I - Grandcourt



I was winning when I met your gaze. Its persistence made me raise my head then doubt myself. It broke my luck.

That was our first encounter. A Saturday in September, toward four in the afternoon, the day still light but cool and fresh, Homburg so pretty, so dull, swallows in the eaves of the houses, grapevines on the walls. Little to do but stroll the main street and glance in shop windows at gifts for the rich to give to the rich: ribbons, perfumes, baubles. Only the long, red, stuccoed building in the middle of the street enticed: the Kursaal, the town's social hub. Madame von Langen, my second cousin, accompanied me. Through the great door another far door opened to a garden, beyond the garden was a park, beyond the park the Taunus Mountains wooded with fir, birch, beech, and oak. It was a vista that promised escape from the tight little town and my own despair; a vista that suggested good fortune. A vista that deceived.

In the gilded rococo gaming room naked nymphs cavorted on the ceilings; the players-old, powdered, and engrossed-multiplied in the walled mirrors. There was a reverential silence, a sanctity; red or black, the spin of the wheel, the nasal whine of the croupier: "Faites vos jeux, mesdames et messieurs." My hand, gloved in pale gray, stretched out to rake gold napoleons toward me. I was twenty and born to be lucky. My numbers were Mama's birthday, the day I was born, my father's age when he died (thirty-six), the date Mama then married the hateful Captain Davilow. That September day at the Kursaal I thought my life might transmute into luck. I began with pittance money, but the more I won the bolder I became. I felt destined to win a million francs before the end of play. I was blessed, the most important woman in the room. Then your gaze deflected me. Your judgmental eyes.

I see that gaze now. It mixed attraction with disdain. Your eyes drew me in but implied I was doing wrong. I was beautiful but flawed, you seemed to say. I felt the blood drain from my face. It was the coup de foudre (as in Bellini's Romeo and Juliet), the start of my unequivocal love for you and your equivocal love for me.

Perhaps all that followed I in a moment saw. As if I knew I was to be excluded from where I so desired to belong. I was capricious, reckless, and in need of guidance, my life waiting to be defined.

I began to lose heavily. My mood plunged, then rose in defiance. I put ten louis on my chosen number; my stake was swept away; I doubled it, again then again. It took so little time for the croupier to rake from me the last heap of gold. My eyes burned with exasperation. Madame von Langen touched my elbow and whispered we should leave. In my purse only four napoleons remained. As I left, I turned to meet your eyes, which I knew were still on me. My look was defiant, yours ironic. Did you respect my daring, my courage to lose?

Mine is a gambling temperament, impulsive, reckless, hopeful. I so wanted the high stakes, the winning chips. To win was to defy the familiarity and fear of loss. Or to court it. It took a punishing journey for me to reach a point of balance between elation and despair.

* * *

I HAD FLED to the von Langens from horror at home. I stayed with them in their hired apartment. They took scant notice of me. The baron, tall with a white clipped mustache, liked to sit in the gardens of the Kursaal and read the court columns of the Times. Madame von Langen liked a flutter at the tables, though no more than a ten-franc piece on rouge ou noir.

That evening after dinner we returned to the Kursaal for the music. I wore a sea-green dress, a silver necklace, a green hat with a cascading pale green feather fastened with a silver pin. I anticipated seeing you again. The rooms shimmered with heat from the flares of gaslights; a trio of strings played Mozart and Weber; thick-necked men with cigars talked in groups; women with fans reclined on ottomans. I felt that all who were there admired me-my retroussé nose, almond eyes, pale skin, light brown hair. I heard Vandernoodt say a man might risk hanging for Gwendolen Harleth. "There was never a prettier mouth, a more graceful walk," his companion said. I was used to hearing such things.

I flirted and charmed, but what I wanted, hoped for, was again to see you. Then you appeared. You stood in the doorway, that detachment you have, your way of observing, your tall, still figure, dark hair, dark eyes. In a nonchalant voice I asked Mr. Vandernoodt who you were. "Who's that man with the dreadful expression?" He answered he thought you looked very fine, your name was Daniel Deronda, and the previous evening he had sat with you and your party for an hour on the terrace but you spoke to no one and seemed bored. He said you were English and a relative of Sir Hugo Mallinger, with whom you were traveling. You were staying at the Czarina, the grand hotel in the Oberstrasse.

