The Season

by Charlotte Bingham

  Mrs Hartley Lambert pushed nervously at her sleeping arrangements, and then patted her beribboned nightcap, thinking, of a sudden, that she could not tell from Sarah’s face whether she had been a success or not. In fact, since she was still wearing her reading spectacles, she could tell nothing from Sarah’s face at all.

  She quickly took them off, and there, at last, was the beloved head, unadorned by anything but the smallest flower tucked into the chignon roll at the top. It was coming nearer and nearer to its doting mama, until there it was, as pretty as a picture, and glowing with that particular look which, Mrs Hartley Lambert immediately felt, could surely only come from some sort of success in a London ballroom? But, just to make sure, and having found her pinz nez comfortingly close to hand, she flicked her fingers quickly at her daughter, making an anxious little click, click, click with them, until Sarah drew quite close and, taking the dance card from her gloved wrist, placed it carefully in her mama’s soft, round, plump hand.

  Now the reading spectacles must be put on once more for inspection of the card.

  ‘Darlingest, Lord Melbury! But surely he was a Prime Minister of England or some such, was he not?’

  Sarah shook her head and smiled. ‘No, Mama, his great-grandfather, I think you will find.’

  ‘But darling, Sarah darling, here is Lord Velmont … and whose is this writing? Lord – who, darling?’

  ‘Clanbridge. He is an Irish peer, the Countess said. Very hairy, very charming though. I liked him.’

  ‘Yes, darling, but as I understand it from the Countess, we do not go for an Irish peer unless quite desperate. Good hunting in Ireland, of course, but the rain! Endless, I believe. But. Sarah.’ Her mother looked across at her daughter who was now standing at the window, the picture of grace in her white lace. ‘My darlingest one, judging from this card it looks to me as if you have the whole of London at your feet already. My love, not one dance not taken. How proud I am of you. And you hardly in England more than a few weeks. What a feat for an American girl, and how proud I am of you,’ she repeated happily. ‘Not one single dance sat out, and every one of your partners a titled gentleman.’

  Sarah turned from the window and smiled back at her mother. ‘As long as it makes you happy, Mama, then I am happy.’

  But her mother hardly heard her. She was too busy turning to the first dance on the card, once more starting to read through, and relish, the list of titled gentlemen who had danced with her beloved Sarah. It meant everything to Mrs Hartley Lambert, since her own reception by her husband’s family twenty years before had not been unfriendly so much as hostile. It was the Hartley Lamberts’ treatment of her, their despite of her, their going out of their way to treat their daughter-in-law in a way that they would not have dared to treat a maidservant, that, following the birth of her daughter, had determined her to reach for the heights when it came to Sarah’s marriage. No-one was going to be able to look down on Sarah the way that the Hartley Lamberts had looked down on her mother. No-one was going to treat her like a maidservant. She would not be insulted daily, almost hourly, because of her poor origins.

  From the first her mother was determined that Sarah was going to marry into an old family, one older than her in-laws’ family, and not an old American family either, although that would not be unacceptable. She was going to marry into the British aristocracy and from that giddy height Mrs Hartley Lambert would at last be able to look down on the Hartley Lamberts of Newport, for ever and ever more.

  Since she had come to Europe with Sarah, travelling in the grandest style, night after night Mrs Hartley Lambert would awake and put on her light and imagine herself able to call on all those Hartley Lambert cousins, all those Hartley Lambert aunts and uncles, flourishing, with the greatest enjoyment, her newly titled daughter under their noses. So much for looking down on her!

  ‘Of course it makes me happy, darling.’ Mrs Hartley Lambert put down the dance card very carefully on her bedside table and sighed. She felt as if she had just eaten one of her cook’s hot pancakes just oozing maple syrup, and butter and cream.

  ‘Good night, Mama.’

  ‘Good night, darlingest. Be as good tomorrow as you were tonight and before long you will be married in Westminster Abbey with twenty-four attendants and the Archbishop of Canterbury to give the blessing.’

