Life Mask

by Emma Donoghue

  Mary smiled faintly. 'We were both born to suffer in this world—but at least we may suffer together.'

  Anne caught herself looking at the painted glass, memorising the angles of arches. This might be the last time she would ever be at Strawberry Hill. She barely knew the Duchess of Gloucester, the favourite niece who was to inherit the house; besides, would she ever want to visit it with its creator gone?

  The crowd squeezed into the dark refectory, making a commotion. There weren't enough chairs; Reynolds's paintings of the dead man's friends looked down on the crowd. Anne sat on a bench and tried to concentrate on the droning voice of the lawyer, Mr Blake.

  The deceased Earl of Orford (how strange to hear him called that) had left his estates in Norfolk and Houghton to Lord Chol-mondeley, and £10,000 to the Duchess of Gloucester. Mr Berry was to inherit his manuscripts, the Berry sisters £4000 each—bless him, thought Anne—and the use, for as long as they remained unmarried, of the building, grounds and furniture of the house known as Little Strawberry Hill. Sir Horace Mann got £5000, Lady Ailesbury £4000, nineteen nieces and nephews got £500 each, Philip the valet got £1500, and for some reason the poor secretary Kirgate received only £100. There were inconsistencies and omissions; some of his best friends were not mentioned in the Will.

  'The sum of £6000 outright, and the buildings, grounds and furniture of the house known as Strawberry Hill, for her lifetime, is bequeathed to Mrs Anne Seymour Conway Damer.'

  She jerked in her seat. 'What?' she said. 'No, that's a mistake.'

  'It goes to you first, Mrs Damer, until your death,' explained Mr Blake, 'and only then does it pass to the Duchess of Gloucester.'

  The Duchess nodded at her civilly.

  'Did the deceased not mention the matter to you?'

  Anne shook her head. She looked to Mary; the younger woman's dark eyes were glittering with tears. Strawberry Hill? Anne was too bewildered to begin to understand this gift. Walpole had been angry with her ever since Bognor, or before; hadn't she betrayed him, over and over, and hadn't he known it?

  We regret to announce the departure from this life, atforty-four years, on the fourteenth of this month, at her home on Gloucester Street in the parish of Marylebone, of that famous beauty of a former age, the Countess of Derby.

  'She's not buried yet,' Mrs Farren told her daughter with an awful fascination.

  Eliza didn't look up from the letter she was writing. 'Why on earth not?'

  'Debts. It says the Countess asked to be buried with all the pomp of her rank, but her corpse can't be released till her family discharges what's owing, which amounts to £5000.'

  'That's not so very much for a citizen of the Beau Monde,' said Eliza, trying for a light tone. 'Why, Georgiana's never owed less than £50,000.'

  She wasn't acting that night; Much Ado had closed and she'd begged Wroughton to give her some breathing space before her next role. The truth was that since the news of her rival's death Eliza had felt strangely sunken, unequal to the task of stepping on stage.

  Her mother was sitting very close to her; Eliza curved her arm to make sure her writing couldn't be read.

  My Lord,

  I hope it won't seem hypocritical of me to offer you my sympathies. The death of a person with whose life yours has been so long £sf so intimately connected must be a shock to the nerves.

  Was Derby feeling guilty now, she wondered, or relieved, or a peculiar mixture of the two? Were his friends congratulating him, or teasing him for his readiness to jump from one trap to the next? A bitter resentment bubbled up in Eliza. It would be said that the actress had reeled in her big fish at last. She couldn't stop the gossip, and the paragraphs, and the caricatures, but she could at least keep things absolutely clear between herself and Derby.

  Don't be injured by my enclosure of the Document you were gallant enough to present me with at Knowsley three Christmases past. I make no claim on you. It may strike you that I've kept you waiting too long & I'm no longer in my first youth.

  No, that line sounded pathetic; she inked it out.

  You've given me no reason to suspect that your feelings have changed, but perhaps I've lived among actors too long to have any faith in my power to read a face. Which of us in this World never wears a disguise, for kind reasons as often as cruel?

  The pen skidded and the page flew out of her hands. 'Mother!'

