James Miranda Barry

by Patricia Duncker

  We are sitting in his library, where we have always sat, surrounded by his books and maps. He has not changed. His great mane of hair, a little greyer, thinner perhaps, his girth, a rounder, more generous world, bearing witness to his good table, and he tends to suffer from toothache in the mornings; but in all essentials he has not changed, and neither has my love for him. Francisco’s outspoken generosity was always my standard, the measuring rod by which I judged all else. Francisco is a man with no mysteries. His unthinking insistence upon candour, honour, openness, gives his outline a solidity I cannot hope to match. He is a man without shadows. I am like my mother, a woman of secrets. I have been forced to hide from others’ eyes. I am a ruthlessly private person. I have locks on all my doors, yet I am required to perform, with all the candles lit, day and night, upon the public stage.

  ‘You see, soldier, secrecy is always in someone’s interest. And obfuscation is the hallmark of monarchy.’

  Francisco has always been a republican and never afraid to say so. Quite how he marries that to his role as a good son of the Catholic Church and a faithful devotee of the Virgin Mary is beyond me. He explains that the Virgin is the head of the armed forces in his country and that they implore her to intercede on their behalf with the god of battles before marching off to engage the enemy. I gaze at Francisco adoringly, my stepfather, my General. He is clearly off his head. He is a South American by temperament, all principles, passion and glory. And I, his adopted child, am made of the cold North, a less appetising mixture of brains, calculation and the brisk chill of reason.

  There is a faint smell of beeswax and leather, and a stronger, haunting richness: the smell of seasoned wood. Francisco never burns coals in his library fireplace. Coals create black dust. There is a silhouette of Mary Ann, framed in plain silver, perched on the left of the mantelpiece and a small bust of Shakespeare. I look at his unlikely pointed beard and rounded cheeks, much-stroked and well-remembered. This is not the face of a man who indulged in any kind of passion, let alone its extremes. Mary Ann once told me that Shakespeare is like a vast, still lake, in which the passing world is brilliantly reflected, but whose waters remain opaque, untouched. Francisco took another view. This equable opacity was in itself suspicious. A man who takes everybody’s part and sees all points of view can have none of his own. Shakespeare was therefore a man without morals or faith. ‘Look how intelligent his villains are!’ snaps Francisco. ‘Why, they’re the most attractive dogs in the pack.

  ‘And yet, my dear child, we know more about him than we do about any of the other dramatists of the period. He was the Stratford grammar-school boy who went off to London, made good, accumulated capital and came home to buy land, settle down and bully his wife. Look at that face. I know a fat, grasping bourgeois when I see one.’

  ‘But we don’t know what Shakespeare really looked like. What about the other portraits? The romantic one with the pearl earring?’

  ‘Shakespeare would never have worn an earring!’ Francisco thunders forth his righteous indignation. An earring? No, indeed not.

  Yet I enjoy my General’s unusual version of the Natural Child of Genius, partly because it is so unfashionable. I conclude that it is Francisco’s Venezuelan origins that give him so strange a perspective on our national poet. He was critical, even when we read the plays together, years ago. He performed all the villains’ parts. His Iago was terrifying. But he still preferred Milton to Shakespeare, and said so, often. Yet he insisted on proper respect for the Bard, to be shown at all times. When I made the bust of Shakespeare cross-eyed, by filling in the corners of his blank white eyeballs with pencil, I was heartily spanked.

  Now, the bust and I stare at one another. I think of Alice, whose intelligent duplicity must match that of her master-playwright, Shakespeare himself. Is she my Katharina, pretending to subscribe to a passive obedience she has certainly never demonstrated in any other aspect of her life? How else could the drama end? The untamed shrew? I could not answer for its success upon the stage.

