Wicked Company (21 page)

“This playhouse is another kind of monster,” Lacy agreed. “’Tis a monster that devours material like a horse eats oats.”

“Any whittling away some of this pile would be a kindness to me,” Garrick conceded. “’Twill offer you an education of sorts.”

“Aye,” Sophie said in a breath, relieved that Garrick had apparently forgiven her transgression. “I’d quite like that.” She stared for a long moment at the rim of her glass. “Sir… I am so dreadfully sorry to have read your letter to Mavis Piggott… ’twas unconscionable.”

“It was,” Garrick acknowledged calmly. “And I’m sure you won’t commit such a
faux pas
again. Now, let us see what you can do with this mountain of words…”

***

A liveried footman clad in cream satin and wearing a prim, white wig answered the door at Number Twenty-seven Southampton Street, a mere four blocks from Drury Lane. He bade Sophie enter Mr. and Mrs. Garrick’s town house. Her back still felt warm from the spring sunshine flooding Covent Garden’s vast, stone-paved Great Piazza.

Sophie held several manuscripts in the crook of one arm. Her other hand fingered a letter posted from Edinburgh that she kept tucked into the pocket of the simple lawn gown she had cut down from one belonging to her aunt. Though she had heard little of Hunter Robertson, of late, what she did know was disheartening: according to James Boswell, Hunter had continued his liaison with the actress, Gwen Reardon. So Sophie had been astounded to receive a letter this very morning in which Hunter revealed that his penmanship had improved markedly and that his grandfather had died of the ague in February. The missive was short, but offered her assurances that his season as an actor and singer at the Canongate was going well.

As the footman led her into the Garricks’ drawing room, Sophie wondered if she dared petition her employer on Hunter’s behalf. Would a strolling player with limited experience as a legitimate actor be a potential recruit at such an august institution as Drury Lane?

Before Sophie could ponder the question further, the footman led her into a well-appointed sitting room where Mrs. Garrick welcomed her with open arms to their traditional Sunday “At Home.”

“Sophie,
liebchen,”
she said in her lilting Viennese dialect, kissing the visitor lightly on both cheeks. “My Davy will be pleased to see you, as am I… please come in. We are examining a new Folio of Mr. Shakespeare which Davy has just acquired. Come! Come!” she urged, leading the way to the book room.

The shelves in the Garrick library extended from floor to ceiling and were enclosed by panels of brass-handled doors fronted with wire mesh. A handsome mahogany desk stood near a window festooned with rich red silk drapery. Several leather wing-backed chairs and a leather sofa seemed an invitation to a book lover like Sophie to curl up for hours.

Garrick was standing next to a book stand on which sat the edition Sophie took to be the new Shakespeare. On the actor’s left stood a man of middle height who had the carriage and demeanor of a gentleman, but whose skin was marred by numerous bright red patches and angry-looking pustules that covered his cheeks, forehead, and chin.

“Sophie! So kind of you to come,” David Garrick said warmly. “Just put those manuscripts on the desk, and have a look at my new prize!”

Garrick led her across the room to perform the introductions. She tried to keep her eyes fastened on the neck cloth of Garrick’s other guest in deference to his dreadful complexion.

“This is Edward Capell, an expert on divining the authenticity of Shakespeare texts—and,” he said with meaningful emphasis, “a deputy examiner of plays in the Lord Chamberlain’s office.”

So
this
was the king’s play censor whom Frances Sheridan had called a “little wretch,” Sophie mused. Garrick was shrewd enough to ingratiate himself with the very man who would be called on to grant a government license for any new production proposed for Drury Lane. “So delighted to make your acquaintance,” she murmured, extending her hand in greeting—a gesture which Mr. Capell unaccountably ignored.

She noticed the man’s own hands were blotched with the same, scorbutic patches that covered the remainder of his exposed flesh. She shuddered to think what the
rest
of his body must look like under his elegant clothes.

