franciscus junius,
The Paintings of the Ancients, 1638
Yet Provis was spared immediate embarrassment. The next day, the French launched their first attempt to invade Britain by heading for Ireland, just as Darton had predicted. As news of the attempted invasion sped inland, fear flowed through London streets as if brought there directly by the winter seas. The threat of war had loomed for so long without any attack that a haze of denial had started to prevail.
Now, however, pamphlets and newspaper articles about Irish treachery and the perils of French rule filled the coffee houses and taverns like petrels fleeing a storm.
‘Those who calculate most freely, state the Directory’s navy to consist of 17 ships of the line, 13 frigates, 15 other vessels and 15,000 effective men,’ reported The Times. ‘It is led by General Lazare Hoche, a most fearsome commander who did suppress the royalists in the West of France. He has joined forces with Theobald Wolfe Tone, founder of the Society of United Irishmen, and an ardent Republican. These madmen cry that they wish to threaten our Monarch and strike terror into these shores. Yet their insolent invective is as naught in the face of His Majesty’s great Navy.’
As Joseph Johnson had fearfully anticipated, William Pitt’s response was to step up his attack on potential enemies within England itself. Each day seemed to bring news of another prominent radical thrown into Newgate Prison, held up as a public example by the Prime Minister for potential links with the French. To Provis’s shock, one of the radicals sent to Newgate was a server who had worked at the Chapel Royal, a man whom he had liked and respected. He did not know to what degree Darton might have been connected with the arrest – it was another murky event in an increasingly murky world. Though at least Ann Jemima had returned. ‘Bodily at least,’ he whispered to himself. ‘Where her heart and mind are is a mystery.’
His mood was so bleak that he hardly felt any of the relief that swept across the country when the announcement came, several days later, that the invasion had failed. Britain – it transpired – had been saved, not by its great Navy, but by the weather.
‘Britain has prevailed,’ thundered The Times. ‘General Lazare Hoche’s fleet did encounter such turbulent conditions first in the Channel and then the Atlantic that it was torn apart before it could dock in Bantry Bay. Captain Sir Edward Pellew of the HMS Amazon states that 12 ships have been captured or wrecked and thousands of men either taken prisoner or drowned. The leaders of this sorry expedition were blown so far off course that they were entirely separated from their men.’
The earlier fear quickly translated into a grim hilarity. Britain exhaled, and the French and Irish were transformed from bogeymen to clowns. Trying desperately to provoke some reaction from Ann Jemima, Provis showed her the Gillray cartoon in which the satirist depicted the failed ‘French Armada’ being blown around on the waves by English Tories. Normally she would have devoured the humour with sharp eyes, would have laughed at the picture of William Pitt, cheeks fat with contempt, venting foul air through pursed lips at the leader of the opposition stuck as a figurehead on a French boat. But now she sat and stared at it, listless, unmoving.
He could not quite bring himself to tell her that he had punched Westall as a result of his visit. Like Ann Jemima he had been in anguish at his powerlessness, miserable that whatever he tried he could not remedy the situation. Before departing for Westall’s house he had sampled a glass of a drink called absinthe, brought to him as a gift from France by Darton. Had it been this, or his anger that had made everything in the streets seem more vivid as he had set out into the night? The catfight that had suddenly hissed and arched its way across his path. The laughing crone with her bottle of gin, her ravaged features given a strange beauty by the chestnut seller’s fire. The treachery of icy puddles that kept betraying his balance as he lurched nearer and nearer to his destination.
He had not told Ann Jemima he was going to see the artist at all. She had told him that she was not ready to plan revenge, that the one truth was that West was powerful and they were not, and that she was not going to cause any further trouble. Yet the madness had seized him, and he would not let it go. He had hoped he was going to be able to recount his visit as a triumph. He had imagined serving up Westall’s outrage to her like the head of John the Baptist. But Westall’s wild and dishevelled state on opening his door had caught him off guard, not least because it seemed to mirror how he felt inside. Once he had recovered from his shock, he had started to feel anger that the artist was not inviting him in, felt the insidious December breeze whistling down his collar and through his clothes. A further humiliation after months of humiliation by West. The suspicion that he was not being taken seriously increased when Westall had suggested he return the next day. When he lunged out with his fist, his intention had been to wind the artist, but Westall had tilted to the left so his impact was on the ribcage. For a moment the two men had surveyed each other, horrified, before Provis turned and fled into the dark.
Ann Jemima had not looked at him as he came back into their apartment. One of the most wretched aspects of her return had been her decision to take up embroidery, something he had once encouraged her to do, but which she had rejected so she could study painting. Now simply seeing her with her basket of threads made him despair. He wanted to rip the infernal thing out of her hands and set fire to it. As if infected by his sentiments, she pricked her finger with the needle at the moment he looked over towards her. She yelped angrily as the blood started to flow from it, then looked down as it flowed onto the embroidery, blotting gorily on the stitchwork.
