The Center of the World

by Thomas van Essen

  It was only later that afternoon that the memories came back to me like a nightmare remembered. I found young Grant and made him accompany me on a walk around the estate. As the recollection of my morning in the studio overcame me, I hurried ahead, as if trying to outrace my shame. Poor Grant. He hardly knew what to make of me. He must have thought I was mad. But he was kind and attentive and asked no questions. He had had his own humiliations in the studio. I cannot remember what we spoke of along the way. I am afraid I babbled like an idiot.

  When I went to my room to rest, the thought of Turner sitting across from me as I passed him the meat seemed more than I could bear. Egremont and all the others counted on me to be presentable and poised. It was my duty to keep the conversation moving. I thought of Grant: how sweet-tempered he was, and how beautiful. I thought of the life that had brought me to this pass. I thought of how Turner had seen me; how I had obeyed his commands. But then I thought of Egremont’s passion, of the tremor on Turner’s lips when I let the robe fall and the reason I had been chosen to play my part in his great work. Shame be damned. With that thought I slept.

  . 36 .

  To: gbolton@madisonpartners.com

  From: arthur@madisonpartners.com

  Date: September 20, 2003

  Subject: Change of plans

  Dear Gina,

  My apologies for the email, but I have just landed in Tokyo. Call Evelyn as soon as you receive this and have her book you on the next plane to London. On my arrival here I found a message from George. I had asked him to keep half an eye on our friend in Princeton—call it a hunch, but it’s really more like a superstition. George has now learned that Mr. Leiden has gone to London, supposedly to give a talk, although why anyone would listen to him is beyond me. Your work on Rhinebeck can wait for a week or so. Go to London in case he makes any moves, specifically any approaches to the auction houses, or to any of the dealers who might be interested in the kind of major work we are seeking. London would not be a bad place to sell a newly discovered Turner, so we can’t be too careful. I have already arranged to have him followed from the moment he lands. Tell our people what plane you will be on and they will be in touch with you when you arrive.

  I feel in my bones that we are getting close. I do not believe that a person like Leiden could stand in our way, but we must take no chances. Act carefully, and give away nothing. What we seek is ours if it is anyone’s.

  I know I am overreacting, but humor me.

  Fond regards,

  Arthur

  To: arthur@madisonpartners.com

  From: gbolton@madisonpartners.com

  Date: September 22, 2003

  Subject: RE: Change of plans

  Barry was waiting for me when I arrived at the hotel and gave me a report. Leiden arrived at Gatwick two days ago and is scheduled to leave on Saturday. He took the train to Victoria and from there a cab to the Radisson. He gave a talk yesterday at a small conference about the role of foundations in advancing philanthropy; he talked about various processes for allocating resources. One of Barry’s guys managed to get in; said he was sensible but dull.

  After the conference was over he checked out and took a cab to a small hotel near Victoria Station (tiny rooms and German tourists). He walked to the Tate through the drizzle. According to Barry he “mooned over the pictures for ever so long, mostly the ones by Turner.” From there he walked along the Embankment and then to the National Gallery. He stopped along the way to buy some cigarettes, and then had lunch in a pub. I am quite certain no one smoked in his house. Barry said he smoked a few halfway down and then put them out, like someone who was trying to quit.

  At the Gallery he also focused on the Turners, spending enough time in front of Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus to annoy Barry. He left at five and went to a pub where he drank a lot and had beef pie.

  He didn’t speak to anyone that Barry noticed, nor did he make any calls. He got back to the hotel at around 10:00. Barry knows the girl at the front desk; she said he smelled something awful when he came in. She confirmed that he is leaving on Saturday. I think you are right; he is worth keeping an eye on.

  Hope all is well in Tokyo.

  Cheers,

  Gina

  To: arthur@madisonpartners.com

  From: gbolton@madisonpartners.com

  Date: September 25, 2003

  Subject: RE: RE: Change of plans

  He went to the museums again on Wednesday and got drunk again. On Thursday he got up an hour earlier than usual and walked to Victoria, where he got on the 9:20 to Pulborough and the bus to Petworth. Barry barely made it onto the train, although I had warned him that anyone who was on a “Turner tour” of London might do that. When he got there he took the guided tour and then wandered around the house and gardens for the rest of the afternoon. He had lunch at a pub in the village. Except for occasional interactions with the guide and the restaurant staff, he doesn’t seem to have spoken to anyone since the conference ended.

