Life Mask (61 page)

Sheridan rolled his eyes. 'You think I'm blind, Derby? My letters arrive ripped open, or not at all.'

'Then you must take more care.'

'That same prominent judge has bet 120 guineas at White's that I'll be in the Tower in two months. It's too late to be
careful,
my friend.
Lucky
will have to do.'

Derby suspected Sheridan of enjoying himself in some strange way.

The next week had a nightmarish quality. Events followed each other without logic or pause. He couldn't wake up in the mornings; he'd have liked to stay asleep behind the tight shutters of Derby House. He didn't have time to visit the Farrens, or send more than a quick note. Soldiers marched along Oxford Street like some surreal procession, the gentle May sun glinting on their bayonets; they were part of a new army called the Volunteers.

News was on every tongue, but one didn't know what to believe. Some organisation called the United Irishmen had been outlawed. Radicals were said to have gone into hiding, retreated to the provinces, or slipped abroad. The Secret Committee reported to the Commons that it had learned of orders for the manufacture of thousands of pikes, to be used in simultaneous uprisings in Dublin, Edinburgh and London; the Duke of Richmond spoke of a conspiracy to seize the Tower of London. Absurd details trickled out, or they seemed absurd to Derby. On the day the Revolution began, one spy claimed, farmers would be ordered to bring all their grain to market and all gentlemen would be confined to within three miles of their homes. At the Privy Council it was decided to call in several Foxite MPs for questioning about their meetings with enemy agents; one of the names was Richard Brinsley Sheridan's. Derby tried to protest, but his throat felt knotted tight.

In the Commons Burke spoke in dark riddles; he said it was necessary to withhold British liberties for a while in order to preserve them for ever. Fox and his men forced fourteen separate divisions on the Habeas Corpus Bill and lost them all. Some of the Whigs tired and went home to their estates; in the final vote they mustered barely a dozen. By the time the Bill came to the Lords, Derby knew it was hopeless.

He woke up that morning, sweaty and hot, and thought:
I must speak.
There were so few Foxites left in the Upper House that his diffidence was no longer a good enough excuse. Sitting in his study in his silk dressing gown, he wrote notes till noon, then sweated to memorise them.
It doesn't matter how I speak,
he told himself,
only that I do.
'Make haste, man,' Derby snapped at his valet as he struggled into a narrow black silk frock coat to wear under his scarlet robes; he puffed out all his breath so the hooks and eyes would meet over his hammering heart.

The Lords wasn't even half full. Derby's eyes scanned the ranks of red-robed peers, counted the bishops and the judges. The Pittites knew they'd win, so they hadn't bothered with a whipping-in. He felt insulted, but also slightly relieved that his first speech in many years wouldn't be to a vast crowd.

The Lords, as always, behaved more calmly than the Commons; not having a Speaker to run the show, they'd learned centuries ago how to take turns. Bedford spoke against the Bill, then Lansdowne, Lauderdale, Stanhope (sounding rabid as ever) and Norfolk, each of them followed by one of Pitt's men, who spoke in the most loathing terms of
the lower orders,
of
enemies to all those of us distinguished by worth and wealth,
of
conspiracies to deprive us of our God-given property, dignity, and even our lives.

Derby was trying to remember when it had happened, this turning of lords against men. His father and grandfather had raised him to think of the tenants of Knowsley as his children, his pupils, his people. When did the rot set in, he wondered, when had peers begun to see laxity in every magistrate, treason in every tavern, evil in every labourer's muddy face?

Finally it was Derby's turn, and he rose and wished he were taller. 'My Lords,' he said, too faintly, 'I am unaccustomed to address you, but on this occasion of grave importance I feel called to do so.'

A loud yawn from the opposite side.

He clasped his sweaty hands and pressed on. 'Are we a nation of terrified boys, so to deceive ourselves about the dangers we face? The government has reported on meetings and plans for a Reform Convention; well, conventions have met in this country before, without so much as a window being smashed as a consequence.'

'Jacobin!'

