De Potter's Grand Tour

by Joanna Scott

  * * *

  On a long walk into the hills above the spa at Vittel, with the sun shining and the skylarks singing, Aimée made up her own story about Victor’s father. She said that after Papa died, his wallet was never found. She reminded Victor that Papa always kept lots of money in his wallet.

  “What do you think happened to his wallet?” Victor couldn’t guess, so Aimée helped him out. “Maybe Papa didn’t fall overboard. Maybe he was robbed. There were no witnesses. Maybe he was robbed and—” She left the possibility unspoken.

  She said they couldn’t be sure about what happened that night. It was awful not knowing, but she didn’t want Victor thinking either that his father had chosen to end his own life or that he was still alive.

  Victor wanted to hear exactly what had been in Papa’s wallet. He asked how much money had been lost. He wanted to know how God would punish the thief in hell. When his mother said weakly, “It’s all a mystery,” he wept so hard that he exhausted himself. They’d arranged their picnic of cheese and bread on a blanket, and he fell asleep across her lap. As she watched him sleep, Aimée regretted her white lie. But it seemed to have the desired effect. After Victor woke, he was resigned to his father’s death. He asked no more questions about the wallet, and in the days that followed, he was cured of his visions.

  How guilty she felt then—not because she’d deceived her son but because she missed having reason to comfort him. Even though she was convinced that her husband was gone from the world forever, she missed the moment of her own heartaching credulity when she’d look in the direction that Victor was pointing, half-expecting to see what he saw.

  Aimée thought endlessly about Armand, imagining the sequence of his last days, hour by hour. She pictured him riding in his carriage from the top of Pera to the customhouse, then waiting on the bench until it was time to board the Regele Carol. She followed him onto the ship, into his stateroom, and back out on deck. She imagined him in conversation with strangers at his table in the dining room. She hoped he’d helped himself to an extra brandy. The thought that he might have been thoroughly drunk occurred to her for the first time. She tried and failed to imagine the storm of his thoughts as he stood at the rail.

  She decided she didn’t want to stay in Vittel any longer and led Victor to Lausanne and up to Geneva. As they traveled, Aimée regularly received the letters and bills that had been forwarded from Cannes. A letter from Mrs. Stevenson arrived for her at the hotel in Geneva. She’d written to Mrs. Stevenson to tell her of the death of her husband and to offer the De Potter Collection for sale to the University Museum. Mrs. Stevenson wrote to extend her sympathies and explain that she was no longer affiliated with the museum. A few days later Aimée was shocked when another letter arrived from Professor Randall-MacIver, who, on behalf of the Board of Trustees, was writing to inform Mrs. de Potter that the University of Pennsylvania was not interested in buying the De Potter Collection. She had expected the sale to go swiftly. Instead, Professor Randall-MacIver asked her kindly to remove the items from the building at her convenience.

  One night in a little hotel in the Alps she had a dream that she was sitting on a seaside bench in Cannes and two policemen appeared and announced that they were arresting her for vagrant lunacy. She woke wondering how she could have remained oblivious to her husband’s growing debts. She wished they had never left their first apartment in Albany.

  The next day she and Victor climbed up the path behind the hotel and had a picnic in the mountains, surrounded by snow peaks and the slope of the glacier. The sun warmed their backs even as they dipped their bare feet into the ice-cold stream. Victor told a joke about the glass ears of the Swiss. Aimée was puzzled. “Glass ears are the glaciers, Maman.” She heard herself laugh for the first time in weeks.

  In mid-August they traveled to Brussels and took the local train to the town of Melle, where they were met at the station by Armand’s brother, Victor, and his wife, Leonie. It was the first time they had seen one another since 1898, when Armand and Aimée had brought their son to meet the uncle he’d been named after. The boy hardly remembered that meeting. Now their greeting was stiff, and when they stopped for tea at a café near the station, their conversation about the weather led to an awkward silence that was broken only when Leonie began testing her young nephew on his French, challenging him to conjugate a series of irregular verbs, clucking playfully when he made a mistake.

