Serpent in the Garden (4 page)

As soon as she had pulled him up, she no longer had any doubt about his true condition. The man was dead. His eyes were open, yet blank. Wisps of brown detritus clung to his lashes and brows. Pooled inside his mouth, staining his tongue and teeth, was a brownish, soupy liquid in which pieces of fibrous matter were suspended. The smell of this substance was acrid and the man had apparently vomited it prior to death. It had coursed down his chin and the front of his torso, subsequently drying to a paste in which morsels of bark were set like glue. The acrid smell of vomit mingled in the humid air with a certain heavy sweetness that she feared might be the stench of death.

O
N THE SAME fine May morning, not fifty yards distant from this distressing scene, Joshua Pope took up his long-handled sable brush and a palette on which he had mixed blobs of lead white, red ocher, vermilion, and yellow ocher to produce a range of flesh tones. When he began to paint, he abandoned his usual expression of calm curiosity and adopted a brisk yet flamboyant manner that matched the extravagant garb concealed beneath his paint-stained linen smock.

Although only three and thirty years of age, Joshua Pope was already regarded as the equal of any portraitist in the land. He had recently triumphed over Reynolds and Gainsborough in a masterly conversation piece, depicting the royal princes George and Frederick at play, that had been exhibited at the Society of Arts. Critics had deemed his works a little warmer and more profound than Romney’s, and being youthful and agreeable and immaculate in his dress, he was more in vogue with polite society than Hudson, Hayman, and Ramsay.

His popularity was such that patrons usually visited him in his rooms for sittings, but exceptional circumstances had altered his routine and taken him to Astley. The previous summer, Joshua’s wife, Rachel, had drowned in a tragic boating accident on the river Thames. Their only child, Benjamin, had perished with her. A slight touch of influenza had prevented Joshua from accompanying them on their outing, and he felt responsible for their deaths. To distract himself from the agonies of bereavement, he had moved to new lodgings, thrown himself into his work, purchased a dozen items of dress—waistcoats, breeches, coats—each more elaborate than the last. But none of these measures succeeded in shifting the bouts of melancholy to which he had grown increasingly prone. The blackness was often unbearable. Every object in his new rooms only served to remind him of his darling Rachel and sweet Benjamin. Every item in his closet, no matter how vivid and newly acquired, seemed dull and worn. He developed a morbid fear of water. He took a mistress, a comely widow by the name of Meg Dunn, but although he slept a little more soundly after their meetings, the shadow of melancholy remained.

As the first anniversary of Rachel and Benjamin’s deaths approached, Joshua yearned to leave London. Thus, when Herbert Bentnick had offered a commission to paint his marriage portrait, Joshua had suggested he come to stay at Astley House in Richmond. Herbert had quickly accepted this proposal; it was unheard of for Joshua Pope to agree to leave his premises, and he declared that he would gladly pay a fee of twenty guineas. All parties were thus very well satisfied.

JOSHUA steadfastly believed that painting a portrait should involve more than just executing a representation. He wanted to discover in his subject’s physiognomy something no one else had seen. He invested extraordinary energies in this pursuit, and although he painted in a traditional manner, he had developed a somewhat singular technique. Positioning himself so close to the canvas that his nose threatened to smear the wet paint, he made a few small hatchings; then, leaning back, holding his brush at the very tip of its handle, he would apply a thin line of paint in a broad sweeping stroke. He was currently engaged in the early stages of his portrait. Yesterday on a primed canvas he had briskly sketched in the outline of his figures in thin gray paint. Today he had begun the first painting—laying in dead coloring, a range of low-key pigments to position everything correctly, and starting to build the likeness. Several minutes of this frenetic activity ensued before he deposited his palette on the side table, wiped his nose on his sleeve and stepped back almost to the doorway.

At this stage of portraiture it always seemed to Joshua that he was seeing the composition through a veil or a dense fog. The tones were monochrome, the strokes spontaneous and thinly laid; richness, shadow, highlight, detail all would come later. Nevertheless, he derived immense satisfaction from seeing the shape and pattern each figure created on the canvas.

His sitter was captivated by his antics. Herbert Bentnick’s eyes watched every portion of Joshua’s physiognomy, which creased and crumpled and puckered with countless capricious expressions. Joshua smiled to himself. Sometimes it was politic to feign a little oddity. If he had the air of a blockhead, what of it? Jigging about held Herbert’s attention, made him forget his self-consciousness; his character became visible. Faces were like maps: you had to unfurl them to make sense of them.

With his head cocked to one side, Joshua squinted at the canvas. His lips distorted in a grimace, signaling moderate satisfaction in his work thus far. Herbert began to mirror his apparently dispirited look. Joshua charged his brush with lead white and vermilion, sucking in his cheeks so that they became triangular cavities and his eyes no more than small slashes in his narrowed face. He looked up again, throwing a lengthy, almost accusing glance in Herbert’s direction, at some foible of his physiognomy that eluded him thus far. Having pondered his handiwork sufficiently at a distance, he approached until he was no more than two feet from his sitter’s face. Joshua peered intently at Herbert’s profile. Joshua was aware his scrutiny was uncivil and made Herbert profoundly uncomfortable. Irritation, as much as Herbert ever experienced such a sentiment—he was a man of equable humor—began to niggle within him. Joshua discerned it tightening up his warming-pan face, darkening his complexion to the color of rubies, contracting the pupils of his pale blue eyes.

