by James Reese
It was a grand scheme! Skillfully, playing prince against prince, court against court, I managed to send my fees skyward! Previously, my peers had charged two or three prices for their portraits. Eventually they would all adopt my pricing policies—that is, one price for a bust with one hand, half again as much for both hands. To the knees? The feet? That would cost more. Posed thematically, and accessorized? For a full-length portrait with a minimum of attributes I might receive six or eight, maybe even ten thousand livres.
When I’d left France at the age of nineteen, I had twenty francs tucked in my shoe. In the course of my travels abroad, I earned in excess of one million francs! No painter in the whole of Europe earned more than I. For this, of course, I was reviled by my fellows.
As they will, rumors arose. It was said that I’d been spied in the streets of this or that capital, wrapped in sable and dripping sapphires. My favorite story had me receiving—from the very Minister of Finance, no less!—a quantity of sweetmeats wrapped in banknotes, payment for a portrait of his mistress done sans robe. As reputed, it was a sum large enough to topple the treasury of the tiny country in question. Nonsense! The Minister sent me a mere four thousand francs in a box worth twenty louis. What’s more, his mistress, the charming Mademoiselle B——, was not, in fact, naked, but rather…erotically accessorized. Dressed as a shepherdess, she was, posing recumbent on a length of sod brought into my studio at the Minister’s expense. I had to cut those sittings short, in fact, for the Minister insisted on being present and he…well, he became overly enthused at seeing his mistress thus arranged. Finally, I could no longer suffer his bleating! I turned them both out and completed the portrait in private.
Those were great days, yes; but at long last I returned to Paris.
I drove through the streets of my city, just as I had when first I’d returned from Russia, summoned by the Queen. I was eager to see what had changed and what—blessedly!—had not. I’d been gone now several years; but always, always the larger part of my heart held to Paris as my home. I have always believed one can love a place as one loves a man or woman: passionately—any true traveler will tell you as much. So it is with a heavy heart that I speak of the Paris to which I returned, for it was not the Paris I’d left, and loved.
Paris still had that certain sheen, that appeal that is, or was hers alone. But, trite though it may be, I find I must liken her to a courtesan whose day has passed, whose gross maquillage obscures what might remain of her true beauty, who clings tenaciously to her ceremonial ways. I saw this whore close up now, harshly lit by my long years’ absence. I saw how her rouge was applied in circles too perfect, how her goat’s-hair wig had shifted, how it sat crookedly on her head and stank of rancid butter, I saw how her one real gem sat loose in her ring and rattled as she beckoned with her puffy, brown-spotted hand. But then my coach would turn a corner and there she’d be, the sweet brazen bitch of old, snapping her fan, batting her long lashes, thrusting out her high bosom, and having her way…and all was suddenly set right.
I speak, of course, of the final days of Paris—though none of us knew it was the end. It would be a few years more before Dr. Guillotine’s girl would clog the gutters with gore, but looking back there is no doubting it: those were the last days of Paris, the Paris I knew, the Paris I loved. My Paris.
Those were the days when Madame de Genlis and her sisters-in-law would dress as peasant girls, have their women gather all the day’s milk off their estates, and transport it, by donkey, to Madame’s manor house. There, Madame and her “girls” would dump it into a bath built for four, strip and wallow in the milk for hours, its surface strewn with rose petals.
Those were the days when nobles had gemstones sewn onto their shoes, silver buttons sewn onto their cuffs.
Those were the days when women paid huge sums of money for bonnets honoring Turkish sultans and Carmelite nuns, as Fashion saw fit. These same women would sit for hours as their hair was wrapped in curling papers and frizzed with hot irons, combed out with nettle juice, and powdered with rose root, ground aloe wood, red coral, amber, bean flour, and musk, the mass of it then wound around a horsehair cushion and festooned with flowers, fruit, feathers, and figurines. The resultant works rose so high that the finest ladies had to kneel in their coaches, as it was impossible to sit.
