But before she could resume her cockney voice I knocked on the door.
‘Come in! Oh, Mr Mozart … You’re earlier than we expected.’
Their confusion was palpable. I fear that mine was too. I muttered some muddled explanation and made my way to the piano. Betty was not dressed as Jenny, so there was no éclaircissement called for, but as Bradley slipped to sit beside me at the piano and Betty began to sing ‘Deh vieni non tardar’ (perhaps my most beautiful melody!) it was clear that nothing was going to go right that day. Half-way through the aria Betty banged her hand on the top of the piano.
‘You heard, didn’t you?’
She was right as usual. We had to talk about it. I nodded my head miserably.
‘I’m afraid so. I don’t usually listen at doors. It was the voice, the accent: I heard it as I came up the stairs.’
‘Where can we rehearse?’ Betty demanded of Bradley Hartshead. ‘Would the King lend us Buckingham House gardens?’
‘Rehearse for the … trial?’ I put in, knowing the answer. Everyone called it a trial, though it was only a sort of hearing. Betty’s head went up and down vigorously, and now that her secret was shared she was smiling.
‘Of course. Now you’re the fourth person to know, and you have to keep absolutely quiet about it.’
‘I don’t have to ask why, I suppose?’
Betty laughed, her composure quite restored.
‘Of course not. You can’t imagine that poor slip of a thing testifying before the House of Lords, can you? I doubt they’d get a single word out of her. Someone has to tell the story for her, and this is the only way it can be done. Frank – Lord Hertford – knows all about my gifts as a mimic, and he approached me and asked me to do it.’
‘And are you sure the story is true?’
She raised her eyebrows.
‘Of course it’s true. Lord Hertford would never risk its being found out if it was a lie.’
‘But I heard you say – pardon me for overhearing – that you didn’t know how the story had got to him.’
‘Nor do I. But I’ll find out. Obviously she talked, and whoever she talked to took the tale to him.’
‘I suppose so,’ I said, but still somewhat dubious. There seemed a lot of assumptions here. ‘Obviously the story will destroy the Queen entirely.’
‘Oh, certainly. And the King will be very grateful. Lord and Lady Hertford too.’
‘He’s paying you for your services?’
‘There will be a gift when the thing is done …’ She smiled. ‘A most munificent gift. Our fortunes – my fortune – will be made. I shall mention, of course, that you know and have been as silent as the grave.’
That seemed a little premature, and to smack of a bribe. But the circumstances of my life have made me eminently bribable. I nodded a solemn acceptance.
‘Of course I shall tell nobody. Jeopardising hopes of the King’s support for the opera season would be fatal at this stage. But aren’t you afraid?’
‘Afraid?’
‘If the impersonation did get out it would ruin your prospects on the stage in this country. Support would immediately swing back to the Queen, and her personal riff-raff can be very violent. They simply would not suffer you to appear.’
‘There are other countries to sing in. Anyway it won’t get out.’
‘Someone who knows Jenny could come to the hearing.’
‘Her testimony – or mine, rather – will be a complete surprise, sprung at the last moment. And nobody knows her. I doubt even Alderman Wood or his wife would recognise her. Can you imagine her fellow-servants being at the House of Lords? Anyway, I shall be Jenny – Jenny with a voice.’
‘Jenny does not have a voice, and anybody who knows her knows that too. If even a rumour got out there could be a danger that you would be … silenced.’
‘Rumour will not get out. Now – “Deh vieni—”’
And she turned back to the aria, singing it this time like an angel.
In the days that followed (days in which I received answers to my requests for financial assistance that were far from satisfactory) I had to contend with growing doubts and fears. Lord Hertford appeared to be using his position as principal paymaster to the embryonic opera company to involve it in a project that was fraught with difficulties and dangers. In his commendable (well, fairly commendable) desire to help the King he was in danger of sailing beyond the windy side of the law and taking the company with him. That he was imperilling Betty Ackroyd’s career, at least for the foreseeable future, was one important consideration. Still more important was the fact that he could be imperilling her life.
