Life Mask (28 page)

Lines on 'La Farren'. From the Italian.
In that roguish face one sees
All her. sex's witcheries;
Playful sweetness, cold disdain
Everything to turn one's brain,
Sparkling from expressive eyes...

'Why, it rhymes as good as if it was English in the first place,' marvelled Mrs Farren. 'But she does gush on, rather.' Eliza resumed satirically.

Sure destruction still we find,
Still we lose our peace of mind,
Touched by her half-trembling hand,
Can the coldest heart withstand?

Her mother's forehead was wrinkled. 'One would think it from a gentleman, it's so very ardent.'

'Oh, that's just what poems are like, Mother. It's far smoother than the ones I've ever received from men, I must grant Mrs Piozzi that. I suppose the polite thing would be to reply in verse,' Eliza added grimly.

'Very true, but don't look for any help from me,' said Mrs Farren, ringing for the maid to clear away the game pie.

Eliza groaned. 'I find anything more than a couplet a strain. I'll have to pop over to Grosvenor Square and throw myself on Anne's mercies; she can improvise in iambic pentameter.'

'Between all your fine friends,' said her mother, 'no wonder you can't find an evening to sit down with me and learn your lines.'

Something sharp in the tone made Eliza look up, but Mrs Farren was gazing out of the window at the late afternoon sun.

J
UNE
1789

The Damer carriage rattled down the Strand and stopped at the great pillars of Somerset House. Sam the footman got down and opened the door of the Royal Academy. Anne told him to wait with the driver; she needed no escort here.

The square entrance hall was guarded by plaster casts of Apollo, Hercules, the Centaurs and Minerva with her spear entwined with snakes. Anne nodded to the porters and walked past the Life School; she'd never been let in there, of course, because of the nude models. She gathered her skirts at the bottom of the elliptical staircase. Men tramped past her, carrying vast canvases, or hauling them up through the stairwell on ropes. 'Stand back, madam, if you please.' 'Mind the lady!'

She met the head keeper on the second floor. 'Mrs Damer, always a pleasure,' he said, inclining his pointed head. 'May I offer a catalogue?'

'Are the preparations for the Exhibition going smoothly, Signor Agostino?'

The Italian let out a chuckle. 'Always some surprises, shall we say? A gentleman in Kent sends in a picture made of hair.'

She shuddered.

Behind Agostino Anne caught a glimpse of the students in the Antique Room hunched over their easels, drawing from a gigantic cast of the Medici Venus, her nervous arms failing to hide her shame. She felt a prickle of envy; she was grateful for her own private tutoring, of course, but it had been solitary and sporadic. These Royal Academy boys were luckier than they knew, being forced to give art their whole attention at such an early age.

Upstairs, over the double doors of the Great Room, was an inscription in rather bad Greek, which Anne translated as
Let no stranger to the Muses enter here.
She might not be a Member of the Academy—they'd elected no more women since that first burst of enthusiasm at their founding—but she was hardly a stranger to the Muses. The vast space of the Great Room and its four curved skylights made it the perfect place to show sculpture, but this wealth of natural light was always kept for the paintings; besides, she told herself, any statue set up here would be toppled by the jostling crowds. Only half the paintings were up, there were still many gaps. Sir Joshua Reynolds—an old family friend of hers—was showing twelve canvases this year and the centrepiece was his huge flattering portrait (commissioned by Georgiana) of Sheridan making his last stand on the Regency Bill.

Anne's own work was in the little room for sculpture and drawings at the back. She made herself look at the animal piece first, because it mattered less. The ink in the catalogue was still a little smeary.
The Hon. Mrs Seymour Conway Darner. Two Kittens in Marble.
This was for Walpole; the kittens were muscular bird hunters at Strawberry Hill by now, but he'd wanted them immortalised in all their luxuriant curled-up youth.

Only now did she let herself turn and—as objectively as she could—regard her
Thalia.
That was all the pedestal said, but there wasn't a man, woman or child in London who wouldn't recognise it as Eliza Farren. The porters had set it at an odd angle, looking slightly away from the viewer, but she could have a word with Agostino about that. The light was good enough and there were no chips or cracks, thank God; marbles stood up better to the crating and moving than terracottas did. She'd given the bust a low, almost matte finish on the hair, but a sheen on the cheeks and bosom. The face was tilted down, gracious, Grecian, slightly sombre; the gaze was blank, inward. The marble looked like packed snow. Yes, it had been worth the endless hours with rasps and files and glass paper, the washings and dryings, the final going over with pumice to bring up the sparkle.
This might well be my masterpiece
, Anne thought nervously.

