Again the concierge yelled up to him one morning as he was shaving. There were three letters in their slot, including one from Frédéric’s wealthy aunt and uncle, presumably inviting them to dinner again. He stood in the hallway to open the one addressed to him, using the ragged letter opener that hung from a string on a nail. He read it several times. Half an hour later he was still sitting on the stairs, flushed and breathless.
Claude went with his friends on the opening day of the spring Salon to see his work hung. They looked for the paintings for half an hour until they discovered both twenty feet above them, just under the ceiling, where little could be seen of them at all.
A party of men and women pushed past them on the way out of the room, knocking into them. “It’s not a failure,” Auguste cried above the noise. “Come back here, Monet! At least you got in. That’s more than the rest of us can say. Success takes a long time.”
“I haven’t got a long time,” Claude cried as he strode out under the great arched entrance. “I’ve got six more damn months of money from home and then I’ll have to find a doorway to sleep in.”
Auguste threw his arm around Claude’s back as they walked. “Look, Claude!” he said. “Start planning for a submission next year. Never mind painting seascapes and shores for now, even though they’re the best around. Paint beautiful women and paint a big canvas. If you do it well enough, the world will notice you. Find some models. You’ll do it. We’ll help.”
FOR HOURS HE wandered alone. When he was troubled, he always sought refuge in the streets and by the river. Sometimes he saw everything; other times he saw nothing. Dusk was falling when he entered the bookshop on the rue Dante near the Sorbonne; the window lamp had been lit and an elderly cat was sleeping on a French encyclopedia. The hand-painted hanging sign read Libraire Doncieux.
A young woman was seated behind the desk. She was so absorbed in writing a letter that she did not hear him come in. Her thick, brownish-red hair, which was secured demurely in a topknot on her head with combs and a heavy black velvet bow, glistened in the light of the desk lamp. She wore a little gold cross against the high lace collar of her dress, and she bit her lip as she wrote.
“Bonjour, mademoiselle,” he said.
She raised her face. It was the veiled girl he had seen in the train station on his way to join the army nearly four years before.
Claude was so startled that his heart began to beat a little faster. She was looking at him oddly now. “Bonjour, monsieur,” she said in a clear, sweet voice. “May I help you?”
“I merely came to look.”
“Very well. D’accord.”
“Do you carry any secondhand books?”
“Some, in the box against that wall.”
A few customers came in as he browsed the shelves, glancing back at her secretly several times. She was so much lovelier than he remembered her because she was real. There was a sort of warmth from her as from the earth on a summer day. He felt it drift across the shop and cause the titles of the books to blur before him.
The customers departed, and he heard the rapid scratch of her pen again until it stopped. The silence was potent. She called, “Je suis desolée, monsieur! I’m sorry, but we’re closing in a few minutes.”
He pulled an old book from a box and walked toward her with it. She looked at the title and smiled. “Birds of Central France,” she said. “That will be two francs, monsieur.”
Now the day was ending outside and the bookshop grew darker. Behind her was a staircase leading to the upper shelves and then above to he did not know where. He had the odd sensation that she would go up those steps, her skirts trailing, and disappear as she had before.
He said, “What’s up there?”
“Books people seldom buy, and above that, my uncle’s rooms. He’s rather the black sheep in my family to own a shop like this, but I like it.”
“I’ve shopped here before. I’ve not seen you here until now.”
“My uncle’s not well, poor thing! I’ve come to help for a few days. My parents don’t let me do too much because I’m just eighteen, but this time they said I might in compensation for …” She pressed her lips together and shook her head.
“You were writing passionately to someone and I interrupted you.”
“I have passionate words to say.”
“Ah, do you?” Claude could see from the quality of her dark wool dress and the real gold cross about her neck that she was not one of the harried Parisian shopgirls struggling to buy a pretty pair of shoes but some daughter of the petite or even haute bourgeoisie whose father had plenty of income. She likely spent most of her days drawing a little or playing the piano or deciding what she would wear. He knew that if she really looked at him, she might see a somewhat shabby young man who had just endured a moment of tremendous disappointment and who, under his slight bluster, was deeply sad.
He walked home by gaslight and then through the studio into his room, where he stared again at the sketch on his wall, which he had made of her when he had first seen her. Marvelous—but what could it mean for him? He locked his door and lay down on the bed with his copy of Birds of Central France lying open on his chest.
His mind was not still, though. Ideas for paintings moved in the dark room before him. He jumped up and flipped through his sketchbooks to find a rough sketch for a huge painting of picnickers under a tree. He had made it the year before and forgotten all about it, but now it came to life for him. The room changed: trees grew, people ate and drank on a picnic cloth, and everything was dappled by sunlight. And the girl in his drawing was in the middle of it.
HE WAS SWEATY and sensually excited; he tried to sleep and ended up making further sketches. His hopelessness of the day before was swept away. He was up by dawn, though he had hardly slept at all. He endured the hours until the shop opened. Suppose she was not there? For it was her face and figure and no other that he saw in the great painting he would make.
