by Elise Hooper
“Oooo, that’s a beauty, too,” said Alice, pointing to the hat atop the dress form.
“Would you believe I hadn’t even noticed the hat? I was too busy recognizing that Dr. Rimmer actually knows what he’s talking about. He keeps telling me to focus on simple shapes, yet I’m always trying to make things more difficult for myself.”
Absorbed with her newest find, Alice lifted the fancy basket-weave hat with a bow of pale yellow silk moiré ribbons off the dress form and placed it on her head. She ended up purchasing both hats. “Since we don’t have class tomorrow, would you like to join me at the new tearoom on Newbury?”
While May explained she had to go out to Concord to check on her parents, she watched Alice wad her change back into her purse without counting it. May couldn’t afford an outing to the newest tearoom, even if she could have stayed in the city for the weekend. She wondered how it would feel to be like Alice and do whatever she pleased without any concerns about money or taking care of anyone. But wait—was this it? Alice enjoyed a far greater degree of independence than most women. Was this what unsettled Joshua?
On the sidewalk outside the shop, May asked, “Alice, how is it you’re still unmarried?”
“Oh, goodness, it all started as bad luck.” Alice shifted the hatboxes in her hands before they set off toward Beacon Hill. “Well, I lost my mother when I was ten. Five years later my cousin Francis died of consumption. I was young but always pictured myself marrying him. And then right before the war, I met a young man who worked for my father. I thought we might have a future, but he died at Fredericksburg. By that point, I was thoroughly tired of losing people and swore off opening myself up to disappointment again. I’m sure all of the other women on Beacon Hill find it odd, but my father fully supports my unconventionality.” She raised up her chin with a decisive nod. “So this is it. It’s a surprising relief. And how would I pursue art if I was married with children?”
May nodded, and her mind raced. Yes, how indeed?
CLAVICLES. SCAPULAS. OBLIQUE muscles. Metacarpal bones. May wondered if she was studying to become a doctor or a painter? Every day with Dr. Rimmer was an exploration of the body: the articulation of the wrist; the bony landmarks of the leg; the proper proportions of the torso. As the weeks became a blur of sketching, she began to see improvement in her work; a relief, for she was ravenous to catch up to her classmates, many of whom had been taking lessons for several years. She spent hours copying from sketches tacked to the front of the room and poring over plaster casts of femurs, the skull, and the pelvis.
May became a watcher of people. She no longer listened to what people said, but studied how faces moved when speaking, altering from one expression to the next, and it amazed her to think of the sea of muscles—contracting, elongating, and slackening—existing under the smooth planes of the face. Even in the hinterlands of sleep, her dreams were strangely fantastical with talking skeletons and bodies that could peel off skin as easily as removing a layer of clothing. The dreams left her bleary, but, unlike Louisa whose spells of compulsive writing diminished her, May thrived on her obsession. She lived in a state of radiant exhaustion.
Chapter 7
Winter passed. The days lengthened. One afternoon springtime sunlight poured through the windows of the Studio Building, making Dr. Rimmer’s room stifling hot. From the voice instructor’s studio next door, the endless trill of a soprano practicing scales gave the afternoon a tedious edge. May erased some unsightly attempts at sketching a reclined figure and promptly wore a hole through her paper.
Impatience had hounded her all week. On Monday, she met Joshua and his younger sister, Nellie, for tea in the Marble Café at the Bellevue Hotel. Amid potted maidenhead ferns and oyster-colored table linens, May greeted them with a signed copy of the newest edition of Little Women. The girl, shining in a stylish primrose pink velvet dress, could barely contain her joy over meeting one of the Alcott sisters.
“Since reading the first part of Little Women, I feel as if I already know you!” Nellie gushed, plucking the book from May’s grip and hugging it tightly under her chin. “I can’t wait to see who all the girls marry.” Nellie rifled through the book’s pages and continued without taking a breath. “Isn’t it strange your life has been published for the entire world to read? If Joshua wrote a book about me, I’d be thumping mad.”
