The Adventures of Allegra Fullerton

by Robert J. Begiebing

  Mr. Stock must have noticed my fascination, for he said to me one afternoon while his sister served tea: “Oh, Mrs. Fullerton, it’s quite all right … this ogling of poor old Chas. He’s used to it. I don’t think he’s ever met a woman who hasn’t looked at him such wise.” He and Tom laughed, but I noticed Lucy became quiet.

  “Is it so plain as that, Mr. Stock?” I said. “In my own defense, I simply find the man unique, just as no doubt you and Tom do. He seems to be cut from some ancient mold, of a former more vital race, does he not? Infused, perhaps by this legacy, with a strange sort of magnetism when compared to the puny tribe of fretfully ambitious men in our age.”

  “Touché,” Mr. Stock said and laughed.

  “Allegra,” Tom said, “maybe you have finally found another man worthy of your interest.” He was smiling tenderly, but I felt hurt that he should insinuate in company a certain incapacity on my part since the death of my husband.

  Lucy Stock looked up. “He is an eminently striking and capable man, Mrs. Fullerton,” she offered. “It would take a woman such as you to interest, or should I say to tame, such an audacious spirit. There are perhaps few enough to be his equal.”

  She glanced at her brother and her pale face suddenly darkened. It was the first time I had seen this delicate woman in high color.

  I had noticed that when he was present she habitually avoided Mr. Sparhawk’s unearthly blue eyes. Later, I discovered in private from Mr. Stock that Lucy had once fallen in love with Mr. Sparhawk herself. Being Chas Sparhawk, he could not help leading her on during his infrequent visits, but her fragile health and her modesty, Mr. Stock explained, rendered her “unequal to Chas’s legendary vigor and appetites. She has found,” he continued, “a perfectly suitable husband.” We had not met this gentleman, however.

  Mr. Stock did not at that moment prolong his sister’s embarrassment, if that’s what it was, but rather took up Lucy’s theme.

  “Our friend Chas Sparhawk,” Mr. Stock began, “has left a wake of broken hearts wherever he has traveled, which is of course far and wide. I’m sure I’ve never seen his equal. Wives, maidens, spinster aunties—no one’s safe from his unfailing effect upon the fair. It’s a most amazing thing to behold, the way they appear to open and turn their very souls in his direction, and it is amusing, I find, to watch those especially who would not, or who think they are not, responding noticeably to his, as Mrs. Fullerton put it, ‘magnetic presence.’ For they too give themselves away, like simple, polite children.

  “And add to these broken hearts his most unsettling habit of leaving as unceremoniously or mysteriously as he arrives, whether it be leaving a farmer or inn-keeper with whom he has lived for months or a year, or a woman who has thrown everything over for such a heartless dog.” He paused, shook his head, smiled, and then launched into one of his favorite Chas Sparhawk stories.

  “He once had a portrait rejected by a dour clergyman who did not care for the likeness. I suspect it was merely too truthful. But old Chas just went on about his business up in old Salem and Marblehead and those parts, painting such a raft of sea captains that he soon ran out of prepared canvas, or any canvas or board at all. And of course time, or the lack of expending it unprofitably on any portrait, being the essence of making one’s living, Chas was at a loss when a handsome commission came his way before leaving town. So he merely drew forth from his wagon—he used to drive a farm cart in those days painted up for a circus and festooned with hawkers’ red flags—the old rejected canvas. He showed nothing of it to his patron and simply painted right over the clergyman’s portrait. But he was also nearly out of oil and color, so he worked in a very thin layer, and went on his way.” Mr. Stock stopped to chuckle, and then went on.

  Portrait of a Woman from Marblehead, Massachusetts, Artist Unknown. Published courtesy of the Fruitlands Museums, Harvard, Massachusetts.

  “But he made the mistake of returning some months later with paints and canvas aplenty and set up another raft of lucrative seafarers’ portraits. Before he could properly begin, however, he was run out of town by a group of armed men!

