Ophelia's Fan

by Christine Balint

  Not only is he in prison, he is translating plays there. And Elliston is interested in staging them. In fact, theaters are fighting over his work. Somehow John Howard Payne was sent the latest plays from Paris. The very word glitters in my mind. No one will tell me what John Howard Payne was imprisoned for. I wonder if he has robbed a bank to support his craft. In the end I conclude he has stolen books and perhaps a French dictionary or two.

  Next day Madame Vestris is absent. Mr. Elliston calls an important meeting. This meeting is so important he waits until we are all assembled before speaking. By this stage it is late morning and I feel faint with hunger on account of having missed breakfast. The thin man with the gloves and mustache is there. Elliston introduces him to Fanny Kelly and me.

  “Ladies, this is Mr. Howard Payne. We will be performing his new drama in four days.”

  I tremble, and Fanny Kelly looks faint.

  Elliston predicts it will be a huge success. It must be ready to perform quickly, he says, lest a rival version be brought out by another company.

  When he has finished I notice Fanny Kelly trying to tell me something. I lean toward her. “He has escaped from prison. We are working with a criminal!”

  She grows flushed and strides after Elliston while the other actors disperse.

  “Mr. Elliston,” she shouts. “I will not be playing tragedy number two!”

  Thus I become Mariette in Payne’s drama Thérèse. Elliston is forced to add my name in bold to the playbills. I spend my time at rehearsal pondering John Howard Payne, who escapes from prison every day in disguise and returns there in the evening. His disguises become a matter of great interest. He is a difficult man to recognize in a bonnet, white curls escaping, and an apron. One day he arrives wearing a regal crimson jacket with brass buttons. He is always a little breathless on arrival; every day we actors slump around the stage waiting for him. I curl hair around my fingers, men tie knots in their bootlaces, Elliston paces up and down muttering. He has heavy shadows under his eyes, and I know he is not sleeping for fear that John Howard Payne will be recaptured and the staging of his masterpiece prevented. Elliston believes Mr. Howard Payne will save his theater. Eventually Elliston says, “We will give him ten more minutes,” and we hear a scurrying backstage. The footsteps are as light as rats in a roof. And then he appears, his weathered face framed by some new sort of headpiece and wearing an anxious expression. Elliston beams as though we have all been having a fine time and Payne’s appearance is an unexpected and pleasant surprise.

  He plays well, if a little too dramatically, but Elliston does not give him much direction. I know that he is thinking of his good fortune in having an escaped prisoner on his stage. Of the criminal playwright and actor. Of the crowds it will draw.

  I cannot help feeling a little frightened of him and endeavor not to be alone in his presence. For I have still not established the reasons for his imprisonment, and I do not know if he is a ravisher of women. When I believe he does not notice me, I stare into his face and wonder what it has seen. I imagine the cold darkness of a prison cell and the harsh words exchanged by inmates. I wonder whether he feels guilt. I see my own world through guilt. I feel guilt that Joseph was forced to work as a child, that Anne is made to suffer, that my mother is burdened with caring for us all on her own. I feel guilt that my position in the company has been lowered to such a degree that we can only eat meat once a month, that my mother feeds me more than she feeds herself. That I am the only one who has known real comfort and love and reading. But this guilt can be nothing compared to the guilt of a real criminal. One who has knowingly and deliberately defied the morals of society. I imagine his crimes. I see him wearing his mustache and gloves, breaking into a vault in the dead of night. I see him hitting a policeman with a metal bar. I see him snarling as he counts banknotes. But when I look into his face, I see only a man who believes he is right.

  I am careful not to tell my mother about my latest performance. I fear she will be angry that I have been forced to associate with such a person. I spend little time at home in between rehearsing and performing, so it is easy to keep information from her.

  Two nights before our first performance, I dream I am on stage with Payne, staring into the crowds. All of a sudden, a plump lady in a gray wig appears from behind the curtain. Then another and a third. They are brandishing swords and popping up from among the spectators. There is a long line of them shouting and running in through the door. One hundred policemen disguised as chorus ladies have stormed the theater. People scream and try to run. One plump lady knocks me to the ground in a dead faint. When I recover I am alone on the stage in the empty building. It is pitch dark, and I cannot see my way out.

  Last rehearsal is desperate. Mr. Elliston is in a great state.

  “What are we to do?” he is almost sobbing. “Covent Garden will release a version of Thérèse this evening. Who told Kemble about the play? Who gave him the plot? I will discover our betrayer.” He is pulling at his hair, his face is swollen and red, and I notice part of his left eyebrow seems to have disappeared.

  “This was going to save us, to save us! Oh, who could have done this to me?”

  “Per’aps we could rehearse, Mr. Elliston?” John Howard Payne says.

  “Not until I discover the culprit!” he growls. For two hours he paces, staring at us as though the information is written in our faces. One by one we are all questioned. I blush and stare at my feet.

  “Miss Smithson, what have you to hide?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “Why do you blush so?”

  “Leave ’er alone,” someone says. Elliston turns violently and begins to question another. When he has finished questioning the troupe, in a fit of madness he begins looking for spies. It is late afternoon, and he is searching all the corners backstage for someone hidden. One by one we slip out the backstage door.

