Doctor Who_ The Adventures of Henrietta Street - Lawrence Miles [9]
The hall of the house was in red and black, and red and black only. Drapes of the finest satin decked every wall, giving the ceremony something of the flavour of an Arabian House. There were roses and dark orchids… strung from the walls on ribbons of silk, though the flowers looked not so much like blooms as velvet themselves [folded] together in the most delicate manner… and it appeared that all was lit by the glow of the red and the black candles in the chandeliers. The men wore black and as a rule did not seem wont to impress, the ladies present wore crimson and vermillion yet the mood was not a sombre one. Lord _______ wore buttons on his jacket in the most macabre European style, fashioned to give the appearance of skulls… [t]hough it was not a masquerade, there were those that came masked out of discretion. At the foot of the stairway I encountered a gentleman whose face was concealed by a hood of red velvet, with no expression and nought of his face [showing] but two of the darkest eyes. Stitched into the forehead of that hood was a sigil in the shape of a triangle [almost certainly a Masonic symbol], while the neck was tied by fine red satin. Yet he had the bearing of a perfectly charming gentleman, with one, hand folded behind his back and the other carrying a flute glass of wine… as if one might wear such a hood at any polite gathering. One hostess, a pretty little red-head, was made uneasy by this and neglected her duty greatly in not engaging him in conversation.
Hardly a typical ball, then. But Scarlette had been selective in inviting her guests. Moreover, the ball was remarkable for starting at midnight, well after acceptable social hours… and to hold a ball in a house known to be a seraglio, a ‘house of leisure’, was itself hardly in line with protocol. Twenty years earlier, when a fashionable gentleman of the haut ton wouldn’t have been seen dead in town without a Covent Garden courtesan on his arm, such a thing might have seemed daring and the height of taste. But the age of the fashionable demi-rep had ended when the notorious Fanny Bradshaw had moved out of Covent Garden and brought the era of the ‘Great Harlots’ to an end. To have assembled any members of society at the House on Henrietta Street, let alone so many, must have been an achievement in itself.
It’s safe to assume that the ‘hostesses’ mentioned in the letter were the women of the House, those who conducted their business in the employ of Scarlette: at any gathering, Scarlette herself wasn’t prone to make an appearance – and therefore make an impression – until later on in the evening. Many of these women’s names have been lost to history, but a few are notable. There was Rebecca Macardle, who’d been among the last of the ‘Deerfield witches’ to evacuate America in 1781. There was the plump, dark-haired Russian girl Katya, whose ample seventeen-year‐old bust concealed a pendant ostensibly given to her by the personal coven of the Empress Catherine (naturally, she was thought to be a spy as well as a ritualist). Later on there was Lisa-Beth Lachlan, whose bad-tempered practicality did much to keep the House alive before the horror of early 1783. But the ‘pretty little red-head’ was almost certainly the girl re erred to by friends and visitors as Juliette.
Many of Juliette’s letters survive, not to mention a curious dream-journal from the summer of 1782. From these it’s fair to say that she was remarkably acute and intelligent, especially given her age. However, visitors to the House described her as quiet, polite, and apparently subservient to Scarlette herself. It’s not difficult to imagine this. Though much of Juliette’s past remains a mystery, it’s known that Scarlette was the one who found her, brought her to the House, and