  Sarah smiled, shut the door behind her, and then leant against it momentarily before giving out a tired and dreadfully unhappy little sigh. It was more than she could have done to have spoilt her mother’s evening, perhaps her whole week, by telling her that every single one of those titled gentlemen who had scribbled their names in her dance card had been well over fifty, and in reality barely able to dance, let alone waltz, or even do the Bunny Hug let alone the tango. Indeed the notion of any of them even attempting a tango, or knowing what it was, brought a wry smile to Sarah’s lips.

  It was true that she had danced through the evening. It was true that, as the Countess smiled graciously, even proudly, to one and all from her chaperon’s vantage point, her protégée had not had a moment to seat herself on her own gilt chair so thick and fast had come the stream of elderly men to scribble their names in Sarah’s card. Meanwhile, her two former fellow pupils from Lady Devenish’s tuition course had waltzed delightedly past Sarah, safely in the arms of much younger men.

  Was it always to be like this? Was she only to attract the attentions of the elderly, via the Countess of Evesham?

  Sarah picked up her skirt with one gloved hand and trailed almost aimlessly towards her own private suite with its large rooms filled with gilded furniture and vast portraits of someone else’s ancestors, its patterned carpets, its chandeliers and its patiently waiting maid.

  ‘Mrs Hartley Lambert must have been ever so pleased when she saw your dance card, miss,’ ventured Corkie.

  ‘Oh, yes, indeed she was.’

  Sarah submitted gracefully to being undressed by the dutiful Corkie, until eventually she was able to seat herself in her satin robe and lawn nightgown in front of one of the many lively fires that were always kept burning in Sarah’s rooms. For despite the fact that it was officially summer in London, the capital of England seemed a cold place to a former child of Newport, the buildings so grey in appearance, and so close to each other, each road so narrow, especially after the broad avenues and elegance of Paris.

  ‘And the Countess of course, miss, she was ever so pleased, no doubt of it.’

  Sarah’s success at the ball, if it could be counted as such, was not just her own, she realised suddenly. It was her mama’s, it was the Countess’s, it was Lady Devenish’s; it was the hairdresser’s, the dressmaker’s, the corsetiere’s. It was everyone else’s success, nothing to do with her. Her success had little to do with herself.

  And yet as she lay in bed staring at the patterns that the dying embers of the fire were making on the ceiling miles above her head, Sarah could not help feeling grateful towards the Countess. After all, given Sarah’s height, which she understood was such a terrible handicap in British Society, she realised that she had, thanks to her patroness, actually escaped with her social life at the opening ball. She knew that, as she was an American girl – or, as the Countess referred to her, a ’Merican gel – and had known no-one at all of her own generation in that ballroom, it would have been all too possible for her to have spent the whole evening seated behind the Countess a very lonely, stranded and isolated ’Merican gel.

  And a girl without a single partner, a girl with an empty dance card at the opening ball, would surely be shunned for the rest of the Season? At best it would be noticed and noted by all. Sarah was not so naive as not to sense, given the male herd complex, that all the younger men would shun her, doubtlessly assuming that she had, in the terms of the stable yard, a known fault. So all in all, she must feel only gratitude to the wise, and still beautiful, old Countess.

  After all the Countess had made quite sure that Sarah Hartley Lambert had a full dance card, come what may, and would no
t be shunned by the pack. The pack would have noticed that Miss Hartley Lambert had not sat down for the whole of that opening ball. They would have noted that, despite her undoubted height, she had been danced with non-stop, her dance card filled from start to finish. Indeed by the end of the evening some of them were even to be seen queueing to scribble their names in her card, only to find it full. So, all in all, the clever Countess had, come what may, ensured her protégée some degree of continuing success, and Sarah knew it, and felt grateful.

