by Jessica Mann
Clementine wrote back that Artemis must ensure that she was treated as the mistress in her husband’s house, a counsel of inexperience, for by the time that Artemis received her letter it was very clear that Princess Bathildis would not dream of surrendering her dignities to an English girl of inferior birth.
The ladies of Horn passed their time as Artemis had first seen them, sitting beside a porcelain stove in a draughty salon, talking about the members of princely families – their marriages, marriage prospects, children and ailments. They embroidered roses and left the backgrounds to be filled in by their ladies-in-waiting. Those ladies were always present, standing and smiling and curtseying. When the princesses retired to the ministrations of their maids, the ladies waited in an anteroom, where they might sit down to repeat and enhance the gossip they had heard from their serene Highness’s lips.
It was not done for noble ladies to take exercise, though they were occasionally driven rather slowly along a road that had been swept clear of snow for that purpose. It was not done to speak of people who were not noble, or of subjects that might conceivably be controversial. It was not done to be interested in outside affairs.
‘It is a duty that we owe the Prince, to express no opinions,’ Artemis was told, and,
‘It is a duty that we owe our rank to keep our distance from our inferiors.’
The fact that Artemis spoke French and German did nothing to endear her to her new family. A wife who could not produce a counter in the game of inheritance and alliance was of no interest. Artemis was asked nothing about her own home, and rebuked if she did not behave properly as a member of her new one.
‘It is a duty that we owe ourselves, always to consider the effect that our words or deeds may have on others.’
They were always afraid that anything they did might be held against them and were sure that everybody watched them, all the time, for signs of favouritism or indiscretion. All the ladies were continuously conscious of their own positions and carried themselves with stiff backs and high shoulders, their chins raised above stretched necks, their lips smiling, their eyes blank.
‘Naturally we are always observed,’ Ulrike told Artemis. ‘That is what we are for.’
Even when there were no guests, stiff ceremony was maintained, both in the salons where the ladies spent their days, and at meals, where the gentlemen joined them. The dining room was lined with footmen and with the ladies-in-waiting, who remained standing, to eat, presumably, later, since their figures made it evident that they ate abundantly and often. Artemis was despised for her small appetite.
‘It is fortunate that she need not display the family jewels.’ Princess Bathildis had not passed to her daughter-in-law any of the Horn jewels, but wore them scattered liberally on her own broad bosom.
Each place at the dinner table was provided with blue glass finger bowls inside which were matching tumblers containing a peppermint and water mixture. At the end of the meal, both ladies and gentlemen took a mouthful of the water, gargled noisily and spat out into the bowls. In order of precedence everyone then passed into one of the salons, where each member of the family then kissed all the others, saying ‘Good digestion’ as they did so. The ladies received Artemis’s brushing cheek against theirs coldly, and Prince Waldemar pecked at the air an inch away from her chin.
My new brother does not seem to have become reconciled to my existence, dear Clementine, Artemis wrote. I recently heard him speaking to my husband, when they were walking under my window.
Waldemar: Did she have to be English? Of all races the least likeable.
Joachim: My dear fellow, I fell in love with her.
Waldemar: Love – for an Englishwoman. Have you not heard Otto Bismarck’s remarks on that race?
Joachim: If Prince Fritz himself may marry a daughter of England . . .
Waldemar: A scandal. But we must pray that nothing comes of it. The girl may die in childbirth. They say she’s a dwarf.
Joachim: She’s as tall as her mother who has borne a large family.
Waldemar: In our plans for a greater Germany, with Prussia at its helm, Bismarck says –
Joachim: I know what such men as Bismarck say. I’ve heard it on all sides. I tell you, brother, you should not believe all you hear from that man.
Dearest sister, Artemis wrote, do not let Mrs Lambert know that I have stooped to eavesdropping, but please ask her whether she knows what this von Bismarck says that could make Prince Waldemar wish for the death of the Princess Royal. Can it be to do with the uniting of the German states under one strong leader, of which she once spoke to us?
