‘Is not hypnosis generally the first sign that things are going in favour of the snake?’ replied Smirke. He started to walk on purposefully.
Farington stayed where he was. In front of him the reptile – twice the length of a grown man – writhed inside its cage. Its coils glistened in the winter sunlight, its darting tongue and tiny jewel eyes moved backwards and forwards behind the bars. Each time it shifted towards a section of the crowd, several members moved away.
‘Some breeds of snake kill by spitting poison,’ declared Smirke from a distance.
‘If that were the case here, then we would all be corpses. Pray stay your cynicism for a while, Mr Smirke. It will be something most interesting to relate, and indeed perhaps draw for the other members of the Academy.’
As Smirke took up his position next to Farington the crowd grew around them steadily. Some shrieked as they approached, others were immediately silenced. The smell of fashionable perfumes and colognes cloyed the crisp winter air. Smirke clapped his hands to his pockets as he noted two small boys in rags starting to skulk around the capes and jackets. He felt a quiet fury that he was in this situation at all. But he knew from long experience that for all his apparent politeness, once Mr Farington was engaged no force, however strong, could distract him. Smirke looked once more to the snake. Its owner was pacing round and round the crowd, ensuring enough space was created for everyone to be able to view the cage properly. Out of the corner of his eye, Smirke sensed a quickening motion, and looked down to see one of the boys running off, stuffing a lady’s silk handkerchief into his pocket as he did so. He thought of breaking out to chase him, but as he turned about the row of people behind him shushed him, and pointed him forward again.
The snake’s owner climbed onto a soapbox. A look of quiet triumph crossed his face as he looked at the horror spattered across the faces around him. ‘A python, ladies and gentlemen,’ he declared defiantly. ‘This is a python, brought all the way here from India. It can swallow rats, birds, small dogs…’ His eyes continued to read his audience with sadistic amusement. ‘On occasions it has been known to eat a man,’ he continued.
‘I can well believe it,’ said Smirke disparagingly, looking at the python. ‘If I were its keeper, I would be very circumspect about opening the cage door to feed it at night.’ He spoke as if regretful that the task had not already proved fatal for its owner.
‘Its mouth may look small,’ continued the man, ‘but this creature is a marvel, both in terms of anatomy and in its ambition. Once it has cornered its prey, it dislocates its jaw and stretches its skin round the animal’s head.’
‘Extraordinary,’ said Farington as he started to make notes.
‘Sir, I see you are particularly interested,’ said the man, noting Farington’s actions. ‘Would you like to come over to the cage for a demonstration?’
Farington gave a dismissive smile.
‘Perhaps this young lady is braver than the gentleman,’ continued the man, looking at a woman wearing a large plumed black hat. She laughed contemptuously, but took a step back as she did so, pushing against another woman who cried out. There was a brief commotion. Smirke realised the second woman was holding a pet marmoset which she had almost dropped. She held it to her like a child, before turning and making her way further up the street.
‘Very well.’ The keeper proceeded with his macabre theatre. ‘There is nothing for it but to feed him my best friend.’
‘I cannot bear this,’ murmured Smirke.
Farington put his finger to his lips. The snake-owner lifted a box up from beside him and opened it. The nose of a white rat tested the air, then quickly the entire animal came out and climbed up the man’s sleeve.
‘This is my friend Monsieur Rat,’ declared the man. His blue eyes were slightly manic now. He started to walk round the edge of the crowd, offering onlookers a chance to stroke it. At the shrieks of both men and women, his expression took on a darker tinge. ‘As some of you may have guessed, he is a French rat…’ jeers rose up, ‘… an admirer of Mr Bony-part. I have been given special dispensation by Mr Pitt to carry out what I am about to do next.’
The crowd’s responding laughter was replaced by gasps as the man quickly walked over to the cage and tipped the rat through an aperture. The creature scuttled around manically and the python’s gyrations increased. Finally the snake reached its head down and grabbed the rat in its jaw, before coiling the top of its body round it to smother it. At the moment the teeth made contact with its body, the rat let out a screech. It struggled a little, but after a minute or so all that could be seen was the thrashing of the tail. It was not long till that too had stilled.
