Three

The Country Wife

Susannah, Lady Messingham, arrived intentionally late at the Drury Lane Theatre. With far more eyes attending the goings-on in the boxes and the pit than upon the stage, she was grossly mistaken in her belief that she could slip into the box unremarked.

Jane, Lady Hamilton, seated incongruously between her husband, Archibald, Lord Hamilton, and her lover, the Prince of Wales, beamed a warm greeting with a wave of her fan to indicate the empty seat behind her. After making her obeisance to the Prince and Princess of Wales, Susannah slipped as inconspicuously as she could contrive into her seat.

The play was Cibber’s revival of William Wycherley’s The Country Wife, a notoriously bawdy Restoration comedy, with Kitty Clive as Margery. It was a favorite production of the prince’s; he was well-known for his vulgar sense of humor. Act I had already begun with the young bride, Margery, just up from the country, conversing with her new sister-in-law, Alithea, as Margery’s jealous husband, Mr. Pinchwife, eavesdropped from behind the drawing-room door.

***

While the audience enjoyed the satire of the pretty young country girl married to the jealous and possessive older man, Lady Messingham’s mirth faded with the dour reflection that the scene played out much like her own life of the past ten years.

Like Wycherley’s Margery, she had been a country bride, the property of a jealous and possessive husband, and ignorant of the ways of the sophisticated world. Unlike Margery, however, she had also spent the past months languishing by the sickbed of a dying man.

She had longed for a normal life, one so many others took for granted, but those days were now behind her. Free at last of husbandly constraints, she was determined to live, yet the strictures of mourning made her new widowhood both blessing and curse. After six months of formal mourning, she was restless, yearning for the pleasures of town life so long denied her. Making an effort to throw off the melancholy thought, she drew her attention back to the stage.

When the curtain dropped signifying the end of Act I, the men departed to procure a drink, leaving the women alone in the privacy of the box. Lady Baltimore and Princess Augusta were engaged in a tête-à-tête, and Jane turned to Susannah for their own private conversation.

“How are you enjoying the play, my dear?” Lady Hamilton asked.

Lady Messingham affected an impish air and mimicked Margery, “La, but what proper, comely men are the actors!”

“Well done!” Jane let out a peal of laughter. “You might do as Lavinia Fenton and take to the stage to catch yourself a duke.”

“Lavinia Fenton?” Lady Messingham asked blankly.

“She was the first actress to play Polly Peachum in Gaye’s Beggar’s Opera, and was quite the star. She was for a time the most talked-of person in London, even before causing the greatest scandal of the decade.”

“What was that?”

“You really were buried in the country if you never heard of her elopement with the Duke of Bolton. Lavinia was a grasping actress, and no better than she ought to be, but the poor fellow was so smitten that he scarce missed a performance. By the end of the season, he left his wife for the shameless hussy! She let the whole thing quite go to her head too, the vulgar baggage. While the duke may have kept her on the side without remark, their setting up house together was truly beyond the pale. Such outré behavior is just not to be borne.”

Harsh words of denunciation, and more than a tad hypocritical, coming from a royal mistress, thought Susannah, with Lady Hamilton’s ongoing liaison with the Prince of Wales such a poorly kept secret. Uncomfortable with the topic of mistresses, she deftly changed the subject.

“You truly are an angel for including me this evening, Jane. I have few acquaintances of my own age. My social circles were limited to Nigel’s set for so many years that I feel rather akin to a fish out of water, but I’ll be deuced if I’ll be cloistered any longer.”

“I understand your position far better than you think, dearest. I was little more than a schoolgirl myself when I was pledged to old Archie, thirty years my senior. And as his third wife, no less, though I really have no cause to grouse. No wife could wish for a more even-tempered and complacent husband.” Jane smiled. “I certainly shan’t judge you for wanting to live, Sukey. Sir Nigel died a happy man. You have no reason to feel guilty.”

“To tell the truth, Jane, I have not the slightest guilt. I was his faithful nurse through it all, but now I am no longer attached to an old man crippled by gout, living is precisely what I intend to do. I’m done with mourning and kowtowing to the dowagers.”

“I warn you to maintain discretion or they will eat you alive, my dear.”