‘Ann Jemima – I have a confession to make to you,’ he began falteringly. Slowly he started to relate the events of the evening, hoping his account might stir some sympathy, but it did not. Instead she suddenly became furious. As he flinched beneath the weight of her rebukes, he chided himself that he should have expected little else, whatever the outcome. Since the events following West’s betrayal, it had been as if she had been made out of some different, more brittle element. She did not laugh these days, it was as if it might shatter her.
He tried to explain how, through painstaking enquiries, he had concluded that since Westall was one of West’s most notorious detractors at the Royal Academy, he would be the best person to approach. He told her he had calculated that if he were going to start rumours against West here was the place to begin. But her ridicule increased the further he progressed with his account. ‘You went to him as a complete stranger,’ she said. ‘Cosway has warned us about addressing this the wrong way. Why would Richard Westall heed what you have to say?’
‘He loathes West,’ he replied. He knew now he did not have the courage to tell her that he had punched Westall. ‘I hoped he would leap to do justice to our cause.’
‘Did he invite you in?’
‘No, he was… no, he was…’
His mouth went dry. She will disown me forever if she knows I have committed this assault, he thought.
‘Of course he did not,’ she spat out, misunderstanding his consternation. ‘Do you really think the artists at the Royal Academy give a fig for doing justice for strangers? You speak as if they were some ancient order of knights. Some strange old man approaching them and telling them their President has failed to honour us sounds like insanity at best, and at worst blackmail.’ She paused, breathing heavily. ‘You may be ingenious when it comes to engaging with people at the court, but you are like a man lost at sea with these artists. You must be more judicious if you wish to enjoin their support.’
‘You know not of what you speak,’ he had wanted to shout. But he had not – it was not his way. I cannot influence her any more, he thought. I have used all that I know to try to help her, and yet it has not been enough to stop us both from being trampled. He kept the thought to himself, like the Spartan boy he had once read about who had concealed a fox he had stolen under his cloak, refusing to admit his theft even as the fox devoured him. Like the Spartan boy he could feel somethin
g eating into him, sometimes making him want to cry out with pain, but no one could have told this from his face, grim with concentration as he continued the day-to-day routine of work at the Chapel Royal.
Her attitude had changed suddenly a fortnight later. It would have been indiscernible to anyone not closely acquainted with her – it was connected to a rhythm of movement, a jutting slightly higher of the chin, the cautious gleam in her eyes as she and Provis dined together. She had not talked much, but she had been cordial to him as he had imparted court gossip, even laughed on a couple of occasions. The laugh was a ghost of what it had been, but still it made him glad to hear it. He had not asked what had occasioned the shift in her humour – merely rejoiced that it had happened at all. Then, just before she retired to bed, she had announced, ‘I have devised a plan. We will talk of it at tomorrow morning after you have prepared the chapel for morning prayer – somewhere away from the palace.’
His first thought was, she is going to run away again. She is preparing the ground to deceive me, and when I go to meet her she will be gone. Yet now he had learned how she could be absent even when she was sitting in the same apartment as him, could look at him directly without seeing or hearing anything that he said. So he had decided it would be wisest to stay his concerns and wait for her to reveal what she wanted him to do. She had told him they would meet in St James’s Park. It was known to only a few members of the court that there was a secret tunnel below Green Cloth Court that led out to the park at one end and the former site of Whitehall Palace at the other. The tunnel had been created by a Jesuit priest fleeing persecution, and led to a network of others snaking beneath the West End of the city. Once he had finished his duties in the chapel, Thomas Provis was to head out as if he was returning to his apartment. Then, just before he reached his front door, he would dart down through the secret entrance.
Now here he was in the park. It had snowed overnight, which gave the landscape around him a deceptive air of virginity. Dawn trailed white skeletal fingers over a sky bruised black and blue by the receding night. All around him trees held their branches up in surrender to the unforgiving cold. As he walked he could see his breath creating small warm clouds in the air. He wanted to reach out and reclaim them, because he felt that with each hot breath, he himself was becoming icier.
Momentarily he wondered if a contemptuous God was looking down on him. He imagined himself from that God’s-eye view – his lamp turning him into a small firefly as he made his jerky progress against the dark landscape. Only months beforehand St James’s Park had been the focus of all Britain as the place where the rioters had attacked King George. But at seven thirty in the morning all the park’s memories of assassination attempts, society preenings and debauchery were invisible.
He felt anonymous. Such anonymity made him feel comfortable, relieved. He felt himself breathing more calmly than he had since the whole wretched business had started. Somewhere, he hoped, out here in the dark was Ann Jemima, waiting, ready – he thought with pained curiosity – to confide in him again. But his heart began to beat faster as he realised he could see her nowhere. He started to spin round with his lamp held aloft.
A branch snapped, and a duck’s quack echoed through the frozen air. Provis turned and saw the other lamp through the branches of a tree on the other side of the canal. Silently he walked across the bridge. He hardly dared to believe, now, that it was Ann Jemima waiting for him. She was wearing her grey cloak – for the first time in weeks it did not seem to shroud her. She said nothing – simply came and took his hand before leading him further away from the palace.
