Praise for The Artist Colony
“The Artist Colony is a sumptuous ride through Carmel-by-the-Sea as Sarah Cunningham attempts to uncover the truth about her sister’s mysterious death. Atmospheric and delicious, FitzPatrick delivers a thrilling page-turner woven with artistic flourish. This exquisite novel does not disappoint! Highly recommended!”
—Michelle Cox, author of the Henrietta and Inspector Howard series
“It’s 1924 and a young woman journeys to Carmel, California, to learn more about her sister’s sudden death. She soon learns that the bohemian arts colony is anything but idyllic, as she’s confronted by flagrant racism and intimations of murder. FitzPatrick has written a vivid historical novel with an absorbing mystery at the center of it, and I was riveted.”
—Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Portable Veblen
“The dramatic landscapes of Carmel, beautifully depicted by FitzPatrick, are central to the plot, whose blow-by-blow story keeps us gripped to the final revelation of Ada’s murderer . . . a must-read novel for anyone who loves historical fiction, art, detective stories, and the West Coast.”
—Maggie Humm, author of Talland House
“. . . FitzPatrick keeps the pot stirred nicely, with revelations popping up like whack-a-mole. There is also a nice sense of scene, capturing this idyllic place on the Monterey peninsula. . . . [This] tale delivers an escape to gorgeous Carmel and an engaging mystery.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Praise for Joanna FitzPatrick’s Katherine Mansfield
Bronze Winner of the 2021 Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) in Historical Fiction
“A historical novel reconstructs the life of Katherine Mansfield as she becomes a noted short story writer and critic while battling tuberculosis. FitzPatrick’s heavily researched novel . . . truly gets into the head of the innovative writer as she balances career, a shaky marriage, and a fatal illness while struggling financially . . . the author deftly captures Mansfield’s fervent dedication to her craft and her unwavering hope that she will overcome her illness. A well-informed, intuitive account of a singular modernist writer whose life is cut short.”
—Kirkus Reviews
THE ARTIST COLONY
ALSO BY JOANNA FITZPATRICK
Katherine Mansfield
The Drummer’s Widow
Copyright © 2021, Joanna FitzPatrick
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.
Published 2021
Printed in the United States of America
Print ISBN: 978-1-64742-169-4
E-ISBN: 978-1-64742-170-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021904267
For information, address:
She Writes Press
1569 Solano Ave #546
Berkeley, CA 94707
She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.
All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
For Ada Belle Champlin (1875–1950)
Ada Belle is the ghostly inspiration that set me off on this particular fictional path and the shade and shadow behind the characters and events in this book.
We owe respect to the living; to the dead we owe only truth.
—Voltaire
The tide, moving the night’s
Vastness with lonely voices,
Turns, the deep dark-shining
Pacific leans on the land,
Feeling his cold strength
To the outmost margins: you Night will resume
The stars in your time.
—Robinson Jeffers: Night, 1925
INTRODUCTION
If I hadn’t inherited a landscape painting by my great-aunt, Ada Belle Champlin, and if I hadn’t moved to Carmel Valley, California, because of that wondrous landscape, I would still be in Manhattan and I would have written a different story.
After my husband, Jim, and I moved into our new home, I hung Ada Belle’s landscape over the stone fireplace. I wondered where in Carmel she had stood to paint the country road bordered by a row of eucalyptus trees in a golden pasture lit by a blue sky brushed lightly with white clouds. In the background, a range of mountains graced with purple splendor.
I am not a painter but I think The Artist Colony started on a blank canvas, not a blank piece of paper. I had a palette of vivid ideas. As I brush-stroked layer upon layer of pigments onto that imaginary canvas, it evolved into an historical novel set in 1924 when Carmel-by-the-Sea was a thriving women’s art colony.
I became very curious about an art colony populated by women who, like my great-aunt, had become painters at a time when it was declassé for a woman to do anything artistic beyond needlepoint. Women were expected to marry and make babies, not art. I wondered how Ada Belle succeeded as a painter under these restraints.
Soon I was deep into a mystery plot, interweaving the history of Carmel’s artist colony with the actions of my characters. As my research expanded, I added real people—the poet Robinson Jeffers and his wife, Una; the painters Armin Hansen, William Ritschel, and August “Gus” Gay—and had them meet my fictional characters in the locations where they had lived. Then I stepped back and let them tell their story.
I became a location scout and went in search of the many historical locations in Monterey where I could set my characters, like the Hotel del Monte, Point Lobos, Monterey Wharf, La Playa Hotel, and Carmel Beach.
One autumn evening, my scouting led to Block CC, Lot 13, on Camino Real, where, based on a very old town map, I thought my great-aunt had lived. I must admit that I had low expectations. There are few original houses left in Carmel. (Those that have survived have been enlarged until the original homes are hardly recognizable, if not torn down.)
