3 Great Historical Novels

by Fay Weldon

  ‘Because poor Alexandra is deaf,’ said Robert, ‘and became so within three years of the marriage, to the Prince’s very great distress.’

  ‘Ernest Cassel is a Catholic,’ said his wife. ‘Don’t they owe more loyalty to the Pope in Rome than to their own country? And one tries not to have Catholics to dinner on a Friday, because of the lack of a meat course. All one can do for them is serve stewed pigeons, which unaccountably are treated as fish, but are never Cook’s forte. Freddie’s cook manages pigeon well enough, but her beef is never right. I am sure dear Freddie is trying to poach her. Well, well, then I will do what I can. We will ask them for the seventeenth, and the Prince will have to put up with both the Baums and the O’Briens. I really hope Rosina consents to be present and doesn’t find a meeting she has to go to. The Prince likes Rosina.’

  She had capitulated. Isobel too, Robert had no doubt, could see the benefit in any plan which would increase the family’s future prosperity. She was her father’s daughter. He moved his hand round her back beneath the silk wrap and felt her body move into his.

  Tessa Too Lets a Cat Out of the Bag

  7 p.m. Saturday, 18th November 1899

  When Minnie returned to the hotel from her horse riding jaunt with Arthur she found Grace bathing her mother’s feet in a most elegant blue and white footbath.

  ‘Epsom salts,’ said her mother. ‘What they use over here for feet. My, what a day we had. Poor Grace got quite soaked. We went shopping down Bond Street.’

  ‘Did you get a present for Father?’ asked Minnie. ‘He’ll be missing us.’

  ‘He’ll be making do on his own, I don’t doubt,’ said Tessa. ‘I wouldn’t worry about him. I nearly bought him a nice pocket watch but he’ll never give up his old railroad watch. How was your day?’

  ‘I had a good gallop,’ said Minnie, ‘and Arthur forgave me for it, though he still thinks it is unladylike.’

  ‘You are very bad, Minnie. You only do it to annoy. I thought you quite liked this young man.’

  ‘Oh I do,’ said Minnie, ‘I do declare I am almost in love with him. I took good care not to make jokes or say anything sensible. That must mean something.’

  ‘While your mother’s feet soak, Miss Minnie,’ said Grace, ‘may I run you a bath?’

  Her tone had quite changed. It was friendly, even concerned. Minnie wondered why.

  ‘Grace has forgiven us,’ her mother said, unasked. ‘She now sees you’re natural born gentry, even if I’m not, and a fit wife for the Earl of Dilberne, so she’s prepared to be nice to us.’

  Grace gasped and scarcely knew where to look.

  ‘Isn’t that a fact, Grace?’ persisted Tessa. ‘See, I can read your mind.’

  ‘I am no different this evening than I was this morning,’ observed Minnie, ‘whatever happened during your day.’

  ‘But she is, isn’t she?’ said her mother to Grace, and then, turning to Minnie, said, ‘We visited the Royal Academy of Arts and saw a portrait of your real father, Mr Eyre Crowe. Holy Mary Mother of God, Minnie, you’re the spitting image of him, same eyes, same nose, I’d put my life on it. Isn’t that a fact, Grace? You saw it for yourself.’

  ‘Oh please, Mrs O’Brien,’ said Grace, in a voice more high-pitched than usual. ‘I saw nothing of the kind, Miss Minnie. Believe me. Just a blotchy portrait of a bearded man. I don’t know nothing about art. I’m just the lady’s maid. Mrs O’Brien, I’d be obliged if you’d just let Miss Minnie get out of these dirty clothes and on with her bath. We want her to look nice for dinner tonight. It is only an hotel dinner but even so.’

  Minnie went quietly with Grace into the bathroom and took her bath. Grace helped Minnie out of her riding clothes. Minnie, accustomed to black servants, was disconcerted to find herself standing nude in front of a white woman, but thought she had better get used to it, though in truth her early experiences in a convent had marked her more than she would acknowledge. She felt a little stunned and dizzy, as if her mother had hurled a baseball at her head and she hadn’t got out of the way in time. What had Tessa just said? Her ‘real father’?

