He nodded toward the sofa. “Will you at least sit so that we may converse in a civilized manner?”
She sank onto the sofa while Percival returned his attention to the wine. He held the glass up just as a beam of early-evening sunlight pierced the rain clouds, flooding the room. For several moments, he turned the glass, as if absorbed with the play of light and liquid. Finally, he drained the wine, then walked over to a side table and filled his glass to the brim from a decanter before taking a seat opposite her. “It is of no importance. You’ve got what you wanted, and I trust it will make you happy.” For a second, she saw a flash of hurt in his eyes, hastily mastered.
“Thank you, Percival.”
“Just do me the honor of not making a fool of yourself, or of me.”
“At the theater, I will be known as Miss Green,” she said. “No one will connect us.”
“That is thoughtful of you.”
“The New Theatre is very grand,” she said. “You can be proud of your contribution. Apparently, the admission prices are to be raised, even for the pit.”
“And a good thing too. Mr. Kemble and his partners must recover their investment. The higher prices will dissuade the more unsavory elements from attending. The theater’s no place for shop assistants and tradesmen.”
“Who is it for then?” Grace was surprised to find that she was enjoying talking with Percival. They so rarely spent time together.
“Gentlemen and ladies, my dear, gentlemen and ladies. Mr. Kemble knows what he’s about by putting up the prices. The clientele can only improve, which is good news for you. A more cultured audience will be a more attentive one. Mind you, in my opinion, Mrs. Siddons is getting too on in years to play Lady Macbeth. I’ve been watching her since I was a lad, and she was past forty then.”
“Mrs. Siddons is a legend!” Grace sat forward. “She is so tall and stately! And her eyes! Mr. Kemble has made me her understudy, but I am determined to get my own roles. It is only a matter of time, and I am still young.”
Percival chuckled. “It is gratifying to see you so passionate, my dear. I have not often the pleasure of it.” His eyebrows rose as he stroked his cheek with one finger. “Perhaps tonight, we could retire early.”
Grace flushed but was prevented from replying by the appearance of Betsy, who placed a bowl of ripe peaches on a side table. “Please, ma’am. These be fresh.”
“Peaches? A fine treat! Tell Mrs. Granger well done, Betsy.” Percival patted his flat stomach.
“Please excuse me.” Grace rose from the sofa. “I must review lines.”
“What for? Mrs. Siddons may be getting old, but her stamina is as legendary as her acting. She’s birthed, what, six children and outlived at least three of them?”
“I believe it is seven children, and she has outlived four. Good evening, Percival.”
Grace escaped to her dressing room. Keeping her voice low, she recited her lines and practiced gestures. She would not wish ill upon so great a lady as Mrs. Siddons, but if something should happen to her—nothing terrible of course, a slight cold would be enough—then Grace would be ready to step in and show Mr. Kemble that he was wise to take her back into the company. Percival was right. Mrs. Siddons was no longer young and rumored to be considering retirement. She’d certainly earned it. Most of the other actresses at the theater would be vying for the chance to replace Mrs. Siddons, but Grace was convinced she had as much chance as any to be chosen.
The successor to Mrs. Siddons! If only her mother were alive to watch Grace make her debut on the London stage—finally stepping into the life she was born for!
Two floors below her window, the door to the street opened and then closed. Percival had not let her down—that was something. She should make more of an effort to speak civilly with him. She could not love him—not as a wife should—but she did not hate him. A hairline crack splintered through one of the protective layers she’d hardened around her heart against him.
Still, by the time Percival returned from his club, Grace would make sure she was long asleep, with the door to her bedchamber firmly shut.
* * *
“We should tell him, Alec. He’s got a right to know something’s up.” Ned cocked his head at the group of men gathered around the table next to them in the crowded tavern. “This lot looks like they mean business.”
“It’s all just talk, Ned. They wouldn’t dare.”
“Maybe not, but there’s been plenty of talk these past weeks.”
A young man slapped the table with the flat of his hand. “Damn me, we’ll teach him a lesson!”
Ned raised his eyebrows at Alec. “You might get the chance to crack a few heads after all these months away from the theater.”
