Joan Wolf (3 page)

 Jessica looked up from the letter she was holding. She knew it by heart, since she had written it herself. “It sounds as though she is thinking of leaving me some money, Burnie. God knows we could use it. I’d better go.”

Miss Burnley had finally agreed and Jessica had packed her bags. She told Miss Burnley that Cousin Jean had arranged for a boat to take her from Dover to Perth, and she persuaded her old governess that she did not need any escort. “A friend of Cousin Jean’s will be waiting for me when I arrive in London,” she said glibly. “I shall be well taken care of, Burnie. You are needed here.” After overcoming Miss Burnley’s objections Jessica wrote a letter to her brothers giving them the same information she had imparted to the governess. She also wrote to Mr. Grassington. On September 16 she set out for London.

* * * *

The place she went first after settling into the inexpensive lodging she had found during her week’s sojourn in London with Miss Burnley was Covent Garden Theatre. Men looked for mistresses who were actresses or opera dancers, so Jessica’s limited worldly wisdom told her. She couldn’t be an opera dancer to save her soul, but she had, thanks to Miss Burnley, a well-trained speaking voice. She thought she could act. Apparently Mr. Harris had thought so too, for he had engaged to hire her a month ago.

Covent Garden was in trouble and none knew it better than Thomas Harris. The famous classical actor John Kemble and his equally talented sister Mrs. Siddons had been the mainstays of the theatre for years. But Mrs. Siddons was retired now and Kemble had given up most of his roles to Charles Mayne Young. Young was a tall, good-looking man with a melodious voice he used to good effect, but he could not vie with Edmund Kean. All of last season Kean had packed Drury Lane with his magnetic, naturalistic acting. Clearly the classical style of acting, so nobly embodied in Kemble and Young, was on the wane. Thomas Harris realized quite well that Kemble now was not an adequate draw and that it would be madness to allow Covent Garden to remain exclusively the home of classical acting. He needed someone who could compete with Kean.

  And then a young girl who called herself Jessica O’Neill had arrived. She told him she was an actress who had previously only worked in small playhouses in the west of Ireland, and he gave her an audition.

He had been immediately taken by her marvelous voice. There was also a distinction about her that he thought would go over well with a London audience. He liked the way she held her head, so erect and beautifully balanced. He was struck by the cool, shining look of her large eyes. She looked as if she had the habit, founded on experience, of not being afraid of anything. She had read the trial scene from
The Merchant of Venice
for him and her rendering of Portia had power and authority, yet was at the same time unmistakably feminine.

Harris had no intention of mounting a production of
The Merchant of Venice.
Kean’s Shylock was justly famous, and however good a Portia he presented, Harris knew he could not avoid unfavorable comparisons to Drury Lane. What he wanted was to present an actor—or actress—who embodied the same style of acting as Kean, romantic and naturalistic, in a new role, and preferably one unsuited to the talents of the Drury Lane star. The day Jessica presented herself at Covent Garden to begin work Harris had her read Juliet. The next day he put her on the stage and had her do the balcony scene with Charles Mayne Young. The result was even better than he had dreamed; he had his new star.

Jessica was somewhat bewildered at finding herself taken so seriously by the Covent Garden management She had hoped merely for a small part, one that would give her the kind of exposure she needed to accomplish her purpose. She was not sure she wanted to be a star on the scale Mr. Harris was envisioning, but as the weeks went by, and rehearsals intensified, she found herself caught up in the production and, most of all, in the role.

She had enormous sympathy for Juliet. Romantic love was something Jessica was unfamiliar with, but the intensity of Juliet’s feeling was something she could understand. Wasn’t she herself prepared to venture into a strange and alien world for the sake of two young brothers whom she loved? And Juliet’s terrible isolation as the play moved toward its conclusion was frighteningly familiar to Jessica. When she stood before the friar, deserted by father, mother, and nurse, Juliet’s words seemed to come from within her own deepest self:

0’ bid me leap, rather than marry Paris, From off the battlements of yonder tower, Or walk in thievish ways, or bid me lurk Where serpents are; chain me with roaring bears, Or shut me nightly in a charnel house, O’ercovered quite with dead men’s rattling bones, With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls; or bid me go into a new-made grave and hide me with a dead man in his shroud - Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble—And I will do it without fear or doubt...