The replies that Artemis received to her letters have not survived. But Clementine must have written warning her to be careful.
You are right, dear sister, to remind me that other eyes than yours and Mrs Lambert’s may see my words, Artemis wrote, and she did not write of political matters again from her husband’s house. Instead she described the ephemera of life in a princely household.
I came upon my sister, Princess Ulrike, in the orangery, with her daughter Augusta, who was walking from tub to tub of the sweet scented trees.
Augusta: Good day, Madame, has it not been a fine day?
Ulrike: Smile, Augusta. Princesses must always smile.
Augusta: (smiling) Good day, Monsieur, we are pleased to see you at court. Have you been for a ride today? Good afternoon, Madame, I am enchanted to make your acquaintance. Have you a large family?
Ulrike: As you see, Augusta is learning to make her cercle.
Augusta: The trees stand for courtiers, Aunt. Good day, Your Excellency, is it not a pleasant day?
Ulrike: A princess must cercler gracefully. I was taught to do it around the trees at home in Weimar.
Artemis: It is a fine art, I can see.
Ulrike: It is one at which a princess should excel. I am admired for my skill at it. Augusta, you may listen to Mamma; once I noticed that a courtier was carrying black gloves. I said that I regretted to hear of his bereavement, and he was naturally overcome with gratitude that I had remembered. Of course I knew nothing of it. I tell you this, Augusta, to remind you how much the people value our attentions. It is not the same in your position, Artemis.
Augusta: What is Aunt Artemis’s position, Mamma?
Ulrike: She is not a proper wife for a prince, my dear, she is not high and well born. In any case, she is an Englishwoman.
Chapter Five
Jeremy Ellice noticed Tamara’s reaction when he brought the tea in a silver pot on a tray made of polished wood with scalloped edges and a shell design in marqueterie. The cups were transparent porcelain with a design of dragons.
‘I am a perfectionist,’ he explained. ‘Either I have what I really admire or I do without. That’s why you are sitting on a deck chair.’
‘Your things are lovely,’ Tamara said.
‘And genuine.’
‘You don’t go in for replicas or reproductions?’
Jeremy made a face at the very idea. ‘They wouldn’t feel the same.’
‘I am never sure about that. Made from the same pattern book, with similar tools, in identical designs – an Adam chimney piece say, or a Chippendale chair, would you know the difference?’
‘And you an archaeologist! It’s your job to know the difference, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, within limits. But I know it from facts, not feelings. All the distinctions in my type series are definable.’
‘So you’d be as happy with a Van Meegeren as a Vermeer?’ Jeremy said.
‘That’s a school essay subject!’ Tamara protested, laughing. ‘It was one of the questions in my A-level exams. I said I would be. If the forger’s picture is as beautiful as the painter’s why should I care who held the brush? I don’t have too much sympathy for people who use art as an investment and then find they’ve chosen fakes. They should have bought for love not money in the first place.’
Jeremy poured out the pale tea. Tamara accepted a cup, and drew in the smoky
scent. She said, ‘I don’t suppose it’s so much of a problem with books, anyway. You aren’t much troubled by forgers are you?’
‘Not at my end of the market.’
‘It must be fun to have a bookshop.’
‘That’s what people always think.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘It has its points. But I’m not rich.’
‘But you deal with what you like best all day – books.’
‘Dealing with them means parting with them. Every time I find something I’d once have given my life for I have to sell it to keep alive. I went into book dealing because I had a passion for them, that’s true enough, but if the passion survives it’s torture not to hang on to them, and if it doesn’t you take agin it. If you go into trade, Tamara, choose something you are indifferent to. Not that you’ll get rich, but at least you won’t suffer.’
‘Presumably if you sincerely want to get rich you don’t choose this sort of work in the first place.’
‘There’s always the hope of finding a first folio of Hamlet. But how many young people know they’d like to have a rich old age? We used to despise material comfort in my youth. I wouldn’t have had a three piece suite if you paid me to give it house room.’
