The Optickal Illusion

by Rachel Halliburton

  Dr Emerson’s legs had been long and angular, his lean face was constantly possessed by impatience, while his ice-blue eyes seemed to look straight through her. He had had no time for the girl his wife had left him. Sitting in his study in Bath, he was far more comfortable devoting his spare hours to correspondence with different scientific societies. Denied a male heir, he hired tutors to educate her as rigorously as if she were a boy. But she knew he was of the opinion that little was being achieved through this education. He had chastised her bitterly when he saw how her notebooks on maths and astronomy were covered with drawings.

  There had been a particularly painful incident shortly after her painting master had introduced her to Hooke’s Micrographia. She had been unable to resist adapting some of the illustrations to satirise both her father and certain of his friends, and on the evening he discovered it he had chastised her bitterly and sent her to bed without supper. Eavesdropping can often prove crueller to the eavesdropper than to the one being spied on – and so it proved when she crept back later to look through the door of the parlour where he was having supper with her grandmother. ‘I look forward to a time, maybe a few years hence, when she can prove to me that her mind is not entirely empty,’ she had overheard him saying. She could not see his face as he said it, but could imagine it – ruthlessly stripped of sentiment, eyes wandering restlessly until they found something worthy of engagement.

  Two weeks later he was the first to die of the smallpox that swept through their neighbourhood. When she wept she did not know whether it was because she would never see him again, or because of the lacerating sense of exasperation that he had left behind. Her grandmother died a week later, and Septimus Green one week after that. While her father’s and grandmother’s deaths had cast her down, her painting master’s death had made her cry out against the impossibility that someone so young, so full of life and curiosity, was no longer there. She wondered what was written next in the cruel script of her life.

  ‘Drink your hot chocolate, Ann Jemima.’ Mrs Tullett’s voice cut sharply into her reminiscences. ‘The morning advances, and it is time that you got dressed. I have made the chocolate with orange blossom – it is believed to steady the nerves.’ Ann Jemima banished the images from her past as she made herself focus on the day ahead. She took one sip of chocolate, then got up and stepped away from the table leaving a plate of clear almond cakes untouched. ‘I am ready,’ she said brusquely. A smile trembled on her lips. ‘Let us prepare ourselves for the ordeal.’

  She had planned the day meticulously. She knew it was a performance, but it was a performance she would execute to perfection. As Mrs Tullett helped her, she stared resolutely ahead into the looking glass, looking at the feathers once more rising up from her hair. This time they were accompanied by a demure black and white spotted gown, a crimson robe arranged over it and a white fur boa hanging round her neck.

  ‘I do not recognise myself anymore,’ she said.

  Today Mrs Tullett had decided not to play the prophet of doom.

  ‘You are beautiful,’ she said simply. ‘You have gone to the bother of stirring up a great bee hive so you should at least walk away with some of the honey.’

  ‘You have been like a second mother to me.’ Ann Jemima’s eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. ‘I could never forgive you for not being my real mother. I have been harsh on you.’

  ‘I have not risked as much as Mr Provis.’ Mrs Tullett’s voice was dour, but there were tears in her eyes too. Seeing this in the mirror, Ann Jemima got up and turned to give her a hug, which she returned warmly. ‘You were such a wretched little thing when you first arrived. You trusted no one, you were rude, and when you weren’t answering back you hid yourself in books. I said at the time to Mr Provis it was as well you were clever, since you didn’t have the looks to attract a good husband. We both thought your only future lay in being a governess.’

  Ann Jemima stood back. ‘I would have made an impatient and bad tempered governess.’

  Mrs Tullett gestured to her to sit in front of the mirror again. ‘Then you became beautiful,’ she continued.

  Ann Jemima looked straight forward.

  ‘Beauty is a strange kind of currency,’ she remarked dourly. ‘It bestows power and value until you meet a predator like Cosway. He tried to use his desire for me to make me worthless.’

  She turned again to look at Mrs Tullett, who put her finger to her lips.

