Authors: Matthew Plampin
Will suppresses a shiver. More than frames or picture dealing, gossip is Jack Harris’s stock in trade. He knows when he sees a kink in the cloth – a loose stitch to pick at. Will’s thoughts, unexpectedly, are of confession. He could air the whole damn story, right this minute. The facts of his experience. The memories that swamp his mind whenever he is trying to work, or sleep, or think. This is surely a chance for release. He peers to the left. The Strand can be seen along the crooked passage of Half Moon Street: the carriages and tall carts, the haze of smoke and steam, the endless crowds through which he has yet to search.
It can’t be taken. What revelations, exactly, would he make? Where would he break off? It’s all roped together, every deed and misdeed of that fretful, tumultuous week. To tell of Tom and Mary Ann Lascelles is to tell of Mrs Lamb, and Abolition pamphlets, and night-time escapades in the state rooms; of Selene and Endymion, stolen, snapped apart and hurled into the boating lake. Harris is no fool. He’d see that he was being given but half a tale. He’d pose questions that Will would be better off not answering. He’d worry the matter like a dog. It’d start too much. The Lascelles have Will’s measure. He can’t do it.
‘Tom weren’t at Harewood, Mr Harris. Just me.’
The frame-maker draws back, his brow lifting. He releases Will’s arm. ‘Really, Mr Turner? Our friend was quite specific. “Only two months previous,” he said, teeth gritted as hard as you like, “they showed me the kindest—”’
‘He went to Harewood the
year
previous. It was the liquor, I reckon. Muddled his recollection.’
Harris considers Will for a second; then he grins. ‘Possible,’ he admits. ‘Very possible. Mr Girtin seemed certain – but you was
there
, sir, wasn’t you! I hope that you should damn well know!’ He slaps Will’s shoulder. ‘You mustn’t be nervous. The night I speak of was several weeks ago now. We’ve seen him since, for business, and had him lecture us on the wickedness of the government with his usual spirit. And only yesterday Mr Samuel was saying that he’s become embroiled with a … laundress, was it?’
‘Dairy maid. Near Regent Street.’
‘No
enduring injuries
, then,’ the frame-maker concludes, ‘on our Mr Girtin. This, I think, can safely be attested.’
The three men laugh and begin to discuss the particular attributes of dairy maids; so Will decides that he’ll resume the duty that propelled him from his easel, out into this unwelcoming afternoon. He excuses himself, none too loudly, and carries on down his intended path. The sounds of the Strand – tradesmen’s cries, the grinding and creaking of wheels, ten thousand voices talking at once – are funnelled up the sloping alley, enveloping Will like a rush of dirty surf; and Jack Harris, calling after him from Chandos Street, is almost drowned out.
‘I’d visit the pillory first, Mr Turner, if I was you. That’s where you got her last time, ain’t it?’
*
An hour later Will is back in his painting room. The latticed window is open despite the cold, in an effort to wring what light remains from the declining day. His oils are mixed and ready, the muddy little heaps dotted across the flat hump of the palette. Before him is a half-finished view of Buttermere, taken from a colour study in the larger sketchbook, one of the best studies of the tour. A rainstorm arches above the mountainous valley, sinking it into a rich pluvial gloom; but at its centre the sun has found a gap in the cloud, and reaches between the foothills to set a golden cradle in the mid-ground. The intention, of course, is contrast: thunderous shadow and blazing brilliance, placed side by side to Sublime effect. His time away, however, has served to underscore the picture’s shortcomings. Timid, he thinks, glowering at it. Hesitant. He has it in mind to add a rainbow, curving over the peaks, leading the eye down to the brightest point, but cannot find it within him. Thomson’s
Seasons
was the source of this notion, so he gives the lines another try.
‘The grand ethereal bow shoots up immense, and every hue unfolds …’
It’s hopeless. The sensibility is fled. These fine words aren’t enough. Image and paint aren’t enough. They’ll
never
be enough. Will slumps onto his stool. He hears Father scrubbing the small courtyard outside his window, working the coarse brush as hard as he can, and Mother’s moans trailing plaintively from the parlour. His own search proved unsuccessful. Even the pillory at Charing Cross – where she has indeed been discovered on several instances, making a vigorous contribution to the punishment of the unlucky souls locked within – yielded nothing. Footsore and irritable, he returned to the shop to find both parents already there. She’d been in the yard of St Paul’s, Father told him, looking for their daughter’s grave, the location of which she could never be made to learn.
