Life Mask (52 page)

The actress fanned herself a little coyly. 'I don't know. His originality's refreshing.'

'But does it mean nothing, then, that my mother is Countess of Ailesbury? Am I no more
Honourable
than Bet my maid? Should Bet dine off my bone china, and should I mend hems in her place?' Anne heard herself beginning to whine.

'You've no talent for needlework,' said Eliza flippantly. 'Paine's main point is that kings are not necessarily wiser than other men—and our own George costs his people more than a million pounds a year to maintain in royal state. Paine says the best kind of government is one based on the public good—'

'The
res publica,
yes, I know the origin of
republic
,' said Anne a little sharply. She remembered, all those years ago, preaching to Eliza about the importance of Whig principles. Now her pupil had gone beyond anything she'd ever taught.

Mrs Farren came in just then. 'Very sorry to disturb, but there's a note for Mrs Damer, sent on from Grosvenor Square.'

Anne recognised Mary's hand.
Come to me,
was all it said.

She stood up. 'I'm so sorry, Eliza, it's been a fascinating discussion, but something urgent—'

'Not illness in the family, I hope?'

'No, no.'

'Do take our manservant with a torch, madam, to light your way home,' said Mrs Farren stiffly.

Not for the first time, Anne had the distinct impression that the mother was not particularly pleased that the friendship had been renewed. Strange how much it bothered her that she might be considered a less than welcome visitor by this former strolling actress! 'Thank you, Mrs Farren, that's very kind.'

She was at the house on North Audley Street in two minutes. Mary was waiting for her, pacing in the narrow hall. She seized Anne's gloved fingers in her own and helped her off with her greatcoat. 'Oh, my dear. The most appalling thing. I had to see you.'

'Calm yourself. What is it?'

'I've been noticed in a
newspaper!'

Anne unfolded the page from Mary's reticule. She sucked in her breath as she read the paragraph, under the small caption, 'News of the World'.

Some would have it that a certain young lady's friendship with the new Earl of O-f—d is not Disinterested. We have learned
that she and her family have recently received a gift of a handsome three-storeyed residence on his estate at T—k—m. When the Earl was asked by a female relation if he had any view to marrying the person in question, or perhaps her younger sister, his answer was, 'That's as Miss B—y pleases!'

'You see!' Mary burst out when Anne set the paper down on the hall table.

Anne put her arm round her and chose her words carefully. 'I see that you've become a true member of the World at last.'

'What do you mean?'

'Mary?' That must be Agnes in the shadows at the top of the stairs.

'It's all right, go to bed; I'm talking to Anne,' Mary called back.

'What I mean,' said Anne when they were alone again, 'is that being a victim of scandalmongering could be considered the qualification for membership in the World. It happens to almost all of us at some point in our lives; it's the price of being distinguished. Besides, the venom on this arrow is feeble. You know what infinitely worse things have been said of me!' Mary let out a wild sob and Anne thought perhaps she shouldn't have brought up that comparison. 'Be rational, my dear. You're accused of no heinous crime—merely of accepting the generosity of a septuagenarian, who may or may not be intending to propose.'

Mary wiped her eyes. 'That's what Agnes said. She laughed it off. But I can't stand the suggestion that I've been laying siege to Mr Walpole, when my feelings have never been anything but filial. Perhaps we shouldn't have let him use those foolish nicknames. But I never thought—he's never behaved in the slightest way—' The tears ran down her face again.

Anne embraced her tightly. 'As to that part of the libel,' she said into Mary's dark curls, more certainly than she felt, 'I don't believe it either. Walpole's the very definition of a bachelor. Mind you, the line they quote does sound like him—as a piece of gallant repartee—'

'But what could he have meant by it?'

'Well, perhaps one of his nosy old nieces asked if he admired you and he didn't want to be so churlish as to say
absolutely not?

Mary's voice shook. 'The blow to my reputation—I'll have to, write to him—but I can't bear it. Anne, would you do this for me, would you tell him?'

'Tell him what?'

'That my family must move out of Little Strawberry at once.'

'Oh, Mary.' Anne let go of her for a moment. 'Why don't you come to bed and we'll talk again in the morning?'

