The Optickal Illusion

by Rachel Halliburton

  His hands twitched as he looked up.

  ‘“What kind of spell”? The impudence of it.’

  Ralph had now turned his back and walked away to the other end of the room.

  ‘Does it become worse?’ West asked. If a moan could be silent, he thought, I have just heard it. He lowered his head again. ‘“The very technique that is meant to bestow Venetian light has in fact bestowed a Stygian gloom upon the scene, so you wonder why the Syracusans have followed Cicero, given the clear risk that he might be leading them straight to Hades.”’

  He put his hand to his forehead. ‘It is wordplay, just wordplay. Pasquin is always extreme in his opinions. It is of little import.’ He realised he was breathing a little harder. ‘Damn him.’ He bit his lip. ‘What have the critics in Bell’s Weekly and The Observer written?’

  His son put his head in his hands.

  ‘The papers you have just burnt?’

  Ralph turned and walked out of the room.

  ‘What can be so terrible?’ West shouted after him.

  A door slammed across the corridor.

  ‘What can be so terrible?’ he whispered.

  Questions of what he should do next scattered and regrouped in his mind. He walked towards the entrance hall. He would go out to buy more papers. But at the moment he reached for his overcoat there was a ring at the door.

  ‘Who is here to taunt me now?’ he muttered to himself as a servant ran to open it.

  Fuseli was revealed. His demeanour unreadable. Under his arm was gathered a pile of that morning’s newspapers.

  ‘My dear West, I must offer my condolences. How shall we contain this scandal?’ he asked.

  ‘Scandal?’ repeated West with growing terror. Fuseli stepped into the hall and deposited the papers on the table as if they had been contaminated.

  ‘The critics have seen even more clearly than I that there is no merit to this method at all.’

  You cannot even make the effort to hide your schadenfreude, thought West bitterly.

  ‘The fact that they have seen it so clearly raises worrying questions,’ continued Fuseli. He reached his hand towards The Morning Post.

  ‘Desist,’ cried West. Fuseli regarded him quizzically. ‘I have already read Pasquin’s words,’ said West more quietly. ‘I am not quite composed enough to hear them again.’

  He indicated that Fuseli should precede him into the dining room.

  ‘You have read all the reviews?’ Fuseli asked, bringing the papers with him.

  ‘I have not…’ West could not avoid glancing at the fireplace as he said this, ‘I have not had a chance to look at the others yet.’

  Fuseli’s eyes followed his glance but did not read its meaning. Sniffing punctiliously, he sat down and picked up Bell’s Weekly.

  ‘The best review is here. The critic says that the pictures painted according to the method are “remarkable for a dark and purperine hue, which seems in some degree to counteract the force of the effect”.’

  ‘That is the greatest accolade?’ West asked sourly, also sitting down.

  Elaborately Fuseli folded Bell’s Weekly, and picked up The Observer.

  ‘The language here is less poisonous than that used by Pasquin. But I believe it analyses the problem more unforgivingly,’ he said as he unfolded it.

  West was put in mind of a barber dentist who twenty years beforehand had removed two of his teeth using pliers.

  ‘“These paintings, rather than possessing ‘Titian’s warmth divine’”,’ continued Fuseli, ‘“are nothing but the chalky and cold tints of fresco and that gaudy glare and flimsy nothingness of fan painting.”’ He put the paper down. ‘In other words they reduce rather than augment their subjects. My dear West, they are the superficial tints of the amateur who aims for effect rather than depth.’

  ‘Of the amateur?!’ West replied.

  ‘That is my word, not the critic’s.’

  ‘I am aware of that,’ said West angrily. ‘You – my friend – are accusing me of producing work like an amateur?’

  The more outraged he became, the more complacent was Fuseli’s expression.

  ‘Yes, I am your friend,’ said Fuseli. ‘The word amateur is cruel, but you must awaken yourself to what has happened. The document revealing Titian’s secret is clearly a piece of quackery, as I warned you from the start. There is no merit in it whatsoever.’

  West fought the desire to flatten Fuseli’s head against the wall.

