“Because he was young?”
“Not just that. I couldn’t believe he could care.”
“Oh, my poor owl.” May realized that it had always been Anna and Beth, and not Louisa, who’d bestowed her with confidence while brushing her hair. She poured water into a china bowl she set over the gas lamp to warm, then settled by Louisa, put her hands in the bowl, and gently, one by one, washed her fingers, which relaxed under her touch. She patted dry her hands and rubbed in rosewater-scented lotion.
“Mother got married at your age,” Louisa said.
“She’d known Father for a while. I missed my hour. But here is a place where I might be able to make a living with my brush.”
Louisa held her gaze, then said, “I’ll leave you with money enough to stay through summer. You can come back before the harbors start to freeze over.”
“Thank you!” May threw her arms around her.
“I’d just sooner you ask me for help than a stranger. I look forward to seeing our family. And to writing a forty-dollar check. I wanted to pay off the house debts first, but with this new windfall, I can finally send Mr. Fields the money I owe.” Louisa picked up the paintbrush May had left by the cup of water, smoothed the splayed hairs, dipped the brush in a spot of carmine, and ran it over a scrap of paper. Her stroke left only a faint trace, but she regarded the wobbly line as if it were a small masterpiece. “You were right: I might have smiled for that portrait Mr. Healy did back in Rome. I hope you’ll paint a better one.”
15
WATERCOLORS
May’s new friend, Jane, mentioned a room available in the Bedford Square boarding house where she lived. It smelled of beef, cabbage, and onions from the kitchen, but it was clean and reasonably priced. The neighborhood was lively with shoeshine boys, girls selling bunches of lilacs or lavender, butchers wearing blue aprons and straw hats, chalk artists drawing on the pavement, boys shuffling with scrapers and pans behind horses, and an old woman in a ragged shawl selling baked potatoes from a pushcart filled with hot coals.
“Bloomsbury is hardly a proper place for a lady,” said Mr. Niles, who’d stopped with Louisa before accompanying her to the train.
“Some people may be down on their luck, that’s all.” May didn’t mention the women with rouged cheeks and painted eyes who lingered in doorways at night. “Lu, you needn’t tell Mother that Jane and I are the only ladies in the boarding house. And all Father needs to know is that I’m near the big library.”
The National Gallery was also just a short walk away. Twice a week, May sat at the table as if she’d been invited to a feast. The caretaker’s keys jangled as he slipped a painting from one of the wide drawers and propped it on a small easel. A fire crackled in the hearth to keep the humid air from damaging the paintings. May loved wielding a paintbrush that was wider than any she’d yet owned. It took practice to loosen her grip and broaden her stroke, to earn the confidence to lift her brush and believe in what a few strokes, or their absence, could show. Jane and Mr. Ramsey showed her how to stipple, putting bits of color in patterns, letting some of the white of the paper shimmer through, and to spread thin layers of pigments, which they let dry before adding another, to make the surfaces luminescent as real sky or water.
After the museum closed, May, Jane, and Mr. Ramsey ate egg sandwiches and talked about John Ruskin, the famed art critic who had written Modern Painters. They debated his theories about the moods and symbolism of color and argued over his advice to remove the black paint, perhaps even brown madder or burnt sienna, from their tins. Jane spoke of setting aside money to take classes in fall and urged May to join her.
“I’m afraid I must leave London by then.”
“You can’t go back to America without seeing Paris,” Jane protested. “There are still reports of guillotines and fires, but that’s bound to be over by next spring, when the Salon will be held again.”
“No one knows what the French will do. They cry Vive la République one day, then beg for an emperor the next,” Mr. Ramsey said.
“The Venus de Milo was found in the cellar of the Prefecture of Police, hidden behind documents stacked before a wall. A broken water pipe saved it from fire. I’d love to see that. And imagine setting up an easel in the Louvre,” Jane said.
“People can paint in the museum?” May asked.
“Even ladies. And some life-drawing classes are open, though they cost three times as much as classes for men. The French believe American girls have money.”