  No one spoke of Armand. The elder Victor did not speak at all, though Aimée could see that he had something he wanted to tell her. She was sure it was unpleasant and hoped he would keep it to himself.

  His silence lasted until the next morning, when he was preparing to take his sister-in-law and nephew back to the station and they were waiting outside on the road for the hackney cab. He presented young Victor with a wooden flintlock dueling pistol, one of a pair, he said, that had belonged to Louis de Potter. The boy whooped as he took the pistol from its case. He tested its weight and pointed it at the sky. “Bang!” he shouted.

  The elder Victor said that he had once watched his grandfather Louis shoot a weather vane on a barn roof with this pistol. The weather vane, in the shape of a rooster, had spun round and round—he whirled his hand to imitate the motion. They laughed at the story, all except the storyteller.

  “You know the truth about Louis de Potter, I assume,” he said when they’d stopped laughing.

  Aimée said, “Of course,” though she had no idea what he was talking about.

  “You know, then, that our grandmother was not the wife of the great Louis. She was his mistress, employed by the family as a cook. A cook! Do you understand what I am telling you! You did not know, did you? You are surprised!”

  Leonie warned him that he must get control of himself, that she feared for his weak heart. Victor was desperate to have the fact acknowledged. He had kept the secret for too long and wanted someone else to guard it. Aimée lied and assured him that this wasn’t a secret—Armand had been forthright about the family history, she said. She pretended to be bored, even annoyed at having to return to a subject that was so tiresome. She told her son to thank his uncle for the gift of the pistol and then said that they’d better hurry—they didn’t want to miss their train.

  * * *

  Her husband’s father was a bastard. Armand had left that detail out of his family history. She might once have resented him for the omission, but now she understood that it fit his ambition to present a front of civility that would be pleasing to all. Anyway, as she pointed out to her son, Louis de Potter must have loved his illegitimate child as much as the children of his legal wife. He had given him a fine dueling pistol, after all. And now that pistol belonged to his great-grandson.

  Aimée began to feel renewed again by their week in Paris. But after they returned to Cannes at the beginning of September, she was forced to confront the reality of her debts. They were in the midst of a stretch of stifling, dry weather, and she felt weak, helpless, weary. She longed for rain. She was oppressed by the present and dreaded the future. Walking along the boulevard de la Croisette, she looked out at the sunset, golden red over the sea, and thought it cruel that the glorious light was reflected in the same sea that had stolen her husband from her. She kept thinking about Gertrude’s vision of Armand on the tram in Nice. She began to wake in the night soaked in sweat.

  One Sunday night in late October, a light rain fell. Aimée reported in her diary that she spent the entire day reading and then in the evening took a short walk up to the observatory. The next morning she had her first Italian lesson and declared that she enjoyed it greatly. After tea she called on her neighbors the Tamours and surprised herself by announcing that she wished to sell Grand Bois.

  Did she mean it? they asked.

  No, she thought. “Yes,” she said.

  She told herself that she had no choice—the upkeep was too much, she couldn’t afford to pay all the servants and still pay for Victor’s education. That she missed her family and friends
back in America was not a factor. She would have stayed in Grand Bois if she could have afforded to. She imagined her husband insisting that he’d left her sufficient resources; he hadn’t foreseen the complexity of the expenses she was facing. She’d come to recognize that his courtly manner hid more than a little naïveté. The money from Mutual Life may have been enough to pay off his debts, but was not enough to sustain the luxurious life they’d grown used to in Cannes. And now she didn’t know if she’d be able to sell the De Potter Collection at all.