  He took the 4:35 home and went straight to the hotel. After about an hour he went to a pub a few blocks away. He ordered bangers and mash at the bar, watched football on the television, and proceeded to drink seriously and, it seemed, deliberately. He smoked about half a pack of cigarettes. He stayed until closing time, at which point he walked back to the hotel, visibly drunk.

  I hope the Japanese are more interesting.

  . 37 .

  I NEEDED TO GET closer to Turner. Seeing all the paintings in the Tate and the National Gallery was helpful, but I thought that if I could walk where he had walked and breathe the air that he had breathed, I might be able to understand my painting better. So I decided to visit Petworth House, the estate of Turner’s patron, Lord Egremont.

  I took the train from Victoria Station to Pulborough and a bus from there to the village of Petworth. The guidebook said that the family made the railroad go through Pulborough, rather than Petworth, because they didn’t want the activity of a station town to intrude on their privacy. They also didn’t want the railroad tracks spoiling their view.

  The bus let me off on a nondescript town square. I walked down a narrow cobbled street, past a restaurant and a few shops that sold antiques and hunting prints. At the end of the street was a small church. There was a garden on one side, a door in a stone wall on the other. I could see that I was about to enter a large structure of some sort, although the approach to Petworth House from the village didn’t reveal anything to suggest folks who had been grand enough to order the railroads around.

  I had never been in a house that was anything like this; in the North Gallery the scale of the place finally overwhelmed me. The paintings were hung two or three on top of each other against a dark red background. In the center of the room was a massive sculpture of Saint Michael doing battle with Satan. The hard marble seemed like living flesh, but it was the size of the thing that provoked a visceral sense of the powers that operate in invisible worlds.

  It was more a public space—a museum or courthouse—than a private dwelling. Petworth House had become a museum, but people who got up every day and had to use the toilet had lived within its walls. The guidebook said that their descendants, the Wyndhams, still lived in one of the wings. I imagined them wandering around the house after all the tourists had gone, like the ghosts of long-dead aristocrats.

  There were too many paintings, too densely packed, for me to really enjoy them. The guidebook said that Turner had been a frequent guest at Petworth and that he had done some painting here. I tried to think of the man who had painted my Helen walking through these very halls and looking at these very same paintings and statues.

  I kept my eye out for Turners. Just above the fireplace I spotted one called Near the Thames Lock, Windsor. There was a river or stream flowing away from the viewer, some trees, and a shadowy castle in the distance. There were young people skinny-dipping in the water, looking young and carefree. They were innocents cooling themselves off on a hot summer’s day.

  I got d
istracted by a large painting nearby—the kind of painting that would be just perfect for an old-fashioned Irish bar in New York. A naked woman was sleeping in a forest. She looked as though she was either thinking about sex or had just had sex. There was a chubby and corny-looking cupid flying above her. He was holding his hands over his eyes, as if he didn’t want to see the naked lady, or as if he was ashamed of what she had just done. It was called Sleeping Nymph with Cupid, by John Hoppner, someone I had never heard of. I looked carefully at the painting to see if I could discover the nymph’s lover retreating through the underbrush. Suddenly I imagined Susan lying on the bed in a hotel room somewhere, or even in our own bedroom in Princeton, in a similar posture, while her lover went into the bathroom to take a piss. It occurred to me that I was a familiar sight to the guards, the middle-aged American man looking too intently at a mediocre nude.

  There was a lot of sex on the walls of Petworth House, lots of naked statues. The Rape of Europa, by somebody named Hilton, might pretend to be about mythology, but it was really about desire. There was a portrait of a Mrs. Robinson by Owen. No one knew who she was, according to the guidebook, but there was something knowing and worldly about the look she directed at me that seemed more like Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate than like someone who was alive to be painted in the early 1800s.

