Jane and the Wandering Eye (2 page)

And what, you may ask, had Miss Jane Austen to do in such company? So my father gently enquired, at the moment of my setting out from No. 27, Green Park Buildings (where all my dear family have been situated but two months, having lost our former lodgings in Sydney Place to the infamous Coles), my brother Henry at my side, a most formidable Richard the Third, and his wife, Eliza, done up as Marie Antoinette.

“Why, Father,” I replied, with a wave of my Shepherdess’s crook, “you must know that the invitation is all my brother’s, procured with a view to amusing Eliza, who must have her full measure of Bath’s diversion during so short a visit to the city, and in such a season. Bath at Christmastide may yet be called a trifle thin, in requiring the larger crowds of Easter to lend it style; and if Eliza is not to be thoroughly put out, we must seize our diversion where we may. A masquerade, and at the express invitation of a Dowager Duchess, cannot be let slip. Is not this so, Henry?”

“Indeed,” my brother stammered, with a look for his elegant wife, who appeared to have entirely swallowed her little dog, Pug, so pursed with false innocence was her mouth. Eliza is but a slip of a lady, tho’ in her present towering headdress, complete with ship’s models and birds of paradise bestowed about her heavily powdered curls, she bid fair to rise far above her usual station.

I must confess to a greater admiration for Eliza’s queen than for Henry’s king—for though both may be called cunning by history’s judgement, Eliza has the advantage over Henry, in having at least
seen
Marie Antoinette in all the Austrian’s former glory, and thus being capable of the incorporation of that lady’s vanished style in her present dress; while Henry is dependent upon the merest notion of humped backs and twirling moustachios,
or a general reputation for squintyness about the eyes, for the affectation of his villain.

“And our own dear Madam Lefroy is to be in attendance at the Duchess’s party as well, Father,” Eliza added. “It is to form the chief part of her final evening in Bath—she returns to Hampshire on the morrow—and we cannot part without some notice on either side. I am sure you would not wish us to neglect so amiable a neighbour, so dear a friend. For who shall say when we shall meet again?”

“But are you even acquainted with the Duchess, my dear Jane?” my father asked, in some bewilderment. “Assuredly—” Henry began.

“—not,”
I concluded.

“That is to say,” my brother amended hastily, “the acquaintance is entirely
mine
, Father. I have performed some trifling service for the Wilborough family, in the financial line. The rout tickets came to me.”

“I had not an idea of it, my dear boy.” The expression of pleasure that suffused my father’s face, at this indication of his son’s advancement in his chosen profession of banking, made the falsehood almost worth its utterance.

“But now we must be off,” Eliza interjected firmly, “or lose another hour in search of chairs, for our own have been standing at the door this quarter-hour.
¹
It has quite struck eleven, and how it snows! Do observe, my dear sir, the unfortunate chairmen!”

Bath’s climate is usually so mild as to escape the advent of winter, but this night at least we were subject to a fearsome blast. And thus, as my father clucked in dismay from the drawing-room window, all benevolent concern for the reddened cheeks and stamping feet of the unlucky
fellows below, we hurried down to the street, where indeed our chairs had been idle already some minutes, and settled ourselves comfortably for the trip to Laura Place—or would have, had not my Shepherdess’s crook refused the conveyance’s close accommodation. This small difficulty resolved, by the abandonment of the offending object on the stoop of No. 27, Green Park Buildings, the chairmen heaved and hallooed, and off we went—with only the occasional bobble to recall the untidiness of the snowy streets, and the likelihood of a yet more strenuous return.

I profited from the brief journey, by indulging in a review of the causes of our exertion, for pleasure was unfortunately the least of them. However circumscribed my usual society in Bath—which is generally limited to my Aunt Leigh-Perrot’s insipid card parties, and the occasional indulgence of the theatre when my slim purse may allow it—I am not so desperate for enjoyment as to spend a decidedly snowy midnight done up as a Staffordshire doll, in a gay throng of complete strangers more blessed and happy in their mutual acquaintance. Nor are Henry and Eliza so mad for rout-parties as my father had been led to believe. My brother and sister
²
had succumbed to my entreaties for support, and had gone so far as to prevaricate on my behalf. From an awkwardness of explanation, I had deliberately withheld from the Reverend George Austen the true nature of our visit to Laura Place. We were gone in the
guise
of revellers, indeed, but laboured in fact under a most peculiar commission.

