The Assembly Room

London, 1855

There is a general hum of conversation whilst the guests arrive. Eleanor has made sure there is a good turnout this evening, in that part of the house which she calls The Assembly Room.  

She thinks of all those she admires, who give her strength, comfort, or inspiration, and invites them - members of her family, all the great and the good. 

None of them are alive, as such. But how can they be dead if she still thinks of them? 

She closes her eyes and checks who is here so far.  

Her older brother Edward - now there’s a man who can tell a story. She places him over in the corner by the fire, still wearing his military uniform, holding a glass of port, gentle and confident as he speaks to Marcus Aurelius, who chuckles easily at one of his comments. 

Cleopatra is over there in conversation with someone, in some or other language, captivating in the way she conducts herself. 

Ah, and here comes her Grandfather, as proud as ever, hobbling along down the edge of the room. A tap on the shoulder and a smile as he squeezes past Aristotle, who is scratching his bushy head. 

Watch yourself, Thinker.

Mind how you go, Granddad.

Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine - her namesake - is as resplendent as she can imagine in the centre of the room, scanning the place imperiously, her head tilted back so regally that her nose is almost as high as her eyebrows. Over there on a luxurious red and gold couch is Byron, leaning towards Caterina Sforza, who is impervious. Mary Shelley is there too, brushing past the two hunched little figures of Rousseau and Erasmus, both deep in earnest discussion. 

She picks out her mother and father, a quiet, steadfast island amid the crowd. In her imagination, they no longer bear the pallour of disease. 

The room needs a few finishing touches, too. She pictures some of her favourite flowers from her plant book in vases over there, some colourful draperies, some dainties on the tables (if the guests need something to nibble on).

She makes sure the room is busy, but not oppressively so. She even invites people she doesn’t know so well, but who, at some point, have helped her in some way. Perhaps that one person who offered some wisdom in a neat sentence, or that portrait whose countenance is so utterly captivating and inspiring. A handful of old friends, maybe, who she has since lost touch with. 

These are the people who stroll easily out of her imagination and into the room. She has great need of them all, because up until now the evening has been terrible. 

It had started in the grand hallway, surrounded by people who very much were alive, and all the worse for it. A coterie of black tailcoats and top hats were filing in from outside, stiff arms linked with stiff wives. 

Presiding over the scene was her Uncle, who seemed to turn rooms grey. He was honoured to welcome his esteemed guests into his home on this cordial evening - he said as much, anyway. 

Eleanor stood next to him, nerves taut under the gaze of each crumpled face and the trod of each black step. Couples approached her Uncle in turn to be welcomed. It was meant to be a party, but every introduction began gravely. ‘Yes, it is bleak outside, isn’t it?’ ‘Ah, yes, so many good men gone in the Crimea… Terrible news about your nephew…’ And so on. 

Then the crumpled face would turn down to her, clearly fumbling for something to say. ‘You must be Miss Eleanor. I am very sorry about your brother.’ A smaller, milkier face next to it would look duly serious and sympathetic, and then they would move on. Of those guests who had already met her, almost all of them landed on ‘Goodness, how old were you when we last saw you?’ as the safest thing to say. At least, it seemed fairly uncontroversial.

These great coal and cotton magnates, hard-headed men of business, a few lords and ladies - these people who supposedly made the world turn - all of them were suddenly rendered awkward and floundering before a pitiful young lady. 

She knew her Uncle hated having her here, and under his charge. It seemed to have been the case ever since circumstance had forced her to come and live with him, a year or so ago.  

She had tried her best when she arrived, and perhaps, in fairness, so had he, but there is nothing to be done about characters, beliefs, and dispositions which are so irreconcilably different. Not so much an issue of contempt, just sheer incomprehension. Here she was, a melancholic nuisance, a precocious little fiend, an interloper in his house and disturbing the order of things (and heaven forbid disrupting the household of Sir Arthur Fastolf MP)

On some evenings, in the living room, she could feel him staring at her disapprovingly from his armchair. He’d peer over his newspaper and down his spectacles. Occasionally she’d meet his eyes, and read what thoughts he was picking away at her with, in that speckled cranium of his. 

‘Mousy little thing, too quiet, dull as dishwater, always sequestered away upstairs, cursed with her vivid imagination.’ He’d adjust his paper with a snap and a rustle. 