  There is time for me to return home, bathe, and eat some bread and a little cheese before opening night. I feel unprepared. One more rehearsal and I could have played Mariette with more certainty. I find my mother in a great state of excitement.

  “Harriet, why didn’t you tell me? Fancy performing with a prisoner. I saw Mrs. Pitchett at the greengrocer and she told me about Thérèse. All of London will be there. I don’t know if I will be able to get a seat. And your name heading the playbills! Will you be paid more for this?”

  “I don’t imagine so, Mother. I am playing as it states in the contract.”

  “How can this be? The leading role and all!”

  “I don’t know.” I take her hand. “All of London will see me, Mother. This is more important than money.”

  “What’s ’e like?” Joseph asks.

  “Quite ordinary, really,” I reply.

  “Does he wear chains? What does he look like?”

  “Well,” I stare him sternly in the eye. “He wears all manner of costumes to rehearsal. It is his disguise, you know, allowing him to escape from prison.”

  “What did he do? Why is he in prison? Will they let him out if he succeeds?”

  “They say,” I lower my voice. “They say he murdered a beautiful woman. No one would allow a man like that to run free.”

  That night the crowd warms the theater like so many embers. If a rival version has been launched, it is clear that it has failed. Elliston is walking about with a cold compress tied to his forehead. It is difficult to take him seriously as he shouts backstage orders.

  Once I step onto the stage, I am Mariette. I see George before me, I am deaf to the audience, and I forget all that has led to his performance. It is not until the curtain call that I briefly become Harriet Smithson again, in time to hear the roar from the house, and to see John Howard Payne wink in my general direction.

  Mr. Elliston seems to have recovered his spirits the following morning, though he still wears the cold compress—perhaps for a different reason. He makes one final change to the playbill before it goes to print. It seems we will be repeating
Thérèse because “No piece, however successful, was ever received with such extraordinary applause. Thérèse is the most successful piece that has ever been produced.”

  After two nights, John Howard Payne disappears. As I walk home from rehearsal, I turn quickly and see him following me. I run into him backstage, I see him near my lodgings. I even see him winking in my dreams. I tell Joseph I believe John Howard Payne might have committed another crime. Two weeks later I overhear Elliston telling someone that Payne is collecting new drama in Paris.

  Mr. Young takes over his role. Young is not a passionate performer; he is measured and controlled, his gestures perfectly timed, his elocution clear. His playing is as accurate as a clock, and I am at ease performing with him. I am buoyed by the crowds, and I notice Fanny Kelly’s bitter glances, worth more than any possible increase in my salary, during other rehearsals. I fancy some of the audience members are coming to see me. One critic writes that I “lie fainting in the arms of [my] enemy, pale and lovely, with a reclined head, like a lily snapped by an ungentle hand.” In my bed at night in the darkness, I practice lying pale and lovely. We play for an unprecedented thirty-one nights.

  Mme Harriet Berlioz

  Rue de Londres

  Paris, May 1841

  My dear Louis,

  I remember when your father first told me about the symphony. I knew I had been its inspiration, and so I assumed the symphony was about love. I waited for him to tell me how I was represented in his music. I listened for his descriptions of my sweetness, modesty, and grace.

  “L’idée fixe, the theme of the beloved, haunts the young musician’s being,” he said. “This is your theme.” He closed his eyes and began to hum. At first his song was gentle and lilting, and he seemed to conduct himself in a dream. Soon he was trying to be an orchestra all by himself. Holding his nose, he did a fine imitation of an oboe; with his lips round and using his tongue, he was a plucking harp. His music grew in volume.

  Hector seemed to think the kitchen table had a fine resonance, and this became his drum while he hummed a dirge-like minor melody.

  “The young musician of morbid sensibility and fiery imagination poisons himself with opium in a fit of amorous despair.

  “He dreams he has killed her,” he said.

  There was a coldness to his words, and I pulled my arms around myself.

  “And then he dreams his own execution.” He hummed something more violent. He clapped loudly and thumped the table four times. “That was his head falling after the guillotine!” he said.

  I squirmed in my chair. “What happens in the end?”

  I remembered an ominous version of the “Dies Irae”; the melancholy tolling of bells, a heaviness with an occasional high-pitched fluttering as though something was escaping. A triumphant conclusion. It alarmed me like some species of forbidden black magic.

  “She turns into a witch.”

  This symphony, said to have sprung from our story, almost changed its course. Following his melancholy nights away from Paris, apparently haunted by my image, your father resolved to marry Camille. I have often wondered how it was that his parents gave their consent so readily to their union and so reticently to our own. Perhaps it was Hector’s first request to marry and they felt him genuine. Or perhaps it was due to her reputation as a concert pianist that they falsely thought her too preoccupied with her work to have time to dally with other men and was therefore a suitable match. It is certainly true that there are far more musicians than actresses in the middle and upper classes for it is only those classes which can afford to educate their children in music, and this is thought to be a profession for which one must be groomed from childhood. Unlike acting, which, it is supposed, can be learned in the blink of an eye when one is a woman in need of an income.