Will sets his palette on the mantelpiece and gazes around balefully at the cramped, cluttered room: at the table piled with papers and books; the muller lolling on its stone plate, both coated in orange dust; the washing line pegged with drying drawings, running diagonally from one cobwebbed corner to another. The problem here, the cause of his restiveness, is obvious. That brief conversation with Jack Harris has brought about an unsettling change. No longer has Will simply been used and then bought off; he has colluded directly. The Lascelles’ calculations can be imagined with infuriating ease. They’ve decided, plainly, that William Turner is
safe
– a neutered, brainless creature, as unlikely to challenge their account, their manipulations and omissions, as the staff up at Harewood. And he has proved them right. He has lied. Obliged himself to lie again.
Beau’s drawings hang together at one end of the washing line. The close views of the house are complete, ready to be taken over to Hanover Square. No chances have been taken. Dutch-style details of rustic life, Vernet skies, the lightest gloss of Claude: everything that could be desired. Will wasn’t going to give them the slightest reason to deny or reduce his payment. The other four are all at roughly the same stage, being worked up for a simultaneous finish early in the new year. Those of the castle are turning out especially well. He decided on the eastern view, with the ruin in the left foreground and Wharfedale off to the right – the first of the day, sketched with such exhilaration – and one of those from the north, the triangular composition, taken just before the breaking of the storm. Before he sought refuge inside. Before he found them.
Suddenly, Will’s discontent points out a course. He pulls down the eastern view, flaps it against a board and identifies a suitable spot: a section of mossy bank, perhaps an inch long and a half-inch wide, just beneath the castle. The scraping nail, grown back to its old dimensions, is brought to bear and the paper cleared of pigment. Then he takes up the smallest of his watercolour pencils, charges it with the very darkest mix of Cologne-earth and makes his addition. Five minutes’ labour puts two tiny figures forever in the foreground of Beau Lascelles’ drawing. One sits in a sun hat and blue coat, sketching diligently into his book. The other, bareheaded in a suit of burnt umber, is stretched out on the ground beside his companion, watching him work with idle interest.
Will and Tom.
‘Stories,’ says Morland now, sitting back with the air of an expectant king. ‘We must have stories.’
The company shifts about, arranging its recollections; glad, in truth, of this new purpose. Little Louis Francia speaks first, his usual trim precision compromised somewhat by port, telling of the severance of Tom’s apprenticeship to Edward Dayes. Jealous of his pupil’s ability, this ill-famed master used to delight in assigning him the most tedious labours imaginable. One task eventually proved too much: the colouring of five hundred prints of Coldstream Guards, of five hundred tunics and sashes and tri-cornered hats, each identical to the last. So Tom, at only seventeen years of age and with four years of indentures still remaining, decided that he would add great long beards to the soldiers instead, and devils’ tails, and tackle of the most extraordinary proportions; and leave Dayes’ house for good, plunging into the city to live off his own brush alone.
‘Independence,’ Francia concludes. ‘Even then, he prized it above all else.’
Bob Porter goes next, standing grandly as if addressing a public meeting, and barks his way through a tale of an artists’ outing into Kent. An old mill was discovered beside a stream, at a picturesque degree of ruination. The painters agreed that this was their subject, to be taken in colour, with the results compared at the day’s end. An hour later, though, Tom was finished, his drawing so fine that it left the others very much inclined to abandon theirs; and when a pair of dairy maids came over to see what they were about, he made them a gift of the sheet like it was nothing at all.
‘They strolled off together, of course, arm in arm.’ The company starts to laugh. ‘Didn’t see the scoundrel again for the better part of a week.’
Third is an affable, diffident fellow called Holcroft – an amateur, it turns out, and a medical student, who went with Tom on his journey to Paris. ‘He wanted to see every last inch of the city, and record it also. We were warned that sketching in the open might be dangerous, that we might be taken for spies and possibly harmed, and should really remain in our cabriolet. But he wouldn’t have it. The hazard simply did not apply to him. And his energy was remarkable. Greater, certainly, than mine.’ Holcroft’s smile falters; he looks to his glass. ‘Although by then, the cough was … it really was very bad.’
