Mrs Whistler

by Matthew Plampin

  ‘There is a plan,’ she said sharply, staring towards the curtained stage. ‘For your bankruptcy. He isn’t finished with you, Mr Whistler.’

  *

  4 June 1879

  The moment was precisely timed. Jim was up on a platform, seated behind a table, in a meeting room on the ground floor of the Inns of Court Hotel in High Holborn. It was the first really warm day of the year. The room’s double doors opened onto a covered courtyard, each new arrival emerging from the dissolving glare of strong sunlight. Jim smoked cigarettes, awaiting the appointed hour, watching these people take their seats. Most were tradesmen. They conversed with one another, comparing their paltry debts and fanning themselves with newspapers, no doubt savouring this chance to lob a cobblestone at a famous man – to haul one of their betters down into the mud for a prolonged trampling. His people came too, of course. There was Maud, sitting at the rear with Eldon, looking distinctly tense; the Ways, major and minor, nodding over at him in respectful greeting; a couple of his more regular breakfast guests from the White House; and then the Owl, after everyone else naturally, claiming a chair in the very front row with empty seats on either side. He angled himself across the one to his left, laying an arm along its back, and gave Jim a sly wink. For perhaps thirty seconds, everything felt like it might just be manageable – under their control, as Owl had predicted.

  A minute before three, however, the shark swam in, scattering the smaller fish: in black, as always, befrilled and alone. The doors were closed behind him. Those lifeless eyes swept the room, without any particular interest. All conversation ceased. Leyland went to the front row as well, to the leftmost end. He removed his topper and sat down.

  This wasn’t a surprise. All those who wished to make a claim against Jim had been required to present a submission ahead of the meeting. Leyland had plainly been monitoring the bankruptcy’s progress, for he’d pounced only a day after the formal declaration with a claim of three hundred and fifty pounds, for those undelivered paintings: the missing portraits of his daughters and (most especially) The Three Girls. This placed him comfortably in the top tier of creditors, among the five largest sums. There had been no question in Jim’s mind that he’d attend. He had a plan, did he not – isn’t that what his poor wife had said? The British businessman wouldn’t be there merely to gloat either. He’d be seeking influence.

  Officiating that afternoon was Jim’s new solicitor, George Lewis; for old Reeve, as requested, had finally submitted a bill for his years of patient service – quite a stunningly large bill, it had to be said, too large to feel remotely glad about, whatever the circumstances – and was now an interested party. Lewis was somewhat younger than Reeve, and a good deal more exacting. He now brought the room to order and commenced their business: the first meeting of creditors. The total sum of the debt was the headline – four thousand five hundred pounds, according to papers filed in the London Bankruptcy Court. Announcement of the sum raised a few gasps, some tutting and a snigger. It was proposed, and quickly agreed, that claims were to be settled by the liquidation of assets and a public sale to be held at the debtor’s property on Tite Street, Chelsea – with all works of art in his possession to be sold at Sotheby’s within a year of the present date. The approximate value of these assets, and the amount therefore expected to be reclaimed, would be determined by a Committee of Inspection.

  Jim sat back, frowning into the middle distance. He’d been forewarned about all of this, but it was still extremely discomfiting to hear. A public sale. Good Lord. The mind-boggling vulgarity of it.

  ‘This committee,’ Lewis continued, ‘is to be composed of three members, drawn from among the body of creditors. It is the business of this meeting to select the persons best equipped for the task.’

  Owl promptly volunteered his services, as they’d arranged, saying he was a dealer in pictures, rare furniture and objets d’art, who possessed a deep familiarity with the debtor’s holdings and could make a fair valuation of them. This passed without objection, as did Owl’s proposal that Mr Thomas Way, printmaker of Wellington Street, take a place as well. Jim relaxed a fraction, absently considering the colours of the room – the shifting golden browns of a summer afternoon, the slanting square of fiery sunlight upon the opposite wall – trying to disregard the black note at its margin.

  ‘And as a third member,’ Owl continued, looking off behind him, ‘might I nominate Mr Matthew Eldon, an artist from Putney, who can make an accurate assessment of—’

  ‘I shall serve,’ interrupted Leyland. His voice was loud and firm; he sounded a little bored. ‘I shall serve on this committee. With all due respect to Mr Eldon, I believe that mine is the more significant claim. I am a businessman, and a collector of paintings now for nearly two decades. I believe I know the value of Mr Whistler’s productions.’