‘And now?’ Tamara asked, shifting on the admittedly uncomfortable chair.
‘Now I get rheumatism. I’d like to spend the winters in the sun and the summers in comfort. And have time to read my wares. Book dealers never read books, you know.’
‘So what will you do if you come across your first folio?’
‘Take the money and run. Get some decent clothes, I’m fed up with being labelled by my appearance. Stop looking like a trendy lefty. Sell this house and get a place with proper bathrooms and central heating. Take taxis. Not have to worry. Become a paid up member of the bourgeoisie.’
‘Would you really like that?’
‘You little imagine how much,’ he said sincerely, realising that Tamara did not believe him. Life was easy enough for someone like her; young, successful, well educated, and looking like the illustration from the lower class of romantic story come to life, with her yellow hair, blue eyes, pink cheeks and snub nose. Admittedly there was more character in her face than a conventional heroine would be permitted to show; she could cope with poverty or adversity, or even with plain boredom. Once, long ago, Jeremy Ellice had supposed himself to be a man of willpower and principle too. Now he would have sold anything, from his wares to his soul, for wealth and freedom. More than once he had called Beelzebub, but so far unanswered.
But this girl would not understand the despair that worldly failure induced in a man who had once despised worldly success. She was, simply, too pretty.
Jeremy Ellice seldom admired female beauty, even though he was unpleasantly affected by its opposite and never chose to be with such women as his sister Margot. He deeply resented the assumption, on her and the hospital staff’s part, that as her only relation he was now obliged to take charge of her. It was bad enough having had Margot in and out of the house these last months, since he had allowed her to keep the papers she was working on in his attic back room. But now, having to wash and feed her, and surrender his own room to her, was beyond the limit. How intensely, he thought, I dislike nurturing and nourishing. Even taking care of oneself is a boring burden, though the price one paid for being free from other ties. But if ever he did find and sell that first folio of Hamlet, a well-trained personal servant would be his first priority; a Chinese, perhaps, or a Malay, a quiet, soft footed, respectful young man.
Jeremy Ellice had been married at one time; the first part of his life had a conventional pattern. He had attended a public school and university. He had even spent a few years climbing up an oil company’s career structure. His present way of life, while not what he would have chosen since he was not rich enough to live the ideal life, was still, in his mind, infinitely preferable to what he had formerly experienced. He thought, mocking himself, I might even be a top manager by now. Like Bill Agnew.
Margot’s ex-husband conformed to his stereotype. Even abandoning Margot for a pretty young secretary had been exactly what men in his position were expected to do. Not that the girl was in for a very jolly life, if Margot’s accounts of the Middle-Eastern sink she had lived in were accurate. Of course, her account of it was hardly dispassionate.
Jeremy Ellice shuddered slightly at the memory of the arrival of his bitter, resentful, man-hating elder sister on his doorstep; a wet night, a heap of luggage, a taxi driver waiting for him to pay for the long journey from Heathrow. ‘I have nobody else to turn to,’ Margot had said. ‘You are all I have left.’ She did not quite say that blood was thicker than water. Looking at this elderly stranger, Jeremy doubted that it was. He was bounced into welcoming her, though he drew the line, that time, at surrendering his own bed. Margot installed herself in the attic room, where she seemed prepared to remain. She talked a good deal, and repetitively, about their shared childhood, although Jeremy remembered little of it. She related the sad saga of her married life, during which Bill had expected to be served and waited on, and to have his ancient mother nursed by his wife. She repeated ill digested chunks of feminist dogma, derived from the magazines she had read at the country club in a nation where western ideas of liberation seemed positively frivolous, compared with the servile lives the native women led. She bemoaned her own ill fortune. ‘I should have gone to a university like you, Jeremy. I should have had a chance to make something of myself.’
It was really in self defence that Jeremy had taken her life in hand. Brotherly love had nothing to do with it. ‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t write a book, if you want to,’ he told her. ‘One doesn’t need a university education for that.’ ‘But my brain has atrophied.’ ‘Nonsense. Make a start on these papers I got in a sale.’
