Stephanie Barron: Jane and The Wandering Eye

That she was unsuited for Isabella, or Lady Macbeth, or even the role of Portia in The Merchant of Venice , need not be underlined. Twelfth Night , perhaps, or She Stoops to Conquer , may have shewn her talents to advantage; but at the Duke of Wilborough’s intercession with the Drury Lane director, Lady Macbeth she played — and opposite no less a personage than the redoubtable Mr. Garrick.

The performance — there was, alas, only one — was declared to have been lamentable. The outraged patrons hissed and shouted, threw all manner of refuse from theatre pit to stage, and forced the curtain down in the very midst of Lady Macbeth’s celebrated walk. Eugenie de la Falaise was mortified, and disappeared abruptly from public view, never to return to the London theatre.

We cannot in justice fault the fifth Duke for having married her. He may be forgiven the indulgence of his folly. The pity, the generosity, the rashness her ruined career may have excited — we can have only the merest idea of how they worked upon his sensibilities. Eugenie was, it is said, a beautiful woman at twenty-four; and though she is now a grandmother these many years, and Wilborough long since gone to his reward, she is no less formidable a presence.

I say this, having found my eyes directed to the Dowager Duchess upon first gaining entrance to her drawing-room. Tho’ possessed of fully seventy years, and requiring the support of a stout cane she clutches tightly in one hand, Her Grace commands immediate attention. Her narrow features and shuttered aspect recall the face of her son, Lord Harold; but where the effect is often forbidding in the latter, it may be declared devastating in the former. A lesser man than the Duke of Wilborough — accustomed as he was to the power of doing as he liked — would have braved greater scandal in pursuit of such a woman.

And scandal there was. His Majesty George II is said to have interceded in the match, which condescension was stoically declined. The Duke’s political fortunes may subsequently have suffered. Certain of his acquaintance may have cut him dead. But others, made more valuable through the passage of time, accepted his bride; and accepted no less the heirs she pragmatically produced.

Bertie, who succeeded his father, bears the greatest fidelity to the Wilborough line, in character as well as countenance; Lady Caroline Mulvern, née Trowbridge, is the unfortunate picture of her Trowbridge aunts; but in the face of Lord Harold, the impertinent among society’s loquacious have gone so far as to question paternity. Lord Harold is so clearly Eugenie’s son, that the late Duke might have had nothing to do with his fashioning.

The Dowager stood in the midst of her fashionable rout last e’en arrayed in the form of Cleopatra — an Egyptian robe and a circlet on her brow, with a velvet mask held before — and beside her stood a girl so very much of Eugenie’s stamp, albeit some fifty years younger, that I knew her immediately for the Lady Desdemona, Lord Harold’s errant niece. She was robed to perfection as none other than herself having ignored the general command of fancy dress; and her quite ordinary appearance amidst the general excess of baubles and plumage rendered her as exotic as a sparrow in Paradise. I could trace no hint of her mother, Honoria, or her apoplectic father, Bertie, in her narrow and elegant face, and wondered whether her character was as French as her countenance.

“Jane,” Eliza cried, her visage incongruously marred by the mask that covered fully half of it, “Henry will have me to dance; and though I confess the heat and crush make the prospect an indifferent one, I cannot find that sitting down should be so very agreeable either. Can you forgive us our desertion?”

“Go, my dear, and make as frivolous a figure as your murdered Queen may support. I shall do very well in idleness here. I find I have an excellent prospect of Lady Desdemona.”

“Where?”

“She stands beside the Duchess.”

“Ah,” Eliza said, with the driest satisfaction, “in the figure of an ingénue. She might readily be Cecilia herself, and prepared to thwart a cavalcade of admirers, whose costumed obscurity can only encourage impertinence. Let us call her Virtue, and have done.”

“Indeed? I had thought her merely to disdain all pretence or disguise. And burdened as I am with so hot and ungainly an outfit” — I surveyed my multitude of muslin underskirts with a shake of my bonneted head — “I cannot in justice criticise. I fairly long for an exchange.”

“Perhaps. But does her abhorrence — or wisdom — reveal a niceness of temperament and taste? Or may we judge her merely to spoil sport?”

“I cannot undertake to say, without a greater knowledge of the lady.”

“Then find her out, my dear Jane, and I shall be content to think as you do. It saves me a vast deal of trouble in thinking for myself.” And with a smile and a care for her overpowering headdress, Eliza left me to Lord Harold’s business.

I began by surveying the company — a torrid blend of the comely and the grotesque, their colours garish and their accents brazen, relieved somewhat by the solitary interval of an elegant figure, composed against a doorframe or supporting a distant wall — engaged, it seemed, in an activity similar to my own. A Harlequin I espied, resplendent in a suit of black and red, in the closest conversation with a stately Queen Elizabeth; and a fearsome Moor, all flowing capes and harshly graven features — though not in attendance upon my particular Desdemona. More than one visage I detected, that when deprived of its domino might daily grace the pages of the Gentleman’s Magazine , or one of Gillray’s satiric drawings. [7] James Gillray (1757–1815) was the foremost political caricaturist of Austen’s day. His satiric prints began to make their appearance in the 1780s. The aquatint engravings generally made sport of fashionable scandals or political missteps, much as do present-day political cartoons. — Editor’s note.

A full quarter-hour of observation, however, could not betray to my sight the predatory horde whose idea had so excited Lord Harold’s anxiety. Two men only approached the Lady Desdemona — yet another Harlequin, suited this time in diamonds of alternating black and white; and a fellow who might well have been Henry VIII, tho’ of a corpulence supplied by tailor’s padding. These two seemed as intent upon conversation with the Dowager Duchess, as with her lovely charge.

“And are you, too, of the Theatre Royal?” came a voice at my shoulder; and looking up, I beheld a Knight in the semblance of armour, complete with visored head, his identity secure in mystery.

“Of its occasional box alone,” I replied, “but I may confess to admiration for good, hardened, professional acting. Are some part of the company present, then?”

“The masquerade is in their honour.”

“So I had understood. But with so many figures in fancy dress, how is one to divine the true player from the false?”

My companion bowed. “You merely posit, madam, the oldest question of mankind.”

I studied the visored face, which revealed nothing of the gentleman within. Could it, in fact, be Lord Harold, making sport of circumstance? The voice betrayed an echo of the Gentleman Rogue’s tone. But no. He should hardly engage my offices on the Lady Desdemona’s behalf, had he intended to form one of the party.

“I wonder, sir,” I began again, “that you can think me a member of such exalted company.”

“I merely tossed at hazard. You might be exalted in any number of ways — as I might myself. We appear as utter strangers the one to the other; but indeed we might claim the deepest intimacy, and yet pass in ignorance, so impenetrable is our garb.”