Gwendolen (3 page)

*

I had not then learned what she perhaps knew: that it is not only love that binds people together in wedlock. Circumstance, sudden impulse, misguided optimism, and fear of loneliness and penury shape our decision-making and our lives and, when we are unlucky, herald our despair.

*

I did not want to be shaped by mamma's melancholy, but I was. I think her marriage to Davilow began as a social and economic necessity, then became an endurance about which it was difficult for her to speak. I think her melancholy grew in the gap between the reality of life with him and the love she knew she could feel and had felt for my father.

*

That space between us across the tables in the ornate salon of the Kursaal, I see and feel it now. How I longed to bridge it. As my passion for you grew, I became acquainted with the ache that life without you brought. Like mamma, I too lived with a sense of loss.

From the start you resisted your attraction to me. I appeared to you spoiled and impulsive. You looked for the Madonna, an unswerving virtue of a sort I lacked, a purity of heart. You sensed your mother in me: your beautiful, ambitious, unavailable mother; the wicked princess who turned you from her throne. But I was not like that. I was not like that. And why did you focus on me and encourage me towards you only to reject me? You chose Mirah Lapidoth, compliant, dependent. She was the better singer and had the sweeter nature but – and I only dare write this because I will never say it to you – she was the lesser woman.

*

After Captain Davilow died, leaving mamma penniless, she, my sisters and I managed on what Uncle Henry gave us. How I resented living under his obligation! He was excessively clear about his own importance and had strong views which he stated as facts. He sat at the head of table, said grace as if privy to the ear of God, and his word was law. His tedious sermons made no sense to me. In his church my mind drifted and I heard only the authority in his voice. Before taking holy orders he too had been an army captain. His own expenses were great, as he was ever at pains to remind us: six sons whose education much stretched him to finance, two daughters for whom husbands must be found. The rectory came rent-free but he was obliged to entertain with formal dinners and to pay the groom, gardener and cook.

Mamma, to him and my aunt – her sister – was ‘poor dear Fanny', victim of not one but two unfortunate marriages. My aunt looked like mamma and was concerned for her, but her own contentment and security made her behave as if she were superior: a condescending manner accompanied her comfort and good fortune.

Uncle weighed the worth in money of my beauty. He was intent for me to be seen to advantage in Society, so that I should marry well. His thinking was that then the burden of caring for mamma and her brood would shift to my husband. He was paternal towards me, felt that as a child I had missed out on family life, and at heart found it hard to resist me. He encouraged friendship between me and his elder daughter, Anna. She was tiny, admiring of me, less aggravating and rambunctious than my half-sisters, and I liked her well enough but could not view her as an equal.

Uncle frequently reminded mamma of his cleverness at finding Offendene for us, how the house was more than she might expect for the low rent she paid, its running costs no greater than an ordinary house, and how the landlord, his friend Lord Brackenshaw of Brackenshaw Castle – uncle cultivated influential friends – owned the Brackenshaw Archery Club as well as much of Wessex.

*

I loathed the way I had to weasel and cajole uncle for anything I wanted. I loved riding. There was nothing I liked more than to gallop across fields or ride with the hunt, and I very much wanted a saddle horse of my own. I put it to him but he baulked at the expense. I persisted and when he next called for tea with my aunt and Anna, I flattered him, played the piano to his liking, induced him to join me in a duet, then urged mamma to speak up for me. ‘Gwendolen desires above all things to have a horse to ride – a pretty, light, lady's horse,' mamma said. ‘Do you think we can manage it?'

Aunt looked disapproving and suggested I borrow Anna's Shetland pony. I protested I could not endure ponies and was willing to give up all other indulgences if I might have a horse. Uncle lamented the expense of his carriage horses, how a horse for me would cost a good £60 and then there was its keep, and how he could afford only a pony for Anna. As ever, he reminded mamma of the cost to him of her and her fatherless brood.