* * *

DANIEL DERONDA. I still love your name. Here in violet ink is my admission of love and pain, hope and struggle. You will never read it, though all is written with you in mind. I know now that I kept a place in your heart and that in a way you loved me, though not as I hoped to be loved, or as I loved you. I hoped I was the woman from whom you might have felt unable ever to be apart, the girl, the woman whom you might have chosen, not to take with you to the other side of the world, but to love and be with until parted by death.

* * *

I ASKED THE Vandernoodts to introduce you to me. You were related to Sir Hugo, so Madame von Langen agreed. The baron looked for you on the terrace and in the café, but you were gone. I waited, but you did not return. It was the first of the disappointments you caused me. Each left me bereft and alone. You had hovered at the threshhold, surveyed the scene, and found it not to your liking. Then you left.

That was the start of my habit of anticipation: looking for you but not finding you. How often in the city crowd have I mistakenly believed I saw you: your walk, the way you turn your head.

It was midnight when we got back to the von Langens' apartment. A letter had been left by a servant on the table in my room. It was from my mother, Fanny Davilow. She chastised me for not having written, feared this letter might not reach me, and that I had traveled on to Baden with the von Langens without telling her. "A dreadful calamity has befallen us all," she wrote. She, I, my half sisters, all of us were ruined. Our agent, Mr. Lassman, had gambled the firm's fortunes on which our entire income depended; the business had collapsed with debts of a million pounds. Whatever money I had with me I must use to return home at once for she was unable even to send my fare. I must not borrow from the von Langens for she could never repay them. We must leave our house, Offendene, immediately. A Mr. Haynes would take over its rental. We had nowhere to go; we should have to live in "some hut or other." There was no money to pay tradesmen or servants. The calamity affected my uncle (Mama's brother-in-law, Henry Gascoigne), and his family too. My four half sisters were in tears; they and Mama would have to sew or mend for a pittance wage; I must find work as a governess.

I read the letter twice. I was annoyed and unconvinced by it. I was used to Mama's laments and exaggerations and unwilling to jump to her anxious command. I had never known Mama to be happy. I feared contagion from her gloominess. My uncertain plan had been to return home at the end of September, but even before this letter I was afraid to do so. On impulse I had fled the muddle and shame that beset me there: the rich man determined to marry me, whose proposal I had almost accepted, not because I loved him or knew what love was before I met you, but to provide for Mama and be exalted in Society. And then his concubine, "the snake woman," who lay in wait for me, told me he should marry no one but her; that she had left her husband for him, and their son should be his heir.

* * *

SO MUCH HAD happened so quickly; I was in a maelstrom of temptation and fear. And now it seemed penury and homelessness threatened too. I did not know what to think or do, or where to turn. I was aggrieved by Mama's letter, aggrieved by you. Had my luck at roulette stayed unbroken, I might have won enough to pay for everything: my return home, the rent on the house, the servants' wages. But even as I read of this latest disaster, I suspected it was not money I gambled for.

I pondered whether to leave for home immediately or go to the Kursaal, win to counter my misfortune, and perhaps again see you. I decided to pawn my turquoise chain. The pawnbroker at least might give me enough to pay for an afternoon at the tables and my fare home. The chain had no sentimental attachment. It had belonged to my father, of whom I had no memory. He was killed when I was a year old, thrown from his horse as it jumped a brook.

I was impatient for morning and for the pawn shop to open. I did not go to bed. A cold bath revived me. I was traveling without a maid, so I packed my own case and put on my gray traveling dress. I pondered my reflection in the long mirror between the two windows in my room. Despite this deluge of disaster, I felt I was charmed. My happiness and good fortune must prevail.

* * *

BEFORE MY HOSTS came to breakfast I stole out unobserved to Mr. Weiner, the little Jew pawnbroker in the Oberstrasse. The morning air of late summer was sweet with roses and lavender. On my way I passed the Hotel Czarina. No one was about. As I went into the shop I thought if anyone sees me they will think I am going to buy some jewel or bauble as a gift. The chain was pretty but frivolous, and I felt no remorse at parting with it, only annoyance that the greedy little Jew priced it at a mere four louis.

Within half an hour I was back at the von Langens' apartment. My hosts were still not up, so I waited in the salon. I intended merely to tell them Mama wished me to return home and to make no mention or revelation of trouble. And now that I had eight louis, I so wanted to gamble again. I was wondering how much I could risk yet still have enough for my fare, when a servant brought in a packet, addressed to me, which had just been delivered to the door.