There were raised voices in the Great Room; she went to the doorway. There was John Downman of Drury Lane, adding a dot of delicate red to a lip. She recognised it as a larger version of his watercolour from the set of
The Way to Keep Him
at Richmond House. How appropriate, she thought with rueful pleasure, that out of the whole collection of seven ladies he'd chosen to exhibit Eliza.

Beside him a man she didn't know, clutching a palette, some paint bladders and a bunch of brushes, was barking, 'I shall demand to speak to a member of the Hanging Committee. I was personally assured that my
Suicide of Brutus
would be hung on the line—' punching his finger at the wooden moulding that ran round the chamber, seven feet up—'but it's been skied up there in a cobwebbed corner, where anyone who hopes to see it will have to climb a ladder! While you, sir—'

'My watercolour's a small piece,' Downman murmured, 'so it must hang here, at eye level. You know the rule, big canvases go above the line.'

'Daubing it with extra carmine, are you, in the hope someone will notice it?' asked the man. 'What have we come to, when the game is won by mere flashy colour and famous faces? When important contributions to the noblest form, to history painting, are shunted out of sight, so that silly sketches of actresses can hog the view!'

Anne felt the blood rush into her face. 'It could be said, sir'—her voice coming out like a gunshot—'that Miss Farren's career represents the triumph of merit over birth. Through genius alone she has won herself a place as great as any duchess in this gallery.'

The furious painter had whitened. 'I beg your pardon, madam.'

'Mrs Damer,' said Mr Downman with a bow.

The other man blustered. 'I meant no disrespect to any friend of yours...'

'Oh, come, I'm a friend to merit in any form, in art as in theatre,' Anne told him in what she hoped was a more relaxed tone. 'Speaking of which,' she said, strolling over, 'I'm greatly taken by your Brutus, especially the elegant line of his sword arm.'

'You can see it, all the way up there?'

'Perfectly, sir; fear not. It dominates the room.' Anne had placated him without even knowing his name; all it took was a compliment. At times like these she was glad to be a mere Honorary Exhibitor who didn't have to earn her bread, or entangle herself in the vicious politics of the Royal Academy. The Members thought her rather a freak, she knew, but better that than one of their snarling pack.

E
LIZA WAS
just back from a trip to her cousins in Dublin, where her Bens (Miss Tittup, Beatrice and Kitty Hardcastle) had cleared her a startling £492. Derby hadn't been sure he'd get back from Newmarket on time to bring her to the Exhibition, so after consulting with her mother she'd decided to let Walpole be her escort, thus offending neither the Richmonds nor the Devonshires; Eliza had almost too many friends of rank these days.

'Such a shocking mob,' said Walpole happily, 'but it's always the way on Opening Day. This vertiginous staircase, did you know, is said to represent the arduous climb of the artist to Olympus.' Eliza placed her arm on Walpole's as if to lean on him, but actually she was supporting his brittle wrist between her fingers. 'Gad, my gouty foot will burst at the seams,' he groaned, as they were pressed up the stairs.

'Perhaps you should be at home in Berkeley Square.'

'Oh, better than that, my dear, I should be in a little boat gliding down to Twickenham, amid sweet June breezes and the chime of blackbirds, far away from this noxious city. And I've much to do at Strawberry Hill; have you heard of the opening of the tomb of Edward IV?' The antiquary spoke as if this were the most exciting news of the summer. 'I'm in hourly negotiations to buy a lock of the miraculously intact royal beard.'

'You might come again another day,' she suggested, 'when the crowd is less overwhelming.'

'But my dear, it's the crowd I'm here for,' said Walpole. 'I didn't pay my shilling to look at art under such ghastly conditions; I'll consider these pictures' pretensions to immortality at my leisure, some other time. No, today I'm here to watch the World lining up to look at themselves in oil and watercolour, like monkeys hee-heeing at a looking-glass!'

