‘I ask myself if there are moments in your life when you might Reflect on what the news is from London. It may surprise you that it barely seems to have stopped talking about you and the Venetian Secret ever since you left. I flatter myself that you may be a little Curious to know how this has affected my own life. Perhaps it will come as some relief to you that I have not suffered terribly – certainly not as terribly as Benjamin West. I did Precis’ly as you and Darton instructed. I waited for West to come and see me – and then I told him that you had Blackmail’d me into taking part in the scheme and took all the money. The old fool never learns. He ingested the story whole, and told me he felt Sorry for me. I suffer’d a while from bad health, but have now recovered. If he sees me at the Palace now, he is so Embarrass’d, he does all he can to avoid conversation with me, which suits us both perfectly.
‘Each time that it seems London has wearied of the Venetian Secret, something fresh occurs to Remind people of it. If you’ll forgive me, it is not Unlike watching an animal in its death throes. In June, a great enemy of Benjamin West, the Irishman James Barry, wrote an Open letter to the Society of Dilettanti, decrying the Academy because of the scandal. There were more calls for Benjamin West’s resignation, but here we are in late October, and still he remains in his position. That seemed to be the Sum of it, but just this week, the alcoholic Gillray has produced a cartoon that goes into some detail about the way he thinks we deceived the Royal Academy.*
‘Yes, my dear, you have even inspired a work of Art. I think in some strange sense it would please you that it is a work of art in which you yourself appear as the main Artist, though the Depiction is obviously not without its ironies. As you know, Gillray has caricatured everyone from Pitt to Napoleon – so you should take some pride that you have seized his attention.’
Provis has enclosed a copy of the cartoon. Now she is on the boat she cannot resist taking it out of her bag once more. She looks at it surreptitiously, feeling as if she is taking some great risk in doing so. The detail is both absurd and extraordinary. It both makes her laugh and seizes her with horror.
Her own image is etched on top of the rainbow. She wonders who has described her to Gillray. His drawing does not replicate her perfectly, yet somehow in the poise and silhouette of her figure he has caught something essential about who she is. Her arm is raised triumphantly as she draws Titian’s head on the canvas. Her slender frame perches on precarious red heels. On the right hand side of her, the Neoclassical building that Gillray has drawn to represent the Royal Academy is in the midst of apocalypse. A large crack rends the façade, while shooting stars rain down from the sky as if about to launch their own assault on the building.
The wretched artists at the centre of the scandal sit at the front of a large crowd as if on trial at the Day of Judgement. For a moment she feels the enormity of what she has left behind, and shivers a little. In a corner, West, with his palette and brushes, is sneaking away to evade detection. A little behind him, the ghost of Sir Joshua Reynolds is rising up out of the ground in a shroud, his hand raised like an ancient prophet issuing dire warnings. As ever in Gillray’s work there are Rabelaisian elements – to the left a grinning monkey, crouched next to a headless statue of Apollo, urinates on a pile of Academy artists’ portfolios. Above them cherubs fart their condescension.
Her hand shakes – she feels hot and cold in the same instance.
‘A letter from your husband?’ enquires Mrs Allenby softly.
Emily looks at her startled. Swiftly she folds the document and puts it in her bag.
‘That is right,’ she declares. ‘There is good news – it seems there is a slight improvement in his health.’
‘Your love for him is very clear my dear,’ Mrs Allenby continued. ‘I could see it on your face when you were reading.’ She darts a glance towards her husband.
‘He is in good spirits. He sounds quite like the man he was when I first met him.’ To Emily’s surprise, tears start to slide down her cheek.
Mr Dornoch, the clergyman, clearly considers Mrs Allenby’s curiosity to be intrusive.
‘What will be the first thing you go to see when we arrive in Venice?’ he asks, skilfully diverting the conversation. ‘The boatman has just announced we will land shortly. I have wanted all my life to go to Santa Croce to see the tomb of Galileo – I trust that Napoleon’s soldiers have not ransacked that.’
A strand of red hair has fought loose of Mrs Allenby’s chignon. Distractedly she pushes it back into place. ‘I wish to go and see Canaletto’s View of the Grand Canal from the Campo San Vio,’ she replies. ‘It was seeing a print of it that made me wish to see Venice – despite the dangers.’
