Wicked Company (76 page)

“Her husband is a notorious drunkard and a rake,” Garrick noted sharply. “Surely, you know that?”

“I fear I am, like Jonathan Swift, of the opinion that these female scribblers do naught but expose the faults and misfortunes of both sexes,” Capell retorted, “at the expense of public morale. But, of course, sir,” he added, making an effort to appear fair-minded toward his host, “I shall read it from first act to last and consult with you directly.”

“I’d greatly appreciate that, Edward,” Garrick said in his most amenable manner. “Have you tried a bit of white asparagus? Mrs. Garrick thought you might prefer it. She ordered our gardeners to plant some in your honor last season.”

***

The following Tuesday in London, Mrs. Phillips called up to Sophie that a messenger from Drury Lane had just delivered a letter for her. Sophie dashed down the stairwell to fetch it, breaking Garrick’s seal with trembling fingers.

I most regretfully inform you that the Lord Chamberlain’s office—for reasons left unarticulated—has refused licence for
A Maid Most Modestly Made
. I hope you will call on me at the theater at your earliest convenience.

Yrs., D. Garrick

She stared at the missive with anger and dismay. All those hours toiling past midnight! Her cramped shoulders and bloodshot eyes! All that effort obliterated with the stroke of a pen, thanks to the capricious judgments of one spiteful, woman-hating little bureaucrat!

“What is it, my dear?” Mrs. Phillips exclaimed, observing Sophie’s angry scowl.

But Sophie hardly heard the query. She seized her cloak off a peg and headed out the door, marching down Half Moon Passage to The Strand where she hailed a hackney and directed the driver to speed to St. James’s Palace.

Storming through the black door with its discreet brass plaque denoting the Lord Chamberlain’s office, Sophie pulled up short at the sight of a tall figure lounging in the antechamber, his long legs stretched out halfway across the room.

In Hunter Robertson’s lap lay a manuscript Sophie deduced he was delivering personally to the deputy examiner of plays on behalf of the owner of Sadler’s Wells. Before either of them could speak, Edward Capell himself emerged from his inner sanctum and peered at them myopically.

“Ah… Mr. Robertson,” Capell said genially, staring admiringly at Hunter’s muscular thighs as he rose to his full height. “My clerk said you’d be calling here with Mr. Rosoman’s manuscript. I did so enjoy you in
La Costanza
at the opera in April. Such diction… such a
voice!”

Capell was virtually fawning over the man! Sophie fumed. Hunter, who seemed as shocked to see her as she was to see him, thanked the censor distractedly for his kind words.

“I’m in no hurry to commence that hot ride back to Sadler’s, sir,” he ventured. “Why not confer with Miss McGann, here? I shall be happy to wait.”

“I believe I know why she has called—
without
an appointment,” Capell replied peevishly, “and I can tell you, mistress, there is really nothing to discuss. I’ve explained my reasons for refusing your play in a letter to Mr. Garrick.”

Sophie summoned every ounce of will to control her raging emotions.

“But that is just the problem, sir,” she replied, her jaw clenched. “Mr. Garrick’s note to me said the reasons for refusal were not made clear. Could you please elaborate?”

“Here?” he asked, looking pointedly at Hunter.

“In your chambers, if you please.”

“Very well,” he replied churlishly, “if Mr. Robertson, who
has
an appointment, has no objection.”

“None,” Hunter assured him, and bowed politely as Sophie marched into Capell’s inner sanctum, a chamber littered with manuscripts on every horizontal surface. Neglecting to offer her a chair, he sat behind his desk and formed his forefingers into a pyramid supporting his pointed chin. The blotches on his skin were more alarming than ever.

“Not to put too fine a point on it, Miss McGann,” he announced with relish, “I find the work offensive. The mutinous daughter disobeying the sensible directives of her father… the warrior who challenges his king. The piece has a shrill, strident tone that society would not deem acceptable.”

Sophie swallowed hard in a herculean effort to keep her temper.

