An Artist in her Own Right

by Ann Marti Friedman

  “Nobly said, Mademoiselle Sarazin de Belmont. You defend your friends well.” He too spoke calmly, but one eyebrow was quirked skeptically. I realized that he had known the answer to his question all along and wondered if asking it had been a test. Would he now decline to take my case? He glanced down at the papers on his desk and appeared to come to a decision. When he looked up again, the ironical expression was gone.

  “Very well. I will inform Monsieur Sorel that we are bringing suit. This will exempt you from being an executor on behalf of the girl; one of the other executors will no doubt be appointed to protect her interests. I know them both as men amenable to negotiation” – he said the word with an almost sinister relish, as if he could only with difficulty refrain from licking his lips – “and if you would return to my office in two weeks’ time, I believe I will have good news for you.”

  The day after my meeting with the lawyer, Monsieur Sorel and his assistants came to our home to carry out the inventaire après décès, the inventory of the possessions of the deceased that is required by law. They had done so upon the death of Maman Madeleine, so that I was familiar with the process. What had been a matter of routine, however, now became a nerve-racking ordeal. Each item, by virtue of appearing on the notary’s list, could be snatched from me as part of Cécile’s inheritance. Together with one of Derville’s clerks, I made sure to accompany the men as they made their round from the furnishings of the front room to the copper pots in the kitchen, the linen press, clothes cupboards, and contents of the bedrooms, writing them down and assigning values. I took care that each object belonging to me personally was noted as such. I stayed with them even while they inventoried Maman Madeleine’s room, the one room whose contents, I reflected, Cécile was more than welcome to take. My head was pounding by the time they left and my face felt set in a permanent scowl of disapproval.

  I let Derville’s clerk attend the inventory of Antoine’s studios in Paris and Versailles. Monsieur Sorel had asked Antoine’s student Paul Delaroche, now a highly regarded history painter, to give his advice and expertise regarding their contents and value, and I knew I could trust him.

  Sorel sent me a copy of the inventory after it was registered with the city. I would inherit an estate worth in excess of five hundred thousand francs. Or Cécile would. I shivered despite the July heat. I had not yet heard from Derville.

  The lawyer greeted Josée and me with a smile of triumph on our return visit.

  “I have excellent news for you, Madame Gros. Although it is customary to leave one’s estate to one’s children, with a life interest in it for one’s widow, an exception is made in the case of a child that is the result of an adulterous relationship. This, Mademoiselle Cécile Simonier most certainly was. The law is clear that an enfant adultérain may not inherit to the detriment of any legitimate heirs. We thus have excellent grounds to break the terms of the will.”

  My body relaxed for the first time since the reading of the will. I exhaled the long breath I seemed to have been holding for weeks. Josée squeezed my hand.

  “One of the first inquiries I made was to see the girl’s birth certificate. It states that her father is ‘unknown.’ I believe this was done so that the child would not bear the stigma of being known as the product of an adulterous union, as she would had your husband been named as the father.

  “Moreover, my research has revealed that your husband has already settled a sum of money on Mademoiselle Simonier for her care now and a dowry later. It is quite customary in these circumstances. If you wish, we can attempt to recover this money as well.”

  “No. She brought him joy when few things did. Let her keep that – it was Antoine’s gift to her.” I felt magnanimous in my victory. “She may keep any money he settled upon her prior to his death,” I said in a steady voice. “I wish only to inherit my due as his widow.”

  Settling an estate or a lawsuit is never a quick and easy process, but within a very few months I was declared indisputably Antoine’s sole legitimate heir and took possession of the bulk of the estate. Returning home – mine and no one else’s – from Maître Derville’s office after signing the papers, I immediately packed up everything in Maman Madeleine’s room – her clothes, furniture, personal effects, and jewelry – and sent the whole lot to Marie Amalric. I could have ordered the maids to do this, but it was a good outlet for the bitter energy that had possessed me ever since the reading of the will. For good measure I added any gifts I had received from my mother-in-law that I had never used or been fond of. I was tempted to send them to the Cécile with a note – “Perhaps you would like these mementoes of your grandmother; she was so happy for her son when you were born” – but thought the better of putting this in writing. It gave me deep satisfaction to finally exorcise the old lady’s presence. I gave orders to the maids to scrub the walls and floor thoroughly and air the room out. I had the walls repainted and opened the shutters to let daylight flood the room. I had decided to move my studio here, the room with the best light.