Alec scowled. “We’d be a lot better off if your precious managers hadn’t raised the prices. There’s going to be trouble.”
“They ain’t my precious managers. Besides, I only work for Mr. Kemble.”
A watchman’s rattle cracked. A young man held it aloft by its smooth wooden handle and cranked. The business end—a wooden rectangle about eight inches long and three inches high—rotated around the handle like a spindle. The grinding, grating sound set Ned’s teeth on edge. Several young men guffawed at the din and banged their fists upon the table. Heads turned, and more young men came over to investigate.
“Old prices!”
A chorus of jeers and cheers drowned out the rattle.
“You sure they mean no harm?” Alec shouted over the noise. “If I was you, I’d go straight to Mr. K.”
More men brandished rattles as the tavern erupted with cries of “Old prices!” Ned set down his mug and stood up. “All right, Alec. I’ll go see him. But I still think nothing will come of it. It’s just high spirits.”
Alec followed him out of the tavern into the Piazza. “I hope you’re right.”
“’Course I’m right. Everyone in London wants to get inside the theater. No one will dare make a ruckus. I’d stake me job on it.”
Chapter 19
His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last,
For violent fires soon burn out themselves . . .
Richard II (2.1.33–34)
On the afternoon of September 18, 1809, Grace arrived at the theater several hours before the doors would open at 5:30 p.m. She walked onto the empty stage in front of the crimson curtain and gazed out over the immense auditorium. Five tiers rose into the gloom—three tiers of boxes and two more above that to accommodate the upper galleries, with the top one crammed with seats so close to the ceiling that patrons would be obliged to peer straight down at the stage. All the walls and box fronts were painted a light shade of pink embossed with Greek designs intended to echo the neoclassical style of the theater’s exterior.
The stage was the largest Grace had ever seen. Two yellow pillars held up the proscenium and supported a wide arch that spanned the width of the stage. Grace stepped to the very edge of the stage above the orchestra and turned to peer up at the carved entablature—a broad horizontal frieze emblazoned with the royal coat of arms just visible in the light thrown from sconces set into the walls.
She knew, because Ned had told her, that ten feet below the stage was a second stage where the machinery used to work the traps and the wings was placed. Below this stage was a cellar deep enough to accommodate the massive flies that were sunk down through slats in the floor.
Grace stretched out her arms and turned slowly on one foot. She wanted to laugh out loud. If only her father could see her. He’d be apoplectic with rage—and powerless to stop her.
“It’s not yet three, sir, and there’s thousands of people out there!”
Mr. Kemble, dressed in his Macbeth costume, entered the stage from the back, trailed by Ned. Before they could see her, Grace darted into the wings and waited in the darkness to watch and listen.
“There’s too many to take in,” Ned said. “What should we do?”
Mr. Kemble whirled around. He was as tall as Ned but with the commanding presence of a
man accustomed to taking charge. “What’s the problem?”
“They’s pushed so hard against the gate at the Bow Street entrance that the chain’s broke, sir.”
“Is the crowd contained? We still have at least two hours before we open the doors.”
“Yes, sir. Most of them are milling around in front of the theater now, crowding the doors. But there’s too many, sir.”
“So you’ve said.”
“What do we do?”
“Do? We do nothing. If my theater has attracted such a mighty crowd on opening night, then the only thing we can do is be grateful. Those who can’t get in will return tomorrow.” Mr. Kemble clamped one large hand on Ned’s shoulder. “Tell the lads to be at the doors when they open and to keep the crowd orderly. They’ll be no trouble.”
“Yes, sir.”
Grace heard the dismay in Ned’s voice even if it seemed Mr. Kemble did not. The night before, Percival had mentioned some nonsense about people being upset by the new admission prices, but surely that would not account for such a large crowd. Mr. Kemble had to be right. Everyone was eager to get inside the New Theatre. And who could blame them? In just a few hours, the boxes and pit would spill over with patrons ready to be enchanted by the great Mrs. Siddons—and Mr. Kemble too. Everyone proclaimed his Macbeth was a marvel.