  “You see, the thin layer of oils could not suppress the slow, ghostly emergence of the old clergyman upon that twice-painted canvas! This mysterious appearance disturbed the family greatly, as if it had been some sort of miraculous stigmata or the possession of the captain’s favorite image of himself by a devouring demon.

  “As you might imagine,” he laughed and went on, “the captain was a superstitious man, as are many men of the sea, and became deeply agitated himself, so much so that he became, or fancied himself become, ill, and fatally so. Word had it that he finally shot the portrait through the heart and burned it. So Marblehead would have no more of Chas Sparhawk.”

  We all laughed to think of this giant of a man chased out of town by a rabblement.

  Chas is the man, I say, who painted my portrait for Tom. Under his penetrating blue gaze, while his charcoal and brushes worked surely in his large shapely hands, I felt restless, a feeling I did not wish to display. He had admired the portraits I had been working on, and he skillfully drew out of me the story of how I became a traveler, as if I could not resist his pleasant inquires. I said nothing of the Dudley affair, of course. And then we discussed prices and the different kinds of sitters.

  When he finally allowed me to see the portrait, however, I found that although it was an acceptable if rather flat depiction, in the manner of country limners, he had captured a flash of ambivalence about the mouth and eyes. It was as if this man had glimpsed my divided soul and then rather off-handedly frozen it in oil on canvas. If I was intrigued by his capacity to see beneath a sitter’s face, I also disliked (perhaps as much as that old cleric!) his having displayed what he had discerned.

  “It is hardly civil, Mr. Sparhawk,” I said, “to attribute to your subject some … mysterious uncertainty or dispossession she does not feel.”

  “Ah, my dear Mrs. Fullerton,” he said, “you’re not of that lyingflattering school of portraitists, are you? And do you really believe that men don’t notice the eyeshot of a woman, any less than a woman notices the eyeshot of a man? If as the saying goes a woman can feel the interest or admiration of a man through walls, then can’t a man feel the same merely at the other end of a room? In conversation with his host? Up to his ears in tack or rigging, a medley or an operetta, or a heel-and-toe with your rival? Do you believe you can lift an eyelash and we won’t know it, even as you know it when we do? Come now, neither the fair nor the unfair sex is so constructed.”

  “You are overhabituated to the admiration of women, I think, Mr. Sparhawk. So that you attribute enchantment even where there is innocence.”

  “Innocence is it, Mrs. Fullerton?” He looked straight through me. “Well, you would know best, of course. And you say I’ve made such an error in this instance?”

  “I say you are habituated to admiration and tactless as a consequence.”

  “Then I’ve made a mistake, I take it. Nonetheless, I assure you, Mrs. Fullerton, that I’ve regarded you without vacillation on my part.”

  “Then you are impudent and churlish.”

  After a moment, we both began to laugh as we stood in front of my portrait. Yet the more I looked at the face he had painted, the more exposed I felt. While I examined the portrait, he moved over to my chair and sat down.

  “Take your time, Mrs. Fullerton,” he said and heaved a sigh. “Excuse my fatigue, while you examine the canvas.”

  I did not answer him. He had been standing for two hours by now. Under these circumstances, I could not help recalling Mr. Spooner asking me to sit for his painting of an ambivalent lady rising from her escritoire upon reading mysteriously discomforting news. Had this crude portraitist succeeded in his own way where Mr. Spooner had failed? But Spooner’s was not a portrait of Allegra Fullerton herself, and I had been snatched away in the very midst of our final sittings.

  “What do you think of it then, taken all around?” Chas finally asked,
his legs stretched out before him.

  I decided to pique him. “That your work is glib, and that the figures in your portraits are disproportionate and flat.” He raised his eyebrows theatrically. “But that is a common enough fault in country limners to be acceptable.”

  A laugh rang out of his enormous chest. “Just so, Mrs. Fullerton! One cannot make a living by attaining perfection.”

  I gathered my things to leave. “Yet the face, though a little askew and prettied up, is well enough done.”

  He stood up. “Oh I assure you, Mrs. Fullerton, I paint without adding prettiness, as you say, or for that matter … uncertainty. There was beauty and mystery enough.”

