The Optickal Illusion

by Rachel Halliburton

‘Never let anyone tell you he killed her.’

  Darton suddenly felt a shiver course through him.

  ‘Why would they say that?’

  ‘It was a terrible accident.’

  ‘An accident?’ He looked swiftly between the three of them.

  ‘That is precisely what it was.’ Ozias started to become hostile. ‘The inquest confirmed it beyond a doubt. Those who whispered otherwise did not see what happened.’

  Thoughts raced through Darton’s head.

  ‘The man I know is not a murderer,’ he finally said. But he did not know what to think. He had not expected the conversation to take this turn at all.

  ‘He was trying to save a life,’ George declared mournfully.

  ‘His little girl ran out in front of the horse his wife was riding,’ said Ozias. ‘The horse started to play up, Mr Provis dashed to get the little girl, and then the horse reared. His wife fell off.’ Tears were starting to redden his eyes – he grabbed a coarse cotton hanky, and wiped his nose. ‘She died straight away. Broken neck. Some had the audacity to say that he had caused the accident on purpose.’

  The words fell like blows on Darton’s ears. In the silence that followed, his heart wept for his friend, for his loss, for all the years he had felt forced to keep quiet. Is this the cause of Cosway’s blackmail? he wondered.

  ‘Was the little girl his daughter Ann Jemima?’ he eventually asked.

  Ozias sighed.

  ‘It was.’

  ‘We all wondered why it was only three years ago, when she came to live with him in London, that anyone knew he had a family at all. Now it is all too clear.’

  George’s eyes became dim, confused, as if he had been posed some impossible riddle.

  ‘Did you know her?’ Darton asked Lydia.

  The atmosphere became charged with something he didn’t understand.

  George and Ozias looked at each other uncomprehendingly. Finally George cleared his throat. ‘What has Thomas Provis told you?’ he asked falteringly.

  ‘In truth, very little. I know her just enough to know she is charming and highly accomplished.’

  George banged his tankard on the table. Cider frothed out impatiently.

  ‘It is impossible that you have met Ann Jemima Provis!’

  Darton looked at Ozias, who also looked shocked. ‘Why is it impossible?’ he replied in consternation. ‘Where do you believe she is?’

  ‘The question is not what I believe,’ said George slowly, almost angrily. ‘The question is what I know.’

  Lydia held up her hand.

  ‘George, be calm!’ she cried, though her own expression was filled with horror. ‘What enrages you so?’ She looked towards Ozias. ‘Is he altogether well? Do you know of what he speaks?’

  Ozias nodded sombrely, while looking towards Darton. ‘I know precisely of what he speaks.’

  Darton’s mind was running through dark fields – he could sense the speed at which he was travelling, but had no sense as yet of his destination.

  George began to mutter, then he stood up. ‘I think you should accompany me,’ he said. ‘It is probably best for you to read the truth. I cannot tell what knavery is being practised in London, but…’ His words trailed off.

  He nodded towards Ozias. ‘You stay here and keep Lydia company.’ His breathing was slightly laboured. ‘I will show our visitor. Can I trouble you for a lamp?’

  She too was trying to take measure of the situation – her eyes darted back and forth between the three men. She went and fetched a lamp from the back of the tavern and gave it to George, who took it with his right hand, while placing his left hand briefly on her arm.

  ‘There is no easy way to tell this story. He must see the truth for itself.’

  He gestured to Darton to follow him. As if caught up in a nightmare, he put on his cape and followed George outside the pub. Cloud hung like cobwebs around the moon – the rest of the landscape was swept with black paint. It was so quiet Darton almost fancied he could hear the sky breathing.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ he asked. ‘Why this mystery?’

  ‘Be patient, man,’ came the answer. ‘You will discover soon enough.’

  Darton’s first instinct was to check the stars – though few could be seen, he could distinguish the Great Bear and the Little Bear in the sky. A long thin creature scudded out onto the track in front of him, then was gone into the bushes. George looked behind him.