These insults had become so familiar that they were losing their power to hurt. In fact, this was the perfect prompt for Derby's next paragraph. 'No, rather,' he said, his voice too high and reedy, 'it is the government's Secret Committee that strongly resembles the sinister Jacobins. It is the spider's web of spies and informers that stretches across our islands—men who invent conspiracies to earn their pay—it is these spider's webs,' said Derby, losing control of his grammar, 'that adopt the abominable techniques of the French!'

He took a breath and desperately tried to remember his next point. He scanned the rows of blank faces above the scarlet robes. Who were these men? He used to think he knew them; he used to feel one of their ancient, dignified company.

'We've been told of the discovery of paltry caches of pikes and a few rusty muskets—but no weapons of mass destruction,' he spelled out, a word at a time. 'Ours is a populace that has neither guns nor the skill to use them—thanks to our ancestors, who framed the Game Laws that give us landowners the sole privilege of hunting on our own estates.' He threw that in as a sop to aristocratic pride. 'I don't deny that in a population generally loyal there may exist a handful of Britons with dangerous views—but I'm convinced that all they do is sing the "Marseillaise" and make fiery speeches. My Lords, if you pass this Habeas Corpus Bill in a spirit of panic, you'll be suspending that sacred liberty, won by our forefathers, that until this year has defined us as Englishmen.'

He sat down rather abruptly, his face hot, to a few desultory
hear hears.
He shut his eyes.
Well, at least that's over.

A
T NIGHT
in her canopied bed on Grosvenor Square, Anne lay puzzling, as if over a page of mathematical problems. Some of the men arrested in the recent swoop might be innocent, but could they all be? What percentage of rumours could be discounted; did ten rumours amount to one fact? The poor rate had tripled this year; did this mean that three times as much was being done to help the poor, or that three times as many of them were starving, because of press-ganged husbands and other effects of the war? How many pikes added up to a conspiracy? How many French ships did an invasion require?

After church she walked in the Mall with Eliza. 'Mrs Siddons?' the actress repeated.

'Yes, she's agreed to sit for me; I thought I'd do her in marble as Melpomene, the Tragic Muse.' Anne was too queasy with fatigue to stay off the subject on everyone's mind. 'But Eliza, suspending habeas corpus must have been necessary to preserve national security,' she said, taking up their argument again, 'because almost the whole of the Commons and Lords voted for it.'

'That only proves that Pitt has bought extensive flocks of sheep,' said Eliza.

'Well, perhaps if
you
thought for yourself like a rational being,' said Anne, dropping her arm and turning on her, 'instead of following your man like an obedient spaniel—'

The actress's gaze was ice.
'My man?'

Anne knew she'd got in too deep. But for years now these words had been lodging like grit under her tongue. 'Your words, your arguments, your very tone parrot Derby's.'

'I happen to agree with His Lordship,' said Eliza, 'and with Fox and the fearless few who stand with them.'

'How convenient! Because you can hardly afford to quarrel with the Earl, given the delicacy of your arrangement.'

Eliza folded her arms. 'To what arrangement do you refer?'

Anne was shaking now. 'I simply think it's revealing, the fact that you're still spouting the glories of
liberty
when the French fleet may be at the mouth of the Thames! You must have made up your mind to accept Derby when he's finally widowed. Your political views declare that you mean to be his.'

'My views are my own. And I'm nobody's.' Eliza walked away, her parasol like a shield between them.

Anne had to hurry to catch up with her. 'I don't blame you for your choice,' she said unconvincingly. After a moment she added, 'I spoke too harshly.'

Eliza turned and looked her in the eye. 'You're in a very trying mood today, I must say.'

She chewed her lip.

'What can I tell you, Anne?' said Eliza with a shrug. 'Of course Derby's views have influenced mine—as yours did, years ago, when you taught me to think like a Whig,' she added pointedly. 'But I must tell you, as to the future, there's no more clarity between myself and Derby than when you first asked me this question.'

'But that was what, seven years ago?' Anne remembered that shining afternoon at Park Place. How fresh they'd been back then, how unhardened. 'The quantity of time you've spent together since then, the whole tenor of your behaviour...'

'Oh, I'm well aware that I seem like a Whig countess-in-waiting, grooming myself to be Georgiana's successor,' said Eliza sharply. 'None of which alters the fact that my own mind is not made up.'

