Wicked Company (27 page)

“How
dare
you call
The Dupe
rubbish, you insolent jade!” retorted a voice Sophie recognized as Frances Sheridan’s. “Garrick rejected your play before he left for Paris, so there’s no point in crying foul to Colman or me!”

“Why you—” Sophie heard Mavis Piggott shout, and she feared the two female playwrights would soon come to blows.

“You will cease this
at once!”
George Colman thundered.

“Stop… stop… ladies, I beg of you!” echoed William Hopkins, whose pleas were all but lost in the furor emanating from the Greenroom.

“Mavis Piggott, you have breached all propriety, not to mention your contract—” Colman declared.

“I shall not set foot upon this stage as an actress until I have your word as a gentleman that you will also mount
my
play!” Mavis said mutinously.

“Well, then, my dear,” Colman replied in frigid tones, “as I have already selected the new works I intend to present this season, we will have no further need of your services.”

“No doubt, you will continue to ‘present’ more of your
own
drivel,” Mavis charged.

“I would have you know that my last play received endless bravos and ran ten nights,” retorted Colman icily. “’Tis scheduled by popular demand throughout the rest of the season—which is far more success than
you’ve
ever realized. Begone, strumpet! Pack your costume trunk and leave here tonight before the curtains part!”

There was utter silence both in the Greenroom and on stage where various theater personnel were preparing the rehearsal space for the first run-through of Frances Sheridan’s play. Sophie quickly stepped behind one of the flies as Mavis Piggott stormed out of the Greenroom, pausing at the threshold to impart her exit lines.

“I’ve read your play, Frances,” she spat. “’Tis full of endless prattle and boring detail. Not even Kitty Clive will save your Mrs. Friendly. Mark my words, ’twill be hissed off the stage!”

“Go burn your bridges somewhere else, woman!” Colman ordered furiously. “We’ve no need of such baggage at Drury Lane.”

“You shall rue such words!” Mavis hurled back at the top of her lungs. “And I’ve plenty of bridges yet to cross, sir! Smock Alley will be pleased to have me back, I’ll warrant… and I shall tell them of the infamy that rules the playhouse here!”

And with that, Mavis Piggott turned and charged past Sophie, who simply stood and gaped.

“I shall write to Ireland forthwith,” Colman muttered loudly. “We shall see if
my
report of this affair does not
keep
her unemployed! Hopkins!” he ordered gruffly. “Now, let us waste no more time. Frances, my dear, have you survived that hissing shrew? Nothing like womanly envy to stir things to a boil, eh what?”

“Mavis Piggott begrudges any who advance ahead of her,” Frances averred as she, Colman, and Hopkins filed past the Greenroom door. “’Tis not merely my sex that prompts her so to vent her spleen.”

“Ah… Sophie!” Hopkins exclaimed upon noticing her standing in the shadows. “So glad you are here.” The trio seemed relieved to be able to shift their focus to the assignment at hand. Sophie offered Frances Sheridan a sympathetic smile, which the older woman returned, ruefully shaking her head.

“All right, everyone,” Colman was saying, bustling on stage. “Let’s get started. Is Kitty Clive here? Players, are you ready? Lighting master? A reflector in the flies will throw more illumination on the scene, if you please. Attention, everyone! Let us begin.”

***

Unfortunately, several of Mavis Piggott’s barbs proved to have substance. Even with Kitty Clive portraying the middle-aged featherhead, and with Mrs. Pritchard and Mrs. Palmer doing their best,
The Dupe
desperately needed Garrick’s sharp eye and editing skill. To Sophie—and the audience—the work seemed flabby and verbose.

Although the comedy opened December 10, as scheduled, it played only two additional evenings. On each of those nights, it was roundly hissed in the fourth and fifth acts during sections in which Mavis Piggott was to have played a small role. Colman sadly determined that to curry favor with the disaffected public, he would substitute two old chestnuts,
The Conscious Lovers
and
High Life Below Stairs,
rendering Frances Sheridan’s profits for her new play virtually nonexistent.

