to take his seat in the Lords. Though he tells me that some of his bluestocking ladies are pleading with him to sponsor a bill to put down faro and roulette!'
'That would never pass,' said Eliza.
'Really, the thing's destroyed the tranquillity of his old age; he has packets of papers to read and answer every morning, consultations with lawyers and creditors, threatening letters from envious relations...'
'Tom Paine says aristocracy is intrinsically absurd,' said the actress.
'However can he claim that?' Anne asked. She hadn't yet nerved herself to buy the American author's Rights of Man, which Walpole kept denouncing as the most seditious of all the pamphlets published to rebut Burke's Reflections.
Eliza shrugged prettily. 'Well, he begins by asserting that all men were created equal and free when Adam and Eve walked in the Garden. He says tides are only meaningless nicknames, worn like shiny ribbons. Being born an aristocrat is no achievement or guarantee of merit; after all, haven't we all met wicked marquesses and stupid dukes? To see the silliness of choosing our lawmakers by their surnames we've only to imagine selecting authors, artists or actors the same way.'
Anne was taken aback. This philosophy was unsettlingly extreme. 'But history—the weight of tradition—'
'Paine says we should shake it off. The living matter more than the dead; every generation, every nation should be allowed to choose for itself.'
'Eliza, can you really believe all this?'
The actress fanned herself a little coyly. 'I don't know. His originality's refreshing.'
'But does it mean nothing, then, that my mother is Countess of Ailesbury? Am I no more Honourable than Bet my maid? Should Bet dine off my bone china, and should I mend hems in her place?' Anne heard herself beginning to whine.
'You've no talent for needlework,' said Eliza flippantly. 'Paine's main point is that kings are not necessarily wiser than other men—and our own George costs his people more than a million pounds a year to maintain in royal state. Paine says the best kind of government is one based on the public good—'
'The res publica, yes, I know the origin of republic,' said Anne a little sharply. She remembered, all those years ago, preaching to Eliza about the importance of Whig principles. Now her pupil had gone beyond anything she'd ever taught.
Mrs Farren came in just then. 'Very sorry to disturb, but there's a note for Mrs Damer, sent on from Grosvenor Square.'
Anne recognised Mary's hand. Come to me, was all it said.
She stood up. 'I'm so sorry, Eliza, it's been a fascinating discussion, but something urgent—'
'Not illness in the family, I hope?'
'No, no.'
'Do take our manservant with a torch, madam, to light your way home,' said Mrs Farren stiffly.
Not fo
r the first time, Anne had the distinct impression that the mother was not particularly pleased that the friendship had been renewed. Strange how much it bothered her that she might be considered a less than welcome visitor by this former strolling actress! 'Thank you, Mrs Farren, that's very kind.'
She was at the house on North Audley Street in two minutes. Mary was waiting for her, pacing in the narrow hall. She seized Anne's gloved fingers in her own and helped her off with her greatcoat. 'Oh, my dear. The most appalling thing. I had to see you.'
'Calm yourself. What is it?'
'I've been noticed in a newspaper!'
Anne unfolded the page from Mary's reticule. She sucked in her breath as she read the paragraph, under the small caption, 'News of the World'.
Some would have it that a certain young lady's friendship with the new Earl of O-f—d is not Disinterested. We have learned that she and her family have recently received a gift of a handsome three-storeyed residence on his estate at T—k—m. When the Earl was asked by a female relation if he had any view to marrying the person in question, or perhaps her younger sister, his answer was, 'That's as Miss B—y pleases!'
'You see!' Mary burst out when Anne set the paper down on the hall table.
Anne put her arm round her and chose her words carefully. 'I see that you've become a true member of the World at last.'
'What do you mean?'
'Mary?' That must be Agnes in the shadows at the top of the stairs.
'It's all right, go to bed; I'm talking to Anne,' Mary called back.
'What I mean,' said Anne when they were alone again, 'is that being a victim of scandalmongering could be considered the qualification for membership in the World. It happens to almost all of us at some point in our lives; it's the price of being distinguished. Besides, the venom on this arrow is feeble. You know what infinitely worse things have been said of me!' Mary let out a wild sob and Anne thought perhaps she shouldn't have brought up that comparison. 'Be rational, my dear. You're accused of no heinous crime—merely of accepting the generosity of a septuagenarian, who may or may not be intending to propose.'
Mary wiped her eyes. 'That's what Agnes said. She laughed it off. But I can't stand the suggestion that I've been laying siege to Mr Walpole, when my feelings have never been anything but filial. Perhaps we shouldn't have let him use those foolish nicknames. But I never thought—he's never behaved in the slightest way—' The tears ran down her face again.
Anne embraced her tightly. 'As to that part of the libel,' she said into Mary's dark curls, more certainly than she felt, 'I don't believe it either. Walpole's the very definition of a bachelor. Mind you, the line they quote does sound like him—as a piece of gallant repartee—'
'But what could he have meant by it?'
'Well, perhaps one of his nosy old nieces asked if he admired you and he didn't want to be so churlish as to say absolutely not?
Mary's voice shook. 'The blow to my reputation—I'll have to, write to him—but I can't bear it. Anne, would you do this for me, would you tell him?'
'Tell him what?'
'That my family must move out of Little Strawberry at once.'
'Oh, Mary.' Anne let go of her for a moment. 'Why don't you come to bed and we'll talk again in the morning?'
'I won't be able to sleep, not a wink,' said Mary, letting herself be led upstairs.
But an hour later she was breathing in the shallow, regular pattern of those who were dead to the world. It was Anne who lay awake beside her, thinking with hatred of journalists and the havoc they caused. She'd have to play the diplomat, now, with all her skill. She wished she could protect Mary from all this, the vulgarity of it. The young woman's profile, a dim white in the darkness, was as clean as a child's.
