Jane and the Barque of Frailty (3 page)

“Eliza, mignon,” she crooned as she presented one powdered cheek in all the appearance of affection; “how hagged you look this evening, to be sure! The years, they have never sat lightly upon you, bien sûr! You have been fatigued, sans doute, by your visit to Surrey last evening—it was a great deal too good of you to solace my exile!”

We had indeed ventured into Surrey last night, despite all my doubts regarding Sunday travel, to enjoy an evening of music at the d’Entraigues abode. The old Count spoke nothing but French, and I understood but a fraction of the communication, tho’ Henry admirably held up his end, and declared the gentleman to be a man of parts and considerable information. The son, young Count Julien, who appears everything an Exquisite of the ton should be, with his excellent tailoring, his disordered locks, his shining boots, and his quantity of fobs and seals, delighted us with his superior performance upon the pianoforte.

The Comtesse had deigned to sing.

Taken all together, I should rather endure a full two hours of her ladyship’s airs in the Italian than a few moments of her conversation; and as she and Eliza put their heads together, I considered instead how the Theatre Royal might serve in a novel: the comings and goings of great personages, a lady’s chance encounter with an Unknown; or the appearance of a Rogue, for example, who might interpret the slight nothings and subtle displays of the ton with an understanding far more penetrating than my own …

It was impossible to be in London at the height of the Season without reverting in thought to Lord Harold Trowbridge. That late denizen of Brooks’s Club, that consummate sportsman and intimate of princes, should certainly have graced one of these lofty boxes, and been in close converse even now with Lord Castlereagh, perhaps, however little he liked that Tory gentleman’s conduct of war. He should have profited by the play’s interval in dallying with a lady, or shown himself one of Harriette Wilson’s favourites, his sleek frame displayed to advantage against the marble columns of the tier. But would he, in truth, have noticed Jane?

The question arose with a pang. At five-and-thirty I cannot pretend to any beauty now. My evening dress of blue, the beaded band encircling my forehead, the flower tucked into my hair—arranged with all the genius Eliza’s French maid could command— is yet nothing to draw the eye. One must be possessed of extraordinary looks or a great deal of money to figure in London. Had his lordship lived, he might have called at No. 64 Sloane Street, as he condescended to do in Bath and Southampton—and left his card as my Willoughby does for Marianne—but in the Greater World Lord Harold’s notice may have been denied to me.

I like to think, however, that he would have approved of my book. It was always an object with Lord Harold that I should write.

“Blue-deviled, Jane?” my brother Henry enquired gently as he reappeared in the box. “We have been leading you quite the dance these past few weeks. I daresay you’re wishing yourself back in Hampshire!”

“Not at all,” I replied, banishing my ghost with effort. “You know me too well for a frivolous character, Henry, to imagine me ungrateful when such divine absurdities are laid at my feet! What writer worthy of the name should prefer the confined and unvarying circle of the country to this? Only observe Eliza’s French count, old d’Entraigues, paying court before Mr. George Canning—and he no longer Foreign Minister, with favours to bestow. Observe Lady Castlereagh endeavouring to ignore the fact that Beau Brummell and the Ponsonbys prefer Harriette Wilson’s box to hers! But tell me— who is that woman with the aquiline nose and jewelled tiara, quite alone in the seat opposite? She cannot tear her regard from Lord Castlereagh. I should consider her excessively rude, did I not imagine her to be a princess of the blood royal, and thus beyond all censure.”

“A princess indeed,” my brother replied with a careless gesture of his quizzing-glass, “but not of the Hanoverian line. You have detected a Russian noblewoman, my dear—the Princess Evgenia Tscholikova. She is resident in London nearly a year, and may be claimed as one of our neighbours—for she has taken a house in Hans Place, hard by Sloane Street.”

“A princess, rusticating in the oblivion of Hans Place!” I declared. “I should rather have expected Berkeley Square, or Brook Street at the very least.”

“Her means, no doubt, are unequal to her station.”

“But why does she gaze at Lord Castlereagh so earnestly? His lady certainly does not notice the Princess; and the gentleman is deep in conversation with another.”

“That is like Evgenia,” broke in the Comtesse d’Entraigues, with a disparaging glance at me over her bare shoulder. “The Princess will always be playing the tragic actress, non? A man has only to spurn her, to become the most ardent object of her soul.”