  But while Madame and Monsieur Berlioz readily gave their consent, the same cannot be said of Madame Moke. She did not dismiss Hector; however, she determined that he should prove himself a suitable match for her daughter. She was concerned at Hector’s lack of fortune which would necessitate Camille continuing to perform after their marriage. And thus Hector resolved to demonstrate his ability to earn money as a composer.

  During the July Revolution of 1830, your father sat for the Prix de Rome examination for the fourth time. On each of his previous three attempts Hector had been short-listed, but his refusal to follow given rules of composition had deemed him three times disqualified. The competition itself reflected everything Hector hated about the institute. But your father proved he could follow rules if the prize was big enough. As gunpowder fired around him and the walls shook, Hector dipped his pen in black ink and finished his cantata. I am grateful that the prize required your father to be locked up, for foolhardy as he was, he would have run out there with a gun and had himself shot within five minutes.

  He handed in his score and ran out into the streets at five in the afternoon, rushing to see Camille. Once satisfied that she was unharmed, he searched for weapons, wanting to be able to claim a part in the revolution which would bring freedom to the arts. I believe it was fate that provided your father only with an empty handgun, then with bullets and nothing to shoot. The riot was over.

  Your father says he was astonished, as he passed by the Palais Royal later that evening, to hear a group of over-excited though bedraggled men shouting his “Chant Guerrier” in the street. Among them were some of his friends. Hector joined in the singing which continued until nightfall when it ended with “La Marseillaise” which had previously been banned. They defied the Bourbons to shoot them.

  The details of the 19th of August 1830 are still clear in your father’s mind. He slept poorly the previous evening and brewed a powerful cup of coffee in the morning, not to waken his mind but to sharpen it. The meeting to decide his fate would not begin until midmorning, so Hector wandered the streets of Paris from seven until ten. He planned to visit the Moke household to divulge the results at two for lunch. After arriving at the institute, it was difficult to find a place where he could be away from his rivals. Eventually he made his way to the library where he came upon one of Beethoven’s earliest scores, which he examined with relish until he lost all sense of time.

  And it was there that Monsieur Pradier the sculptor discovered him at five in the afternoon. He was surprised at Hector’s tears. The score shaking in his hands, Hector stood and Pradier shook his hands, gazing into his eyes for some moments.

  “The prize is yours,” he said.

  Harriet

  London: 1826

  EARLY IN THE YEAR a letter from Charles Castle Coote arrived in my dressing room. He had not written to me since my school days, and I had heard nothing from him since I left Waterford for the Dublin theater twelve years earlier. I wondered if his interest in me had been rekindled by some favorable reviews in the London newspapers.

  The letter was formal in tone and informed me merely that he was studying the law in Oxford and would be in London at midterm hoping to see me. He had read of my successes in the theater and was proud, he said. He remembered our early performances together at Waterford and hoped we could be friends once more. I kept the news of his impending arrival from my mother as long as I could. But a few days before, I had to tell her for I knew I needed her presence. It would not do to spend too much time with Charles Castle Coote alone.

  My mother aired our lodgings and spent an entire day sweeping the floor and wiping away the dust. Our home was humble, she said, but no Castle Coote could say it was not clean. She scrubbed my sister until she screamed, and even Joseph was forced to bathe in a basin of almost-cold brown water.

  Charles appeared in the greenroom two days before I was expecting him. I was alarmed at all the people who saw him and could start rumors circulating again. From the other side of the room I gestured to him as subtly as I could manage and left by a side door. A few minutes later he was in my dressing room with the door closed. He was much taller than I remembered and had lost his thin raggedness. He seemed to ha
ve grown into himself and had turned into a very handsome man. I was unsure how to greet him. He took my hands and kissed them. He stood staring into my eyes for several moments. Energy and light surged through me and I felt as though I were in Waterford again, that all I had to do was open the door to find orchards and fields about me.

  “You are looking very well,” I smiled. “Please, sit down.” I dragged a chair out from the corner and turned my own chair away from the mirror, glancing quickly at my face as I turned. I had been planning to change out of my costume. That would have to wait.

  “My mother sends her love. She hopes to see you again soon.” I smiled.

  “George is in the navy, and Edmund is soon to be married.”

  “Please pass on my congratulations.” After a brief silence I asked, “And you, Charles, are you married?”

  “No, not married.”

  “My mother—my mother was expecting you to supper in two days’ time. Is that convenient to you?”

  “Yes,” he nodded. “Yes, that would be lovely.”

  By the evening of Charles’s visit, our lodgings were almost unrecognizable. I had bought some posies from a flower seller in Covent Garden, there was clean air and light and the smell of baked apples. My mother and sister wore freshly laundered gowns. Joseph had reluctantly changed into the clothes my mother had cleaned for him and sat with us as we waited. When the knock came, my mother hissed at us to stay where we were while she went to the door. She returned with Charles, and for a few seconds we all stood awkwardly looking at each other. Then Charles remembered himself and leaned over to me, kissing my cheek.

  “Harriet, lovely to see you again.” He turned his attention to my sister. “You must be Anne. You may not remember me. Charles. Charles Castle Coote. And Joseph, good evening. You do resemble your father.”