IT TOOK Anne right through Christmas to reconcile Mary and Walpole. 'You must give her time,' she told him over a glass of sherry at Berkeley Square.
He swung the poker limply into the logs. 'How she hurts and punishes me! It comes near to breaking my heart.'
'But cousin, your fortune—your fame as an author and collector—your new tide—all these things are like a harsh light reflected on Mary.' Anne knew she was repeating herself. 'She tortures herself with having profited from your generosity in Italy and now in the matter of the house.'
'What, would she only condescend to be my friend if I were a beggar?'
Anne sighed. 'The article was very mortifying to her feelings.'
'So will she let us be judged in the vilest of tribunals—the papers? Low, anonymous scribblers should simply be ignored,' declared Walpole.
'Oh, that's all very well for you to say!'
His bushy eyebrows went up.
'You're a man, and a rich one, who can defy the World if you want to. Mary has no such security. You're putting her happiness in peril,' Anne warned him. 'And Agnes's too,' she added as an afterthought.
Had she gone too far? His face seemed to fall in. His eyes were watering. 'Oh, Anne. I never meant her any harm!'
This would be the time to ask whether he'd really made the remark the newspaper had attributed to him—but somehow Anne didn't want to know. Even if he had, journalists distorted everything. The thought of him and Mary as a married couple was incongruous, and not just because of his age and ill health; it would be a sort of incest, now they were all such a family. It would unbalance everything, bring on chaos.
Walpole was plucking at his high starched stock as if it were compressing his windpipe. 'The World is so very harsh. I thought my years would allow me to enjoy this friendship in peace—but no. Please, my dear Anne, I beg you—for the sake of your old crippled godfather, but above all for hers—I beg you to use all your tact and wisdom to persuade her to stay at Little Strawberry! Don't let her chimerical scruples poison the end of a life which she, and only she, can sweeten.'
Anne very much wanted to shake him till the eyes popped out of his head. She nodded and patted his leathery hand. She remembered something Walpole himself had said once: One should never be cruel to the old, because any day might be their last. For some reason she thought of poor Sir Joshua Reynolds, king of British art, who was lying on his deathbed now, his body vastly swollen; they called him tranquil, but that was only the laudanum.
A week later she was able to report that the Berrys would not be leaving Little Strawberry Hill. In reply, Walpole sent his thanks and a verse which suggested he'd found his sense of humour again.
An estate and an earldom at seventy-four!
Had I sought them or wished them, 'twould add one fear more,
That of making a Countess when almost fourscore.
But Fortune, who scatters her gifts out of season,
Though unkind to my limbs, has still left me my reason...
MAY 1792
After one of their hard games of tennis—which Derby won on this occasion—he and Fox drank fresh milk from a bored-looking cow in Hyde Park. They waved to Mrs Darner as she went by on her stallion and caught a glimpse of Earl Spencer in his newly famous hip-length coat. The story was that he'd cut the tails off for a bet; it looked like a jacket a three-year-old would wear.
'Mrs A. protests she hasn't seen you since before Christmas, Derby,' said Fox, supine on the grass. 'You might dine with us at Maidenhead Bridge on Saturday, then come out rowing.'
'That sounds delightful.'
'How're the children?'
'Very well, I believe,' said Derby, searching his memory for any recent news. 'Edward's leaving Eton this summer; he'll go to Trinity, Cambridge, as I did.'
'Can the boy really be that old?' Fox laughed.
'Even little Elizabeth's turned fourteen. I let her spend most of last winter with her mother in Marylebone,' Derby mentioned, breaking his rule of never referring to Lady Derby.
'Ah, good of you. I imagine she's the invalid's sole consolation in life,' said Fox gently.
Well, it was partly kindness, but partly his secret conviction that she was Dorset's daughter, Derby admitted to himself; she'd a
lways seemed out of place at Knowsley.
'And the other two...'
He wouldn't let anyone but Fox or Bunbury probe like this. 'Oh, they haven't seen the Countess or heard me speak her name since they were in leading strings,' he said more confidently than he felt. He wondered if Elizabeth told them much about Marylebone.
Who knew what went on in the shadowy minds of the young? 'Also, I've got four wards up at Knowsley, since my poor uncle's death,' he said to change the subject. General Burgoyne, the veteran of Saratoga, had not only been a fond uncle but had made a Whig of him.
'By-blows of the great man?' asked Fox.
'Yes, their mother was an opera singer,' said Derby.
'It's always jolly having youngsters about.'
'Yes,' said Derby, 'they take the bleak look off a place.' He knew that Fox had two children of his own by former mistresses. The boy was deaf and dumb, and the girl a little slow too; Mrs A. was very good to them and let them visit St Anne's Hill often. It was a great pity, Derby thought, that the happy couple had none of their own—but the Impure (as the papers called courtesans) generally ended up barren.
Sheridan threw himself down in the grass beside them, only an hour late, and refused a beaker of milk. 'Have you read Paine's latest?' he asked abruptly, waving a pamphlet. 'Brilliant ideas on every page. Payments to help with birth—marriage—funerals—allowances for every child and free schooling—pensions for the old and crippled—'
'And how would we pay for all this?' Fox teased him.
'Simple: an income tax.'
'Ouch!' cried Derby, clutching his pocket.
Sheridan grinned at him. 'Oh, you'd still have enough for your birds and horses.'
Fox rolled on to his stomach. 'No, but seriously, Sherry, you mustn't go round brandishing that thing; the author and publisher have already been charged under the new Proclamation against Seditious Writings.'
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