Too Great a Lady
Page 5
Dr. Graham peered down at me, his curiosity now fully piqued. “How old are you, Miss . . . ?”
“Lyon, sir. Emily Lyon. I was fourteen this past April.”
“I see no sense in beating about th’bush, Miss Lyon. You have three things that interest me. You have an inquisitive mind, a lovely singing voice, and your figure is incomparably to my liking.”
I blushed and curtsied.
“Forgive my bluntness; I’m a Scot. Are you happy here at Arlington Street?”
“I am as ’appy as I ’ave ever been,” I replied truthfully, “but I do not dream of spending all my days ’ere. I confess I ’ave conceived a powerful fondness for singing.”
“And that is reflected in your talent for it; make no mistake, Miss Lyon. I have been marking you. And were you interested in exchanging your finery for more modest apparel, and your soft bed here, provided gratis I am sure, for accommodations in meaner quarters that you must needs pay for out of your own purse, I would offer you a position as a singer at the Temple of Health.”
I struggled to contain the flutter in my heart and keep my smile from bosting out of my face. “At what salary?” I furrowed my brow.
“Two crowns for each performance. Six performances a week.”
A heated negotiation ensued, and to my immense astonishment—and glee—I was able to bargain the Scotsman up to a whopping two guineas a performance and the use of his spinet during the day.
My relief was enormous. I had secured legitimate employment at the premises of one of London’s most celebrated citizens. And there was nothing Mrs. Kelly could do about it. The “abbess” had lost her opportunity to retail my virginity; however, she had been well paid for the pleasure of my companionship for several months, and it remained in her interest to maintain Dr. Graham’s good custom and that of his own elite clientele.
I had my trunk packed and had quit Arlington Street forever by the following noon—a searingly hot day in mid-August 1779, on which a sudden rainstorm produced no effect whatever on either the stifling weather or the city smells. I located a rather spartan room in a boardinghouse in Cork Street, just footsteps from the Royal Terrace, settled in, then, flushed with my own triumph, set out for my new place of employment.
Previously, I had seen only one of the three lavishly decorated rooms known as the Museum of Elixirs, when the evening lamp-light had provided a suffused glow over what I now recognized as glorious depictions of heroes and kings, from such grand personages as Orpheus, Atlas, and Prometheus to Alfred the Great, King Arthur, and Richard Lionheart.
In the tinsel chamber of Apollo, the last of the grand chambers, lay the famous Celestial Bed. Gilded dragons gamboled about its columns, meeting overhead in an arched pavilion, and above the bed, an inscription in Latin, which my new employer translated as “It is a sad thing if a rich man has no heir to his property.”
My duties varied from evening to evening. On some nights, concealed by lavish draperies, I would stand behind one of the four crystal pillars enshrining the electrical apparatus, and serenade the lovers in the Celestial Bed. Some nights, I was instructed to counsel the infertile and charm them with my songs, often accompanied by additional voices and the dulcet tones of a harp. On other evenings, I participated in the doctor’s demonstrations as a “warbling chorister,” trilling my odes from beyond the performance area, unseen by the glamorous spectators who clamored for seats and ringed the galleries. How I would have preferred to be one of the barely clad young ladies who struck poses in imitation of some classical and healthful theme. After a month or so, I begged the doctor to promote me.
“Your beauty should be seen, ’tis true,” he agreed, “but I have more need of your voice, lass. My goddesses are mute.”
But it was the goddesses who received all the attention from the gentlemen. My enjoyment wasn’t nearly the same when I was stuck behind the scenes, or providing the musical accompaniment to a fifty-pound fuck.
However, with all the delights of London competing for the attention, and the coin, of his particular clientele, Dr. Graham was compelled to develop new programs with some degree of frequency. Toward the latter part of 1779, as a new way of endorsing the nourishing benefits of frequent mud baths, the doctor introduced Hygeia, the Goddess of Health, to an eager public.
My wish to step out from behind the scenes was less than half-granted, however, for the doctor immersed me to the shoulders in a vat of warm mud—which in truth felt quite delicious against my skin, even through my shift. The audiences could see naught but my head (adorned in the old style in an enormous powdered wig trimmed with feathers, flowers, and pearls) and my face (powdered, patched, and painted like a lady of the court) while I gazed out at the mural of the brave King Richard the Lionhearted clad in the tabard of a crusading Knight Hospitaller.
After the performances, I would reappear in clean drapery, with my own hair falling nearly to my ankles, and the doctor would introduce Miss Emily Lyon to them. From then on, I never lacked for attention and was offered no end of opportunities to dine out, or to visit Ranelagh and Vauxhall just at the time of the evening when the wild and adventuresome crowd would make its appearance, and the grounds truly lived up to their description as pleasure gardens.
Never was a young lady so feted as I was on my fifteenth birthday in 1780. A sandy-haired buck of twenty-six whom I knew only as “Uppark Harry,” one of Dr. Graham’s frequent patrons—and a man I had also seen at Mrs. Kelly’s several times—invited me to join him and a number of his set at Vauxhall after my appearance as Hygeia that night. What guttling we enjoyed! Capon and roast meats, and exotic fruits and delicacies, all washed down with copious quantities of champagne.