I took it to my room. It was the necklace I had pawned less than an hour before, wrapped in a linen handkerchief from which the initials were torn. Enclosed on a scrap of paper was a scrawled penciled note in capital letters: A STRANGER WHO HAS FOUND MISS HARLETH'S NECKLACE RETURNS IT TO HER WITH THE HOPE THAT SHE WILL NOT AGAIN RISK THE LOSS OF IT.

* * *

SO IT BEGAN. You as my conscience. I knew it was your doing. Rebuked once more, chastised by your view of how I ought not behave. It was as if you sought proof of my transgressive ways. What did you mean you hadfound the necklace? You must have watched me from a window in the Czarina, seen me enter and leave the pawnbroker, waited until I was out of sight, then hurried to quiz him. Why did you wait? What did you know of my reason for going to his shop in the early morning? I had shown no particular distress. I might have been buying presents for my half sisters. And why the ripped handkerchief and halfhearted anonymity of the necklace's return? I was angry. Who was I to you that you should be so personal? What right had you to shadow me and pry into my affairs?

I had said very little to Weiner. He assumed all valuables brought to his door were because of bad luck in the Kursaal. Perhaps you told him you were my guardian. But you knew nothing of me; we had not even spoken. You knew nothing of the letter from my mother. It was my necklace to dispose of as I wished. I might have been instructed to pawn it. Why did you assume it was of any importance to me? Why your assumption that I had an obligation to keep it? You knew nothing of its provenance. You bought it back for what was to you small change.

In my room I wept from tiredness, anger, frustration, confusion. So many damning things had already happened. I needed to believe in my own worth. Yet behind my anger I dared feel flattered, dared hope your concern was an invitation to intimacy and that you were as drawn to me as I to you. Your intrusion wounded my pride, but when you wrote of your hope of my not again risking the necklace's loss, perhaps you were offering to save me from future risk and keep me safe. I packed the necklace wrapped in your note and handkerchief and my own confusion. Your words were a reproach, like your critical gaze as I gambled. But my youthful hope was not immoderate. You were young, handsome, seemingly unattached. In the cool of early morning why should you leave your hotel, track the path of a beautiful girl to a shop, ask about her transaction there, try to put right her suspected hardship, find the address of her lodgings...? Why should you bother to do all that unless you were smitten.

I had no choice but to leave Homburg immediately. I could not risk seeing you again in the Kursaal or the street. A servant called me to breakfast. I dried my eyes and joined the von Langens. "Mama has written," I told them. "She urgently needs my help and has summoned me to return home at once."

My hosts protested at my traveling alone. I assured them I would travel in the ladies' compartment, rest on the train, and be safe. They took me in their carriage to Homburg station, instructed the porters, and waved me farewell. I arrived at Offendene on the following Saturday morning.

Offendene-set amid tranquil pastures and the leafy lanes of Pennicote village. It is the only house I have ever viewed as home. We had lived there scarcely a year when news of this financial calamity came.

Mama, my half sisters-Alice, Bertha, Fanny, and Isabel-and Miss Merry, the housekeeper, all were grouped on the porch when I stepped down from my carriage. "Well, dear, what will become of us?" was Mama's bleak greeting. I observed her faded beauty and shabby black dress. Her despondency cut me. My sisters looked at me with subdued concern. I was the eldest. I was responsible. Before my luggage was lifted down, I resolved to safeguard the roof over all their heads.

* * *

PERSEVERE WITH MY story, and you will learn how a welter of humiliation led me to sell my soul to achieve this. I did what I knew to be wrong, then paid heavily as the wheel of my misfortune kept spinning.

* * *

THE HOUSE, A sprawling redbrick mansion, was serene: the smell of applewood fires in the hearths, the flickering shadows of candlelight. Oil paintings hung above the staircase that led from the large stone hallway: a huntsman on a bay surrounded by hounds, a poacher, and a gamekeeper; sheep and goats in a barn; girls on a riverbank. The dining room's oak paneling smelled of beeswax; the rosewood chairs were covered with worn red satin. Over the mantelpiece dogs snarled at each other in two dark paintings, and Christ worked his wonders with loaves and fishes. The wainscot carved with garlands in the drawing room, the organ built by Henry Willis, all the familiar detail seemed impervious to bad news.

