Fanny and Stella (19 page)

Vulgar rivals and cheap imitators had periodically attempted to usurp the position of the
Gazette
as the town’s social lodestar, as its finely calibrated chronometer of gentility. The
Scarborough Advertiser and List of Visitors
had lasted a mere four months, while the grandly named
James Greasley’s Scarborough Times and Weekly List of Visitors
survived just a matter of weeks. It was true that the
Scarborough Herald and Weekly List of Visitors
had mounted a more sustained siege, lasting, much to everyone’s surprise, for two years and two months, before withering on the vine. The
Scarborough Gazette and Weekly List of Visitors
sailed on, unperturbed and imperturbable, through rough seas, storm and tempest, as Scarborough’s ship of social state.

The entire purpose of the
Gazette
, its beginning, middle and end, was polite society and the social round. Week in, week out, the
Gazette
would appear at exactly the same time on a Thursday morning with two or three, and sometimes more, pages devoted to listing those visitors to Scarborough considered to fall within the pale of polite society. For ease of social gradation visitors were grouped together according to which hotel, apartment or other establishment they were residing in during their stay, and these selfsame hotels, apartments and other establishments would be listed in strictly
de
scending order of gentility.

Scarborough’s long season stretched from March to almost the end of November, and every day of every week the train would shudder slowly to a halt alongside the railway station’s famously long platform, and from its first-class carriages would be disgorged and deposited, like the shining pebbles washed up on the Strand, a fresh batch of distinguished visitors to make new patternings in Scarborough’s endlessly shifting social sands.

And what pebbles, what patterns, what sands! When Royalty, in the ample figure of the Prince of Wales, graced the town with a visit in 1869, the news caused much fluttering in the breasts of the ladies of Scarborough. Some were propelled into a positive frenzy of excitement and gave themselves up to endlessly promenading the fashionable shopping streets, or genteelly loitering in the gardens and parades in their best bonnets, in the forlorn hope of dropping a curtsey to His Royal Highness.

The Peerage was well represented, with a fair sprinkling of Dukes and Duchesses and Dowagers, Lord This’s and Lady That’s, as well as a baker’s dozen of baronets or their relicts. There were any number of Honourables, and an even larger number of assorted, untitled relations: annuitarians of all shapes and sizes; cousins of multiple and dizzying removes; swathes of elderly maiden aunts and blustering port-nosed uncles; and plenty of plain – in the fullest sense of the word – Misses. Almost without exception these assorted relations were as poor as church mice – poorer even, if such a thing were possible – but they kept up appearances wonderfully well and never ceased bragging about and basking in the reflected glory of their wealthier kin.

Then there were those from the middle ranks of society: an abundance of elderly and wealthy widows; plenty of plump ladies of a certain age richly dressed in Macclesfield silks garnished with gold and diamonds; ruddy-faced gentleman farmers and their ruddy-faced lady wives, who always looked a little uncomfortable in their Sunday best; surgeons, lawyers and portly parsons and lean preachers with their wives and children, as well as the odd Collector or lesser-ranking official of the East India Company spending his six months’ home leave by the sea. Without any particular distinguished connexion but with plenty of money, they had managed to establish a precarious toehold in Scarborough society by dint of lavish hospitality and a willingness, bordering on the slavish, to flatter and praise and pander to their social betters.

Scarborough prided itself on not being narrow, on not being hidebound. The wealthy, as well as the well-born, all had their contribution to make and it would be foolish to make too many hard and fast rules. All were meticulously recorded in the hallowed pages of the
Scarborough Gazette and Weekly List of Visitors
as if it were the Book of Life itself.

Apart from those invalids – real and imagined – who came in search of a cure and assiduously drank the vinegary, brown chalybeate waters famed for their aperient properties – ‘it strengthens and exhilarates the bowel,’ according to
Theakston’s Guide to Scarborough
(author and publisher: Mr Solomon Wilkinson Theakston) – and discovered by the enterprising Mrs Thomasin Farrer in the reign of good King Charles, matrimony was the main purpose and preoccupation of Scarborough’s visiting gentlefolk. Like a vast flock of migratory birds that each year flew to the farthest shores to seek out a mate, so the distinguished and the not-so-distinguished, the rich and the poor, the plain and the beautiful, the old and the young, the hopeful and the hopeless, those with a past and those with a future, flocked to Scarborough for the annual mating season where rich and brilliant plumage, elaborate courtship rituals, dancing and singing, struttings, couplings, feints and sleights made it a sight to behold.

There was a mild flutter of anticipation among the readers of the
Gazette
of Thursday, 15th October 1868 when that august organ, struggling gallantly with the spelling of Stella’s given name, announced that ‘Lord Arthur Pelham-Clinton, M.P. and Mr Earnest Boulton, Esquire’ would be appearing next Tuesday and Wednesday at the Spa Saloon, Scarborough in a dramatic double bill,
A Morning Call
and
Love and Rain
.

The subsequent sudden and dramatic postponement of the entertainment at the Spa Saloon took everybody by surprise. Mr George Reeve Smith, the manager, took the unusual step of publishing the text of the terse telegram he had received from Lord Arthur:

Oct. 20, 1868. – Clinton, London, to Smith, Spar.

Ernest Boulton very unwell. Cannot leave London to-day. Will start by nine train to-night. Pray postpone entertainment until Wednesday.

It was felt by everyone to be a most gentlemanly telegram, and there was widespread speculation as to what the sudden indisposition of Mr Ernest Boulton might be. It was to be hoped that it was neither serious nor contagious (especially not the latter, in case Lord Arthur contracted the contagion, and then who knew what might happen). But the anxious matrons of Scarborough were reassured by the fact that Mr Boulton would clearly be well enough to travel later the same day, though everyone knew that travelling through the night was ruinous to health. Indeed, there was such a wave of sympathetic interest in the wellbeing of these two young men that when they arrived in Scarborough bleary-eyed and half-asleep early on the Wednesday morning, both performances were completely sold out.