  “Your fancy gets the better of you, Mr. Sparhawk.”

  “Come now. I painted the face you turned to me. I thought perhaps the face showed some … discomfort. As you said yourself, you’d never sat for your own portrait before, though you’ve painted scores of others.”

  I said nothing in response, but turned to go. He took my arm gently, and I turned halfway toward him again.

  “Perhaps it was some fancy or wish wandering through your mind. My conversation was insufficient, no doubt, to command your attention fully during the hours of your sitting.” He laughed mildly, as if at himself.

  “But why are the wanderings of my mind a concern of yours?”

  “My dear Mrs. Fullerton. Can we agree simply that I have exercised what many say is my one gift? Capturing something within. Now, I do not say that I always divine it perfectly. But I say that patrons do remark upon it. I never attribute something I don’t see.” He faced my portrait again and gestured toward it. “It is you, in your bold new dress, brush and palette in hand, and the face, as I say, you presented. Please believe me, Mrs. Fullerton. It is nothing more.”

  The fact is I did believe him. But it was disquieting that he caught with uncanny accuracy something I had been feeling yet thought quite hidden. As I had promised, Tom and I returned in two days for the portrait and to pay his modest fee. Tom was delighted with the painting, and I could not help noticing again that he too seemed to be taken by the very presence of this legendary traveler.

  “Ah,” Chas said, standing up and raising a hand to stay us as we took our leave. “I would be honored if you would both join me at this hour for supper.”

  Tom said that he would keep his appointment with Mr. Diddit, the tailor who was measuring him for a new suit of clothes.

  I was just saying no thank you, when Sparhawk turned to me. “You have not told me enough about the great Mr. Spooner. I met him once, you know, at a public exhibition. Gouraud’s first public exhibition, as I recall, at the Horticultural Rooms in Tremont Street.”

  “Oh yes, the Daguerreotypist?”

  “The same. He was introducing the New Process.”

  “I didn’t attend myself, but Mr. Spooner came away an unbeliever,” I said. “‘Another Faux-Messiah out of New York City,’ he called Monsieur Gouraud. ‘Too sly and charming by half. A dark—one might say demonic—little Frenchman!’ His very words,” I added.

  Chas let loose a peal of laughter.

  “Of course it was all new to us that spring,” he finally said. “And such a crowd of ladies and gentlemen in attendance! I can tell you they all fell for this Gouraud. But not so Mr. Spooner; I could see when we met. There was such a press of those seeking Spooner’s opinions on the process, paying him their respects and the like, that I did not insist at the moment on further conversation about this ‘demonic little Frenchman,’ as you say he put it. But I myself was most intrigued. Still am. What do you make of it?”

  “That it might well put all you face-makers out of business,” Tom said. “Has in fact begun to do just that.”

  “Ah! Yes. That too, no doubt.” He laughed softly.

  “With the middling class of folks, perhaps,” I added.

  “I suspect you’re right, Tom,” Mr. Sparhawk said. “So then, one must change with the times?”

  “Even when the times are out of joint?” I asked.

  “Out of joint?” Mr. Sparhawk laughed again. “Very good, Mrs. Fullerton. Very good. Well, I mean to say there’s a woman, for example, around Philadelphia. Have you heard of her? A Miss or Mrs. Henry, or Henri, I believe? Another French charmer …”

  “Eliza Henry, I think you mean. Oh yes, I’ve heard of her.”

  “Well then, there you have it, Mrs. Fullerton!”

  “My dear sir, it has never occurred to me to throw over my painting for this … chemic process of rigid image-making.”

  “Ah, I see then. Her Master’s true apprentice.” He smiled manfully, generously. “I admire you for it. I do, believe me. Come what may, you follow your star, Mrs. Fullerton. Now, you must tell me more of your Mr. Spooner! He interests me.”

  “You go ahead, Allegra,” Tom said. “I’ll take the portrait to our rooms before I see Mr. Diddit.”