‘What is your choice, Emily?’
Emily wipes the tears away with a handkerchief.
‘I think,’ she pauses for a moment, ‘I will go and see Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin in Santa Maria dei Frari.’ She smiles. ‘He created it in the face of huge scepticism. I have a love of those who defy sceptics.’
She takes a deep breath, and looks out of the boat again. As she glances down she sees a sea bream dash below the boat, and briefly envies its solitary progress through the cool waters. She raises her head again, and realises they are about to arrive in St Mark’s Basin.
‘We are there!’ she exclaims. ‘We are there.’
In front of them the Campanile of St Mark soars up on one side, while on the other side the dome of the cathedral is just visible. The evening sky is seared with vermilions, angry golds, and muted pinks. Emily feels that she has never experienced such colour in one landscape before, never seen buildings that looked so much as if they have been imprinted on their surroundings by a painter’s brush. The calls of men lap across the water from other boats as they come into shore. She and her companions look at the buildings imprinted against the raging sky, at the mortals walking before them in the square.
The bells from St Mark’s strike four o’clock. The water throws back the shimmer of their sound. Now she realises that while she has often imagined how Venice looks, she has never thought of the sound of it, the smell of it. The slap of the water against the boats, the faintly diffracted sound of the crowd, the coldness of the air she is inhaling, the scent of chestnuts roasting next to the quay.
Mr Dornoch holds his hand out to her to help her off the boat. ‘I have been told many times that even those who haven’t been to Venice feel they have seen it before when they arrive,’ he says.
‘People always say Venice seems a little unreal,’ she replies. ‘But I have never seen anything so real in my life.’
She gets off the boat. As the others preoccupy themselves with their luggage, she takes a quick look around her. She frowns for a moment and briefly puts her hand on her forehead. The swoop of her gaze becomes wider, she looks beyond the people with whom she has arrived – first out to the lagoon, and then to the far corner of the square.
Suddenly, without saying a word, she picks up her small bag and starts to walk away rapidly.
At first the group does not notice. When they do, the two older women start shouting and waving at her to come back, but she will not heed them. Mr Dornoch makes as if to walk after her, but then he stops himself, recognising the sense of purpose in what she is doing. For a brief while her silhouette remains distinct – there is a point when she turns as if to call something out to them, but then she checks herself and turns away again.
They look towards her, not knowing what to do or say. As they continue to watch, she starts to become eclipsed by the movement of other people. A flock of pigeons cuts dark shapes against the air, a lone trumpeter begins to play to the crowd. Distracted, they realise they can see her no more – she has become just a detail in the ebb and sway of the Venice evening.
* Titianus redivivus;–or–the seven-wise-men consulting the Venetian oracle. A copy of this Gillray cartoon is owned by the British Museum.
HISTORICAL NOTE
I stumbled upon the eighteenth-century cartoon
ist, James Gillray, in an exhibition at The New York Public Library in 2004. His world instantly captivated me – not only was it full of dirt, gossip, and intrigue, it also gave a sense of a society undergoing profound change. About ten years later, when I was thinking about writing a novel, I was looking through a collection of his cartoons and discovered a satire of a real-life scandal. Titianus redivivus;–or–the seven-wise-men consulting the new Venetian oracle erupts from the page with ribald detail: it includes the shamed artists, a urinating monkey, the ghost of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and a young woman presiding over them all from a rainbow. It is simultaneously cryptic and outrageous. I started to research it the same day.
The true story of Benjamin West – then President of the Royal Academy of Arts – and Ann Jemima Provis is every bit as extraordinary as it first appears: it deals with obsession, jealousy, vanity, deception, lust, disappointment, and the elusive pursuit of genius. It also shows the Royal Academy at a point when it was still a radical young institution, introducing new artists and contemporary art in a time when many collectors were obsessed by historic works. The artists themselves came from a range of backgrounds, so the Academy was a microcosm of tensions in London immediately after the French Revolution – some were close to King George III, others were closer to those wanting to overthrow him. Beyond this was the cat-hissing rivalry that automatically sprang up between individuals who wanted to mark themselves out as the greatest artists of their time.