*

My pride wilted as mamma demeaned herself and said she wore nothing but two black dresses. I winced to hear her tell uncle how I was prepared to tutor my sisters when Mrs Startin left. It was as if she was begging. I wanted mamma to have diamonds, furs, whatever she desired, and not to need ask anything of anyone. Aunt went on about how Anna rode only the wretched donkey and how no horse was afforded her. But uncle's indulgence was calculating: if I was to acquire an expensive husband – an aristocrat and landowner, with a fortune to benefit them all – a degree of finery and show was essential. ‘Gwendolen has,' he said, ‘the figure for a horse.'

*

I got my horse. I called her Twilight. Anna, content with her pony, did not begrudge me. And before long uncle saw his worldly ambitions for me realised. Apparently on their way home aunt rebuked uncle for his pampering of me, but he spoke again of his duty to help me ‘make a first-rate marriage to a man more than equal to himself'. Aunt feared one of her boys, Rex or Warham, might fall in love with me, but uncle assured her that would not occur. First cousins, he said, must not fall in love. If it happened, marriage would not be allowed and, more to the point, the boy would have nothing. ‘At worst,' he said, ‘there would only be a little crying. You can't save boys and girls from that.' And crying there was, for Rex did fall in love with me, though not I with him. My crying was for you, Deronda. No one saved me from that.

*

Such were life's problems even before the catastrophe. It is hard to be proud when you have no money and are dependent on a pompous uncle. I had little freedom to do as I chose, nor did I know how or what to seek. I strongly felt the confinement of home and I dreamed of breaking free, of being more than the chattel of my uncle or the elusive ambition of mamma. I wanted my own achievement, my own expression, but what did I have beyond my beauty and high spirits … Yes, I got my horse, but what I longed for were the wild plains where the horse might take me.

*

Herr Klesmer. Looking back, I now see that the chain of my humiliation began with him. He was famed as a composer, pianist and teacher. I met him at Quetcham Hall, in our first spring at Pennicote, at a dinner party given by the Arrowpoints. They had hired him as music tutor to their clever, gifted daughter Catherine, who played the piano, violin and harp. Mrs Arrowpoint declared him to be a genius, and he certainly looked the part with his large head, long brown hair, flowing cape, gold spectacles and flamboyant gestures. I did not at first know he was a Jew like you. I had never before met a Jew socially. I did not know Jews could be geniuses. I thought they were all moneylenders and pawnbrokers.

*

Mrs Arrowpoint had written extensively on the sixteenth-century Italian poet Torquato Tasso. She had a voice like a parrot, wore startling headdresses and was provoked by my beauty and its effect on men. I have often observed that unappealing women resent me. I told her, at this party, how I adored Tasso and that I too would like to be an authoress. She offered to loan me her unpublished manuscript in which, she said, she corrected popular misconceptions about his insanity, explained his complex feelings for the Duke Alfonso's sister Leonora, and gave the real reasons for his imprisonment. Such was the lure of creative excitement in Wancester.

After dinner Klesmer and Catherine played a four-handed piece on two pianos. It was a more accomplished performance than I could ever aspire to, but it was very long. Mr Arrowpoint then asked me to sing and led me to the piano. Klesmer stood a few feet away and smiled at me. I had no nervousness. Mamma told me my voice was like Jenny Lind's and I believed this to be so. I sang the aria ‘Casta Diva' from Bellini's
Norma
.

Jenny Lind, though ordinary and uneducated, succeeded in the world as I hoped to do.

Klesmer stared at me as I sang. I was aware of his gaze. It seemed to bore into me, a prelude to yours at the Kursaal. ‘
Ah, riedi a me
,' I sang. There was such applause. ‘Bravo!' Mr Arrowpoint shouted with tears in his eyes; ‘Bravo, encore, encore!' Herr Klesmer stood mute. I prepared to sing again but first said to him, expecting contradiction, ‘It would be too cruel, don't you think, Herr Klesmer? You cannot like to hear poor amateur singing.'

In his German accent he replied, ‘That does not matter. It is always acceptable to
see
you sing.' The insult took away my breath. I felt myself blush with anger. Why did he need to say that? I had been asked to sing. It was a dinner party. The guests were thrilled by me, far more so than by his virtuosity. His was the first in a series of blows that tore at my pride and culminated, months later, in your return to me of my turquoise necklace.