“I’ll wager ’tis a cabal organized by Mavis,” Kitty Clive asserted when the curtain closed on
The Dupe
for the last time. “Try not to be too disheartened, Frances, my dear.”

“What will you do now, Mrs. Sheridan?” Sophie asked with concern. Thomas Sheridan was playing an engagement in Dublin so the poor woman had faced the entire calamity without his support.

“I shall meet my husband in Bath where he’s to lecture on oratory,” she sighed wearily, “and will try to decide whether to attempt play writing ever again.”

“But
The Discovery
was such an enormous success!” Sophie protested. “You shouldn’t think of quitting.
The Dupe
simply needed a bit more time to bring it to perfection!”

“You are sweet,” Frances said, smiling at Sophie sadly, “but the battle with Edward Capell in the Lord Chamberlain’s office to secure a license each time, plus the vagaries of the stage…” she allowed her words to drift off. “I think, perhaps, I should remain a novelist. ’Tis far less treacherous for the author, I think. Especially if one is a woman.”

True to her word, the dramatist repaired to Bath before the week was out. For Sophie, the small flame of desire to try her hand at the play-writing trade had been snuffed out by this humbling glimpse of the perils facing even experienced women scribes like Frances Sheridan.

***

Christmas Day dawned bleak and cold, with steady sleet beating against Ashby’s shop windows. Sophie spent the morning reading a book in bed, determined not to feel sorry for herself. After several hours, she gave the embers on the hearth a stir and noticed that outside, a light snow was dusting the cobblestones of Half Moon Passage, now devoid of all traffic.

In the eerie quiet, she began to muse about the tumultuous year since she had arrived in London. In two months she would be turning nineteen, she realized with a start. And this very week Hunter had sent her holiday greetings from Bath with a return address that told her he was living on Pierpont Place, in the neighborhood of John Arthur’s Orchard Street Theater. In the dim light of Christmas morn, she donned a simple day dress, trundled downstairs to the shop, and extracted his missive from her desk, relishing its contents on this lonely Christmas morn.

I play the occasional Romeo to some plump, middle-aged Juliet, and have done Benedick quite to my liking, of late. Most of my efforts, however, fall in the realm I’m most comfortable playing: songs, skits, and light entertainment. Bath, it seems, is where one comes when one’s been sacked or plagued by London creditors. As neither catastrophe has befallen me, I am quite the curiosity among my fellow players.

So much for the tale of my adventures. I thank you for your missives sent care of the theater and apologize I am such an inferior correspondent, but you were ever the scholar and the scribe, and I, your poor, untutored but affectionate friend, H. R.

Ah, a postscript, and how could I forget? The sentiments that prompted this poor communication—A Happy Christmas, dear Sophie, from your Guardian Angel who prays constantly that you are behaving yourself. Relieve my anxiety on this question by writing me at Number Six, Pierpont Place, Bath.

“Happy Christmas, Sophie!” Lorna’s cheerful voice called out, interrupting her languorous perusal of Hunter’s letter.

Sophie looked up and saw her friend smiling outside the book shop’s front window. Short puffs of frigid vapor rose in the air with each word.

“Let me in…
’
tis
freezing
out here!”

Sophie swiftly unlocked the door and ushered Lorna inside.

“Quick, I’ve a fire in the hearth upstairs. Come up and I’ll brew you some tea.”

The two young women shared a companionable cup of the bracing liquid. Then Sophie donned her aunt’s best dress and combed her hair back into a simple style tied with a scrap of ribbon at the nape of her neck. They had gladly agreed to join Mrs. Phillips and several shop assistants in making short work of a roasted goose cooked to order by the Half Moon Tavern. Sophie had also bought a pastie, some cheeses, and a sack posset, a delicious custard made of milk, nutmeg, eggs, and sherry that she intended to take to her aunt at Bedlam in hopes the turnkey would allow his patient to enjoy such Christmas savories.

***

The hired coach deposited the two visitors at Moorgate and the driver was instructed to wait.