  Margaret Farren backed away, peering at the letter, her furious lip jutting. 'I knew it. You mean to throw it all away in the last act.'

  Eliza was on her feet. 'Give it back.'

  'What devilish little fool is this that calls itself my daughter?' cried Mrs Farren. 'Such a troublesome and wanton spirit you've always had, Betsy, behind that smooth face!'

  Eliza reeled at the accusation. 'Wanton?' she repeated. 'I've lived like some anchoress. You've chaperoned my every waking minute since I was a child.'

  'Wanton, I say,' ranted the old woman, 'because the best of men's not good enough for you. What, would you throw the Earl's signed promise back in his face? Hasn't he waited on you longer than Jacob in the Scripture?'

  'The long delay, that's my point exactly—'

  But Mrs Farren stormed on. 'So Derby's plug-ugly; what's that in a man? Is it so dull to be adored and worshipped? Who are you pining for, some fierce Oriental sultan on a flying carpet?'

  Eliza stared.

  The woman's face was darkening to purple. 'Or maybe it's not a man you want at all.'

  As Eliza stepped closer—while her arm was flying up of its own accord to backhand her mother across the cheek hard enough to raise, a green bruise for a week—she already knew how it would go. She acknowledged in her bones that she was going to marry Lord Derby and spend the rest of her mother's life silently begging her pardon. But she hit her anyway.

  ...Which of us in this World never wears a disguise, for kind reasons as often as cruel? This is why I'm returning your Promise. If you wish you may destroy it & we'll not speak of it again. I will always be glad to call myself

  your friend,

  E.F.

  Derby, halfway through breakfast, crumpled the letter and its enclosure in his fist. Christ, how long does she mean to torment me? But he didn't want the servants to read the letter, or, God forbid, sell it to a newspaper; he never liked to leave temptation in their way. He walked over to the fire and stuffed the paper ball in, watched till it was ash.

  'But M'Lord, the carriage—'

  'I don't need it, I'll walk.'

  The man goggled at him. It seemed to fill him with shame that his master, a peer of the realm, would be seen walking down the street. Derby could have explained that he was only going round the corner to Green Street, but there was just one person in this world to whom he was willing to explain himself today. He knew he shouldn't be doing this at all—approaching Eliza Farren's house in the broad light of day not a week after his bereavement—but he was beyond such scruples.

  The butler was instructing the footman to fetch His Lordship's mourning greatcoat, the one with the black squirrel trim. 'I'm very well as I am,' said Derby with vast impatience and opened the front door himself.

  The April day wasn't as mild as it had looked from the window; the breeze tightened Derby's calves as he walked and got in under his black cloth frock coat. He felt a twinge of gout in his elbow. He told himself to stop thinking like an old man.

  Up North Audley Street and left on to Green Street. He stood outside the house for a moment, catching his breath, and became aware that a carriage had slowed to a halt. He'd been seen; would this be in the evening papers? A certain widowed Peer was glimpsed on G——n St today, panting outside the Bow Window of his theatrical Inamorata... It didn't matter.

  He turned; the face in the window was framed in a handsome black hood trimmed with fur. 'Mrs Damer,' he said with a bow. 'My commiserations on your loss,' he added, remembering Walpole.

  'And mine on yours.' Were those eyes ironical or merely grave? She held his gaze a moment longer, then s
aid a word to the driver. She pulled the curtain across and the carriage surged on down the street towards Grosvenor Square.

  He was rattled; he was thrown. Was Anne Damer some kind of witch to haunt him so? Behind him the door scraped open and he spun round. It wasn't Mrs Farren but the manservant, who muttered something about the mistress inviting him to step up.

  Eliza was waiting for him in the parlour. She was alone, for once, thank Christ. Derby came in the door full of wrathful recriminations, but they all fell away at the sight of her face. It was the same perfect oval as it had always been, but there was something uncertain in her azure eyes. She hadn't meant her letter to be cruel, he realised, she was only nervous; a filly shying at the big jump. Her face was like a child's, but it also gave him some hint, for the first time since he'd known her, of what she would look like when she was old. He felt irritable with tenderness. He got down on one cold, aching knee.

