The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell, reviewed by Judith Allnatt.

Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2023, the novel opens with a gripping scenario. Sixteen year-old Lucrezia,  bride of less than a year, is taken to a hunting lodge deep in the country by her husband Alfonso 11 d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, and while they dine together she realises that he plans to kill her. I was instantly hooked, not only by the classic 'woman in jeopardy' situation but by the fairy-tale resonance of the setting. The high walled, star-shaped fortress in a wintry forest made me think of both Rapunzel and the Sleeping Beauty. Set in the mid sixteenth century in the Duchy of Ferrara, the world described has both strangeness and a fairy-tale familiarity: there are white ponies, cloaks and squirrel-lined gloves, wax seals, daggers and sleeping draughts. Furthermore, as the story unfolds, fairy tale elements of manipulation by an older generation, imprisonment, love and attempts at rescue are crucial parts of the story.

Allori_Agnolo_Detto_Bronzino_(bottega)_-_Lucrezia
_de_Medici_-_Galleria_Palatina

The narrative switches between Lucrezia's present jeopardy and her backstory, tracing her history from birth through a childhood in which she is marked out as unbiddable, clever and artistic, to an early arranged marriage. The author has a free hand with Lucrezia's  fictional persona but draws on the facts of her situation: she is parted from her family and sent from Florence to Ferrara, a naieve and lonely teenager with a husband 11 years older whose political future depends on producing an heir. Lucrezia did not promptly get pregnant and in less then a year she was was dead. The cause of death given at the time was 'putrid fever', (modern historians consider this to have been a reference to pulmonary TB) but after her death it was rumoured that she had been poisoned - done away with by her husband. 

Browning's poem,'My Last Duchess' a dramatic monologue in the voice of Alfonso draws on this chilling scenario and, as the title implies,  Lucrezia was one in a series. Alfonso married three times and all three marriages were without issue. Browning's poem presents a sinister portrait of the Duke and focuses on his obsessive and unwarranted jealousy. Maggie O'Farrell's presentation of the character is terrifyingly changeable, a sociopath who is ice-cold and manipulative. To both versions of Alfonso, cruelty is simply a means to their own ends.

At her marriage, Lucrezia was caught between two powerful men: her father, Cosimo, Grand Duke of Tuscany and her would-be husband, and had no choice in the matter. Her father's power is brought home to the reader from the outset. In the basement of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, he keeps Big Cats: exotic beasts often collected by rulers or accepted as gifts betokening status and reflecting power and strength. (The street at the  back of the palazzo is still called Via dei Leoni). Lucrezia, as a child, witnesses the arrival of a tiger and is desperate to see it.  O'Farrell uses Lucrezia's visit to the tiger, in which she touches its fur without fearsome consequence, to show us her daring and to suggest that something of the creature's power lies within her character, despite her weak position in the hierarchy. At the same time, this strength at her core marks her as different from her siblings and the suggestion that she must have enchanted the beast demonstrates the wariness of others. The motif of the tiger is woven through the novel in connection with the power within Lucrezia that is her selfhood. O'Farrell also makes figurative use of the lions. She recounts that the interconnecting door between the tiger's and the lions' enclosures are accidentally left open and that the lions attack and kill the tiger. Later in the novel we meet Alfonso's right-hand man, Baldassare, who is unscrupulous, devious and brutal. O'Farrell gives him the first name Leonello and both Lucrezia and the reader instantly identify him as a dangerous enemy.

A_Lion_and_Tiger_in_Combat'_by_Johann_Wenzel_Peter

In a world where she and her sisters are not allowed to leave their rooms without permission, Lucrezia finds self expression through art. Fittingly, the author describes the colours, textures and detail around her with a painter's eye, bringing the Renaissance world vividly to life through close observation and imagery. We feel the touch of Lucrezia's  ankle length hair that she can wear 'around herself like a shroud' and  a candle makes 'a trembling circle of waxy light (that) pushes at the blackness'. In the gown she must wear for her marriage portrait with its huge skirt and ballooning sleeves 'her hands appear like the pale and ineffectual paws of a mouse, peeping out of frilled and ornate cuffs'.

As I hope you'll read and enjoy the novel, I won't comment on the conclusion of the narrative other than to say that the use of Lucrezia's paintings, executed on small pieces of wood and then overpainted with pictures of birds and beasts, provide an apt imagery. The final picture one is left with is not that of the marriage portrait, depicting Lucrezia as a powerless, jewelled, static status symbol. O'Farrell's final image of  her protagonist has stayed with me and will continue to do so. 