“’Tis difficult for you to return to this place, isn’t it?” Lorna asked quietly.

Sophie nodded somberly. She felt her heart thudding in her chest at this first sight of Bethlehem Hospital’s imposing facade since her hasty exit four months earlier. She sighed audibly, thinking of the diatribe she’d written describing the scandalous cruelties and abuses that took place within its grand facade. Unless one had actually been inside, Bedlam looked ever so respectable.

“Aye… even those statues bring back horrible memories,” she shuddered as her gaze fastened on the gigantic renderings of Mania and Melancholy that guarded the hospital’s entrance.

The two young women mounted the steps and walked gamely through the entry into the impressive foyer.

“So, ye’ve sweetmeats for that cracked aunt of yours, have ye, luv?” the turnkey leered, his appreciative gaze surveying the visitors and their basket. A ring filled with keys hung from his gargantuan waist and his breath smelled of gin. “Have you considered offering any Christmas cheer to old Jackson?”

Sophie fished out a small pork pie from one of her pockets and two shillings from another.

“I’d be pleased if you would accept these small tokens, sir,” Sophie said sweetly. “And much obliged if you’d deliver this basket to Mrs. Ashby, with Christmas wishes from her niece.”

“Small tokens, indeed,” groused the man called Jackson, “but as ’tis you two pretty things that’s asking—”

“Turnkey!” interrupted an authoritative voice. “What, pray, are you doing! You are quite aware that we do not allow such rich, distempering foods to be given our patients!”

Sophie froze, having identified the speaker as Bedlam’s fearsome director, Dr. John Monro. She had risked returning to the lunatic asylum because she’d been certain that the head of the hospital would be at home, gnawing the bones of his own Christmas goose. She grabbed Lorna by the hand and was about to make a dash for the door when Dr. Monro blocked their path.

“Well, well, so you’ve come to pay a call on that demented creature you call aunt,” he said, eyeing her narrowly. “I wagered ’twould be a lifetime ‘ere I saw
you
in Bedlam again. You had no use for our methods as I recall.”

Sophie swallowed hard and exchanged anxious looks with Lorna—the only person she had taken into her confidence after publishing her broadside about the horrors of the place.

“I see there are others far more knowledgeable than I who take issue with what passes for treatment here,” Sophie retorted, and instantly regretted her audacity.

“So there are,” Dr. Monro replied evenly, regarding her with a penetrating stare, “and I’ve often wondered who—other than that upstart William Battie—had enough knowledge of this institution to write so descriptively…”

He stared at her with an intensity that raised the hackles on the back of her neck.

“I can’t imagine what you speak of, sir,” Sophie said with feigned nonchalance. “I hope you will have the decency to deliver my Christmas goods to my aunt. I bid you adieu.”

“Not quite so fast, missy,” Dr. Monro growled, taking a menacing step closer.

“We’ve merely come to bring Christmas provisions to Mrs. Ashby,” Lorna spoke up bravely.

“This does not concern
you,
chit!” he snapped, causing Lorna to clutch Sophie’s hand in a deathlike grip. He turned his malevolent gaze back to Bedlam’s former inmate. “I can assure you that I have not enjoyed having such outrageous criticism published about me, especially as I suspect ’tis a mere layperson claiming to understand the subtleties of science,” he said in a threatening voice. “Nor did I appreciate being summoned to answer queries before Parliament,” he added, glowering.

Sophie bit her lip to keep back an intemperate reply.

“’Tis no affair of ours,” she managed to answer. “Now if you will simply let us pass, we will trouble you no further.”

“Indeed, you
won’t!”
he said angrily, his flashing eyes studying Sophie as if trying to piece together a puzzle. “As I recall, your aunt and her husband had that book shop and
printing
establishment near Covent Garden known for producing foul abominations and selling prints not fit for decent folk.” A satisfied smile began to crease his lips. “I doubt the Crown magistrates would hesitate to accept my bill of libel accusing John Ashby’s niece—a former
inmate
—of printing lies about me in the paper and distributing scandal sheets around the town.”