Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice Sequel Bundle: 3 Reader Favorites (43 page)

His most recent activity having announced that possibility, he well-nigh laughed.

But as he laughed but seldom, he caught himself before revealing to the help that, however covert, he, upon occasion, enjoyed a diversion.

“Ahem, yes. I suppose that is true.”

Recognising he was perilously close to losing his countenance to diversion, she prodded him mercilessly.

“To contravene such an event, perhaps one or both of us could create a scandal. Nothing is so desirable as to have a portrait of a scurrilous ancestor to exhibit for the enjoyment of one’s guests.”

Her attempt to bid him laugh fell short. He gathered his considerable dignity and looked upon her with an air bearing all the condescension of one whose fore-fathers had not an infamy amongst them.

Quite unchastened, Elizabeth raised her eyebrow to him in silent suggestion he might do well to rethink his supercilious attitude now that the Darcy family name was at the mercy of her occasionally unguarded propriety. (She dared not speak of Lydia; that was less a tease than a threat.)

As he was acquainted with the occasional cheekiness of his wife and her occasional admonishment against undue pride, he took her unspoken disapproval under advisement by kissing her hand. She smiled up at him out of the corner of her eye, partly in affection and partly because it was amusing for her to think of herself (scandalous or scandal-less) in the sedate company she saw upon the wall.

Moreover, as accustomed as she was to looking upon the portraits there as an objective observer, it did not please her to envision future generations eyeing her portrait and reviewing her countenance.

A small stamp of her foot was the single indication of displeasure she allowed herself. This gesture was less at the necessity of a portrait than that she had no voice in the matter. Not only did she not want her image studied; the process of effecting that invasion demanded a series of tedious sittings. Other than slumber and prayers, she could not remember a time when she welcomed being still for more than a full quarter of an hour. Hence, she certainly did not look with anticipation upon the labourious tedium that a sitting entailed.

Alas, a painter had been already commissioned.

He would be there within the week.

Both of Darcy’s parents sat for Thomas Gainsborough, who died but a year after compleating the elder Mrs. Darcy’s portrait. It was a bit of a contest to determine just who held the grander coup, they to have obtained the service of that illustrious painter or he to be called upon to paint such eminent personages. Hence, the mutual happiness of the commissions was exquisite.

Beyond the very basis of his livelihood (that being homage and lucre), Gainsborough harboured an ulterior motive for coming to Derbyshire. The true reason being that their Chatsworth neighbour was the Duchess of Devonshire.

The duchess was known as one of the greatest beauties in England and every painter of any repute clamoured for the opportunity to capture her allure. During his lifetime, Gainsborough painted her thrice. His first portrait of her was as a child; the second as a young woman; and the last was effected during the year he spent in Derbyshire.

The great man suffered for that final painting. He painstakingly sketched her again and again before finally submitting paint to canvas. Once committed, he spent weeks just endeavouring to perfect the pout of her lips (that little
moue
of hers influenced any number of intrigues and one ultimately non-fatal duel). Gainsborough died yet unsatisfied that he had done her beauty justice.

For Georgiana Spencer was arguably the most famous enchantress in England. When she was but seventeen, Georgiana, daughter of John, the First Earl of Spencer, wed William Cavendish, the Fifth Duke of Devonshire. Many a gentleperson pronounced her far too young for him. But however old, a fifth duke far outranked a first earl, thus the overt quibbling over age disparity evaporated.

Nevertheless, it was an obstreperous match.

Her beauty was of legend. Unfortunately, her comportment was ruled by imprudence. She dressed flamboyantly, flirted flagrantly, drank with intemperance, and squandered her husband’s considerable fortune. All of these acts were committed with a zealous deliberateness that could not utterly fall to the onus of youth.