  Josée and I went to the art supply shop to which Denon had taken me over thirty years before, to get new easels, canvases, paints and other supplies. Fashions in dress had changed, but the eager voices and purposeful energy of the young men and women who thronged it – some of whom I recognized as Antoine’s students – were very much the same as on that first visit. When I closed my eyes, I was overcome with a wave of déjà-vu. I was simultaneously fourteen years old and forty-six, starting my career and re-starting it after all too much in between, with all too little to show for it. Then, Denon had sung the praises of a young painter named Gros, and now I was his widow.

  Fortunately, Josée was there to touch my arm and bring me back to the present with a cheerful word before my memories could lead me into melancholy. I paid for my purchases, gave directions for their delivery, and we left.

  I saw Pauline regularly in the months that followed but Henri only rarely. His habits of dissipation were beginning to tell upon him. Even as an adult, he remained the perennial spoiled younger brother, not bad, but not good either. He died two years later, in 1837, without ever fulfilling whatever promise he may have had.

  He was buried in the Gros-Dufresne family vault at Père-Lachaise, in the chamber next to Antoine’s. He had finally achieved his ambition of being recognized side-by-side with his brother-in-law the prominent artist.

  As it turned out, he had more in common with Antoine than we had realized. When Pauline and I went to his rooms after the funeral, we were startled to find a strange woman who seemed very much at home there, sorting through his things.

  “You must be Baudouin’s sisters,” she said to us calmly.

  “Baudouin?” we exclaimed.

  “I know you called him Henri, but he liked me to call him Baudouin. It was not so ordinary and thus better suited to him as an artist, he said.”

  That sounded like Henri. “And who are you?” we asked the woman.

  “Liliane,” she replied, extending her hand to be shaken as a man would. Her accent was provincial, overlaid with Parisian working-class, but her hands were smooth. “I was his” – she hesitated slightly – “companion these last five years.”

  Our astonishment said more clearly than words that he had never mentioned her. She shrugged philosophically. “We met at the Palais-Royal,” she offered by way of explanation.

  Pauline and I shared another startled glance. Had Henri been supported by a prostitute?

  Once again, she read us accurately. “That is where we met,” she said firmly. “Baudouin insisted I leave the trade after I was badly beaten by another client. He found me work as an artists’ model, and he never took a sou of those earnings either. He took good care of me and the children.”

  “The children?” we echoed. There was no sign of them in the room.

  “Madeleine is four,” she replied calmly. “Marie-Adelaide is two. We don’t live here. Baudouin didn’t have much patience with babies.”

  “Madeleine was–�
��”

  “His – your – mother’s name. I know. Baudouin missed her very much, even after all these years.” Her eyes filled. “Just as I will miss him.” Her tough façade dissolved as tears rolled down her cheeks and she began to sob.

  Pauline went to her and put her arms around her, murmuring words of comfort. I busied myself filling the kettle and lighting the stove so that we could boil water, then went out to purchase tea and pastries. (Henri had stocked only stronger drink.) There was much to discuss.

  Henri a father, yet he had never mentioned it to us! Had he thought we would reject Liliane and their daughters out of hand? True, ordinarily I might have done, but there was something forthright about Liliane that I liked nonetheless. I think Pauline felt the same. Had she been of our class, we could have been friends.

  Later that day, we went with her to the room where she lived with the girls. There was no doubt about their paternity. Madeleine looked much as our mother must have done when she was a little girl. Marie-Adelaide – named for Louis-Philippe’s queen – looked like Henri, especially when displaying her two-year-old’s temper.

