Authors: The Painted Lady
Then I was ready to face the future.
I knew, of course, that I would never love again. No man would
ever know me as Frederick had... no man who did could have gone on loving me
with Frederick's accepting, uncritical, unflagging, and wholehearted devotion.
It never ceased to amaze me
that Frederick, knowing of my origins, had actually made me his wife—and after
I'd given myself to him! But Frederick had loved me back in England when I was
seventeen—even when I'd blurted out the humiliating truth about my grandmother,
he'd loved me —and he had never stopped loving me, nor I him. When things were
at their worst, when any other couple would have been at each other's throats,
savaging each other's souls with bitter accusations, it was not so with
Frederick and me. Instead, as I'd retreated gracefully into the quiet,
undemanding depression that had been like death in life and Frederick had
consoled himself with alcohol, it really seemed that these stratagems were what
allowed us to keep love, if not its splendid early passion, alive.
A fortnight after Frederick's death—it was the same day I finally
began to clean up the little studio—Lord Marsden left a card inquiring after me
with Marguerite, who had been acting as my doorkeeper. But by then I saw no
reason to hide myself from anyone.
So I quickly sent my thanks for his kind inquiries to his
temporary address in Paris, the Hotel Bristol.
Lord Marsden would always have a special place in my heart. He had
done so much to help establish Frederick's reputation only a few years earlier.
It was the elusive dealer Julien, of course, who had actually engineered
Frederick's dizzying rise to fame and fortune. He had insisted on showing
Frederick's
Othello
series to Lord Marsden, and not only had the
enthusiastic viscount purchased all six of the
Othello
paintings, he'd
also commissioned one of a favorite scene from
The Winter's Tale.
It was
of the moment when the supposed statue of Hermione reveals herself to be a real
woman of flesh and blood. I posed for it.
When the viscount arrived to deliver his condolences in person, I
was genuinely delighted to see him.
"It is customary," said Lord Marsden, "for
friends—and I hope you will consider me a friend—to ask whether there is
anything one can do to lessen the hardship of such a bereavement. In my case,
these are not idle words. If there is anything, anything at all I can do that
may ease your difficulties at this sad time, you have only to say the
word."
I swallowed my pride, for I knew that I could not afford to let
the opportunity pass. My situation did not allow it.
"Then I will take you at yours," I told him, and was
relieved to see that he really did look pleased, rather than becoming stiff and
uneasy, as I'd half feared. "But I must assure you that my circumstances
are not nearly so desperate as you may have imagined."
This was true. At first I had supposed that the sudden cessation
of visits from Frederick's creditors was due to some nice reluctance on their
part to harass me too soon upon the heels of his death. I ought to have known
better —they had never exhibited much chivalry before. The truth was, as I had
by now begun to discover, that they had all been paid off.
Frederick, it seemed, had spent the last day of his life making
good his debts.
And how he had done it was a complete mystery.
He'd still had money in his pockets when his body was found, and
it felt like a small fortune to me, once I realized there were no other
claimants to it. But I couldn't stretch it out forever.
"It seems," I now observed to Lord Marsden, "that
Paris is daily becoming more popular with our countrymen. But perhaps you have
noticed the difficulties some of our visiting compatriots encounter when they
try to make themselves understood on this side of the Channel?"
"I have," said Lord Marsden with a little smile.
"Well, for most of the past year I have been offering French lessons
to our English visitors, and I know that you have a great many
connections...." Here I stammered a bit with embarrassment but forced
myself to go on. "So if you should hear of anyone who wishes to achieve
greater fluency, and would not mind paying a very modest fee for lessons, I
hope you will think of me. I can't ask you to testify to my abilities, of
course, but if you would at least mention my name—"
"I should be very glad to," interjected Lord Marsden
quickly. "And I think I
can
testify to your abilities—Julien swears
that you speak like a native, and your late husband once confessed to me that
he'd have had the very devil of a time, after you first came to Paris, had you
not worked so patiently to help him master the finer points of the
language."
I felt a belated but sincere little twinge of gratitude for my
grandmother, who, even after she had washed up for the last time, figuratively
speaking, on an English shore, pregnant, unmarried, and cast aside by her
protector because the child she carried was not his, had clung to the language of
her native land. She'd been fluent in both English and Italian, but she had
always spoken only French to me. It was the language of love, she used to say.
Of course, love had not
meant quite the same thing to her as it did to me.
Lord Marsden was as good as his word. Within a few weeks, I had
acquired several new students and was gaining confidence that I would somehow
be able to make my own way in the world. Of course, I'd have to exercise my
hardworking grandmother's lessons in frugality for the rest of my life. But
instead of bemoaning my fate, I was glad to have had that stringent education,
which she had prayed I would never have to use.
By late April, the Concours Hippique horse show had for over a
month been drawing English visitors, along with
Tout Paris,
to the
Palais de l'Industrie, and the demand for lessons was growing. I suppose there
was a sort of cachet in learning French from the widow of a well-known artist
who was now on his way to becoming a legend, having died so tragically and with
a certain morbid glamour so long before his time.
By this time, although I still missed Frederick keenly, I was not
indifferent to the benefits of my new independence. It was a condition I had
never known before, having been so dominated by my grandmother and then having
had to assume so many mundane responsibilities during my marriage to Frederick,
whose artistic temperament had held him to a more elevated plane.
Yes, I hungered for my incomparable husband more than I can
say—but not so much for his body, to which I had been virtually unable to
respond for two years, as for the sheer warmth and vitality of his presence.
However, I found it easier to adjust to my new life than I had
supposed; and the very notion of ever marrying again remained wholly inconceivable.
