Life Mask

by Emma Donoghue

  Here in London, the founding of the French Republic was being claimed by Pitt's Tories as proof of what they'd always told the Whigs—that giving more power to the people was incompatible with a monarchical government like Britain's. This had been a disastrous summer, what with the rained-out harvest and so many hungry and bewildered émigrés flooding into England. Up at Knowsley Derby had been disturbed by wage protests among Liverpool workers; he blamed the new cheap edition of Paine's Rights of Man, which he said could be found in every cottage and coal pit. And there was a strange new phenomenon: Loyalist Societies, thousands of them springing up across the country, to intimidate anyone who expressed any Frenchified opinions.

  'Would you care for some gooseberry pudding?' Mrs Farren asked now, as if they'd settled the political question.

  'No, thank you, Mother.' If she were perfectly honest with herself Eliza knew she was less troubled by the affairs of France than by those of the Drury Lane company, facing into a second season in exile at the King's Theatre. Fed up, Jack Palmer had gone down to Brighton to shake off his creditors and try to set up a provincial troupe of his own. Sheridan had been a wreck ever since his poor wife's death from consumption; he spent all his time with his son Tom and the motherless baby. (According to Derby, Sheridan and Lord Edward Fitzgerald had agonised drunkenly over which of them should raise the girl, before Fitzgerald had decided to make atonement by letting Sheridan give her the protection of his name.) The proprietor had failed to come to terms with Mrs Siddons about her salary—the press were calling her mercenary—so she was staying away, on an arduous tour of Ireland. And her brother Kemble was threatening to resign as manager, maddened, just as Tom King had been, by having his hands tied and no prospect of the new Drury getting a roof this year.

  To top it all the unquashable Mrs Jordan was back, as popular as ever now her partnership with the Duke of Clarence was old news, with sparkling new roles written just for her: a daring comedy about the 'rights of women' by Joseph Richardson and one by Mrs Inchbald with a romantic song for Dora that Eliza just knew would be all round town in a week.

  'I'd swear you've lost a stone this summer,' her mother rebuked her through a mouthful of pudding.

  Eliza glanced at herself in the mirror over the fireplace. 'I believe not,' she said coldly. Ever since she'd turned thirty, in July—a date she hadn't spoken of to anyone except her mother—she'd been asking herself, Does it show? For over a year, now, she'd been using lemon juice to hide the grey in her golden hair.

  Mrs Farren was saying something about a secret wedding.

  'Whose?'

  'Why Mr Fox's to Mrs Armistead.'

  'I never heard anything of that,' said Eliza incredulously.

  'He dotes on his Mrs A., all the World knows that,' said Margaret Farren, 'and if anything were to happen to him all of a sudden he'd wish her to be provided for, wouldn't he?'

  'I don't believe Fox has anything to bequeath but debts.'

  'Well, I think it's lovely, if the story should happen to be true. It just proves,' said Mrs Farren sententiously, 'that when someone takes someone into keeping in a nice and regular way he doesn't necessarily grow sated of her. So faithful to his Liz, he's been, and vice versa, since they first set up housekeeping together ten years back! And now she's got her reward at last, maybe.'

  The moral was obvious. Eliza took a long breath. 'Fox might have married Liz Armistead any time he chose,' she pointed out, 'but he's never chosen to, because you know why, Mother? She's his whore.'

  Mrs Farren winced at the word but kept her eyes fixed coyly on her needle.

  'She's been had by every wealthy gentleman in England at one time or another and that happens to include Lord Derby, by the way,' she added. 'Dear Liz has been tossed from hand to hand like a ball. And you want me to model myself on this piece of used goods?'

  'She's a very amiable woman, I hear.'

  'She may be more charming than the Queen, but I'll never sit down in a room with her,' said Eliza, shaking slightly. 'If this absurd rumour turns out to be true I wish the couple all happiness, but I still won't be paying a call.'

  'I never meant you should call on them—'

  'No, Mother, what you meant was that I should have let Lord Derby take me into keeping while I was still the right side of thirty.'

  'I never said so!' The old woman's eyes were spangled with righteous tears. 'I'm only concerned for my dear girl's future.'

  'And your own.'