* * *

WE HAD NOT seen Offendene before we moved in. Uncle Henry-the Reverend Gascoigne-arranged matters for us after Captain Davilow, my stepfather, died. On moving day Mama and my sisters gathered on the porch and looked questioningly at me. "Well, dear, what do you think of the place?" Mama asked, and I made my rapid and abiding judgment: "I think it charming, a romantic place; anything delightful may happen in it; no one need be ashamed of living here; it would be a good background for anything." Offendene gave ample room for me, Mama, my half sisters, Mrs. Startin (their governess), Miss Merry, and Jocasta Bugle (the maid). Though the house lacked the splendor Mama thought my due, I truly believed we might be happy in it and that I might shut out the apprehension that the dark comes however bright the day. I have always been afraid to hear about the indifference of the universe, my own insignificance, the casual inevitability of death, and the caprice of chance. Even at school I trembled when astronomy was taught.

On the day we moved in I found that under Offendene's protective roof was hidden a prescient warning. I and my sisters excitedly explored the house. In the drawing room Isabel tapped a hinged panel in the wainscot. A painted image of a dead upturned face sprang out, with a panicked figure fleeing from it. The effect on me was extreme. I froze with fear and trembled but could not scream. Mama and Miss Merry wrapped me in a blanket. When revived, I shouted at Isabel, "How dare you open things that were meant to be shut." I ordered Miss Merry to fetch the key, lock the panel, and give the key to me. No one, I instructed, was ever, ever to open it again. The device, we later learned, was a practical joke by the Earl of Cork, who first owned the house. The eccentric earl wore knee breeches and costumes of his own invention. Another of his jokes, long removed, was a suit of armor that drew a sword when a key was turned.

Mama tried to shield me from the terror within me and assuage my fear of the dark and of being alone. I tried to assuage her loneliness and disappointment. She looked to me for comfort when my stepfather was often away. At Offendene I did not want a room of my own; Mama and I shared the large bedroom, decorated black and yellow with a view of the garden. My small white bed was made up beside hers.

On the night I returned from Homburg, in bed and overtired, behind my closed eyes I again saw Mama in her shabby clothes and heard her supplicating words, "Well, dear, what will become of us?" and then came a hallucinatory image of the dead face in the wainscot and the figure in flight. I cried out. Mama lit a candle, I crawled in with her, she called me her darling, and I slept with her arms around me. To others I seemed beautiful, daring, and rash. To her I was a child.

* * *

IF ONLY WE could have stayed at Offendene a few years before misfortune struck! There was society enough to make life pleasant. Mama accompanied me to parties and dinners: the Arrowpoints at Quetcham Hall; our landlords, Lord and Lady Brackenshaw, at Brackenshaw Castle; Mr. Quallon, the banker, at the Firs. Sometimes in summer Mama, my sisters, and I, along with my cousins Rex and Anna, picnicked on the grounds of Diplow Hall. Though the house, owned by Sir Hugo Mallinger, for most of the year was unoccupied and shuttered, its acres of secluded grounds, forested with elms and beeches, were open. Deer grazed on the grassland. We spread ourselves under the trees or by the lilied pool.

I was petulant and hard to please. I viewed myself as superior to provincial Society, voiced discontent with what was around me, and expressed little gratitude for such good fortune as I had. Though unable to define what I wanted or was capable of achieving, I could not view the Archery Club, dances at Brackenshaw Castle, and dinner with the Arrowpoints as the zenith of my ambition. Being so much admired and so often told I was beautiful set me apart. I liked to be the center of attention, in control, and to have the last word. I came to see my beauty as a kind of genius, an accomplishment of my own doing. It was like a magnet. In hotels waiters fawned, smoothed my napkin, brushed crumbs from the cloth in front of me. If the laundress ironed a crease into a sleeve, the maid would say, "This will never do for Miss Harleth." If the wood smoked in the bedroom fireplace, though Mama's eyes watered, she apologized to me. If, after a long and tiring journey, I was last at the breakfast table, the main concern would be, Was Gwendolen's coffee hot, was Gwendolen's toast crisp? "Gwendolen will not rest without having the world at her feet," Miss Merry said. And it was true. Forgive me. I was young.

I did not hide my exasperation with my half sisters. I assured them they were lesser creatures-deserving of their back to the highway in the carriage, entitled only to the smaller piece of cake.

I was incredulous that you, though you saw my charm, resisted it and even criticized me.

* * *

ON OUR SECOND day at Offendene, as I brushed my hair in front of the tall mirror in our bedroom, Mama said, "Gwendolen, dear, if you had a wreath of white roses in your hair, you'd pass as Saint Cecilia." (Mama, I have to tell you, thought my singing voice divine.)