“Emily, girl, favor us with a song! Tu chantes comme un ange. Celestial!” Uppark Harry stretched his long legs and pulled me onto his lap. He was one of those Englishmen who, having completed their grand tour on the Continent, began peppering their speech with French upon returning to their native soil. They believed it lent them polish, even as they belched through their words.
“Sing that one you used to do at Mrs. Kelly’s,” he whispered in my ear, thoroughly bathing it with his tongue.
“Ooh, ’e’s got it for fetching!” I remarked to one of the other bucks, a slender, rather sober fellow whose name I learnt was Charles Greville.
“I’m sorry, I don’t speak the cant,” Greville condescended, with his eyes on my bosom the while he insulted me.
“It’s just one of our expressions back in Flintshire. Means ’e’s a lovable rogue. Ain’t you, ’Arry?” I said, giving old Uppark a tickle in the ribs.
I was living a fine life for a barely literate girl. Though I had not the fancy clothes and furbelows I was afforded at Arlington Street, my body was my own and I could bestow it upon whom I pleased. I had no dearth of admirers to chuse from, and I was earning enough on my own to pay my landlady, never going hungry in the bargain. No life of a browbeaten serving wench or filthy, overworked factory slut for Emily Lyon!
But below the surface of the glittering town life lurked rumblings I could not apprehend. I began noticing, throughout the month of May, that more and more people from all stamps of life walked through the streets of London sporting a blue cockade on their hats. Their number grew and grew until their religiously inspired fervor exploded during the first week of June.
On June 2, I was leaving my room bound for a stroll in Piccadilly when I quite literally bumped into my landlady.
“Quick, gal, there’s no time to lose,” exclaimed an excited Mrs. Budge, thrusting a blue cockade into my hand while, with her other, she gripped my wrist and drew me into the street.
“Whatever for?”
“Don’t just stand there dawdlin’. Stick it in yer ’at. Hurry now, there’s a girl. Shows you’re one of us!”
“One of who?”
“Protestants, gal.”
“But I don’t know if I am—I never went to church as a girl.”
“Then yer a Protestant!”
That night, linkboys’ torches were commandeered as the mob, sixty thousand strong, hungry for Catholic blood, and bent on destruction, battered down the doors of Papist churches, smashing or stealing everything they could lay their hands on, leaving charred rubble and shards of jewel-colored glass in their acrid, noisy wake. Known Papists were dragged from their homes and beaten with brickbats until their heads and limbs were reduced to bloody pulp and their abodes looted of all valuables before they were set ablaze. Word spread like disease that no Catholic, his family, or his property was safe in London.
The rest of us were imprisoned by fear, for the city was under mob rule. Dr. Graham suspended his free treatments of the poor and his costly lectures to the elegant until peace might be restored. For days, the streets teemed with anger and ran with blood. London’s miasma became even thicker and more odiferous from the billowing smoke and smoldering rubble. I barricaded myself in my room for fear when I learnt that Gordon’s followers had burst the gates of Newgate gaol and released the prisoners, who had quickly blended in among the rioters. The next target was the Bank of England. Five days after the Gordon Riots began, King George summoned the militia, and after John Wilkes ordered his troops to fire upon the crowd gathered outside the bank, the unrest was finally halted.
The human toll was 290 dead. Twenty-five of the riot’s ring-leaders were hanged, tho’ George Gordon himself was found not guilty of treason.
I had not known what it was like to experience war, and could not comprehend the complexities and nuances of the politics behind all the violence. But I was certain that I wished to avoid another encounter with such brutality and destruction. I began to suffer nightmares in which I became the victim of a vitriolic mob. For the first time since my arrival in London—a city not unknown for its criminal element, regardless of the political climate—I found myself frightened to live there. I feared that others would feel the same as I and seek their pleasure before their own hearths rather than venture of an evening to an establishment like Dr. Graham’s. If times grew lean for him, my employment would not be secure, and to be one step ahead of being tossed into the gutter, I had to devise an alternative plan, should that unhappy day come to pass.
One evening, gazing upon the mural of Richard Lionheart as I impersonated the Goddess of Health, the yearned-for epiphany arrived. It was time for Emily Lyon to seek greener pastures. Out of the warm mud emerged Emily Hart, the young woman to whom, by summer’s end, the cavalier Uppark Harry had made a most advantageous offer.
Seven
Uppark Harry
“You’re a ‘sir’?” I squinted at his card. “Sir ’Arry Fether . . . Fetherst—”
“It’s pronounced ‘Fanshaw,’ ” said Sir Harry, relieving me of my distress at being unable to make out the pronunciation of “Fetherstonhaugh,” his impossibly long surname. And how could anyone, having only heard it, be expected to spell it correctly!
“I’m not a man prone to elaborate preambles, Emily, but you’ve quite struck my fancy. I find that I enjoy your companionship tremendously. And I should like to know whether you would find it amenable to provide it to me on a more frequent basis.”
My breath caught in my throat. “You’re not asking me to marry you, are you?”