  Tessa had made hints through Minnie’s childhood, especially when Billy failed to use a spittoon or sneezed into his soup, and annoyed her, that Minnie was not her father’s child and thanked the Lord for it, but since Billy had always laughed it off, and given Tessa a cuddle, and told his wife to cut out giving herself airs, Minnie had assumed the claim to be just another of Tessa’s passing follies. She knew the name Eyre Crowe. She had seen his painting in the Institute of Arts back home often enough. His name was engraved on the little brass plate beneath a painting of a group of clean and healthy girls waiting on a bench for the slave auction. All that slavery was over now, though freedom hadn’t seemed to do the Negroes much good. She couldn’t see that the squalor, filth and cold of the cattle yards was much of an improvement on the cotton fields. It didn’t bear thinking about too much, any more than that she wasn’t her father’s daughter, which, frankly, if true, and she would not be surprised if it were, was rather a relief.

  Billy was a good-hearted, jovial, generous, noisy, tolerant man, who did good in the community, ate enormously, broke wind frequently, was kind to cattle while they waited for slaughter, and never flaunted any mistresses in front of his wife. Billy and Tessa were two of a kind and, however fond she was of them, not her kind. No, she could accept her illegitimacy, or whatever it was, well enough. She’d just had to readjust her vision of herself rather quickly: Miss Melinda O’Brien – affianced, if secretly, to Arthur, Earl-in-waiting of Dilberne. Billy was, she could see, not the best father-in-law for Arthur, but probably preferable to have in his life than a mother-inlaw who had borne his wife outside the marriage bed. She must persuade her mother to stay quiet about Eyre Crowe, simply forget him, as she herself would. Was he still alive? It was possible, although one always assumed those who had paintings in gold frames in State museums were of the past. If so, it might complicate matters. She could live very well as Viscountess Hedleigh, the O’Brien girl. But Viscountess Hedleigh the Eyre Crowe girl? She did not want to lose Arthur. She was reeling him in as a fisherman does a salmon. He was tugging away at the line at the moment; the last thing she wanted was to have it snagged and snapped on unexpected rocks before she could pull him in. Arthur must get no hint of this development. Her mother must simply forget she had ever set eyes on a portrait of Eyre Crowe. So must Grace. Then everything would be as it had been. She stepped out of the bath clean, warm, rosy and composed.

  Fortunately Grace had come to the same conclusion. ‘I brought out the brown creased-silk with the low neck for Miss Minnie,’ said Grace to Tessa, tenderly drying her new mistress’s feet. The swelling had gone down; the gold kid shoes would fit by the time she was ready for dinner. The shoes had cost as much as she, Grace, earned in a year. There must be some other way of living in which the harder you worked, the more money you earned. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. It was a fine sentiment, but more a statement of hope than a declaration of intent. ‘Miss Minnie can wear it with the pearls. Very simple and nice, suitable for a young girl.’

  ‘Snakes alive, Grace,’ said Tessa O’Brien, ‘are you trying to turn my girl into a frump? That dress does nothing for her at all.’

  ‘It’s discreet and ladylike, Mrs O’Brien, and that’s what we want for her at the moment. May I offer you a word of advice?’

  ‘Advise away, Grace,’ said Tessa. ‘There’s no stopping you anyway.’

  ‘Silence is the best policy,’ said Grace. ‘Truth is too dangerous. Miss Minnie is as pure as the driven snow, born in wedlock, and legal heir to your husband’s fortune.’

  ‘You’re a good woman, Grace,’ said Tessa. ‘But what a world of lies this is!’

  ‘It’s how we all survive,’ observed Grace.

  Rosina Spills the Beans to Minnie

  10.30 a.m. Sunday, 19th November 1899

  Rosina had arranged to meet her friend Diana at Essex Hal
l in the Strand. Rosina did not make friends easily, and was pleased when Diana had responded to her invitation to join her. Diana had studied the natural sciences at Girton, one of the few grudged Cambridge colleges for women, and though students received their lectures in a room above a baker’s shop, at least they were allowed to study, if not to graduate. Girl students were not welcome at Cambridge, especially now they had taken to hitching up their skirts and cycling through the streets to lectures. Indeed, the effigy of a girl cyclist had been hung and burned in the Cambridge Town Square in Diana’s second year. But Diana continued to cycle bravely on, though many other girls stopped.