"Except for my nose," I joked. "Saints' noses never in the least turn up. I wish you had given me your perfectly straight nose. It would have done for any sort of character-a nose of all work. Mine is only a happy nose. It would not do for tragedy."

"Oh, my dear, any nose will do to be miserable with in this world," Mama replied. It was typical of her to imbue a jest with gloom. I wanted her to be enthusiastic. I believed her melancholy made gloomy things happen. It was as if all my hope and joy could never counterbalance her pessimism, and yet she looked for and found her happiness through me.

I told Mama her dullness made me feel nothing was of use. Was it marriage, I asked, that left her disaffected? "You must have been more beautiful than I when you were young." She protested at this, of course, and in my secret heart I doubted it. "Marriage is the only happy state for a woman, as I trust you will prove," she said, and although I did not want that to be the case, I supposed it had to be true.

"I would not put up with it if it was not a happy state," I said, then told her I was not going to muddle away my life in service to a man and do nothing remarkable for myself.

I did not want to believe in the imperative of marriage. It held no appeal. I knew little about men beyond what I had read in books. I grew up with women. Mama's marriages had sapped her wealth and twice left her widowed then penniless. Family life I viewed as curtailing and petty. I had no wish for children, I found them irritating. Yet I supposed I would marry-someone of distinction and rank-I neither doubted it nor dwelled on it. I was resolved, though, that I was not going to let a man have power over me; lovemaking appalled me; when propositioned, I felt obliged to tease. I felt no attraction to any man until I met you. Marriage was not the focus of my ambition. I wanted fame but thought no further than that my life should be pleasant, that I should star at parties, be victorious at the Archery Club, applauded at the piano, and admired on horseback.

I read novels, poems, and plays, had views on Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre, Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair, the silliness of Lydia in Pride and Prejudice, the awfulness of Casaubon in Middlemarch, the piety of Eva in Uncle Tom's Cabin. I was praised for my soprano voice, the skill with which I played the piano, my graceful dancing. I could read music. I spoke passable French. But my power, my gift, was to be the most captivating person in the room. My wit sparkled.

* * *

HOW PUNISHED I was for such hubris. But through the torment I endured, I did not fall victim to Mama's dulled acceptance of misfortune. Beyond my suffering I kept alive a longing for a life that was free and a love that linked me to your wisdom; or was it to your kind dark eyes and beautiful voice?

Mama and I do not quarrel. Our love is deep. She is magnanimous, as was her mother, I believe. I was her favored child, her princess, best friend, and source of pride. She coiled my hair, fastened my dresses, advised me which gloves and what jewelry to wear. She would do anything for me, make any sacrifice, and readily forgive me any misdemeanor. In her eyes I never truly could do wrong.

But I was rash, impulsive, consumed by my emotion of the moment, and at times cruel. I recall with shame a cold night when in our beds Mama felt unwell but had forgotten to take her medicine. She asked me to fetch it. I was warm and sleepy, and I refused. "She would have done that for you whatever the discomfort, whatever the cost" was the rebuke that went through my head as I heard her stumble to the cabinet.

I was short-tempered with my sisters too. Remembered incidents of wrongdoing added to a sense that I deserved my punishment when it came ... One afternoon while I was playing Chopin's "Minute Waltz," Alice's canary kept up a shrill whistle, which I found intolerable. It was as if the wretched creature mocked me. I exploded in temper and crushed it in my fist. I killed it. Alice wept. I was shocked at myself. That I could so lose control and be provoked into rage and violence. I am capable of murder, I thought. To compensate, I bought her a white mouse, but she said she hated mice and was scared of them. I think she became afraid of me and what I might do next, and it was true I was unpredictable. To myself most of all.

* * *

THE DEATH OF Captain Davilow, my stepfather, accorded me no grief. I always hated him to come home. His attention to me was leery and unwanted. I tried never to be alone in a room with him. I could not admit my aversion to Mama. To do so would have destroyed her fragile world. But I came to resent my four half sisters and the life Mama's marriage to him compelled me to live. He squandered her money and stole her jewelry and sold it.

I think of your childhood, Deronda. Sir Hugo told me of it: how you grew up knowing nothing about your parents or even your true name. How you thought Sir Hugo was your father and on the one occasion when you met your mother she told you she could not love you.

We were both outsiders, you and I. More united by uncertainty than ever you allowed. But you plucked certainties for yourself from the fictions of the past: a prescriptive, demanding religion, a directional quest, a constant wife, whereas I ... I blew with the wind and hoped to arrive at a perfect destination.