  My childhood is far behind me. Yet the library is still so familiar. Every polished wooden surface, the lamps with their automatic snuffing devices, the fire-screen with lion’s feet, the comfortable chairs with wooden lecterns that swivel in their copper holders. This is Francisco’s temple to the written word, the church within which he worships every day. I gaze at this brave man whom I have loved so much, this man whose first gift, a golden chain, is still warm around my neck, beneath my tightly buttoned collars and fine waistcoats, and my heart clenches hard, like a fist. My passion for my mother has ebbed and changed. This woman has made the best of her life by not always telling the truth. She propagates an official version of events, in which some things will not, do not, cannot, happen. I no longer believe her. Yet she has always fought for me, defended me – and made demands upon me. I have never had my mother’s confidence and gall. But now I stand outside her sphere. I can move in the world more freely than she could ever do. I watch what she says, what she does.

  I send my mother money. I never ask why she needs these sometimes substantial sums for her private use. Francisco is a rich man who would deny her nothing. But this is a woman of secrets. Mary Ann possesses all kinds of information, which she will not share. And now I mistrust that beautiful, languid radiance, that gorgeousness, so luminous beneath Francisco’s loving glance. I mistrust that loquacious charm at the dinner table, that capricious, transparent loveliness, the glitter and wit of her fashionable observations, that intelligence and acumen. My mother is a woman who is performing a part. Her acting is so perfect that she only abandons the stage when she is alone. I have rarely seen her without her wigs and paint. But I have watched Mary Ann sitting silent, imagining herself unobserved, sunk in her own meditations, and her face was blank. I judge this chill mask, which registers no emotion, no expression.

  The blank face vanishes when I stand before her.

  But now I contemplate my General, off duty and at ease, his features tranquil in repose. He is looking into his Quarterly Review. This man’s face, with his characteristic enthusiasm and serenity, is the same face that would consider the world, were all humanity obliterated, and were there only green fields before us, and a hare, sitting up.

  Francisco sighs with contentment. He must therefore be reading poetry. He is. Go on, read it aloud to me.

  Again beguiled! Again betrayed!

  In manhood as in youth,

  The slave of every smiling maid

  That ever lied like truth.

  Well, dearly was each lesson bought

  The present as the past,

  What love some twenty times has taught

  We needs must learn at last.

  Francisco gazes peacefully at woman’s eternal infidelity. I fully expect him to advise me never to trust the fair sex and their confiding smiles. So before he can moralise on the subject of women, as all men often do, I ask for his help.

  ‘Francisco, we must find Alice.’

  ‘Alice Jones? Barry’s kitchenmaid?’

  ‘And his model, if the Pandora is anything to go by. I assume you didn’t notice. She stole a box. Did Mary Ann tell you?’

  ‘Yes, I believe she did. I can’t recall what was in it.’

  ‘Well, I think Alice is trying to become an actress. It was always her ambition.’

  I tell him everything I know. He listens carefully.

  ‘Then, my dear, if we want to find her we must begin by going to the theatre.’

  * * *

  We take our seats in a private box. I am squirming with irritation. Francisco’s idea of research is that we should enjoy the play while Rupert probes the nether reaches of the house. Rupert does at least know what Alice looks like, and if anyone finds her it will be Rupert. But Alice can hardly have transformed herself into an actress overnight. As in every other profession, success in the acting world must surely depend on your family origins and who you know. On this reckoning, Alice is nobody at all.

  I brush the du
st from my uniform. The city I knew as a child is changing beyond recognition. We negotiated our way carefully from Hyde Park Gate, through an endless building site, hazardous with pits, scaffolding and piles of bricks. The streets are now paved and clean, from Portman Square all the way into the city. The evening is wonderfully lit with oil lamps, and the first warm days are alive with people, out walking or spending money. The city itself is like the setting for a play, freshly painted façades and well-orchestrated crowd scenes, where there is always an event to observe.

  I look round the theatre and find that a good many people are staring back at us. Francisco is magnificent in his blue uniform, topped off with a mass of medals and a cockade of feathers. I notice my scarlet coat is flecked with mud, and, seeing that we are being intently studied, from some quarters with the aid of opera glasses, I try to prosecute my cleaning operations discreetly. I shall never get used to those twin trumpets, malicious curiosity and gossip. I can even hear the conversations: that’s the son, who trained to be a doctor. And somehow they all know that David Erskine, eleventh Earl of Buchan, foots the bills. How fiendishly important it is, to know who pays. Mary Ann sits between us, in white silk and blue ribbons. She is well past thirty now, but at a glance she has all the fresh beauty of a young girl. There are people in this theatre wondering how she does it: herbal creams or Faustian pacts. Francisco looks old enough to be father to us both. The round of theatre visits commences. A young man opens the door of our box and bows. I cannot hear everything he says to Mary Ann, who leans towards him, smiling, for the music has begun.