Eliza rapped her friend’s knuckles with a furled fan. “You will shock my sister, Anne. Do not be letting your tongue run away with you, I beg.”

“But surely you have seen the papers, Eliza?” The Comtesse’s voice was immoderately loud; several heads turned. “It is everywhere in the Morning Post, if one has eyes to see and the mind to understand. The Princess’s letters to Castlereagh—most importunate and disgusting, the very abasement of a woman in the throes of love—were sold to the Post but a few days ago. The editors would disguise the principals in the affair, of course—as ‘Lord C——,’ and ‘the Princess T——,’ but the truth is known among the ton. Evgenia has disgraced herself and his lordship. Lord Castlereagh has only to conduct himself as usual, to silence the impertinent; but I wonder that she dares to show her face.”

The malice behind the words was sharp and pitiless; a worse enemy than the Comtesse d’Entraigues I should not like to encounter, and of a sudden my sympathy went out to the Russian noblewoman, who alone among the Great at the Theatre Royal was lapped in a chilly solitude, no friend to support her. I, too, had read the salacious excerpts in the Morning Post, but lacking all familiarity with the ton, had no ability to put a name or face to the initials. My cheeks flushed with consciousness as I recalled a part of the correspondence.
My limbs burn with the desire to lie once more entangled in your own … There is nothing I would not sacrifice, would not risk, for the touch of your lips on my bare skin … I can hardly write for anguish, I tremble at the slightest glimpse of you in publick, my dear one, desperate to have you alone …
However abandoned the prose, it was vile to consider of it strewn before the publick eye.

“What I desire to learn,” I said indignantly, “is who should undertake to traffick in a lady’s intimate correspondence?”

“Her maid, perhaps—if the girl was turned off without a character,” suggested Eliza.

“But Castlereagh was the recipient of the letters,”

Henry objected, “which must point to a culprit in his lordship’s household.”

“Unless he returned the Princess’s correspondence,” I offered.

“I will lay odds on it that she sold them herself,” the Comtesse d’Entraigues pronounced viciously. “She would enjoy the fame, however black.”

“You are acquainted with the lady, I apprehend.”

“Twenty years, at least. She has the habit of inserting herself in my affairs; I will not deny that I abhor the very sight of her.” The Comtesse rose abruptly, smoothed out her silk gown, and said, “Eliza, I will wait upon you in Sloane Street tomorrow. Do not fail me.”

Eliza bowed her head in acknowledgement, and the Comtesse swept away—the curtain being about to rise on the second act, and all further conversation being impossible in the presence of Sarah Siddons, and the blood that stained her hands.

B
Y THE MORNING
I
HAD ENTIRELY FORGOT
R
USSIAN
princesses and French countesses, their affairs of the heart or their implacable hatreds—for it was Tuesday, the twenty-third of April, and thus the very date determined by Eliza nearly two weeks before, for an evening of musical entertainment, the professional performers to include a player upon the harp, one upon the pianoforte, and a succession of glees, to be sung by Miss Davis and her accompanists. The evening was intended as a sort of tribute to Mr.

Henry Egerton—no relation to the publisher of my book, but the son of one of Henry and Eliza’s friends—and Henry Walter, a young gentleman who is a cousin in some degree to all of us. I like to refer to the party as “the evening of the three Henrys,” and have served my hostess best by staying out of the way. There is a great deal to be done—the final orders to the cook, the shifting of a quantity of furniture from the passage and drawing-rooms, the disposition of chimney lights—but at ten o’clock in the morning Eliza and I paused to draw breath, and to drink a cup of tea. Eliza has suffered the slight indisposition of a cold, resulting no doubt from the necessity of quitting the coach briefly on our journey into Surrey Sunday evening—it being a chilly night, and the horses jibbing at some rough paving on the hill prior to the descent into the village, and all of us forced to stand about in the cold air while the coachman went to the leaders’ heads and led them over the broken ground. Eliza’s nose is streaming, and she will not be in looks this evening for her party—a vexation she is happily able to disregard, in all the bustle of preparing for her guests.