“It’s hardly fair, but the classes would be worth it,” May said.
“Yes. The teachers often are on the Salon jury, and they like to see their names printed beside their students’ in the programme.”
“But even some of the most celebrated artists are turned down. We tried last year. And were rejected.” Mr. Ramsey slipped out a green card marked “refusé” from his billfold.
“Mercy, why do you carry around that horrid thing?” Jane asked.
“I’m told we should expect to collect at least a dozen before our paintings get in. The card reminds me that I must try again.”
May dreamed of such a chance as she spent her days making copies. She was elated when some were put up for sale in the museum shop, and she found she could set higher prices as the winter passed. When the room in the National Gallery was closed, she often perched on a campstool in Westminster Abbey and sketched arches, chapels, cloisters, tattered banners, and the slant of sun through stained glass. She didn’t love making short, stiff strokes as much as she liked copying Turner’s watercolors, but she was proud to have this work shown in the Dudley Gallery. They also displayed her still lifes of antique books, silver candlesticks, and spotless apples she planned to submit to the Salon.
But her life wasn’t all work. While she was careful with her money, she didn’t want to be mistaken for one of the British women who seemed forever in waterproofs and round-toed boots. Happily, Mr. Niles enjoyed accompanying her to Oxford Street shops and advising on scarlet heels, a velvet hat circled with pink tea roses, and a beaded purse. He seemed to appreciate how her silk gowns set off his jacket with a velvet collar and narrow trousers with stripes up the side, though he glanced at handsome young men as furtively as she did. They attended a flower show, saw plays at Covent Garden, watched horses jump hedges in Hyde Park, and visited the zoo, where she sketched caged bears and rode a camel. Sometimes they just shared dinners, where she liked hearing his American accent as he replied to her accounts of news from home. Dan French had won the art prize at the Cattle Show and sent baskets of strawberries to the Alcotts in appreciation of his first teacher. Sadly, Mrs. Hawthorne had passed over, with Una by her side. She never got to see her first grandchild. May didn’t tell him that Julian, his wife, and their baby moved to New York, where he was designing bridges.
But May forgot about Julian and everything else on learning that Turner copies made by both her and Jane had been selected for a watercolor show that would be attended by the members who’d selected what would be shown as well as prominent art critics.
“John Ruskin! No one is more respected. What an opportunity,” Mr. Ramsey said.
“For humiliation,” Jane said.
“Louisa points out that a critic is just one man,” May said.
“Your sister is famous enough to say such things.”
“She wasn’t born with privilege.” May lifted her chin, the way Louisa did when people suggested things came easily to her.
“If Mr. Ruskin calls something art, then it is, according to those who matter. And if he says it’s not, then that’s the end of a career,” Mr. Ramsey said. “I don’t say he’s not knowledgeable. Better him than Queen Victoria, who thinks a good painting is a painting of a deer.”
The evening of the show’s opening, May looked over watercolors that were romantic or realistic, conservative or innovative in technique. She watched Mr. Ruskin move toward a painting, step back, then forward again, training his eyes on the work. She walked toward her
copy of Turner, which she thought was as close as she’d yet come to showing water in conversation with wind and sky.
“What will we do if his review is scathing? It would have been better if our work hadn’t gotten in,” Jane said.
“Don’t be foolish,” May said, though her stomach ached. She was glad to be distracted by the approach of Mr. Niles. She was pleased she could ask him here, though it couldn’t repay him for the excursions he’d treated her to. As they looked at paintings, he said, “We donated books for a bazaar at the Music Hall in Boston to benefit The Woman’s Journal.”
“I didn’t know Roberts Brothers supported women’s suffrage.”
“We don’t, but we like to keep our most famous author happy. I suppose she’ll be happier still when you return. It won’t be long now?”
“No.” May missed everyone, but she wished a return to Massachusetts didn’t mean she’d never come back to Europe. She secretly thought that if her painting was accepted by the Salon, she might not only go to Paris to see it, but stay on a while to paint.
