by Ella Edon
She took his card and smiled. “I am Garance Monteux, chanteuse.”
Suddenly, his whole demeanor changed. “Good Lord! You’re that songstress that’s coming to Covent Garden. I’ve ‘eard about you. You’re the Parisian Nightingale, ain’t you?”
Garance laughed. “Yes, that is what they call me.”
“Might I be permitted to call on you when you are there? Maybe I could take you for some real English tea?”
“Maybe,” she said hesitantly. Fortunately for Garance she had reached her cabin and opened the door quickly, closing it on his face. She put her body against the closed door and rolled her eyes. “Camille! These English are very bold!” she said smiling.
“Yes, I should have warned you that they would throw themselves at you,” said Camille. “The English do not obey the common rules of propriety. Ils sont fous, ces anglais!”
Within the hour, Camille led her mistress off the ship and towards the waiting carriage of Mr. Philip Salomon.
Salomon smiled at Garance seeming to be mesmerized by her beauty. In fact, he had difficulty taking his eyes off her and it took him a minute to speak.
“Mademoiselle Monteux, it is my great pleasure to welcome you to England. I can tell you that the entire country is on pins and needles to hear you sing.”
“Why would they do this?” said Garance whose English, although quite fluent, was still idiomatically constrained.
“Oh no,” he laughed. “I only meant that they are eager to hear you sing. The stories of your performances in France have travelled across the channel far more often than your person.”
Garance was pleased and confused by this information. “I am a little bit tired, Mr. Salomon,” Garance said with a pleading look on her beautiful face. “Could we depart?”
At that moment, Joseph Tweedsmuir passed her by and approached, just as she was getting into the carriage. “I’ll see you in London then,” he said to Garance. “I need to hear your nightingale.”
“You see?” said Salomon. “The English need to have you in their lives. Things are quite bleak at this time of year, and I am sure that you will be a wonderful diversion for the society folk.”
“Thank you very much, Mister Salomon,” said Garance ignoring Mr. Tweedsmuir and taking her seat. She allowed Camille to pack her trunks, with the help of the coachman. “I am very eager to know about my accompanist. What can you tell me about him?”
“Mr. Cipriani Potter is one of our finest composers. He has already composed a number of works that have received universal acclaim and they believe he has been a student of the great Viennese composer Beethoven.”
Garance laughed knowingly. “Is this not the deaf man who writes his noisy symphonies?”
“Well, uh, yes,” said Salomon realizing he had not impressed her.
“No matter,” said Garance seeing that she had hurt her benefactor’s feelings. “I am certain he is a very talented man. How old is he?”
“Under thirty,” said Salomon. “Moreover, he is a very talented pianist.”
“Does he play the clavecin as well? I am not the loudest singer, and this may strain my vocal cords if I must play with a forte player.”
“Well, yes, but you will be performing in very large halls, like the Royal Albert Hall and Covent Garden, you understand. Covent Garden alone has an auditorium that seats twenty-eight hundred people.”
“Mon Dieu!” said Garance. “This is a city!”
“Heh, heh. I assure you, mademoiselle Monteux, that the acoustics are superior, and you will be heard. Nevertheless, I do recommend using a pianoforte.”
“I am tired,” said Garance, “and I cannot make any decisions at this time. Please forgive me if I sleep a little.”
“Yes of course,” said Salomon admiring her beauty as she closed her large, deep brown eyes, and allowed her eyelashes to shade her vision. As she slept, he watched Garance closely, as a father would admire a child. He noted her straight, small nose, her beautiful alabaster complexion, and her stunning raven-colored hair. She was an exquisite woman, and he saw only profit in her arresting beauty.
Salomon noted that they would be in London by nightfall since it was shortly after nine in the morning. He suggested to Camille, who seemed to be Garance’s business manager, that he had procured very comfortable accommodations for her in the fashionable apartment in St. Martin-in-the-Fields.
“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.”
“Mister 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, madame,” 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 madame is not good with money, and I am her purser,” said Camille.
“I was made aware of this, although I confess I expected a gentleman.”
“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 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 mystery was out. That evening in the papers there were 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 of marrying for love.”
“You’ve been reading too many of those girly books 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?” said Jonathan. “It looks rather as though I haven’t a brass farthing to give any young maiden 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 was 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. I read in The Times only this morning as how 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 for 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,” said 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 him, a shirt with elaborate knots in the neckcloth that choked him, 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.
