“What an honor,” Matilda said, continuing her almost private discourse with Emma. “I think a young lady would be thrilled to meet such a famous man.”
Helen sniffed and said, “Quite right, Matilda. You do have a good head on your shoulders.”
George finished his pie and set the plate aside so Matilda could take it away. “Allow me to attend to myself and the carriage horses.”
Following Helen’s lead, they all rose from the table.
As Emma started for the stairs to get her hat, Matilda whispered, “Mr. French’s a famous man, known about these parts for years. Maybe you’ll learn something.”
“What can I learn?” Emma replied. “I’d rather stay home. Mother’s always been attracted to money and fame.”
“Shoo. It’ll be good for you to get out of the house and stop pining over that boy. It’s not healthy . . . you’ll find out when you get older.”
“All right,” she said, ascending the stairs, but her mind was far away from Mr. Daniel Chester French.
* * *
Secretly, her father had encouraged Emma to draw when she had displayed an early interest; not so her mother, who found a woman’s artistic desires to be distasteful. “One can never attract a worthwhile husband through such pursuits,” she had admonished George one time with Emma within earshot.
However, Emma’s practice of drawing, at first relegated to the barn, allowed her to go inside herself, to lose track of time, to fill the vacant hours in her room with something that amounted to fulfillment. Drawing gave her pleasure. She stashed finished sketches under her bed where her mother would never condescend to look, leaving Matilda to find them and compliment her on her talent.
“You mustn’t tell Mother,” she told the housekeeper. “It will be a secret between us.” Matilda was more than willing to keep secrets as long as no one, most of all Emma, was harmed.
The dense clouds still hovered over them by the time they boarded the carriage shortly after one in the afternoon. Their legs covered by a wool blanket to stave off the damp, Emma and her mother sat in back while George took the reins in front. On the hour trip to the French home, they passed hills clothed in green, stony blue lakes, and tilled fields.
Emma grew more excited as they neared their destination, thinking that perhaps Matilda was right—meeting such a famous man might be an honor—and that the experience of a new artistic form awaited her. They arrived at the imposing stucco residence to find the sculptor waiting for them in the lane behind his home.
“I’ve never seen so many windows in a house,” Emma whispered to her mother. “It’s very grand.”
“Don’t be gauche,” her mother shot back. “You’ve seen plenty of magnificent homes in Boston. Remember your breeding.”
The horses whinnied to a stop and George jumped down from the carriage to shake Mr. French’s hand.
Emma studied the sculptor’s face as if she would sketch it. What struck her most about Daniel Chester French was his affability, a kindness she gathered from his countenance despite his preference to keep his lips distant from a smile, as if some spiritual level of artistic seriousness guided his consciousness. He was balding, with the hirsute remains of his youth covering only the sides of his head, along with a few wispy strands crossing his pate; a full, brushy mustache streaked with gray covered his upper lip to his nose; the eyes were cleanly set, dark and reflective; the ears large with pronounced lobes. He wore a gray jacket and pants and a high-collared white shirt fastened with a striped bow tie.
“Welcome to Chesterwood,” Emma heard the sculptor say above the chatter of introductions.
George opened the carriage door, releasing the footsteps, and assisted his wife from the vehicle. Emma followed, holding on to her hat, as she descended the steps.
“A pleasure to meet you at last,” her mother said as the sculptor extended his hand. “Thank you so much for your invitation to tea.”
“I’ve always been fond of Lewis Tea,” he said, “so when the occasion arose that we might meet, I had no hesitation.” He paused and pointed to a large building not far from the house. “My studio. We often entertain visitors there, on the porch; unfortunately, on days like today we must keep inside.... I’m sorry my wife won’t be able to join us, but I’m afraid the damp weather has brought on a summer head cold. She conveys her regrets.”
The luster in Helen’s eyes faded a bit at the news. “I was so looking forward to meeting her . . . perhaps another time.”
“Of course. I’m sure there will be other opportunities.”