  Our brother had never been very prudent with his money, but we were relieved to discover, in the days that followed, that while he had spent the 50,000 francs of capital our father had left him, Maman’s money that had been left to him upon her death was intact. It did not provide a large income by our standards, but Liliane was pleased. It was arranged that Henri’s daughters should inherit it in trust and that their mother would have full access to the income.

  They did not stay in our lives for long, however. The following year Liliane’s mother died, and she and the girls went to live with her widowed father on his farm in the Basses-Pyrénées. We have had only the barest news of them from the notary who administers Henri’s estate.

  After this, my life fell into a routine of painting in my studio, going to daily Mass and visiting Pauline and Josée. It was a soothing, undemanding life. I needed peace after all I had been through. The twin betrayals of Antoine’s suicide and the terms of his will had scarred me, leaving me with lasting suspicion and distrust. I did not seek new friendships, and I certainly had no thoughts of remarrying.

  My life constricted rather than expanded in my newfound freedom. It came about so gradually that I did not realize how pinched and soured I had become until the celebrations for the return of Napoleon’s remains drove me from Paris to Toulouse, from my routine to new activities, from suspicion to a wider acquaintance and a little girl who is teaching me to love again.

  Now, at last, I rejoin the living.

  Chapter 15

  Toulouse, 1840

  It is 31 December 1840, the close of the old year, and a fitting date for the conclusion of my memoir. I am writing in my room in the home of Madame Lapierre, sitting at my desk by the window with its view of the tower of the church of Saint-Sernin. The pale winter sunshine lights the room and a cheerful fire burns in the grate. The ring of voices outside is clear and distinct in the sharp air. There is a child’s laughter in the house – Jeanne, my landlady’s daughter and my friend.

  I fell in love with the church of Saint-Sernin last summer, when the sunlight coming in the clear windows gave a golden sheen to its walls and arches, articulating the purity and simplicity of the architecture. I have visited many times since. My heart lifts just to be there. I rejoice at the presence of the relics of the saints. In Paris the Revolution did away with relics, but here they are venerated as they have always been. Even the Baroque figure of St Sernin at the main altar, incongruous in style with the rest of the church, seems the fitting expression of an uplifted soul.

  At services on 1 November, the Day of All Souls, my attention was drawn to a mother and daughter I had seen several times before, a young blonde woman in widow’s black and a little girl of seven or eight with hair the dark brown mine used to be and grey eyes set in a solemn face. Her winter coat was too small and I guessed that the mother was trying to make it do for one more year. She was impressed by the mystery and majesty of the Mass and clearly yearned for the day when she would be able to join her mother in taking Communion. But there was such sadness there! The mother’s face was neither so rapt nor so sad. She felt her loss, but she was occupied in coping with it, supporting and making a home for the two of them. The little girl’s grief was purer. Reliving my own losses as I had been, my heart went out to her as we exchanged the kiss of peace at the end of Mass.

  Afterward, I asked the priest about them. Jean Lapierre had been killed only a few months before in an explosion at La Poudrerie, the gunpowder factory on one of the islands of the Garonne. Even in times of peace, it seems, the materiel of war goes on killing men. He had made a good living for his family. They had been generous to the church, Père Grégoire said approvingly, but not a thrifty couple, and what little savings they had was coming to an end. The lodger his widow, Marianne, had taken in to help pay the mortgage had proven unreliable…

  “Is she looking for another?” I cut into his doleful litany of the Lapierre family’s misfortunes. The eagerness in my voice surprised me – I had spoken on impulse. He gave me her address in one of the nearby streets.

  The house, one of several in the row, was proud to stand among its neighbors but showed slight signs of neglect, its step not quite so white as the others in the street, its knocker and doorknob unpolished. She should scold her housemaid, I thought, and then realized that this pointed to an inexperienced mistress trying to do these humble tasks herself.

