Eliza’s Daughter (13 page)

My performance, on the first night of the recitals, was nothing out of the common way – or so I considered, and Mr Tregarron confirmed my opinion – (he, poor fellow, lacking a leg, had to be wheeled to the Assembly Rooms in a Bath chair) – but, for some wayward reason, I satisfied the public fancy, and was encored over and over. I had begun by singing a group of folk songs, and some verses from Shakespeare: ‘Come away, come away, Death', which I had set to an air of my own. For my last encore, since the audience of richly dressed valetudinarians continued to cry, ‘Bis! Bis! More! More!' I chose a song greatly beloved by Mr Sam and Mr Bill, in which I had joined with them a hundred times:

Oh,
she
looked out of the window, as white as any milk,

And
he
looked into the window, as black as any silk.

Hollo, hollo, hollo, hollo, you coal-black Smith

Oh, what is your silly song?

I never shall change my maiden name,

That I have kept so long . . .

It was plain that many of the audience knew it too, and all joined in. As the
Bath Echo
said next day, ‘It was an event unprecedented in the annals of the Winter Concert Season . . .'

Mrs Jebb grumbled, ‘I never bargained for this! All these old fellows coming to call – Lord Glastonbury, Lord Frome, and now the Bishop! Where am I to find biscuits and Madeira wine to feed them all?' But in fact she was quite amused. For her it was like a return to the old days in Paragon. And besides, when the gentlemen came calling, I was generally off at my duties in Queen Square. This I did not in the least regret. Lord Glastonbury and the Bishop – a pair of whiskery seventy-year-olds – reminded me a little too forcibly of Dr Moultrie.

But soon I was to have an adventure of my own.

After several of the concerts I had noticed a group of young men staring at me very attentively, as if they would have liked an introduction. But this was not to be: Miss Orrincourt had been most stringent in her decree that the young ladies who took part in the performances must be escorted away from the Rooms the very moment that their part in the entertainment was concluded. Back to Queen Square we rolled in a hired conveyance; and from there, once the young ladies had been dispatched to their hard beds and their Napoleon blankets (with tapes attached, so that they could be worn as outer garments in the event of a sudden French invasion taking place in the middle of the night), I was graciously permitted to make the best of my own way home to New King Street.

Sometimes a party of young gallants would assemble near Mrs Haslam's school to applaud our return there after a concert, but they were prevented from approaching us too closely by the school porter. And since I did not choose to walk the streets of Bath alone at night, being concerned not to endanger my hitherto unblemished reputation in Bath society, I had persuaded Thomas, Mrs Jebb's manservant, to meet and escort me home on these occasions. This he very obligingly did for a weekly fee of sixpence, unknown to his mistress who from the outset had made it plain that I must not expect such services.

I was accustomed to slip away from the garden gate, where Thomas would be waiting for me, and had not so far been detected.

Of course the young ladies of the school giggled and sighed and languished over these fashionable admirers.

‘They are a group known as the Bath Beaux,' explained Miss Cleone Artingstall. ‘Oh – they are all so handsome! Lord Edward Weatherspill, Augustus Link, Daniel Dane-Fotherby – but especially Lord Harry ffinch-ffrench!'

‘Come, Miss Artingstall, sing your scales,' I suggested.

‘Nay, how can I be expected to sing scales when I think of Lord Harry? Have you looked at him, Miss FitzWilliam?'

‘No, I cannot say that I have.'

‘He is so romantic – with his tangled elf-locks and his flashing dark eyes! So like Lord Byron.—Oh, Miss FitzWilliam –
have
you read “Hours of Idleness”?'

I had, and considered Byron's verses inferior in every way to those of my two friends.

‘The scale of C major, Miss Artingstall.'

‘He is the younger son of the Duke of Flint.'

‘C major.'

‘Oh, bother C major!'

‘Miss Orrincourt says that no young lady can expect to shine in polite society unless she has a mastery of the rudiments of music.'

So at last, sighing and grumbling, she applied herself.

‘I don't know how you can be so hard-hearted, Miss Fitz. When I think of Lord Harry my heart melts inside me.'