Her questionable reputation, however, did not belay gentlemen from lusting after her. In spite of (or perhaps because of) her dubious repute, the ladies copied her manner, her voice, and her dress, whilst vehemently condemning her low morals. None of this might have caused the scandal it had, had not the duchess taken such a keen interest in politics (or more specifically politicians). As compelling a woman as she was, her campaigning skills were unparalleled. These gifts reached their apex when she perfected the tactic of obtaining a vote in exchange for a kiss, which, howbeit highly popular amongst the electorate, exposed her to the severest kind of criticism.

“It was an outrage against station!” decried the aristocracy. “Actually cavorting in the streets with common citizenry!”

They insisted it revealed a vulgarity of character unheard of in proper society. Whilst her equals spoke of her in whispered near-hysteria, there was a consensus amongst the clergy that was not so quiet. For every man of the cloth felt called upon to denounce the duchess as a wanton strumpet obviously suffering from rampant nymphomania. (When that particular sin was addressed from the pulpit, the pews were full—no man actually knew of a nymphomaniac, but the possibility was thrilling.)

The duchess went about her business heedless of the uproar and it most probably would have died down had not there been the untimely arrival of her love child by the future Prime Minister of England, Charles Grey. This indiscretion became quite public during the final year of Gainsborough’s life. One might premise that such improvidence on the part of the lady with whom he was besotted might have hastened his demise.

Notwithstanding Gainsborough’s consternation, Cavendish himself was in a bit of a snit. Busy as he was with his own
affairs d’amour,
he learnt of his wife’s
faux pas
belatedly. But learn of it he did, and thereupon banished not just Georgiana and Charles Grey’s son, but also the final Gainsborough portrait from Chatsworth compleatly.

After a year abroad, tempers had calmed and Georgiana returned to her ducal home. Little note might have been made of her re-entry to the neighbourhood had not an oddity occurred. Whilst the duchess was absent, the duke’s mistress, Lady Elisabeth Foster, had moved, bag and baggage, script and scriptage, into Chatsworth. And upon the duchess’ return, Lady Foster did not vacate. Indeed, the duke, the duchess, her children by the duke, her son by Charles Grey, Lady Elisabeth Foster, her children by (one must suppose) Lord Foster, and her children by the duke, all lived together in seeming harmony for another dozen years.

The Duchess of Devonshire’s portrait, however, disappeared. A masterpiece lost, those who had beheld it attested. Gainsborough’s finest. In absentia, its reputation swelled to adulation. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for its subject. The duchess’ person merely bloated. Indeed, when the duchess died, her fondness for spirits had left her a dissipated shell of her once beautiful being.

In time, the stories of her excess faded along with the tales of her beauty. Without a backward glance, the old duke abandoned Chatsworth for London. He had been there but a year when he took kith and kin quite unawares by fathering yet another child with
Lady Foster (any number of wagers would have been covered that the old duke had no powder left in his pistol). Within a few years, Cavendish was dead as mutton. His numerous offspring (with all due bereavement and impenitent greed) embarked upon a vigorous jockeying for a position of prominence in the hierarchy of inheritance. The haggling was interminable. By the time of Elizabeth and Darcy’s marriage, Chatsworth was largely unoccupied and the beautiful duchess rarely spoken of at all.

Any mention of her was removed from Mrs. Reynolds’ recitation of Derbyshire history. The single remnant of the story that dogged Pemberley was a question that Darcy asked but of himself. And when he did, it was with great disquiet. He did not at all understand how, with all the opprobrium surrounding their former neighbour, the duchess, why a member of the dignified Darcy family carried her name. Moreover, who had chosen to name his sister Georgiana? His mother, or his father?

W
ith a scud of dust worthy a particularly impertinent cyclone, Robert Morland’s coach descended upon Pemberley. Protégé and heir apparent to Gainsborough, it was Morland who had won Mr. Darcy’s commission to paint his wife’s portrait.