They were Jessica’s exact feelings about marriage with Sir Henry Belton.

The Covent Garden management was delighted with Jessica and raised her salary to twenty pounds a week. All during the weeks of rehearsals rumors of her beauty and genius were skillfully spread throughout London.
Romeo and Juliet
was to open on October 6, and by early that afternoon the various entrances to Covent Garden Theatre were surrounded by crowds eager to obtain admission. When the doors opened at half-past five an immense throng poured into the house and rushed into the pit and galleries. Before long the boxes and circles were filled with the most famous men and women of the age, all eager to see Jessica 0’Neill, the “new Siddons.”

Jessica stood in the Green Room frozen into immobility. When she was called to the stage she stood in the wings certain she would not be able to utter a word. She heard Mrs. Brereton, who was playing the nurse say, “Where’s this girl? What, Juliet!” and, taking a deep breath, she walked on stage.

Chapter Four

He was ... to each well-thinking mind

A spotless friend, a matchless man, whose virtue ever shined.

—
FULKE
GREVILLE

London could talk of nothing but Jessica O’Neil. When the curtain had fallen on her first performance the audience had burst into a wild tumult of applause. The management had announced a new play for the following evening, but hundreds of voices had shouted back, demanding another performance of
Romeo and Juliet.
The manager had yielded, and
Romeo and Juliet
ran the next night as well.

The critics were universally enthusiastic. The
Morning Chronicle
wrote, “It was not altogether the matchless beauty of form and face, but the spirit of perfect innocence and purity that seemed to glisten in her speaking eyes, and breathe from her chiselled lips.”

The
Morning Post
raved, “A sense of innate delicacy, of rare sensibility glowing through the fervour of her words, and the presence of passion and growing strength, rendered her performance a delight to behold.”

And William Hazlitt, writing for the
Champion,
thought “she perfectly conceived what would be generally felt by the female mind in the extraordinary and overpowering situations in which she was placed.” Crowds were turned away from the theatre each night she played. Jessica, to her own astonishment, was famous.

Philip Romney, Earl of Linton, came to London near the middle of October to find the town still in an uproar over Jessica 0’Neill. The Romneys belonged to that select group of families who had virtually ruled England during much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Together with the great Whig houses of Cavendish, Russell, Grenville, and Spenser, they owned vast numbers of acres and were born to an almost automatic right to a voice in the government and a seat in the cabinet. And of all the great landowning Whig aristocrats none looked more the part than did the present Earl of Linton.

He was at this time twenty-seven years of age and possessed a personal presence that instantly suggested a prince in very truth, a ruler, warrior, and patron. Ironically, he was not involved with government, the Whigs having been out of power for many years, but he was interested in certain areas of social reform and made it a point to be in the House whenever one of his causes came up for a vote. He spent the greater part of the year in Kent on his principal estate of Staplehurst.

He had come up to town because his elder sister and her children had arrived at Staplehurst for a prolonged visit with his mother and he had long ago decided that a little of Maria’s company was more than sufficient. She was ten years his senior and tended to dwell at great length on the fact that as the only son of the family it was his duty to get married. He knew very well that it was his duty, and he had every intention of fulfilling it—some day. In the meanwhile he did not relish Maria’s strictures and he did not want to upset his mother by quarrelling with his determined sister, so he decided that it would be a good idea for him to pay a visit to London.

His many friends were delighted to see him, and it wasn’t long before Lord George Litcham invited him to share Lord George’s sister’s box at Covent Garden. “You really must see Miss O’Neill, Philip,” he said. “She has quite stolen Kean’s thunder, you know.”

“Well, if she is half as good as Kean she is worth seeing,” Linton replied good-naturedly. “I saw him as Shylock last year and I still haven’t forgotten the impression he produced. Like a chapter of Genesis, I thought.”

“She is every bit as good. And infinitely more beautiful.”

“Oh?” Linton raised an inquiring eyebrow.

Lord George smiled briefly. “After her performances the Green Room is so filled with her admirers that one is fortunate to get two words with her.”

Linton looked amused. “Then certainly I must see her, George. Thank Lady Wetherby for me and say I shall be happy to make one of her party tomorrow evening.”

