Mary Ann and Miss Mozart (3 page)

“A concert!”

“Every September we invite parents and visitors to the school. There is a display of work – needlework, drawing and such – and a concert with recitation, singing and playing.”

“I should love to be in the concert,” said Mary Ann. And she thought: perhaps, if I sing well, Mama will believe that I could become an opera singer.

She knew her father was less antagonistic to this idea than Mama. He was a bit of a singer himself, and it was his mother – her Grandmama Giffard – from whom Mary Ann had inherited her voice, and who had taken her to the opera for the first time and inspired in her the ambition to perform. She remembered how they had sat high up in the gallery and seen the singers far below on the candlelit stage – a jewelled tableau in a circle of light – and heard their voices soaring. Grandmama Giffard had died last year, but Mary Ann remembered her with love and gratitude.

“We will try ‘Nymphs and Shepherds’ again,” said Mrs. Corelli. “But first, let us talk about breathing…”

Mary Ann left after half an hour and joined the others, who were reading around the group: an improving text on the subject of modesty.

Later, after supper, lagging a little behind the other three on their way to the dormitory, she had reached the first floor when she heard singing. Someone was singing ‘Nymphs and Shepherds’ in an easy, absent-minded way, humming over forgotten words – and she had the feeling that whoever it was had heard her practising with Mrs. Corelli and picked up the song by ear. The voice was a woman’s, untrained, clear and pleasant, like those of some of the ballad singers Mary Ann loved to hear in the streets near her home.

Who could it be? The sound did not come from the music room but from a room next to the back stairs – a room Sophia hadn’t bothered to mention.

She did not dare open the door; and when she hurried to join the other three on the second floor she was caught up in a flurry of gossip and giggles and forgot to ask them about it.

Chapter Three

Jenny

Monday, 28th May, 1764.

Dear Harriet,

I can scarcely believe it is already a month since I came here to Chelsea. I told you in my last letter how very much I liked the school and I am still of the same mind. Mrs. Corelli is so kind as to say that she thinks well of my singing and that I am developing a stronger voice already. Mr. Ashton, who teaches the harpsichord, is also pleased with my efforts. He takes us for Music and also Mathematics.

I am the best of friends with the three girls I share a room with. All four of us have harpsichord lessons, and Sophia and I are both in the choir. Sophia is full of gossip and plans: she is our leader. Phoebe is amiable and follows Sophia’s view in everything. As for Lucy, Sophia teases her that she is so clever she will not get a husband. Lucy has a collection of shells and minerals which she keeps in a case under her bed (to the annoyance of the maids who try to sweep there). Although she is shy, she is witty and often makes us laugh.

I have written to Mama and expect she has told you that we read together in class every day, and write essays, and Mrs. Neave also teaches us Geography. There is a splendid globe, like the one Papa bought for George, but larger. We do needlework, which I like less, but Phoebe produces exquisite work; her stitches are so fine they can scarcely be seen.

We also go out to take the air, and on these occasions we are expected to behave in a ladylike manner; only sometimes we are so excited that it is difficult not to exclaim or dart about. Last Saturday, on our half-holiday, a party of us went to the Chelsea Bun House, which sells the most delicious sugared buns and cakes – you would love it, Harriet – but Lucy was in even more delight over the collection of curios and antiques which forms a small museum within the shop. We saw some extraordinary objects there, among them cuttlefish bones, and fossils, and a stuffed lizard.

On Sundays we go in file to church. The church is nearby, in Chelsea Walk, and is ancient; it has been here since Chelsea’s beginnings. Inside, we listen to very long sermons. They are exceedingly dull. But we behave ourselves well and are seen to advantage by our neighbours, and that pleases Mrs. Neave. Of course we also sing hymns, which I enjoy.

There is another person here who likes to sing: one of the maids. Her name is Jenny. I heard her singing “Nymphs and Shepherds”.

Mary Ann paused, and put down her pen. Perhaps it would be best not to write too much about Jenny. Harriet would undoubtedly share the letter with Mama, and their mother might not like the idea of Mary Ann making a particular friend of one of the maids.

She remembered her first evening, when she had heard the singing, and how she had seen Jenny the next morning, coming out of the room on the first floor, her arms full of clean, folded bed linen. The open doorway behind her had revealed a storage room containing shelves and baskets and a linen press. Jenny was humming to herself, and Mary Ann had known at once that here was her singer from the night before.

Without thinking, she exclaimed, “Oh! It was you!” The maid looked startled, and Mary Ann explained, “I heard you singing yesterday: ‘Nymphs and Shepherds’. I’d been practising it with Mrs. Corelli.”

Jenny smiled. “I like to learn the young ladies’ songs. They’re different to the ballads I hear in the streets.”

“Do you come from Chelsea?”

“Yes. My mother has a room on the waterfront, by the ferry. There’s a tavern near our house, the Half Moon: I sing there some nights. And at the Duke of York.”

Mary Ann was impressed. Jenny was a performer! She much admired the girl’s looks: her dark eyes and tall, slender figure. She thought Jenny a finer-looking girl than any of the young ladies at the school. She said shyly, “I should like to hear you.”

Jenny laughed. “Oh, I don’t think so, Miss – not in a tavern.” She shifted her bundle of linen and said, “I must see to my work, or Mrs. Price will be after me.”