Previously, nothing less than a request from St. James’s Palace could lure Morland from his studio in Bath for a sitting. Beyond royalty, all who sought his services were bade come to him. Darcy, however, demanded, by means of polite request, that the painter bring himself to Derbyshire at Elizabeth’s leisure. Morland seldom travelled from the healing waters of home and that city’s simpering adulation of him, and never to the incivility of Derbyshire’s fresh air. However, he had made haste to commence this work, understanding the portrait might well be the benchmark of his career.

Other than the King, the Queen, the Prince Regent, and sundry royal family members, few sittings were of more import than that of Mr. or Mrs. Darcy. As a young man, Mr. Darcy’s likeness had been taken by Sir Thomas Lawrence (Reynolds should have, but the poor man died in the year of ’92) and that gentleman was bid return for the honour of Miss Georgiana. Morland considered it quite a coup to wrest the Darcy commission from the courtly master.

Morland arrived at Pemberley with two assistants, five trunks, and an ill-temper. His poor disposition was a result of his most recent project, that of a bust of good King George. Not only did Morland’s genius fail to flower successfully in the unfamiliar setting of the royal court, but dementia had already descended upon George and he continually called Morland by Thomas Gainsborough’s name. Morland’s self-regard could not allow himself to admire another’s talent, even if poor Gainsborough was dead. By the very nature of the work, each artist competed (however each insisted
not) with not just his contemporaries, but also the many who traversed the dicey water of artistic interpretation long before him. Thus there was reason aplenty to disparage, be it current or historical, competition.

Artistic integrity notwithstanding, Morland had a frightfully lucrative career emblazoning enormous canvases with the shamefully embellished countenances of the wealthy. That occupation demanded an artist straddle the sometimes perilously fine line betwixt likeness and flattery. It was always a relief to Morland if his client was not so unprepossessing as to frighten children. (There was one unfortunate aristocrat whose ill-fitting wooden teeth could not quite be contained by his lips. The pictorial results were disastrous. Morland tried not to think of it.)

It is not unusual for painters to become a bit enraptured with their clients. One must feel a certain fondness to do justice to a lady’s face and figure. (Ah! The figure!) Gainsborough had been more than a little smitten with the Duchess of Devonshire, else he would not have made three attempts to capture her likeness.

An artist’s predisposition to infatuation did not leave Morland’s sensibilities untouched. (The man fell in and out of love with all the regularity of the tide.) Moreover, if artists often were bewitched with their subjects, it was conversely true that the time and intimacy such an undertaking demanded lured (with considerable encouragement from Morland) more than one woman’s affection from a faithful path. Romantic intrigue was an exceedingly happy by-product of his profession, for seldom was there a man more taken with wenching. Even whilst under the very noses of their husbands, he was surprisingly successful upon eliciting these assignations. This phenomenon, no doubt, was the direct result of a widely held supposition that those of artistic sensibilities were a bit light in the slippers.

He adored women, women adored artists, and husbands dismissed said artists’ threat of wifely seduction. And he was paid handsomely. Was not life grand?

Perhaps the most salient amongst the many inducements to Morland’s accepting the Darcy commission was the reputed comeliness of the intended subject. As yet, her likeness had never been attempted (Mr. Darcy had a miniature, but that ilk was hardly worth noting). The notion spun Morland almost giddy. It was he who would be first to pluck the flower of her beauty for the world to savour. It was unto him that she would surrender her image. A union of souls. An exchange. A consummation.

So to speak.

By the time he arrived at Pemberley, Morland was so unstrung as to be almost prostrate with anticipation. He had tortured himself the length of the trip, alternately certain, then not, that Mrs. Darcy’s handsomeness had been exaggerated.

Ushered into the grand salon, he espied her sitting next to Mr. Darcy. Neither rose, demanding Morland cross the room to perfect a bow. He issued a respectful dip of the head, but just enough of a slack-wristed brush with his hand to his heart to insist his genuflection but a courtesy and not a true statement of obeisance. This little pantomime compleated, only then did he allow himself to look fully upon the face he held in such hopeful apprehension. His reaction could be described no other way than confounded.