The Dark Clue (40 page)

Seeing the blotches and tear-stains on her pale cheeks, the frantic working of her hands, the uncontrollable tightening of her mouth, I almost relented. Had she turned back to me again, and made one last attempt to persuade me, I should have packed up at once. But she was defeated, and left without another word.

It is as well for me she did.

So hastily did I write everything down, and in such a topsy-turvy order, that I have only the haziest idea of what I have got. Today I was too exhausted to read through it all again – or, rather, too fragile, for I dread finding that after all my discoveries are worthless, and the whole ordeal of getting them consequently a waste of time. And that, when I think of what I endured – and, even more, of what I compelled poor Mrs. Kingsett to endure – would be hard to bear.

Tomorrow I shall be stronger.

XXXIII

Extract of a letter from Lord Meesden to Kitty Driver,
2nd October, 1802

Beaucoup de monde À Paris
– or you might simply dispense with the ‘coup' and the ‘de', for the whole
beau monde
is here, or has been – Fox, Lansdowne, Morpeth, a clutch of duchesses, Ladies Conygham and Holland, and a thousand more. And all, to me, the most tremendous bore; for none possesses the only quality that can arouse my interest – being
you.

In search of diversion from my
youless
state (no horse, I swear, ever felt the want of a driver more) I went yesterday to the Louvre. It was as tedious as being in society, and for much the same reason – whatever their merits, Titian and Rembrandt and Raphael never painted the one face in all the world I long to see.

While there, I found your friend Turner skulking by a Poussin, and feverishly scribbling hieroglyphs into a notebook. He started when he saw me, and would, I think, have tried to make his escape if I had not gone up and asked him when he intended to return to England. I had thought perhaps to entrust him with this letter (or with the unborn twin I should then have written, beginning ‘I send this by the hand of Mr. Turner'), but he seemed so displeased at being recognized that I repented of the idea. As we parted, I said:

‘You know, Mr. Turner, you are the only man in Paris I envy.'

‘Why?' he growled, in a suspicious sort of way.

‘Because you will see Mrs. Driver before I do.'

XXXIV

Extract of a letter from Lord Meesden to Kitty Driver,
15th May, 1803

Copley tells me his tiresome compatriots are again making trouble for the King – but now, having won the colonies, they are no longer content with fighting there, but have carried the war home, to the Royal Academy. The Philadelphian President, West (I begin to fear men named after cardinal points –
North
loses us
America;
West
brings the insurrection here; what mischief may we expect from Messrs.
South
and
East
, when they appear?), has taken up arms, demanding that the Academy Council should be answerable to its own General Assembly, rather than to the Crown. I confess I can see very little purpose to its being the
Royal
Academy, if the King is to have no power within it, and his only function is to be a convenient scapegoat, on which indifferent painters may vent their fury at their own want of success; but Copley fears the democrats will carry the day.

Among the most incendiary of them, it appears, is your friend Turner, who plots against the royalists like a veritable Robespierre, and cannot contain his rage and loathing whenever he meets them. Are you certain we should invite him to the wedding? He may end by fomenting the tenants against us, and forming a committee, and turning the church into a People's Court, and declaring our bodies independent of our heads.

XXXV

Extract of a letter from Lord Meesden to Lady Meesden,
2nd February, 1809

Turner, it seems, has again excused himself from carrying out his duties as Professor of Perspective. No woman that I know would let a man off so lightly, who still showed such reluctance to enter the conjugal bed, more than a year after the ceremony; but the Academy has not even hinted at lawyers and doctors and divorce, but merely smiled demurely, and said it will be well enough for him to start
next
year.

XXXVI

Extract of a letter from Lord Meesden to Lady Meesden,
22nd January, 1810

Still the trembling bride awaits. Turner protests he has a headache, and cannot begin his lectures for a further year.