He led them across the spacious yard and through the tall studio doors into a room that towered over Emma’s head. Never had she seen such grand space, such sculpture in abundance: plaster casts, bronze works, animals greater than life-size, cupids, marble busts, mythological figures, all on display before her eager eyes. An ecstatic excitement buzzed inside her; she wanted to shout. How wonderful it must be to bring the lifeless materials of bronze and marble to life, a kind of divine magic akin to birth!
The sculptor noticed the look of wonder in Emma’s gaze and leaned toward her. “After tea, I want you to do something for me.”
Helen’s eyes widened, while Emma’s heart beat fast in anticipation of the mysterious request from the great man.
He led them to a room at the north end of the studio. They sat in Chippendale chairs at a table near the marble fireplace and drank Lewis Tea and ate iced cake and vanilla cookies. The conversation veered from her father’s history with the company, to their purchase of the Lee homestead, to her mother’s activities as a wife and homemaker.
“I would like to do more for the church,” her mother told the sculptor.
Emma suppressed a smirk, for her mother had never once indicated a liking for the church members, their groups, or their activities. Helen was content to sit at home and think of things for George to do while complaining about the lack of conveniences since leaving the city, the paucity of cultural life, and the absence of any intelligent friends.
The sculptor appeared to pick up on the meaning beneath her mother’s words. “We often get wrapped up in our own lives.” He turned to Emma. “I hear you’re good with a pen, young lady. That was one of the reasons I invited your family here.”
Her mother flinched and her father stiffened in his chair.
“Wherever did you hear that?” Helen asked.
“News travels in the Berkshires like lightning on a stormy day,” he replied.
Emma knew there could be but one answer. Matilda.
George’s cheeks puffed out, his face blanching with the exposure of his secret encouragement.
“I’d like you to draw for me,” the sculptor said. “I urge young people to learn about art. I sometimes teach . . . and if you display talent, you might study with me.”
Her mother stopped in mid-sip and put her teacup down. “I’m sure Emma has no such interest, Mr. French, although it would be a great honor to study with you.”
“We should let the artist decide,” the sculptor said, his eyes alighting on Emma.
Her father nodded.
Helen tilted her head in defiance. “George, really . . . Emma is much too young—”
“Never too young to learn,” the sculptor said and turned to her. “Are you interested in sculpture?”
Emma looked down at her teacup, then at her mother, and, finally, at her father. “I’ve seen statues before, but, until today I didn’t know how beautiful they could be. I’d like to learn.”
“Will you favor me with a drawing? I have a sketch pad and pencil in the casting room. Let your parents enjoy their tea.”
Emma heard the hurried whisperings of her mother directed at her father as she got up from her chair. The sculptor took her hand and they walked to a large wooden table near the studio doors.
“Look around, decide what interests you, let your muse run free.” He turned in a broad circle, and she followed him, taking in the sculptures around her. “Sit or stand, do as
you wish, but pick the subject and let it fill you. Create.” He pointed to the pad and charcoal on the table. “Let art become part of you.”
Emma drew in a breath—being here was like being in Alice’s Wonderland—and, at last, someone—someone of note—appreciated her for who she was. She picked up the pencil, the wooden shaft shaking in her hands, and sat at the table.
“Don’t be nervous,” he said. “If you’d like, I’ll return to your parents. It seems your mother may need some calming down. Give me a quick impression in twenty minutes. We can go into the fine details later.”
As the sculptor returned to her parents, the marble bust of a man, a soldier wearing a helmet, caught her eye. French positioned his chair to sit again, its legs scraping against the floor, the conversation beginning anew.
The face reminded her of the drawing in her classics book of Perseus holding the severed head of Medusa.
The helmet flowed easily from her hand, the charcoal outlining the curved form swelling in pleasing lines around the face. She sketched quickly, finishing a rough likeness of the head, as well as the addition of a body defined by muscular biceps, abdomen, and legs. The figure was nude, but, except for the head, turned to the side to conceal any features that might be embarrassing to her parents.
