‘Aristocrats, writers, politicians, harlots,’ she continued, turning back to her audience. ‘All became equal before him. Any of them could appear on his canvas, the harlots raised to goddess status, the aristocrats revealed as humble men.’ The look in her eye became intent. ‘Titian understood that it is not where you come from that makes you, but the way you respond to life.’ Opie frowned, he could suddenly hear the barely suppressed anger in her voice. ‘He saw the humanity in everyone…’ here she paused for a moment before looking down and reasserting herself.
The words are in her script, but the emotions they have inspired are not, he reflected. He glanced over towards Thomas Provis, who was at the other end of the semi-circle of chairs. He found it striking now, and later even more of note, that he seemed to be the most fascinated pupil in the room. The contentment shimmered off him. Unlike everyone else, he was gazing not at the canvas but at Ann Jemima, nodding his head every time she spoke. Opie fought the desire to grab a sketchpad and draw him. He noted the tuber-like nose, the mottled skin, so unlike his daughter’s features. Again he wondered about her dead mother. That is obviously where the beauty came from, he thought to himself.
He forced himself to focus again. The first canvas was removed from Ann Jemima’s easel, and was replaced with one where the lead white paint had dried. Deftly she added the light and dark shadows in the face. Then this canvas in its turn was removed and replaced by a painting where the shadows also had dried, and all that was left was for her to glaze. ‘Colour comes from reflection and refraction,’ she said. ‘Titian would constantly adapt an image as he was working on it. But he would also build that sense of shifting light into the painting by using layer upon layer of transparent glazes over the opaque body colour, scumbling in order to soften the effect.’
As she talked, she applied and blended Dutch pink and brown pink with dabs of crimson lake. Again Opie was struck by her ability. Slowly he gained a sense of blood flowing beneath the skin of the anonymous young man being depicted, the feel of the slightly coarser skin on the cheeks and oiliness on the nose. There is that movement of emotion on the face that I noted in the Venus and Cupid, he recognised with a start. West lied when he said he repainted it – it was her work. Farington and Smirke must be having the same thoughts. He looked up towards them to see if there was any acknowledgement. But Farington was now writing frenziedly, while Smirke stared transfixed at the canvas.
His eye now fell on Stothard. The expression on his face was one of furtive lust. So he is won already, thought Opie, regardless of what he thinks the method’s merits are.
He looked back to Ann Jemima. I can see clearly that any of us could use the same combination of colours, he reflected, and yet not achieve the same effect. It is about her brushwork, about a certain instinct. The greatest aspect of painting is the moment when it goes beyond rational explanation. She has something that no one here can buy. I wonder if even she fully comprehends it.
He was fascinated to see how the other artists would react when the session had ended. Would any be openly hostile? Might others be politely dismissive? He had made up his mind to lead the applause, just to make sure that Miss Provis was not discomfited, but when she finally put her palette and brush down, he was surprised to find himself eclipsed by the eruption of delight from the other artists in the room.
Farington’s notebook fell to the floor in his distraction.
‘As we all knew, this is a discovery of great importance,’ he declared loudly. ‘Well done, my dear, you have demonstrated it beautifully.’
Westall came up next to Opie. ‘I shall not sleep tonight, I am so excited. It is so subtle, and yet so profound. What is your opinion of it?’
He looked straight at Opie, his face alight. Then he frowned slightly as he saw Opie’s own expression, and started to laugh.
‘We have a doubter in our midst?’
‘No, no.’ Opie shook his head. ‘I am not a doubter.’ He coughed. ‘I believe I have seen something amazing, but I am not sure it is Titian.’
Rigaud overheard him as he joined them. ‘You are an oaf, sir,’ he declared belligerently. He took a silk handkerchief folded into a square and wiped the sweat from his forehead. ‘I should not be surprised you do not comprehend it, it is clearly suitable only for refined sensibilities.’
Opie decided it was best not to reply. He went over to Ann Jemima and her father, who were now with Hoppner and Farington.
‘Mr Opie.’ The sheen in her eyes was that of the victor. ‘I must thank you.’
‘It is no trouble at all,’ he said, unable to stop himself smiling as she grasped his hands and looked at him. ‘It is we who must thank an artist of such talent as yourself.’
She caught his choice of words straight away.
‘What was your verdict on the method?’ she asked quickly.
‘I was very impressed by your painting,’ he replied, lifting the enthusiasm in his voice. ‘You are aware that Angelica Kauffman, one of the first female members of the Academy, will be visiting London from Europe next month. I can arrange an introduction if you would like.’
He looks directly at her.
‘You cannot deceive me,’ Ann Jemima said smiling archly. ‘I can see you need further proof that the method itself works. Mr West was of the same opinion as you to begin with, yet he eventually changed his mind. It is most kind of you to offer the introduction, and I would be glad to accept your offer. Maybe I can talk to her of the method.’
She looked intently at him.
‘You are dangerously perceptive,’ he said, charmed despite himself.
‘You will be my ally in this, will you not, Mr Opie?’
He bowed.
‘Of course, Miss Provis. Please do not imagine I could be anything else.’