  ‘He will be gone from your life soon enough.’

  The plan for today was that she and Provis were going to take their carriage over to Farington, before going with him to Somerset House. Now she came out of the apartment and walked through Green Cloth Court and past the Chapel Royal. There he was waiting at the side entrance to the palace. She felt relieved to see how cheerful he looked, almost – the thought strangely flashed across her mind – as if he were a father waiting for his daughter on the morning of her wedding. He took her hand and looked her in the eye. ‘You look every inch the part, my dear,’ he declared.

  Just as he had so many months before – when they made their first visit to Benjamin West – he held the door of the carriage open for her. Just as she had all that time ago, she placed a wary hand to her headdress before climbing in. ‘What can go wrong now?’ whispered in her mind. She was struck by a sense of time looping round on itself.

  By mid-morning, the clouds had become heavier and darker. While there was still an eerie orange tinge to them, the white clouds had been replaced by swirling blue-greys and blacks. In the twenty minutes it took Provis and Ann Jemima’s carriage to reach Farington’s house, icy drops were starting to fall.

  Ann Jemima realised, as she saw him, that the diarist’s vanity meant he considered it to be his great day as much as she was supposed to consider it to be hers. He was standing at his front door – for a second it framed him as if he were the final painting to be hung at the exhibition. He gestured dismissively at the rain. ‘Merely a sign that today the best views are to be enjoyed indoors,’ he declared as he climbed into the carriage.

  It took twenty minutes for the carriage to reach the top of the Strand. Once it did the rain turned to hail – an elemental battering against the sides of the coach that made it sound as if a crowd was pelting them with stones. Ann Jemima thought it would stop quickly. But it continued for a while. She felt her sense of fear growing at the impending exhibition opening.

  Oblivious to her worries, the men continued their conversation in raised voices.

  ‘I was in Wright’s Coffee House last night,’ declared Farington. Ann Jemima could smell the sherry on his breath. She looked quickly at Provis, who was nodding. A strange friendship had sprung up between the two men in recent weeks, as Provis’s palpitations had revealed Farington’s own obsession with health and unconventional remedies – none of which, she noted, had yet been tried by Provis. ‘A young gentleman gave me a pamphlet about the French invasion of Wales,’ Farington continued.

  ‘What more is there to be said about another failed attempt to invade our shores?’ Provis declared. ‘It seems that when the French military proceed east they are successful, but when they come west across the Channel they are doomed to look like fools. They did not intend to invade Wales at all. Their course was set for Bristol.’

  Ann Jemima looked down.

  ‘You are, as ever, correct, Mr Provis,’ Farington continued.

  The hail continued to beat down.

  ‘At breakfast, however,’ the diarist continued serenely, ‘I decided I would read the pamphlet. I was most glad I did so, the story was unexpected and,’ here he looked at Ann Jemima, ‘seemed most auspicious. It appears that when the French army landed at Fishguard in Wales, they started off by looting as much food and wine as they could, and quickly became drunk. As a result they were in no state to resist when they were approached by a battalion of Welsh women. The bravest was a cobbler called Jemima – a fearsome, modern-day Boadicea. She threatened twelve men with a pitchfork, overcame them
, and ended up locking them in a church.’

  Both Ann Jemima and Provis were silent.

  ‘It is impossible that one woman could have done that,’ Provis eventually replied.

  ‘Mr Provis,’ Farington shook his head sternly. ‘We should never underestimate the determination of a woman by the name of Jemima. Look at what your daughter has achieved over the last few months.’

  Ann Jemima felt a strong desire to laugh. Quickly she turned to stare out of the window at the icy blur. She could hear the horses whinnying their discomfort. She was about to speak, when, as unexpectedly as it had started, the hail suddenly came to a stop. They descended from the carriage. Everything felt very quiet.

  They walked through the gates of Somerset House and into the entrance of the Royal Academy. There they made their way past the busts of Michelangelo and Newton and paused for a moment as they came to the spiral stairway coiling its way above them to the Exhibition Room. Ann Jemima turned to Provis. Once more she marvelled at how perfectly composed he seemed after the weeks of worry.