My defence was not so much hardness of heart as lack of interest; the distant group of young beaux, with their smirks and murmured innuendoes, making eyes at the young ladies from the seminary, impressed me not at all. But one day I chanced to encounter Lord Harry on his own, and that proved a very different matter.

The series of winter concerts had ended: spring, rainy, tardy and reluctant, was beginning to creep through the streets and gardens of Bath. I had resumed my habit of taking Pug for an evening stroll in the Green Park. There was a small iron gate leading to an inner garden, which, I suppose, had once belonged to a private house. Here I used to ramble with Pug (now becoming aged and asthmatic) because the early flowers in this sheltered spot, crocuses and snowdrops, made a poignant reminder of the gardens at Kinn Hall where, between deep banks, the little brook dropped from level to level, and there would often be spring flowers in January, or even December. I wondered, walking here, how Triz and Lady Hariot were faring, whether they were still in Portugal. It was long since I had heard from them. The French had reached Oporto now, and were all over Spain; Napoleon had set his brother Joseph on the throne in Madrid. Perhaps my friends were safe enough in Lisbon; British troops were there, still. And now there was talk of Sir Arthur Wellesley being sent out to the Peninsula to do battle against the French forces under the command of Soult and Ney. Colonel Brandon, I knew, had served under Wellesley in India; perhaps (if healed of his wound) he too might have decided to rejoin his old commander, if Sir Arthur should take command there? But, in that case, what would Mrs Brandon do? Would she accompany her husband? Or return to England?

All these speculations were sad and fruitless. I had heard nothing from Mrs Ferrars as to the Colonel's whereabouts. My only news of the war came from Mrs Jebb, who, on her regular excursions to the Pump Room, devoted at least half an hour each morning to careful perusal of the newspapers; she had been bitterly disapproving of Sir John Moore's retreat to Coruña. ‘Trust a man to make such a botch-up of the business! If a female had been in command there would have been no such retreat. We would soon have sent that Soult about his business, and Bonaparte also!' (Boney-party, she pronounced him.)

‘You should be at the Horseguards, ma'am,' I said, teasing her, and she seriously replied, ‘You are right, child. Wars – and utterly stupid, costly wars, at that – will continue, no question, until government lies in the hands of females. And that will not be in my lifetime, nor in yours, neither.'

Quitting the little garden, in the February dusk, I caught a finger of my glove in the rusty latch of the gate and stood trying to disentangle it without breaking any of the silk and worsted threads. In this I was much hampered by Pug, who wheezed and twitched impatiently at his lead.

‘Allow me to assist you, madam,' said a courteous voice over my shoulder, and a large male hand appeared, which skilfully detached the twisted strands from the rough latch. ‘Quiet, sir!' the voice admonished Pug. ‘Can you not see your mistress is in difficulties?'

Startled and subdued, Pug desisted from his pulling.

‘I am very much obliged to you, sir,' I said, glad that my left, or better hand had been the object of his solicitude. The right one, holding on to Pug's leash, I tucked well under my mantle.

‘There can be no obligation in the case. I have been longing for such a chance to introduce myself ever since I heard you sing. Miss FitzWilliam, is it not? I am Harry ffinch-ffrench. I know all about you, Miss FitzWilliam, because I have a cousin, Maria Glanville, at Mrs Haslam's school. And she tells me many wonderful things about you, Miss FitzWilliam, including the fact that you are a great devotee of poetry – which I am too! I cannot tell you how eagerly I have longed for an opportunity to discuss with you all my favourite authors and their works!'

His voice was extremely agreeable, warm and cajoling.

Oh, me! How readily we may be deluded, if the delusion should chime with some pet vagary of our own! Harry ffinch-ffrench could not have hit upon a subject more attractive to my taste; and in no time, recrossing the Green Park, we were deep in discussion of Mr Scott and Lord Byron, of whether it was permissible to compare their work, and whether Scotland was as suitable a location for tales of chivalry and drama as the more romantic Italian or Turkish mountains and valleys.