  She didn't say a word.

  'Will you marry me?' Having rehearsed the line for sixteen years, Derby thought he knew how to say it so it would express everything he felt. But it came out quite formal.

  Her tone was just as plain: 'I will.'

  APRIL 1797

  The softly handsome Lord Edward Smith-Stanley drove her to the theatre. His father had asked the young MP to be Miss Farren's escort this month, to save the couple some embarrassment until the first month of mourning was over. 'What do you think of these peace talks between France and Austria, Miss Farren?' he asked. 'I very much wish that our government hadn't missed its moment to make peace with France, too.'

  'So do I,' she assured him, speaking very clearly because of his bad hearing. He was a sweet fellow and she'd be glad to be his stepmother, absurd though that sounded. All that worried Eliza was a paragraph in one of the newspapers about young Lord Stanley's aspirations to supplant his Father in a certain Actress's heart...

  She managed to catch Sheridan in the corridor and ask for a few moments in his office. 'I'm to marry Lord Derby on the first of May.'

  'Felicitations,' he said blandly.

  She was glad the date was soon; the situation was so awkward—almost farcical, with Derby having to go about in mourning clothes over his blithe heart—that she wanted it to be over.

  'Now some claimed the Derby stallion would shy at the final ditch,' remarked Sheridan, 'but I always said there'd be no stopping him. The betting was high at Brooks's on this point, I can tell you—and I'll have heavy pockets tonight.'

  'I've no idea what you mean,' said Eliza with a wintry smile.

  'Well, you must admit it's not a very common event, is it?—an actress catching such a plum? In the whole annals of the theatre,' said Sheridan, looking almost fondly around him, 'I can't think of more than one or two examples.'

  'I intend to retire after my performance next week,' she told him.

  'Ah, yes,' he said with a sigh. 'When I married the first Mrs Sheridan we could have done with her earnings, but I wouldn't have dreamed of being disgraced by having my wife perform for hire. She got £100 by her last concert, but I made her lay it in the plate at church.'

  'What a gracious gesture,' said Eliza sardonically. He thinks we theatre folk are all whores, she realised. Himself included.

  'Well, we'll miss you, Miss Farren, I must say,' said Sheridan. 'You're a perverse nymph and you've given me a few grey hairs over the years, but you can certainly act. You'll need all your talent where you're going. I dare say you'll find Knowsley like one long elegant comedy—though short on jokes. Luxurious costumes, superb scenery, but never a moment to step out of role and take a breather.'

  Eliza hated him at that moment. She and Sheridan had never sat down and had a conversation in their lives—but he knew her well. 'Now, about my arrears,' she said with a sharp smile. 'The debt still amounts to more than £800. If you prefer, you can take the matter up with Derby; I know you're more used to talking of money with him.'

  That dart seemed to bounce off Sheridan. 'Now, this is too bad,' he teased, 'the richest lord in England means to rob us of our brightest star and then quarrel with us for a little dust she leaves sprinkled behind her.'

  'Gold dust,' she said.

  'Dust all the same.'

  But she found herself grinning unwillingly. Sheridan had won this final round.

  THE EVENING before her last performance Eliza sat at her secré- taire, studying the latest prints. A crude one called The Dance of Death showed herself and Derby dancing round Lady Derby in her coffin. (Perhaps the Earl was right when he'd speculated the other day that satire released tension; perhaps because the British upper ranks had submitted to the vicious engraving knives of Rowlandson, Gillray and their ilk, they'd avoided the literal Guillotine. So far, at least.) Here was another called Contemplations upon a Coronet that showed Eliza at her dressing table in an ecstasy:

  —hey for my Lady Niminy-Piminy—O, Gemini!—no more straw beds in Barns—no more scowling Managers!—& curtsying to a dirty Public!—but a Coronet up on my coach—dashing at the opera!—shining at the Court!—oh, dear! dear! what shall I come to!

  That one almost made her laugh. It had been such a long time since straw beds in barns. She thought back and tried to remember how that had felt: the scratchiness of old straw under sacking. No, the memory was out of reach now; that was little Betsy who'd slept on straw, not Miss Eliza Farren.