  ‘Stoat,’ he muttered.

  Darton felt under his cape. He had no intention of using the small sword concealed beneath it, but his fingers groped to feel the metal in its leather sheath, and were reassured to find it there.

  Now he realised they were turning off into St Mary’s churchyard. The square Norman tower stood solemn in the darkness.

  His frame is slight, it is his determination that carries him, thought Darton as George teetered resolutely through the graveyard. First he went to the row of tombstones next to the church, but what he wanted was not there. Then he went to the next row. Darton could see his entire silhouette lit by his lamp as he carefully read the names on the graves. He looked around him – watched the other graves extending into the distance. As a sudden breeze set the trees dancing around the edge of the churchyard, an exclamation from George in the dark indicated he had found what he was looking for.

  ‘Come over here,’ he cried. ‘Come and read for yourself.’

  Darton went over. He looked at the letters on the grave as the candlelight leapt and flared. He shook his head. Then putting his hands on the ground he crouched down to read them closer.

  ‘This is impossible,’ he finally said.

  ‘It is the truth,’ said George.

  ‘It cannot be so.’

  ‘It cannot be any other way.’

  Darton looked again. Reached out to touch the letters carved into the stone with a hammer and chisel.

  ‘Ann Jemima Provis, daughter of Thomas and Belinda Provis. Taken to our Lord aged two years,’ he read out.

  ‘She died fifteen years ago,’ said George. ‘It was a tragedy. Thomas Provis had risked everything to save her. And then she died six months later of scarlet fever.’

  Darton looked back at the inscription.

  ‘She would have been exactly the same age as the girl I know.’

  ‘But she is not the girl you know.’

  ‘So if it is the real Ann Jemima Provis who lies here, who is the girl who is living in London?’

  He tipped his head back and looked at the moon. He felt as if the past were a jigsaw puzzle, and some malevolent child had just kicked the pieces everywhere.

  He took a deep breath and looked at George.

  ‘How strange the human heart is,’ he continued. ‘Provis lost all he loved. So he has taken revenge on the world by making sure that no one would ever know enough about him to do him harm again.’

  George made a small groan as he bent down in the darkness to pick up the lamp.

  ‘What will you do now?’

  ‘I must continue to Bristol tonight. My business there is but brief. If I go there now, I can leave for London by mid-morning tomorrow.’

  ‘What will you say to Provis?’

  ‘I do not know. I love the man like a brother. Right now I cannot see how to start this conversation.’

  A barn owl carved through the air in front of them.

  Darton felt in the pocket of his breeches. ‘Please take this small purse as a sign of my gratitude for your help.’

  ‘Keep your money.’ The words sat heavy in the bitter air. ‘It has been no pleasure to enlighten you.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Benjamin West is forgiven

  ‘How many with great abilities, and fine genius in design, have fought for the attainment of knowing the Mechanic of Colours, yet have ever been in the dark, ’tis much to be regretted that an early help has not been at hand, that the utmost time might be given to the more material and scientific studies, as the longest life is
too short for the acquisition of perfection in all.’

  william williams,

  An Essay on the Mechanic of Oil Colours, 1787

  Does the air seem different to a man who, once condemned, has now been acquitted of his crimes? Certainly, thought Benjamin West, it felt easier to breathe these days.

  He recalls once more the moment when the letter arrived at his house. He had quickly recognised it to be in Thomas Provis’s hand, and had recoiled when it was handed to him.

  He did not read it for a couple of hours. When he eventually opened the letter, he could feel his mouth was dry, and he cursed to himself. Then his eyes fell on a sentence that contained the phrase ‘a great misunderstanding’. He skimmed the letter further, and saw the word, ‘generosity’. Trembling, he went back to the top of the letter to read it properly. ‘We had never meant such enmity to spring up between us,’ it declared. ‘We wish to convey our joy at the discovery that it was all a great misunderstanding. That you chose to make this clear to Mr Cosway is yet another example of the generosity that we had observed in your behaviour from our first meeting. We are profoundly happy at this resolution of the situation.’