It was fertile territory. For about a year before writing anything I immersed myself in the letters, diaries and historic records of the real-life characters involved. As with other historical fiction writers, for me – while the history was fascinating – it was in the gaps between what is known historically that this story was able to come to life. Next to nothing is known of Ann Jemima, apart from the extraordinary effect she had on everyone who met her. One satirical song published at the time suggested that the main interest the artists had in her was sexual, but it did not take much research to gain a sense both of her artistic accomplishment and of her intelligence.
The resulting book is not a faithful historical account – for that it is best to go to the diaries of Joseph Farington, one of the artists caught up in the events depicted. The outrageous deception central to the plot comes from fact, but the motivations, ambitions and intrigues of the different characters are my imaginative response to the arc of the story. Researching the era more widely was both illuminating and liberating – one particularly enjoyable discovery was that there were many more female innovators at the time (in science, art, literature and music) than most conventional histories suggest. Unorthodox and law-unto-herself though she is, Ann Jemima is also an indication of the many other voices that have been silenced, and a world of stories still waiting to be told.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I began my research in the hushed and perfectly formed surroundings of the Royal Academy’s beautiful library and archive. As well as holding historical accounts of the scandal, the library contains the actual manuscript presented by the Provises to the Academicians. I would like to thank Nick Savage, the Royal Academy’s former director of collections, for giving me permission to come and study the manuscript, and Mark Pomeroy, the Royal Academy Archivist, for suggesting other sources.
I am neither an art historian, nor an artist – it was the human aspect of the scandal that drew me in. In terms of helping me understand the extremely technical aspects of the manuscript I will be eternally grateful to Nicholas Walt, director of London’s oldest art suppliers, L Cornelissen & Son, who sat me down one morning before Christmas to explain the different terms. Among other matters we debated whether or not Indian Yellow was really made from cows’ urine. A jar full of strong-smelling pigment seemed to settle the question – though further research shows the answer, like several aspects of colour, is more complex.
David Cranswick – artist, Royal Academician, and expert in traditional methods for making paints – was also generous enough to let me into his studio on a cold April day and demonstrate to me some of the paint-making techniques with which both Titian and Benjamin West would have been familiar. On top of this he was happy to discuss matters ranging from Newton’s Opticks to rabbit glue.
In terms of historic detail, David Baldwin – Serjeant of the Vestry at the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace – helped hugely by giving a tour of the palace and the chapel. My character Josiah Darton is entirely fictional – it was an act of imagination to make him sing in the choir and be a spy – so it was with some amazement that I heard from David that church musicians were often spies at that time in history, both because of their connections and as a result of the travel involved in their work.
I owe a huge amount to my agent Toby Mundy, who understood my motivations for writing the book straight away, and whose belief in it and advice has made all the difference. I must also thank him for linking me up with Peter Mayer, President and Publisher of Duckworth Overlook, a publishing legend who turned out to know better than I how much further I could push the book. I am extremely grateful for my long and enjoyable conversations with Peter, and for his ability to balance valuable guidance with giving me free rein.
I feel very lucky to have a number of friends who bit the bullet and agreed to read the book in the early stages. It’s a big test of friendship, and Ben Rogerson, Patrick Marmion, Gurion Taussig, and Robert Pfeiffer, you all made invaluable suggestions. Rebecca Glover, you probably helped more than you realised when we agreed I would send you a chapter a day for Advent. And Imogen Robertson, former brunch companion and successful novelist, you have been there ever since I started writing seriously, and are a constant source of wonderful advice about negotiating the publishing industry.
My husband, Bill McIntosh, deserves a huge amount of credit, not least for telling me to stop doing other work and to sit down and concentrate on finishing the novel. Authors’ spouses put up with a lot, and he has dealt with the ups and downs of this process with endless patience. My son, Fergus – far from providing a ‘pram in the hall’ distraction from creativity, in fact gave me the motivation to organise myself properly and ensure I had something to show for my work. For that, and the constant adventure of watching him grow up, I am forever grateful.
Finally, I suspect most aspiring authors show their mothers their work first, and according to most mothers they are geniuses. And that’s where the journey ends. However, when you know someone well, you can also tell if they’re lying. It was when my very strong-minded mother, Jenny Halliburton, genuinely seemed to enjoy what I was writing that I realised that this story might have a life outside my head.
COPYRIGHT
First published in 2018 by Duckworth Overlook
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© 2018 Rachel Halliburton
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