Lady Wetherby’s box was very near the stage, and Linton had an excellent view of Jessica’s performance. He had rather thought he had outgrown
Romeo and
Juliet
and was surprised and then deeply moved by the swift and tragic beauty of the story as it unfolded before him. Jessica’s beautiful voice, clearly audible in the farthest reaches of the gallery, gave such an intensity of feeling to the poetry that lines that had hitherto seemed outrageous now appeared glorious expressions of the truth and ardor of young love. And she was indeed striking, with that magnificent skin, that mouth with the curve that could be so tender yet so resolute, the arch of those dark eyebrows with the wonderful gray eyes beneath them.

“I’d like to meet Miss O’Neill,” he said to Lord George after the performance was over.

“Oh Lord, Philip, I hope
you
aren’t going to enter the sweepstake for her favors,” said Lord George.

“Is there a sweepstake?”

“Assuredly. The betting at the clubs is in favor of Ashford at the moment. He is the richest one of the lot.”

“A high flyer, I see.”

“Oh, definitely.”

They had entered the Green Room by now, and it was indeed thronged with the great and the famous. Jessica was standing with her back to the full-length mirror talking to Lord Debenham. “Can you introduce me, George?” Linton asked softly.

 “Come along,” replied his friend, and prepared to shoulder his way through the crowd. But it was not necessary. People naturally stepped aside for Philip Romney; it was his fine unconscious way, his friend thought ruefully, of outshining, overlooking, and overtopping the swarming multitudes. He was smiling now, throwing a brief word or two to those he knew, but not halting in his determined progress toward the tall girl at the far end of the room.

Jessica looked up and saw him coming. The light from the Green Room lamps gilded his hair, the color of ripe corn and as thick and gleaming as ten-year-old Adrian’s. He was tall and broad-shouldered and the eyes that met hers across the space of twelve feet were blue as the sea. His face was still lightly tanned from the sun, and the thought flashed through Jessica’s mind that he looked just like a Viking. But the deep voice was surprisingly soft as he murmured an acknowledgement of Lord George’s introduction and reached out to take her offered hand in his own large, strong grasp.

“I admired your performance enormously. Miss 0’Neill,” he was saying.

“Thank you, my lord,” she replied, looking straight at him with that beautiful fearless gaze of hers. Gray eyes met blue with a sudden shock of what could have been recognition. Jessica’s face was very still.

“I wonder if you would care to drive out with me tomorrow, Miss 0’Neill?” said Linton in his grave, soft voice.

There was a brief pause while Jessica continued to look at him. Then she said, “Yes, I should like that very much.”

“Damn!” said Mr. Melton to Sir Lawrence Lewis. “If Linton is interested in Miss 0’Neill the rest of us may as well retire from the field.”

“Unfortunately, you are right, Melton,” replied Sir Lawrence. “What he wants Linton usually gets. And he don’t mind paying a high price.”

“He’s had no one under his protection since the Riviera. And that was at least six months ago.”

“Damn!” Sir Lawrence said to Mr. Melton, as he watched Linton smile at Jessica. “I’m very much afraid he
is
interested. I wonder how long he plans to remain in London this time?”

Lord George asked his friend the same thing. “For how long do you mean to remain away from your pigs and your cows, Philip?” he queried Linton humorously as they made their way toward Brooks’ later that evening. As Staplehurst was one of the most famous and beautiful estates in the country, the references to livestock were seemingly facetious. But Lord George was not as fanciful as it might appear; Philip Romney was in fact one of the most advanced farmers and enlightened landlords in England. He administered all his own estates, and the grinding rural poverty that was affecting so much of England due to the postwar economy and the Corn Laws was not in evidence anywhere on Romney land.

Linton belonged to that diminishing number of wealthy, powerful, landed gentry who were genuinely attached to the land they owned and the people who worked it for them. He was known to every farmer and laborer on his vast estates, and had been since his childhood. The land, to the Earl of Linton, was more than the rents it brought in; it was also the people who cultivated it. Staplehurst, that great golden stone house surrounded by ponds, waterfalls, and Capability Brown’s famous park, was also the center of some of the most efficient and profitable agriculture in England.