After Jim and I had cocktails at Carmel’s La Playa Hotel bar, we walked down Camino Real in search of Lot 13. The surf was breaking against the rocky coastline a few blocks away and I inhaled the same brisk, salty air that I imagined Aunt Ada Belle had breathed in when Carmel was an undeveloped coastal village.
Night was falling as we approached a parked car with the headlights left on. Jim knocked on the front door to inform the owner. A man in his early sixties came out, switched his car’s lights off, and thanked us.
We told him we were looking for a cottage where my great-aunt Ada Belle, a painter, might have lived in the 1920s. He pointed at an unlit cottage directly across the street and said he’d lived on Camino Real his entire life. One artist had lived there when he was growing up, and then another artist had moved in around 1973. He gave us her name and phone number. I couldn’t believe my good fortune.
The next day I called Belinda Vidor-Holliday, the current owner of Block CC, Lot 13. I introduced myself, said her neighbor had given me her phone number, and told her that my great-aunt might have been the original owner of the studio-cottage where she now lived.
“We must meet,” she said immediately. “Where are you?”
“I’m in Carmel.”
“Then come over now.”
My heart beating fast, I drove down Ocean Avenue to Camino Rea
l and parked in front of Lot 13. Even in daylight the cottage was barely visible behind a wooden picket fence and under the cover of leafy oak canopies. I had just unfastened the seatbelt when there was a tap on my window. I rolled it down and said hello to the elderly but still lovely Mrs. Holliday. After quick introductions, she invited me to come inside.
Stepping over the threshold was like entering another world, another time. I looked up at the lofty multipaned windows and skylights on the north-facing wall. A shaft of sunlight illuminated a paint-stained easel propping up an abstract painting layered in vibrant colors. Used paintbrushes stuck out of glass jars on a tray of metallic oil tubes. All my senses took in this painter’s paradise and I felt the spirit of my great-aunt applauding my arrival. I could’ve shouted for joy, but I didn’t want to scare my hostess.
Mrs. Vidor-Holliday was well-informed about the history of the cottage, as she too had been curious about its lineage, but she doubted that my great-aunt had built it. I hid my disappointment and asked her if I could see the files documenting the cottage’s history she’d mentioned.
She brought me into a small side room furnished with a trundle bed and desk. While she looked for the files, I hoped I was standing in the room where Ada Belle had slept.
Mrs. Holliday couldn’t find the documents she was looking for, but she asked me to join her for a cup of tea in the studio. We found we had much in common and were soon calling each other by our first names.
When I told Belinda that my great-aunt had been a founding member of the Carmel Art Association, she said there was a photographic portrait exhibition of past artist members currently on display at the gallery. I had only seen a blurry, pixelated photo of my great-aunt, and the prospect of seeing what she actually looked like gave me goose bumps.
“Let’s go,” Belinda said with a twinkle in her bright blue eyes, as if she’d read my thoughts.
In the gallery, we slowly walked along the rows of photographs honoring deceased CAA members since its inception in 1927. Belinda, a longtime member, pointed out several artists she’d known. We were disappointed not to find Ada Belle’s photograph.
On my second visit, Belinda told me she’d found the Architectural and Historic Survey from 1922. My heart stopped when I saw “Owner Block CC, Lot 13: Ada Belle Champlin.”
“Look, Belinda!” I said pointing to Ada Belle’s signature on the deed.
She was as thrilled as I was.
Standing at her printer and copying the documents that proved my great-aunt’s ownership of Lot 13, I felt certain Ada Belle was peering over my shoulder. Every time I return to visit Belinda, who is now my good friend, I feel the same rush of excitement I had that first time.
After I told Belinda the name my great-aunt had given the cottage, she had a wooden sign carved and THE SKETCH BOX now hangs from her front gate. She said it was “the right thing to do.”
—Joanna FitzPatrick
SATURDAY, JULY 19, 1924
—1—
The screaming iron wheels of the Overland Express awakened Sarah to her alarming circumstances. She blinked several times until her eyes accepted the morning light. Normally, she would’ve admired the radiant emerald green and amber patterns cut into the stained-glass window of her Pullman compartment and considered how to capture their radiance on canvas. But today wasn’t normal and she doubted her life would ever be normal again.
Not after receiving a telegram at her garret in Paris informing her that her sister, Ada Belle, had drowned in the Pacific. And now here she was in a tiny room on wheels coming to a halt at San Francisco’s Union Station.
Two weeks ago this death-by-decree telegram from the marshal in Carmel-by-the-Sea showed up under her door just as she was raising her paintbrush to her canvas to start the final painting for her one-woman show at the prominent Nouy Gallery in Paris, and her first measurable success as an artist came to a screaming halt just like the wheels of the Overland Express.
She shut her eyes, returning to the imagined palette she’d been blending pigmented oils on.
Shame on you, Little Sis, she heard Ada say as if she was in the berth above her, rather than lying cold in a casket. Always thinking of yourself first. Try to remember that I am the one who will never paint again.
Your death is not my fault, complained Sarah, gulping down an emotional cocktail of resentment mixed with grief and guilt.