The minutes evaporated, and she looked up from the pad to see the sculptor studying her from across the room. Her mother and father stared at each other across the table.
She went back to the face, but no matter how hard she tried, it looked nothing like the bust. The nose lacked the delicacy of the sculpture; the eyes, though rather lifeless in white marble, had even less vitality on the page than on the form. The chin was too angular and displayed none of the smoothness of the bust. Even she could see this as she trudged back to the table. She glanced at one of the shelves crammed with plaster figures and sketches. There, on top, was the nude figure of a woman, and angled beneath it, the nude form of a man. Her mother would have turned her eyes away and offered recriminations at the sight of both drawings, but Emma found them pleasing, particularly the man, whose frontal figure displayed every part of his anatomy. She thought of Kurt and wondered what it would be like to draw him.
“Let’s see what you’ve created.” His lips parted in a half smile. He was sitting like a judge at the end of the table.
She handed the pad to him, only its back visible to her mother’s inquisitive eyes, and waited for his pronouncement about her effort. Emma shuffled her feet, until Helen shot her a look that shouted, “Sit down.”
The sculptor took his time, and after a few minutes of intense study, placed her drawing faceup on the table. Her mother squinted at the form, closed her eyes, and leaned back in her chair. Her father seemed interested, but subdued, in what she had created.
“Very nice . . . respectable work. . . .” He lifted the pad between his hands and showed it to her parents. Shaking her head, Helen looked away.
“I don’t mean to distress you, Mrs. Lewis, but the human body is the bread and butter of the artist . . . unless you’re a master of landscapes only, like the French of late. But, even then, you can’t be a true artist unless you understand the form, which the French have already demonstrated.”
“I find it perverse,” Helen whispered, her gaze still turned from the pad.
“Mother?” Emma pleaded. “Did you hear what Mr. French said?”
Helen nodded. “I don’t want to speak of it.”
“Do you think my sculpture perverse, Mrs. Lewis? Look around you. You’ll see the naked breast of womanhood, the unadorned form of man.”
Her mother pursed her lips and stared at her husband. Emma feared that the worst was to come, perhaps in the carriage ride home.
“Your daughter has raw talent,” the sculptor said to her father. “If you agree, she could study with me over the next two summers before she goes off to higher studies. The preparation would do her good. Would you like that, Emma?”
She looked at her immobile mother and, seeing nothing but resistance, nodded. “I’ve never attempted sculpture, but I’d like to try . . . if you feel I’m good enough.”
“Of course. The work will be hard, but worth your while. Over the winter, continue with your sketching, but begin to think in three-dimensional terms, not only on paper, but in space—in your mind.” He looked again at the drawing. “The body is fine, but we have some work to do with the face. Do you agree?”
“Yes. Faces seem to be my weakness.”
“When you’re done here, you’ll have no weaknesses.” He rose from his chair. “Let’s have a tour of the garden before you depart. It’s lovely in any kind of weather.”
Emma got up, her legs wobbling with excitement from the news. She would be studying with one of the country’s best sculptors. She couldn’t wait to tell Charlene—and Kurt.
Her mother rose stiffly from her chair and followed the sculptor while Emma and her father walked behind. As they left the studio, she and her father exchanged a look that meant they both understood the trouble ahead. George smiled as if to say, “We’ll get through this,” and proceeded to his wife, who brushed him away with her arm.
* * *
The carriage ride home was as frosty as the chill that had crept into the air.
Nothing was said that night, but a silent, ever-building tension between her parents grew with each passing day until the living room exploded when Matilda left for the evening the following Sunday.
Emma had never heard an argument like it, and the heated and hateful words exchanged downstairs left her shivering and crying in bed, afraid that she had created a terrible and unalterable rift between her parents. Even after pulling a pillow over her head she heard shouted snippets of the conversation:
“How could you encourage her?” her mother railed.
“Emma’s talent is art—she should be encouraged!”
“Art is fine for men of means—not women . . . a girl working as a sculptress?”