  The first scene is a forest, the lighting very startling. At the theatre in Edinburgh we had huge chandeliers hung directly over the stage in the old-fashioned style, but here the lights pour forth, sepulchral, from the wings. Our heroine, pursued by her father and brothers, has missed her rendezvous with her banished love, and is convincingly terrified by the looming branches, realistically rustling, suspended from unseen agents, and the terrific Gothic pile protruding through the verdure behind her. Can these be the ruins of the convent where my sainted mother sought refuge so many years before? Yes, yes, they almost certainly are those very horrid walls, which harboured once a noble woman crossed in love. She pours forth her grief to the audience. I begin to think that there is only one play put on in all the theatres, which must contain all the elements of M. G. Lewis’s The Monk to ensure its success. Our heroine will shortly run mad and we will all be thunderstruck with surprise. But no, Mary Ann is whispering to Francisco that there is a stunning breeches part and we are to see a new actress, who has all London at her feet, but that she, Mary Ann, once saw Mrs Jordan in the part, and even past her best, for her waist is now quite stout, she was so charming and her legs were as lovely as ever, we shall not see the likes of her again, for there is none to equal her. This play is by Mrs Joanna Baillie, now all the rage in Drury Lane, and involves a gaggle of gypsies and a violent horde of brigands in the pay of the wicked count. It is described as a ‘Romantic Mélo-drame’. Judging from the intermittent roars and humming from above, the rabble are here too, enjoying themselves. They cheer on the gypsy dancing. They applaud the songs.

  I cease to follow the play and gaze, mesmerised, at the audience. Why, all the world is here, not on the stage but in the house. Here are the rich laden with jewels, lawyers, city men, with their entire families, young beaux on the make, ogling the women, the young women painted up, selling their bodies, and not even waiting for the interval to do it. I gaze carefully at the prostitutes, afraid to see Alice among them. One of the more saucily indecent doxies catches my eye and winks. I stare back, fascinated.

  The stage machinery hums and creaks. The scene is set outside a cottage in the forest, where the virtuous count, an unlikely character, if ever there was one, assists in the rescue of the honest peasant’s beautiful wife from the lecherous villain, only to discover, O Horror! that it is his cousin in disguise, with whom he once exchanged vows of love, but swore to renounce because of the enmity between their fathers, yet this was but an excuse, as, unbeknown to both the lovers, the old nurse had revealed to the aged count, his father, now deceased, that the child had died at birth and the babe substituted was of noble origins, born, in a convent whose ruins even now haunt the ancient forests where we dwell, to a woman, sir, whom you know alas! all too intimately, and thus, the young count, virtuous and unspotted though his soul might be, adored the woman who was, in fact, HIS SISTER.

  She is not, of course, really married to the peasant.

  Mary Ann has forgotten Mrs Jordan’s performance and is clearly enjoying herself. The loving friend of the disguised maiden fleeing her father, an ogre from a fairy tale, is disguised as a woodcutter and has such shapely legs and such a daringly short green tunic that we all quite forget ourselves as she prances on, wielding an axe, to a universal roar of eulogy. This then is the star of the evening, the real heroine, who can actually solve this impossible plot. Why hasn’t she appeared before the fifth scene? Oh, she did? That was the girl who rushed down from the battlements, swore to be avenged (upon whom?), and at all costs to find and protect her beloved friend, who, lost and abandoned, wanders in the forest. I missed all that. I must have been looking at the audience. Ah! Thank God – another song.