In its edition of Thursday, 22nd October 1868, the
Gazette
recorded, erroneously, the names of the two distinguished visitors who had arrived the day before: ‘Pelham-Clinton, Lord Arthur M.P.’ and ‘Belton, Ernest Esq.’ They were staying at the Royal Hotel, where the startlingly named ‘Mr D. Anus’ was also listed as residing. Though considerably less expensive than the newly built Grand Hotel with its 365 bedrooms (one for every day of the year), the Royal was nevertheless highly regarded by
Crosby’s Guide
as ‘the oldest and most aristocratic’ of the Scarborough hotels.

The more enthusiastic readers of the
Gazette
were curious, more than a little curious, to see Lord Arthur Pelham-Clinton in the flesh. Apart from being the third son of a very distinguished Duke, he had been, it was said, quite a hero during the dreadful Indian Uprising, though no one could remember the exact details of his gallantry. More to the point, he was the Member for Newark (and quite a rising Member, it was said, with the patronage of Mr Gladstone assured by virtue of being his godson).

It was a trifle unusual, Scarborough conceded, for a rising Member to tread the boards so enthusiastically; such theatrical propensities seemed more than a little odd, especially as the interests of most gentlemen from similar stock began and ended with blood sports. But whether there was any impropriety in it was quite another matter. Scarborough noted that Lord Arthur had appeared on the professional stage alongside the Marquis Townshend’s troupe of ‘Noble Amateurs’, and so as far as society was concerned that was the end of it. Any endeavour, theatrical or otherwise, which numbered in its ranks at least one Marquis must be a highly respectable, if not positively praiseworthy, pastime.

There was one aspect of Lord Arthur’s life in which Scarborough took a particular and kindly interest. He was known to be unmarried at the present time, and in the eyes of Scarborough society an unmarried Lord was an unmarried Lord and therefore an extremely desirable commodity for their many unmarried daughters. Though there had been rumours of engagements, indeed of several engagements, none of them had fruited into matrimony. It could well be that Lord Arthur was currently engaged. Scarborough would cross that bridge when – and if – it came to it. But a man was innocent until proven guilty. Scarborough would therefore treat Lord Arthur as
not
engaged to be married – and go on treating him as such until proof positive was offered to the contrary.

According to the well-thumbed copy of
Dod’s Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage of Great Britain and Ireland
in Mr Theakston’s Library (founder and proprietor: Mr Solomon Wilkinson Theakston), Lord Arthur Pelham-Clinton was twenty-eight years of age – the perfect age, in the opinion of many, for a man to marry; an age when the impetuosity of youth gives way to manly maturity, when wild oats have been sown (and sometimes unfortunately reaped), and when most men are soberly considering taking a well-brought-up wife with a comfortable fortune.

Then, of course, Lord Arthur was a bankrupt and his name had been in the newspapers. Though the shame and stigma of bankruptcy might well damage the chances of other, lesser, men in the matrimonial market, the wealthy matrons of Scarborough with spinster daughters on their hands saw it as a positive advantage. It was a truth universally acknowledged that a single man
not
in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a rich wife. And the same could surely be said for Lord Arthur’s theatrical consort, Mr Boulton or Mr Belton (the
Gazette
, puzzlingly, had it both ways), who was very likely a most superior sort of young man, although rigorous interrogations of the pages of
Dod’s Peerage
had not, as yet, borne fruit.

S 
tella played the roles of Fanny Chillingtone and Lady Jane Desmond to the hilt, with plenty of stage whispers and alouds and asides, managing half a dozen lightning-quick costume changes which delighted the audience and brought forth storms of applause. She was beautiful and she was fascinating, and the audience could not keep their eyes off her. She effortlessly ran through the gamut of emotions, being, by turns, thrillingly bitter and bitingly sarcastic, aristocratically haughty, foot-stampingly impatient and curl-tossingly petulant. She was mischievous, worldly, calculating, but could switch in a flash to vulnerable, fearful and tearful. She simpered, she flirted, she smiled and she was coy. She was compelling and she was dazzling. She sparkled and she shone like the diamonds she wore on stage, reflecting and refracting all the wonderful, the multifarious, the flashing and the fleeting moods of Woman Incarnate. The audience loved her.

Unsurprisingly, the
Gazette
was positively fawning in its praise of the actors. The Spa was ‘honoured’ and its frequenters ‘delighted’ by the ‘two charming little drawing-room pieces’. The
Gazette
was especially in awe of ‘the very easy “at home” character of the acting’ which quite obviously reflected ‘the
au fait
acquired by the social position of the actors’.

Lord Arthur and his companion were invited to attend the sumptuous studios of Mr Oliver Sarony in order that a series of photographic likenesses might be taken. In the commodious dressing rooms of Sarony’s studios (‘an establishment with every convenience for carrying out Photography to perfection’, his advertisements in the
Gazette
proclaimed), they were to dress themselves as Sir Edward Ardent and Mrs Chillingtone. Mr Sarony took no fewer than thirty-four different negatives for a sequence entitled ‘Man and Wife’. In a long and exhausting session, Stella was also prevailed upon to pose in other attitudes and costumes, including as a nun at prayer, which made a most striking and soulful image.

The photographs sold like hot cakes, and Mr Oliver Sarony struggled to keep up.

‘Was there a popular demand for these photographs?’ Stella’s barrister asked him in court nearly three years later.

‘Yes,’ the photographer replied. ‘There was a great demand.’

‘They sold freely to the Gentlemen and visitors in Scarborough?’

‘Very fast, as fast as we could print them.’