'I won't be able to sleep, not a wink,' said Mary, letting herself be led upstairs.

But an hour later she was breathing in the shallow, regular pattern of those who were dead to the world. It was Anne who lay awake beside her, thinking with hatred of journalists and the havoc they caused. She'd have to play the diplomat, now, with all her skill. She wished she could protect Mary from all this, the vulgarity of it. The young woman's profile, a dim white in the darkness, was as clean as a child's.

I
T TOOK
Anne right through Christmas to reconcile Mary and Walpole. 'You must give her time,' she told him over a glass of sherry at Berkeley Square.

He swung the poker limply into the logs. 'How she hurts and punishes me! It comes near to breaking my heart.'

'But cousin, your fortune—your fame as an author and collector—your new tide—all these things are like a harsh light reflected on Mary.' Anne knew she was repeating herself. 'She tortures herself with having profited from your generosity in Italy and now in the matter of the house.'

'What, would she only condescend to be my friend if I were a beggar?'

Anne sighed. 'The article was very mortifying to her feelings.'

'So will she let us be judged in the vilest of tribunals—the papers? Low, anonymous scribblers should simply be ignored,' declared Walpole.

'Oh, that's all very well for you to say!'

His bushy eyebrows went up.

'You're a man, and a rich one, who can defy the World if you want to. Mary has no such security. You're putting her happiness in peril,' Anne warned him. 'And Agnes's too,' she added as an afterthought.

Had she gone too far? His face seemed to fall in. His eyes were watering. 'Oh, Anne. I never meant her any harm!'

This would be the time to ask whether he'd really made the remark the newspaper had attributed to him—but somehow Anne didn't want to know. Even if he had, journalists distorted everything. The thought of him and Mary as a married couple was incongruous, and not just because of his age and ill health; it would be a sort of incest, now they were all such a family. It would unbalance everything, bring on chaos.

Walpole was plucking at his high starched stock as if it were compressing his windpipe. 'The World is so very harsh. I thought my years would allow me to enjoy this friendship in peace—but no. Please, my dear Anne, I beg you—for the sake of your old crippled godfather, but above all for hers—I beg you to use all your tact and wisdom to persuade her to stay at Little Strawberry! Don't let her chimerical scruples poison the end of a life which she, and only she, can sweeten.'

Anne very much wanted to shake him till the eyes popped out of his head. She nodded and patted his leathery hand. She remembered something Walpole himself had said once:
One should never be cruel to the old, because any day might be their last.
For some reason she thought of poor Sir Joshua Reynolds, king of British art, who was lying on his deathbed now, his body vastly swollen; they called him
tranquil,
but that was only the laudanum.

A week later she was able to report that the Berrys would not be leaving Little Strawberry Hill. In reply, Walpole sent his thanks and a verse which suggested he'd found his sense of humour again.

An estate and an earldom at seventy-four!
Had I sought them or wished them, 'twould add one fear more,
That of making a Countess when almost fourscore.
But Fortune, who scatters her gifts out of season,
Though unkind to my limbs, has still left me my reason...

M
AY 1792

After one of their hard games of tennis—which Derby won on this occasion—he and Fox drank fresh milk from a bored-looking cow in Hyde Park. They waved to Mrs Darner as she went by on her stallion and caught a glimpse of Earl Spencer in his newly famous hip-length coat. The story was that he'd cut the tails off for a bet; it looked like a jacket a three-year-old would wear.

'Mrs A. protests she hasn't seen you since before Christmas, Derby,' said Fox, supine on the grass. 'You might dine with us at Maidenhead Bridge on Saturday, then come out rowing.'

'That sounds delightful.'

'How're the children?'

'Very well, I believe,' said Derby, searching his memory for any recent news. 'Edward's leaving Eton this summer; he'll go to Trinity, Cambridge, as I did.'

'Can the boy really be that old?' Fox laughed.

'Even little Elizabeth's turned fourteen. I let her spend most of last winter with her mother in Marylebone,' Derby mentioned, breaking his rule of never referring to Lady Derby.

'Ah, good of you. I imagine she's the invalid's sole consolation in life,' said Fox gently.