Those were the fears. The doubts nagged at me quite as insistently. From the moment I had heard Jenny Bowles tell her story – or have it told for her – I had wondered if it was the truth. The best argument I could come up with for its being true was that nobody would choose Jenny to tell a lie. But there were other questions too: how had her story come to Lord Hertford’s ears? And what was his position in all this? He was husband to the King’s principal mistress. There are doubtless some who gain pleasure from being cuckolded by royalty, but I would have expected them to come from the middle rather than the upper ranks of society. Could Lord Hertford really be such a man? He was, by all accounts, complaisant. But why should he be so eager to come to the King’s assistance?
My state of mind was unenviable, and I was glad that I had more or less completed Le Donne Giocose or whatever I decided to call it, so that the atmosphere of good humour and forgiveness which pervades its final moments was not affected (though it must be said that I have lived a life of constant aggravation and privation and it has seldom, thank the Lord, affected my music). Alas, the reply from Nannerl when it came did nothing to restore my composure. After the usual jokes of a personal nature – highly personal, or rather personal at bottom! – she went on:
I had heard rumours concerning Mme Hubermann-Cortino’s departure from Vienna even before I received your letter. No one has suggested that the departure was due to troubles at the Opera House, though certainly the usual intrigues and factions are at work there as ever. Mme Hubermann-Cortino sang there frequently in a variety of roles, and was well received by the Viennese public and aristocracy.
The rumour-mongers were busy, however, with her private life. The heir to the throne, the good Archduke Ferdinand, is as you know unmarried, and unkind tongues suggest that his mental capacity is limited. To be frank, some speak of him as close to an idiot. This would matter little in democratic Britain, where the King reigns but does not rule. But it matters here, where the Emperor rules (or employs Metternich to rule for him!). There is much talk of the Archduke marrying and producing an heir, or alternatively of his being deemed incapable of succeeding to the throne. His conduct is therefore constantly scanned.
How the affair began is a mystery. The Archduke is not known for his love of music. What everyone seems to agree about is that the Brunswicker’s husband was far from outraged. Indeed it is said that the gallant soldier was the instigator, and had played the same role in other affairs of his wife with men of power and wealth. Truly we live in terrible times! How our good father would have been pained by such iniquity! But it must be said that affairs of the heart, including affairs with married women, are not unknown in the Imperial family. It seems, therefore, that there must have been some special reason for Prince Metternich bundling the Hubermann-Cortino woman and her scheming husband out of the capital and out of the country. But what it was the tongues of rumour disagree on. What they do agree on is that the precious pair will not be allowed back in a hurry …
I read the letter with outrage. Tongues of rumour indeed! I could believe nothing of what such tongues alleged against the divine Therese. Her purity and goodness were vouched for by her beauty and her excellent taste and principles. Clearly she had been the victim of the intrigues and libels of a rival soprano. I did not waver in my view that she was all a woman should be, and that she would be the f
oundation stone on which our glorious Coronation season of opera would be built (you see, I was beginning to suffer from the delusions of all those involved in operatic enterprises!).
But as I took a leisurely stroll in the direction of the Queen’s Theatre I was assailed by the familiar nagging questions. If Therese had been bundled out of Vienna by Prince Metternich, why had she come so early to London? It was not the obvious place of refuge for a prima donna, particularly with our operatic life at such a low ebb. If Milan was ruled out by its Austrian rulers, why not Rome? Or Naples? Why not Munich or Berlin?
But those last names suggested a further train of thought, and I stopped in the vicinity of Carlton House and took out the letter to read it again, nagged by a half-memory. Yes – there it was! My dear sister referred to Therese as ‘the Brunswicker’. So that explained the unfamiliar accent. And it gave me furiously to think. I had never heard that brand of German spoken before, but there would be many people in England who had. Because it was the German spoken by our own Queen, the wife of Prinny, Caroline of Brunswick.