“Here is Henry,” she said impatiently as my brother stepped into the breakfast room, the morning paper under his arm, “come to eat up all the toast! I dare swear you smelled the bread baking halfway down Sloane Street, and hurried your feet to be in time.”

I held out my plate, but Henry was not attending to Eliza’s teazing words. His face was very white, and his countenance unwontedly sober.

“What is it?” his wife demanded with sudden perspicacity. “You look entirely overset, my dearest. Surely it is not—not one of the family?”

Henry shook his head, and set the newspaper on the table. “Nothing so near, thank God. But terrible, for all that. I suppose it is because we saw her only last evening. I cannot get over how alive she was, at the Theatre Royal … ”

As one, Eliza and I bent over the Morning Post. And read, in implacable print, the news: the Princess Tscholikova was dead—her throat slit and her body thrown carelessly on the marble steps of Lord Castlereagh’s house.

¹
In a letter to her sister, Cassandra, dated April 25, 1811, Jane states that Henry gave up their tickets for this performance, and that she was unable to see Mrs. Siddons—a curious prevarication, in light of this text.—Editor’s note.

Chapter 2
Blood and Ministers

Tuesday, 23 April 1811

∼

“H
OW VERY DREADFUL
,” E
LIZA BREATHED.
S
HE SET
down her plate of toast and pressed her hand to her heart. “And to think she lodged but a few steps from our door! How thankful I am that she was not killed at home!”

“ Was it murder, Henry?” I enquired.

“The editors would intimate suicide. The Princess is believed to have done herself a violence after being refused admittance to his lordship’s household.”

“But at what hour?” I reached for my brother’s Post. “Only consider—she cannot have importuned Castlereagh on the very steps of his home, even at the close of Mrs. Siddons’s play, and not been remarked by all the world! London does not go to bed so early as one o’clock!”

“Neither would she have sought an interview with his lordship at dawn, Jane.” Henry frowned. “Yet her body was found by a charley in Berkeley Square at a few minutes past five o’clock in the morning.”
¹

“She might have lain there some time, I suppose. Does a London watchman make regular rounds?”

Eliza sniffed. “Never if he may avoid it. The charleys, as you will observe, are elderly louts. I cannot recollect ever meeting with one in the lawful conduct of his duties—even when we resided in Upper Berkeley Street, which you must know, Jane, is most select. We must account it the merest mischance that the Grosvenor Square man stumbled upon the body at all.”

The Post had furnished its readers with a small line drawing of the Princess, in full evening dress, her looks ghastly and her torn throat dark with inky blood. The editors were amply recompensed for their part in the poor creature’s ruin; her violent end should sell numerous copies.

“And was this revenge?” I mused. “Her character destroyed by the publication of her correspondence, did the Princess think to shatter Lord Castlereagh’s peace? Prick his conscience? Shame his wife? Or was she simply mad with grief?”

“All Russians are mad,” Eliza observed.

“She did not appear to be out of her senses last evening, however. Recollect her earnest gaze! Princess Tscholikova greatly desired to be private with his lordship—but could have no opportunity. It must be impossible to command Castlereagh’s notice in so publick a venue as the Theatre Royal. Did she seek him, then, on his very doorstep? And to what purpose?”

“It cannot look well, her having been found at his lordship’s,” Eliza said doubtfully. “If the world fails to credit the notion of suicide, Lord Castlereagh must be suspect.”

“Fiddlestick,” I retorted. “Why should a gentleman of high estate—heir to an earldom, and known to be powerful among government circles—chuse to discard the body of his mistress in his own entryway? It will not do, Eliza, and you know it. Throw the lady into the Thames, by all means, but do not leave her lying about for the charley to find. Besides, Lord Castlereagh has no need of murder. He is the sort of man so complaisant in his own regard, as to consider the denial of his society as punishment enough.”

“What is this?” Henry cried. “Is Jane to ridicule a Tory minister? And she such a staunch opponent of the Regent and his Whiggish friends!”

“I cannot admire Lord Castlereagh,” I admitted, “Tory tho’ he is; and he has not been in government these many years, for which we are taught to be thankful. The little fact of his having a mistress is as nothing to his want of brilliance in oratory; and you well know, Henry, that his conduct of the Walcheren campaign was everywhere deplored.
²
The Great World did not mourn when he resigned the post of Minister of War.”