  I was hungry and always willing to talk about my mentor, so ultimately I accepted Mr. Sparhawk’s invitation.

  He cleaned up, and we were soon in the tavern over our meal. He spoke for some time of what he had heard of Mr. Spooner. “Such manliness yoked to such sensibility,” he said, repeating a commonplace and washing his potatoes down with his beer. “Now, what is his instruction like, what are the great man’s … principles?”

  “Well, the first is that one should go to nature before going to school.”

  “School? As to some foreign academy or whatever?”

  “Yes. Because nature teaches us to observe the object itself first. Be it a person, animal, tree, or whatever, so that we learn to see the ‘individuality’ therein; that is the word he uses, the individuality. So that we learn to see things in themselves before we learn the lore of academies. Seeing well he believes is the only source of painting with intelligence and sincerity.”

  “That seems common enough sense.”

  “He had me sketching painstakingly the details, for example, that differentiate one species from another—it may take months, he admonished me. Only then would he allow me to paint what I had already seen closely and drawn. The characteristic forms, I mean, of objects, or of animal and human figures.”

  “Then do we unschooled limners have the advantage of those trained by great men in the academies of Europe?” He grinned, as if he did not believe a word of it.

  “Except for the fact, as Mr. Spooner never tires of pointing out, that we make no progress beyond a certain crudity of style because of coarse commercial necessity. But, yes, in a sense we have the advantage of avoiding the ‘superstitions of art,’ which he says are as distracting to us as are the superstitions of religion to others. That’s what Mr. Spooner means by the difference between a ‘true landscape’ and a ‘mere sensual and striking picture,’ which depends over much on the stimulant of colors.”

  “There is something in that,” he said.

  “And it is through the simplest palette,” I continued, “(say, only red, yellow, blue, white, and black) and economy of means that one learns to use materials ingeniously to produce the desired effect, or enduring work.”

  “Well, Mrs. Fullerton,” he said, “I wonder if there is not something in that too.” He was listening carefully.

  “He is always careful of the methods of training, you see. And always warning of the dangers to a fine artist of resorting to making money from one’s work too early, and becoming stuck ‘in the quagmires of mammon.’ He never tired of reminding me that whoever embraces art chiefly for pecuniary reward, or worldly celebration, will find his work turned to dust even before his bones.”

  We both laughed.

  “He says that, does he?” Chas said. “It’s easy enough to say such a thing once a host of wealthy patrons have beaten a path to your door.” He laughed again. He reached over and touched my arm near the shoulder with an unsettling familiarity. “But you and I have our livings to get, by painting a few heads a week if we can get ’em.”

  “You’re right, of course, about th
at.”

  Mr. Sparhawk shook his head. “Such men are voices from another world, I’m afraid, Mrs. Fullerton.”

  “One has to choose one’s world, I suppose,” I said.

  “But there may be as many dangers in the salon or drawing room, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Oh yes,” I agreed. “Mr. Spooner has always been the first to admit that great men have given us too many soulless decorations.”

  “Well, then, as you see, I’m not in the least trained, unlike yourself, Mrs. Fullerton. Yet I paint what I truly see. Will you grant me that?”

  “What you see, perhaps, I’ll grant you, Mr. Sparhawk. But one has to study to see what is there; the truth or the soul of the object or person is perhaps another matter… .”

  “And that I have none of the superstitions, as you say, of the academies?”

  “Yes, Mr. Sparhawk. None of the painterly superstitions.”

  He smiled. “One works with whatever one has,” he said. Then he changed the subject. “But what are your plans now? Return to Boston, I suppose.”

  I told him that Tom and I planned to travel west, saying nothing about our being set on a journey out of Massachusetts for Tom’s sake. He spoke against such a plan, reminding me that by my own testimony the work of my ambitions lay in Boston—without or with Mr. Spooner. “I’d be happy to accompany you to Boston, in a few weeks time,” he said. “Tom seems to have some dislike, some distrust of the place.”

  “Oh, he would return with me, if we decided to go. But we are rather set on this other adventure just now, as more lucrative, you understand.”