Lord Harold Trowbridge, my dark angel of recent adventure—confidant of the Crown, adversary of whomever he is paid to oppose, and general Rogue-about-Town—is the Dowager Duchess of Wilborough’s younger son. He is also in the throes of some trouble with a lady—nothing unusual for Lord Harold, although in this instance, the novelty of the lady’s being not only unmarried, but related to him, must give the mendacious pause. In short, his niece, Lady Desdemona Trowbridge—an Incomparable of the present Season, a girl of eighteen with all the blessings of fortune, beauty, and breeding to recommend her—has thrown off the protection of her family and friends; has left all in London whose interest should form her chief consideration and care; and has fled to the Dowager Duchess in Bath. The agent of her flight? The redoubtable Earl of Swithin, who claims an interest in the lady’s future happiness. In short, the Earl has offered for her hand—and caused the fair Desdemona considerable vexation and grief.

Lord Harold observed the flight, and respected his mother’s wishes to leave the girl to herself for a time; he remained in London, and restrained His Grace the Duke from summoning the chit immediately back home; he forbore to visit Laura Place himself, and urge the reclamation of sense; and when the Lady Desdemona showed neither an inclination to quit her grandmother’s abode, nor to suffer very much from her voluntary exile, being engaged in a delightful round of amusement and shopping in the weeks before Christmas—he applied, at last, to
me.

My niece is a lady of excellent understanding, Lord Harold wrote in his barely legible hand,
but possessed of the Trowbridge will. She is headstrong, and entirely capable of acting against her own interest. I am most concerned that she not fall prey to the basest of fortune hunters—whose attentions she might unwittingly encourage, from a misplaced sense of pique, or an
inclination to put paid to Lord Swithin’s plans. Is it impossible—do I ask too much—that you might observe her movements for a time, my dear Miss Austen? And report what you observe? I wish chiefly to know the nature of Desdemona’s acquaintance—in whose circle she spends the chief part of her days—and the names of those gentlemen upon whom she bestows the greatest attention. You would oblige me exceedingly in the performance of this service; for tho’ Her Grace might certainly do the same, she is, as you may be aware
, not
the strictest judge of propriety.

And as the letter supplied a direction in Pall Mall—Brooks’s Club, to be exact—and the very rout tickets formerly mentioned, I could not find it in me to refuse—if, indeed, at present I could refuse Lord Harold anything. It is not that I owe him some great debt of gratitude, or harbour for the gentleman a more tender sentiment; but rather that where Lord Harold goes, intrigue surely follows—and I confess I have been insupportably
bored
with Bath, and the littlenesses of a town, since my return from Lyme Regis but a few weeks ago. The Gentleman Rogue and his errant niece presented a most welcome diversion.

And so to Laura Place we were gone.

I
DO NOT BELIEVE
I
EXAGGERATE WHEN
I
DECLARE THAT
the Dowager Duchess of Wilborough’s establishment was ablaze last e’en with a thousand candles. Light spilled out of a multitude of casements (the original glazing of which must have exacted from the late Duke a fortune), and cast diamond-paned shadows upon the snowy street; light flowed from the open entry-way at every chair’s arrival, like a bolt of silk unfurled upon the walk. A hubbub of conversation, too, and the clatter of cutlery; a voice raised hoarsely in song; a burst of laughter. The faintest strain of a violin drifted to the stoop.

Henry paid off the chairs and presented our cards to the footmen, but I found occasion to dally at the very door, almost deterred by the glittering hordes I glimpsed within—until an exclamation from Eliza thrust me forward. I had trod upon the foot of Marie Antoinette.

The foyer was a wealth of pale green paint picked out with pink and white, the colours of Robert Adam. Pink and green silk lined the windows, and a bust of the Tragic Muse loomed before a pier glass opposite—Mrs. Siddons, no doubt, and taken from the painting by Reynolds.
³
I gazed, and beheld myself reflected as Shepherdess, a forlornly bucolic figure amidst so much splendour. Eliza pinched my arm.

“As near to Old Drury as may be, my dear,” she murmured.
⁴

“Indeed,” I replied. “The Dowager Duchess may be living in relative retirement, but she has not yet forsworn her passions.”

“Let us go up,” Henry interposed with impatience. “There is a fearful crush at my back!”