  She extended her right hand to him so that they could walk up together.

  ‘The wild beasts are waiting for us,’ he said with a dark smile.

  ‘The wild beasts?’ remarked Farington. ‘Dear me, I would not be afraid. You will find only friends here. All of London wants to know you.’

  They walked through the ante-room and into the main exhibition room. Rows and rows of pictures tilted out diagonally from the walls. With a shock, Ann Jemima realised she was gripping Provis’s hand so hard she was causing him pain. With a thin crescent of a smile, she let go.

  As if led by the same instinct, they both walked towards Benjamin West’s Cicero, which dominated the wall immediately opposite them. She had determined before she saw it how she would respond, the precise nature of the smile, the air of pride. But as her eyes surveyed what West had painted, she could feel her smile petrifying.

  ‘He has not followed any of what I told him,’ she thought. ‘It is absurd for me to feel anger. But the painting is terrible. There is nothing redemptive about any aspect of it. There is no clarity to the colours – it as if they have been inspired by mould in a damp parlour.’ She forced herself to be calm – to focus on the proportions of the painting. On the way the figures had been drawn. Yet there was no comfort here either. Cicero resembles a desperate actor, trying to impart significance to a lump of badly carved stone, she thought. It is an embarrassment. She started to breathe more quickly.

  As if echoing Ann Jemima’s thoughts, Provis declared, ‘West’s history painting is rather more subdued than people have said it was. It is interesting, is it not, how differently position and light render a painting.’

  Farington’s pause, Ann Jemima realised, was as eloquent as anything he had said to her in the weeks running up to the exhibition.

  ‘There are some – Rigaud and Westall included – who do not think he has been true to the method.’

  ‘No, he has not at all,’ exclaimed Ann Jemima with anger. ‘I thought he had worked it out. I thought this was why he wanted to keep it to himself. When we worked together…’ The words failed her. ‘All those demonstrations were for nothing.’ Her voice was brittle. Provis tried to catch her eye, but she would not look at him. She moved back a little to look at the painting from a different angle.

  Provis coughed.

  ‘Mr Farington, you said a week ago that you had seen West’s work and thought it was greater than any of Poussin’s landscapes.’

  ‘Yes, well – as you cleverly point out, position and light can reveal a painting differently. I still think it has many merits,’ replied Farington.

  He is positioning himself so he can swing equally towards praise or criticism of the method, Ann Jemima thought to herself. He has been our most prominent champion, yet even he can see that West’s painting cannot be praised unguardedly. She looked swiftly towards Provis and noted yet again his perfect composure. Swiftly she started to make her calculations.

  ‘We cannot be blamed if Mr West has not followed our instructions,’ she declared with a coolness she did not feel. ‘Once he was being honest, I would have been happy to see that his interpretation of the method was superior to mine. Yet this seems not so much an interpretation as a complete transgression. You, Mr Farington, have understood it far better.’

  Farington stared at her for a second – then a gleam of approval came into his eye.

  ‘We shall see how others judge it,’ he replied. ‘We have all become perfectionists as regards to how the Venetian Secret should be executed. Maybe we have become too close to it.’

  He touched her arm lightly. At the same moment, she sensed his attention shifting to an event that was taking place behind her. She looked round to witness Westall and Rigaud walking through the door, followed by a short man with hooded eyes, a sallow complexion, and artfully dishevelled clothes. He surveyed the room with contempt.

  ‘Who is he?’ she asked Farington.

  ‘That,’ Farington replied, allowing the word to hang in the air, ‘is Anthony Pasquin.’

  ‘The critic?’ she asked.

  ‘One of them.’

  She looked once more at the man. This time she looked down to see that his shoes had holes in the toes.

  ‘I find it hard to believe,’ she said, turning back to Farington with incredulity. ‘He looks like he has just come from the poorhouse.’

