Frank Delaney - Venetia Kellys Traveling Show

ALSO BY FRANK DELANEY

FICTION

Ireland
Tipperary
Shannon

NONFICTION

Simple Courage:
A True Story of Peril on the Sea

F RANK D ELANEY is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Ireland, Tipperary, and Shannon, and his nonfiction work Simple Courage: A True Story of Peril on the Sea was selected as one of the American Library Association Books of the Year. Formerly a judge for the Booker Fiction Prize, he worked for many years as a broadcaster with the BBC in England, where he also wrote many fiction and nonfiction bestsellers. Born in Ireland, he now lives in the United States.

S he sprang from the womb and waved to the crowd. Then she smiled and took a bow. Thats what her mother told me, and so did the midwife, Mrs. Haas. During the birth, the wind howled outside, and the snow whirled in a blizzard of frightful depth and terror. People died on the streets that evening, overwhelmed by the weather. When the blizzard cleared at around ten oclock, the stars came out bright and brighter, salt grains and diamonds, high above New York. The wind had stacked up the snow in hefty, gleaming banks against the bases of the tall buildings. By then the infant was pink and asleep, tiny hands wrinkled and clenched. Venetia, her name was, chosen the instant she appeared, and she was born, her mother insisted, in mythic circumstances: Moses; bulrushes; nativityshe murmured those words, to herself as much as to me.

You are reading the story of Venetia Kelly, that mythically born baby. She became a young woman of remarkable talent and passion, and when she was thirty-two years oldthe year I met hershe was drawn into a terrible intrigue that had a profound effect upon my parents and me.

Ive waited a long time to write it down. My reasons for doing so at all? Simple: The story isnt over, and Im telling it now to try to secure its ending. Im aware that Im like a man running after his hat in a high wind: I may never retrieve it; at moments I shall seem ridiculous; and finally the forces against me may deny me the result that I want. But there it is.

Venetia Kellys story became my story too; it determined the direction I would take at one time, and has controlled how Ive lived ever since. I cant say whether I might have had a different life if Id never met her, but such has been her impact that Ive never looked for anything else. In other words, the existence that I lead keeps me as close to her as I can get under the circumstances.

As you read, please know that Im a man of mature years telling the story of himself when young, so forgive me if at times I make the young me seem and sound older than eighteen. In fact, I dont think Ive changed that much; certainly I recognize myself easily. And I wasnt a complicated young man, but an only child is always a little different. My parents treated me almost as an equal, and I perhaps had more adult sensibilities than were good for me at that age.

I think that I might have found it easier to write about myself as a younger childthe small boy who dug for gold on the farm so that he could buy his parents gifts; who worried that they worked too hard; who bought his mother tinned pears for her birthday. At eighteen, some of that survived, but by then the sense of responsibility with which I am cursed had begun to grow all over me like an extra skin. I feel it every day, I feel it now; it too spurs me to try to put this account in your hands. But Ill endeavor to assemble all the reasons, as I think of them, and as they arise.

Tiny Digression (more Digressions later too): Is there an ideal age at which momentous events should happen to us? Is there a certain plateau we must reach before were capable of taking on big things? I have no idea, and if anybody ought to know, I should.

A s youll see, I cant tell you this story without the detailed inclusion of the mother, Sarah Kelly, also an actress. Sarah, when telling me about Venetias birth, flung about the word auspicious. That afternoon, in an attempt to induce birthVenetia was two days latethe mother sang something from Donizetti; she said that women in the theater had told her a high note could bring on labor.

As she hit the note, a horse in the street below neighed so loudly that the two expectant women, Sarah with her massive bump and Mrs. Haas with an armful of warm towels, went to the window and looked down. Sarah said, given the tricks of the light, that she thought she was looking at a unicorn.

That same morning she had a letter from a school friend repaying an old debt.

Auspicious, she said, waving a hand like a frond. Wasnt it all auspicious?

The father wasnt there that snowy night of the birth. Nor did he ever appear in Venetias childhood. He did speak to me eventually (once the others had agreed to be interviewed), and he then, this unpleasant, aloof beanpole, tried to buy my silence. This was a fellow so measured that people said he never changed his clothesalways a black double-breasted suit, startling white shirt, dark red tie.

So: born out of wedlock, the daughter of a rich and prominent man and a glamorous and already renowned actress, a storm-tossed birth, a foot of snow in the streets, pedestrians hurled to the ground by winds of hurricane force, perhaps a unicorn, plus a recompense coming from afar. Was it mythic? Its tough to say no.

We have myth to correspond with the great moments of life, Sarah Kelly said to me all those years later. She was prepared only to talk about such things as the birth or Venetia when young, and had condemned Mrs. Haas to the same restrictions. When beggars die there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes. And every mother knows the exact, the precise, the meticulous details of the birth of every child she has ever bornethats her own, private little myth. So I can tell youthis was a birth from a legend. If you want proof, see how remarkable the child became.

Now, looking at my notes of that conversation, I can analyze what Sarah said. In essence, she linked the birth of her daughter to the birth of Jesus Christ, and she supported her thesis with an unattributed quotation from Shakespeare, the remark about beggars and comets, and so forth.

If you want to put yourself in good company, reach for the top. That was Sarahdramatic, resplendent, with a long, elegant slope of a nose, and born without the gene of shyness. And that, in essence, was the level of sophistication we came up against, my family and I. Plus, not far away from Sarah, crookedness, thievery, danger, and death.

Nobody here in Ireland recalls snow that night, or planets crashing, or at the very least some thunder and lightning. Ive made local inquiries, and Ive checked the meteorological office recordsrain here, frost there, fog somewhere else, temperatures between 28 and 48 degrees Fahrenheit, nothing abnormal.

Where Venetia Kelly was born, the weather also looked as though it would stay ordinary that daya dry and sunny New Year in New York, the first of January, 1900. In fact, it was unseasonably warm on Park Avenue. And then, in a matter of hours, the blizzard swept down from the Great Lakes faster than a rumor. No wonder Venetia often complained of the cold.

Sarah had to leave the house that night where she gave birth; she had to get out before the Andersons returned. That, apparently, was part of the deal. The conception of the baby had taken place in Mr. Andersons study on Park Avenueon the desk, she told me. Sarah had always wanted to see his home, observe the things that comforted him; so, his wife away for Easter, Mr. Anderson had invited her over on the Sunday afternoon.