  After about an hour, I stopped following the guidebook and just allowed myself to wander around. It was a wonderful building, suffused with grandeur and reeking of art. There were only a few other tourists, so except for the elderly docents who were stationed in most of the rooms, I often felt I had the place to myself. What would it have been like to live in Petworth House in Turner’s day? I tried to imagine Turner’s footfalls echoing through the empty hallways, the statues disappearing into the gloom as the light began to fade. Perhaps he would hear the soft tread of an old servant, or the rustle of a silk gown as a lady hurried off to dinner. Perhaps there would be conversation in the distance, perhaps the sound of a harpsichord and a woman singing.

  Suddenly I saw her. It was Helen, but she was called Jessica. I somehow knew it was her, even though she didn’t look like her at all. My heart started to race. She was leaning out of a complicated window casement. The background seemed ablaze behind her, as if the room was on fire, but her expression was oddly still and resigned, as if she couldn’t decide whether to call for help or retreat into the flames. Perhaps she had set the fire herself and the painting captures that moment when the suicide takes her last look back on the life she is about to relinquish. The jewels and the elaborate gown she wears suggest that wealth and privilege are no guarantee of happiness. Perhaps she regrets her decision.

  But when I looked closer, I saw that it was just a gold background. There was no fire. I was painfully upset to see that Turner had reduced Helen, my Helen, to this banality. It was definitely her. The jewels she wore were the same jewels Helen had flung to the floor of her chamber. But Helen’s beautiful hand, a hand which was meant for touching and pleasing and for creating embroidery of unsurpassed beauty, had become, in Jessica, a kind of useless appendage that represented the vague idea of a hand—that thing at the end of the arm which is useful only for closing windows. What upset me even more, however, was her body. The body for which heroes met their deaths had been constricted beyond recognition by Jessica’s bodice and by Turner’s perverse refusal to provide an illusion of depth. I stood in front of the painting for a long time, lost in anger and confusion. Eventually I calmed down and went outside. I walked up the hill behind the house and sat on the grass beneath one of the chestnut trees, where I lit a cigarette and looked down on the view. Smoking, I realized, did not make me any younger. I kept on smoking anyway.

  There was a small lake perfectly placed in the expanse of manicured ground that stretched out behind the house. There were deer in the distance, ducks swimming in the pond, an odd statue of a faithful dog on the shore. Petworth House itself, massive and grand, dominated my view. If only the sun would go down in a blaze of flame, this would all be a painting by Turner, and I would be one of those peasants or travelers placed on the edge of the composition. I imagined that Turner himself had sat on this very spot. Perhaps he had walked up here with the woman who had become Jessica and Helen. They had looked down on the great house together, feeling a sense of its power. Could she have understood what Turner intended her to become?

  . 38 .

  “I KNEW SIR JOHN,” Lord Egremont said. “He was no better than the rest of us, but he would not have done such a thing. He was always very considerate of his wife’s feelings. She too was a lady of the world. Their relations were only moderately regular, but they understood each other. They continued to live happily together until his death.”

  We were talking about one of the pictures that hung in the North Gallery, Hoppner’s Sleeping Nymph with Cupid, which Egremont had purchased at Sir John Leicester’s sale. The painting depicts a young woman sleeping in a forest. She is naked except for bit of gauzy stuff draped most artfully between her legs. She sleeps as no young woman has ever slept, in an uncomfortable but amorous posture, which suggests either an invitation to impropriety or that an impropriety has recently occurred. A chubby and blindfolded cherub flies above her. Given what I have been told about my host’s proclivities when he was a younger man, I am not surprised to find the painting in his collection.

  “I too had heard those stories suggesting that Sir John’s mistress had been the model for the beautiful nymph,” Turner said. “You are right, sir. Sir John was a good man. He would never have insulted his wife in such a manner. But what I am about to relate is the true story of the lovely nymph. No harm now, with the present company, for I shall ask you not to spread this about. Besides, Sir John is dead three years and time has done its work.”

  The four of us were sitting in the library after dinner, as had become our custom. Turner had asked for, and received, a glass of brandy. He seemed more cheerful than he had in the past few days, and more inclined to talk.