  That was a low blow; Mrs Farren's lips trembled.

  'Oh, Mother, I'm sorry,' said Eliza suddenly. 'Of course you want to see me settled. And you're right to wonder how long our savings would last if the World decided it fancied a younger face for its Queen of Comedy. But trust me, it would do no good for me suddenly to abandon all my principles at this stage in the game!'

  A rap at the door below; they waited for the manservant to come upstairs.

  'Lord Derby, miss, madam,' he announced.

  Eliza stood and gave the Earl her hand. Derby had turned forty a fortnight ago, with a little supper for his intimates, but of course men's years were shorter than women's. He looked oddly haggard today. 'A hard afternoon's riding, My Lord? Or a long night at Brooks's?'

  He shook his head and sat down before a chair was offered, which was unlike him. 'Ghastly news from Paris.'

  Eliza steeled herself. 'More trials and executions?'

  'Worse.'

  Her mother sucked in her lips.

  'The mob thought the Prussians were at the city gates,' he said in a ragged voice, 'and they panicked and broke into the gaols. With pikes and axes, clubs, shovels even. Some say they're drunk, or egged on by thugs hired by the Jacobins; I don't know what to believe. The thing is they're butchering everyone.'

  'Aristocrats?'

  'Yes—the Princesse de Lamballe refused to denounce the Queen and she was ripped—literally ripped—to pieces. The killers paraded parts of her—' He broke off, swallowing, his eyes shifting between the two women.

  'Tell us,' said Eliza.

  'They speared her head on a pike,' he said, 'and held it up outside the Queen's window, shouting Viens baiser ton amie!'

  'Come kiss your friend! Eliza muttered to her mother, though she suspected it could mean something worse.

  'The Due de La Rochefoucauld ... his mother, aged ninety-three, had her son's brains rubbed in her face,' said Derby hoarsely. Mrs Farren made a choking sound and rushed from the room. Derby didn't seem to notice. His eyes burned into Eliza's. 'They threw the heads of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting into the flames. But it's not just aristos they're killing, it's all the prisoners. Farmers, priests, maids, peasants, beggars, children—' His voice cracked. 'I've heard rumours of cannibalism. They say the gutters are running, literally running over, with blood. And the French government stands by and does nothing!'

  'Oh, Derby/ Eliza said inadequately. She hadn't taken it in yet. She couldn't feel anything for the victims he was talking about; it was all too sudden, too bizarre, a freak show of corpses. She'd seen some unpleasant sights in her childhood, as her father's troupe had worked its way back and forth across England, but she'd never seen a gutter filled with human blood. All she could feel right now was an appalled pity for the Earl, whose face was a papery colour, whose fingers twitched. And an absurd little bell was going off in her head, reminding her that they were alone together, since her mother had run out of the room. Ridiculous, she told herself, he's hardly going to plunge his hand in my bosom right now.

  'Christ! It's all wrong,' he said. 'Soiled. They've taken the best of causes, the Great Experiment of our age, and shat all over it!'

  It was this extraordinary vulgarity, more than anything else, that made her realise how upset Derby was.

  ANNE AND MARY sat in the library at Little Strawberry Hill, hands locked together. 'They say Paris stinks of vinegar,' muttered Anne. 'Vinegar's the only thing that scrubs off bloodstains.'

  Mary was as white as paper. 'The ones I blame are the lead
ers like Robespierre and Danton, who shrug and call it the will of the People to purge itself of enemies! I heard poor Lafayette tried to sail for America—but the Austrians captured him.'

  'Our old friend Madame du Barry has just arrived safely via Calais,' Anne told her, 'she's staying at Park Place. She says dear Madame de Staël got out somehow, thank heaven. No one in Paris expects to live more than another day, but they all keep going out to restaurants and theatres, as if nothing's amiss! Apparently the Duchesse de Noilles landed at Brighton dressed as a boy—despite being enceinte—after spending fourteen hours on board hidden in a coil of rope, while her poor maid was locked in a trunk.'

  The story didn't bring a flicker of a smile to Mary's face. 'There can't be any sane people left in France now,' she said, 'they're all either fled or dead. Liberty's not worth this price.'