“Edward did an absolutely
brilliant
job of cataloging my book collection six or seven years ago,” Garrick said briskly, his warm approbation a gracious attempt to cover the awkwardness of Capell’s refusal to take Sophie’s hand. “In addition to his duties for the Lord Chamberlain, my friend, here, has currently embarked on a worthy project—restoring Shakespeare’s texts in a completely new edition of the plays. I’ve invited him to peruse my latest acquisition, in hopes it may further his work.”

“You are too kind,” Capell murmured, appearing relieved to be allowed to return to his inspection of the volume.

Sophie watched, bemused. She knew this was important work indeed, if done well—the painstaking process of sorting out which editions were most faithful to the Bard’s original writings.

Just then, several other guests arrived, including Frances and Thomas Sheridan. Sophie quickly gravitated to them.

“Alas, Garrick invites me to dine at his table, but not to act at his theater,” Thomas said moodily. “We shall be forced to return to Ireland if we can’t pry a bit of employment out of him. Some say he dares not allow my tragic muse upon his stage, fearing ’twould outshine—”

“Now, my dear,” Frances interrupted in hushed tones, “Davy has a difficult juggling act as manager. He was more than kind to mount my play.”

“Yes, he got it past that mincing little sod over yonder, I’ll grant him that,” Thomas said darkly, shifting his eyes in the direction of Edward Capell.

“Davy does what he can, given the normal obstacles and James Lacy’s pinch-fisted ways,” she responded soothingly.

“I wonder,” Thomas commented, glancing over at Garrick, who was pointing out some facet of the Folio to the peculiar Capell. “He certainly plays the flatterer to
that
piece of—”

“Thomas!”
Frances interjected sharply. “I agree with you on the subject of Capell, but we are Davy’s
guests!
Let us cease this unpleasantness and discover what Sophie has been conjuring up for herself these days. Are your playbills selling briskly, my dear? Such a lovely one you did for my play·”

Sophie brought the Sheridans up to date, including the fact that she was reading plays that came to Drury Lane from all manner of odd sources.

“Every tobacconist and wigmaker thinks he can write a play these days,” Thomas said irritably. “’Tis enough to make a professional retire to herd sheep or grow vegetables.”

“And most of what I read
is
dreadful. It evokes neither a smile nor a tear,” Sophie said. “Tell me, Mrs. Sheridan… are you busy with a new work?”

Thomas patted her hand encouragingly.

“Tell her, Fanny, tell her what
you
have been conjuring in that clever brain of yours!”

Sophie was struck by Sheridan’s contradictory character. On the one hand, envy dripped from his every pore when it came to his unspoken competition with David Garrick. Yet Thomas was wonderfully generous-spirited about his wife’s efforts as a writer.

Frances blushed but seemed eager to tell Sophie her news. “I’m working on a new play! ’Tis about a sort of engaging featherhead… you know, one of those garrulous females given to aimless, brainless talk.”

“It sounds most promising.” Sophie smiled encouragingly. “How much I admire you, Mrs. Sheridan!” she blurted impulsively.

“Why, thank you, my dear,” Frances replied, genuinely touched. “Perhaps one day you will try your hand at something for the stage?” She smiled affectionately, and Sophie was struck suddenly by the great contrast between this woman’s warmhearted generosity and Mavis Piggott’s mean-spirited prickliness.

Mrs. Garrick chose that moment to announce that tea and a buffet were being served in the dining room and the group repaired to the front of the town house where a resplendent repast was set before them. The refreshments consisted of a piping hot brew from China, plus a veritable groaning board of colorful cheeses, sweet puddings, maids-of-honor cakes, orange-flavored jumbles, and Shrewsbury biscuits featuring brandy and rose water and served with red raspberry jam.

Sophie watched with fascination as the eccentric Edward Capell studied the buffet carefully. Then slowly, and with great deliberation, the king’s play censor began to assemble some decidedly odd choices on the fine bone china plate provided him by Mrs. Garrick’s footman.

“Mr. Capell, sir?” Sophie said by way of satisfying her curiosity. “May I help you to a bit of this marvelous jam?” she asked, smiling as she extended a spoon dripping with the rich, ruby jelly. “I’m told it comes from the Garricks’ Hampton House estate.”