  She closed her eyes, shutting out the pretty patterns of the flickering flames on the ceiling far above her. Tomorrow morning she must be up betimes ready to ride out with the fashionable and the infamous up and down Rotten Row in Hyde Park, accompanied by not one groom, but two. Something which Sarah herself found embarrassingly ostentatious, but upon which her mother had insisted. She had also insisted, for this all-important show of wealth, on ordering for her daughter what Sarah thought must be the most expensive riding habit in the world. Not run up at Busvines, as so many others would have been, but made in Paris. It was dark green to set off Sarah’s dark brown hair, and had the minutest silver threads running subtly through the stitching. The silver threads, thank heavens, could not be seen until the sunlight caught at them, at which point the idea was, apparently, that, without the onlooker’s realising it, Sarah would catch the eye in a way that frost on a leaf in the early morning caught the eye, the French tailor had explained, with many a flourish of his arms as he elaborated on this scintillating fact.

  Privately Sarah had found the riding habit what her Newport friends back home would call shudder-some. It was altogether too eye-catching to be quite nice, but her mama had fallen furiously in love with its Gallic subtleties, so that was what Sarah would be wearing in the morning, come what may, although she dearly hoped that she would not be wearing the plumed hat with the silvered band to go with it. There was another more discreet version without plumes or band, and she thought, beginning to fall asleep at last, that would surely be less eye-catching? Goodness only knew she was so tall on a horse, the very last thing she needed was to catch the eye with silver bands and heaven only knew what else.

  ‘My dear.’ The Countess was talking to Lady Medlar. ‘Ve whole fing was a raging success. You are to be congratulated, Augustine, really you are. Those opening balls can be such a disaster. As we well remember, in the old days, the opening ball was so often so rusty. The orchestras had not been in the swing of fings for long enough, so ve music was dull and bad, and the caterers usually had not taken on enough servants, or the florists delivered enough blooms, and so on, ve whole fing, as I say, too rusty for words. And let us face it, Augustine, so important to remember things as they were, rather than as one would have liked it. The Duchess, if you remember, was always so cross-seeming at her opening ball! Whereas, nowadays, you, my dear, are by comparison ve epitome of grace and beauty. Really, you are.’

  This speech was so unlike her old rival Daisy Lanford that Augustine Medlar found herself feeling completely wrong-footed, embarrassed, and indeed looking everywhere but at Daisy herself. She would, if she could, have liked to have asked, ‘What on earth do you want, Daisy Lanford? What on earth do you want of me to come out with such twaddle?’ But of course she could not. For, although Lady Medlar was the maker and breaker of reputations, although she sat, literally, beneath a gilded canopy to receive her guests at her afternoon At Homes during the whole livelong Season, even she would not have dared to be so impolite, or indeed so direct, to Daisy.

  For, besides ‘Little Mrs George’ as Mrs Keppel had been known, no-one had been guaranteed to bring a smile to Edward VII’s lips more quickly than Daisy. Whatever had been their affair of long ago, whatever had been their loving, their friendship had withstood the test of love, and that, as everyone knew, was the greatest test of all. It was well known among the middle-aged of their set that to love and to remain friends was even harder to achieve than that biblical ideal, the happy marriage.

  No, despite everything, Daisy had been, and always would be in the world’s eyes, the most adored of the old king’s mistresses, and, no matter what happened, they had enjoyed too much happiness together for the rest of the world to forget.

  Not that Daisy had not been a worry to all her devoted admirers. Indeed, throughout the previous decade she had fallen in and out of debt with such monotonous regularity that it had even come to His Majesty’s notice. More than once, knowing of her troubles, her former lover had brought in kind financial advisers to try to bring some sort of order to her chaotic life.

  But no adviser could help Daisy, and while she remained, mercifully, above having to give ‘tango teas’ – the latest rage for the fast set – she had been forced to ‘help’ heiresses through the Season in return for having all her Ascot dresses paid for, and other remunerations. It was just a fact. Daisy, among many others of her kind, had suffered not just from the fall in land values, not just from the increase in taxes, but from her own inability to adjust to the fast-changing times. She had enjoyed too much for too long, and never counted the cost until a few years before when Messrs Coutts and Co. had finally brought home to her that she could no longer afford to go on as she had. Estates must be sold, albeit for yards below what should be their true value, old servants dismissed, and even horses put out to grass.

