16
Bath dawned cold, bright and dry the next day. It was the kind of morning that felt like a beginning, and as Eliza and Margaret stepped out of Camden Place, Eliza was hard-pressed not to consider it a sign of sorts. She smiled. She had not been able to stop smiling since a boy from the Pelican had delivered her Somerset’s note an hour previous, her heart so brimming with joy that she felt certain it must be spilling out of her to the rest of the street.
“The satisfaction might be approaching a little much, Eliza,” Margaret said, regarding her indulgently, and Eliza laughed, twining their arms together and setting off at a brisk trot.
She had hardly slept the night before—too alight with emotion to do anything other than sketch idly until the early hours of the morning, her mind turning the night before over and over in her mind, and yet she did not feel tired, but rather restless with energy.
They were bound for Mr. Berwick’s painting rooms, just off Monmouth Street, where he had begun exhibiting his new works. He had delivered the invitation to Margaret at the concert’s interval the night before, and as soon as Margaret had let it slip this morning, Eliza was hurrying her into her pelisse and nudging her out the door, motivated as much by a desire to be out, to be moving, as by curiosity. The sun hit their faces as they passed onto Lansdown Road and Eliza lifted her head to be able to enjoy it all the more, smiling again. It was a wonderful day.
“Your engagement will not remain a secret for long, if you continue beaming in such a way,” Margaret said, laughing.
Eliza shushed her half-heartedly.
“I am not engaged,” she reminded her. “More . . . engaged to be engaged.”
“Very different,” Margaret said. “It is a good thing, then, that I had not yet badgered you into accepting Mrs. Gould’s—very literal—companionship. This is a far superior state to leave you in.”
“I am glad you think so,” Eliza said. “For I had wondered if perhaps—once your sister’s child is handed off to a governess—you might make your home with us.”
Margaret gave a bark of laughter.
“I do not think Somerset would be happy to share your company, so soon into your marriage,” she said.
“He has already agreed,” Eliza said.
“Under duress?”
“No,” Eliza insisted. “He is fond of you, himself—and he knows that you are important to me.”
“We shall see,” Margaret said dubiously. Then, nudging Eliza’s elbow, she added, “I am delighted to see you made so happy, Eliza, but are you sure you wish to quit Bath for Harefield?”
Eliza could not prevent the instinctive shudder that ran through her at the thought. But—
“Harefield will feel different, with him,” she said. “I am sure of it.”
They would close up the state apartments, rid the house of its gloomiest memorabilia, light the fires—and besides, Eliza imagined they would spend most of the year in London, or on visits, or inviting friends for long house parties . . .
“What friends are these?” Margaret asked gently, when Eliza voiced this aloud. “Lady Hurley? Melville? Would Somerset like to have such persons visit him?”
Eliza frowned. Lady Hurley, perhaps, for Somerset had softened toward her, but the Melvilles—the thought was laughable. The trouble was, when otherwise would she see Melville—and Lady Caroline, of course—if she could not issue such an invitation? Equitable rank they might be, but they hardly ran in the same circles, usually—that they had come across each other in Bath at all was utter happenstance. Or, perhaps fate, if one was feeling more poetic, that is.
“I think we are here,” Margaret said, peering around, and Eliza shook the thoughts from her head. Somerset had voiced it correctly, after all. They would solve all such problems, once they were together again.
Mr. Berwick’s showrooms at 2 Westgate Buildings had once belonged to portraitist Thomas Beach, and they were so magnificent in size and ambience—Mr. Berwick had employed a violinist to play whilst his guests browsed—that Eliza was immediately struck by jealousy. How she would love to have such spacious rooms available to her, a painting room with perfect light and a capacious showroom calculated to display her pieces to their utmost advantage—to feel confident to exhibit, rather than hide.
“It is impressive,” Margaret said begrudgingly, as they began a slow circuit of the room, pausing to gaze at the landscapes and portraits they passed. Eliza had hoped to confirm that Mr. Berwick’s self-satisfaction was entirely unwarranted, but that he had talent was not surprising. He had exhibited so frequently at the Royal Academy, after all, and though he was hardly an exciting artist, Eliza had to acknowledge, as she stood in front of a three-quarter-length portrait of a woman—Van Dyck–inspired, certainly, with the froth of fabric, lace and flowers all about her—his gift with a brush.