She was at the bookshop desk again, writing another letter, but when he came close she quickly turned it facedown. What was in it? It did not matter. He had nothing to do with her personal matters; he did not even know her. “Bonjour, mademoiselle,” he said in a more charming way than he had the previous day. “I did not mention this yesterday. Je suis peintre—I’m a painter.”
Her large brown eyes studied him, her hand over the turned letter. “Are you, monsieur?” she asked.
“I’m planning a huge picture of picnickers on the grass to be painted outside, en plein air, in the forest of Fontainebleau, a short train ride from Paris. I need a young woman to model. You’re very lovely. It would take a few weeks. I plan it for June. I would of course pay for your time and your lodging. Would you model for me?”
“But I am not a model, monsieur,” she replied demurely. “And I don’t know what my parents would say if I went from the city alone.” From her now downcast eyes, he could imagine exactly what they would say.
He flapped his hat against his trouser leg, keeping the other hand securely in his pocket. “I assure you I’ll ask nothing that could be considered immodest or offensive. You would be fully clothed; I would ask you to bring your loveliest dresses. As for my references, others can speak well of me. My family has a prosperous business in Le Havre. My best friend, also from a fine family, is coming to model. Look, here’s my address. Will you send word to me if you decide you can come?”
He walked home and through the studio, where his friends were painting, and threw himself on the bed. He wondered why she had been allowed to work in the bookshop, in compensation for what, and to whom she had been writing. She would not come, of course, and she was the one he wanted. He was uncomfortably aware of something about her that had haunted him since he had first seen her with the family.
But at twilight, when he was hurrying out to buy sausages before the shops closed, he noticed a sheet of blue stationery in the mail slot. “Dear Monsieur Monet,” it said in neat handwriting. “I could come for one week o
nly if I can bring my sister as chaperone. We regard it as an adventure and hope it will be of help to you and further the cause of art. Sincerely, Camille-Léonie Doncieux.” The other side of the paper had a few words crossed out. He thought they said, “My dear love,” but it did not matter, for they were not for him.
FONTAINEBLEAU WAS AN ancient royal forest that artists had discovered more than a generation before. Claude wandered about until he found the place he wanted to paint, then set up his easel and a small canvas to begin to capture the leafy beech trees in the foreground and the background that he would need for his picture of picnickers. Later in the studio he would repaint everything on a very large canvas that no one in next spring’s Salon could possibly ignore.
He had taken places in a rustic inn that catered to artists: two tiny rooms in the attic for himself and Frédéric, and one lovelier and larger room for the girls to share. Everything was ready when Frédéric arrived a few days later. He had brought his paints and easel, hoping to have time to work himself.
That night they smoked their pipes outside the inn in the warm air, waiting for the Doncieux sisters to arrive by coach from the local train. The young women did not come on the first coach or the second. Already it was ten o’clock at night.
“They’re not coming!” Claude said. “It’s all over for me.”
“They’re coming. There’s one more coach.”
“I bet you a pack of tobacco they don’t.”
“I bet you your future prize in the Exhibition they do.”
Claude leapt up from the stone bench to pace the dirt road. A faint lamp glow was coming closer, illuminating the trunks of oaks. The horse stopped, the door opened, and two tall girls wearing bonnets and struggling with large wicker trunks cautiously put their feet on the step to descend. Both men ran forward to help and nearly toppled the luggage.
“We nearly couldn’t get away,” the girls cried, their words tumbling over each other. “And we’re so dreadfully tired! Did you get the hatbox?” He had a feeling they had been arguing on the way, and indeed when he and Frédéric carried the bags upstairs and closed the door, he heard the muffled intense voices.
HE ROSE VERY early and descended the stairs with his paint box. The sisters’ door was firmly closed, and no sound came from within. “Are the young women who came last night still here?” he asked the innkeeper’s wife as she came toward him carrying clean linen, and she replied, “Bien sûr! But of course! One of them has already walked in the garden; she’s below with her coffee. It will be a fine day, monsieur.”
Camille-Léonie Doncieux was standing by the window, two hands holding her coffee bowl; she held the curtain back just a little with her shoulder and was gazing out at the flowers. She turned to him with a smile and said cheerfully, if a little shyly, “Good morning, monsieur!”
“Good morning, mademoiselle.”
She put her coffee bowl on the table and gave him her bare hand.
She was young indeed and very lovely; hers was a strong, almost classical Grecian face with full eyebrows, beautiful eyes, and a strong nose. Neither was she too slender, he noted appreciatively: a full bosom pressed against the bodice of her blue and white striped dress. He had had the impression before she turned that she had been waiting for someone; under her outer restraint he sensed a certain anticipation that something she would like was hurrying toward her.
He felt a strong frisson of attraction and immediately frowned at himself. She must be only a model to me or I won’t do well, he thought.
He heard skirts on the stairs as her sister, Annette, descended, still looking half asleep. Frédéric came down shortly after and drank his coffee hastily. The four of them left a clutter of bread crumbs and empty coffee bowls on the table as they walked out to work on the painting.