  ‘It may not be the fault of the method,’ he declared. ‘I combined it with other techniques.’ He thought back to Ann Jemima’s accusation at the opening of the exhibition. ‘Miss Provis even chastised me for doing so.’

  ‘She had the effrontery to chastise you?’ Fuseli exclaimed. ‘This is an irrelevance. Yours is not the only picture criticised.’ He tapped his fingers crisply on the table beside him. ‘Benjamin, you know the degree of my respect for you. You have created many important paintings. But Cicero has proved a terrible mistake.’

  West looked wretchedly into the flames.

  ‘I created my best work almost thirty years ago,’ he replied softly. ‘Was I doomed to be a better artist then than I am now?’

  ‘Many of us look up to your judgement,’ continued Fuseli. ‘But all men are fallible – and on this occasion, you have failed.’

  West thumped his fist on the table.

  ‘You yourself dismiss the critics as much as anybody. You would be the last to deem a work to have failed just because of an article in a newspaper…’

  ‘Please, Benjamin,’ interrupted Fuseli. ‘This is clearly different. I may be proved wrong. But did it never seem to you that Thomas Provis and his daughter were fraudsters? How did you ever become entangled in this mess?’

  The light in his eyes was now kind, concerned.

  West leant back in his chair. Fuseli, concerned, was even more irritating than the Fuseli who rebuked. He linked his fingers and ground his left thumb against the palm of his right hand.

  ‘I refute that they are fraudsters. They are both genuinely passionate about art. She, particularly…’ His words trailed off. ‘I began my dealings with them extremely sceptically. It was only after I had performed many experiments that I became sure that I wanted to use the method.’

  ‘You went to the girl for demonstrations.’

  West was quiet. ‘I was quite moved by her dedication. I felt there was a lot I could teach her.’

  He looked at Fuseli.

  ‘She flattered you in the best way she could,’ the Swiss painter said evenly, ‘by making you feel you could help her even as she sold you something she claimed would help you. But you didn’t play the game in the way she expected. So then she turned on you.’

  Painful visions danced before West’s eyes. ‘She understood the way I felt about Titian,’ he eventually said, shaking his head. ‘She talked about him in a way that…’ he hesitated, ‘there was genuine understanding there. And she was most charming.’

  ‘Charm is very different from truth. Often people who deceive others possess it in abundance.’

  West inhaled deeply.

  ‘I apologise, Mr Fuseli. I believe solitude would help me more at this moment,’ he said.

  Fuseli nodded.

  ‘That is natural. There is much to consider. You are lucky that so many of the other Academicians were taken in by the Provises. The King cannot dismiss all of you, so I would predict that – for the time being – your position as President can be sustained.’

  ‘Pasquin did not dismiss all the paintings created according to the method,’ declared West with the air of a drowning man grasping at a reed. ‘He acknowledged that Farington’s paintings were good.’

  Fuseli’s contempt was so tangible it was as if there were a separate person standing in the room. ‘You and I have talked about this before. Farington is tediously adequate most of the time. He offends nobody, either with his opinions or his art. I have little respect for the man.’

  For the rest
of the morning Fuseli’s assertions itched at West’s mind. Yet despite their conclusions on Farington, he decided that it was the diarist whom he should see next. At this point in the whole painful process he needed an ally in embarrassment. Since Farington had been one of the Provises’ chief champions, West felt that he was more than qualified to take up the role.

  He sent a boy round with his calling card, announcing he would like to see Farington that afternoon. When the reply arrived, just over an hour later, it came as little surprise to West to hear that Smirke would also be in attendance. If a satirist should sketch a cartoon of the two, he thought to himself, he would yoke them together and label them as Disdain and Ambition. West did not trust Smirke, he could smell the lack of respect on him. Yet though he credited Farington’s loyalty still less, he suspected that now the reviews had been published, the diarist would be building a defence against ridicule that could prove most useful for himself.

  But if he had hoped to find some splinters of comfort, he was disappointed. ‘It is all most unfortunate, most unfortunate,’ declared Farington as West was shown into his study. ‘Most painful to be written about in such a way.’