As people made way for the critics who headed to the main gallery, May joined Jane and Mr. Ramsey. Mr. Ruskin stepped behind a podium, spoke about the genius of Turner, then took out a piece of paper. “Those who honor his legacy with diligence and talent include …” He read a few names, which blurred together, until May heard her own.
Jane and Mr. Ramsey didn’t have to hold up her elbows. She wasn’t going to faint. But she felt her knees give, as pleasure pulsed through her, warming her face and hands.
After the men stopped speaking, May accepted congratulations from friends. Then she and Jane headed home, taking long strides, speaking of all the people who’d seen their work that night. Near the boarding house, a woman wearing a crushed hat and ragged cloak held out her hand. May fumbled with her purse, then dropped four pence on her palm. The woman nodded her thanks, with a glance that acknowledged the slim line between their fates, between good luck and bad, past and present. Does your father know where you are? It didn’t seem so long ago that May had been a girl waving handbills at people who hadn’t seemed to see her, or pretended they didn’t. Now she remembered how despite her shame at being seen as poor, the sky had seemed to brighten and lift, as if asking her to paint it. Maybe her work as an artist had started then.
16
THE BRİDGE
Leaves had fallen from brambles that looped over the rustic fence. May passed boys playing leapfrog and girls rolling hoops toward the house next door, then walked up the path to home. Mother embraced her and wouldn’t let go even when Anna and Louisa squeezed in to make a place for themselves. Father was slightly stooped. Anna’s boys, who now had lean faces and wore long trousers, accepted May’s kisses with shy, beautiful grins. May hoped Anna would at least choose lavender or gray rather than follow Queen Victoria’s or Mrs. Lincoln’s fashion of interminably wearing black crêpe.
Everyone settled in the parlor, where May tried to sound modest while explaining the importance of Mr. Ruskin’s praise. She decided not to mention the green refusé card she carried, even though she craved hearing protests that such was unfair. The conversation soon turned from art to how the Damens’ carriage harness had been stolen, and now Mrs. Damen had to be wheeled to church in a wheelbarrow. Ellen Emerson had bought a donkey, which was proving to be a nuisance around town, running into clotheslines and trampling gardens. Mother showed May around the house and yard, pointing out things Louisa had bought: a new rocking chair, soapstone sink, and furnace. She’d even bought a horse and a wicker cart.
When May went into town on errands, neighbors greeted her warmly, but when they asked, “How was your trip?” most waited only a moment, as if her time overseas could fit in a sentence. Some old friends showed off newborns, toddlers, and even children old enough to be in school. May bounced babies on her lap, admiring their soft fat fingers and letting them touch her coral earrings. She envied the way these mothers could wake every morning with a purpose as visible as their children’s bodies, instead of wondering how to fill blank paper. Still, hearing some speak in fast, shrill voices, as if they expected to be interrupted, made May miss artists who talked about ways to suggest the movements of water or faces, the different qualities of blues and greens.
She was glad to see Dan French, who said that he was busy making dozens of clay maquettes, trying to decide whether his statue of a minuteman, which he was sculpting to commemorate the first battle of the Revolution, would look best sitting, standing, or striding. May was glad to learn that one of her former students, pretty, plump Rose Peckham, still painted. She told May about the art museum under construction in Boston. “It’s supposed to open in time to celebrate the hundred-year celebration of the nation.”
“I suppose it takes time to carve all those fig leaves.”
Rose begged May to teach classes again. Her studio looked smaller than she remembered, so one evening, she put on her blue bonnet with its ostrich plume and attended the selectmen’s meeting, where she got permission to use the unoccupied second floor of the old Mason’s Hall. Rose and Dan helped her haul out boxes of trash and termite-ridden furniture, sweep the wide-planked floors, and scrub the windows. May tacked up her Turner copies and drawings of Westminster Abbey. She borrowed anatomical casts from the School of Technology and art books from the Emersons, slipping in her copy of John Ruskin’s The Elements of Drawing. She ordered watercolor paper almost as thick as linen, rolls of canvas, and bags of dry plaster, and painted a sign for the Concord Art Academy.