7. Il Color di Morte
All this time the defenders of the Queen were testifying to her virtue before the House of Lords at Westminster. The fever pitch of partisanship had by now somewhat abated. People were bored with Caroline’s pose of injured innocence. That she had been injured no one doubted, but fewer were now prepared to proclaim her innocence. Innocence, somehow, wore a different guise: it was not heavily rouged, it was not blowsy, it did not make gestures and strike poses that seemed to be aimed at the gallery. The gestures and poses seemed in any case to have been copied from the gestures of Italian opera singers – and provincial Italian opera singers at that. Attenders at the hearings were relieved when the Queen nodded off to sleep, which she rather frequently did.
I was much too busy to attend any of the hearings. Mr Clarkson had decided that one of the pieces that would fill in the time before rehearsals for the opera season could begin should be an old work of mine – The Call to Arms. It was a ‘left-handed’ piece, but one I am less indifferent to than most. It was based – very distantly – on Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer, so the libretto is less of a thin gruel than the books for the majority of such pieces. It was put together by some sorry hack whose name I forget who has since perished, I seem to remember, from war, pestilence, or want. Probably want. I wrote most of the music on the Continent in 1802, during the Peace of Amiens, and it is suffused with the joy and satisfaction of being at long last in Civilisation again. (The disappointments of the trip, financial and musical, as usual failed to intrude themselves into the music.) So that though most of the piece is pap, like all my English burlesques, there are one or two numbers such as the canon quartet of which I am not ashamed. I was quite looking forward to seeing it on stage again.
We had a fortnight for rehearsal and preparation – quite long enough if one went at it with a will. I recruited Bradley Hartshead to assist in the rehearsals and the training of the singers (insisting to Mr Popper that he be paid, which was agreed to with an ill grace). As rehearsals proceeded a certain buzz started going round the company, a feeling that this was a decidedly better offering than the Queen’s standard article – not because any more money was to be spent on it than usual (of course not!) but because the music and the characterisation had a little more substance.
Betty was to play Marietta (I told you it was only distantly based on Farquhar). It was a good part with two quite attractive arias. I rehearsed her thoroughly, and quite often went to talk things over in her dressing-room. Brilliant creature that she is, she could both attend to my instructions and watch her dresser going about her acts of theatrical drudgery – ironing, ham-fistedly sewing, and helping on with costumes. There was about Jenny Bowles a slight access of confidence, a just perceptible lightening of the burden of dread. I surmised she had been told it would not be necessary for her to tell her story before the Lords tribunal.
The first night was scheduled for a day just as the Queen’s defence was drawing to a close. Something of the players’ anticipation of success had penetrated to the outside world. The Call to Arms had been popular when it was first played. It had coincided with the resumption of hostilities against the Corsican monster. However the war was so long-drawn-out, successes were so slow in coming, that patriotic fervour could not keep the audiences coming in for long. It was now fifteen years since it was last played, and people were regarding it as a new piece. All to the good. A fair sprinkling of the beau monde as it is called (inappropriately, considering their faces and figures) could be expected for the opening night.
By the time that occurred the cast was exceptionally well-drilled. We had some quite good singers even apart from Betty, and I had managed to get the tenor to sing and act as if the words and action actually had some meaning (though that would not last beyond the first few nights). When the opening night came I lingered round in the vestibule noting the notabilities: Lord Harewood, the Duke of Devonshire, the Duke of York (still in mourning for his wife, though only sartorially) – and of course my Lord Hertford, with his Lady. All these grandees acknowledged me most graciously, and some came over and shook my hand as fellow members of the Brotherhood. Lord Hertford, after acknowledging my presence, went over to have some words with Mr Popper, who was standing prominently in the centre of the vestibule, preening himself as if he had written the piece that was about to be performed. That left Lady Hertford alone. I should have made an early escape. My heart sank as, instead of talking to any of her fashionable friends, she advanced in my direction.