She found it impossible to imagine that this man and her mother were brother and sister. This man, who would sooner die than reveal his emotions, who ate his meals like he was performing surgery, who got frustrated when the toilet brush for his newly-installed lavatory was out of place. Eleanor missed the calm worldliness of years past. 

Her cousins, some years younger, hadn’t made things any easier. They picked fights with her, stole her things; their entire mode of existence seemed at odds with hers. And when one of them runs off crying to a parent, it is always Eleanor who gets the blame for being obtuse. ‘Why can’t you be civil with your young cousins?’, her Uncle asked once. She wanted to say because Richard is a vicious brat and Constance eats newspaper, but she couldn’t find the strength. ‘I’m sorry, Uncle’. 

Her cousins weren’t here tonight, thank God. Their mother had taken them away to some spa town somewhere, presumably to stuff their little cherub faces with chocolate and tell the other notable matrons how intelligent they were. It was Eleanor, therefore, who had to take on the role of dutiful daughter of the household this evening. 

As the guests milled around the hallway, she was compressed under the iron weight of having to ‘perform’. She felt heavy - every step she took seemed contrary to the ease with which she moved alone - she thought about the move of every muscle, every syllable she spoke. And even though she took against these people - through no real fault of their own - she still felt the need to be understood and approved by them. She wanted to prove to them that she wasn’t really dull, or quiet, or meek; that in the rich seams of her mind, there was a wealth of jewels and minerals; the only issue was that these people didn’t yet know how to mine for them. 

As she forces herself to go about the delicate dance of mingling, therefore, she feels every tacit disapproval personally. Looking up into each scrutinising face, she feels dismayed at every furrowed expression - part pity, part puzzlement - as she tries to explain something. She develops an exceeding awareness of her own incompetence with each stutter or digression. She questions whether she has any jewels or minerals after all, and feels herself turning into a sounding board. Conversation after conversation washes over her, her legs sore after a dreary hour. 

Eventually they proceed to the dining room, austere with its hard wood walls and dark green fabrics. After a while, as they all sit around her Uncle’s new room-length table, solemnly blowing on their silver soup spoons, she begins to realise she needs to go to The Assembly Room. Feeling awkward, scared, and unloved, she needs her ghosts to help her find her bearings again. 

As the frigid meal advances, the need becomes an urge, and time slows to a crawl as she counts down the seconds until the living will all leave and she can go upstairs. 

As she is sapped by the boring weight of Mrs Nullford’s conversation, she feels the need of her grandfather’s insight. She feels the need of her brother when there is no-one here to snicker as Lord Roberts gets up and accidentally smashes his legs into the table with a fantastic clatter, disturbing the surfaces of 22 little soup bowls, then sheepishly straightening his attire and clumsily manoeuvering out of his predicament. She needs somebody to tell her what to do as she feels a nagging sense of unworthiness, after trailing off her sentence, reddening, and running another conversation into the ground.

She suddenly felt vicious, cast her eyes over all the figures in the room, boring into them. ‘None of you are as sensitive and warm as my parents. As if any of you are as well-read and learned as my grandfather? And you? Laughing like my brother could? The only time you laugh is when you see an open grave. In the name of God, why won’t you all go home?’ 

Mercifully, eventually they all do. She says her own goodbyes in her head. Yes, yes, Reverend Maguire, go in peace to love and serve the Lord, and please feel free to take your time whilst you’re doing it. If you think I’d genuinely like to come to your piano recital, Miss Simpson, you must be even more dim than I took you for. You can go as well, Mr Currer Hunt Esq., take another one of your cold baths at five o’clock in the morning and we’ll see if you’re any more interesting for it.  

With the front door finally, resoundingly, firmly shut, and with a wave of dismissal from her Uncle, she practically runs upstairs to The Assembly Room. It was, in fact, her bedroom, a grand room in the older wing of the house which, crucially, was far away from her Uncle’s end of the building. Both parties preferred it that way. 

When she first arrived, after her parents had died and her brother had gone overseas, it was dusty and underused. But Eleanor liked its character. There was a day when it had been a more conventional meeting place, and she liked to imagine grand people from across the centuries in colourful clothes having their own little ceremonies in here. Certainly, with its lofty ceiling, grand fireplace, and cosy wood-panelled walls, it was a room conductive to social occasions, imagined or otherwise. 