Well, it was partly kindness, but partly his secret conviction that she was Dorset's daughter, Derby admitted to himself; she'd always seemed out of place at Knowsley.

'And the other two...'

He wouldn't let anyone but Fox or Bunbury probe like this. 'Oh, they haven't seen the Countess or heard me speak her name since they were in leading strings,' he said more confidently than he felt. He wondered if Elizabeth told them much about Marylebone.

Who knew what went on in the shadowy minds of the young? 'Also, I've got four wards up at Knowsley, since my poor uncle's death,' he said to change the subject. General Burgoyne, the veteran of Saratoga, had not only been a fond uncle but had made a Whig of him.

'By-blows of the great man?' asked Fox.

'Yes, their mother was an opera singer,' said Derby.

'It's always jolly having youngsters about.'

'Yes,' said Derby, 'they take the bleak look off a place.' He knew that Fox had two children of his own by former mistresses. The boy was deaf and dumb, and the girl a little slow too; Mrs A. was very good to them and let them visit St Anne's Hill often. It was a great pity, Derby thought, that the happy couple had none of their own—but the
Impure
(as the papers called courtesans) generally ended up barren.

Sheridan threw himself down in the grass beside them, only an hour late, and refused a beaker of milk. 'Have you read Paine's latest?' he asked abruptly, waving a pamphlet. 'Brilliant ideas on every page. Payments to help with birth—marriage—funerals—allowances for every child and free schooling—pensions for the old and crippled—'

'And how would we pay for all this?' Fox teased him.

'Simple: an income tax.'

'Ouch!' cried Derby, clutching his pocket.

Sheridan grinned at him. 'Oh, you'd still have enough for your birds and horses.'

Fox rolled on to his stomach. 'No, but seriously, Sherry, you mustn't go round brandishing that thing; the author and publisher have already been charged under the new Proclamation against Seditious Writings.'

The Irishman's handsome features went hard. 'Paine has proved our so-called
representative Parliament
is rotten to the core. Only one man in a hundred has a vote, for God's sake, after all these years of Whig campaigning! Did you know that Old Sarum, with three houses in it, returns two Members, and so does all of Yorkshire with a population of over a million? Besides, the Commons is bought and sold daily—clogged with placemen who dread the PM will take away their pensions, snorers who can't stay awake through the debates and graspers who shove their way in by treating each village to a barrel of whisky!'

'I was giving speeches on these topics when you were still parsing sentences at Harrow,' said Fox quietly.

'Sherry, you sound like you'd rather move to France,' joked Derby to lighten the mood.

His friend stared at him. 'I'm not the revolutionary they call me; I just want liberty and justice. You should pull off those aristocratic blinkers for a moment. Last year, even when we stooped to accept the Eunuch's support, we couldn't pass Abolition—the most shining of causes—because of old farts who were afraid that if we freed the blacks they'd turn Jacobin, and up and slaughter us all!'

'Many of us feel as you do,' Derby assured him, 'but the state of France is causing jitters. No man will repair his roof in the hurricane season.'

'He must,' said Sheridan, 'or the whole thing may blow off.'

The silence stretched. 'This was such a pleasant day,' murmured Fox with lys eyes closed, 'until you turned up.'

'I've brought good news, actually, old Foxy,' said Sheridan, leaning up on his elbow. The rapidity of his moods had always unnerved Derby; too much like a virtuoso performance of Garrick's. 'Grey and Fitzgerald and I have just founded a new Reform society—not a populist one, but for gentlemen—we're calling it the Friends of the People. Has a good ring to it, hasn't it?'

A long pause. 'Mm,' said Derby.

'We mean to table a Reform motion in the next session.'

'The time is out of joint,'
Fox quoted grimly. 'That riot of footmen, that fire at the House of Commons last week—'

'To be fair, it was found to be a pair of breeches smouldering in a cupboard,' Derby pointed out, 'hardly evidence of insurrection.'

'Oh, I know.' Fox sighed. 'But it all looks like anarchy—
Lib
erty's demon child,
as Pitt's pamphleteers call it. The Prince is convinced there's a Jacobin agent under every bed.'