Those were the days when courtiers vied for innumerable positions, and wit could be traded for wealth. Indeed, anyone applying himself at Court seemed capable of drawing a salary, for there were positions aplenty and money enough. The King’s kitchen supported some twenty-odd cup bearers (answerable to the four carriers of the royal wine), as well as sixteen hasteners of the royal roasts, seven candle snuffers, ten passers of salt, et cetera, all of them handsomely paid. As for the Queen, half of what she billed the treasury for perfumes would have fed the starving families of Paris.
For those were also the days when countless children of the city subsisted on chestnut gruel, boiled down from bark, sometimes but not always salted—how many parents rotted in jail for having stolen salt? Men mutilated themselves to fare better as beggars. Each day at sunrise, on the steps of the Foundling Hospital, the sisters would find shivering infants, notes pinned to the bawling bundles begging baptism, and forgiveness. In the provinces, too, peasants starved as feudalists fed what little grain there was to their game, resulting in the vengeful slaughter of animals of the hunt by the starving peasantry, and, in turn, the retributive, legal slaughter of the peasants.
When before had so few had so much, so many so little?
Meanwhile, at Court, the King might be found hunting or forging ever more intricate locks in the company of his smith. The Queen busied herself showering all manner of excess on her friends and her Swedish lover, Fersen.
The press was beginning to flex its newly discovered muscle. And the politicized organized themselves into clubs—Jacobins, Cordeliers, the Minimes, the Society of Indigents, the Fraternal Society for Patriots of Both Sexes. Bad men were revered; good men met with unjust ends.
The city, the old whore hiking up her skirts, offering herself to whoever would have her, was rank with the stench of coming catastrophe.
And here I was, returned to this Paris, rich from un métier de luxe: the Continent’s Portraitist. To whom did I belong? No one. The poor resented me, and the privileged would soon sicken me. Where did I belong? Nowhere. Had I been wise, had I known, perhaps I would have stayed away, holding tightly to the dream of home, as the exile does, and never sought its fulfillment.
But was I really so melancholy, so maudlin when first I returned? No, I was not. Time distorts things; time bends and shifts. In those few years leading up to the Revolution, I am ashamed to say I clung to old Paris, to the douceur de vie I’d known.
I was beautiful, rich, talented, famous, and free. Had I left Paris a nobody to make my name abroad to return to this ugliness? No! I would have my fun. I would insist on old Paris, refuse this doomed and dying Paris. I too could step over the poor on my way into the city’s finest salons. I was, after all, a witch!
Immediately upon my return to Paris, I made my presence known. Happily, I discovered my husband had been fast forgotten. I sent word to the various academies to which I belonged. I wrote to the Queen with news of our mutual friends. In reply I received a commission to paint—yet again—the royal children.
I purchased two homes—properties that backed up to each other, the one in the rue Gros Ch——, the other the rue Cl——. A huge garden spread between them. The homes were well appointed, decorated under the direction of the Queen’s dressmaker, Rose Bertin.
I took up residence in the rue Cl——, the house resplendent in satins, silks, and damask, with the wallpaper and furniture all commissioned from the finest ateliers. The house opposite I had fitted out as a conservatory and studio; my guests would stay in its upper stories. There too I kept the vast store of wine I decided to amass, quite cheaply, for many of the finest cellars of Paris were being auctioned off in lots, a sign
of the coming bourgeois panic.
As for the garden between my two homes, well, it was there that I quite literally cultivated my love of roses.
Finally, settled, I took the advice of a lady friend and, as my reentry into society, I agreed to host a concert for a violinist of (as it turns out) no consequence whatsoever. I entered the crowded conservatory last, of course. All turned to greet me. There was an exquisite silence—like that which follows the final note of an aria, before the eruption of applause—and then all present stood, and bowed. I was back.
The ovation that followed, as I made my way to my front-row seat, lasted several minutes. The musician rapped on his violin with his bow, the ladies slapped their fans in their gloved hands, the gentlemen tapped the parquet with their canes. Needless to say, I did not hurry to my seat. Here I was, having risen from the street. I’d traveled and returned to the acclaim, the adoration of le tout Paris. Ah, yes, I was happy as any fool. Then, that day’s reception seemed to mark my ascension. I feel differently now.