As soon as she had closed the bolt on the door, she felt the tension lift from her shoulders, as if carried away by angels. Finally, wonderfully, alone. How unimaginable would it be to share this sanctum with anyone else? Can you imagine Mrs Pratchett sitting here, prattling on about her fantastic new bath with a deployable step for ease of both access and egress, how it’s a huge advantage for a woman with her back problems? And the rattling of rain on the windows unheard, the ghosts ignored, the ideas undiscussed. 

Eleanor is more ready for her own guests than ever. Sat on her bed, she builds most of them from her memories, her books, her grandfather’s tutelage, and imbues them with the qualities she likes. The rest, of course, she already knows well. Thus, she soon fills the room with ghosts. There they all are: her family, her heroes, her muses. 

She thinks again of her Uncle, her Aunt, of anybody else who looks down on her, and tells them: ‘You can chastise me, disapprove of me, but here is a world you can’t touch. Your malign influence is confined to your neat little rooms, and your tiny convictions. You can stay worried about the fat hands of Alderman Rochford perspiring on your mahogany table, but we think about things differently here in The Assembly Room.’

Her guests look expectantly toward her at the head of the room. What is the topic of discussion this evening?

A Declaration of the Rights of Eleanor.  

First she confides in her parents, tells them of this general living situation which she fears will be her ruin. They respond in kind. 

‘You? Ruined? Will you not still have your imagination, your books, your pencils, your love of independence?’ They remind her, in sum, that there is far more to the world than her Uncle’s small household. After they have spoken, it seems small indeed. 

Next she looks to the other Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine. The great lady is full of the pride and haughtiness of her position. She doesn’t care for the opinions of the majority, and most people seem small to her - she doesn’t need unimportant people to like her, and therefore she is free. The younger Eleanor duly makes a mental note. Thank you, Majesty. I will be regal in spirit. 

Caterina Sforza, bulwark against adversity - shows Eleanor how to be strong. Cleopatra, a vision of sophistication, shows her what to do with her talents and experiences. Standing near the bookshelf, Shelley and Byron remind her that there are alternate lifestyles to lead, filled with alluring possibilities, and that, contrary to what her Uncle says, there is nothing hysterical or useless about literature. 

Her Grandfather doesn’t say so much. Really, he has already spoken - and will continue to speak - through all the other eminent figures in the room. She can discern the strains of his own warm voice in theirs, and his reliable presence still commands the room, from where he stands, arms folded, just near the back. 

Next is Rousseau, who she imagines as a neat little man, with the face of a friend. What he says is pure emotion, but he distils it into concise, rational little packages, dismissing the posturing of the fools downstairs as vacuous, corrupted by the misguided ambitions of civilization. Pay no heed to their silly old parade, he reassures her. Listen only to the motions of your own soul. She sees her mother and father nodding. 

Erasmus appears as she has seen him in paintings, wearing his scholar's hat, heavy furs, and a wide, contented smile. He points out that we are all fools, none more so than that veritable festival of fools downstairs - there is comfort in knowing that the blind are leading the blind. 

La Belle Ferroniere is here, too - she shows Eleanor exactly how to arrange her face. Like this: self-assured, composed, with a very slight, ambiguous smile - a smirk to some, a snarl to others. Eyes which dare you to try and guess what is going on behind them, which make a person think less ‘What does she look like?’, and more ‘What do I look like?’. 

Her brother speaks last, so that they can all round off the night with a smile on their faces. 

‘So long as we leave our mark on you, sister, we are forever with you.’ And then, some jokes, some stories, a nice end to the evening. 

Having received each ghost’s wisdom in turn, Eleanor begins to feel deliciously, viciously, confident. All those in the living world who have underestimated her, shouted at her, mistreated her, form into one mass. She burns them all internally; not so quiet anymore. ‘You are not Eleanor Fermor’, she says to them. ‘You aren’t even The West End’s number one Eleanor Fermor impersonator. I am shaped by the influence of these great people, and everyday I go into the waking world thinking of them. Today I had need for the strength they give me, but now I have it, and woe betide anybody who underestimates this everyday miracle.’

She draws all this wisdom from across the divide of the non-living and the living, and in doing so the divide seems less stark. As she lays back and feels the pull of sleep, she lets her guests fall back into easy chatter. Aristotle goes and helps himself to some biscuits. She pulls up the sheets, inhales the comforting, familiar scent. She’s in good company, now.