“You would doom her to a life of servitude in the kitchen?”
“Better that than a life of poverty with miscreants.”
The argument burst not with a bang, but with an unendurable silence that left the house cold and hushed as if the lonely meanderings afterward were sounds created by melancholy ghosts. Her father moved into what had been a guest room, leaving Helen alone in the marital bedroom that had been theirs since they’d moved in. In the following weeks, cold greetings were exchanged between them, even extending to Emma, while her father took refuge in his own sad counsel. A separate living arrangement might linger until spring, Emma believed, when the land, and possibly hearts, thawed. In her loneliness, she wrote several letters to Kurt—none of which were answered.
* * *
Daniel Chester French sent periodic letters to her parents throughout the winter encouraging Emma’s studies. At first, Helen ignored them until an invitation to meet another well-known neighbor in Lenox, Edith Wharton, was issued by the sculptor. The chance to meet the writer of The House of Mirth was too much for her mother to brush aside. Helen spent many days in Wharton’s company in the spring and also in the months when the novelist wasn’t traveling abroad. Their unexpected friendship seemed to usher in the long-awaited reconciliation between her parents Emma had hoped for.
“She seems so sad for a talented woman,” Helen told them one night at the dinner table. “Both she and her husband . . . no married couple should suffer so.” She reached out her hand and for the first time in months touched her husband’s arm and the next evening they reconciled, moving again into the same bedroom.
Throughout the summer, Emma rode her horse three times a week to Chesterwood to receive instruction. As the sculptor worked on plans for his outdoor statuary, he looked over Emma’s shoulder and critiqued her work with the modeling clay, noting her innate ability to create the form, but fail in the details. She created maquettes of clay and plaster, and even learned techniques for carving marble under French’s guidance. Emma learned to love t
he process of bringing an idea, a drawing, to full form, and marveled at the process of creation.
Although thoughts of Kurt lessened during her tutelage, he was never far from her mind, especially after receiving an invitation in the autumn from Charlene to spend time between Christmas and New Year’s at the Vermont farmhouse. Emma learned that Kurt also was invited and arranged for an immediate positive response.
* * *
“You never answered my letters,” Emma said, fiddling with the red sash of her robe.
Kurt, reading a magazine, sat in the overstuffed wingchair in front of a dying fire of birch logs, his long legs stretched across an equally plush ottoman, trying to feign indifference to her attentions. Charlene and her family had already retired, leaving Kurt to keep watch on the fireplace until the embers died. There were four bedrooms upstairs: Charlene and her parents each occupying separate rooms on the front of the house; Emma’s and Kurt’s rooms faced each other, at the end of the long upstairs hall. Patsy and Jane were not at the farmhouse; instead, they were at home in Boston.
Frustrated, Emma pulled a chair near the fire, blocking Kurt’s view of the flames and the warmth emanating from them.
“I will be very cold and cranky if you don’t move,” he said and drew up his knees, exposing his gray wool socks extending down from the cuffs of his pants. “It was twenty-five degrees outside when I checked the barn thermometer two hours ago. It’s colder now.”
“You might as well spend the evening with the horses, for all the attention you’ve shown me.”
He leaned forward, the magazine crinkling in his lap. “What would you like me to do?” He rested his hands in his lap. “We can’t play the Edison—we’ll wake the family and Charlene’s father would be angry. We can’t dance because we don’t have music. We can talk but I suspect you’re tired, as it’s nearing eleven, past your bedtime I’m sure.”
“I’m not a child, Kurt,” Emma huffed. “It’s been a year and a half since we’ve seen each other. At least tell me what you’ve been doing.” She took in his form. He had lost none of his attractiveness since she’d seen him last; in fact, the last vestiges of his boyish good looks had been replaced by the features of a handsome man: his shoulders had broadened, the beard darkened to a noticeable stubble, the chin and cheeks firmer, the eyes still a lively and lovely sky blue. She hoped to draw him.
The Sculptress Page 2