Uppark Harry laughed, baring his long teeth. “Oh, my dear, you are a wit! I hope I do find a wife half as clever. I offer you a pretty cottage of your own in the country, provided you let me come and visit you whenever it suits my pleasure; and you will entertain me and my guests at table—when my mother is in town, of course, or in Bath for the season. Fait-il plaisir? ”
“I ’ave no idea what you just said to me,” I confessed.
“Does that make you happy?”
Of course I should have preferred a proposal of marriage, but for a girl of my stamp, with little breeding and less education, I had fallen arse over tit into a field of clover.
Within two weeks I had given my notice to Dr. Graham and informed Mam of my intentions to become the mistress of Uppark.
“I suppose you know what comes with the territory.”
I nodded my head. “Would I ’ave a brighter future stuck in the mud at the Temple of ’Ealth? Living in one gloomy room in Cork Street with a popery hater for a landlady?”
“I can’t say as to that, Emy, and I don’t know what difference popery makes to you, but if you kept your situation in Adelphi Terrace, you might chuse to bestow your gifts where you may.”
“I’m chusing Sir ’Arry,” I said stubbornly.
“Is it far you’re going? I don’t want you to get so far away you won’t be able to get out of trouble if it’s brewing.”
“It’s in Sussex, in the valley of Harting. Eight hours from London with a coach and pair,” I recited from memory. “Just think, Mam, I’ll be doing all the duties of a country squire’s wife—and ’e’s a nobleman in the bargain!”
My mother took me to her bosom and, releasing me, grasped me by the shoulders. “Mark me, gal. I know your flights of fancy. You and your ’Arry may be ponshyn like rabbits in your little cottage, but when ’is mother decides to put an end to ’is frolics, you’ll be standing in the road before you can remember ’ow to spell ’is name, y’nau.” She cocked her head to regard me askance. “It’s my own damn fault. I’ve said it afore and I’ll say it again. I love you to pieces, but what the devil will become of you, Emily Lyon?”
I grinned. “Something wonderful, I expect. I’m Emily Hart now! A new name for a new life!”
Harry met me at Petersfield in the yard of the Red Lion. I endeavored to conceal from him how fagged I was from bouncing about for so many hours in the Portsmouth Coach and greeted him with my widest smile. “Miss Hart! I trust your journey was a pleasant one.” He swept me off my feet—quite a task since I was near as tall as he—and spun me about, planting a passionate kiss on my lips. “What a jolly time we’ll have, my girl. Let’s slip a few glasses past the ivory before we set off for the manor, shall we? Come, you mustn’t say no, for I know you to be quite the little toper on occasion.”
Thus having been answered for without uttering a word, I was ushered into the bustling inn, where he commandeered a large round table at the center of the room.
“Come, a pint of porter for my fair companion, and a bottle of claret for yours truly!” he exclaimed, and within moments our drinks had been set upon the table. When he noticed I was nearly salivating over a roast joint being devoured at the next table, in a twinkling a plate of mutton appeared before me; and I gave him a most grateful grin, for I was famished. Scarce had I downed more than a quarter of a tankard’s worth of stout when Harry ordered a second bottle of wine for himself. I prayed he did not expect me to match his pace.
But after the last drop of the second bottle had “passed his ivories,” he called for his chaise, and we clattered out of the inn yard as though the excise men were on our trail, driving to the top of the Sussex Downs, along a steep incline, until we reached the iron gates of Uppark itself. How grand it all was,
and what a vista it commanded! The sun was beginning to set, but I could still see Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight and just make out a mast or two poking into the sky.
The redbrick main house, four stories high, had so many windows that a delightful view of the estate might be commanded from any room. One entered by a sweeping stone staircase leading from a terraced and verdant park so smooth that a mighty game of bowls could be played upon it. Before the house and gardens lay a charming pond that Sir Harry kept stocked with fish. Grass and gravel walks led to every part of the property, including the new stables and kitchens, which could also be reached from the main house through subterranean passages. As his private races held along the Downs had earned a large measure of renown, the stables boasted some of the finest horses in the county. Beyond the great house lay his orchards and the forest in which Sir Harry and his friends enjoyed their frequent shooting parties.
And this paradise was what I was to be mistress of! Much as I enjoyed town life, the sight of glorious Uppark reminded me how much I’d missed the country. I wanted to roll down the hill the way I used to do back in Hawarden when I was naught but a wild and barefoot child.
With a mischievous grin Sir Harry offered me his arm. “Come, my girl, let me show you inside.”
“And this is all yours?” I gasped, agog at the fine staircase, the gilded surfaces, and the elaborate plasterwork. The furnishings looked fit for King George himself.
“I inherited Uppark from my father six years ago. Much of what you see was purchased on my grand tour in 1776. The gilt-edged mirror you see above the fireplace is French, of course; the porcelain figurines on the mantel, Capodimonte—from Naples. Now, my widowed mother still resides here; her rooms are at the far end of the upstairs hall. But,” he added gaily, “she is happily ensconced at Bath à ce moment, and there I hope she stays—for several weeks. I mean to have a card party this evening; tell me, do you play faro?” I shook my head. “Macao?”