‘Mr Farington, can we move on now?’
Smirke was beginning to feel ill.
‘The most interesting element of the experiment is to come…’ said Farington, waiting for the python to dislocate its jaw to eat the rat.
But Smirke had had enough. This time he ignored the rebukes of the crowd as he turned and pushed his way for an escape. After a last quick glance Farington realised he would have to follow him.
He caught up just as Smirke was about to turn into Oxford Street. His friend’s pallor had a greenish hue to it and he continued to stride rapidly. Finally he commented dourly, ‘I did not enjoy that, one bit.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Though at least the python was honest about his intentions. It is clearly no relative of Mr West’s.’
Farington laughed grimly. He looked quickly at his watch and exclaimed. Smirke regarded him questioningly. ‘You were right to move us on, Mr Smirke. Our appointment is to be at Mr Opie’s in ten minutes’ time. We must quicken our progress.’
A few minutes later John Opie looked at his own watch. He walked once more around his double drawing room to check that the housekeeper had set up the right number of chairs for the demonstration. Then he returned to his studio to survey Ann Jemima Provis and Thomas Provis as they busied themselves with the final mixing and grinding of the colours.
They had arrived at ten o’clock that morning. He had not been sure how to greet them. He had pondered much on what the secret might be that was allowing Cosway to blackmail them. He wondered about what had happened to Ann Jemima’s mother, about how the Provises had first encountered Cosway, about business deals that Provis might or might not have conducted in the past. Mr Cosway himself had insinuated that though he had bought artefacts from Provis himself, he was always careful to make sure the origins were not dubious. Maybe the manuscript itself is stolen, Opie thought. Maybe that is why Ann Jemima is so afraid.
Now she was here to perform the demonstration there was no doubt about the seriousness of her intent. In the studio he noted the absorption on her face as she and her father prepared and set out the paints with precision. Her focus was total. Every detail had to be closely observed. It is almost, he thought wonderingly, as if her life depended on it.
‘Burnt Umber,’ she called.
He could see that Provis was shaking as he got the jar of powder out of a large wooden case.
‘Carmine Lake.’ The verger looked into the same case. Panic drained his expression as his eyes darted back and forth.
‘It is in the second case. On the left, right at the top. Remember, we put it there this morning.’
Provis nodded, and went to the second case where the powder was as she had instructed.
‘Ivory Black, Indigo, Blue Hungary and Minium. Those are all in the first case again. And Dutch Pink and Verdigris. Those are in the third, with the containers of oil.’
Opie realised Provis was acutely conscious of his gaze as he fumbled to open the third case.
‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I mean not to discomfit you. Your daughter’s feat of memory is considerable.’
He looked at them both searchingly. Who are you? he thought.
‘You have seen nothing of note yet,’ responded Provis.
I suspect not, Opie thought.
Out loud he said, ‘Did Mr West see this?’
‘You must feel gratified that he is now acknowledging you.’
‘It was a very unfortunate misunderstanding. A man can become a monster in your thoughts by seeming to oppose you thus.’
‘If he had responded to any of our earlier approaches, then we would never have needed to go against him,’ said Ann Jemima briskly. With precision she measured vermilion into a clear jar.
‘You look like an apothecarist setting out her wares,’ said Opie.
There was a crash as Provis dropped a jar that Opie saw was labelled ‘Titian Shade’ to the floor. Ann Jemima looked towards him angrily and rushed over.
‘It is not broken,’ he said. ‘Please, Ann Jemima, do not fret.’
She stared at him for a moment, and then relaxed.
‘I am sorry,’ she said. Her eyes met Opie’s briefly. ‘We are both somewhat agitated.’
