by Ella Edon
“I have studied the maps of London. There seems to be no organization to this town, whatsoever. It reminds me of Paris before the revolution,” said Camille in excellent English.
“I beg your pardon,” said Philip as he realized that Camille was a great deal more than a lady’s maid. “I did not introduce myself. Please forgive me. I am Philip Salomon.”
“Camille Dreyfuss,” she said. “You are a Jew, I understand.”
Philip was a trifle bewildered by this strange question. “Well, yes, I am. Although I am at pains to see how that has anything to do with the matter at hand.”
“It is simply that I am also une juive, and I feel much more comfortable knowing that I can trust you.”
“I am trustworthy because I have nearly a hundred years of this sort of work in my family. My father and his father before him have been impresarios.”
“Monsieur Salomon,” said Camille. “I hope I have not offended you. I merely meant to say that I feel confident in your dealings and in your decisions. We shall want our first payment when we arrive. I believe it is to be three hundred Guineas.”
“Ah, three hundred Pounds, Mademoiselle,” said Philip.
“Is there a difference? I was given to understand that these words were synonymous.”
“Well, it is a mere trifle,” he said. “But a Guinea is a Shilling more than a Pound, and our agreement was in Pounds Sterling.”
“I see. You know that Mademoiselle is not good with money, and I am her purser,” said Camille.
“I was made aware of this, although I confess, I expected a man.”
“Yes, I see so. So, I caught you, as your English say, ‘off guard’?”
“Indeed,” said Salomon, leaning back in his seat, and allowing the rumbling of the carriage to lull him to sleep.
Toward evening, as they approached London, Garance awoke to watch the streets go by. She was amazed at the winding streets, but equally amazed at the number of people. The coachman took them first to Covent Garden, where she saw the four massive columns of this relatively new building rise to a triangular portico. “Where is the marquee?” she asked, bewildered.
“We do not have a marquee, Mademoiselle Garance. But believe me, everyone in London knows you are appearing tomorrow night.”
“I see. May I walk around here for a moment? I am feeling a trifle constrained in this carriage.”
“Of course.”
They had stopped several times at inns along the way, and Garance had taken plenty of time at each of them to primp and preen, and she looked divine as she stepped out of the carriage.
A cluster of gentlemen who seemed to be in an animated conversation, saw her, and one of them exclaimed, “That’s ‘er!” and began to sprint in her direction.
“Are you Garance Monteux?” he asked as he stopped short before her. He was a straw-haired lout dressed in a top hat and diamond buttons. He was what they call a dandy.
“Who is asking?” said Camille as she stepped in front of her mistress.
“I was asking,” said the lout. “I’m a singer meself. I performs at the music hall down the road there. There’s plenty of lads who wants to meet Miss Garance.”
“Well, Miss Garance is not in the way of meeting young men just yet. If you want to meet her, you can buy a ticket the same as any others.”
“But they is going for like twenty pounds! Much too dear for a poor performer such as I. Only the ‘oity-toity can afford them tickets.”
“Nevertheless, Miss Garance will be indisposed until after her performance tomorrow night.”
“Oy, that’s a rum deal,” he said, scuffing his feet and trudging off with his hands in his pockets.
But it was true: a group of gentlemen was approaching with bouquets of flowers, which had been hastily purchased from the flower girls in Covent Garden. They seemed to be a gouty lot, bulky men with overflowing, corpulent frames and jowly bulldog faces. They were sporting crack-toothed smiles, with many shades of yellow bedecking their glinting teeth.
“Madame,” said Camille, as she saw her mistress moving toward them. “This is no time to meet your public. We must preserve the mystique. Come, let us find our lodgings.”
But the secret was out. That evening, the papers were filled with articles about the mysterious Parisian Nightingale who had appeared at Covent Garden, and the anticipation of the event was wild.
The following evening at seven, Garance Monteux stepped out onto the stage at Covent Garden, and as soon as she was visible, the place erupted with shouts of joy. She was momentarily frightened by the ovation given to her before she had even opened her small mouth.
She was a small woman, slight and quite petite, but she was dressed in the most beautiful long-sleeved, lavender colored, Empire-waisted gown. Her raven hair was in an upswept pompadour, held in place by pearled combs, and a diadem at her forehead that glinted in the gaslight of the theatre.
Her hat, which she wore throughout the performance, was of the most beautiful white ostrich feathers, and her earrings and necklace that accentuated her décolleté, were made of small but pure red rubies. She was a vision of fashion, and stunning, heart-stopping beauty. But she had never expected her own heart to stop at the sound of admiration.
She curtsied modestly at center stage, as her accompanist, the charming, if excessively slim, Cipriani Potter, made his way to the Broadwood piano that was behind her. As the applause died down, Potter began to play. It was a beautiful sound. This piano was superior to those she had used in Paris. She was accustomed to the tinkly Pleyel pianos, while this robust instrument inspired Garance to the heights of her abilities.