The rout was intended, so Lord Harold had informed us, as a tribute to the principal players of Bath’s Theatre Royal
⁵
—and the present evening’s performance being
just then concluded, the tide of humanity spilling into Laura Place from the direction of Orchard Street was decidedly at its flood. The staircase, a grand curve of mahogany, was completely overpowered with costumed bodies struggling towards the drawing-room; I hooked one arm through my brother’s, and the other through my sister’s, and so we stormed the redoubt.

Let us pass over in silence the travails of the next quarter-hour; how our gowns were torn, and our headdresses deranged; what injuries to slipper and glove. Better to employ the interval in relating the chief of what I know about the Dowager herself—the barest details of Her Grace’s celebrated career.

I have it on so good an authority as my dear mother’s dubious memory, that Eugenie de la Falaise began her ascent as a pert young chorus girl in the Paris comic opera; from thence, with a comely ankle and a smattering of English, she rose to Covent Garden; and it was there the Duke of Wilborough—the
fifth
, rather than the present, Duke—fell headlong in love with the lady. Wilborough was already past his first youth; he had seen one Duchess into her grave, and her stillborn son with her; and thus it should not be remarkable that he might establish the beautiful Eugenie privately, or offer unlimited credit in the most fashionable shops, and a smart pair to drive her about Town, in return for the enjoyment of her favours, as Lord Derby once did with Miss Farren.
⁶
But Eugenie had a greater object in view. She wished to play at tragedy.

That she was unsuited for Isabella, or Lady Macbeth, or even the role of Portia in
The Merchant of Venice
, need
not be underlined.
Twelfth Night
, perhaps, or
She Stoops to Conquer
, may have shewn her talents to advantage; but at the Duke of Wilborough’s intercession with the Drury Lane director, Lady Macbeth she played—and opposite no less a personage than the redoubtable Mr. Garrick.

The performance—there was, alas, only one—was declared to have been lamentable. The outraged patrons hissed and shouted, threw all manner of refuse from theatre pit to stage, and forced the curtain down in the very midst of Lady Macbeth’s celebrated walk. Eugenie de la Falaise was mortified, and disappeared abruptly from public view, never to return to the London theatre.

We cannot in justice fault the fifth Duke for having married her. He may be forgiven the indulgence of his folly. The pity, the generosity, the rashness her ruined career may have excited—we can have only the merest idea of how they worked upon his sensibilities. Eugenie was, it is said, a beautiful woman at twenty-four; and though she is now a grandmother these many years, and Wilborough long since gone to his reward, she is no less formidable a presence.

I say this, having found my eyes directed to the Dowager Duchess upon first gaining entrance to her drawing-room. Tho’ possessed of fully seventy years, and requiring the support of a stout cane she clutches tightly in one hand, Her Grace commands immediate attention. Her narrow features and shuttered aspect recall the face of her son, Lord Harold; but where the effect is often forbidding in the latter, it may be declared devastating in the former. A lesser man than the Duke of Wilborough—accustomed as he was to the power of doing as he liked—would have braved greater scandal in pursuit of such a woman.

And scandal there was. His Majesty George II is said to have interceded in the match, which condescension was
stoically declined. The Duke’s political fortunes may subsequently have suffered. Certain of his acquaintance may have cut him dead. But others, made more valuable through the passage of time, accepted his bride; and accepted no less the heirs she pragmatically produced.

Bertie, who succeeded his father, bears the greatest fidelity to the Wilborough line, in character as well as countenance; Lady Caroline Mulvern,
née
Trowbridge, is the unfortunate picture of her Trowbridge aunts; but in the face of Lord Harold, the impertinent among society’s loquacious have gone so far as to question paternity. Lord Harold is so clearly Eugenie’s son, that the late Duke might have had nothing to do with his fashioning.

The Dowager stood in the midst of her fashionable rout last e’en arrayed in the form of Cleopatra—an Egyptian robe and a circlet on her brow, with a velvet mask held before—and beside her stood a girl so very much of Eugenie’s stamp, albeit some fifty years younger, that I knew her immediately for the Lady Desdemona, Lord Harold’s errant niece. She was robed to perfection as none other than
herself
having ignored the general command of fancy dress; and her quite ordinary appearance amidst the general excess of baubles and plumage rendered her as exotic as a sparrow in Paradise. I could trace no hint of her mother, Honoria, or her apoplectic father, Bertie, in her narrow and elegant face, and wondered whether her character was as French as her countenance.