Opie left the two of them to continue with their preparations. It was eleven o’clock when Ann Jemima next emerged from the studio. ‘Have you a table on which I can place my palette while I am explaining the process?’
Now, he noted, she was deciding to use her charm again.
‘Indeed I have.’ Unwillingly he found himself noting the small pretty mole on the right side of her nose, the blue clarity of the determination in her eyes, the light flare of pink in her cheeks.
‘Is there anything else that you need?’
‘Not on this occasion, thank you, Mr Opie. I think that other than the table we are fully prepared.’
All around there was a sense of the momentum picking up. Soon the sounds of horses’ hooves and carriage wheels were heralding the arrival of the artists. Opie’s housekeeper had an appointment to go and have porcelain dentures fitted that day. She knew that Opie needed help with showing the artists in and out of the house, so she had offered her fourteen-year-old brother to help. Opie realised, too late, that the boy could not repeat the names he had to announce without mangling them. As Smirke, Stothard and Farington arrived, they were translated into ‘Firke, Bathard and Storrington’. ‘Hoppner’ became ‘Hopper’, and ‘Rigaud’ and ‘Westall’, ‘Wigall and Westor’, with considerable uncertainty on the last syllable. Smirke’s eyes looked as if they were about to fall out and roll down his cheeks, he was so amused. Yet the general mood was ebullient, and the absurdity of the situation merely added to the sense of gathering excitement.
At last the entire company had arrived. Opie motioned to the artists to take their places in the semi-circle of chairs arranged round Ann Jemima sitting in her long smock at the easel. For a second before her lesson began there was absolute stillness in the room. Sitting at one end of the semi-circle, Opie could see the artists’ different expressions, some guarded, some openly expectant – a room of sophisticates waiting to be transformed to believers. A friend at the Royal Society had once shown him insects preserved in amber, their bodies perfect, but their motions frozen forever in the golden glaze. If the translucent sap were to fill the room at this very moment, he thought to himself wryly, most of us would die happy.
She looks out at her audience. For a moment she sees the men in front of her as if they are figures in a painting. All eyes fixed on her. A sense of unreality. When Provis came to her and told her that West was openly praising the method, she had felt the years of other people’s doubts fall away as if they had been a great weight. In this room, she thinks, we are all brought here by the same desire. Desire has created hope, and hope is never stronger or more vulnerable than at the point when it may be converted to truth.
With a catch in her throat, she finds herself thinking of Septimus Green. In this fleeting memory it is her fourteenth birthday, and rather than being so distracted that he hardly notices her, he is smiling at her excitement at what is about to happen. A science experiment has been set up as an entertainment for her on the kitchen table. There is a transparent glass vessel in front of them, sealed by a cork, and it contains a red powder. A glass tube leads from it to another glass vessel, which is partly submerged upside-down in water. He is holding a lit spirit lamp, and as he brings the flame to the bottom of the vessel containing the red powder, the powder starts to blacken and a thin vapour spreads up the tube.
‘Desire is like a flame that converts one substance to another.’ The sentence flickers briefly in and out of her head, but she pays little heed to it. In front of her the room full of men, waiting for the transformation to happen. Waiting for her to apply paint to the canvas and demonstrate the technique that will allow them both to resurrect the ghost of Titian and look to the future.
She picks up the palate and paintbrush and looks at the canvas. The memory comes to the front of her mind more strongly now – as her painting master holds the spirit lamp to the first glass vessel bubbles start to appear in the water, rising up into the second vessel. In the first vessel dark grey specks begin to spatter against the glass, becoming more and more metallic in hue until a tiny silver ball appears. The bubbles rise faster and faster.
‘What is the powder called?’ she asks, staring at the silver ball.
‘It is mercury calx,’ he replies. ‘It can be used in paint. The silver is mercury. But for many years, nobody knew what gas was produced.’
Now he withdraws the spirit lamp from the bottom of the glass vessel. He takes a wooden splint and hands it to Ann Jemima so she can light it with the flame. She holds it for a few moments.