She began with “Lo! Here the Gentle Lark” which was written only the year before by Henry Bishop, one of the great English composers. She was joined by a flutist playing in the wings, and the coloratura notes of her singing sounded like tiny jewels in the ears of the awe-struck listeners, who had never heard a voice like Garance Monteux’s.
When she finished this beautiful song with a long, held high note, the audience gasped. Throughout the hall, whispers of “The Parisian Nightingale” could be heard in awe. Then the applause began: at first it was confused, awe-struck, but soon it was rapturous and sustained.
Garance curtsied humbly, which brought every man in the hall to his feet.
Chapter Four
Covent Garden
Master Jonathan Anderson-Reese was in London, alone and bewildered. He felt as though he had been torn from his comfortable life at Oxford and thrown into a serious and dangerous place that he had no idea how to navigate. It was Friday, and so he expected his friends Peter and Simon to be in London, and he had hoped they would find him and lure him away to do something jolly to take his mind off the dizzying world of funerals and estates. And, true to form, the two of them knocked on his door on Friday evening with joy in their hearts and tickets for the best show in town.
“I say, old sock,” said Simon as he walked through the front door of the house on Wimpole Street. “You look a bit down in the dumps. Is the death of your father too much for you to bear?”
“I declare I am bewildered by every little twist and turn in the road. It seems father has rather a large debt owed to some rather unscrupulous characters.”
“I see,” said Peter, with a wry grin. “Well, old man, it seems you have some courting to do.”
“Courting?” said Jonathan with alarm. “What on earth would you think that for?”
“Did you not say that your sister Cecily, with whom I have had a few encounters, and with whom I confess I am a trifle smitten, suggested this would be the answer to all your troubles? Some young thing with a sizable fortune? Perhaps one of those young ladies is in need of a title! The daughter of one of the iron merchants or some coal baron— You know the type. Arrivistes, I think, is the term we gentlemen of leisure use to refer to them. They must have some comely daughters.”
“Peter, I am not that sort of chap, as you know. I have been taken in by the concept o
f marrying for love.”
“You’ve been reading too many of those girly books written by Miss Austen, I see. You see yourself as a Mr. Darcy, or some such thing.” Peter laughed aloud. “The sad truth is, my old bean, you have few options and only one thing that is worth a tinker’s damn.”
“One thing?” asked Jonathan. “It looks rather as though I haven’t a brass farthing to give any young lady who would deign to lower herself to court a pauper.”
“Pish tosh,” said Simon. “You are an earl, and although you may not value it, those frightful business chaps are enamored of these sorts of things. Titles, the good sort of people, you know. They can’t break into society unless they associate themselves with us. The gentry.”
Jonathan balked at this idea. It’s rather like selling oneself in Cheapside, he thought. But he admitted, even to himself, that this may well be the only way to save the family fortune. He had heard stories about these magnates, who had made scads of money in disreputable businesses like iron and spirits, but he had never met a single one.
“So, what is your suggestion, my friends?” he asked.
Simon smiled. “Have you heard of the Parisian Nightingale?”
“Can’t say that I have. My mother has rather an annoying mynah bird, but that is no magic animal.”
“She’s a singer; a soprano, and she has taken the continent by storm, appearing in the most fetching gowns. She’s the most beautiful woman in Europe, they say. Men are swooning at her feet as she walks by them. I read in The Times only this morning that she was walking in Covent Garden and twenty gentlemen presented her with bouquets of roses and fell to the ground in a dead swoon. It was a wonderous sight.”
“I see,” said Jonathan, who was unimpressed. “And why should this songstress have the slightest interest in me?”
“Because we have three tickets to the most sought-after concert in London. It should be fairly swarming with these young ladies who are more than eager to meet a young earl such as yourself. And it is tonight, at seven.”
“Well, I am famished, and I think I need a spot of tea.”
“A spot of tea? After I tell you I have tickets for the Parisian Nightingale? What on earth are you talking about?”
“I simply cannot function without something to eat.”
“Very well. We shall go to my club and wolf down a sandwich or a pie,” said Peter shaking his head in disbelief. “I declare, I have never known a chap so disinterested in the fairer sex.”
“I’m not disinterested,” protested Jonathan. “I am a trifle pre-occupied, though, and hearing some warbling frog is not my idea of a pleasant evening.”
“And what is your idea of a pleasant evening?” asked Simon.
“I should say a good game of billiards at the club is enough for me.”
“You are a damnable idiot, young Jonathan,” said Simon in disgust. “Come, put on your overcoat and come with us. There isn’t a moment to spare.”
The three friends went out into the night and walked to Peter’s club, which was only a few blocks from Covent Garden. And, although Jonathan protested going back out into the frigid night, the others dragged him along to Covent Garden where they proceeded to mingle with society.