Davilow inflicted a bewildering lifestyle on us. We moved from hired Paris apartments to hired villas in Lausanne, Baden, Amsterdam. We stayed nowhere long enough to settle, make friends, or feel part of any place. It was a lifestyle that made me restless, rootless. Mama gave birth to Davilow's tedious daughters: Alice, to whom I was asked to give lessons, was slow, pulled silly faces, and had no ear for music or languages. Bertha was always sketching flowers and leaves but covered the sketches if I asked to see them. She and Fanny whispered and giggled a great deal. Isabel was clumsy. That was how I viewed them then.

Davilow disappeared for weeks at a time without saying where he was. I do not know if Mama ever asked. I was her anchor, her link to my father, the eldest daughter, the one apart, the one in charge. I was contrary and demanding, but looking back to the days before the calamity of our loss of money, the impending loss of Offendene, my terrible marriage, I believe what formed my character, shaped my courage, was the haven of Mama's love for me. She protected me from my fears: of the dark, of loss of control, of failure, or of someone bending my brittle will to theirs.

I knew almost as little about my forebears as you of yours. Mama's father had owned sugar plantations in Trinidad, so when the American Civil War began I think she was ashamed of her family's links to the Confederates and slavery. My father's family, apparently titled, cultured, and certain of themselves, viewed Mama as inferior and an unsatisfactory wife for one of their kind. When I was twelve Mama showed me a miniature of my father, a colored portrait in a silver frame. I saw little beyond eyes shaped like mine, but I offended her by asking, "Why did you marry again, Mama? It would have been better if you had not." She blushed and said I had no feeling.

I had not then learned what she perhaps knew: that it is not only love that binds people in wedlock. Circumstance, sudden impulse, misguided optimism, and fear of loneliness and penury shape our decision making and our lives and, when we are unlucky, herald our despair.

I did not want to be shaped by Mama's melancholy, but I was. I think her marriage to Davilow began as a social and economic necessity, then became an endurance about which it was difficult for her to speak. I think her melancholy grew in the gap between the reality of life with him and the love she knew she could feel and had felt for my father.

* * *

THAT SPACE BETWEEN you and me, across the tables in the ornate salon of the Kursaal, I see and feel it now. How I longed to bridge it. As my passion for you grew, I became acquainted with the ache that life without you brought.

From the start you resisted your attraction to me. I appeared to you spoiled and impulsive. You looked for the madonna, an unswerving virtue of a sort I lacked, a purity of heart. You sensed your mother in me: your beautiful, ambitious, unavailable mother; the wicked princess who turned you from her throne. But I was not like that. I was not like that. And why did you focus on me and encourage me toward you only to reject me? You chose Mirah Lapidoth, compliant, dependent. She was the better singer and had the sweeter nature, but-and I only dare write this because I will never say it to you-she was the lesser woman.

* * *

AFTER CAPTAIN DAVILOW died, leaving Mama penniless, she, my sisters, and I managed on what Uncle Henry gave us. How I resented living under his obligation! He was excessively clear about his own importance and had strong views that he stated as facts. He sat at the head of the table, said grace as if privy to the ear of God, and his word was law. His tedious sermons made no sense to me. In his church my mind drifted, and I heard only the authority in his voice. Before taking holy orders he had been an army captain. His own expenses were great, as he was ever at pains to remind us: six sons whose education much stretched him to finance, two daughters for whom husbands must be found. The rectory came rent free, but he was obliged to entertain with formal dinners and to pay the groom, gardener, and cook.

Mama, to him and my aunt, was "poor dear Fanny," victim of not one but two unfortunate marriages. My aunt looked like Mama and was concerned for her, but her own contentment and security made her behave as if she was superior: a condescending manner accompanied her comfort and good fortune.

Uncle weighed the worth in money of my beauty. He was intent for me to be seen to advantage in Society, so that I should marry well. His thinking was that then the burden of caring for Mama and her brood would shift to my husband. He was paternal toward me, felt that as a child I had missed out on family life, and at heart found it hard to resist me. He encouraged friendship between me and his elder daughter, Anna. She was tiny, admiring of me, less aggravating and rambunctious than my half sisters, and I liked her well enough but could not view her as an equal.

Uncle frequently reminded Mama of his cleverness at finding Offendene for us, how the house was more than she might expect for the low rent she paid, its running costs no greater than an ordinary house, and how the landlord, his friend Lord Brackenshaw of Brackenshaw Castle-Uncle cultivated influential friends-owned the Brackenshaw Archery Club as well as much of Wessex.