In the fit of excess that followed my return to Paris, I also bought a cottage in Chaillot, to which I would repair on Saturdays, returning to Paris on Monday afternoons. Yes, Paris. It was there, not long after my “debut,” that I hosted—to my great and long-lasting regret—my Greek Supper.
24
The Greek Supper, Part I
I HAD JUST come home from a stay of some length at le Raincy, where I had painted a royal niece, some lesser princess, at full-length and to great profit. Awaiting me was a letter from Téotocchi.
Much time had passed since Venice, but still I thought longingly and often of my days there. Knowing my nature had changed my life little. I was as I’d always been, more or less, except now there was a word—witch—to explain the distance between myself and others. I found myself, for better or worse, defined. Still, I was not to be seen late at night in my studio toiling over a brass cauldron, slicing the hearts of hummingbirds or plucking the eyes from newts. I cast few spells. It’s true: there’d been bouts of unbidden clairvoyance now and again, but nothing to speak of. As for my “talents,” I had come to appreciate only those that applied to my art, and since returning to Paris, my output had been prodigious—this despite a quite active social calendar.
How thrilling—Téotocchi was coming to Paris. Her three-line letter said little else.
Within the week I received two more packages from Téotocchi. The first—too wicked—was a long letter all in cipher. The second package contained a popular novel of the seventies, Paul et Virginie, and the cipher’s code. The letter was little more than a listing of numbers corresponding first to pages in the novel, then lines, and finally words. Distilling sense from Téotocchi’s letter took me whole days. Word by word, filling with guesswork what gaps existed. Only when I read the letter entire did I stop cursing my sister, for I understood why she’d gone to such lengths to conceal its contents.
The letter contained the names and addresses of eleven witches. I was to write to them all, using the same cipher, summoning them to my home.
According to Téotocchi’s letter, a new witch must, within the first few years of discovering her nature, host her Soror Mystica, her first sister and discoverer, as well as eleven other witches loosely affiliated by geography, interest, or affection. The new witch summons these sisters, hosting them for a period not to exceed one and one-half days.
Téotocchi wrote that the eleven sisters—with addresses ranging from Paris to Angers to Brest, from the Auvergne to the Cambrésis, Corsica, Naples—would all have a copy of Paul et Virginie. I need only write a brief letter of introduction; in it I should state that Téotocchi was my Soror Mystica. I was then to copy the letter into cipher eleven times. Finally, my original, unciphered letter burned, I was to post my invitations and plan my party. No, no, no—let me say here that Téotocchi never referred to this esbat as a “party”; all she said in her letter was that its purpose was threefold: to thank my Soror Mystica, to meet the witches of my coven, and most important, to learn. It was I who thought it would be a party…. It was not.
Téotocchi had set the date for the esbat in her letter. Samhain, or All Hallow’s Eve. The 31st of October. The year: 1788.
When finally I’d deciphered Téotocchi’s letter, and composed, copied, and posted eleven of my own, it was already mid-September. I’d little more than a month! And I was determined that this would be the esbat to end all esbats! (I was a fool indeed.). I wanted my party to be as grand as any Parisian soirée, as any storied sabbat of the Burning Days.
Plans had to be made, immediately. Of course, I could not confide in my corps of servants. So what to do? I had hosted heads of state, kings and queens, artists of the first order, but surely other rules applied when one opened one’s doors to a coven. A coven. I’d only ever met Téotocchi; and here I was, set to meet eleven other witches.
Weeks passed; still I had no plan. Finally, I woke one night in early October to find my blue silk sheets slick with perspiration. I sent for Narcise, a friend, a fixture at the finest suppers, something of a mascot to the Elite.