  She couldn’t sleep that night, and she finally gave up and went down to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. While she waited for the water to boil, she stood in the doorway. The weather had cleared, and the terrace was lit with an icy glow from the full moon. As she listened to the water trickling in the fountain, she remembered the day she and Armand had come to see Grand Bois for the first time. Before even entering the house, they’d walked into the overgrown garden and seen the stone nymph lying on the ground. Armand had peeled back the tangled ivy from the figure, revealing the empty almond eyes, the fine sculpted wedge of her nose, her lips parted in a smile. “Bonjour, mademoiselle!” he’d said with a laugh, and as Aimée looked on, she’d felt a pleasant awareness of a new task ahead, as if the nymph were a living thing that needed to be cared for. And they had cared for her, at great expense—cleaned and repaired and returned her to her pedestal, where she gave the impression that she stood there pouring water back into the basin, backlit by the moon, just so her beauty could be admired, too pleased with herself ever to consider that one day she would be abandoned.

  * * *

  Through the next six months, Aimée slowly packed up the contents of the house. She hired a photographer to take pictures of the villa and grounds. Working with Ernestine, she prepared the linens for storage, boxed up the books and papers, and wrapped the collection of magic-lantern slides in newspaper. With François’s help, she took down the paintings. On her own, she carefully emptied the gilt cabinet and packed the curios in shipping crates. She worked slowly, pausing to examine each piece. She rubbed her thumb along the edge of the pair of tear catchers before realizing that the dusty streaks were on the inside of the alabaster tubes. Wrapping the ivory elephant from the chess set, she saw that the tower on its back was chipped. As she was finishing, she suddenly worried that the strange metal figure with the broken shaft was missing. She told herself that she must already have packed it and forgotten.

  On June 16, 1907, a close, hot day, their final full day in the villa, Aimée and Victor finished packing their trunks in the morning and then went to say goodbye to the neighbors. The next day they had their last tea in the garden, and Aimée went upstairs one last time. “Took leave of our rooms & my bed,” she wrote in her diary that night, scratching a thick line, as if she could force herself to accept her loneliness once and for all.

  The servants lined up at the door to say goodbye. François promised to take good care of the garden. Young Ernestine cried loudly and periodically blew her nose with a great snort. Felicie looked on grimly. Aimée stayed cheerful, determined not to give away her feelings. She picked a big bouquet of carnations to carry away with her, and she and Victor left Cannes on the 6:00 p.m. train bound for Boulogne.

  Constantinople

  GIVEN ALL THAT ARMAND WANTED to communicate to his wife in his last two letters to her, it was understandable that he made just a brief reference to the disagreeable business that had occurred in Constantinople. He didn’t have the desire to elaborate, especially since his hope was that the threats directed at him would be forgotten in his absence.

  Aimée never knew that two influential men affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania were in Constantinople, both of them involved with excavations at the ancient Sumerian city of Nippur. She never learned about the controversy surrounding the discoveries at Nippur. And she couldn’t have known that her husband had set up a meeting with the hope of winning an endorsement for the De Potter Collection.

  Osman Hamdi Bey studied law in Paris but went on to devote himself to art and archaeology. He became director of the Ottoman Imperial Museum in 1881 and undertook important excavations at Nemrut Dayu. In 1884 he rewrote the laws to prohibit the export of ancient artifacts, and his permission was required for anyone seeking to excavate in the Ottoman Empire. He received an honorary degree from the University of Pennsylvania, presented to him personally by Professor Hermann Hilprecht in 1894. As a writer in The Athenaeum put it, “Now that the oversight of all the antiquities found in Turkey is in the hands of Hamdi Bey, he is the object of great attention from those who wish to share in their enjoyment.”

  Hermann Volrath Hilprecht was an archaeologist and specialist in Assyriology. Hired as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania in 1886, he oversaw the Nippur excavations from a hotel room in Constantinople. Hilprecht claimed personal credit for discovering thirty thousand cuneiform tablets that had, in reality, been discovered by an American, John Henry Haynes. Professor Hilprecht, the absentee director of the excavations at Nippur, discredited Haynes’s work. According to gossip at the time, Haynes suffered a mental breakdown and returned to live in seclusion in the United States. But questions arose about Hilprecht’s honesty. In 1904, the curator of General Ethnology at the University of Pennsylvania revealed that Hilprecht had appropriated a bronze goat’s head from Nippur for his private collection. And early in 1905, Canon Peters, the original director of the Nippur explorations, charged Hilprecht with deliberately misrepresenting the evidence of the discoveries at Nippur.