No one can follow this. All good humour is dispersed, melancholy building in its place. Morland, plainly experienced in both dissipation and grief, moves to quash it.
‘Save us, Turner,’ he cries, rapping on the tabletop with his cane. ‘Save us, sir, if you please. They tell me that you were his boyhood companion, with all of London as your stamping ground. By God! Days like that must surely never dim.’
Sat in a corner, Will is almost hidden between Georgie Samuel and Paul Sandby Munn. He eyes Morland, the bane of his afternoon: the old coat, the broken veins, the drink-swollen jowls. The exact link between Tom and this sorry figure is unknown – Jack Harris, kept away himself by an attack of rheumatics, remains the best guess. A prodigy in his youth, Morland smothered his talent with a profligacy so reckless it has seen him confined to the King’s Bench, cast from his home more times than can easily be counted, and required to throw out pictures at a rate that has made any quality or originality impossible. He’s a failure, in short; but today he finds himself in the company of success, and is determined to have his fun. Addressing Will often, he tries to drag him into the foreground and inflict whatever embarrassment or disquiet that he can.
Will shakes his head. ‘Damn shame, that’s all. Poor Tom.’
Morland pushes no harder, for the moment. He drains his glass and supplies them with his own tale, a florid account of a night spent coasting through the low taverns, including the one they presently occupy – the Rummer, which he claims was Tom’s special favourite. There’s boozing and singing, wenching and spewing; and then a running battle with the militia – the ‘agents of repression’ as Morland terms them – involving hats tipped into gutters and the liberal slinging about of dung. It’s an evocation of Tom Girtin that his circle of intimates struggles to recognise. They listen with forced smiles.
Will’s attention drifts. He looks out into the tavern, at the ancient black beams and warped floors; at the sallow faces that watch them steadily through the tobacco smoke. This occasion is starting to feel rather pointless, as if he’s waiting for something – for someone – whose arrival is less likely with every minute that passes. He wants very much to consult his watch, a handsome piece bought last year after the conclusion of his business with the Earl of Egremont. Another glance at those sallow faces tells him this would be unwise.
Fresh bottles are brought and glasses charged, and the toasts begin again. This is Morland’s other method of choice for fending off the gloom: port-induced insensibility. They work through a list, more or less identical to the one trotted out in the Crown and Anchor, and the Three Tuns before that. Liberty, poetry, love; their brother Thomas Girtin, and his wife and son; and his paintings, his magnificent paintings, sure to immortalise him in the annals of art. Will hangs back, feigning participation, barely touching the thick liquid to his lips. He needs to keep a clear head.
Morland is watching him. ‘Perhaps, Turner,’ he calls, ‘if you won’t talk of Tom, you’ll be so kind as to talk a little of your pictures. What’ve you got on the stocks this year, eh? What astonishing feats can your public expect?’
Will’s frown weighs down his features, tilting his head towards the Rummer’s cracked floorboards. The old reprobate has put this to him in the certain knowledge that he wants nothing less than to answer – and that everyone present will be eager to hear whatever he might say. Sure enough, he looks up again to find himself hemmed in by expressions of deep interest and enthusiasm; of reverence, almost, in a couple of cases. They’re
leaning in on him
, it feels like. It’s extremely discomforting.
‘This and that.’
‘I understand you were in Switzerland, Mr Turner,’ says Holcroft. ‘Few have been, especially of late. One can only imagine the effects. The sentiments they inspire.’
‘There’s Alpine pieces,’ Will allows. ‘A large marine.’
‘With tall ships, I hope,’ booms the rosy-cheeked Porter, ‘and stormy seas. Good God, that one last year, of the fishing boats – I swear it made the carpet move beneath my feet. Damn thing was quite
nauseating
to behold. And I say that, you know, as the highest possible praise.’
‘New one’s better.’
Four or five questions come at once, along with more half-heard impertinence from Morland. Will protests, telling them that he can reveal no more – thinking that this really is intolerable, that he might well be justified in getting to his feet and heading straight home. Georgie Samuel intervenes. A degree less drunk than the rest and plainly seeking to rescue Will, he reminds them loudly of the evening’s purpose.