  “Although not in my line, I encouraged you to purchase the nymph, my lord. Fits in well with the old Greeks. The mutable body is our link to past times. The spirit of the age may be different, but the body is the same, although it partakes of the age in which it dwells. But Hoppner understood flesh. There is a quickness to it; she almost seems to be breathing.

  “There was a pretty poem, you know, written on the painting:

  As on her arm reclines the sleeping fair

  And with her breath the loitering gale perfumes,

  Love sees, or thinks he sees, his mother there,

  And near earth directs his glittering planes;

  Hovers with fond delight around her bower

  And swells the fragrance with a roseate shower.

  Turner closed his eyes as he recited. I was surprised by the amount of passion he put into his recitation, but also struck by the odd places in which he put the accents.

  “Lovely stuff, that. Poetry. A wonderful art, Mr. Grant. I have dabbled with numbers myself, but it’s hard going for me. ‘Roseate shower.’ A wonderful phrase.”

  “You were about to tell us the true story of the lovely nymph,” Mrs. Spencer reminded him.

  “Ah, yes. Hoppner was kind to me when I was younger and trying to make my way. Twenty-five years ago, you know. His line was mostly portraits, so he was willing to do what he could for a poor landscape painter. One day he invited me to his studio. Sir John was there, and Hoppner was good enough to introduce me to him. We got on well. Eventually he invited me up to Tabley to paint some views of the neighborhood. Lovely locale, a fine house. Not Petworth, of course, but what is?

  “Sir John was a frequent visitor to Hoppner’s studio in those days. That is where he met young Molly. Pretty Molly, we called her. Sometimes Polly Molly, but why I don’t know. She was no better than she needed to be, but, Lord, more beautiful than anyone had a right to be.

  “She was an artist’s model. Also a temporary special friend to certain gentl
emen. A good-hearted girl. Sir John wished to join the ranks of Molly’s friends. But Molly said no. Which seemed odd at the time, given Sir John’s wealth and standing. And he was more than personable enough for a rich man. But no was her answer and she stuck to it. Sir John moped about like a heartsick mooncalf.

  “But he was nothing if not persistent. A man of strong character, as you can attest, my lord. And ingenious. He hit upon the happy idea of commissioning Hoppner to paint her portrait. And the still happier idea of suggesting a classical composition. That sort of thing was not in Hoppner’s line, you know, but the result was the delightful Nymph—his best work, in my opinion.

  “Sir John felt, as most patrons do, that he had the right to stop by the studio and observe the progress on his commission. Try to discourage that sort of thing, myself. Unless, as is the case with the present company, the patron is a respectful man of taste and discretion. Not always the case, you know. Few are the benefactors of art who understand the business well enough to know when not to meddle. Fellows think that the size of their purses gives them good ideas about art. ‘Wouldn’t that tree look more sublime on the left—sublimity very important, don’t you think?’

  “But you and Sir John, my lord, are notable exceptions. Both knowledgeable and accomplished in your own line; respectful to artists and their work.”

  I looked over at Egremont to see how he was taking this clumsy flattery. His smile suggested that he appreciated it but was not moved. Turner continued with his story. Sir John, he said, had contrived with Hoppner that he would appear at the studio one day while Hoppner was doing some preliminary sketches of the beautiful Molly. At these early sessions Molly was clothed, and it seemed proper enough that Sir John should appear to observe the progress of the work. He took the occasion of his visits to compliment Molly on her charms and to give her small presents by way of compensating her for her labors. Turner can be very amusing when he tells stories out of school about the artist’s life. As he warmed to his tale he became more and more animated, seeming to forget that terseness which is the distinguishing characteristic of his speech. He did imitations of the various parties in the little drama that had us all laughing heartily. His Hoppner spoke in a barely intelligible deep rumble, while his Sir John talked in an affected drawl which, Lord Egremont pointed out, caught the flavor of the man exactly. Best of all, however, was the way he did Molly. When he affected a high falsetto and squeaked, “Oh, no, sir, I couldn’t,” even the butler standing at the sideboard laughed out loud.