“The housekeeper?”

“Yes.”

She knocked at one of the dormitory doors opposite and, receiving no answer, went in.

It was a while before they spoke to one another again, but Jenny always acknowledged the younger girl with a smile, and Mary Ann felt that they had become friends. A week or two later, when the choir had been talking about Ranelagh Gardens, Mary Ann asked Jenny if she had ever been there.

“Oh, yes, Miss! Not as a visitor. That costs two and sixpence; even more on firework nights. But my cousin Nick plays the fiddle, and sometimes he’ll go in and play for the crowds in the gardens. Last time he took me with him and I sang. We made a hatful of money before the stewards moved us on. You’d love the Gardens, Miss; all the great folk go there. And the lights! It’s like Paradise…”

Mary Ann brought her attention back to her letter.

I’ll be home in less than a fortnight, for Whitsun,
she wrote
. And George too. We shall all have so much to tell each other. I am glad to hear your news from home, and especially that Papa expects success from his new venture. If he is in good spirits when I come home, do you think he’ll take us to the Tower to see the animals? I do so love to go.

Till then, dear Harriet, I remain,

Your devoted sister,

Mary Ann Giffard

Chapter Four

Two Prodigies

The girls all went home for a week’s holiday at Whitsun. Sophia, tossing chemises and stockings into her bag, made a great show of despair at the prospect of being parted from her friends.

“I don’t know how I shall
endure
the holiday without you all! My brothers are
odious
and delight in provoking me. The week will seem far too long.”

Mary Ann knew Sophia well enough by now not to take all this too seriously. And Lucy said, “Well, I shall be glad to go home and see my cats and not have to think about lessons for a week.”

“Oh, Lucy! You are heartless!” protested Sophia. “Mary Ann, will
your
brother be home? Is he as maddening as my two?”

Mary Ann said yes, he was, because that seemed to be the thing to say. In fact, she rather enjoyed George’s company and had always been closer to him than to Harriet, who was seven years older than her.

“Lucy is lucky to be an only child.” Phoebe, who also suffered from brothers, was rolling stockings into pairs.

A bell rang far below, signalling breakfast, and all four of them shrieked in alarm and flung a few more items into their bags before hurrying downstairs.

A buzz of chatter enlivened the queue as they filed into the dining room.

“Did you hear about those extraordinary children from – where was it? – somewhere in Austria?”

“Salzburg,” said an older girl near Mary Ann. “The Mozarts.”

“Such amazing musicians!”

Mary Ann listened eagerly to the gossip. She heard that there were two Mozart children, a boy of eight and a girl of twelve, and both were such gifted musicians that they had taken London by storm. They had arrived in the city with their parents only five weeks ago and had already been invited twice to the palace to play for the King and Queen.

“Of course the King loves music, and the Queen sings…”

“The King was enchanted with them, especially the little boy –”

“They say the boy composes and plays his own works. At such a young age! It is amazing.”

“And the girl plays the harpsichord with brilliance…”

It seemed that there had been a concert at Spring Garden on Tuesday at which these “prodigies”, as their father described them, had performed.

“Oh! I wish we could have gone!” exclaimed Mary Ann.

Lucy widened her eyes. “At half a guinea a ticket? I think not.”

But after breakfast Mrs. Neave asked all the music students to stay behind. She told them about another concert – one they might be able to afford.

“I am arranging our annual visit to Ranelagh,” she said. “There is to be a charity concert there in aid of a new hospital on Friday the 29th of June. The music is sure to be popular pieces that you will know, and this will be an opportunity – the first for some of you – to see Ranelagh Gardens. I shall enquire about tickets after the Whitsun holiday, when I know how many of you are coming. If you wish to be included in our party, please ask your parents for five shillings, and bring the money with you when you return to school. Don’t forget.”

As if we would, thought Mary Ann. And Sophia said, “Let’s all go! It’ll be such fun!”

“Don’t let Mrs. Neave hear you say ‘fun’,” said Lucy, and Sophia put a hand over her mouth and pulled a face. “Fun” was a word used by young men about town, not by young ladies.

“What fun!” exclaimed George, when Mary Ann met him at home later that day and told him about the concert. “Ranelagh is all the rage, I hear.”

“
Everyone
will be there,” Mary Ann agreed, and sighed theatrically, Sophia-style. She meant everyone of consequence: the gentry, perhaps even royalty. “It will be quite divine!”

“Oh!
Quite
divine!” George, grinning, hopped out of reach as she went to hit him. They had all been teasing her, ever since she got home, about her new way of talking. She’d picked it up from Sophia without noticing, and now it had become second nature.

Her mother did not object.

“I’d rather Mary Ann spoke in that way than copied some of the girls at her old day school,” she told a smirking George and Harriet. “And see how well she looks, and how she carries herself! I’m pleased with the change in her.”

They were all impressed with the improvement in Mary Ann’s harpsichord playing, and with Mrs. Corelli’s comments on her singing. Mary Ann had chattered all the way home about the school, the teachers, her friends, and her music lessons.

“I do so love being there,” she said. “And Mama, I need five shillings for the concert at Ranelagh! And my shoes are shabby – the ones I wore last summer…”