  West remembered once in Pennsylvania being caught up in a storm on a lake. The sky had seemed entirely clear when he had set out in his boat. But within ten minutes of the first warning breeze, the waters were agitated, the clouds loomed like black rocks, and lightning was spearing the water. He had felt lucky to reach the shore alive. It had been the same when he heard from Cosway that the Provises were accusing him of concealing their secret from the Academy. Up till that point he had persuaded himself that his conduct had been essentially honest, and that in time he would acknowledge the Provises. But once the scandal had struck, even he was forced to confront the reality that his refusal to inform Ann Jemima the moment he decided the method was authentic was, from whatever angle you considered it, reprehensible.

  ‘I would not have been worthy of my position as President if I had raised the other artists’ hopes about the secret without performing a full range of experiments,’ he found himself saying to Cosway. In that moment he almost believed it. ‘The method is not perfect on its own.’ How he hated the man. Like so many men who were fundamentally weak, Cosway revelled in pretending he was doing his superior a service at the same time as he clearly enjoyed his discomfort.

  The portraitist spared no detail in telling West of the outrage of the other Academy artists. He looked coolly at West every time he repeated the accusation that he intended to keep the secret to himself purely to gain an advantage for the Royal Academy Exhibition. How West damned the Provises’ argument at the same time as he was angrily forced to concede its ingenuity. No one, he kept repeating to himself, no one who had not seen the secret could realise how much work he had to do on his own in order to make it effective. Did I simply desire an advantage over the other artists, he was on occasion forced to ask himself? I was caught up in my obsession – what crime was that?

  He recalled when he had first heard about Mariotte’s blind spot. As a boy it had delighted him to carry out the experiment in which he drew a dot and a cross on a piece of paper, between six to eight inches apart. He would cover his right eye with his right hand. Then he would stare at the cross with his left eye. Gradually he would lean closer and closer to the paper until the magical moment when the dot disappeared entirely.

  ‘Was that the case here?’ he asked himself at one point. He thought back to the painting of the Venus and Cupid. ‘Did my vanity mean that I could not see that what she created when I was out of the room she created without my help?’ He put his head in his hands. ‘I have been a foolish old man.’

  He tried to tell Cosway that as President of the Royal Academy it was his job to be at the forefront of any such discoveries. That he would be doing Ann Jemima and everyone else a favour by creating works of art on his own that, with this new knowledge, would outshine everyone else’s. That once he had been heralded a success by the critics, he would be able to give a series of lectures explaining his methods to the other artists.

  Yet spoken out loud, such noble sentiments seemed revealed for the shabby dreams they were. ‘What should I do?’ he had said to Cosway. He detested himself but detested Cosway even more for his feeling of helplessness. He found himself thinking, if it were not for Cosway I would not even be caught up in this mess. It was he who decided to introduce me to the Provises in the first place. The swell of anger he felt at this point was irrational, and he recognised that. He managed not to punch Cosway as he replied calmly, ‘I think this can all easily be resolved.’

  ‘Easily?’ West replied with some astonishment.

  Cosway nodded. ‘I think all the Provises ever wanted from you was acknowledgement they should be paid. If you had not ignored them repeatedly when they approached you, things would never have come to this pass.’

  West’s head felt like a metal pot – in it, his fury started to steam. He had wanted to say to Cosway, ‘You yourself declared it was ridiculous that a man like Provis should have come by such a document. You yourself averred that without me they could never have proved the document’s authenticity.’ But where Cosway had been all flattery when he had first approached West about the matter, now he regarded him with sour disappointment.

  ‘Miss Provis particularly felt that she had achieved some kind of friendship with you. I think hers is the anger of someone who placed a great deal of affection and trust in you, and felt that both were trodden underfoot.’