  The room agreed with exactly the same willingness that it had for Owl and Way. Leyland had reputation, galling though it was to admit. He had authority.

  Someone would object. Jim was certain of it. Owl – his disdain for Leyland, the face of modern philistinism, was supreme. Or Anderson Reeve. The lawyer knew of the fellow’s wickedness, of his scheming and manipulation. Way, even, meek mouse though he was. He’d heard Jim’s tales and been horrified by them. Surely he had a limit.

  But nothing came. The business of the meeting con­­tinued without complaint. Jim had been told that he was expected to remain silent, for the most part, unless directly appealed to for information. This, though, was too much. To have the British businessman’s plan reveal itself so blatantly, to see it unfurl so very blackly and without the least challenge, was more than he could tolerate. And so up he stood, inserting the eyeglass, his chair scraping hard as it was pushed back from the table.

  Jim had lost innumerable hours to declaiming Frederick Leyland: railing before that portrait in his studio, recounting the villain’s crimes, detailing the scalding contempt in which he was held by so many. And now it was happening. The real Leyland was not ten yards away. There was an audience arrayed around them. Not an enormous audience, it was true – Jim noticed that nearly half the chairs were left vacant – but it was enough.

  ‘And so we see, gentlemen,’ he began, ‘so we see here before us this afternoon the power of the plutocrat. This, mark you, is how he brandishes his influence – how he makes his grievances known. It must be distressing, must it not, to have arrived at the apex of one’s life to discover that you are only a millionaire. That it is only because of an abundance of lucre, amassed in the very grubbiest of methods, that your fellow man takes you seriously at all.’

  Jim could feel himself straightening as he spoke, his shoulders drawing back; was it an involuntary pride, he wondered, investing his person with the gravity of his words? No – Lewis was reaching around his chair and tugging on the tails of his summer jacket, trying to pull him back into his seat. He ignored this as best he could, throwing out his hand in a scornful gesture.

  ‘Enfin. This is what it is to be an artist. We suffer the yoke of the rich. We are subject to their whims and their folly and their desperate, stifling meanness. We suffer it daily, mes amis. We suffer it eternally. Yet you have before you today the opportunity – you have in your hands the chance – the chance to upbraid – to halt—’

  Lewis was persisting, finding strength in mortification. Jim lost a portion of his balance; he rocked up on one foot and was brought down, somewhat more heavily than was dignified. There was a shallow burst of applause, five people at most. Anger struggled with embarrassment. He brushed the curls from his burning brow, the eyeglass dropping out, and glowered away towards the door.

  Dear Lord, it was difficult to sit through the rest of it – to listen to Lewis define what amongst his belongings, the painstaking accumulations of a lifetime, was eligible for inclusion in this public sale. Very little stuck; but Jim could hardly help heeding that of his artworks, the unfinished paintings were to be set on the block alongside the finished ones, and sold off just t
he same. His one reliable line of defence against the philistines had been stripped away.

  At the instant of adjournment, Leyland left. Jim gave chase, hopping from the platform, darting back out into the greenhouse heat of the covered courtyard. Leyland was crossing the stone floor, marching over the ribs of shadow cast by the iron and glass roof. Overtaking him, Jim swivelled about to stand in his path.

  ‘So there it is,’ he declared.

  The shipbroker stopped, resigning himself to an exchange. He didn’t appear triumphant, or even especially malignant, just like a man running short of patience.

  ‘For all these years it has been you. You at the head of it, and you at the goddamned tail. Cheating me over my peacocks. Setting the Board of Works upon my house. Marshalling my enemies for the courtroom. And now buying up my debts – rallying this rabble to bring me down. For that’s what you’ve done, isn’t it? You are not one creditor, Leyland, but a whole throng of them!’

  Leyland fitted on his topper. ‘I don’t have time for this.’

