The Dark Clue (4 page)

So please, my dearest – don't worry! And let me end with a worry of my own: I was delighted to hear that you have been visiting our favourite haunts on the moor, but do you think, in your present condition, it is wise to walk so far, particularly when you have no companion to help you, should need arise? Please – be careful.

Your devoted husband,

Walter

V

Letter from Walter Hartright to Laura Hartright,
1st August, 185–

Brompton Grove,
Tuesday

My dearest love,

Your letter reached me this morning. Thank you! I confess I was hoping it might arrive in company, for over the last few days I have felt powerless to do more on the
Life
until I have heard from Jones and Ruskin (with the result that, to Davidson's evident annoyance, I have taken to anticipating the post by pacing about the house like a caged wolf awaiting the full moon).

But your words galvanized me into action; and as soon as I had finished reading them I at once resolved to go on the offensive, and try to find my own way into Turner's world. I confess I had no very clear idea of how, or where, I should begin (I think at the back of my mind was the notion that if all else failed I could end up at the Athenaeum, where I might happen upon someone who recollected him): my aim was merely to set out, and see where the day took me. And – although it may seem fanciful – I think my faith was rewarded.

Hyde Park was even more thronged than usual, but by avoiding the carriage-ways, and following the narrowest paths through clumps of bushes and over grassy rises, I was sometimes able,
for a moment, to imagine myself not in the centre of the greatest city on earth but in some pleasant rural Eden. My way brought me at length through a fringe of trees and out by the Serpentine, which – as if pressed flat by the heavy sky – lay as still as a newly poured bath, glowing with the surly sheen of pewter. Around the shore, as their nurses looked on, children played with hoops and sticks, or put dolls to sleep in their own perambulators, or chased after a silly dog (a bundle of white curls, with no discernible face) which had made off with a ball and chewed it half to pieces. One little boy was wailing inconsolably, and I stopped to ask him the matter.

‘I've lost my duck,' he sobbed, pointing to a little wooden pintail, which had bobbed out of reach and seemed to be trying to join the real ducks in the middle of the lake.

It was here that fate first took a hand; for I went back to the trees, broke off a small branch, and (after a good deal of getting it, and losing it, and getting it again) managed to retrieve the toy, and return it to its owner. And had it not been for this small delay, I should not still have been there five minutes later, when a voice suddenly called out:

‘Hartright!'

I turned, and could not for a moment identify the fashionably dressed young man who had broken from the crowd and was advancing smiling towards me. It was only when he pointed to the stick that still hung dripping from my hand, and said, laughing, ‘What? Trying to catch dinner?' that I knew him by his voice.

‘Travis!' I said.

It was no wonder that I had not recognized him, for he had grown a beard, and, instead of his usual get-up, was sporting a check waistcoat and a new soft felt hat. He carried a large portfolio, which he pinioned under his arm while he removed a flawless yellow glove and shook my hand.

‘Where are you going?' we both said together, and laughed.

‘Sir William Butteridge,' he said. He tried to sound nonchalant, but his face shone, and in struggling to suppress his smile he distorted his next words so much that all I could make out was ‘.. . discuss a . . .'

‘A
what?
'

‘A commission.'

‘Really? That's wonderful!' I said. And I was, needless to say, truly delighted for him; but I cannot deny that I felt a pang of envy, too, swiftly followed by satisfaction at the recollection of my own commission, and as swiftly again by frustration that I was sworn to secrecy, and could not, therefore, counter ‘Sir William Butteridge' with ‘Lady Eastlake'.

‘Is it in there?' I asked, nodding towards the portfolio.

‘Just a few sketches. You want to see?'

He laid the portfolio on a bench and opened it. Inside were some rough drawings of a sickly-looking young woman with flowing hair clutching a broken column for support. ‘She's swooning at the sight of her lover,' Travis explained, pointing at a vague blob on the left-hand side, ‘who is returning, mortally wounded, after a seven-year absence. Faith and Purity, that's what Sir William wants. I think I've got it, don't you?'

‘I'm sure he'll be very pleased.' It did occur to me that, since Sir William had made his fortune dispossessing widows and orphans from the path of railways, he might stand in greater need of faith and purity than most; but I said nothing.

