Chapter 2 #3
The Bath buildings, for instance, had a warm glow to them, built in famous Bath stone, and the houses in that Crescent sported columns along the upper stories.
Dante had sketched similar designs for the Cheltenham version, with at least a pediment or two to balance the whole and call up the grandeur of a temple.
Masters had overruled him in the name of function and affordability, and the result was a drab slab of bricks that Dante was now personally and permanently associated with.
“I have seen Bath,” the disdainful beauty returned, “and sadly, the Cheltenham Crescent does not stand up to the grandeur of the original.”
Dante ground his teeth together. If he’d had his way, it would have.
Work on the Crescent had made him rich, at least by his own standards, but it wasn’t the mark he wanted to leave on the world.
Yet this lilac harpy had already dismissed him as unworthy.
Unremarkable. Beneath her notice, save to point out where he had failed.
“Are you from Bath then, lovey?” An older woman addressed the girl. She was dressed as a matron, disdaining the ubiquitous white for color and wearing a velvet pelisse over her abundant bosom, with a bonnet sprouting fruit and feathers topping the whole.
“No,” said the younger, and that was all.
“Thing is,” said Dorsey, hooking his thumb in the pocket for his fob, “there’s nowhere left in town with a proper building to lend us. And we needs us a theater, now that the Queen’s burnt down.”
“Shame about that,” Thompson said immediately.
Dorsey shook his head, though he expressed agreement. “Shame.”
“One of the old inns won’t do?” Dante asked.
“All let to lodgers for the season, and none of them grand as what we wants,” said Dorsey. “We’ve done our part with the inns and the barns at the byways, see?”
Dante had only the dimmest comprehension of the hierarchy of theater, but he knew that the strolling players were little more than vagabonds, often viewed as thieves.
They performed where they could, employing whatever acts would bring in coin, and their audiences drew from all levels of the lower classes.
The magistrate or council of a town decided if the troupe could be allowed a decent venue for their productions, or if the wanderers were best shooed along to the next town with threats of reprisal if they stayed.
Then there were the respectable companies who toured on their circuit, moving their effects and their stages from town to town.
They provided tasteful entertainment for the genteel and adjacent classes, often borrowing from the latest London sensations and sometimes London actors.
He had seen Sarah Siddons perform in Bristol and knew that while the licensed theaters of London were the crown jewels, the regional theaters could occasionally manufacture very acceptable ornaments.
Dante wondered where Dorsey’s troupe fell among this broad spectrum of quality.
An actress. The lilac harpy was an actress. What ground had she to sneer at him, a man who knew what it meant to earn his living?
Dante turned his back on her. “Have you asked at the Great House?” he inquired of Dorsey. He didn’t know why. It wasn’t as if he were a chatty person in general, and he felt even less inclined to help the little termagant so ready with her insults.
“Bit iffy there with the change in ownership,” Dorsey replied. “Not sure Fisher wants to take the jump. Said he’s safer letting the grand rooms for assemblies and card parties and dinners and the like.”
Dante nodded. There was something about the man’s affable manner that stirred comradeship. Dorsey wore the garb of a gentleman, but he didn’t have the artifice of manner. He spoke as he thought, plain and to the point. “And the Assembly Rooms?” Dante asked.
“Which ones?” drawled Lady Disdain.
By the bones, did she have to be part of this conversation?
Couldn’t she giggle and gossip with the other girls who were standing apart, studying the assortment of young gentlemen and making eyes at their favorites?
Instead she stood here debating with him as if she had a part in the decision-making process. Arrogant girl, too big for her boots.
But Dante had her measure now. The successful actresses played aristocrats on the stage—it was one of the biggest objections the moralists leveled against them—and so carried their airs into real arenas.
Here was living proof of it. He refused to be raked down by a girl who earned her bread by looking down her nose at the world.
He made his living by bringing the world beauty and shelter.
“The Lower Assembly Rooms,” Dante said, because those were the haunts of the more fashionable crowd. And recently redone to quite grand effect, another project he had had his hand in, though another had taken the credit.
Dorsey shook his head. “No good for theatricals. No stage.”
“The Upper?” Dante tried.
“Why should those be any more accommodating, if the Lower won’t do?”
The harpy delivered a glare as cutting as her words. She had thick brows, which made her eyes appear all the larger and lent her an innocent look. But she didn’t have the trim, pert nose of an aristocrat, and the contrast turned her looks from piquant to arresting.
If she didn’t possess a dainty and easily offended nose, she oughtn’t go turning it up at people. Though he wasn’t making the best account of himself, an architect wondering why Dorsey hadn’t found an existing building to lease.
He tried ignoring the pretty harpy again, addressing her manager instead. “I can design you a theater. Exactly to your specifications. Nay, better.”
Dorsey rubbed his hands together, grinning broadly. “Just the man I’d hoped to find, then. Wouldn’t you agree, pet?”
“No,” said the girl, fire in her eyes, but now she sounded panicked. “He can’t help us, Dorsey. We’d best find someone else.”