Then, one June morning, more than four months after Frederick had
been laid to rest in the Bagneaux, where the paupers sleep, Lord Marsden, who
had continued to call upon me during his extended visit in Paris, asked whether
he might introduce to me his cousin, Sir Anthony Camwell, who had just arrived
in Paris for the Chantilly Derby. Lord Marsden would be returning to England
soon, but his cousin, he said, intended to remain longer, for he was an art
collector and had become fascinated with French and Belgian Symbolist painting.
Lord Marsden was aware that, although Frederick had largely scorned the
Symbolists for being too ethereal, I had not shared his opinions on that
subject. It was true that the pale, rather attenuated saints of Puvis de Chavannes
lacked the robust and vigorous splendor of Frederick's best works, but I did
not think any the less of them for it.
I had heard Sir Anthony Camwell's name before. At the very height
of Frederick's success, the baronet, who'd apparently been remarkably struck by
the beauty of some of the paintings that decked his cousin's walls—particularly
the one of Hermione—had arranged to visit Frederick's studio with Lord Marsden.
It might have been another great coup for Frederick, for Sir Anthony was said
to be very rich. But the visit had not materialized: At the last minute Sir
Anthony had sent his regrets and, with what could only be regarded as cavalier
incivility, had not even proposed another date! Not even the courtly Lord
Marsden had offered any explanation for the baronet's precipitous withdrawal.
I'd hardly cared; I'd just lost my child and was almost beside
myself with regrets that seemed too deep for tears. But even Frederick had been
crushed by Sir Anthony's sudden loss of interest in his work, and although the
severity of his disappointment was not at all the kind of thing that Frederick
could have found the words to express, it must have shaken his self-confidence,
for, in spite of his success, Frederick suffered from a growing anxiety that
his work might suddenly become unfashionable. It was most unfortunate that Sir
Anthony's thoughtless little blow had fallen on Frederick at a time when I was
too demolished myself to perform the complex job at which I had become so
skilled, that of bolstering Frederick's spirits whenever they flagged without
actually acknowledging that they
were
flagging—a condition he would have
indignantly denied.
But now at last I would meet the arrogant and ill-mannered Sir Anthony
Camwell, whom chance had linked so closely in my mind with my own greatest
failure and with Frederick's subsequent decline. Out of regard for Lord
Marsden, however, I voiced no objection to the proposed introduction. Perhaps
since Sir Anthony was planning to spend some time in Paris, Lord Marsden had a
view toward helping me acquire yet another pupil. Or perhaps Sir Anthony had
come to regret the earlier lost opportunity—now that Frederick's death had
permanently secured his reputation and had sent the value of his works soaring.
Perhaps he wished to snatch up anything still in my possession. But I had
nothing to sell.
I had nothing left at all of Frederick's mature works, except five
gorgeous but blazingly indiscreet canvasses that had been rolled and bound
almost as soon as the paint had dried and had been relegated, in our final
home, to the back of a deep closet behind a barricade of ordinary domestic
clutter. Frederick had promised me long ago that no eyes but ours would ever
see those brilliant, damning masterpieces.
This time, Sir Anthony did not excuse himself from keeping the
engagement. On the appointed day he arrived at my door in Lord Marsden's tow.
Although I had been predisposed to dislike him, on account of the
subtle injury I felt he had done Frederick, he was Lord Marsden's cousin, and I
was determined to be cordial on that account.
But, alas, he appeared to be everything I had feared he would
be—-and worse.
He was young—much younger than his cousin—and as tall as
Frederick, although with not so massive a frame.
No one, in fact, could have been more unlike Frederick. He was as
handsome, it is true, but in an entirely different way.
Frederick's vitality had given an irresistible charm and magnetism
to a face that might have otherwise been merely pleasant. Sir Anthony's
features had been chiseled with such flawless precision that he seemed to feel
no need to exert his personality at all in order to enliven them.
No, there was not one ounce of Frederick's endearing spontaneity
in Sir Anthony Camwell. More than anyone I had ever seen, he exuded a cool,
quiet, almost lazy self-possession, the kind which proclaims itself to feel
under no obligation to ingratiate or please.
From his silk hat to his fine leather shoes, he was attired with
studiously understated elegance. Indeed, all that prevented him from being the
perfect gentleman's fashion plate, in swallowtail coat, gray-striped trousers,
dove gray waistcoat, and snowy ascot, was the fact that his hair, which was
pale blond in color and rather long, hung loosely around his well-cut features,
undisciplined by any pomade. That single suggestion of insouciance gave the
perfection of his appearance some slight interest that, in my opinion, would
have otherwise been entirely wanting.
And as soon as he spoke, he dispelled my misperception that he
might be a candidate for French lessons. For although Sir Anthony had not been
born to the tongue, he used it, in a low voice which I found disarmingly
pleasant, with as much appreciation and sensitivity as if it had been a woman
and he her lover.
But he did nothing to suggest that he wished to impress anyone
with his fluency. Indeed, he spoke very little, and although unerringly polite,
he was so unforthcoming that I began to imagine he had been dragged along against
his will.
Lord Marsden was warm and voluble, attentive and amusing; his
cousin was remote and virtually mute. At first I thought he was unspeakably
bored; soon I began to sense that behind his indifferent facade, he was alert
to everything, although he contributed nothing. Perhaps, as he was undoubtedly
accustomed to luxury, he was dismayed by the shabbiness of his present
surroundings.
When I made a polite effort to bring him into the conversation,
which had been bubbling along quite easily without his help, his response was
not encouraging.
"How long are you in Paris, Sir Anthony?" I asked him at
one point.