  Mary Ann knows how to attend the theatre. She pays just enough attention to the events on stage and the events either in the boxes opposite or in the stalls beneath, to follow any intriguing plot developments in either sphere. Another young man has acknowledged her. I catch her very gentle, gracious bow. Several necks swivel to see what lucky gentleman is known to the beautiful Mrs Bulkeley. She opens her fan with a snap. I sigh with relief that I will never have to learn how to play with such fragile objects, whose purposes are largely decorative concealment. Yet I watch my mother managing the theatre, with undisguised admiration.

  The entr’acte arrives. Mary Ann agrees to sip a little chilled lemonade. I am suddenly confronted by a gentleman with an alarming waistcoat and huge staring eyes behind tiny round glasses.

  ‘Mrs Bulkeley . . . (bow) . . . General Miranda . . . (a still deeper bow) . . . Dr Barry . . . (an odious stare) may I take the liberty of enquiring after your uncle’s health? We have heard the most alarming rumours at the Society of Arts.’

  I have no idea who this is and he has not introduced himself, but the enquiry is clearly addressed to me, which is not a little rude, for the old painter’s sister and close friend are also present and I am clearly the youngest of the party.

  I draw myself up and arrive at the level of the buttons on his midriff.

  ‘I am afraid that I have not had the pleasure . . .’

  Mary Ann, ever the seamstress when it comes to a breach in good manners, does the honours at once.

  ‘James, may I introduce the painter Mr Benjamin Robert Haydon.’

  No doubt someone else who hates James Barry, and with justice.

  ‘Thank you, sir, for your concern. My uncle is very weak and not expected to live long.’

  A flurry of condolences and anxieties rings around the box. Mary Ann explains that we left him not two hours ago, and that he is comfortable, as comfortable as we could expect, but yes indeed, weak, very weak, too weak to be fractious and objectionable. Would he be able to receive a visit? As his doctor, I think not. Any excitement or agitation could be fatal. Mr Haydon deeply regrets. He had always regarded Barry as a master, whose greatness has never been fully acknowledged. I incline my head gracefully on my uncle’s behalf, but wonder how anyone can acknowledge the greatness of someone given to vilifying his patrons, at some length, in his public lectures. Mr Haydon stays longer than is either usual or polite, and, while paying the conventional compliments to Mary Ann and Francisco, continues to stare enquiringly at me. I begin to loathe his little round spectacles and become disconcertingly abrupt.

  When the orchestra strikes up and the play begins again, Mary Ann squeezes my hand and whispers, ‘My darling, you appear to have inherited your uncle’s tem
per. I thought that you intended to hussle Mr Haydon out of our box.’

  ‘He struck me as an ingratiating charlatan.’

  ‘But he’s very highly thought of. Sir George Beaumont paid at least £100 for his Macbeth. And The Assassination of Dentatus was ecstatically praised in The Times.’

  ‘Shhhh, you two,’ says Francisco, as the heroine flings herself to the ground, weeping, upon finding the honest peasant’s cot burnt out by the brigands – here are the smouldering walls – and the little plot of land abandoned. The dog, a real one, licks her face, thus demonstrating the fidelity and affection of our dumb companions, to offset the treachery of our relatives. He gives a most touching performance, and earns a roar of applause. Enter the woodcutter with the exciting legs. We all breathe sighs of relief. Whenever the woodcutter enters the fairy tale, whatever sex she is, all will shortly be well, and the wolf is as good as dead. Woodcutters belong to an honourable profession, with a reputation for heroism.

  I concentrate on the plot, which is about to be unravelled. The last act takes place in a church, which is wonderfully painted in perspective, with side chapels, one on each flap, life-size looming saints, an image of the Mater Dolorosa surrounded with candles, and ghostly chords upon the organ to complete the illusion. Our heroine is discovered, ever the victim, upon her knees, begging for someone else to intervene and resolve her desperate situation. This really is the tradition of Monk Lewis. We are bound to have a ghost or two. And sure enough, one of the statues becomes luminous in the fluttering half-light and begins to stir. Can it be? Yes, the spectre of the late departed mother, for this is her tomb, with the arms of a noble family thereupon, who watches o’er her beloved child and speaks in hollow tones from beyond the grave. Beware! Beware! The ghost has a very original way of moving, and appears to glide on little rollers. For once the entire audience is transfixed by the action upon the stage.