“I only take credit for Amy March’s more gracious moments. It can be odd at times, but Little Women really isn’t my life. My sister made up those stories,” May said without elaborating on the truth behind that particular fiction. “Though once I burned a manuscript of Louisa’s after an argument, just like in the book.”
Nellie let out a whoop of laughter that would surely have resulted in a reprimand at her finishing school. “I loved that part. It was so mean of Jo to prevent Amy from going to the theater. She had it coming. I’m glad Amy got her revenge.”
Joshua chuckled and raised his eyebrows. “I really must read this book for a better understanding of you.”
“One shouldn’t need a book to understand me.” May smiled back at him over the rim of her teacup.
Before parting, Joshua insisted May join his family for dinner. With Nellie nodding her head furiously in agreement, he said, “I shall speak to Mother tonight. We shall have you over on Thursday night. Expect a note with the particulars to arrive later this evening.”
Well, that had been on Monday, and it was now Thursday. No note arrived. Every morning May checked with the front desk at the hotel but to no avail. No note.
May frowned at her ruined sketch. Next to her Alice moaned, crumpled her paper, and threw it to the ground.
“Let’s get out of here,” May said. Without further discussion, the women tossed their supplies into their shawl straps and stumbled downstairs, past the mind-numbing hum of the sewing machine store on the first floor, and outside onto Boylston Street.
“Oh, thank goodness for the breeze,” sighed Alice, reaching up to re-pin her hat. “Where shall we go?”
“Let’s go to the show at Williams & Everett that Dr. Rimmer mentioned this morning—what was the woman’s name?”
“The woman from New Hampshire? Jane Gardner.”
May nodded. “Did you catch that she lives in Paris?”
“Imagine that.”
“I feel as if I spent all morning doing just that—imagining myself living in Paris. I could desperately use some inspiration and distraction. Let’s go.”
INSIDE THE MAIN gallery of the oak-paneled walls of Williams & Everett, a woman, glowing in a plum-colored silk day dress, held court. A cluster of somber-suited critics and dealers surrounded her. It could be none other than Jane Gardner.
May and Alice inched through the crowd to get closer to the woman. They were blocked by a pale lanky fellow with an oversized Adam’s apple, who stroked his chin, bristling with red whiskers. He nodded approvingly. “Miss Gardner’s animals are surprisingly good. They remind me of Rosa Bonheur’s.”
The man next to him gave a low laugh and replied, “Do you think she perfected her technique by sketching haunches and cuts of ribs in a Parisian butcher’s meat locker like Bonheur?” The man caught sight of May tilting her head to listen to them, and his walrus-like drooping mustache twitched as he frowned. “Women artists are unseemly.”
“Well, if it gives me more work to sell, I’m all for it.” Still stroking his chin, the tall man moved away to inspect the paintings lining the walls, leaving a space for May and Alice to edge in closer to Miss Gardner.
A man with a pipe in his mouth said loudly, “Whenever I visit Miss Gardner’s studio, there’s quite a menagerie.”
May couldn’t tell if he added this information to talk about animals or to stake some sort of claim on the woman.
“It’s true, I adore animals and have two dogs, a cat, and an assortment of birds,” Miss Gardner said. With glittering eyes, she lowered her voice and leaned into the crowd. “But once I used a lion as a model.”
May w
atched the artist describe how she went to a ratty little zoo on the outskirts of Paris where she cajoled the zoo master into letting her draw their lion, but of course, the lion was ill; yet she used this as the perfect opportunity to study his anatomy. The poor creature was so bony she could practically see right through him, and so she sketched the pitiable flea-infested waste of a lion until he died; but even then she was not done with him; the plucky artist managed to locate a cart into which she loaded the pathetic beast and wheeled her specimen along the avenues of Paris, until she arrived at her studio where she dumped the corpse and painted him until the fetid stink of the sad creature defeated her.