XXXVII

Extract of a letter from Lord Meesden to Lady Meesden,
1st February, 1811

Must end, & get Perkins to preen me for tonight – but before I do, a piece of droll intelligence: The marriage is consummated at last! – Turner has made his first public appearance in the character of Professor of Perspective! – & Larkin (whom I met at the B/s) tells me it is quite the most amusing thing in London – quantities of comic business with papers, illustrative drawings &c. – sentences starting confidently in one direction, & then taking another, & so by degrees finding themselves in a dead end, by which time both the audience & Turner have long since lost any idea what they may mean, save that it plainly has nothing to do with perspective. There isn't a farce or a comedy comes close, says Larkin – the Academy could sell tickets at a guinea apiece, & would be turning people away.

XXXVIII

Extract of a letter from the Hon. Miss Lydia Bolt to
Lady Meesden, 1st September, 1827

Speaking of which, dearest Mama, Mr. Turner is here, and not at all as I had supposed him to be – not brusque or withdrawn, but charming in a shy, birdish, kind of a way, and with an interesting observation to make on almost any subject, from
Childe Harold
to the reflection of light from wet feathers. He found me in the garden, trying to sketch the sea and Portsmouth beyond. I was, I own, embarrassed that
he
of all people should see it, but he was very kind, and took great pains to help me, without a single word of discouragement or criticism.

He,
by the by, painted one of our
conversazziones.
Imagine a scene by Watteau, blurred by the rain before it is dry, and you have it.

XXXIX

Extract of a letter from Cynthia [Lady?] Abbott to
Lady Meesden, 13th April, 1813

I wish you had been with us last night – we dined at the Nuthampsteads' – the dinner indifferent enough, but great hilarity – young Mr. Smiley,
qui veut devenir artiste
, as he says, entertained us hugely with his imitation of Turner giving a lecture at the Academy. His napkin became Turner's notes, which he proceeded to ‘lose', and discover at last under my chair – one of the footmen was transformed into Turner's assistant (to whom, apparently, he invariably delivers his oration, rather than to the audience) – and his words, when they were audible, had Turner's jumbled sense and execrable pronunciation to perfection. I cannot remember everything he said, but an orange, I recall, was a ‘spearide form' – the (semi-circular) arch on the window a ‘semi-ellipsis' – and the ‘young gen'lmen' of the Academy were ‘hex'orted to raise the hart of landscape to the poetical ‘eights of ‘istory painting, for the glory of Britain hand ‘er Hempire'. There was a deal more in the same vein, but I missed much of it, alas,
de trop rire.

XL

Extract from Act II, scene ii of
The Man of Taste,
a privately
performed farce by Richard O'Donnell [1810?]

[Tom Wilde sees Lucy Luckwell at the theatre, and falls in love with her. He follows her to the country house of her guardian, the connoisseur
LORD DABBLE
, where he gains admission by presenting himself as an artist, and offering to paint Lucy's portrait. Instead of being left alone with her as he had hoped, however, he is constantly interrupted by a stream of painters and connoisseurs offering advice.]

Enter
SPEED.

SPEED:
No, no, no, no, no.

TOM
: Why, what's amiss now?

SPEED
: It's too small.

LUCY
: Oh, no, Mr. Speed, surely not!

SPEED
: And can you not dress her as Boadicea, or Britannia? Portraits aren't worth a fig, unless you
dignify
‘em, as Sir Ocular said.
History
, now, that's the thing. Wait. I'll fetch a crown, and a ladder.

Goes off.

TOM
: Dear Miss Luckwell!

LUCY
: Dear Mr. Wilde!

TOM
: Dear Lucy!

Takes her hand.

LUCY
: Oh! oh! oh!

TOM
: I have, I fear, a confession to make.

LUCY
: Oh, pray, don't be fearful! I shall be happy, dear, dear Mr. Wilde, to receive
any
confidence you may care to repose in me.

TOM
: Why, then, I am not really -

Enter
OVER-TURNER
and
COLD-CUT.
They stand stock-still, staring at the picture.

TOM
: Well?

COLD-CUT:
(looking at Over-Turner)
Um um um um um.
OVER-TURNER
: It wants yeller.