  Marianne Lapierre answered my knock. She had changed from her Sunday church dress and wore an apron; I could smell food cooking. Her expression of mild annoyance at being interrupted gave way to a smile of recognition. “You sat next to us at Mass.” She spoke the local dialect, but I was surprised to find I understood her with only a little difficulty. Evidently I had absorbed more than I realized during my weeks here. I responded in French, speaking slowly and distinctly as I had learned to do, and was relieved that she understood me. I explained my errand, saying that the priest had recommended her to me. I apologized for coming while she was busy and offered to return at another time, but she assured me their dinner could wait, and eagerly invited me inside.

  “Who is it, Maman?” The little girl, too, had changed her frock and was drying her hands on her apron. She gave me a look that was half friendly, half wary, unsure what this new circumstance would bring into their lives. I longed to bring the carefree look of childhood back into her face.

  Together, the mother and daughter showed me their home. It was clean but furnished with the bare necessities, all frills and ornaments having been sold. In the winter they lived mostly in the warm kitchen at the back, even bedding down there at night. The empty front room was used for drying laundry when Madame Lapierre returned from one of the wash boats on the Garonne. Upstairs, the mother and daughter had moved into the smaller front bedroom and rented out the larger one in the back. Without a steady lodger it was a real struggle for her to keep up the mortgage payments, she told me, but she was determined to hold on to the house for as long as she could. To be a widow in lodgings, with no property or means to her name, was something she dreaded more and more as that day seemed to be getting closer.

  The back bedroom overlooked a yard and stables but Saint-Sernin rising above the humble scene lent nobility to the view. It would gladden my heart to be so near the church and hear the summons of its bells. The room itself was clean, the planks of the bare floor scrubbed to whiteness. There was a hearthrug in front of the fireplace, but no smell of a recent fire. The walls were painted Mediterranean blue – her favorite color, Marianne explained, because it matched her eyes – with white trim at the window. The bed had a thick straw mattress, and the armoire, table and chairs were simple but solidly made.

  “It’s perfect,” I told them. “I know I will be very happy here.” Marianne and Jeanne gave me relieved smiles. I paid a month’s rent in advance with louis d’or. Jeanne’s eyes grew wide at the sigh
t of the gold coins. She later told me that, “Papa used to have coins like that on payday, but since he died we only have silver and copper ones.”

  I spent the next two days happily shopping, packing, and arranging for the rental of a feather mattress and a wide bergère armchair and footstool. Marianne was helping her uncle at his market day stall when I moved in, so it was Jeanne who helped me unpack my trunk. She is seven years old, about to turn eight, she says with an air of self-importance, holding up her fingers to be sure I understand. She paid my few possessions flattering interest, holding my fur muff to her cheek with a dreamy expression that I longed to paint. Later, when I wasn’t looking, I heard her whisper words of love to it as though it were the kitten she longed to have. My paints and brushes and pencils and steel pens, my expensive sketching and writing paper, my drawings and manuscript tied up with red ribbon, were fascinating to her. I take living with artists and writers for granted, but to her I was a strange new creature. She made me think of Denon in Egypt, eager to comprehend the wonders around him.

  I was glad of her curiosity, for it helped us to overcome our mutual shyness. When I took her out for hot chocolate afterward to thank her for her help, we were smiling at each other like old friends. We paused on the way home to buy biscuits from a woman who carried her wares in a tower-shaped tin box on her back.

  Jeanne likes pretty things, like bright ribbons for her hair. Sugared almonds and chocolate dragees in pastel colors, crystal violets and rose petals delight her as much to look at as to eat. I began to keep bowls of them in my room, and eating my own share, I have started to gain a little weight and to look less pinched.

  I do not have many things here, compared to my apartment full of a lifetime’s possessions in Paris. But I do not miss them. More and more, I think of them as dead objects from a dead life. It is the new clothes I have bought in Toulouse, the new sketches I have made, and above all the growing pile of manuscript pages of my memoir that are the living things, the things that matter.