Demoted from my brief status as a governess I became a student once more, enrolled at Oxford House, Marylebone. At this charming academy, picturesquely situated at the top of the Marylebone High Street bordering on the gardens, I was instructed in all the requisites deemed proper for a young lady’s schooling.
Mother was compelled to increase her budget for tallow, as I was wont to stay awake halfway through the night writing verses. “Your complexion is sallowing, Mary,” she insisted one night. “It’s evident that you are not getting enough sleep.” I began to protest, but she would have none of it. “And your scribbling during every hour of leisure has led to a want of fresh air and exercise, which will sap your beauty just as rapidly. There are two things a girl must have to secure her future, a fortune and her looks, and the former, alas, is of greater value than the latter. Thanks to the unfortunate outcome of your father’s recent business ventures, your greatest asset, Mary, is your beauty, and I can’t have you squandering your dowry.”
“But, Mama, I am composing a tragedy!”
“’Twill be a tragedy if you lose your eyesight before you turn fifteen.” She sighed despairingly. “Who will marry a blind bluestocking?”
Not too many weeks later, my father paid us a call.
“I came to tell you that I have made plans to quit England,” he told Mother.
“Another American venture?” With my ear to the keyhole, I could not tell from the timbre of her voice whether she had finally become indifferent to him or if she was masking tears.
“I shall miss the children greatly. You are sensible of the fact, Hester, that my heart cracks every time I am obliged to depart. It has not been easy…on me…I feel deeply the…want…of means….” He was pacing the length of the carpet. I could hear the floorboards creak beneath his tread. “Damme!” He pounded his fist into his hand. “No man intends to fail!”
I inched the door open ever so slightly, hoping the hinges had been well oiled.
“Mary is nearly of marriageable age. If unchecked in her ways, and without a father’s hand to guide her”—and here he stopped before the fire and raised his outstretched arm, leveling an accusatory finger at my mother—“Hester, take care that no dishonor falls upon my daughter. If she is not safe at my return, I will annihilate you!”
My mother heard the stern injunction and trembled while he repeated it. “Annihilate!”
I feared he might stride like mighty Jove through the parlor and catch me eavesdropping by the door, so I scurried behind the stairwell and hid myself in a broom closet until I heard the tromp of his boots upon the wooden floor of the vestibule and the sound of slamming doors.
Then I tiptoed back into the room. My mother’s shoulders were heaving as though an invisible puppetmaster was shaking her up and down. She was sobbing into her handkerchief. I knelt at her embroidered slippers and placed my head into her lap. “I shan’t disappoint you, I promise,” I whispered into her apron. “Or him.”
I rang for a cup of tea and remained with Mother until she had composed herself. Then I returned to school, heavyhearted. I felt that Papa had adjudged and condemned us, without our ever having given him cause to doubt my modesty or Mother’s ability to raise me as a proper gentlewoman.
One afternoon I was summoned to the parlor of Mrs. Hervey, the governess at Oxford House. A rug was laid across her lap, the coals in the brazier providing an insubstantial defense against the frosty air seeping through the wainscoting. “Tea, Mary?” she inquired, motioning for me to sit across from her. She poured some for me and refilled her own dish. “I don’t suppose you know why you are here,” she continued, handing me the saucer.
I shook my head. “No, ma’am; I do not.” I worried that I might once more be dismissed from school, turned out into the world like a half-baked cake.
“It has not escaped my notice.”
“What hasn’t, ma’am?”
“I should inform you that your performances in the student theatricals have been remarked upon by other instructors as well as by your classmates,” said Mrs. Hervey, offering me a biscuit flavored with orange-flower water. “And a true talent is to be encouraged.” She leaned toward me and favored me with one of her smiles, showing her immense front teeth. “Now, what do you say to that?”
My heart was beating in my chest, for she had singled me out as Hannah More and Mrs. Lorrington had done, for excelling in something I truly loved. To make believe that I was another person—even if that fictional young lady had her own perils—removed me, however briefly, from my tendency to melancholy and over-reflection and from my own fortune’s state. These outlets for my precociously honed sensibilities were as exciting as taking a journey to a foreign land where one could reinvent oneself and begin anew.
At my request, a few days later, Mother was consulted on the matter. Mr. Hussey, our dancing master at Oxford House, was present as well, for he also held the position of ballet master at Covent Garden; Mrs. Hervey had told him that I possessed “an extraordinary genius for dramatic exhibitions.” My head swelled from the compliment, and I could see that Mother, although she adored me beyond measure, was wondering whether my governess was of the sort who was prone to the use of superlatives.
“Is this truly what you want, Mary?” My mother’s hands fluttered skyward in delicate despair. “Name me a single actress whose reputation has not suffered for going upon the stage,” she lamented. “I read the newspapers! What of poor Mrs. Cibber—forced at gunpoint by her husband, so I heard, to sleep with a benefactor, in order to trump up an adultery charge and collect money for’t! Or