The events of the last week flipped and whirled in his head.
‘You are a most fascinating woman,’ he found himself saying.
She smiled. And so I am considered won, he thought.
* By the eighteenth century a wider range was available, though hog’s bristle was still the main type used.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Josiah Darton travels to the West Country
‘Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes,
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth…’
william shakespeare,
Richard II, Act 3, Scene 2
Darton left London before the news of West’s confession broke. He arose in the dark at six in the morning after the dinner at Johnson’s. The cold felt brutal. He had to break ice in the pitcher before pouring the water into a bowl to take a wash. Then he tipped out into the jaws of the morning to take the seven o’clock stagecoach to Weymouth.
From the window so many fragmented impressions. London’s dirt – tyrannical, colonising every detail of life – gradually yielded to the sodden blacks and browns of the January countryside. As the coach gathered pace, Darton became hypnotised by the long stretches of fields and hedges interspersed by sporadic outbreaks of small houses and churches, islands of snow on the shivering grass, and chimneys fluting smoke into a white sky. When the evening drew in, it was possible to spot rabbits leaping around huddles of livestock. For the first time in months, London felt like a dream.
It was too dark to see the city of Weymouth properly when he arrived that night. It was the other senses that informed him: the clacking of the horses’ hooves faintly echoed by the surrounding buildings; the sensation of frosty air scraping against the skin as he climbed out of the coach; the smell of singed meat surging from a nearby kitchen. His instinct after a day of being confined in a small darkened space was to head for light, food and conversation. He deposited his bags at the Golden Lion Inn, and then made his way to the Royal Assembly Rooms. He could hear the place in his mind before he walked in the doors – the leisurely clicking of the billiard balls, the gentle percussion of glasses, the soft rumble of low laughter. Many off
icers of the Navy were there to play billiards, and he made it his business to talk to them. Whisky proved the alchemist he sought to transmute idle conversation into useful indiscretions on the sailors’ part. Many of them were disillusioned – dissatisfied with their pay, and contemptuous of Pitt’s foreign policy. Five glasses later Darton was unconvinced that the Navy was any more prepared for a second French invasion than it had been for the first a month beforehand. Then a bottle of rum was introduced, and one of the sailors offered to teach him an Italian card game, briscola, that he had never played before. The next he knew it was four o’clock.
The image of Opie’s outraged face danced and swayed in his head when he eventually fell into bed. Quickly it was supplanted by the memory of Ann Jemima walking like a ghost across St James’s Palace. Mrs Tullett’s words, ‘You can never account for the way people might perceive something,’ kept running through his mind. He groaned and rolled over to try to get into a comfortable position for sleep. London is full of trouble for those who seek it out, was among his last thoughts. Sometimes the craftiest of us find ourselves in quicksand.
He awoke the next morning feeling as if a herd of cows had trampled across his body. He was uncomfortably aware of every movement – the blinking of eyes in an aching head, the swallowing accompanied by a faint sense of bile, the stiffness in his arms and legs. It was more than an hour before he managed to rise, and an hour beyond that before he could gather himself together to hire a horse to ride to Yarlington.
He almost threw up as he mounted the horse. But once he was on the road, even beneath the black clouds of hangover, he realised the countryside around him was beautiful, almost an antidote to his physical discomfort. He remembered once hearing Provis say that King Arthur had supposedly had his castle near to the village where he had lived. Wreaths of mist round skeletal dark trees gave the landscape a mythical quality. In his distorted state of mind, if it had suddenly revealed a witch he would not have been greatly surprised.
He arrived at Yarlington shortly after lunch. By now he knew what any other individual could have told him – he was in no fit state to ride on to Bristol that day. A small inn built in mustard-yellow stone seemed to offer suitable sanctuary. He deposited his battered travel bag with its owner. Since cold fresh air still seemed to be what his body most desired, he then went for a ride round the neighbourhood.
His horse took him past thatched and stone-roofed cottages to the outskirts of the village, where there was a large stately home in soft red brick that appeared to have been built only recently. The cedar trees he could see on the edge of its grounds were gawkily immature, while the gardens were still in the process of being tamed. The main house would not even have been here when Provis had lived in Yarlington, Darton thought. But Ann Jemima would have been a small child when it was being built. Right now it was as if the house were hibernating. There were no people to be seen in either the gardens or at the windows. Around the cedar trees, snowdrops dipped their heads while dark flowerbeds gave little sign of the life unfurling beneath.
Darton guided the horse’s nose back towards the centre of the village, letting it trot till they were going past the old Norman church of St Mary’s. Unlike the stately home, there was a sense that the church was at one with the landscape. He could almost imagine it having roots instead of foundations, reaching long gnarled fingers towards the centre of the earth.
Just outside the church, he could see a young man standing with his head bowed in front of a grave. He waited on his horse until the man’s prayers were finished. The man was startled at first when he turned to see him. Darton apologised. He asked him if he had heard of the Provises. The man said he knew the name, but further questioning made it clear his recollections were of an old woman, now dead – who Darton assumed to be Provis’s mother. When Darton asked if he knew Thomas or Ann Jemima, he said he did not. He explained he had been working in Bath these last four years and was not close to many in the village beyond his own family.