  'Liberty?' echoed Anne. 'The French have done what I thought no one could do, they've made me sick of the very word.'

  'We once thought the Revolution so glorious—'

  'Yes, and when there were outrages we blamed them on the work of lone maniacs or outside agents,' said Anne bitterly.

  'But this massacre'—Mary's voice rose to a sob—'they say more than a thousand people were hacked apart in a day, quite systematically—children of seven years old—'

  'I know, I know,' said Anne, reaching up with one hand to stop a tear halfway down the young woman's face. 'I hate to admit it but Walpole's right.'

  Mary nodded. 'The French aren't fit for self-government. He says one might as well establish a republic of tigers in some forest in India!'

  'And women are at the forefront of the violence, that's what appals me most,' confided Anne. 'They say Madame de Méricourt rides ahead of the mob in red with tricolour plumes, waving pistols and a sabre, urging on the slaughter...'

  The maid came in to say Miss Agnes and Mr Berry were playing whist in the parlour, if the ladies cared to join them. They both shook their heads.

  'At times like these,' said Mary, holding tightly to Anne's hand, 'I wonder how I can be made of the same stuff as my relations.'

  Anne nodded. 'Despite their many merits, your father and sister don't understand you.'

  'I confess,' murmured Mary, 'to sometimes resenting that I must play the protecting mother, instead of the carefree companion, to my sister—and as for my father, I must be the guide, instead of finding in him a wise tutor...'

  'Well, shall we say,' suggested Anne with a slight laugh to lighten her tone, 'that if you had no other duties, no other connections in the world, I might persuade you to take up residence at 8 Grosvenor Square?'

  Mary flushed with pleasure. 'Oh, my dear.'

  'The thing's impossible, of course—'

  'Quite. But thank you,' said Mary, eyes wet, 'thank you for mentioning it.'

  Anne cleared her throat and put her hands back in her lap. 'You know,' she said, 'I've had a curious sort of ... commission I suppose you'd call it.'

  'But you never sell your work.'

  'Oh, it's not a monetary matter. My uncle, Lord Frederick Campbell—I don't think you've met him—has a notion to offer the nation a life-size statue of the King, to be erected in the Scottish Register Office, and he insists that no one but myself is up to the task.'

  'How odd.'

  'At first I brushed it aside; after all, I never do whole-lengths. And men aren't my forte; I haven't tried one since my mask of Thames for the bridge at Henley. As for King George—well, I think I can say without treason that he's never been the object of any personal devotion on my part.'

  Mary nodded.

  'But now it occurs to me that his merits aren't the point,' said Anne, struggling to find the right words without sounding sentimental. 'He's our king. Last night I was lying awake, worrying about the spread of violent insurrection across Europe. Is it beyond the reach of possibility that it might erupt here? There was that riot of footmen in May, and so many strikes and bread protests ... Could a Cockney mob break into Newgate and hack the prisoners to bits?'

  'Oh, surely not.'

  'Well, surely not is what we'd have said about Paris a few years ago. Look, I found this on the floor of my carriage the other day and it's not the first—' Anne reached into her pocketbook and smoothed out a folded handbill. She'd read it over and over last night; the blurred print seemed to haunt her.

  PROCLAMATION by the People, to the People.

  The peace of Slavery is worse than the war of Freedom. Our Ministers are oppressive, our Clergy parasitical, our Royals profligate, our Taxes outrageous. Let Tyrants beware! The time is at hand when the sovereign People of Great Britain will no long suffer themselves to be duped by the lukewarm apostasy of their sham Representatives, but will depend on their own exertions to produce a truly Reformed Parliament.

  GOD SAVE THE PEOPLE!

  'You're right,' said Mary with a shudder, 'that has more than a whiff of sedition about it. Their truly Reformed Parliament must mean a revolutionary assembly.'

  'Imagine if our sovereign were to be reduced to Georgie Hanover at the tip of a pike!' said Anne. She remembered her point. 'So in the middle of the night it occurred to me that perhaps I ought to take on this statue after all.' She folded up the handbill and put it away, so the servants wouldn't see it. 'At times like these, one should overcome personal prejudice. Whatever my political views may be, I'm a loyal subject; I'm no republican. Perhaps my uncle's request is a sort of sign that I should take up this mighty task and see what I can do with it?'