I loathed the way I had to weasel and cajole Uncle for anything I wanted. I loved riding. There was nothing I liked more than to gallop across fields or ride with the hunt, and I very much wanted a saddle horse of my own. I put it to him, but he balked at the expense. I persisted, and when he next called for tea with my aunt and Anna, I flattered him, played the piano to his liking, induced him to join me in a duet, then urged Mama to speak up for me. "Gwendolen desires above all things to have a horse to ride-a pretty, light, lady's horse," Mama said. "Do you think we can manage it?"

Aunt looked disapproving and suggested I borrow Anna's Shetland pony. I protested I could not endure ponies and was willing to give up all other indulgence if I might have a horse. Uncle lamented the expense of his carriage horses, how a horse for me would cost a good sixty pounds, and then there was its keep, and how he only afforded a pony for Anna. As ever, he reminded Mama of the cost to him of her and her fatherless brood.

My pride wilted as Mama demeaned herself and said she wore nothing but two black dresses. I winced to hear her tell Uncle how I was prepared to tutor my sisters when Mrs. Startin left. It was as if she was begging. I wanted Mama to have diamonds, furs, whatever she wanted and not need to ask anything of anyone. Aunt went on about how Anna rode only the wretched donkey and how no horse was afforded her. But Uncle's indulgence was calculating: if I was to acquire an expensive husband-an aristocrat and landowner, with a fortune to benefit them all-a degree of finery and show was essential. "Gwendolen has," he said, "the figure for a horse."

I got my horse. I called her Twilight. Anna, content with her pony, did not begrudge me. And before long Uncle saw his worldly ambitions for me realized.

Apparently, on their way home Aunt rebuked Uncle for his indulgence toward me, but he spoke again of his duty to help me "make a first-rate marriage to a man more than equal to himself." Aunt feared one of her boys, Rex or Warham, might fall in love with me, but Uncle assured her that would not occur. First cousins, he said, must not fall in love. If it happened, marriage would not be allowed and, more to the point, the boy would have nothing. "At worst," he said, "there would only be a little crying. You can't save boys and girls from that." And crying there was, for Rex did fall in love with me, though not I with him. My crying was for you, Deronda. No one saved me from that.

Such were life's problems even before the catastrophe. It is hard to be proud when you have no money and are dependent on a pompous uncle. I had little freedom to do as I chose, nor did I know how or what to seek. I strongly felt the confinement of home, and I dreamed of breaking free, of being more than the chattel of my uncle or the elusive ambition of Mama. I wanted my own achievement, my own expression, but what did I have beyond my beauty and high spirits? Yes, I got my horse, but what I longed for were the wild plains where the horse might take me.

* * *

HERR KLESMER. LOOKING back, I realize the chain of my humiliation began with him. He was famed as a composer, pianist, and teacher. I met him at Quetcham Hall, in our first spring at Pennicote, at a dinner party given by the Arrowpoints. They had hired him as music tutor to their clever, gifted daughter, Catherine, who played the piano, violin, and harp. Mrs. Arrowpoint declared him a genius, and he looked the part, with his large head, long brown hair, flowing cape, gold spectacles, and flamboyant gestures. I did not at first know he was a Jew like you. I had never before met a Jew socially. I did not know Jews could be geniuses. I thought they were all moneylenders and pawnbrokers.

Mrs. Arrowpoint had written extensively on the sixteenth-century Italian poet Torquato Tasso. She had a voice like a parrot, wore startling headdresses, and was provoked by my beauty and its effect on men. I have often observed that unappealing women resent me. I told her, at this party, how I adored Tasso and that I too would like to be an authoress. She offered to loan me her unpublished manuscript, in which, she said, she corrected popular misconceptions about his insanity, explained his complex feelings for Duke Alfonso's sister Leonora, and gave the real reasons for his imprisonment. Such was the lure of creative excitement in the district of Wancester.

After dinner Klesmer and Catherine played a four-handed piece on two pianos. It was a more accomplished performance than I could ever aspire to, but it was very long. Mr. Arrowpoint then asked me to sing and led me to the piano. Klesmer stood a few feet away and smiled at me. I had no nervousness. Mama told me my voice was like Jenny Lind's, and I believed this to be so. I sang the aria "Casta Diva" from Bellini's Norma.

Ah! bello a me ritorna.