  Diana turned up to the meeting in the Strand on a bicycle, to the cheers of those gathering there to hear Sidney and Beatrice Webb talk on the nationalization of land. Rosina felt at ease in Diana’s company. She was a handsome, vigorous girl, almost as tall as Rosina. Like Rosina, she had not done the Season out of principle, much to the alarm of her family. She was Anthony Robin’s younger sister. Tonight she seemed troubled, and confided in Rosina, promising her to secrecy.

  Her brother Anthony, she said, who was engaged to be married to a charming girl, one of her pals, was apparently a frequent visitor to a woman of bad repute in Half Moon Street. A cab driver had told her maid, who had told her. What should she do: tell his fiancée, her friend, or say nothing and let the marriage go ahead?

  ‘Say nothing,’ Rosina advised. ‘Young men do that sort of thing. He will stop when he’s married. Good heavens, if marriages didn’t go ahead because the groom was not a virgin, there would be remarkably few marriages in the land.’

  Diana said that was not all that was worrying her. She was sorry if this was news to Rosina but her brother Arthur was joining him in these seedy escapades. She had asked Tony and it seemed Arthur paid the rent. Under the definition of the new Amendment to the Vagrancy Act this made the dwelling a brothel, and though Arthur could probably not be convicted as a pimp, the press might get hold of it and there could be a nasty scandal, which would harm both her brother’s career in the Bank and Rosina’s father’s political career. Particularly as the Earl had in his time paid rent on the same premises.

  ‘How on earth do you know all this?’ asked Rosina. Arthur, that did not surprise her. But her father – could it be true?

  ‘Tony told me all,’ said Diana. ‘Flora – that’s her name – told him that your father was her original protector. She asked him not to tell Arthur because Arthur thought he was her first, and she didn’t want him seeing her as used goods. Of course, she may be inventing this sorry tale to justify herself in some way, but it all makes sense. My brother says I am being obsessive about the dangers and has no intention of stopping his visits. Men tend to be so innocent about what happens next. I thought perhaps your brother should be warned.’

  And then the bell rang and it was time for everyone to troop back into the hall, though a few had left because it was a rather boring talk, in which Sidney had spent an hour explaining what he meant by saying that rents collected by landowners were unearned, for surely the ground we walked upon was ours? The second half was equally dull, which was as well because Rosina was in a state of shock and had a great deal to think about. Her father, unfaithful to her mother to the extent of setting up a mistress? It could only be the Prince’s influence. And her mother? One’s father’s past infidelity was not something one mentioned to one’s mother. Should she be presented with the truth, if it was really true? No, hardly; it was of the question. No matter how one’s mother irritated one, one did not want to destroy her. Better to let the matter lie.

  Arthur was another matter. He should be ashamed of himself. Diana’s brother, and her brother, each wooing proper girls while keeping a whore behind their backs. Arthur’s Minnie, mind you, was not exactly innocent according to Grace. Nor did Rosina believe for one moment that Arthur loved Minnie, or Minnie, Arthur – he wanted money and she wanted rank. The falsity of his smile was evident when he spoke to his parents, and to her, Rosina, of what a topping girl Minnie was. Not that an engagement had been announced, but Arthur had told so many people he was going to drive Minnie down to Dilberne Court in the Jehu to show the place off to her, it could only suggest to all that he saw her as a future bride and chatelaine of Dilberne. And all the time he was sneaking off (twice a week Diana had said) to this Floratrollop’s den of vice to meet up with Tony Robin, there to have his cake and to eat it too. Five years before she had thought Tony might be one man she could possibly marry: at least he was clever and serious, and one could sometimes have a decent conversation with him. But he’d quickly formed an attachment to another girl, a diminutive and very silly beauty, a Duke’s daughter. A mere earl’s daughter like Rosina was obviously not quite good enough for him, especially when she was three inches taller than he.