  OCTOBER 1792

  Walpole didn't just approve of the proposed statue, when Anne mentioned it to him after a blackberry breakfast he held at Strawberry Hill for his seventy-fifth birthday. He took it as proof that his goddaughter had seen sense at last, like the Prodigal Son. 'What a splendid idea of your uncle Campbell's,' he crowed. 'What better moment to thank providence for the tranquillity we enjoy in this kingdom, in spite of the republican serpents we harbour in our bosom—the demon Paines, horned Tookes and harpy Barbaulds and Macaulays and Wollstonecrafts!'

  'Is Miss Wollstonecraft a harpy?' put in Mary.

  'Well, consider her tide: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman indeed! What's next, the rights of mice?'

  Anne kept, her expression neutral. She'd lent Mary the book and they'd both found much in it that stirred them, especially the protest against the mire of triviality in which most women were caught. 'Vis-à-vis this statue,' she said, 'I'm inclined to think that catching a likeness of the King is unnecessary.'

  'Quite so; unhelpful, even,' said Walpole, leafing through his engravings and tapping a print of George Ill's face with one horny fingernail. 'The man doesn't matter; the Crown's the thing. And what better time for such a project, now the rabid French are swarming over their borders—annexing Savoy and Nice, the Rhineland and the Netherlands, and calling it reunion I expect to hear they've seized Rome and Madrid any day now.'

  Though Anne's opinions had been altered by the horrors of September, she still found Walpole irrational on the subject of France. 'I plan to make the King rather young, slim, upright,' she said, 'but not an Adonis, more like Saint George the dragon killer.'

  'Excellent,' he crowed.

  'I wish there were any other topic of discourse than politics,' put in Robert Berry from the corner.

  'Oh, I know, Papa Berry, I know,' cried Walpole, 'but who can hear, talk or think of anything else?'

  Anne went home early, dropping the Berrys off at North Audley Street, and began some sketches for her statue. She knew that old friends would be amused, at best, and at worst appalled, by her sudden display of loyalty to the Crown, but she didn't care—at least, not enough to be put off. It was time to test her talents; otherwise she'd carve dogs and ladies' faces till the day she died and never know whether she could have done anything more.

  She made a series of little maquettes on a little wire doll-man, trying out the pose, the balance of forms. Her King would hold his arm across his body, with a lance in his hand, she decided.
He would wear long, heavy robes; every line would say mastery. The next day she started constructing the armature. Life-size wasn't enough; she wanted her creation to tower, to awe. The armature turned out to be eight feet high; she had to use a stepladder, and take Sam away from his duties for two days to hand rods and tools up to her. The clay model, on which the marble would be based, would be a few inches more than that.

  Anne thought of that shabby fellow called Smith whom she'd made occasional use of at the start of her career. When he kept offering to mend cracks and finish polishing for her she'd mistaken it for gallantry—thought Smith remarkably mannerly for a member of the middling-to-lower orders, with little education except in pot making—but gradually, as she became more sure of herself and her vocation, she realised that the fellow was hungry for power. She could see it was humiliating for a man approaching middle age, who would have liked his own workshop, to be general factotum to a lady artist. Smith was always loitering and offering to rough out sections of the model for her: Save you the labour,; madam. As if Anne had ever been afraid of hard work! When, after a few years of terracottas, she'd gathered her nerve and taken up marble carving, Smith had fretted over the weight of the hammer and muttered about her doing herself an injury ... but by then Anne didn't care what he thought and she'd forbidden him to so much as move her tools except to scrape and wash them at the end of the day. In the end she'd let the man go and had never taken on a replacement.

  Smith's revenge had come a few years later, when a snide article on the state of British art had referred to a certain Sculptress whose best busts owe much to the skills of a Subordinate. This from a rogue who used to leave blocks out in the yard to be streaked by rain or shattered by frost, and would excuse himself with It's only stone, madam, what harm?. The memory of Smith's lies filled Anne with rage even now. She looked down at Sam, who stood below the stepladder, his dark face expressionless, and never said a word, which allowed her to forget he was. there until she needed a section of pipe or a length of wire.