Ah, riedi a me.

Ah return to me my beautiful

Ah, come back to me.

Jenny Lind, though ordinary and uneducated, succeeded in the world as I hoped to do.

Klesmer stared at me as I sang. I was aware of his gaze. It seemed to bore into me, a prelude to yours at the Kursaal. "Ah, riedi a me," I sang. There was such applause. "Bravo!" Mr. Arrowpoint shouted with tears in his eyes. "Bravo, encore, encore!" Herr Klesmer stood mute. I prepared to sing again but first said to him, expecting contradiction, "It would be too cruel, don't you think, Herr Klesmer? You cannot like to hear poor amateur singing."

In his German accent he replied, "That does not matter. It is always acceptable to see you sing." The insult took away my breath. I felt myself blush with anger. Why did he need to say that? I had been asked to sing. It was a dinner party. The guests were thrilled by me, far more so than by his virtuosity. His was the first in a series of blows that tore at my pride and culminated, months later, in your return to me of my turquoise necklace.

Catherine Arrowpoint compounded my humiliation by commiserating: "See what I have to go through with this professor," she said. "He can hardly tolerate anything we English do in music. He tells us the worst that can be said of us. It is only bearable because everyone else is so admiring."

I tried to regain my poise, said I supposed I had been ill-taught and had no talent, and would be obliged to Herr Klesmer were he to tell me the worst.

"Yes, it is true you have not been well taught," he said to me and all who wished to hear. "Still you are not quite without gifts. You sing in tune and have a pretty fair voice." He told me I produced my notes badly and the music I sang was "dawdly canting seesaw kind of stuff. Music for people with no breadth of vision. It makes men small as they listen to it. Sing something larger and I shall see."

So much for Bellini and so much for me. Klesmer was God, I the unworthy earthling, trapped by superficiality. "Oh, not now," I said. "By and by."

"Yes, by and by," Catherine Arrowpoint agreed, then joked it always took her half an hour to recover from the maestro's criticism. After such pretense of allegiance with me, she invited him to play, "to show us what good music truly is." Which he did. A composition of his own called "Freudvoll Leidvoll Gedankenvoll." And I am sure his talent was huge, so much more huge than his manners. I tried not to cry.

Clintock, the archdeacon's son, came up to me and asked what Freudvoll meant, but I did not know. He said he wished I would sing again, for though he could listen to me all night he got nowhere with this sort of tip-top playing. I told him if he wanted to hear me sing, he was in a puerile state of culture, for I had just learned how bad my taste was, which gave me growing pains. He smiled politely and asked how I liked the neighborhood. I replied I liked it exceedingly, for it had a little of everything, and not much of anything, and most people in it were an utter bore.

Clintock then talked of croquet and told me it was the game of the future. I hear my voice now as I cut him down: "I shall study croquet tomorrow. I shall take to it instead of singing."

That was how stung I was. I viewed myself as superior to Wancester Society, yet I was judged by it and found wanting. You might have rescued me and shown me a path. But all this was before I met you.

Clintock informed me of a friend of his who had written a poem in four cantos about croquet that was as good as anything by Alexander Pope. He offered to send me a manuscript copy. I said he must first promise not to test me on it, or ask which part I liked best, "because it is not so easy to know a poem without reading it, as to know a sermon without listening."

He did not care to find barb or insult in my remark, he was staring at my breasts and legs, but Mrs. Arrowpoint overheard, made a judgment, and did not share her Tasso with me.

* * *

CATHERINE ARROWPOINT, PITIFUL of the smallness of my talent yet assured of Klesmer's regard for hers, continued to invite me to dinners and soirées, but I could not see her again without a wave of jealousy and self-doubt, though her looks were unremarkable, her complexion was sallow, and her features were small. She was an heiress with unshaken confidence in her own talent, secure enough to disregard her plainness as an irrelevance, whereas I who was poor had only my looks and my dreams.

After that evening at the Arrowpoints, though at Brackenshaw Castle, the Firs, and Quetcham Hall my singing had hitherto given such pleasure, I vowed never again to sing before an audience; I was as obstinate as I was offended. My admirers viewed me as exceptional. I was determined my detractors should see that too. I was not going to condemn myself to giving lessons to Alice like an impoverished governess or to help in the village school with Anna. If I could not be a singer, I would have a stage career. Mama told me I was more beautiful and alluring than the actress Rachel had been in Phèdre.



Copyright © 2015 by Diana Souhami