“Good morning, Lady Somerset.” Mr. Berwick appeared eagerly at her shoulder.
Though it was still morning, he was turned out in prime style, a diamond pin stuck in his elaborately knotted neckcloth, and Eliza noticed he was now wearing his cuffs a little paint splattered, in Melvillian fashion.
“I am so glad you could attend! Ah, I see you are admiring Madame Catalani!”
Madame Catalani? Eliza turned back to regard the painting again. She supposed it could be her: her hair was the correct color, after all, and she was wearing the same dress she had when she performed at the Assembly Rooms, although as Mr. Berwick had rendered her skin paler and her frame far slighter than Eliza remembered, and bafflingly, as having far more décolletage than she possessed in reality, Eliza had not recognized her.
“Are you sure we are looking at the right one?” Margaret said, disbelief clear in her voice.
Fortunately, the fortifications of Mr. Berwick’s ego ran too deep for him to notice.
“Everyone has praised the likeness most effusively,” Mr. Berwick said. “Mr. Fletcher deemed it absolutely splendid.”
Eliza smiled. Of course he did.
“But you simply must see the portrait I exhibited last year,” Mr. Berwick said. “Come—the Morning Post praised its innovatory use of color . . .”
Margaret snorted quietly as they followed.
“Behold!” Mr. Berwick said, standing back and giving a rapturous sigh as he regarded the painting. It was larger than the others—the only full-length portrait in the room—oil on wood, the subject posed in a classical style. The whole effect was certainly accomplished, but the longer one looked, the more that seemed a little off. The proportions of the subject’s body were peculiar: the torso too long, the legs, on close examination, curved, like a wishbone. Eliza stepped forward. At closer quarters, the pastoral backdrop was all wrong: a sheep larger than a horse, a horse standing at the same height as a chicken. It was a farmyard from a nightmare.
“Some have called it a masterpiece, of course, but I myself think it is not above adequate.”
If that. Eliza had assumed such a portrait—which had stood among the great artists of the age, with eyes and importance and consequence afforded onto it—would be miles and miles above her own work in quality. But had she shown such a painting to her grandfather, he would have rapped her over the knuckles with a paintbrush.
“Oh, Mrs. Winkworth has just arrived—if you will excuse me . . .”
Mr. Berwick bustled off. Margaret stepped level with Eliza, peering forward herself.
“I must say, this ought make you feel a great deal more confident,” she said.
“It does,” Eliza said. “It almost makes me think . . .”
“Yes?”
“It is of no import,” Eliza said, deciding not to voice the thought aloud.
For what purpose would submitting her own portrait of Melville to the Summer Exhibition serve, other than vanity? She was tempting fate sufficiently by painting the portrait in the first place, was she not? And even if her fortune no longer felt quite so precarious—Somerset was hardly going to remove his fiancée’s income—she still had to find a way of explaining the whole scheme to Somerset in a way he would understand. It was more than enough to worry about, without adding new pressure. Certainly, it would be the realization of every childhood dream she had harbored, ever since her first visit to Somerset House at ten years of age. It might constitute proof, finally, that she did have skill, did have talent. It might allow her to call herself, at last, an artist.
“Shall we be off?” Margaret asked. “I have a few books to fetch from the library.”
“I think I shall return directly home,” Eliza decided, as they stepped out of the saloon back onto the street—Staves the footman springing back to their side from where he had been waiting.
“Writing to Somerset?” Margaret guessed, grinning. “Very well, I shall see you anon.”
They turned in opposite directions, and as Eliza wound her way through the streets at a leisurely pace, she looked around her with renewed admiration. Knowing that her days in Bath were numbered, Eliza felt all the more aware of its beauty, its shining stone, its hills upon hills, the regal curve of its townhouses: it was just so beautiful. She was crossing onto the Royal Crescent, just for the pleasure of looking upon it, when a wild clattering of wheels had her turning around, startled to see, careering down the street toward her at top speed, a shining high-perch phaeton. In it, resplendent in a riding habit à la Hussar and a tall beaver hat plumed with curled feathers, was Lady Caroline.