  Well, tomorrow she'd be saying farewell to scowling Managers and making her last curtsy to the dirty Public. She was to give them Lady Teazle in the School for Scandal—not so much her favourite as theirs. As she lay awake in the dark night, her mind was clogged with the names of all the women she'd played over the years. Lady Fanciful, Lady Modish, Lady Paragon, Lady Plotwell, Lady Rustic, Lady Sadlife, Lady Townly, Lady Trifle: they lined up like some ghost battalion in old-fashioned hoops and lace ruffles. Mrs Sullen, Mrs Simper, Mrs Freelove;, Miss Loveless, Miss Lovely, Miss Languish. Alcmena, Alinda, Almeida, she thought, starting to work her way through the alphabet in the hopes that it would send her to sleep; several Belindas, Berinthia, Bisarre, and the Baroness of Bruchsal.

  She yawned, the following evening, as she pulled on the turban and plumes that she'd worn for Teazle ever since big hats went out of fashion. She darkened her eyebrows and shaded the lids with blue; used a dab of rouge to enlarge her lower lip, which had always been a trifle too thin.

  There was nothing about her retirement on the playbills, but all London knew. Jack Palmer, in his Joseph Surface costume, popped his head in to say that the crowd was the biggest for years; the doorkeepers had never taken in so high a sum on a non-Ben night. Several carriages had collided outside and three people had been hurt while attempting to squeeze into their boxes.

  'Not badly?' Eliza stared at him, thinking of the terrible night at the Haymarket when a dozen people had been trampled to death.

  'Nothing to worry about. And your Earl appeared in his box at the end of my scene and got a big cheer,' he assured her.

  'Jack?' she said as he was going.

  He cocked an eyebrow.

  'Thanks.'

  'For what?'

  'For twenty years.'

  He sketched a mocking bow and the boy came to say that Act Two was about to begin.

  Eliza tripped on stage as young Lady Teazle, to scoff at her grouchy old husband, played by Tom King. He attempted to answer—but they were silenced by a deafening hail of applause. She stood there, smiling and curtsying. The clapping only got louder; the crowd wouldn't let her begin. She felt a tightness in her throat. This was the same audience who'd hissed her when she missed performances, howled with laughter when she'd been called a Tommy. Was it her departure that was making them so fond, or her story, the fairy tale of a poor girl lifted to a glittering rank?

  She found the Derby box and gave him a private smile. The Richmond box was usually empty these days; tonight it was occupied by Anne Damer. Eliza stared at her; her heart appeared to squeeze shut for a moment, before it beat again.

  'Lady
Teazle, Lady Teazle, I'll not bear it,' began Tom King, shaking his head.

  'Sir Peter, Sir Peter, you may bear it or not, as you please,' she cried merrily, 'but I ought to have my own way in everything, and what's more, I will too!

  After her first few scenes had passed Eliza found that the familiar lines—not just hers, but her fellow actors' too—were playing rather strangely. The sparkling wit was still there, but also other tones. It was tragic, really, that Sir Peter loved his wife but couldn't tell her so for fear she'd laugh at him; awful, the way these gossips tore apart their so-called friends.

  By the end of the play Eliza's throat had a swollen feeling, as if she'd been speaking for days on end. When she came out to take her bows she saw that Anne Damer had already gone. This gave her a peculiar pang: She might at least have stayed to the end.

  Lady Teazle's epilogue was an old piece, by Colman, but Sheridan thought it suited Eliza's present circumstances perfectly. T, who was late so volatile and gay! she began,

  Like a trade wind must now blow all one way,

  Bend all my cares, my studies, and my vows,

  To one dull rusty weathercock—my spouse!

  Here she bobbed a sulky curtsy in the direction of the Derby box, which won her a great laugh. And now she began a mime of rural boredom.

  In a lone rustic hall for ever pounded,

  With dogs, cats, rats and squalling brats surrounded...

  'Lots of little Derbys!' crowed a Cockney in the pit. Eliza ignored that, but it caused great hilarity.

  Farewell all quality of high renown,

  Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious town!

  Farewell! your revels I partake no more,

  And Lady Teazle's occupation's o'er...