Capell backed away from her in horror. The blotches on his skin had deepened to vermilion.

“God’s blood, but I do not
care
for such stuff!” he choked. “My digestion… ’tis ghastly to consume such dreadful—I-I only consume edibles that are
white!
All else causes me to—”

Suddenly, he cast her a poisonous glare, as if she had pried an abhorrent secret from him. The plate he held began to shake from side to side, jiggling his sliced breast of turkey, white goat cheese, and creamy pudding into a bland, unappetizing jumble. Sophie observed that, true to his words, there was no item of food on his plate that was not white.

Sophie had once read about the causes of scurvy in sailors. She thought it no wonder that the man had become such an unappealing-looking creature, if his nutritional choices were so narrow. And from what little she’d observed of the man, he
despised
females. She pitied any woman playwright who dared submit her work for his consideration.

It appeared to Sophie that Edward Capell appreciated only two things in life: pale food and the original works of William Shakespeare.

Nine

As spring ripened into early summer and London grew hot and dusty, Sophie sensed a palpable shift of focus among the Drury Lane players.
The Miser,
an old chestnut by Henry Fielding, was slated to be the final presentation of the season. Many of the actors who could sing and dance had signed on for the summer months at the various London pleasure gardens like Vauxhall. Those who could not find employment in London made the passage across the tortuous Irish Sea to perform at Smock Alley in Dublin.

Sophie heaved a sigh of relief when she learned Mavis Piggott would soon depart for Ireland. ’Twould be the best of Irish luck, Sophie brooded, if Mavis were engaged there indefinitely.

One quiet Saturday morning prior to the official three-month closing of the theater, she broached the subject of Hunter Robertson and his talents to the manager of Drury Lane.

“Well, my dear… I may not be the one with whom to raise this question of new players,” Garrick said. “Mrs. Garrick and I are considering a respite from all this,” he added wearily, gesturing to the overwhelming pile of manuscripts heaped high on his desk.

“Leaving
Drury Lane?” Sophie asked, alarmed.

“Perhaps for a while,” he said pensively. “Those half-price riots last January were most disturbing to both of us.” His eyes glittered with indignation. “The rabble can destroy in a twinkling everything one builds over a lifetime,” he said bitterly. “I’ve been treading the boards for twenty-two years. Let them do without me for a while.”

Sophie was amazed to hear the harshness and resentment that tinged Garrick’s words and to see the angry flush in a face that invariably presented a calm demeanor to the world. She stared at him, suddenly at a loss for words. Garrick not play Drury Lane? ’Twas
unthinkable!

“Your Hunter Robertson sounds a likely candidate,” Garrick continued, his kindly manner restored, “but I’d have to see him perform.”

“He could sing for you and recite some speeches he’s played… would that be sufficient?” Sophie asked anxiously.

“I usually prefer to see applicants perform before an audience,” the manager explained gently, “or have someone whose judgment I trust report to me of players in the provinces… but should he come to London… yes, Sophie, my dear… I’ll be pleased to have a look, if it means so much to you. A sweetheart from home?” he inquired teasingly.

“N-no,” she stammered, wishing with all her heart she could claim a higher place in Hunter’s affections. “He’s merely a friend. But a very
gifted
friend.”

Within the hour she had posted a letter to Hunter reporting the exact words of her conversation with the august manager of Drury Lane. She wondered if Hunter would chance leaving a secure position in Edinburgh—and the voluptuous arms of Gwen Reardon—for the Great Unknown of the London theater world.

***

The closing of Drury Lane for the summer months of 1763 meant that Sophie would soon lose the steady income from printing and selling playbills that had rescued her and her aunt from abject poverty. Ashby’s Books would also soon be minus the services of Lorna Blount, who had taken a position for the summer season as dancer at Sadler’s Wells, a theater off the Islington Road on the outskirts of London. Sophie glanced around the shop, her eyes scanning the shelves.