  ‘It is characteristic, I must say, most charmingly characteristic, that you have appeared to claim your vengeance not with that horsewhip of yours but an account book. Punishment with the pen – Bon Dieu, very apt! And now, I suppose, London will see the Liverpool shipbroker in a perfect reversal of his patronage, extracting where once he bestowed.’

  Now that was a line. Jim was sorry that there was nobody nearby to overhear. It was certainly wasted on Leyland. The fellow appeared to arrive at a decision, drawing near and lowering his voice, treating Jim to a close view of the frill, with its primped, creamy folds; the point of that perfectly barbered beard; the smell of his eau de cologne.

  ‘You are a fraud, sir,’ he said. ‘An artistic Barnum. A charlatan pretending to a genius that he does not in the least possess. You deceive the simple-minded. You poison them with your mendacity and your contemptible posturing. I will open up your house and I will put your miserable existence on display. I will show you for what you are.’

  A weapon was required, and in something of a hurry. Mind ablaze with blinding white, Jim reached straight away for the most deadly. ‘Expose my true state, is that it? The hollowness of my claims to renown? Rather like, say, the serial adulterer, the brazen fornicator, who pretends to lead a respectable family life? Who will destroy a wife he does not deserve for the sake of his boundless lust – for the sake of eating lobster with his harlots? Fathering more bastards along the way than the – the city can contain?’

  Was this a threat – an actual threat of action, of exposure? Jim lifted his chin and kept his eye locked with Leyland’s; but saying it aloud, finally confronting the rogue with it, had made him uncertain. He knew how these things could go. Drag an Englishman’s private arrangements out into the light for no reason but his shaming and you risked shaming only yourself. There would be talk of dishonour, of ungentlemanly behaviour, resulting in the disgrace of the accuser rather than the accused. Was it simply too hazardous, even for one teetering on the brink of the void?

  Leyland knew all this as well. Of course he did. He stepped around Jim, making for the hotel doors. ‘Whistler,’ he said, ‘you confounded ass.’

  *

  Jim had always enjoyed destroying his work. Purgative was the word, with all the usual analogies applied: the slate wiped clean, the room swept bare, the dice gathered up for another throw. Along with his favourite clutch of brushes and the table palette he’d brought over with him from Paris, the broad-ended knife was for him a truly vital piece of studio equipment. The blade must have just the right width and weight. One had to be able to slide it between the canvas and the rubbery hide of the paint and really drive it along – strip off everything, the ground included. He considered himself to be rather expert at it. In the right conditions, he could cut away a yard or more with a single stroke.

  This time was different. These were not paintings being abandoned due to dissatisfaction, but obliterated in a spirit of defiance. If anything, though, this increased Jim’s vigour. He’d stacked them against the studio wall – portraits of friends, of Mitford and his wife; a few of Maud; earlier canvases, nude sketches and little landscapes, that had been hanging around for a decade or more – each one awaiting its moment.

  He’d returned home from the creditors’ meeting in a state of clear-headed fury. This he’d known for absolutely goddamned certain: none of these works would have a price affixed to them to be sold for the reimbursement of Leyland and his surrogates. Their only worth, after he’d been obliged to leave the White House and the committee had commenced its valuations, would be as blank canvas. He’d gone upstairs in trousers and shirt, rolled up his sleeves and set to it.

  Owl had come over, and was watching from the studio chaise longue as a full-length oil sketch of Maud in grey and blue was removed forever from the earth. He was talking as well, offering rueful reflections upon how completely Fredrick Leyland had blindsided them, along with schemes by which disaster could still be averted.

  ‘Clever though our shipbroker is, there will be ways to regain the advantage. His ploys and stratagems can be turned, you know – flipped about and used against him. And we, as ever, have plans of our own. Those plates over there, for instance. We could value them merely by their weight in copper, and sell them to Eldon for safe-keeping. And of course any inventory we compile will make no mention of the paintings in pawn or away for engraving …’

  Jim said nothing. He’d worked his way down to the bottom corner of the full-length. It held Maud’s disembodied foot, clad in a slipper, like a black oyster shell against the biscuit brown floor. The blade slid beneath the layered paint, prising it free; it curled over, flaking away, lost at once amid the shavings heaped around his shoes. It was as pleasant as ever to listen to the cadence and timbre of Owl’s fine rich voice, but the old sense of reassurance was not quite there. A new element had been introduced, Jim decided: a long-limbed, black-clad spanner jammed directly into the inner workings of the machine. The canvas before him was now clean, or as clean as he could be bothered to get it. He took it from the easel and tossed it beneath the piano. His feet dragged a little through the paint peelings – like dead leaves, he thought, fallen from his denuded career. He stood for a minute, a hand on his hip, gathering himself for the next one.