For more than an hour Herbert uttered no word of complaint, partly because he had, after all, been warned. It was Joshua’s habit to explain something of his methods to his patrons, reasoning that it would help them tolerate his methods and, more important, make them properly appreciate the finished work. Last night in the salon, dressed in his best coat, of pale blue satin trimmed with silver frogging, and matching breeches and waistcoat, he had held forth. “Transverse illumination is essential,” he had declared, studying the air-twist stem of the glass that held his claret. “It provides depth of shadow, which in turn enhances the beauty and character of the sitter. In the same way that beauty seems more radiant when juxtaposed with ugliness, without extremes of darkness and light a subject would seem devoid of contour and therefore much less compelling, d’you see?”

“Indeed,” said Herbert, who was intrigued, as always, with any insight into a new and unfamiliar world. “I had never considered it, but now I see that it must, of course, be so.”

“Every good rival of mine believes it to be so. They say Mr. Gainsborough paints only by candlelight.”

Joshua proceeded then to explain that the pose and background were equally crucial elements of the composition. “They too should add to the momentousness of the portrait, conveying to the viewer something of the character and achievements and interests of the subject. Why, you can have no idea, sir, of the eloquence of a pair of hands. They may impart stern authority, graciousness, candor—myriad traits—depending on the positioning.”

“Quite so,” said Herbert, who was as thirsty for Joshua’s knowledge as Joshua was for his wine.

“Thus the composition will be transformed from a mere likeness into a work of significance, something truly deserving to be called a ‘work of art.’ As for the sketchy backdrops of my rivals—those who use parsley and sheep’s wool and mirror and coal for woodland, cloud, water, and rocks—is it not an outrage that such men should call themselves ‘portraitists,’ when they are no better than the daubers of stage scenery?”

“Come, come, Mr. Pope,” said Herbert, laughing. “Surely the visage is most crucial? Is not the background merely a distraction from that?”

“I beg to disagree with you, sir,” said Joshua, smiling smoothly, for he greatly enjoyed discussions of this nature. “In any portrait worth the name, the setting should be as identifiable and as individual and as carefully executed as the subject. It is an intrinsic part of the whole. Do not believe anyone who tells you otherwise.”

“Then I am fortunate indeed to have commissioned you. And I confess myself eager to see the finished work,” replied Herbert with a bow, before turning, as politeness demanded, to attend to the ladies.

But if Joshua’s explanations had been politely explained during last evening’s conversation, now, with a palette and several brushes in his hand, his manner had perceptibly changed. He became a detatched observer of life, not a participant in it. Decorum was gone. Herbert Bentnick was no different from the jug on the plinth beside him, an object to represent. Joshua was possessed by paint.

Herbert Bentnick had commissioned this portrait to mark his forthcoming nuptials with Sabine Mercier, who, in three months’ time, would become his second wife. Since a fondness for gardens had brought the pair together, Joshua had chosen the famously verdant grounds of Astley as a setting for the portrait, in which Herbert stood, one hand on the back of a seat in which Sabine would recline like an exotic Venus. To one side stood a small plinth, over which an assortment of fruits and flowers from the garden would be artfully strewn. Bearing in mind Sabine’s passion, Joshua decided—with the happy couple’s concurrence—that a pineapple would be the centerpiece of this arrangement. Sabine would be turned toward Herbert. In one outstretched hand she would tender him a ripened fruit; the other hand would be behind her head. Beyond would be a prospect of the gardens: the grottoes, the lakes, the aviaries, the temples, and, of course, the pinery.

Joshua was currently working on Herbert’s hands and face, progressing from light to dark tints, following the structure of the face with his strokes, making no attempt to soften the patches of different hue. Herbert tried not to flinch as he felt himself once again coming under Joshua’s dissecting gaze. He raised his head a trifle and held his eye steady, his fingers contracted on the back of the chair. The clock on the wall behind ticked languidly.

Herbert was a large man of heavy torso, yet his legs appeared fragile, birdlike, inadequate for the weight they supported. Like most men in their middle years he had the face he deserved. An even temper and a benign disposition were written in his smooth complexion, vivacity and brio in his plump, upturned lips.

Herbert loved to dabble in many subjects. His library bore testimony to his various interests: the shelves held not only a vast number of books, but also, inter alia, a collection of bird’s eggs, a case of shells, a cherry stone he believed to be carved with a hundred faces, folios of engravings of fauna discovered on foreign expeditions, and portfolios of investments in a ragbag of businesses including fish farms and strangely adventurous pumps. Few of these enterprises had yielded the financial fruit he had hoped for, but Herbert measured remuneration not just in monetary terms but also by the diversion they afforded. In this respect he considered himself very rich indeed.