A Victorian Scandal: The Peer and the Dancer by Judith Allnatt

In 1851, the Spanish dancer Josefa Duran, known as ‘Pepita’ caught the eye of Lionel Sackville-West, a member of the British aristocracy (2nd Baron Sackville). She was slim and beautiful and was known for the airiness of her dancing, for her luxuriant, waist-length dark hair and for the kiss curls she wore on each cheek. She had what we would now call ‘celebrity status’ and young men were said to have plucked flowers from their own wives’ hair to cast them at her feet on the stage. 

Born in a Málaga slum to a barber father and a clothes-seller mother, Pepita’s background couldn’t be further from that of Lionel’s family, who owned Knole, one of the largest and most important of Britain’s Great Country Houses. They met a week or so after Lionel had seen her at the theatre; Lionel visited and they soon became ‘intimate’. A further obstacle to the lovers, beyond the chasm between their social classes, was that Pepita had in fact married another dancer, Juan Antonio de Oliva, only the previous year. They had separated swiftly in circumstances that Oliva maintained were ‘not honourable’ to Pepita and she had left Spain to tour abroad.

The Cartoon Gallery, Knole

Their relationship was intermittent in nature. As first attaché in Berlin, Lionel was able to visit Pepita in the cities and towns in which she was dancing but there were inevitably spells when they were apart. Pepita was certainly no angel; she appears to have had other liaisons with Prince Youssoupoff in Munich and Duke Maximilian Joseph in Bavaria. After Lionel and Pepita’s daughter Victoria was born, they separated for two years but Lionel returned to her after hearing that she was desperately ill. She had lost a baby and refused to say who the father was, but nonetheless they were reconciled.

In 1866, having given up dancing, Pepita had luxurious clothes, beautiful jewels and a house bought for her by Lionel in the French coastal town of Arcachon. Nonetheless, she was isolated by her situation. Unaccepted by society because she and Lionel were not married, she was unable to mix socially in Lionel’s circle. When they stayed in Paris, Pepita was reduced to tears because she was unable to go with Lionel to a fete in the Tuileries that he was visiting. His colleagues at the Foreign Office knew nothing of his liaison or the fact that he had children. He had never mentioned that part of his life. Now at Arcachon, her children were short of playmates as the children in the neighbouring villa had been told by their parents not to play with them. When entertaining, it was reported that no ‘ladies’ ever attended, that her guests were young men and that she drank. 

At Arcachon, the house was named ‘Villa Pepa’: a name that may show Pepita’s egocentricity or may reflect a sense of defiance at her exclusion and the desire to make a world separate from the stresses of the ‘society’ around her. The desire to create another ‘world’, is perhaps echoed later in the haven from the public sphere made by her grand daughter Vita Sackville-West and her husband, Sir Harold Nicolson, in their gardens at Sissinghurst.

What was the truth about Lionel and Pepita’s relationship? Were they ever married? It became important decades later because of question over who should inherit Knole. For years Lionel was steadfast in putting up objections to signing the register of his children’s births. Later, when pressed to do so by Pepita for the sake of her reputation, he signed for two of his children but later claimed that he had no memory of doing so. One of these was Pepita’s youngest living child – Henry – who was later to feel therefore that he had a claim to be Lionel’s true heir.

In Arcachon society there was gossip that her children had several different fathers including the Prince of Bavaria and Count Henri de Béon, alongside Lionel. One can see how these rumours might arise as Pepita appointed Henri de Béon as her superintendant at the villa and gave him a bedroom next to hers. Lionel seemed to know about Béon living there but didn’t send him packing. Whether this was because he held no suspicions or because he was extremely tolerant of his mistress’s amours is not clear.

At forty, Pepita gave birth to another son, Frederic, but both mother and baby survived only a few days. According to Vita’s account in her book ‘Pepita’, Lionel broke down at seeing Pepita and the baby laid out together. He blamed himself for her death, sobbing that he had killed her, presumably because he had fathered the child when Pepita was an older mother. As if fuelled by guilt, from that point on Lionel seemed to refer freely and publicly to Pepita as his wife; she is named as such in the funeral invitations, letters and in the notices in the local paper. Ironically, only in death did Pepita receive the acknowledgement of their relationship that she had craved through their many years together. She was buried, as Lionel’s wife, in the municipal cemetery above the town. Béon and his mother took care of the five children, supported financially by Lionel, who referred to him at the time as a ‘dear friend’.