‘There's money in mediaevalism,' said Travis, perhaps feeling he had failed to impress me as an artist, and must therefore do so as a man of the world. ‘Take my advice, Hartright. Find yourself a knight and a damsel, and set to work.'

‘I haven't the time, just at the moment,' I said. I hesitated, giving him an opportunity to ask me why not; but he merely busied himself with putting his sketches away, so I went on: ‘Tell me, what do you remember of Turner?'

‘Turner? I barely met him,' he said, closing the portfolio. ‘My first Academy dinner was his last. I did see him once or twice on Varnishing Days, but it would never have occurred to me to speak to him.' He turned towards me, and a spasm of silent laughter shook his heavy chestnut curls like blossom on a tree. ‘Like sauntering up to the altar, and helping yourself to communion wine.'

‘Was he really so extraordinary?' I said.

‘Not to look at,' he said. ‘Well, yes,
extraordinary,
but not in the way you mean. Not
impressive
. He was about so tall' – he held his hand out, below the level of his own shoulder – ‘with a huge
Jew nose, and beady grey eyes, and an enormous top hat with the nap brushed the wrong way, and an old-fashioned coat with tails that almost swept the ground (and couldn't have been much dirtier if they had), and long sleeves that entirely covered his filthy hands. Like this.' He hunched forward, miming the ridiculous little figure he had described. Several passers-by stopped to stare, and a small girl erupted in uncontrollable giggles. I could not help laughing myself – Travis always looks most beatific when he is being most malicious, and seeing his pale, noble face contort into this grotesque hobgoblin was irresistibly comical – but it made me uncomfortable, as if I had joined in the mockery of some poor unfortunate whose only fault was his unusual appearance.

‘I meant,' I said, ‘was he really so great a genius?'

‘Certainly if you equate genius with industry,' said Travis. ‘He never stopped. Rain, shine, awake, asleep, in the water closet… He's doubtless at it now, scraping sunsets on his coffin lid.'

‘Oh, come now,' I said, laughing. ‘What's your true opinion?'

He did not reply at once, but stared gravely at the ground, as if seeking an answer there. Finally, he said:

‘We thought so then. Or, rather, we thought he was a genius who had lost his powers, and degenerated into madness.'

‘How mad?' I said.

‘Just look at his late pictures,' he replied. ‘Colours entirely divorced from any object. Great splotches of paint that look like nothing at all, save – splotches of paint.
Pictures of nothing,
as the critic said,
and very like.
'

‘And what do you think now?' I said.

He shrugged. ‘Some of the early work. The Dutch sea pieces. The engravings.'

I waited for him to go on, but he didn't: he took a watch from his pocket, looked at it, then gathered up the portfolio.

‘Can you suggest anyone else,' I said, ‘who might have known him better?'

‘Jones?'

‘I've written to him.'

He shrugged again, and shook his head. It was only after we had shaken hands, and said goodbye, and gone a few paces on our separate ways, that he turned and called:

‘Try Davenant. He's in retirement now, at Hampstead. But still has his memory, and likes to open it to the public sometimes, and display the contents.'

This slight encounter had given me, in truth, little enough; but for some reason – no more, maybe, than that I had at last taken the initiative – I came away from it filled with a new spirit. Or perhaps it would be truer to say an old spirit: for, like the face in a crowd which suddenly calls to mind a long-forgotten childhood playfellow, I knew it at once for something I had known before. My heart beat faster; my legs ached with a tremulous excitement; I filled my lungs, and found in the smoky air, which only an hour ago had tasted of drudgery and sickness, an intoxicating hint of romance – I felt, in short, like a young man again, newly released from dull routine and about to embark on some great adventure. Had you seen me striding through the Regent's Park and up Avenue Road (it did not even occur to me to take a cab), you might have fancied you saw the ghost of that other Walter Hartright, who, fifteen years ago, his head full of simple purposes and grand hopes, used to walk from London to Hampstead three times a week, and think nothing of it. I seemed, indeed, to glimpse him myself sometimes, marching companionably at my side; and it was surely at his prompting that I broke my journey at a plain roadside inn, and sat with him over a plain luncheon of bread and cheese and ale – I the grave master of Limmeridge, and he the cheerful young drawing teacher, with neither the burden nor the privilege of fortune, and no prospect save the prospect of life itself.