“I’m rather surprised at such a finding,” she said slowly, “for, as perhaps you know,
Forced Marriage,
from which my play is adapted, is a work that has been presented on and off in Britain for some ninety-nine years.”

“My point precisely!” he snapped. “If Aphra Behn were writing today, I doubt if
any
of her plays would be granted license. Her type of bawdry is the reason Parliament saw fit to
establish
the Licensing Act in 1737!” He looked at her narrowly and stood up
in a gesture of dismissal. “When will you female scribblers realize you have no business blathering on about serious subjects that are unsuitable… or, as they say in your native Scotland, beyond your, ken!” he added scathingly. “Now, if you will be so kind…”

Fearing she might strike this repulsive little government functionary, Sophie whirled on her heel and stormed out to the antechamber.

“So sorry to have kept you, Mr. Robertson,” Capell said unctuously. “Now what have we here? Something that will suit your stellar skills, I should hope. What’s this I hear about your becoming dance master at—”

Hunter had better have a care to guard his privates from that little weasel!
Sophie thought darkly, stalking past the two men into St. James’s Street and heading down Pall Mall.

No hackney or even a sedan chair was in sight, so she walked all the way home. As soon as she slammed the door to her upstairs lodgings, she flung herself in exhaustion and despair onto the bed she had once shared with Hunter. She pounded the mattress with both fists, feeling capable of murder. All those hours of fine tuning the dialogue to give it a contemporary ring… all the brain-cracking labor attempting to strike just the right tone to highlight the ludicrous implications of arranged marriages! She knew instinctively that before many more years passed, young women—even in aristocratic circles—would be demanding freedom from the tradition of being sold to the highest bidders like mere cattle.

She sat up on her bed with fists clenched so tightly, her knuckles had bleached themselves the color of chalk.

“Blast them all!” she cried aloud. “Blast every bloody one of them to hell!”

***

Sophie awoke the following morning with the same fury and outrage boiling inside that had gripped her vitals the day before. She had barely gulped a mug of tea before she grabbed her swan’s feather quill and dispatched a note to David Garrick, thanking him for his faith in her skills as a dramatist, but acquiescing without protest to the verdict of the Lord Chamberlain’s office. Then she began to compose the piece requested by Lord Darnly.

“After all… we female scribblers have to
eat!
” she said furiously to the wall opposite her desk.

Two weeks of white-hot activity eventually produced a two-act diversion she titled
The Vanquishers Vanquished.
Rather than portraying animals enslaving local hunters, she had devised a plot with a comical gender reversal in which a group of Spanish soldiers invading the Amazon jungles were conquered by the formidable women of the region and forced to do their bidding.

“’Tis just far-fetched enough to be amusing,” Roderick Darnly pronounced the day Sophie called at his chambers at Number 10, St. James’s Street to receive his verdict on the commissioned work.

“I desire that this piece be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain’s office anonymously,” Sophie responded tersely. “And unless you are prepared to agree to such an arrangement, I will throw these pages on the hearth!” she added, gesturing toward the crackling fire warding off the unseasonable chill.

“No need for such theatrics,” Darnly replied, raising an eyebrow at her outburst. “We shall call it ‘A Musical Confection’ and intersperse some ballads and rope dancing at the interval. That way, the piece will be considered a ‘concert’ and we avoid having to submit it to the examiner altogether. I shall let you know immediately if I can place the piece before summer’s end.”

“Excellent,” Sophie agreed, mollified. Preparing to make her departure, she inquired, “Are financial arrangements for authors at such pleasure gardens similar to the author’s Third Night Benefit?”

“Just leave the fiscal matters to me,” he assured her.

“Forgive me, Roderick,” Sophie insisted, gazing at him steadily, “but I wish to know
before
I submit my work precisely how playwrights at these houses are recompensed.”

“We will fashion a sort of partnership in this venture. You will receive a portion of the profits, after expenses.”

“In effect, a Third Night Benefit?” Sophie repeated stubbornly.