  ‘Do you credit the critics’ judgement?’ West refused Farington’s offer for him to sit down. ‘You at least have emerged from this with some acclaim. Surely that suggests the method has some merit.’

  ‘Oh, Mr West – it is not the critics to whom I refer.’ Farington blinked at him. With that blink a dividing wall was clearly erected between the two of them. Farington, it was clear, had no intention of making himself an ally.

  ‘I believe the method does have some merit when it is practised properly.’

  And now he affixes broken glass to the top of the wall, thought West. ‘No, it is the other more informal publication that distresses me.’ Farington continued.

  West and Smirke found their eyes meeting – both looked quickly away again.

  ‘I congratulate you that you maintain some faith in the method,’ declared West. ‘But the informal publication – forgive me, I do not…’

  ‘Have you not heard of…’ in that hesitation he could discern Farington’s clear triumph at being ahead on the news, ‘Have you not heard of the song?’

  ‘The song?’

  Now West stared at both Farington and Smirke. As they stood silent a new circle of hell seemed to announce itself.

  ‘A song has been travelling around the coffee houses ever since the evening of the exhibition opening,’ continued Farington. ‘Not only is it most dismissive of the method, it suggests that we were all engaged in…’ he coughed, and took out a handkerchief to wipe his forehead.

  ‘It suggests…’ he hesitated again.

  ‘It suggest we were all engaged in sexual liaisons with Miss Provis,’ said Smirke, with slight impatience.

  ‘All of us?’ responded West drily.

  ‘Yes, all of us,’ said Smirke, tapping his cane on the floor. ‘The author has dedicated at least a verse to every painter involved in the scheme.’

  This is like dancing on knives, West thought. He gazed disbelievingly at them.

  ‘Who is the author of this song?’ he asked.

  ‘It is an Academy member – Paul Sandby,’ said Smirke. ‘Normally a most civil man. But he has been highly savage in his attack. Highly savage.’

  ‘Do you have the publication?’ West asked.

  Now it was Farington and Smirke who exchanged glances. Farington lifted up a folded document from his desk as if he were a forensic scientist revealing the latest piece of evidence for a crime.

  As West started reading it he raised a hand to his forehead. As he went further, a groan escaped him. His lips moved from time to time as his eyes moved down the text, but he stayed silent until he reached the fourth verse.

  ‘“Oh! What a Field for modern genius

  To handle all the Charms of Venus

  With flowing tools like Mars’s Penis,

  Doodle doodle do…”’*

  He looked up. ‘Well…’ He felt his voice scrape against the air. ‘Sandby is hardly an Alexander Pope, is he?’

  There was no cheer to be found in Smirke’s expression.

  ‘It becomes infinitely worse,’ he said. ‘I suggest you peruse the verses dedicated to individuals.’

  West looked down again.

  ‘“Miss bought her Titbit first to West a’

  A President to all the rest a’

  He to the Bottom Groped it best a’

  Doodle doodle do…”’

  He stared ahead of him for a moment into the distance. ‘You say it has been going around the coffee houses. How many of them?’

  He turned his gaze back to Farington and Smirke.

  ‘We do not know,’ said Smirke. ‘Enough for it to be the talk of the town.’

  ‘You say each one of the artists has been attacked?’ asked West.

  Farington and Smirke nodded. He raised the piece of paper again.

  ‘“First Farington with fire shoving

  He Artful mystic modes approving

  Explores in haste Dame Natures Oven,

  Doodle doodle do…”’

  ‘It is a most vulgar work,’ said Farington in discomfited tones. He cleared his throat. ‘As for what he says of Smirke…’

  Smirke gave him a Medusa’s glance.

  Farington walked over and grabbed the paper from West.

  ‘“Such tawdry doings did confound her”,’ he read. ‘“Till Smirke”,’ he hesitated, ‘“drew out a Long Nine Pounder”.’ Smirke dropped his head. ‘“Charg’ed full with Nouse enough to drownd her. Doodle doodle do.” There is a second verse…’

  ‘Mr Farington, I feel that is quite ample’, interrupted Smirke. ‘We all have a sense of the tone of it.’