‘Now blow it out – gently,’ he says.
She purses her lips. The flame is extinguished, but the splint still glows. He takes the second vessel from the water, and invites her to place the splint inside it. The flame reignites, and they look at each other with triumph.
‘The gas is oxygen,’ he says. ‘It sustains all human life.’
And still the men are waiting.
Now there is another memory.
‘When does a painting come alive?’
West is talking to her.
‘When is the moment of transformation – when does it cease to be lines and colours, and start to live and breathe?’
She says nothing.
‘Do you think that is something the manuscript reveals?’
She realises what he is trying to say, and nods cautiously. ‘It shows how Titian’s colour is transformative,’ she replies. ‘You see how he could trap movement in a still image, give a sense of past and future where we can only see the present.’
‘I had a friend, Benjamin Franklin,’ he says. ‘He conducted experiments to catch lightning from the sky. In the past, when I’ve tried to look for the life contained within Titian’s colouring, I’ve felt as if I’m engaged in the same impossible pursuit.’
‘It is the impossible that tantalises you, is it not?’ she declares, with a sudden jolt of recognition.
He smiles broadly – it is as if a screen has suddenly fallen away from who he is. ‘What kind of life can we have if we do not push at the edges of what has already been achieved?’
Opie saw Ann Jemima pause for a moment before she began to talk. The look of intense concentration on her face. She was quiet for longer than he expected as she started to mix the paint on her palette, and he worried that she was too scared to speak. He felt the tension build in the room.
When she finally began to talk, her words came out a little fast and loud. He saw her chide herself, placing her hands firmly on her knees to stop them shaking.
‘When Michelangelo first saw a painting by Titian,’ she said, ‘he declared how regretful it was that Titian had learnt to paint in Venice, since it meant he had not been taught how to draw,’ she began.
Some of the men laughed.
‘Yet Titian was disdainful of perfect draughtsmanship. Like many Venetian painters, he believed that creating strong outlines was untrue to what he observed in the world around him. It was through the shadowing and blending of colour that objects took on their reality.’
She took a sip of the tea that had bee
n brought for her.
Opie began to feel anxious. Her youth is greater than we have all given her credit for – I trust she is not overwhelmed by this, he thought to himself.
‘In Venice,’ Ann Jemima continued more steadily, ‘he could choose colours imported from all over the world. Lapis lazuli from Badakhshan. Malachite from Hungary. Realgar from Bohemia. Cochineal from India. Earth colours from Umbria and Siena.’ She walked over to the table where some of the jars of paint powder were standing. She picked up a jar of Crimson Lake, her fingers thin and pale against it. ‘Getting precisely the right colour became an obsession for him. When his patron Emperor Charles V rode out into battle, he did so to blaze the glory of the Catholic Church. When Titian was painting Charles, he wanted to use the most beautiful and intense red possible to convey this. He was in Bavaria, but sent a courier three hundred and sixty five miles across Europe to Venice just to obtain him half a pound of Crimson Lake.’
Opie looked around the faces of the gathered artists. So far she was telling them little that they did not know. Yet there was a quietly growing sense of how impressed the company was at Ann Jemima’s mastery of information. Farington’s eyes had a lizard’s glaze, it seemed that he was hardly daring to blink for fear of missing a word. Westall’s acute concentration was marked by a watchful smile.
Ann Jemima took some lead white paint and started to apply it to the prepared canvas. Opie leaned forward. In contrast to the slight nervousness of her speech, her movements were deft and well executed. Yes indeed, she has talent, he found himself thinking. He noted that her hands had stopped shaking. As her paintbrush moved across the canvas, the shape of a young man’s head quickly began to emerge.
‘You never knew who you were going to encounter in Titian’s studio,’ she said after a few minutes. She frowned slightly as she stood back and scrutinised the canvas. Most of my pupils would be happy to have produced a silhouette that was half as good, Opie thought. This girl places high demands on herself.
The Optickal Illusion Page 28