Eliza let out a genuine gasp. It was well known, of course, that Lady Caroline was a prodigious whip, but it was quite another thing to see it in real life.
“Lady Caroline!” Eliza exclaimed, both in shock and in greeting, as Caroline brought the horses to a prancing stop beside her—her groom jumping down to hold their heads.
“I ordered my phaeton down from Alderley,” Lady Caroline said in explanation, her eyes sparkling. “Hang the expense! Do you like it?”
“It is magnificent,” Eliza said.
“May I take you up for a while?” Lady Caroline said, extending a hand in invitation. “I have just taken Lady Hurley up for a few streets, but I should like to spread their legs properly out of town.”
Eliza hesitated. The high-perch phaeton looked very precarious, the frail body of the carriage hanging directly over the front axle, its bottom a full five feet from the ground. And she was only barely dressed for walking—a sturdy pelisse thrown over her flimsy morning dress in her haste to leave the house. And, further, what would be considered typically eccentric of Lady Caroline in London might well, for Lady Somerset in Bath, be remarked upon as dreadfully unusual.
But . . . With her engagement—her almost engagement—were not the days of watching her behavior so closely behind her?
“I would love to,” she said, feeling reckless, and after bidding her footman return to Camden Place without her, she accepted the groom’s assistance into the carriage.
Eliza had ridden in a high-perch phaeton once before, invited by a gentleman in her first Season—but either her memory had failed her, or that young buck had been a far more sedate driver than Lady Caroline, for this felt like something different entirely. Exhilaration was too small a word for it. The carriage, so unlike its placid cousin, the barouche, offered no protection to its riders at all, and though the day had felt not overly windy while walking, perched above the spokes and driving at what must be ten miles an hour at least, it buffeted directly into her face. By the end of the street, Eliza was breathless. By the time they passed out of Bath and into the fields surrounding the city, she was clutching tightly to her bonnet for fear its ribbon was not strong enough to keep it upon her head and letting out involuntary shouts at every tight turn.
Lady Caroline took them on a wide loop around Bath, and only once they seemed to be on the return journey did she allow the horses to slow sufficiently for proper conversation.
“Oh, I needed this!” Lady Caroline said, shaking her head like one of her horses. “My mind simply does not work without exertion—I have been struggling to write since we arrived.”
“It must be difficult, to write again after such a delay,” Eliza noted, raising her head to the sunshine.
“Oh, there has been no delay,” Lady Caroline said. “I am always writing—it is just publishing that I have avoided these past years. The brouhaha after Kensington was such that I had to retreat from society, for a while.”
“You—retreat?” Eliza said, unable to mask her incredulity. Nothing in Lady Caroline’s deportment—so fearless and glamorous—had given Eliza reason to believe she was bothered by scandal.
Lady Caroline navigated a tricky turn of the junction with an unhurried flick of her wrist.
“You cannot have been in London at the time,” she said. “Our closest friends paid no mind to the outcry, but many hostesses would not receive me. And while it took Caroline Lamb two years to be readmitted to Almack’s after Glenarvon—a far more improprietous text—they were slower to forgive me. But then, standards for Melville and me will always be different than they are for our cousins—as my mother so often warned us.”
“You are related to the Lambs?” Eliza said, though it ought not surprise her, for the aristocracy did have a wretched habit of marrying their own relatives.
“And the Ponsonbys, though more distantly,” Lady Caroline said. “Our family trees are all hopelessly tangled.”
Eliza regarded Lady Caroline out of the corner of her eye.
“The . . . Irish Ponsonbys, too?” she asked tentatively. There had been another article in the newspaper that week about Miss Sarah Ponsonby and her companion Miss Eleanor Butler, dubbed together the “Ladies of Llangollen,” that had made some scandalous intimations.
“If you refer to Miss Sarah Ponsonby, then yes,” Lady Caroline said, seeing through Eliza with ease. “Though I have no gossip for you.”
Eliza flushed pink.
“The sequel to Kensington,” she said in a quick change of subject for she did not want Lady Caroline to think her scurrilous, “you mean to publish it?”