'But if you don't mean to marry him—'

'What am I doing?' Eliza looked at Anne almost guiltily. 'I hardly know. I certainly don't mean to marry anyone else.'

'Then—'

'I've no fear of single life; it suits me perfectly well. If I build up my savings until I retire at, say, fifty, I should have a comfortable sufficiency to support myself and my mother.'

Anne narrowed her eyes.
Miss Barren, an ageing spinster, formerly of Theatre Royal, Drury Lane?
'That's a touching little vision, but it doesn't ring true.'

'Well, harass my mother with your questions, then! She's had it all mapped out since I was nineteen,' said Eliza sullenly. 'The Countess will kick the bucket, Derby will go down on his knees, I'll give him another half-dozen brats and we'll all live happily ever after at Knowsley.'

Anne's chest felt tight when she considered the image.

'But many an invalid dies of old age,' Eliza went on, 'and Lady Derby's not forty yet. Now that really would be tragic, if I fixed my heart on a future that never came to pass!'

'So have you fixed your heart on it? We want what we want,' Anne persisted. 'Which of us ever managed to give up a strong desire merely because it mightn't be gratified?'

'Well, perhaps it's not a strong desire,' said Eliza.

'Don't you love Derby?' No answer. 'How can you bear to live so cheek-by-jowl if you don't?'

Eliza shook her curls off her face. 'How can I tell if I love him? It's not like the ecstasies in the plays, I know that much.'

'What you felt for Mr Palmer, when you were young—'

'Oh, that was just childish infatuation. Derby seems more like a husband, from what I've heard of them, than a lover,' said Eliza, looking down the tunnel of leafy trees that marked out the Mall. 'Part of daily life. I've never had occasion to miss or long for him.'

Anne nodded. 'Perhaps we only know we love when we lose.' Her eyes were burning; for some reason she found her mind going off at a tangent, to that awful day in the Royal Academy when she'd demanded an explanation from her former friend and turned to find herself in an empty room.
If she asks me what I can possibly know of love, what shall I say?

Anne hadn't told Eliza about William Fawkener's proposal; the scene in Hyde Park had been so ghastly that she'd spilled out every detail to Mary, then tried to forget it had ever happened. She'd never been what they called
in love-,
perhaps John Damer had snuffed out that possibility in her. But she did feel strongly about things. Her heart moved like a bird in its cage.

J
UNE 1794

In the interval between the musical burletta and the main play, which was Mrs Centlivre's old favourite
The Wonder,
Eliza was in the dressing room running through her lines for Act Four.

She who for years protracts her lovers pain,
And makes him wish, and wait, and sigh in vain,
To be his wife, when late she gives consent
Finds half his passion was in courtship spent...

She paused, struck by the lines, though she must have spoken them twenty times before. Was the observation true, she wondered, or merely cynical? Could Derby possibly be as zealous in marriage as in courtship?

Mrs Siddons, huger than ever, came in to collect a fan she'd left in her paintbox. 'I do hope you're not reading that dangerous book, Miss Farren,' she murmured.

Eliza glanced up and saw that
The Adventures of Caleb Williams
had slipped out of her bag. 'Dangerous?'

Mrs Siddons blinked owlishly. 'Full of subversive doctrines, I mean.'

'Have you read it?' asked Eliza with a fixed smile.

'I wouldn't touch such stuff—'

'Oh, do you get all your views second hand?'

'My dear—'

But there was a tap at the door. Her brother Kemble came in looking grave as ever. 'I must warn you, Miss Farren, Frederick's opening speech—the liberty one—I've had to change it, against my better judgement.'

'Why don't you follow your judgement, then?'

'Have a little appreciation for my position,' the manager pleaded. 'That line in Holcroft's comedy gave extreme offence to the crowd the other night. Do you care to see our fine new theatre ripped up in a riot?'

Eliza shook her head, wrestling her temper into submission. She'd rather liked the Holcroft line:
I was bred to the most useless, and often most worthless of all professions: that of a gentleman.
Derby'd found it hilarious. Surely not every witticism counted as an attack on the established order? But then, poor Holcroft was still in gaol, awaiting trial, which rendered every word of his suspect.