  Reginald was there in the cab to pick Rosina up when the meeting ended. Diana cycled off on her bicycle, hair flying in the wind, wearing a crimson high-necked and red-corded tailored jacket, with cross-braiding down the bodice and a vaguely military air, a pair of divided skirts gathered at the ankles, and high-laced button boots. Rosina, who usually attracted attention in some loose and flowing modern gown, felt positively old-fashioned; not to mention cross, embarrassed, and ashamed that Diana knew so much about her family and to its discredit.

  Rosina had not been best pleased when Isobel sent Grace off to work for Mrs O’Brien. She could hardly complain, having once told her mother that she had no use for a lady’s maid, that she was perfectly able to draw her own bath, do her own hair, look after her own clothes and it was ridiculous for a perfectly healthy woman to ask another woman to do these things for her. But then she had been eighteen, and had not realized how much of adult life was spent seeing to appearance. Even the maids would change their clothes three or four times a day, if only adding or removing a starched and pleated cap or a frilled apron. On Mondays when the agency laundresses came in the rooms were foggy with steam which came up from the laundry, and the smell of burnt fabric as over-heated irons dashed to and fro over lace and muslin too fragile to endure them. It was amazing how much work two women of the leisured classes required.

  She had managed to persuade her mother to send the laundry out. And though her father demurred, asking how she thought the laundresses were going to live if her mother didn’t employ them, Rosina replied, ‘Why, in professional laundries where they will be properly trained and worth the money they get.’

  Meanwhile, as a governess she once had used to say, ‘The miners in Africa starve.’ Methodist Miss Penny would not have approved at all of the Dilberne’s involvement with gold mining. If the Modder Kloof gold mine subsided and took down the family fortune with it, Rosina, hot from Essex Hall in the Strand, could see it was no more than they deserved. Bad enough to profit from the labour of workers on the land – for them to exploit the labour of those poor beneath it was doubly disgraceful. She wanted no part of it.

  She was angry with her father for having made a mockery of his marriage: she was angry with her mother for letting him do it. Her brother was a hypocrite and a liar. She was angry with herself for her complacency in the past. She could see herself now as one of the oppressed of the world. She would earn her own living. Medical school would not accept her – she had fewer educational qualifications even than Grace – so she would go to Mr Pitman’s secretarial college, learn shorthand typing and earn her own living: perhaps she could work in the offices of a Trades Union Congress or for the Fabian Society itself. She would move away from home and live in some romantic little room down by the river and be a bohemian. Or perhaps she could learn to paint, and be an artist? The world was full of opportunities!

  By the time she got home to Belgrave Square, in time to change for the d’Astis’ salon, she had decided what her response would be to the Arthur dilemma. She would ask Minnie out shopping, before any engagement was announced, and warn her about the kind of man she was marrying.

  She had to dress without Grace’
s help. That did not help her temper. She flung a dozen outfits to the ground before she chose what she thought was appropriate to the event. A plain blue velvet dress and a small grey-brimmed hat with a wide leopardskin band round its crown worn at a rakish angle. It made her look modern and intelligent; if she was not to be valued for her looks she would be valued for her mind.

  It was an enjoyable evening at the salon. Mr H.G. Wells was there, bouncing and squeaking away, and the Countess d’Asti gushed and squawked, her shelf of a bosom draped in layers of flimsy lace, very much mutton dressed as lamb. Rosina could never work out why her mother took the woman so seriously. The writers and artists who clustered round ‘dear Freddie’, as they loved to call her, were after her free food and drink and the occasional hand-out. At least her mother kept her dignity.

  The lion of the evening was Henry James himself, haughty and dignified, up from Sussex. There was a most extraordinary story going the rounds that he remained unmarried because he had deliberately sat on a white-hot stove to scald himself and thus make himself unfit to be a husband. It was the kind of thing one heard at the d’Astis’.

  H.G. Wells affected not to recognize Henry James, rather unkindly asking who the hippopotamus was. Mr James for his part seemed to rather admire H.G. as one who cultivated the common touch, of which Mr James was incapable, seeming to have been born stately and incapable of a short sentence. Rosina noted how, while her mother liked to invite guests who ‘got on’, the Countess deliberately chose those whom she hoped would not. Rosina’s parents had declared themselves indisposed, which Rosina knew to be a lie. Arthur had simply not turned up. Rosina supposed he was off with his whore.