Narcise, of course, came without question. Darling, dark, diminutive Narcise…
Long ago, a traveler returning from Africa, desperately currying favor with the Dutch Queen, presented that lady with a black child, snatched off a Senegalese beach as though he were a shell. This child was Narcise’s grandfather. As a child, and later as a man, he moved from court to court with the Queen, unequal to the royals but superior in station to everyone else. His only duty was to delight the Queen. He was taught to read, and he read well; he became the Royal Lecteur, renowned for his strangeness and grace as well as the deep, deep voice that belied his stature. (The Queen, it was said, had her stunted man stand beside her at state ceremonies so that she might rest a jeweled hand on his turbaned head.) Narcise’s grandfather lived and died at the Dutch Court, conferring upon his heirs a strange cachet, one that faded within years of that man’s death. If there were bequeathed a title or a royal pension, Narcise—who’d long ago left the Dutch—knew nothing of it.
Narcise was a poet by vocation, or so he would say. In truth, he read much and wrote little. He scratched out short, insipid sketches of his lovers. Dependent on the kindness of a bevy of mistresses, he was a flatterer par excellence; with no money of his own, he managed to live quite well. Quite well, indeed. His carriage was noble, his name was known, and his favors—favors of all sorts—were widely sought.
“Surely, mon vieux,” said I when he arrived in a bit of a huff, “this is not the first time you’ve been summoned to someone’s parlor in the middle of the night?”
“Indeed not; but it has always been for a far better reason than hostess anxiety.” Narcise then produced two bottles of esteemed red wine, gotten, he said, from the cellars of Madame de X——; and he took from the pocket of his waistcoat his own corkscrew. “My dear,” said he, “there are tools a society man must carry in addition to his own,” and with that he pulled both corks. “But now tell me, what in the name of Christ on Calvary has you so troubled?”
That night, as I told Narcise all I could of my predicament, he stood to pace the floor. He hummed, scratched at his stubbled chin, mopped his furrowed brow with a pink silk kerchief. He exerted himself, all for my benefit. Finally, removing his waistcoat and tossing it across the foot of my bed, where the green and gold brocade shone in the firelight like the scaled skin of a fish, he asked why this particular soirée had me so upset; I’d hosted scores of such suppers. I lied, saying that I worried like this before each supper, that each of my suppers had to be perfect (as indeed they were) and he let the topic fall, taking a seat and turning instead to the guest list. I batted the topic away with a wave. “Every hostess,” said I, “knows the list to be secondary to the theme, mon petit homme.”
That long night my friend and I considered and dismissed one idea after another. Finally, I despaired.
It was well past midnight—yes, the hour was small, perhaps two
or three—when Narcise and I decamped to the plush plane of a golden-blond divan, for my bed was ridden with the debris of our late-night snack—apple cores, rinds of cheese, a small Chinese bowl half-full of pits sucked from grapes and black olives. And, of course, the two empty bottles of wine.
A perfectly pale and opalescent moon slid from behind a bank of clouds, its light overtaking that of my candelabrum and my fireplace. “Sleep,” I said. “I need sleep.” I reclined, sank into a bank of pillows. “Recite something, anything. Lull me with one of your poems.” For that I received a pinch.
Narcise took from his pocket a copy of “Anacharsis,” and, though I was half-asleep already, when my friend got to the part in the poem wherein a Greek supper is described—specifically, that part which touches upon the preparation of sauces—I bolted up to exclaim, “Voilà! C’est ça!”
“Woman,” asked a startled Narcise, “what’s gotten into you?”
“Go on!” I commanded. “Read!”
And read he did, not knowing what possessed me. I took up paper, pen, and ink from my nightstand and scribbled away. “Again,” I would say, when he’d read all the way through a certain passage. “Repeat it, please!” And he would. A perfect angel, so compliant! I am sure he thought I’d lost my mind, for it was some time before I calmed enough to explain my plan, which was, of course, to host the esbat as a Greek supper.
Inside of an hour the details were done.
I wondered, would my sisters take to the idea of an Athenian evening, a Hellenistic honoring of our sororal alliance? Suddenly nothing less grand would do. What a show I’d make of it!