Catherine Arrowpoint compounded my humiliation by commiserating. ‘See what I have to go through with this professor,' she said. ‘He can hardly tolerate anything we English do in music. He tells us the worst that can be said of us. It is only bearable because everyone else is so admiring.'

I viewed her as kind but condescending. Klesmer clearly more than tolerated everything about her. I tried to regain my poise. I said I supposed I had been ill taught and had no talent, and would be obliged to Herr Klesmer were he to tell me the worst.

‘Yes, it is true you have not been well taught,' he said to me and all who wished to hear. ‘Still you are not quite without gifts. You sing in tune and have a pretty fair voice.' He told me I produced my notes badly and the music I sang was ‘dawdly canting see-saw kind of stuff. Music for people with no breadth of vision. No cries of deep mysterious passion – no conflict, no sense of the universal. It makes men small as they listen to it. Sing something larger and I shall see.'

So much for Bellini and so much for me. Klesmer was God, I the unworthy earthling, trapped by superficiality. ‘Oh, not now,' I said. ‘By and by.' ‘Yes, by and by,' Catherine Arrowpoint agreed, then joked it always took her half an hour to recover from the maestro's criticism. After such pretence of allegiance with me she invited him to play, ‘to show us what good music truly is'. Which he did. A composition of his own called ‘
Freudvoll, Leidvoll, Gedankenvoll
'. And I am sure his talent was huge, so much huger than his manners. I tried not to cry.

*

Clintock the archdeacon's son came up and asked what
Freudvoll
meant but I did not know. He said he wished I would sing again, for though he could listen to me all night he got nowhere with this sort of tip-top playing. I told him if he wanted to hear me sing he was in a puerile state of culture, for I had just learned how bad my taste was, which gave me growing pains. He smiled politely and asked how I liked the neighbourhood. I replied I liked it exceedingly, for it had a little of everything and not much of anything, and most people in it were an utter bore.

Clintock then talked of croquet and told me it was the game of the future. I hear my voice now as I cut him down: ‘I shall study croquet tomorrow. I shall take to it instead of singing.'

*

Clintock informed me of a friend of his who had written a poem in four cantos about croquet that was as good as anything by Alexander Pope. He offered to send me a manuscript copy. I said he must first promise not to test me on it, or ask which part I liked best, ‘because it is not so easy to know a poem without reading it, as to know a sermon without listening'.

He did not care to find barb or insult in my remark, he was staring at my breasts and legs, but Mrs Arrowpoint overheard, made a judgement and did not share her Tasso with me.

*

Catherine Arrowpoint, pitiful of the smallness of my talent yet assured of Klesmer's regard for hers, continued to invite me to dinners and soirées but I could not again see her without a wave of jealousy and self-doubt, though her looks were unremarkable, her complexion sallow and her features small. She was an heiress with unshaken confidence in her own talent, secure enough to disregard her plainness as an irrelevance, whereas I who was poor had only my looks and my dreams.

After that evening at the Arrowpoints', though at Brackenshaw Castle, The Firs and Quetcham Hall my singing had hitherto given such pleasure, as obstinate as I was offended, I vowed never again to sing before an audience. My admirers viewed me as exceptional. I was determined my detractors should see that too. I was not going to condemn myself to giving lessons to Alice like an impoverished governess or to help in the village school with Anna. Mamma told me I was more beautiful and alluring than the actress Rachel had been in
Phèdre.
If I could not be a singer I would have a stage career.

*

Christmas Eve brought my next humiliation. To display my theatrical talent I decided to stage a
tableau vivant
from
A Winter's Tale
before invited neighbours in the drawing room at Offendene. My intention was to let Herr Klesmer know that though my musical gifts might be unequal to Catherine Arrowpoint's, my acting skills were another matter.

I was director and principal player – Hermione, the beautiful, virtuous, vilified queen, shut away from the world for sixteen years. Cousin Rex, home for the holidays from his law studies, was my husband, King Leontes, crazed with jealousy. Mamma, in a white burnous, was my friend Paulina. Anna, Miss Merry and Mr Middleton, uncle's assistant clergyman, who had pale whiskers, wore buttoned-up clothes and seldom laughed, were to have small parts. Jarrett the village carpenter built the stage.