  ‘That is part of the intention,’ declared Farington. ‘He has an attitude that he describes as a philosophy, in which he believes he need not stand on ceremony with anyone. There is as much vanity in the informality of his dress as there is in the outfit of a Bond Street Lounger.’

  Pasquin walked to the middle of the room and started turning slowly. Ann Jemima observed how his act demonstrated the same combination of vanity and disregard for the opinion of others as did his outfit. It was almost as if he were enjoying the fact he was at the axis of a world now depending on his approval. She tried not to appear to be looking at him, but her eyes kept on being drawn back to him as his eyes glitteringly perused the rows of paintings. Suddenly Pasquin gave out a loud ‘Hah’, and she jumped. All those who weren’t already looking at him swung round. His gaze had come to rest on the largest painting in the exhibition.

  ‘Was the artist drunk who submitted this?’ he exclaimed loudly. A frisson ran across the room accompanied by gasps of laughter. He walked over to scrutinise it more closely.

  The image was of a naked man standing legs astride, with muscular arms raised above his head. He wore a helmet, while his face and body were illuminated by an unearthly light. Next to him stood another naked man, but he was more in the shadow. His hands were resting on a lance. Behind them swirled an apocalyptic landscape.

  Farington nodded knowingly.

  ‘It is Thomas Lawrence’s painting of Satan summoning his legions. Many of us suspected it would cause something of an upset.’

  ‘That is precisely what Lawrence desired,’ declared Westall laconically as he approached them. ‘It no longer amuses him to create nice society portraits. He wanted to do something that would jolt polite society.’ He bowed, laconically, in Ann Jemima’s direction. ‘If it prompts letters of complaint and makes at least one person faint it will have achieved its end.’

  ‘It will be the talk of London,’ said Ann Jemima with barely concealed irony. A quietly malicious sense of relief had stolen upon her. No matter what criticism would greet Benjamin West’s painting, she quickly realised that Lawrence – who had been so contemptuous of their method – could be an even greater cause of disapprobation. She saw Pasquin walking towards them.

  ‘He calls it Satan. But it looks like a mad German sugar baker dancing naked in a conflagration of his own treacle,’ he declared. As he laughed, Ann Jemima noted the greasiness of his hair and skin, and a faint unwashed aroma that made her want to stand back. With difficulty she contained herself as he looked at Westall. ‘You once shared a house with Mr Lawrence, did you
not?’

  Westall nodded. ‘I am proud to say that I did,’ he replied insolently.

  ‘Did you notice any insanity at the time?’

  Westall’s contempt was almost tangible. ‘Sadly not.’

  Around them the room began to fill up. Ostrich feathers, floral perfumes, arch aristocratic voices, the exaggerated cadences of personal introductions – all indicated that one of London’s most important society events was in full sway. Ann Jemima was aware she was receiving several gazes and comments of approval, but the fuller the room became, the more she felt as if she was in a social sea, being pushed back and forth by competing currents. In the far corner she saw, with a shudder, that Cosway was essaying a flirtation with a young lady dressed in pale green with a white fur boa like her own. She turned away, briefly unable to cope with the memories brought back by his presence. Now Rigaud was to her left – but since he was in the middle of a lengthy and complex disagreement with one of Westall’s patrons, she chose not to interrupt the exchange. Slightly further away Stothard was squinting at a small work by an artist whom Ann Jemima did not recognise. Provis, she realised, had been diverted by Smirke who appeared to be talking to him at length in the ante-room.

  She considered whom she should approach next. As her eyes roved the room, her attention was caught by a painting that showed a gale whipping up over the sea. The swirl of the wind gave the trees on land a turbulent almost liquid aspect that made them look like an extension of the choppy waves. ‘Who painted Fishermen Coming Ashore at Sunset?’ she asked, lost for a moment in the image’s beauty. She did not realise she was speaking the words out loud.

  ‘That is Joseph Turner’s submission,’ she heard Benjamin West’s voice saying. She turned to him with surprise, noting the grey shadows etched under his eyes.