I ventured to inquire whether he had come across the works of my friends Mr Bill and Mr Sam. He expressed surprise at my being acquainted with them, said he himself had not read them, but understood their verses were crude peasant stuff and imbued with dangerous revolutionary notions, to boot. At which I laughed very heartily and urged him to acquaint himself at once with the works in question, before he revealed such an ignorant misconception to any other interlocutor.

My new acquaintance seemed quite startled at this, and turned to peer at me inquiringly in the dusk. His looks, I could see, fully lived up to Miss Artingstall's panegyrics; and – what did more to recommend him to
my
favour – he bore a certain resemblance to dear Mr Sam, in that he had large deep-set eyes and glossy black locks which were swept back in picturesque disorder. (He was in truth somewhat handsomer than Mr Sam, who had thick lips and a habit of letting his jaw hang open when excited; but no qualities could ever excel those of my dear Mr Sam, or not in
my
estimation.) Still, as I say, the resemblance, superficial though it might be, recommended this new acquaintance to my goodwill. Also I was happy to encounter someone, and a member of the male sex, at that, with whom I might discuss matters that were of interest to
me.
I had spent so many hours, days, weeks and months, uncountable periods of time, it seemed to me, during the past few years, listening to trivial conversation on supremely uninteresting topics.—At least in Byblow Bottom when we talked, it was on subjects relevant to our life: somebody's wife had died, somebody's pig had escaped, somebody's roof had collapsed. Means of dealing with the situation were canvassed. But here in Bath, conversation was, it seemed, an end in itself. Materials for it were collected like kindling wood, but then used in an artificial and prodigal manner, merely to generate a flame. But to what end? Simply to make a sound, to fill a silence, to pass a period of time. Time which, it seemed to me, could in a thousand ways have been more profitably spent. Mrs Jebb's aged friends, the girls at the school, the teachers there, made themselves acquainted with books, attended dramatic performances, not because they cared about the book or the play in question, but simply in order to be supplied with topics for chat.

‘You
must
converse, young ladies!' Miss Orrincourt admonished her charges over and over. ‘The gentlemen – your husbands, fathers, suitors – always require to be entertained. Always. When they are not hunting, shooting, governing, making laws or fighting wars – then it is your task to provide them with entertainment. So you must at all times have a fund of conversational topics ready to divert your company.'

Be hanged to that, I had often thought, remembering Lady Hariot and her unique knowledge, wit, intelligence, all lavished and wasted on the Squire;
I
shall look for a man who can interest
me.
And if I do not find him, like the lady in the ballad, I will go to my grave unwed.

Which is more than likely to happen in any case.

But now here, for a wonder, seemed to be a man who
was
prepared to interest me. Who walked beside me talking of Crabbe and Cowper and Sir Charles Grandison. As we parted at the park entrance, he suddenly drew out from the breast of his jacket a paper and handed it to me. He said beseechingly, ‘I have long, as I told you, Miss FitzWilliam, been seeking an opportunity to meet you and I have not come unprovided. This paper – somewhat warm and creased as you may see – has accompanied me for several weeks through the streets of Bath in the hopes of such a lucky encounter.'

How
many weeks? I wondered in parenthesis. For he had told me that he was a student at the university of Cambridge and I had wondered no little at his apparent liberty to leave his studies so freely in order to flit away and disport himself in Bath.

‘I have been so eager for your eyes to rest upon these lines, Miss FitzWilliam! And I shall do my utmost to procure an early opportunity of hearing your comments.—Do you often walk here at this hour?'

I replied cautiously that I did now and then but that my time was not at my own disposal, etc., etc., and he bowed, with much grace, sweeping his hat from those artlessly disordered locks – would have pressed my hand – only it was still holding the paper he had given me – and then vanished into the dusk.

The light being by now insufficient for me to be able to read what was written on the paper, I had to suppress my natural curiosity until I was back in my bedroom in New King Street.

There, I am obliged to confess, I felt a certain disappointment.

I long to be

My lady dear

The drop that sparkles

In your ear

I'd share your pillow

All night through

I'd hear each gentle

Breath you drew

If not the jewel

Then I'd be

The glass wherein

Your face you see

Ah! joy! for then