‘This is better,’ she said to him when they finally stopped. ‘I couldn’t abide being in that apartment any longer. The air stank with our disappointment, it was choking both of us, I did not know how much longer we would be able to bear each other.’ She paused. ‘The cold air out here helps me to think more clearly, more cleanly.’
‘Less cruelly?’ he joked wretchedly.
‘I regret profoundly that I have been unable to stop myself being so unkind with you these past two weeks.’ Her own voice faltered. ‘I did not want to come back – it made me feel trapped, humiliated. Yet even as I was so harsh with you, I was asking myself why…’
‘You had to show your anger to somebody. West would not oblige us with his presence, so you directed it at myself.’
‘Yes, yes…’ She was silent for a moment, biting her lip in embarrassed acknowledgement. ‘After you went to Mr Westall, I decided I should write to Mr Cosway again.’ Here her eyes refused to meet his. ‘He wrote back, and was most supportive.’ Now she looked up. ‘He is more sympathetic to the idea that we should pursue West than he was on his last visit. His insights have given me the perfect idea for what we can do to make West give us the money.’
Another game, thought Provis sourly. But he kept his counsel.
‘What do you think each artist at the Academy cherishes more than anything else?’ she continued.
‘Each artist?’ he echoed stupidly.
‘I am not talking in terms of possession. I am talking about the quality that makes them who they are.’
He remained silent, unable to see where she was leading.
‘I am not talking about their honour, or the honour of the Academy.’
Finally he understood.
‘It will probably vary from man to man,’ he answered slowly. ‘But if you are talking about the way they see themselves as artists, then it will be their talent they value more than anything else.’
‘Not just their talent,’ she concurred, ‘but the way that talent is perceived.’
He laughed low.
‘Then we are talking of one of the deadly sins, pride.’
‘Pride or vanity. It matters not what name you give to it. But yes, I believe that is what is most important to them.’
A fox ran out in front of them with a struggling duck in its mouth. It looked at them, startled, before leaping onto the frozen canal and disappearing into the undergrowth beyond.
‘No one will be interested that Benjamin West has wronged two strangers,’ she continued. ‘As you have seen, if we present our case to them straightforwardly with ourselves as victims we have no hope. If however, we present it to them as a crime against themselves…’
‘A crime again themselves?’
‘Yes,’ she replied triumphantly.
He stopped. ‘In what way?’
He looked at her face as she prepared to respond. He saw the renewed self-assurance. The glint in her eye had a knowing, Machiavellian edge to it. She had become a mature woman rather than a disappointed girl.
‘West has been cunning, and we must be cunning too,’ she declared. ‘He only became interested in deceiving us once he realised the manuscript had true worth. Up till that point he viewed us as eccentric individuals…’
‘He saw me as an eccentric,’ he corrected her. ‘He had more regard for you.’
‘No.’ Her voice was cold. ‘No, I have come to realise this. He did not have regard for me. He had interest in me in as far as I could provide him with details that aided his ambitions. I failed to see that, and that made me weak.’
The last word cracked out as if on the tail of a whip. She paused for a moment as if needing to collect herself.
‘His belief that he can use the manuscript to produce the best pictures for this year’s Academy exhibition is a strong advantage.’
‘Indeed.’
‘We can inform the other artists of the Academy in all good faith that he is using the method in the hope that all of them will trail behind him.’
He was starting to understand.
‘In other words we tell them that West is trying to cheat them.’
‘Precisely,’ she said. ‘On top of this we raise the price of the manuscript to reflect its worth.’
Here, he felt, he was ahead of her.
‘I had conceived a plan along those lines already,’ he replied. ‘When I approached Westall I sa
id it was worth £600.’
‘That is not sufficient.’
Again her tone was sharp.
‘Then how much are you thinking of asking for it?’ he replied.
‘One thousand pounds.’
‘One thousand pounds?’
She laughed his incredulity.
‘You do understand how important the Academy’s annual exhibition is?’ she continued. ‘You do understand how much it matters that West is using the method to prepare all of the pictures he submits to it? It takes just one patron to favour an artist to increase the money he can command for a painting ten times over.’
He was silent for a moment. Then he too started to laugh, feeling the stiffness in his jaw at the unaccustomed movement.
‘We must be bold,’ she continued, taking his laughter as a sign of approval. ‘We have been too cautious, too deferential. So on top of this we approach not just one or two artists, but ten, fifteen, however many it takes to sway opinion against West. Through his greed, West sought to disinherit us. Let us use the ambition of others to take our revenge.’
He was starting to lose all sensation in his hands, so he held his left one up to the lamp. He looked as his fingers glowed red, the light illuminating the blood in them.
‘When do we commence?’ he asked.
‘We leave our appointment cards today,’ she said shortly. ‘Tomorrow night there is a meeting at the Royal Academy – and we want the rumours to be starting to spread then.’
The Optickal Illusion Page 16