It was as if she had thrown bread crumbs into a gaggle of geese, for the men all erupted into equal parts agitation and titillation. No one could have ever considered her a conventional beauty—the woman was slight with a narrow face, sharp nose, and thin dark hair pulled back into a bun—yet she had these men enthralled.
“Your human figures are equally convincing,” said the walrus-mustached man, pointing at one of her paintings on the wall. Although he didn’t say it, the obvious implication was: How does a woman manage to achieve such lifelike paintings?
His insinuation was not lost on Jane Gardner. She looked him straight in the eye. “I dressed like a man to have access to one of the government-run schools, so I could work from nude models. I’d been ill and my hair was cut very short. My classmates figured out my ruse quickly, but no one seemed to mind.”
She shrugged as she spoke, but her nonchalance was feigned. She was alert, watchful, and nimble with her command over her audience. “I speak French fluently, so I fit right in.”
Again, her audience clucked and deluged her with comments.
May and Alice wandered the gallery, awaiting an opportunity to speak with the artist. A dead lion in her studio? Dressing as a man? Nude models? Miss Gardner remained besieged by the men, so eventually May and Alice gave up and reluctantly climbed the stairs to the lobby.
Bent over to sign the guest book, both women failed to notice Miss Gardner slip out the front door of the gallery. It wasn’t until they walked outside that they found her alone. She stood on the sidewalk, immersed with sprinkling some tobacco onto a small white paper resting on her palm. After rolling the paper up to make a cigarette, she ran her small pink tongue along the edge to seal it and noticed May and Alice.
“If you wanted to speak with me, you needed to be pushier in there. All those fellas have no problem interrupting one another to get at me.” She flicked a match down the side of the brick building to light her cigarette, took in their art satchels, and exhaled a ring of smoke slowly. “So, now there are opportunities to study here in Boston? I left because there was nothing for women.”
“Miss Gardner, how have you learned . . . ?” May waved her hand at the gallery’s entrance, lost for words. “Your work—it’s so real. The composition, the—”
The woman shrugged. “I started off by copying the masters in the museums in Paris. Over time, I developed clients willing to buy my copies so I could afford private instruction. But really, copying was how I learned the most.”
“But studying with master painters—” Alice began, but Jane cut her off with an impatient shake of her head.
“The masters are a mixed lot. Some practically run opium dens. They’re like parasites, bleeding naïve American students dry of all their cash. But they do have connections to dealers and critics, and those are the fellows you need to sell your work. But really, first you need to have something to sell. I do nothing but paint and meet with potential clients.”
A woman in a chocolate-brown velvet jacket sidled past them on the sidewalk, scowling pointedly at Jane’s smoking, but the painter ignored her. “The men all waste their days meeting in the cafés to drink with each other, but I work all of the time.” She looked back over her shoulder at the gallery and dropped her cigarette to the sidewalk to snuff it out. “Speaking of work, I should probably get back in there to mingle with those wretched sharks. Well, aren’t you going to introduce yourselves?”
Flustered, both May and Alice rooted through their bags for their cards and made introductions.
“Be sure to call on my studio when you arrive in Paris.” Miss Gardner held the cards aloft and sauntered back into the shadow of Williams & Everett’s doorway.
“When we arrive in Paris?” Alice watched the woman with a glum expression. “I think she means if we arrive in Paris.”
May breathed in the smell of tobacco and exhaled slowly. “No, she knows what she means. We must get to Paris somehow.”
Chapter 8
May exited the main entrance of the Athenaeum onto Beacon Street with thoughts of Greenough’s Venus Victrix filling her mind. She had taken to leaving Dr. Rimmer’s class some afternoons to sketch in the Athenaeum’s sculpture gallery. The marble statues served as feeble substitutes for a live human model to be sure, but they beat copying endless anatomical sketches. The prospect of studying from live models had gripped the women artists since winter. After all, women were earning medical degrees at the New England Female Medical College over on Stoughton Street—surely these women studied the human form. Why not the women in the Studio Building? Yet Dr. Rimmer remained clear that there would be none of that in his class. Not in a class for ladies.