“If I can,” Lady Caroline said.
“And you are not concerned about the consequences?”
“Certainly I am,” Lady Caroline said. “It is why I plan to seek refuge in Paris this summer. Distance should insulate me a little from condemnation.”
“But . . . then why risk it?”
“Because I want to,” Lady Caroline said, as if it were that simple. “It is the work I am proudest of and I’ll be damned if I will be intimidated out of publishing it.”
“You do not think it better to . . . wait,” Eliza said. “Until a more fortuitous time?”
She thought, briefly, of the steadily growing murmurs linking Melville and Lady Paulet.
“I tire of waiting,” Lady Caroline said. “I shall not do it anymore.”
“You are very brave,” Eliza said. “I could not . . .”
“Couldn’t you?” Lady Caroline said. “And what of Melville’s portrait?”
Eliza shook her head.
“It will always remain anonymous,” she said. She was under no qualms that Somerset was likely to find the revelation of her painting Melville’s portrait difficult enough, without it being publicly known. “I did think, however . . . I did wonder . . .”
Eliza looked at the side of Lady Caroline’s face, dithering for a moment, before deciding that while Melville might be blindly supportive, Lady Caroline would surely answer her honestly.
“I did wonder about submitting the portrait to the Summer Exhibition,” she said in a rush. “I saw the work Mr. Berwick is to submit, and I think—well, I do not think mine is all that much worse. But then, why should I do such a thing—even anonymously, it will only invite more inquiry, more spectacle, and for no gain other than vanity.”
“And for what reason do you think Mr. Berwick submits his work?” Lady Caroline asked politely.
“For publicity, I am sure,” Eliza said. “How else will he earn a living?”
“He has an independent income of two thousand pounds a year,” Lady Caroline said. “As he told me himself.”
Eliza digested this for a moment.
“Ambition and pride are not muscles women are generally encouraged to cultivate,” Lady Caroline said. “But that does not mean we are incapable of learning. If your true qualm is a lack of talent, well, rest assured that Melville has known enough artists to know skill when he sees it.”
“Do you refer to Lady Paulet?” Eliza asked, before she could stop herself.
Lady Caroline gave an incriminating pause before answering.
“Yes, we have often been in her way,” Lady Caroline said.
“Is she as wonderful as they say?” Eliza asked.
A landscape artist of great renown even before her marriage to Lord Paulet—himself a great patron of the arts—Lady Paulet’s praises were regularly sung across all the elegant drawing rooms of London’s West End.
“She is as talented as they say, if that is what you are meaning, and quite as capricious,” Lady Caroline said. She did not say “capricious” as if it were a compliment.
“And she is a beauty?” Eliza asked, unable to help herself. She was not sure what she would gain from knowing the lady was beautiful—of course Lady Paulet would be, to have ensnared a gentleman such as Melville—but she found herself ravenous for detail.
“She is certainly not the sort of woman one can easily look away from,” Lady Caroline said.
Eliza nodded tensely. She wished she had not asked.
“The rumors say that she and Melville were . . . closely acquainted,” she said, peeping at Lady Caroline from the corner of her eye.
“I had not realized that particular piece of gossip had already reached Bath,” Lady Caroline said, voice neutral—which was tantamount to an admission, in Eliza’s view.
“Rumor has it,” Eliza decided to risk bluntness, “that Lord Paulet’s discovery of the affair is what led you to come here.”
“I cannot speak to my brother’s private affairs,” Lady Caroline said briskly, “though you may rest assured that all involved suffered a great deal.”
Eliza subsided, feeling herself chastised, and they drove in silence for a while—Eliza admiring Lady Caroline’s graceful handling of the reins.
“How came you to be able to drive so well?” Eliza asked.
“My mother taught me,” Lady Caroline said. “My father taught her.”
“I did not know that she drove, too,” Eliza said.
“My mother was careful always to behave as the perfect lady of quality in public,” Lady Caroline said briefly.
“But she was accepted into society, was she not?” Eliza said, brow wrinkling. “I thought the Queen’s patronage had . . .”