COLD-CUT
: Indeed, yellow would improve it mightily.

OVER-TURNER
: An' a burnin' sun.

COLD-CUT
: A sun! Of course!

OVER-TURNER
: An' a sea-monster.

COLD-CUT
: The very thing I was about to propose.

OVER-TURNER
: Where's your colours?

Tom hands him his palette.

OVER-TURNER
: Cold-cut, you make out the bill. Now then.

He starts mixing paints furiously with his brush. Enter
SIR GILES BOOMER
and
MR. MEASURE.

SIR GILES
: No! No! No! No! No!

TOM
: What's the matter now?

SIR GILES
: Ho! Stop! Seduction!

TOM:
(aside)
What, am I discovered?

SIR GILES:
Mr. Wilde, you must not allow yourself to be led into unnatural error!

TOM:
Error it may be, Sir Giles, but nothing connected with Miss Luckwell could be considered unnatural.

SIR GILES:
Let me see. Where's my Claude-glass, Measure?

Measure hands him a Claude-glass. Sir Giles examines the picture through it, slowly walking backwards.

OVER-TURNER:
Claude? ‘E does misappre'end, as Sir Ocular ‘ad it, taste may usurp genius, all is bespoke, nothing allowed, when that which ‘eretofore is ‘eld up as perfection.

SIR GILES:
Your picture is fine, Mr. Wilde, very fine – I would only say it could be browner, especially in the skin and teeth, for Nature, you know, is
exceedingly
brown, as the Old Masters taught us, though a common eye may miss it. But all in all I should say – only avoid the excesses of Over-Turnerism, and you will be the great hope of the British School!

TOM:
But as I was just trying to explain to Miss Luckwell -

SPEED:
(off)
I thought
I
was the great hope of the British School!

Enter
SPEED,
carrying a ladder, with which he inadvertently hits Sir Giles, knocking him to the ground.

SIR GILES:
That was last year.

XLI

Extract of a letter from Richard O'Donnell to Kitty Driver,
4th September, 1799

William Turner is also here. Do you know him? He certainly knows
you
– has seen you in everything, and is evidently a great admirer of yours, but won't come out and say so directly. I hope I have no cause for jealousy – it would be displeasing indeed for a man to know he had been usurped by a dwarf. The last I knew of him, he was painting scenes at the Pantheon in ‘92, but now it seems he is quite the coming artist, and has been engaged by Mr. Beckford to make watercolour drawings of the estate.

And why, you are doubtless wondering, am I at Fonthill? Because Mr. Beckford stands in pressing need of monks; and finding
himself unable to procure the real thing (to which his avowed atheism, and his enthusiasm for catamites, have proved an obstacle), has turned to a popish Irish theatre manager to coin some counterfeits. Every morning, I assemble the ‘lads', as Mr. Beckford calls them, in a vast unfinished hall, and drill them in chanting and singing and processing until I can no longer keep my temper with them – which happens often enough, for they are the least apt pupils you ever saw, having been selected more with an eye to their fawn-like looks than to their thespian ability.

And what does he want with monks? you say (nay, you whisper it, you trollop; I hear you as I write) – why, he wants them to fill his house, which when it is finished is to be the greatest gothick palace in the world – 350 feet long, and with a tower taller than the spire of Salisbury Cathedral. He plans
une grande ouverture
next year – though what he will do for guests I cannot conceive, for he is so notorious for keeping butterflies that no respectable member of society will set foot here – and work continues day and night to get it ready. Last evening, after dinner, I looked from my window, and thought I had never seen a more ridiculous scene: the labourers scuttling back and forth by flickering torchlight; Beckford, dressed as an abbot, prowling among them, with poor Wyatt, the architect, hovering in attendance like a nervous novice; and Turner behind, shrinking into the shadows as if they were his natural home, then darting out again like a little elf, drawing so quickly that his hand was but a blur. I should have laughed out loud, had I not recalled that this monument to folly is being erected on the poor scarred backs of those wretched Negroes in the Indies, from whom all Beckford's fortune comes.