“I don’t even care anymore, Jane! They never accepted me from the moment Nigel took me to wife, the jealous old cows. They have no pity, no compassion, even though I spent nearly a decade of my life married to a man who could have been my grandfather.”

“You know you can always count on me,” the lady smiled. Delighted with her new role of benefactress, her voice became animated with the formation of her plan. “My darling girl, I fully intend to induct you into our Leicester House set, where I’ve no doubt you’ll soon become one with the most beautiful ladies, and a toast among our brilliant men.”

“How I would love that, Jane! Nigel would never take me out amongst such fashionable people.”

“No doubt for fear of the attention you would draw, as evidenced this very evening.”

“What do you mean?” Susannah quirked a thinly shaped brow. She had chosen her gown with the greatest care, but without her customary lace fichu the cut revealed much more than Nigel ever would have allowed. Although pleased by the compliment, she now wondered if she might have been a bit too daring—but wearing it so was her own little rebellion.

“Come now!” Jane laughed. “You must know what a stir you have caused. Half the peers in this theatre craned their necks for a better view when you came into the box.”

Including the prince himself, Lady Messingham thought ruefully. Although seated with his wife on one side and his chief mistress on the other, the heir to the throne had cast his eye upon her a number of times throughout the performance. Perhaps he’d begun to tire of Jane’s constant importuning for her husband’s advancement, or, more likely, was just following family tradition by adding to his collection of mistresses. In either case, the proposition of a liaison with the bug-eyed prince held no appeal to Susannah.

Leaning closer, Jane spoke behind her fluttering fan. “You know, Sukey darling, there are any number of highly placed gentlemen who could ensure you a more than comfortable life. You could easily take your pick of the lot, after a proper interval, of course.”

“But, Jane, I haven’t the slightest desire to remarry.”

“Pshaw! What nonsense!” Jane said and gestured grandly to the posh theatre and its fashionable occupants. “You well know, such a life as this is not lived without considerable expense.”

“I am more aware than you know, but any eligible man of my own age won’t have me. After my childless marriage, ’tis no secret I’m barren. If I cannot provide the requisite heir, I have only the options of an aged bachelor or widower, and I refuse to live the rest of my life warming another old man’s bones!”

Jane smirked. “Then do you intend to spend your dotage as a shriveled-up old dowager with only the company of a house full of cats?”

“Indeed not!” Sukey heartily denied the thought. “I’ll not lack for company. Now that I’ve put off my weeds, I plan to attend the opening of every opera, dance holes in my slippers at each ball, and promenade all of London’s pleasure gardens on the arm of a different dashing beau every evening.”

“Do you now?” Jane’s brows rose in mock censure. “Then perhaps a word of wisdom would not go astray? Though I hate to disillusion you, dearest, even the most gallant of men will expect some… tangible reward… for his service to you. But with youth and beauty yet on your side, wife or mistress would be purely your choice…”

“But Jane, you don’t understand at all.” Her voice was nearly choked with frustration. “After living so many years akin to an exotic pet on a chain, now that I am finally free, why should I trade one cage for another?”

“You know as well as I, Sukey, a woman in your position has but two options: a husband… or a protector.”

“I won’t have it, Jane. There must be another way,” Susannah insisted. “I refuse to be placed under any man’s dominion again. Who, now, must I truly please but myself?”

Jane’s eyes only grew wider. “But without a man’s patronage, how in heaven’s name do you propose to maintain your lifestyle?”

After a moment’s reflection, Sukey asked, “Jane, just how do so many men of similar reduced circumstances go on?”

Jane scoffed in reply. “Those without a patron, you mean? Far too many of them subsist only by gaming. Cards, dice, cocking, pugilism wagering, horse races… the list of worthless pursuits goes on and on.”

“Gaming?” Sukey repeated with a sudden gleam.

Jane was aghast. “My dear, you have no idea the danger you would court in contemplating such a ruinous thing!”

“But why not, Jane? If others make a living at the green tables, why shouldn’t I?” She thought of the young gentleman she’d met over the hazard table the prior evening and her face lit with a winsome smile. “After all, I only lack someone to teach me…”