  ‘Just promise me, Jimmy,’ said Owl, seeing what was to happen, ‘that you will spare your Three Girls.’

  Jim looked around; the painting in question was off in a corner, on its side, which lent it an odd effect. ‘That picture was done for Leyland. He talked, once, of hanging it in the Peacock Room. You can be sure that he’ll have an eye out for it, when you come to do your inspection with Way. He’ll want to grab it, Owl. A trophy, don’t you see? Whistler’s scalp, as good as. It has to go.’

  Owl sat up, swinging his legs from the chaise longue, in such earnest that he actually put out his cigarette. ‘My friend, this I cannot permit. These others are sketches, a mere flexing of your powers. But The Three Girls is a full and marvellous expression of them.’ There was a significant pause. ‘That, old man, is a five-hundred-guinea picture. History will condemn me if I stand by while it is erased.’

  Jim firmed his hold on the knife’s handle, both irritated by Owl’s interference and relieved, undeniably, to have been halted. ‘It is too large to be smuggled out,’ he said at last. ‘Even men as blockheaded as those downstairs would notice.’

  Owl wasn’t concerned. ‘It won’t be here – after you have vacated, when we perform our inspection – I promise you this, Jimmy. As your friend. Your devoted friend.’ He grew regretful; contrite. ‘You blame me for his presence on the committee. I know you do.’

  Jim considered this. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘that with your understanding of it all, and how it was to run, you might have devised some means to block the fiend’s participation.’

  ‘I didn’t think that he’d try to become so directly involved. That I confess. But do not give him another thought. I will atone.
I will save your Three Girls.’

  Realising that he was going to relent, Jim set down his one absolute rule. ‘He must not see it. That is the critical thing. He must have not the least sense that it might be available. Do you understand, Owl?’

  Owl placed his hand upon his breast, upon that length of red ribbon pinned to his lapel, and the heart beneath. ‘I will see it done. I will see you through this, my dearest old man, to the best of my abilities. We cannot save your fine house – that, alas, is beyond us. But everything of real worth will be salvaged. By the time of the public sale, nothing will be left but scraps and trash. It will be an embarrassment for your enemies, a rank embarrassment. Leyland will wish he’d stayed well out of it.’

  The Portuguese leaned back, cracking open his cigarette case, his conversation now wandering off in another direction altogether, as he began to recount an extraordinary dinner he’d had the previous week at a restaurant in Piccadilly. It was a typically Owlish yarn – in which his party was seated and perusing the menu before they realised that the table next to theirs was occupied by a trio of old men with the faces of dogs; whilst just behind were midgets, half a dozen of them, arguing about wine; and across the room, in a tender tête-à-tête, were a young girl with a full ginger beard and a giantess who must have been twelve feet tall.

  ‘A troupe of curiosities, they were,’ Owl explained, a little unnecessarily. ‘Engaged at the Egyptian Hall, which was only a street or so away. Turns out they took all their meals there. It certainly lent the place a rather singular atmosphere.’

  Jim nodded, murmuring something, but his thoughts were on the public sale. He imagined a crowd packed into Tite Street: gentlemen of the press down at the front, his allies among them; a wooden platform, onto which item after item was wheeled out, through the front door, up the steps, for a full display. He went over to a bale of drawings, stowed behind the door, and began rifling through it. Close to the top was a cartoon of Leyland, done a week or so earlier in pen and ink. He’d sketched these things intermittently since the Peacock Room – usually during dinner, for the amusement of his companions. This one was unsparingly cruel, depicting the befrilled shipbroker as a blackened, reanimated cadaver – jaw gaping, skull bulging, eye staring dully. There was another behind it, similarly monstrous, in which he held a horsewhip in his claw-like hand; and another further back, where a peacock’s plumage was bursting from his hunched shoulders.