  All this Augustine Medlar knew, and Daisy knew that she knew, but what Augustine still did not know was why Daisy was flattering her so uncharacteristically. Daisy never flattered anyone. What on earth could she possibly want?

  Augustine leaned forward on her chair underneath its gilded canopy. Her curiosity was so intense that she really felt that should any more time elapse before she heard Daisy’s intentions she thought she might have a fit of palpitations or burst her corsets. Of one thing both of them could be completely assured, and that was that Daisy was always up to something. And more than ever now that she had been forced to take foreign debutantes under her wing in order to pay for her own London Season. Everyone knew that nowadays Daisy could never afford to dress in new Worth gowns from Paris if they were not paid for by some arriviste mama from outside England.

  ‘How may I help you, Daisy?’ Augustine demanded, allowing her eyes to travel to the new arrivals at her afternoon At Home by way of pretending disinterest.

  From the advantage of her raised dais she could see young men still placing their hats and canes in the corner of the room in the old way, the canes making a dull clatter, the hats too, as was the custom, being left at the side of the room, and never in the hall, unless it was one’s own home.

  Side by side with the young men came young ladies beautifully dressed in their walking clothes and escorted by their mamas similarly tricked out in the smaller, neater hats of the new era, the hobble skirts making it plain that they were dressed in the height of that year’s fashion.

  No so, however, the young officers in their strictly tailored uniforms, or the foreign diplomats in their strange, dark, always rather silken clothes. Nor indeed the members of parliament, looking rather too recently outfitted as Liberals always seemed to, still too new to power to have the easy air, the lived-in look of the older Tory men up from the Shires at the behest of their wives and daughters, their minds still at home on their estates, their worries over harvests and the falling price of land etching little lines under their eyes. And where once the hauteur of the newly arrived from the previous century would have marked their expressions, now there was only anxiety to be read.

  Not that it mattered, to Augustine Medlar anyway. She cared only that they were all still there, everyone who was anyone, and as anxious as ever to be seen at her At Homes. All making their way, slowly or methodically, in whatever fashion they had elected, towards Lady Medlar’s famous throne-like chair, with the dais giving it such an imperial air. She knew only too well that no-one in that room was able to put their hand on their heart and declare that they wanted nothing from Augustine Medlar. They were all there because they al
l, to a person, one way or another, wanted something from her; and that was what was so interesting to Augustine Medlar, to find out what it was precisely that they wanted, and then to deny or grant it to them, as the mood took her.

  For that was what power was all about, the giving and the taking, according to one’s whim, and never mind the consequences to the petitioners, never mind the hurt, never mind the gain. The power to raise or cut down was more sensual than love to Augustine Medlar, and more flattering to her ego than the heartiest compliment or the most ardent lover. Love she despised, and always had. Once suffered, love was thankfully to be set aside for the fascination only of the sentimental, or the foolish. Once one had one’s babies, one simply ignored one’s husband’s mistresses, as one ignored one’s husband’s gambling debts; they were just a dull part of him, in which one took great care to take no interest whatsoever. It was common knowledge that England had enjoyed so little war for so long that the men were bored, and bored men went looking for mischief, which fortunately, since Society had at last organised itself properly over the last fifty years, they found in the arms of their mistresses in St John’s Wood, or, if they were rather poorer, in the houses of somewhat cheaper women living at discreet addresses in Muswell or even Tulse Hill.

  But – inwardly Augustine sighed – she must pay attention now for Daisy was answering Lady Medlar’s question.

  ‘You may not help me, Augustine, don’t be silly!’ Daisy gave her famously light musical laugh. ‘You have never been able to help me, Augustine. Why, not even the King can help me, and you know that, of all people. You know that, or should do. No, of course you cannot help me.’