“Acceptance was not so simply achieved,” Lady Caroline said. “There were those who found her a fascination, but to others, she had to do much more than simply change ‘Nur’ to ‘Eleanor.’ Each day was an exercise in proving her refinement, her European sensibility, her knowledge of English custom.” Lady Caroline’s mouth twisted into a rather bitter smile. “While English ladies all around her bedecked their bodies in Bengal muslin, their shoulders in Kashmir shawls and their houses in chintz without a single thought.”
Eliza had not known—well, she had assumed, naively, that save for a few spiteful persons, all had been resolved with the Queen’s blessing.
“And you do not . . .” Eliza said, her mind flickering back to Lady Caroline’s decision to hang social consequence. “You do not feel a similar pressure?”
“It is a little different for me,” Lady Caroline said. “I was born here. I grew up with the sons and daughters of dukes and earls as my playmates. My skin is lighter. It is not easy—but it is different.”
Eliza nodded, silently.
“At Alderley, though, we could always be at ease,” Lady Caroline said. “It was there Mother taught me to drive.”
“I always thought it would be a wonderful thing to know how to do,” Eliza said enviously.
“You can always learn,” Lady Caroline said.
Eliza laughed. “And who on earth would agree to teach me?”
“Why, I would,” Lady Caroline said, quite casually. “Let us start now.”
“You cannot be serious!” Eliza said.
“I am quite serious—you have been observing me do it for a little while now. Come, take the reins.”
“Lady Caroline, I do not think this is at all—” Eliza began to object.
“Oh, do call me Caroline,” she said impatiently, dropping the reins into Eliza’s lap. Alarmed, Eliza seized them and pushed them back toward her, but Caroline whipped her hands behind her back so that she could not.
Eliza looked to Wardlaw, Caroline’s groom, perched behind her, hoping he might offer assistance, but he merely gazed back at her, a hint of amusement in his eyes.
“Do not look to him for help, Lady Somerset!” Caroline instructed. “Come now, I thought you wanted to learn.”
“I have not the faintest idea of what to do!”
“Do not look so frightened!” Caroline said. “Now, hold them as so . . .”
It was far less exhilarating, far more terrifying, to be the driver rather than the passenger, and Eliza hunched low over the reins, her eyes wide with nerves, feeling she might turn to stone with how tightly she held herself.
“Try not to look so pained,” Caroline instructed. “It is not at all dashing if one looks pained.”
“I am trying not to kill us,” Eliza said through gritted teeth.
“At this pace, I think it far more likely that we perish from starvation,” Caroline muttered. “The peril is part of the fun!”
She let Eliza have the reins for a full twenty minutes. As Bath began to rise up around them once more, Caroline took the reins back for the final few miles. They drew up outside Camden Place and Eliza gathered her skirts around her—bone-tired, but thrilled with herself—but Caroline laid a hand on her arm, stopping her.
“Lady Somerset,” she said. “Eliza. You may ignore me if you wish, but . . . I think that to have the means and the opportunity, but to not act, simply because you are afraid—it would be the most terrible waste.”
Her face was uncharacteristically earnest.
“Thank you,” Eliza said. “For today.”
“Please pass on my regards to Miss Margaret,” Caroline said, gathering up her reins. “And inform her we shall be tackling the future tense upon the morrow.”
And she set her horses briskly off once more, leaving Eliza in the dust with a great deal to think about.
Camden Place
March 2nd 1819
Oliver,
The days without you draw long, but I have waited for too many years to quail at six weeks. However long they take to pass, I know our reunion will only be sweeter for its interlude.
As I said to you on that night—I need not, I am sure, specify which I mean—there is much we must speak of still. So much that I wonder we wasted so much time upon pleasantries, when there are such vast quantities of each of our lives that remain a mystery for the other.
I do not think I mentioned, for example, that I am still painting. Perhaps you do not even remember that I used to do so, but I have received a commission while in Bath—to be fulfilled anonymously, but a proper artist’s commission, nonetheless. And while you may think it sadly self-indulgent—as you well know, I lack for neither income nor diversion—even if vanity were my only motivation, I should wish to see it through. I will see it through.
I await your reply—your thoughts—with truly excessive eagerness, and remain
Yours forever,
Eliza