  By early June, Hilprecht was back in Constantinople. Armand arrived in the city with his touring party on Wednesday, June 7. All he knew about the dispute involving Hilprecht was that Mrs. Stevenson disapproved of his methods and had cut off all ties with the University Museum. Hilprecht, Armand believed, had successfully defended himself against allegations of misconduct. From the bits of news that reached Armand in Cannes, he assumed that Mrs. Stevenson had resigned under pressure from the trustees, and Hilprecht had emerged as an even more respected expert than he’d been prior to the dispute. He didn’t know that Hilprecht had cheated and connived his way to the top of his field. And it didn’t occur to Armand that he might have judged Mrs. Stevenson too harshly, or that after she resigned there would be no one left at the University of Pennsylvania who recognized the value of his collection.

  Armand wasn’t entirely new to the field of Assyrian antiquities. Back in 1898 he had written to Mrs. Stevenson, “My Dear Madame: I have just closed up my house in New York and in packing away some of my collections, I came across three tablets which I have had for a number of years and which were formerly in the possession of Clot Bey, in Cairo. When I purchased them, I was told by his son that they were acquired by him somewhere in Asia Minor, and no doubt they represent some period of Assyrian art. They would probably not go with my Egyptian Collection, but I thought you might be glad to have them on deposit in the Museum of the University.”

  When Armand sent the tablets to Mrs. Stevenson, he didn’t specify their exact provenance or date, and his tone was unconcerned. If she wanted them on deposit, she could have them. She accepted them, and they joined the De Potter Collection in Philadelphia, where eventually they were examined by the University of Pennsylvania’s own Assyriologist, Professor Hermann Volrath Hilprecht—the same man Armand had arranged to meet on June 8, 1905, at a café in Constantinople.

  * * *

  Armand led his small party to the Seven Towers, where they were met by two carriages he had hired to drive them along the land walls to the Adrianople Gate. From there, the group proceeded on foot. They walked through the narrow streets to the old Forum Constantini, continuing on past the mausoleum of Sultan Mahmud II, and then skirted the north end of Maïdany, arriving at the Hagia Sofia. After trooping from the crypt to the dome and even putting their fingers in the notch inside the famous weeping column, they stopped for a lunch of mutton pilaf and compote for dessert. Then they strolled
through the market behind the Parmak Kapoossy gate.

  Leaving the Americans to shop for talismans and pipes and ebony spoons, Armand went straight to the café at the end of the alley. He was a few minutes early, but Professor Hilprecht was already there.

  “Professor Hilprecht?” Armand asked, removing his hat as he approached the man.

  “I have something for you, Mr. de Potter,” Hilprecht said, ignoring his greeting, “but first you have to tell me what he is meant to hold.” He gestured to the bronze on the table in front of him. Armand saw it was a plump figure, about four inches high, with an expressive face crowned by a copper wreath of ivy leaves and berries. The eyes and lips were enamel. In the left hand it held a staff, ornamented with a pinecone. The right arm was raised, as though in the midst of lifting something, but was broken off at the wrist. Except for this, the figure was intact.

  “Why, it’s a fine little statue—Greek, is it?” Armand said evasively. “I see there’s a staff in one hand.” He had been expecting to give Hilprecht the iron figurine from the gilt cabinet as a gift. But it seemed Hilprecht had brought along a trinket from his own collection to exchange.

  “He has a staff, yes. But what is he supposed to be holding with his other hand?”

  “Perhaps a shield?” Armand proposed. Though he felt wary, conscious of being tested, he was prepared to show Hilprecht the greatest respect. Mrs. Stevenson had given up her authority at the University Museum because of some dispute about Hilprecht’s credibility. But Hilprecht, not Mrs. Stevenson, was the expert who had been invited to advise the Ottoman Imperial Museum. And, like Armand, he was a collector himself. Armand had thought they would feel at ease with each other.