Claude spread a picnic rug with dishes and food on the ground beneath the beech tree and set up his easel and the canvas. He called sternly, “Now, Mademoiselle Camille, if you please, over there. Sit on the rug. Yes. Now pick up that plate and hold it out a little. Very good. We’ll work this way for a while and then I’ll have you change places. I’ll paint you as different women. And you, Mademoiselle Annette, sit there if you will.” The women took their places, laughing a little, arranging their full dresses over their crinolines, which were fuller in the back in the new style, tidying their hair. Frédéric stretched his long body on the grass, propping himself up on both elbows.
Paris was full of professional models who knew how to hold a pose; would these girls be still? Yes, it appeared they would be still, though they did talk softly back and forth about the theater, which they both adored.
Sun touched the bright colors on Claude’s palette as he painted the first stroke, then the second. He always began in apprehension. If it worked, there would be a time when the painting took him, when it reached out and he became it, when he smelled of oil and mineral spirits, when he and the air became one.
His hours passed radiantly; with every stroke, he enclosed himself more in the canvas. By the afternoon’s end, he noted that his models had begun to sag this way or that, into the ground or leaning against the air. Claude sighed; he felt his own weariness with intense reluctance, but there it was. He could wring no more of himself from the day or his models. His arm ached and the light was going, going. He wanted to rush forward under the trees and snatch it in his arms.
THE SISTERS LOOKED somewhat alike and were almost the same height. Both were beautiful. He saw that when he painted and again as they sat down in the inn kitchen for dinner that night. Annette sat quite straight, showing off her long, lovely neck above her high dress collar as if she might be presented to the nobility at any moment if someone from the ancien regime before the Revolution should sweep into this farmhouse kitchen past the blackened stove. Camille was more open; she broke into conversation and then pulled herself back with a shy smile. She picked up her fork and forgot to eat the bit of lamb. She wore her brownish-red hair in a thick bun at the back of her neck, with several shorter strands falling against her cheeks as if they resented being constrained.
They were well-bred young ladies suddenly stolen off for an adventure together. Their parents likely did not know they were here. Claude looked toward the dark window. If they should be followed!
He was still so much in his painting he had no idea how he would make conversation with them. He looked at his friend and at the girls at the table, rearranging them in his mind on the canvas as he had seen them that afternoon.
Frédéric poured the wine gallantly. “So, mesdemoiselles!” he said in his charming bass voice. “Have you both always lived in Paris?”
Annette shook her head. “No, monsieur; we’re from Lyon, where we studied at the convent school. We came four years ago. Our father’s a silk merchant and continues his work here.”
“Yes, everyone comes to Paris for art, for music, for theater! Do you go often to the Louvre?”
Camille leaned forward, both hands on the table. “We go to the Louvre all the time, and to the theater,” she replied, stammering slightly. “I love the theater so! Almost as much as books. I am always coming home with books, aren’t I, Annette? I have read a lot of Balzac, much to my mother’s disapproval, but I prefer the novels of George Sand. They’re more tender. And Victor Hugo makes me cry.”
“Do you read poetry too?”
“Oh, yes.”
They all ate hungrily. Annette glanced now and then at her engagement ring as if appraising it; Claude had heard she was to be married in the autumn.
When dessert was served, Frédéric exclaimed, “How can it be you’ve never modeled before?” He sat back boyishly, his thumbs in his suspenders, smiling happily, surveying the girls. “You’re both beautiful and sweet. Tenderhearted, I would say.”
Annette shook her head, pushing her wineglass away a few inches and then surreptitiously drawing it back. Her voice was now just the slightest bit unsteady. “Camille’s the one who’s tenderhearted! Why, if she likes someone
, she gives everything.”
The younger sister flushed. “Really, it’s not so. But how odd we’ve been to the Louvre many times and not seen each other. Paris is so big. You see someone interesting and then they are gone, gone. I’ve seen faces and remembered them always. I wonder sometimes what I’ll do with my life. I have so many plans.”
“What plans?” Frédéric asked seriously.
“Oh, well, plans!” she said, flushing.
Claude was now so tired he could hardly follow the conversation. In addition, Camille kept changing for him: he recalled her in the train station and then the book shop and now here she was across the table from him in an inn kitchen in Fontainebleau, her eyes a little unfocused for the wine. He struggled for words and managed to ask Annette, “But if you are to be married so soon, mademoiselle, why did you come here?”
Annette raised her hand to tuck in any loose strands from her hair. We regard it as an adventure, the note of acceptance had said. “To chaperone my younger sister, of course! Bien sûr! She came home the day you asked her, monsieur, saying we must go, we must go, and I couldn’t let her go alone.” Ah, he thought. Camille wanted to come and so she did, and left behind her passionate letters. But to whom were they written?
Annette drank delicately and dropped her voice. “Camille is also expected to become engaged by summer’s end; actually my betrothed and hers know each other well.”
Camille’s face became serious. “Yes,” she replied. “Monsieur is a dear man, very kind. I didn’t expect my sister and I to find husbands so close together, but she’s engaged and will marry first.”
Claude & Camille Page 5