Since seeing Miss Gardner’s show the previous week, May had been consumed with thoughts of traveling to Paris. Was she getting ahead of herself? After all, she needed to spend more time under Dr. Rimmer’s tutelage learning the fundamentals of figure drawing, and really, drawing everything for that matter. Uprooting herself from everything she knew and voyaging to France was daunting. For mercy’s sake, she didn’t even speak a lick of French, thanks to her unorthodox education. But if asked to copy one more set of feet from a sketch of Dr. Rimmer’s, she was going to eat her bonnet.
“Miss Alcott!”
She looked up to see Joshua approaching her on the sidewalk, his mother at his side.
With a contrite expression, he said, “I apologize for not sending over a note sooner—I’ve been tied up with a dreadful case at work, but isn’t this a happy coincidence? Mother, you remember Miss Alcott?”
Mrs. Bishop studied her son and her face bloomed, transforming from haughty to doting in an instant. “Such a good son. Even busy, he still makes time for his mother.” The older woman looked at the sandstone façade of the Athenaeum. “You were in there?” she asked May, raising her hand to her heart, as if visiting the Athenaeum was on par with frequenting grog shops down by the wharves.
“My sister was recently granted lending privileges, so I’m able to visit the art and sculpture galleries as her guest.” May ran her fingers over the sketchbook tucked into her satchel as she spoke. The last thing she needed was her sketches of unclothed figures to tumble down onto the sidewalk in front of them.
Mrs. Bishop sniffed. “A library is no place for women.”
May refrained from pointing out that her family believed that a library was the perfect place for women—she had no desire to emphasize the singularity of her parents and their views.
Oblivious to the cool looks passing between the women, Joshua said, “Mother, Miss Alcott must join us for dinner.”
The older woman’s nostrils flared. “Of course, that would be lovely. You must. Shall we say this Friday evening?”
Joshua nodded. “Perfect, it’s settled.”
May accepted gracefully, but doubts screamed inside her head. Wrapped in a mink stole, Mrs. Bishop resembled a large creature of prey. May thought back to moments earlier when the woman’s face had conveyed such pure joy when she looked at Joshua. May wondered if hers did the same thing. It probably did—he could have that effect upon a woman.
Perhaps this was why Mrs. Bishop disliked her.
THE BISHOPS’ LONG dining room table was crowded with Bristol glass candlesticks and a bouquet of hothouse roses, mignonette, and pansies. Silver forks and spoons of every length gleamed at each place s
etting—more than May had ever seen. What would she do with all of them? She thought of her attempts to brighten up her family’s table at home with garlands of autumn leaves and vases of wildflowers and shrank in her seat.
The burl-veneered panels of the sideboard gleamed underneath steaming plates of veal pies, steak, scrod, rolls, and baked beans bathed in brown sugar and molasses. The table practically groaned with abundance; there was no way the five of them could possibly consume everything. She thought of the food baskets Marmee delivered to the poor. How many baskets could she make from this meal to deliver to families in the slums of Boston’s West End? Her family had its weaknesses but squandering blessings was not one of them.
From her spot at the end of the table, Mrs. Bishop appeared to pick at her food. “Your mother must have been sorry to see you move to Boston. She has no objections to you living on your own and studying art?”
“My parents have always encouraged us to be independent.”
“I’ll say. You’re lucky,” Nellie said.
May smiled at her, relieved by the presence of her young ally.
“Nellie, if this evening is too much for you, you can have all the independence you want and eat alone in your room.” Mrs. Bishop’s grim warning served its intended effect; the girl looked crestfallen and clamped her mouth shut.
“Our eldest, Charlotte, studied watercolors briefly but found needlepoint more to her liking,” Mrs. Bishop said. “But she has no time for frivolities like that now. Once you’re a wife, running a household and raising a family takes over.”