‘Mr Mozart!’
In public rooms there was a slight whinny to her voice that was anything but attractive.
‘My Lady.’
‘We are expecting great things tonight.’
‘Your Ladyship is too kind.’
‘My husband says it is something special.’
I bowed. Her voice, to my relief, was lowered.
‘I am grateful to you, Mr Mozart, for your letters.’
There was something in the voice – an edge – that alerted me to trouble coming.
‘I have tried to keep Your Ladyship informed.’
‘I am obliged to you for what you have told me. Less grateful for what you have not told me.’
‘Not told you, My Lady?’ I put on a pose of mock innocence. ‘Of course I have not told you the gossip and small change of the day to day events in the company.’
My eye was most compellingly engaged by the spectacle of her hand going into her reticule and coming out with a small purse.
‘You mistook my purpose,’ she said, her voice as unmusical as it could well be. ‘I didn’t want to hear gossip. I have no interest in who is pleasuring whom.’ She leaned forward and hissed in my ear: ‘I wanted to hear about money!’
I stared at her dumbfounded.
‘I beg Your Ladyship’s pardon—’
‘I wanted – and want – to hear how much of his – and my – fortune My Lord is throwing away on this opera company’—there was such scorn in her voice!—‘and on its singers.’ Her eyes glinted: she was obviously on her favourite subject. ‘Opera companies, as you must know as well as anybody, Mr Mozart, eat up money. I want to know how much my husband is throwing away. That was what I meant when I asked you to keep me informed of the arrangements.’
The purse transferred itself to my hand. It felt like a very small one. No doubt Lady Hertford felt she had already paid for information which she had not received. Now she retreated towards her natural friends, but before she reached them she turned her thoroughbred head in my direction.
‘Write to me again, Mr Mozart!’
I stood there speechless. It must be said that Lady Hertford’s reputation was not that of a generous or a charitable woman, though her independent fortune was large. In a word, she was thought to be rapacious, though rumour had it that the King was currently transferring his affections to a woman, Lady Conyngham, still more outrageous in her determined acquisiti
veness. Truly such a man deserved to live in perpetual financial difficulties! I had not thought before, though, to question the gift of that purse. Clearly it had been intended by her as a sort of investment, to gain information on the expenditures of her less grasping husband.
Though to be sure Lord Hertford had never had the reputation of a generous man either. I had reason to be grateful to him, but in truth his expenditures were mostly in connection with his great love, music. His help to me had been timely rather than lavish. He knew (unlike his wife) when expenditure was called for from a man in his position. He was, in his rather old-fashioned way (for he was very much older than his wife) cultivated, suave, gentlemanly, but exceedingly cold. I would sooner petition him for money than for sympathy, but I would not expect a lavish amount of either. They were a couple, all things considered, from whom I would have preferred to keep my distance.
I turned to go backstage, but was prevented by the Brunswickian goddess and her more earth-bound husband.
‘Mr Mozart! Our sincerest best wishes for success tonight.’
Talking to a true musician I was forced to dampen expectations. In fact the mere thought of her listening to one of my left-handed pieces was something of an embarrassment.
‘Dear Madam – it is nothing. The slightest possible piece—’
‘Anything from the pen of Mozart must bear the stamp of genius.’
Her husband bowed and said something that seemed to be one of his routine and rote-learned compliments, but in the crush and babble it was quite incomprehensible.
I bowed, took one more look around the fairly glittering assembly, and disappeared back stage. There everything was in its usual state of hysteria and disorder. I will not bore you with the details. One tenor in a state of panic is very like another. The tenor this evening was Andrew Masters, and he was predictably fussing about autumn vapours (when was this god-forsaken city anything but vaporous?), the consequences for his voice, and his fears that he ‘would not do justice to himself’. I told him I was sure he would reveal the full extent of his talents. You can tell he is a tenor, because he went away satisfied with that.
Dead, Mr Mozart Page 7