“Jonathan Anderson-Reese, have you met Miss Helen Wiglesworth, the daughter of the esteemed wine merchant and industrialist Thomas Wiglesworth?” asked Simon, his hand on a young woman so corpulent she looked like a blancmange dessert.
“Oh, my stars! A true earl!” she gushed, her smile causing her eyes to squint to the point that they disappeared from her broad and blotchy face. It was clear to everyone present that Miss Helen Wiglesworth was smitten.
“Charmed,” said Jonathan, trying not to make contact.
“Oh, and such fine manners,” she said in direct contradiction to his evident lack of interest. “I’ve heard so much about you. I hear you are a first at Cambridge.”
“Oxford, actually,” said Jonathan still trying to be civil. He was feeling ill at ease and somewhat uncomfortable in his gentlemanly clothing that included stovepipe trousers that chafed, a shirt with elaborate knots in the neckcloth that choked, and a tailcoat that felt as though he had been transformed into a massive cricket. In short, he felt annoyed and constrained. From the perspective of Helen, though, he was an Adonis. She admired his handsome face, his beautiful, long dark hair, and his shapely figure.
Jonathan tried his best not to take his annoyance out on the portly young lady, Miss Wiglesworth. “But that is no matter, and it is all over and done with.”
“Oh, and why is that? Have you graduated?”
“I’m afraid not, Miss Wiglesworth. I have had to withdraw from the college because of the death of my father … in a hunting accident.”
“Oh, my stars! How romantic!” said Miss Wiglesworth. “A hunting accident!” And then she caught herself. “My deepest condolences on the loss of the earl— I mean, your father.”
“Thank you, Miss Wiglesworth,” said Jonathan, turning away. “Do enjoy the concert.”
“Oh, I won’t. I simply hate that European caterwauling.”
“Jonathan, you simply must meet Miss Cordelia de Montmorency,” said Peter, pushing him toward a young and attractive blonde girl.
“I am very pleased to meet you,” said Cordelia.
“And you as well, Miss Montmorency,” Jonathan replied, already bored.
“I was given to understand that you are a hereditary earl,” said Cordelia, looking at him with interest..
“Well, I suppose I am,” he said, looking past her and into the crowd of overdressed and over-perfumed young ladies, who had gowns that took up nearly the entire room.
There was a silence, during which he looked at this pretty blonde, ringleted young woman. To all the rest of the world, Cordelia was a beauty, a striking beauty, but all Jonathan could see was a coarse young child bent on boring him to death with her dull conversation. “I beg your pardon, Miss Montmorency, but you have a most fascinating moniker. I have never met a person with such a … Shakespearean name.”
“Oh, it is not Shakespearean, it is Kentish,” she said, and at that moment, Jonathan realized although her blonde ringlets were beautiful, and she was fairly dripping with jewels of one sort or another, there was a dullness behind her eyes revealing that she was not a clever girl.
“I only meant that it was a name taken from King Lear,” he tried to explain.
“No, no!” she giggled. “I was given it by my mother. She was from Kent, and my pappa is a man of few words, so he had no say in the matter.”
“I see,” said Jonathan. “And what is it your father does?”
“He’s a manufacturer of spirits.”
“Spirits? What do you mean? He is a necromancer?”
“No no! He makes gin.”
“Gin? Oh, I see. How merry.”
Jonathan saw Simon, over her shoulder, making a mime show of drinking spirits and lurching around in a daze. He smiled. “I mean, that is fascinating. And are you interested in music?”
“Oh no. I have a tin ear. I am only here to meet young gentlemen such as yourself.”
“Oh,” he said, feeling overwhelmed with boredom. The bellman had begun to walk through the young crowd, indicating that the performance was about to begin. “I really must take my seat. I hope you enjoy the evening, Miss Montmorency.”
“You as well, My Lord,” she said with a flourish.
“Well I do hope I meet you again, Miss Cordelia de Montmorency,” said Jonathan gallantly.
“I hope so too, Lord Jonathan Anderson-Reese, Earl of Yarmouth.”
She moved away, and Simon and Peter approached him, and both of them were smiling. “That is the answer to all your troubles, old sock,” said Peter.
“Dear God in heaven, I should rather leap off London Bridge than spend a single evening in her company.”
“She is dull as ditch water, but pretty as a picture,” said Peter, glancing after her.
“Heaven preserve me!�
� exclaimed Jonathan.
Peter and Simon looked at one another. “He is hopeless,” said Simon.
Sitting in Covent Garden, Jonathan sank further into despair. He felt more and more as though he would be condemned to a life of frivolity with someone like Miss Cordelia de Montmorency - a name he was almost certain had no Normand origin at all. Indeed, he would bet his last farthing that it had been invented by some resourceful gin distiller no more than ten years ago because it looked fine on a label.