“’Tis possible it could be even more advantageous than that,” he replied. “You will receive your share based on the entire run of the work—after expenses—however long it plays.”

“However long it plays?” Sophie mused, relieved to hear this intelligence. “Lud, but those rope dancers must attract a crowd!”

***

“They’ve taken
The Vanquishers Vanquished
at Sadler’s Wells,” Lord Darnly announced with a satisfied air the morning of August first as soon as Sophie had boarded his well-appointed carriage. “Thomas Rosoman has already put it into rehearsal. We are expected there by noon to confer about certain production details.”

“Sadler’s Wells?” Sophie repeated, dismayed. “But I thought surely you would have submitted it to Ranelagh Gardens or Vauxhall here in the city as a first choice. I never dreamed you’d—”

“Sadler’s suffers from its distant location and is in need of spectacle to draw the crowds away from the popular pleasure gardens in town… hence, Thomas Rosoman’s willingness to take on silent partners in some new ventures. Surely, Sophie, you can’t object to my having sold it to him?”

“No… only…” Her words drifted off as she stared across the swaying coach.

Hunter was at Sadler’s Wells! However, she could not bring herself to disclose her personal problems to the viscount, especially because Hunter believed Roderick meant more to her than a mere patron.

“The plan is to lace the tale with melodies and lively dancing,” Darnly continued. “Rosoman wishes to confer with you about the most likely places such songs could be inserted.”

“I see,” Sophie murmured, glancing down at the manuscript laying in her lap. “Then, if you don’t mind, I’ll just spend the hour’s ride thinking about where that might be possible,” she suggested, relieved not to have to maintain a conversation with her fellow passenger when her mind was in such a whirl.

***

Darnly’s coach grew hot and stuffy by the time they approached Rosebery Avenue, a dusty road that led to the entrance to Sadler’s Wells. Gravel crunched beneath their wheels as Sophie leaned forward to glimpse the elegant iron-gated entrance to the theater itself.

“Word is, Rosoman spent the moon enlarging the brick building you see over there,” Darnly observed as the carriage rolled deeper into the grounds of the pleasure garden. “He calls it his music house. And over there at the edge of the green? That’s an English grotto garden that he hopes will attract larger summer crowds.”

Sophie gazed out the window to gain a better view of her surroundings. There was a river in the distance and a revolving mill and fountain whose splashing waters were very pleasant, indeed. Several acrobats and tumblers were practicing their routine on a wide expanse of lawn, while, above her head, a stout rope stretching between two large trees supported a man and a woman dancing on the slender cord with astounding agility. Sophie was relieved to discover that Lorna Blount was not among these daredevils. Fortunately, she’d been cast as a mere dancer.

Sophie heard the sound of music floating through the theater’s open windows. Down by the river, a round-shouldered worker was fastening what looked to be fireworks on a wheel that would, when lighted later that evening, spin spirals of flame in a spectacular display of pyrotechnics.

A harried-looking man of middle years emerged from the brick building and walked briskly toward their coach as they rolled to a stop in front of the theater’s entrance. Sophie stifled a groan at the sight of Hunter walking a few paces behind him.

“Welcome… welcome,” Thomas Rosoman hailed Darnly and his companion as they descended from the coach. He shook the viscount’s hand as the aristocrat had somehow come to his rescue. “We are delighted to see you. You both know Mr. Robertson, I gather.”

Lord Darnly surveyed Hunter coolly. Sophie wondered if the nobleman recalled their unfriendly exchange six years earlier in Bath. For her part, she nodded brusquely and kept her eyes glued on Rosoman.

“Robertson,” Darnly murmured, inclining his head in a curt greeting. “So this is where you tipped up after Colman sacked you.” He ignored Hunter’s cold stare as he addressed the owner of Sadler’s Wells. “Rosoman, I suggest we discuss our matters of business privately. I take it you intend these two to sort out the practicalities of adding music to Miss McGann’s comedy?”