The consequences of Lionel and Pepita’s unconventional liaison rumbled on decades after Pepita’s death. Lionel’s nephew (confusingly another Lionel) had inherited Knole in the absence of a ‘legitimate’ son. Henry brought a case that sought to prove that Pepita had been secretly married to Lionel, that he, Henry, had been registered as Lionel’s child and that he was therefore the male heir. The scandal caught the public imagination to the extent that a drama was shown, catchily named ‘The Marriages of Mayfair’ that was a thinly veiled reference to the Sackville-West affair. For Henry and the court case however, it was impossible to cast doubt on the legality of Pepita’s marriage to De Oliva, that had in fact continued throughout Pepita and Lionel’s affair. Henry lost the case and Knole continued in the hands of the accepted line of Sackville-Wests.

To find out more about the Sackville-Wests:  'The Disinherited' by Robert Sackville-West
 'Vita - the Life of Vita Sackville -West' by Victoria Glendinning

 Visit Knowle (National Trust)

 Visit beautiful Sissinghurst (National Trust)

King’s Residence or Riot Control? - by Judith Allnatt

In the Northamptonshire village of Weedon, where I live, there stands an imposing garrison that shipped out arms to Wellington’s forces in the Napoleonic wars. As well as the massive storehouses still in existence for canon, muskets and gunpowder, there were once barracks, hospital, chapel, and three spacious white brick buildings known as the ‘Pavilion’, which are said to have been built as a retreat for George III, should Old Boney invade.

Other Ordnance Establishments nearer the coast, such as the Tower of London or Faversham Powder Mills, risked being destroyed or captured, whereas Weedon is pretty much in the centre of England and is about as far away from the sea as one could possibly get. Therefore, it seems plausible that the decision to build here could have been influenced by a need to spirit the king away to the safer Midlands.

He would have been well defended. Five hundred soldiers manned the place (suddenly the village had thirty pubs!) and vast quantities of firearms and ammunition were constantly being shipped in and out by canal (barges being smoother carriers of barrels of gunpowder than carts).

On the other side of the case, it has been mooted that the King’s retreat theory is just a Royal Rumour, suggested by the palatial appearance of the white buildings on the hill, which were only ever intended for the Governor and his Principal Officers.

Adherents to this argument point out that a site where every second ‘blast house’ was filled with earth in case an explosion should occur and bring them all down like dominoes seems an unlikely haven. In government plans outlined by the prime minister on Christmas Day 1803, it was stated that, in the event of an invasion, the king would lead his army and move to Chelmsford if the enemy landed in Essex, or to Dartford, if they arrived in Kent.

When researching for my novel, The Silk Factory, I became fascinated by the question of why the massive garrison had been built here, in Weedon. If it was not for the purpose of putting distance between the King and Bonaparte’s invading armies, why choose the Midlands? It didn’t seem practical that Arms stored here would have to travel long distances to port in order to reach their destinations abroad. I started to look at what was going on in the area at the time and to form a new and somewhat more sinister theory of my own.

At that time, there was terrible poverty and government fears of revolution were sharpened by events in France. Textile workers in the Midlands were dreadfully exploited: children started work as young as six, and men and women laboured long hours for starvation wages. On top of that, employers were bringing in new machines that were putting men out of work, some of which produced inferior quality goods. (The word ‘shoddy’ originally meant the thin, low-grade silk stockings that wide frame machines produced). In desperation, textile workers broke into premises and smashed the looms.

The Frame Breaking Act of 1812 made it a hanging offence to damage an employer’s looms, yet poverty was so extreme that the crime was almost commonplace. Lord Byron, prompted by pity for the weavers, spoke in parliament against the bill, saying: ‘Can you commit a whole country to their own prisons? Will you erect a gibbet in every field and hang up men like scarecrows?’

In the centre of the Midlands, an area where textile workers were starving and turning to violence and rebellion, the fact that 500 men and a reserve stock of 1,000 small arms were always kept at the garrison at Weedon is unlikely to be coincidental. Its force was well placed to crush any riot or insurrection and, sure enough, it was reported in 1816 that the cavalry rode out from Weedon to quell an ‘uprising of ribbon weavers in Coventry.’

The walled garrison on its hill overlooking the village and silk factory must have seemed horribly intimidating to the inhabitants and impoverished weavers below. Perhaps the rumour that the garrison was to act as a royal retreat was started even at this early point, as propaganda to make the building of the massive military complex seem more palatable. Writing on location, literally in the shadow of the huge buildings, helped me to channel the sense of might and authority of the Establishment over the populace.

Find out more at  The Depot Visitors Centre  A leaflet giving a guided 'Silk Factory Walk' is also available on site.