What had been a rather tiresome part of his job, travelling long distances to country sales, came as relief when Margot was waiting to chatter to him in his house. Otherwise Jeremy might have given the sale on Dartmoor a miss. But the trip had been useful in another way. Reading a local paper at breakfast because the London papers had missed the train to the south west, Jeremy had seen Mrs Hoyland’s advertisement for someone to live with and look after her father.
‘But I don’t want to look after more geriatrics,’ Margot had cried. ‘I have wasted the best years of my life doing that. I hate looking after people.’
So do I, Jeremy thought. He was damned if he would look after this woman, tied to him by illusory bonds, any longer. Allowing her to keep the Bessemer papers in the attic room she had taken to calling hers was his final concession, though he hoped never to hear any more about self-supporting women of the nineteenth century. Margot had decided that Artemis Bessemer was a perfect example of the type, and was working on a thesis about her. ‘I know I can’t get a contract from a publisher, or even be helped with the research. Not without qualifications.’ He diverted her from another ‘if only’ monologue. ‘You’ll be able to make something very interesting. Someone is sure to publish it.’
Artemis Bessemer was an example of a woman who first had, and then was, a lady-in-waiting, but her story would illustrate the life of any ‘lady companion’ whether in a palace or a suburban villa. Margot had spent months entering on filing cards the details of the indignities such women suffered. They were used to being pampered and indulged, and, above all, obeyed. They found themselves bullied or slighted once they undertook that genteel servitude. Those who had been educated to ring bells, had to answer them. Ringing bells, Margot said, was the great divide in that society. Her plan was to show that it was only an extreme example of that pattern when a duchess or countess who lived like a queen in her own household was treated as an inferior in a royal one. Accustomed to life as the mistress of a mansion, the Queen’s Lady would find herself lodged in rooms so small she might have had to write her letters sitting on the bed. Dignified grandmothers had to ask, and were often refused, permission to rece
ive visitors or to go out of the palace bounds. Those whose habit had been to summon and dismiss their own servants, were rung for and told to leave with equal authority.
‘This is all very interesting so far, as a matter of fact,’ Tamara told Jeremy with some surprise. Somehow the dreary looking woman who had moved in to look after Grandpapa did not seem the type to produce anything worth reading. ‘It can’t all be invented.’
‘Certainly not. Margot is the least imaginative woman I know. It’s all out of the Bessemer papers. They are in a heap in my attic.’
‘Where do they come from?’
‘From your part of the world. Dartmoor. It’s really pure chance in my trade which of the country sales one picks on; there are far too many to go to them all. Anyway, I got some quite useful books, and this rusty tin trunk that didn’t seem to have been opened for God knows how long, with the name Lady Clementine Bessemer painted on it. When Margot was helping me sort out the job lot, she found the letters in the trunk.’
‘All this material? What luck.’
‘Yes – diaries, letters, dance programmes, service sheets, invitations, all the impedimenta of an upper class young lady, quite untouched as far as one could tell. Screeds of letters from this Artemis, but all one sided. Clementine’s diary petered out when she grew up. Nothing after she was about eighteen.’
‘Who has Margot shown it to?’ Tamara asked.
‘Nobody, as far as I know. She doesn’t know too many people in London.’
‘Surely . . . some contemporary Bessemers . . .?’
‘None in Who’s Who or Whitaker’s Almanac. Margot has written to the present Prince of Horn, but I don’t think she’s had a reply yet.’
‘One of Artemis’s descendants?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t read everything yet. Why don’t you have another cup and carry on with the typescript while I just nip downstairs to see if Margot wants anything.?’
Chapter Six
For Christmas, the Family moved to another of its castles, Drachenschloss. Although this residence had fewer rooms than Horn, where there was said to be one for each day of the year, it was an immense edifice made of red stone erected over a reddish mountain, in whose living rock some of the rooms actually were.