  West realised they were all regarding at each other with the mixture of wariness and mutual loathing of prisoners shackled together in their cell.

  ‘What shall we do?’ he asked.

  Smirke took a deep breath. ‘If we issue a denial, no one will credit us,’ he replied.

  ‘Sandby’s doggerel is mere satirical tittle-tattle,’ said Farington, who had been sitting looking pained. ‘I think we must rise above it.’

  ‘And the allegations we have been defrauded?’ asked West. ‘Sandby’s contribution is dismaying – mortifying, but I agree we must rise above it. I am more concerned in addressing accusations that we have been deceived.’

  Farington gazed at him as if he had just pronounced a philosophical impossibility.

  ‘Deceived? My dear West, I do not believe Miss Provis to be the agent of any deception,’ he said.

  ‘But what of the method? The method for which most of the artists paid only after you, Mr Farington, led a campaign to ensure that money was handed to the Provises.’ Finally he felt a mild satisfaction as he saw the diarist shift uncomfortably. ‘Do you agree with the critics that it does not work?’

  ‘The critics said that your interpretation of the method did not work,’ Farington snapped. ‘When you read their reviews of other paintings in the exhibition, they are less scathing. Do you really imagine the Provises to have invented this great-grandfather who went to Venice, to have drawn up the details of the document themselves. It would have taken months and months, perhaps years, of devoted study.’

  They were all silent for a moment.

  ‘Miss Provis, for all her attributes,’ continued Farington, ‘is a mere young girl – and her father, if you’ll forgive me, could not have done it. I think if there has been any crime on the Provis’s part, it has been that of over-enthusiasm for a family document that they hoped would make them money.’

  His stare challenged West, who realised it was time to retreat. ‘Perhaps you have put your finger on it, Mr Farington. Yes, indeed, what you say is, on reflection, most perceptive.’

  ‘The situation may look straightforward to the critics,’ replied Farington, ‘but the more I think of it, the more I believe they have missed many of the subtleties.�
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  ‘Often people react badly to what is new,’ interjected Smirke.

  ‘Do you think that is what it is about. A refusal to engage with the unfamiliar?’ asked West.

  ‘I certainly intend to continue experimenting with the method,’ said Farington. ‘In a few days these reviews will be forgotten.’

  West felt his distress start to abate. ‘Wise words indeed. Wise words.’ He frowned. ‘Have you talked to the Provises on this matter? What is their reaction to all of this?’

  Farington cleared his throat.

  ‘I sent a message earlier today,’ he replied. ‘Ann Jemima has gone to the country for a few days after what she, poor girl, still believes to be the success of the exhibition.’

  ‘And her father?’

  ‘Provis himself has been taken ill, and cannot leave his apartment right at this moment.’

  The momentary calm West had felt ceased.

  ‘So we cannot talk to either of them?’

  The full implication of his words resounded round the room.

  ‘Some people might say that is suspicious,’ replied Farington.

  Again Smirke and West looked at each other.

  ‘But they were both most diligent in their efforts as we approached the exhibition,’ continued Farington. ‘We were all concerned about Thomas Provis’s health: it surprises me not at all that he is unwell. It makes perfect sense that Miss Provis has escaped London for a few days too. She is a young girl – she has much to cope with, and has behaved, I think, admirably throughout.’

  The pattern was set. West had gone for reassurance to Farington’s house, but his doubts had proved hydra-headed. His hopes that the story would fade quickly as other topics scandalised and delighted Londoners proved equally fallible. When Ann Jemima did not reappear from the countryside after a few days, he was concerned. When, two weeks later, she had still failed to appear, he acknowledged bitterly that no matter what her charms, perhaps her motives had not been honourable. It was around this time that the whisper that Prussian Blue had been developed only a century beforehand started to circulate. This revelation in particular stunned West. He tried to reason with himself that it was clearly an acceptable substitute for another shade used by Titian. But in his heart it proved the death knell to the method’s credibility.