With a faint sense of defeat Darton returned to the inn. He took bread, pickled oysters and water for his lunch, then retired upstairs, overcome by weariness. When he awoke a few hours later his hangover had gone and his thirst returned.
The evening around him was soft, muted. Against the quiet, his footsteps rapped like carthorse hooves on the stairs. Two old men sat at a table by the window. At lunch a stern woman with pepper and salt hair had served him. Now a young girl worked behind the bar. She regarded him knowingly as he walked across the wooden floor and ordered a tankard of Somerset Cider, before positioning himself warily on a barstool.
‘Where do you hail from?’ she asked. She had pale red hair, and a face that was attractive, not least because of its direct unbashful gaze. He thought, with approval, that she would never have graced an illustrated pamphlet on conventional female beauty.
‘I rode from Weymouth this morning,’ he replied, sensing the inadequacy of his response. ‘Before that I was in London.’ He surveyed the cider she had just poured as if unsure whether it were friend or foe. She snorted. ‘I see it was not the waters you were taking at Weymouth.’
He grimaced. ‘It was the firewater. God have mercy on my soul.’
One of the old men sitting behind him walked up to the bar.
‘I’ll drink to that.’ His white hair was sparse, his eyes gleamed darkly from raisin skin. Behind him, his companion sat silent.
As the barmaid refilled the old man’s tankard, Darton took a sip of cider.
He looked over to the barmaid again.
‘What brings you to Yarlington?’ she asked.
He felt her desire to be relieved from boredom as if it were an undercurrent in a river threatening to tug his feet off the ground.
‘I take it you do not have many visitors here,’ he threw back at her.
She shrugged.
‘We’ve had more since the large house was built,’ she replied.
The old man raised a finger in the air. ‘Last summer we had two poets, Wordsworth and Coleridge pass through,’ he rasped. ‘They were on their way to the Quantocks.’
Darton forebore from commenting. He could still remember an evening spent with Wordsworth some years beforehand where the poet had told him about John Stewart, a man who had walked from India to Europe. To Wordsworth the man was a visionary. For that one evening Darton too had felt the fire of a mind that had witnessed humanity in remote mountainscapes and turbulent cities, and had felt compelled to seek a truth that addressed society’s ills through the miracle of nature.
The old man’s memories were less exalted.
‘They certainly supped their fill of the cider, did they not, Miss Lydia?’
‘Indeed they did, Ozias,’ she replied dismissively. ‘They supped their fill, and then they vomited it all out again. After their visit we shall not be welcoming poets again. I take it you are not one?’
Her gaze was now stern. Darton took another sip of cider.
‘Being a poet is not one of my sins,’ he replied drily.
The girl walked over to the other side of the bar, and began to polish some of the tankards. He watched her for a while. This inn is her parish, and she knows well that no matter how long he bides his time, each man will eventually make his confession, he thought.
‘Did you grow up here?’ he finally asked.
‘I did.’
She was clearly older than Ann Jemima, but only by a whisper, he thought.
‘May I ask your age?’
She waited a moment to answer him, polishing the tankard vigorously before holding it up to the light.
‘I am twenty,’ she finally replied.
‘Did your family ever know a man called Thomas Provis?’ Darton said.
She frowned.
‘I remember a Mary Provis very well, but not a Thomas Provis.’
Finally the second old man spoke.
‘I remember Thomas Provis.’ He winced, as if the memory had given him a physical pain. ‘It was a tragedy, w
hat happened to his family. I wasn’t surprised he left here. Couldn’t live with the ghosts.’
Darton swung round on his stool. He could feel his heart starting to beat faster.
‘I am a close friend of his. It is clear to all those who know him that he has suffered,’ he said.
The man nodded solemnly. A prominent chin jutted from his thin face, while his white hair came down to his collar.
‘His wife was a good ’un.’
The judgement was delivered in a monotone.
The girl laughed quietly, now polishing the bar. ‘George either describes people as good or bad ’uns.’
‘It is a useful enough distinction,’ said Darton. He paused for a moment. ‘Mr Provis never said how she died.’
The girl looked sharply at the two old men, and back at him.
‘Why are you here asking about your friend?’ she asked suddenly. ‘In truth it is a long way to travel here from London. What is your business here? Is he in trouble?’
Darton had been expecting this.
‘Not at all,’ he replied.
He was aware of a shift of atmosphere in the tavern. Six inquisitors’ eyes bored into him.
‘I was coming in this direction because of my own affairs. I am travelling to meet my cousin, who is a riding-officer,’ he said. The half-truth slipped out easily.
‘One of the men who patrols the coast?’ asked Ozias.
Darton nodded.
‘Looking for smugglers and the like? ’Tis a hard job.’
‘It is indeed,’ said Darton dismissively, anxious for the conversation not to be entirely diverted.
‘Was there something suspicious about how she died?’
He was not quite sure exactly what made him ask the question, but Ozias sat up straight.
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