  His tone was never anything less than polite. Cosway would never be vulgar enough to make a direct accusation – it was all about insinuation, nuance. ‘Because of your secrecy about the reason for Miss Provis’s visits, she suffered even more than she had anticipated,’ he continued. ‘There were certain servants who witnessed her comings and goings, who drew unseemly conclusions.’ The eye contact was momentary, the voice velvety with impudence.

  West leapt from his chair. ‘They thought that we were… that I was…?’

  The words guttered out as he paced backwards and forwards. ‘Dear me,’ he started up again, ‘that I would stoop to…’

  He looked at Cosway, who nodded gravely. Damn you again, West thought to himself, damn you. Truly we have reached the heights of absurdity. That you, who are renowned for your flirtations, should be in a position to accuse me.

  ‘She has, I trust, confirmed to you that there was nothing improper going on,’ he said. He felt the potential of the ground to disintegrate beneath his feet even as he issued the statement. Cosway was silent. ‘That is one impropriety, I hope, of which I have not been accused,’ continued West. Eventually Cosway replied,

  ‘No, of course. She is emphatic that your behaviour on that score has been without reproach.’

  Again, the gentle emphasis on the words ‘on that score’. West flinched even as he felt relief.

  The idea that he should write the letter explaining his conduct had been Farington and Smirke’s. There had been something cathartic about the process, he had to admit, as if the written words had acted as fastening pins for the reality that for several days had seemed to shift before him. He had slept easily that night for the first time since the accusations had been made. And the result was most unexpected. To his surprise, two days later came the written acknowledgement from the Provises that they accepted his version of events. So Cosway, West thought, regarding him more favourably now, had been right. The Provises’ attack had been motivated by hurt rather than cunning.

  A week later Thomas Provis left his visiting card. That afternoon Provis and Ann Jemima were shown into West’s drawing room, just as they had been two years beforehand. West wondered if they were going to show any anger despite their supposed absolution of what he had done. But Ann Jemima in particular appeared friendly, deferential, even regretful of what had happened. West congratulated them, and thanked them for their charity. Yet the human heart is complex, and even as the pleasantries were exchanged between them, West fe
lt as numb as a plank of wood. He realised that despite his relief, he had been stripped of any capacity for expression following the accusations. When the door finally closed behind them, he realised he would be quite happy if he never saw them again.

  ‘February 2, 1797 Newman Street, London

  ‘William, my dearest brother,’

  He sits once more at the desk in his study. Outside the day is painted in greys – a cold drizzle washes through the streets and gutters.

  ‘I trust this finds you in good Health. Since we last corresponded, I fear to say that I have been thru’ the greatest upset of my Presidency, and know not if the Repercusions are yet over. I have written to you twice now of the girl Ann Jemima and the method she did bring me. After what seemed a most Excelent and fruitful exchange on art and the subject of Titian, I was considering what recompence I should give her for it. But while I prevaricated she and her Father did approach several members of the Academy and accuse me of theft.’

  He thrusts the quill in its holder and puts his head in his hands.

  ‘Theft?’ he says to himself. ‘As if I were some vulgar pickpocket, or some petty house burglar. My reputation marched to Newgate gaol. It is a travesty.’

  ‘As you know,’ he continues, ‘such an accusation should instantly have been seen as Risible. But to my horror I realised many members of the Academy were convinc’d. Thus I was forc’d into declaring that the method itself was of Significant merit, regardless of my contribution, and that I had been wrong to withhold it from the other Artists.

  ‘Personally I Suspect’d that the accusation was that of the father and not of the girl. Its vulgarity and distorsion Seem’d out of keeping with her character. I sought to explain that it was my intention all along to present it to the Academy and acknowlege the Provises’ part in it at a time of my Chewsing. Thankfully the girl’s honesty and Perspicacitie did prevail. The Provises did agree that what had happened was down to a misunderstanding, rather than any crime on my part. After letters had been written on both sides, I was Absolv’d.’