Rose and more than a dozen other young women enrolled. May used her notes from Dr. Rimmer’s class to talk about the shapes of skulls and hands. She set up still lifes, though she was tired of painting flowers bright as if just plunged in water and landscapes that suggested the world was always sunny. She brought strips of wood, a saw, nails, and canvas that smelled like sails. She taught them how to build a frame and stretch canvas over it. More often, they used watercolors. She demonstrated how to soak the paper and apply glazes and scumbles, layering pale colors and transparent washes to give the effect of light. Only Rose worked with much dedication. May thought too many wasted time without understanding how fleeting it could be, and they hardly listened when she urged them to tour galleries.
“My father said he might send me to Paris to study, but how would I ever find a safe place to live or the right school?” Rose asked.
“Paris is the only place a woman can study the figure. But let’s get back to what’s under our hands.” May didn’t want to talk about Europe. She’d recently visited Dan in the barn his father had helped him convert to a studio, where he’d propped up a mirror and a copy of the Apollo Belvedere, which Mr. Emerson had arranged for him to borrow from the Athenæum. He’d soon cast his statue of a Revolutionary soldier in bronze, but he’d told May he wouldn’t be at the town’s centennial celebration when it would be unveiled. He’d met a fellow whose father sculpted in Florence and had invited him to join them in Italy.
IN THE MIDDLE OF APRIL, SNOW FELL AS MAY HUNG A flag in the window, though yesterday bluebirds had flown over the yard. She, her parents, Anna, and her boys dressed warmly and walked past many horses and buggies on their way to the Old North Bridge. There, new ice had formed on the river’s edge. Townspeople wearing colonial costumes or century-old clothes scavenged from attics stamped their feet to stay warm. Men decked in three-cornered hats and breeches brushed snow from the benches and a podium. One told May that the Middlesex Hotel was full and the train from Boston was running extra service.
The snow stopped, but the sky remained gray as May looked for Louisa, who must still be with a few other eminent women escorting the wives of President Grant and some Cabinet members. May found places for Mother and Father in front of the speakers’ platform and took a seat beside Daniel French’s family. She congratulated them on his statue, which was now draped with flags so that all she could see was the granite pedestal.
“Have you heard anything from Dan?” she
asked.
“He’s discovering sculpture in Italy such as he never dreamed of. And congratulations are due to you, too. We heard you won first place at the Cattle Show,” Judge French said.
May had been pleased with the eight-dollar prize. She moved over as Louisa crowded in beside her on the bench, leaned toward her, and whispered, “When I asked Judge Hoar where the ladies and I should sit, he replied, ‘Anywhere in Concord, Miss Alcott, except on this platform.’”
May looked at Carrie’s father sitting in front with male orators, poets, and politicians. After prayers, some tunes by the Marine Band, and a long meditation on memory, glory, and liberty, the platform seemed to settle into the wet earth. President Grant looked nervous. As gentlemen kept on praising ancestors, Judge French slipped a newspaper under his vest and murmured, “Perhaps more will die of the cold here today than did in the battle we’re commemorating.”
After more than two hours of speeches, Mr. Emerson pulled the cords attached to the flags, revealing the Minuteman statue. Everyone stood and cheered for the seven-foot-tall statue of a handsome man holding a musket with one hand, while stepping away from a plow. He was about Dan’s age and wore a shirt with an open collar and pushed-up sleeves, breeches, and knee-high boots. May thought the soldier in tight trousers looked a bit more like someone sauntering up to a belle rather than heading into battle, though the face was noble.
Some people headed to the Old Manse, which its owners had opened to serve hot meals to out-of-town visitors. Special guests headed into the Cattle Show Building. May greeted friends, then she and Louisa walked to the river.
“It was good of you to give Anna your seat for the dinner,” May said. She watched Anna keep an arm around Mother’s waist as they navigated the uneven ground. Her boys were throwing rocks into the water and stomping on thin ice. Father was trying to get through a crowd of men around President Grant, probably to offer advice.
Little Woman in Blue Page 17