She stretched out her cramped legs and stepped down onto the cold floor.
“San Francisco. End of the line. All passengers disembark!” shouted the Pullman porter as he rapped loudly on her door.
Observing her pale, pathetic face framed in the washstand mirror, she said critically, “You will never do!” Her painter’s hand penciled in the brows and painted the lips ruby red like it was her own self-portrait in need of a touch-up.
A crimson jersey skirt and matching jacket hung in the closet. The chic outfit had given her the appearance of a House of Chanel model stepping out from behind the curtain into the limelight. Only three weeks ago she’d bought it in expectation of wearing it at her first exhibition. But now it seemed unpleasantly cheerful when she felt so miserable. If only she had a black veil to hide behind, but it was too late to think of that now.
The porter rapped again and called out in his Southern drawl, “Ma’am, are you awake?” She asked him what time it was, then wound back the hours on her deceased father’s pocket watch from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 a.m. and stood up straight and tall, feigning confidence. She pulled down her cloche hat over her bob of unruly auburn hair stopping at her penciled brows.
Her hand froze on the doorknob, suddenly afraid to face the world without Ada. The Pullman compartment had been a safe, dark theater where she had projected their shared memories like a silent movie while the Overland Express whisked her across the country: Ada cuddling her when she fell and scraped her knee. Ada teaching her how to hold a paintbrush and blend oils on a palette even before she taught her how to read.
Sarah stepped down onto the railway station platform. From living in Manhattan and now Paris, she knew her way around hectic train stations. In normal circumstances, she would’ve saved a dime and proudly made her way through the terminal on her own, but not today.
A red-capped Negro porter, easily identifiable in a sea of white faces, piled her valise onto a handcart. “Where to, ma’am?”
“Del Monte Express,” she said, remembering the directions Ada’s friend Miss Rosie McCann had cabled when inviting Sarah to her lodge in Carmel.
“Follow me!” The porter pushed his way into the dense crowd of suit-and-tie men and white-gloved women, indistinguishable faces shaded under fedoras and sunhats. Seconds later, she was drowning in the rush of marching feet. She stood up on her toes, painfully squeezed into Parisian pumps, and saw the red-cap disappear down a long corridor.
At the Del Monte Express ticket booth, he was waiting with his hand outstretched and a wide grin. She tipped him gratefully and purchased a one-way ticket to the Monterey depot where Miss McCann said she could catch an autobus to Carmel.
Above the din of blasting train whistles, a newsboy held up the morning paper in his hand and yelled, “Read all about it! ‘Inquest Verdict: Famous Artist Commits Suicide.’”
Sarah gaped at her sister’s enlarged photograph filling the front page. The ground beneath her tilted and she leaned against a post to stop the train station from spinning. Her hand shook as she fumbled for her coin purse, paid the newsboy, and pressed Ada’s photograph to her thumping heart.
The conductor of the Del Monte Express saw her stumble on the boarding platform and picked up her baggage and then helped her onto the four-car train just as it was whistling its imminent departure.
He found her an empty compartment and she collapsed onto a wooden bench. She stared at Ada’s golden smile under the ominous headline. The familiar photograph of her sister had been taken by a journalist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. There were very few paintings by women hanging in any mu
seum, and there’d been a huge to-do about Ada’s seascape Carmel Point being displayed. Sarah remembered standing next to Ada and feeling very proud of her big sister’s success and wishing someday her own painting would hang at the Met.
As the train lurched forward, a dapper middle-aged man wearing a gray pinstripe suit and a gaudy pink ascot slid open the door to the compartment. He tipped his fedora, stepped in, and plunked himself down on the opposite bench. He stretched his long legs across the narrow aisle and buried his face behind his own copy of the Examiner.
Sarah pressed down her skirt, squeezed her knees together to stay away from his outstretched legs, and began reading the lead story:
When the renowned art critic Mr. Arthur E. Bye was asked why he thought the famous painter, Miss Ada Belle Davenport, 36, took her own life, he said, “Women artists cannot sustain the force, the strength, the power of concentration, the prophetic insight that genius demands. To create a child is the greatest aspiration of a woman’s life.”
Mr. Alvin Judd, marshal of Carmel-by-the-Sea, added, “Yes. If Miss Davenport had aspired to motherhood and left art-making to the men, she might have avoided such a tragic end to what would have been a fulfilled life.”
You idiots! she cried out to herself. My sister did live a fulfilling life.
Sarah knew from experience the prejudice that the fraternity of art critics held against professional women painters, but for a man of the law to use her sister’s career as the motive behind her suicide was outrageous.
The article ended with the inquest. An inquest that was supposed to be held after Sarah got there, not before, or so promised Marshal Judd when she wrote back to say she was coming immediately.
Within a few days she had exchanged all the francs she had in the bank for US dollars, bought her tickets, packed a few garments, and boarded the HMS Majestic to New York and then the Overland Express to San Francisco.
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