Eliza laughed behind her ivory fan.

They had to move slowly with the crowd; it was like wading through mud. They edged into the Great Room. 'Modelled on the Salon Carrée in the Louvre. You notice the resemblance?'

'I'm afraid I've never seen the Louvre,' Eliza told him, trying not to sound pathetic.

He blinked at her. 'What could have possessed you to bypass that sacred portal?'

'I've never crossed the Channel; my education didn't include a Grand Tour,' she reminded him with a smile.

'Of course not, but my dear Miss Farren, this won't do!'

'My time isn't my own. I'm answerable to the public,' she explained, hiding her impatience. 'When do I ever have the time to go off on a pleasure trip?'

'Dreadful,' said Walpole, shaking his desiccated head. 'Something must be done. I'm past all hope of travels myself, I'm afraid, but perhaps Mrs Damer—' The crowd swirled them apart for a moment. 'Nothing here worth looking at,' he reassured her, when she had hold of his twig of a wrist again, 'except Georgiana in that corner, with her spaniel.'

Eliza scanned the portraits.

'No, no, my dear, the person herself, there.'

She laughed at her mistake, recognising the Duchess through a crack in the crowd, beaming up at her sister's portrait. It was an indifferent painting, but the crowd was thick around it, because the word was that the beautiful Harriet and Sheridan had been caught in flagrante last week and Harriet's husband, Lord Duncannon, meant to institute divorce proceedings.

'Any canvases of you this year, my dear?' asked Walpole.

She led him to Downman's watercolour.

'Charming; that'll sell well in engravings.
Portrait of a Lady,
a very suitable tide,' he read in the catalogue. 'Do you notice all the ladies in the big oils look identical this year? Gad, how they leer down at one! The same vast hat, fluffy grey powdered curls and winsome expression.'

'We're slaves to fashion.'

'Whereas an old lizard like me is immune to its siren call. I've had this waistcoat since 1765,' he boasted.

Passing a small oil of Dora Jordan in breeches, Eliza managed to feel a moment's sympathy because her rival was said to be having a dreadful summer; first she'd fallen out with an Edinburgh manager over money and had resorted to the desperate, undignified tactic of writing to the papers to justify herself—then her mother had died in her arms. Eliza couldn't imagine daily life without her mother by her side. She and Walpole finally managed to squeeze into the little sculpture room. 'Ah, my beloved child,' he said, seizing Anne's gauzy ribboned sleeve, 'if I may address a genius so improperly!'

She gave her hand into his, then kissed Eliza. 'It's been weeks,' Anne murmured. 'I heard the most thrilling accounts of your conquest of Dublin from the Duchess of Leinster. Here, come and meet yourself'—tucking one arm into Eliza's.

Eliza hadn't yet seen the
Thalia
finished. Besides, it made all the difference to have it posed on its pedestal, as if floating above the crowd. The lustre of the white marble startled her. 'It's astonishing,' she said in Anne's ear. 'People will think me a poor, fleshly copy of the stone original.'

Walpole found his tongue at last. 'I can hardly imagine,' he murmured, 'how sweet it must be to see all those long months of labour transmuted into beauty.'

'Oh, but you write books, sir,' Eliza protested.

'Not the kind that transfix their readers with ecstasy,' he said, rueful.

'Are you enjoying yourself, despite the crush?' she asked Anne.

The sculptor loosened into a smile. 'I am, I confess. It does me good, once a year, to feel my chosen art matters so violently to so many people. I always half expect someone will be trampled to death on the stairs!'

'Perhaps the Muses would appreciate the sacrifice,' Walpole said merrily, then caught sight of one of his many nieces and excused himself to greet her.

'I can't take my eyes off my own marble face,' Eliza said, then turned to look at Anne. 'I don't think I've ever thanked you, have I?'

'Why should you?'

'Thank you,' said Eliza simply. But even as she said it she was aware of performing the phrase, of delivering it in as modest and charming a way as she could. That was the problem with her profession: it made it impossible to stand, sit or speak without some aura of self-consciousness.

'It's I who should be thanking my model,' Anne protested. 'In fact, I have a little gift—nothing that need embarrass you, just to mark the happy occasion.' She took a tiny package out of the pocket that dangled in the seam of her gauze-covered skirt.