On her way back to the dressing area, Grace passed Mrs. Siddons’s private room. The door was slightly ajar.
“To alter favor ever is to fear:
Leave all the rest to me.”
The line was from Lady Macbeth’s first scene with Macbeth when she plots with him to kill King Duncan. Even in practice, the full, rich tones of Mrs. Siddons’s voice thrilled Grace. She’d watch and learn from the great actress so that one day she too could earn the adoration of thousands. Grace hugged herself, smiling into the gloom.
* * *
A few hours later, Grace stationed herself in the wings so she had a good view of Mr. Kemble striding onstage. The theater was full to overflowing. She’d heard Ned say that the box office had turned away several hundred people—mostly young men who wanted to gain admission into the pit. Just yards from where Grace stood, over three thousand people shuffled feet and adjusted fans. The New Theatre Royal at Covent Garden was the largest theater ever built in London, which meant, so far as Grace knew, that it must be the largest theater in the world.
Mr. Kemble stopped at center stage and stood bare legged in his new Macbeth kilt, his fists resting on either side of his hips. The orchestra struck up “God Save the King,” and the theater exploded with lusty singing. Grace felt as if her own heart would burst with pride as she joined in. She grinned at the three actresses dressed as the witches ready to go onstage as soon as Mr. Kemble finished his welcome speech. Under their hideous makeup, they also flushed with pride, their voices clear and sweet. Grace had never experienced the tug of patriotism with such fervor. The smell of fresh paint and the twitch of newly hung curtains were a reminder that she stood at the precipice of a new life.
As soon as the anthem ended, Mr. Kemble stretched out his right arm. “We feel, with glory, all to Britain due,” he declaimed. He then paused and lifted his other arm, symbolically embracing every man and woman in the audience. “And British artists raised this pile for you!”
A mighty roar, a volley of boos and hisses and jeers, rose and crested through the vast theater. Grace clapped her hands over her ears. Onstage, Mr. Kemble did not flinch. He continued speaking, although not one word was audible except perhaps to Mr. Kemble himself. The witches crowded in front of Grace, their olive-tinged faces aghast.
The crowd came together in a crescendo of booing—the sound long and sustained like foghorns on the river. Seconds later, whistles took up a counterpoint of malice, weaving in and out of the rumble of stamping feet and rough shouts—seabirds in a storm. Ned came up behind her.
“They’ll calm down soon enough,” he said.
Mr. Kemble finished his speech and stood tall and haughty for another minute. The noise swirled around him—chaos bumping against rigid defiance. Finally, with a sniff of his famous hooked nose, he strode offstage.
“Go on, girls!” Ned said. “They’ve got no quarrel with you.”
The witches edged onto the stage to be greeted with a renewed bout of jeers and heckles. Like frightened puppets, they lurched through the scene, their jerky movements so clumsy that one of them kicked over the cauldron. A cascade of dirty sand skittered across the stage. Raucous laughter destroyed any chance the witches had of setting a fearsome tone for the play. Grace remembered her own disastrous debut as Juliet and shuddered with sympathy.
“We’re in for a long night,” Ned said.
“They can’t keep it up,” Grace whispered, although she needn’t have bothered keeping her voice low.
Howls of protest greeted the reappearance of Mr. Kemble at the other side of the stage. Oblivious to the noise, he strode in front of the witches and waited with his chin held high to be hailed Thane of Cawdor. For all the crowd knew, he was being hailed Thane of Cheapside. The theater erupted with more yells and catcalls. The terrified witches struggled to shout lines that no one—not even Mr. Kemble—had any hope of hearing. Grace would not have believed it possible for an audience to keep up such a racket.
Kemble’s bare knees under his kilt glinted like swollen white fists in the light thrown from the candles. For a few seconds, the noise lessened and his words boomed out.
“Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires . . .”
The hoots and catcalls and hollers started again, even louder than before. Mr. Kemble mouthed a few more lines and then stamped off the stage, his face purple with rage.
“Intolerable boors!” he hissed. “They can’t keep it up.”