Mr. Davenant (I learned at the post office) lived not half a mile from my mother's old cottage, in one of those quaint red-brick houses in Church Row. Its once-regular facade had started to sag and buckle with age, giving it the unsteady look of a child's drawing (Florrie, indeed, would have got the lines straighter!), as if it had tired of classical sobriety, and decided to get drunk. A big wood-clad bay window, jutting out pugnaciously from the first floor like the stern of an old man-of-war, added to the air of disorder.

The door was opened by a young manservant who still seemed pitifully uncertain of his duties. When I inquired if Mr.
Davenant was at home he said: ‘I'll go and ask him'; a moment later he came back, his cheeks flaming, to ask my name; and then, after a few steps, stopped, and turned again – presumably to find out my business. He was interrupted, however, by a man's voice booming down from upstairs:

‘Who is that, Lawrence?'

‘Mr. Hartright, sir,' called the boy.

‘Who?'

‘Mr. Hartright!'

‘What does he want?' shouted the man, as if he were commanding a company of troops.

‘What do you want?' stammered the boy.

‘To talk about Turner,' I said.

The boy relayed this to the man upstairs, who promptly roared:

‘What the devil does that mean?'

‘What the -?' began the boy, so thoroughly embarrassed now that you could have lit a cigar from his face. I stepped past him into the hall, to be met by a line of unsmiling family portraits and, at the foot of the stairs, a large oil-painting of what appeared to be the Battle of Waterloo. Staring down at me from the first-floor landing was a fine-looking man of seventy or so, with white whiskers, a noble nose and a heroic brow. He wore a paint-stained smock tied loosely at the neck, and was tapping the handle of a brush impatiently against the banister.

‘I was told you knew Turner well,' I said.

‘Oh, yes,' he said, ‘and what of it?'

‘I am hoping to write his biography.'

‘Are you, by God?' He leant forward, peering closely at me. ‘You're not that what-ye-call-him, been making such a damned nuisance of himself?'

‘Do you mean Mr. Thornbury?' I said.

He grunted.

‘No,' I said.

He pondered a moment, then said: ‘Come up. Fifteen minutes.'

A moonlit seascape hung above the stairs, and another battle scene – showing a knot of red-coated soldiers clustered round a tattered union flag, while the shadowy enemy crept towards
them through a fog of gunsmoke – dominated the landing. I stopped before it, and asked:

‘Is that one of yours?'

He nodded abruptly. ‘Can't get rid of ‘em. No-one wants anything now except pretty little pictures of their families, all scrubbed clean and dressed up like tailors' dummies. And those damned fainting women.' He shook his head. ‘Madness.'

I could not help smiling – he had skewered both Travis and me with a single stroke – but fortunately he was too busy wiping his fingers on his smock to notice.

‘It's very impressive,' I said.

He nodded again. ‘There, I shan't smear you now,' he said, and grasped my hand. ‘How d'ye do?'

As if that simple formality had qualified me to be admitted to his confidence, he turned and led me into a double room – divided in the middle by folding doors – which ran the entire depth of the house. At one end was the large bay, giving a distant view of the heath and washing the walls and floor with silvery light; at the other, a south-facing rear window, unshuttered, but screened with a sheet, presumably to mute the effect of the sun.

A huge unfinished canvas, held upright on a crude frame, stood in the bay, next to a table spread with brushes and an open paintbox. It was turned to catch the north light, and I could consequently only half-see the subject; but I made out enough – a woman on a horse, surrounded by armed men, and a line of sails on the horizon – to guess that the subject was Queen Elizabeth before the Spanish Armada. On a dais in the centre of the room, a woman in a blue velvet cloak and a tall hat sat for the central figure. Her ‘horse' had been ingeniously constructed of three bolsters lashed together and laid between a pair of trestles; and she held before her a wooden sword, which – doubtless because she had been at it some time, and her arm was tired – wavered perilously.