But for the next two hours, they did keep it up from scene to scene and act to act—sometimes swelling in volume, occasionally receding so the odd, disembodied word hung in the air only to be smothered by an even greater uproar. The rumbling of the crowd bubbled through the theater like carriages over cobblestones. The loudest yells were reserved for Mr. Kemble. Each time he stepped onstage, the noise in the theater trebled. When Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth joined him, the line that always sent shivers down Grace’s spine was swallowed in a thunderous cry.
“Screw your courage to the sticking place and we’ll not fail.”
“It’s a bleedin’ disgrace.” Ned came to stand next to Grace. “Mr. Kemble’s told me to call in the magistrates. As soon as the play’s done, they’ll read the Riot Act.”
“What do they want?” Grace asked.
“They want the prices put down.”
“Will Mr. Kemble oblige them?”
“Mr. Kemble don’t bow to no man, and especially not to a crowd like this. It’s bad enough they’re yelling at him, but Mr. K. won’t want them doing the same to his sister.”
Mrs. Siddons reeled off the stage after her final scene—the famous sleepwalking scene when she rubs unseen blood from her hands and stares with mad, dead eyes at the horrors of her past.
“Insufferable!” she exclaimed. “Where is my brother?” Mrs. Siddons turned on Grace. “You! Take my place. I will not set foot on the stage again until this outrage is ended.”
* * *
Two magistrates arrived to read the Riot Act at 11:00 p.m. Mr. Kemble, still in his Macbeth kilt, stood next to them and scowled out at the crowd that had not yet dispersed after the end of the final act of the afterpiece—a farce called The Quaker. Although the shouting and hallooing did not stop, the mood was more festive than vicious. Even if the magistrates’ threats had been audible, no one in the seething crowd seemed remotely inclined to heed them.
At Mr. Kemble’s command, Ned was stationed below and to the right of the stage where he could see out over the pit. The musicians had packed up their instruments and left the theater for the comfort and relative quiet of a nearby tavern. Ned wished he could join them, but there was no chan
ce of that for many hours yet. He’d ushered the actors and actresses out through the stage door and did his best to calm Mr. Harrison. The poor old man railed about the riot caused decades earlier when he’d taken Mr. Garrick’s place as Hamlet. But loud as the crowds had been then, they’d never kept up the disturbance for the entire evening. This new breed of theatergoers was insufferable! The lot of them should be banned.
“They’ll not be budging,” said Alec, who came to stand shoulder to shoulder with Ned.
“They can’t stay here all night,” Ned said. He grinned at Alec. He was glad that he’d been able to convince Mr. Brandon to take Alec back on as ticket taker out front. It felt good to be working with his old friend again.
“What a fine mess! I never expected them to keep it up so long.”
A young man jeered at Ned. “Whatcher smilin’ at? Ain’t nothing to smile about.” The man raised his fist and bellowed, “Old prices!”
Others near him took up the cry with renewed energy. Onstage, one of the magistrates gestured and shouted, his face plum purple. The other held him by the arm and appeared to be telling him to give it up as a lost cause. Mr. Kemble continued to scowl at the crowd. Ned wondered if Mr. K. would have more success with the crowd if he listened to their complaints. After all, the prices had risen. Maybe people had a right to be angry.
“The magistrates have given up,” Alec said, jerking his head toward the stage. “Does that mean we can go home now?”
“I wish, but so long as there’s patrons in the theater, we got to stay. Let’s hope they get tired soon.”
The young man staggered toward them, his arms and legs moving independently, reminding Ned of an ineptly handled marionette. The lad landed at Ned’s feet and smiled up at him with gin-fueled confidence. “Old prices, mate! Whatcher mean just standin’ there not making a noise with the rest of us?”
Ned seized the lad’s arm above the elbow. “We work for Mr. Kemble,” he said. “And the performance is over.” He gave the lad a none-too-gentle shove toward the side door. “Theater’s closed.”
To Ned’s relief, the lad executed a mock salute and then lurched out the door. Ned turned his attention back to the seething pit and sighed with dismay. Several men hopped up on the benches. They stomped their feet and bellowed at the now-empty stage, and then laughed uproariously.
The Muse of Fire Page 18