by James Wilson
‘I tell you about the Admiral! The bottles! The ladies!’
‘You lying foreign b-!’ shouted Mr. Neave. Emboldened by drink, he clenched his fists and lurched forward, scattering boys on every side, although he could barely reach his opponent’s shoulder.
‘Please!’ I shouted. ‘I have no interest in any Admiral!’
I hoped this would calm them, but it appeared to have no effect. The men jostled themselves into two groups, while the boys lined up against the fence, either because they wanted to watch or because they could not escape. I quickly formulated a plan: I would appeal to the beanpole’s chivalrous instincts and offer him and his friends a penny apiece to escort me safely to the nearest cab stand.
I had already started back towards them when, at last, I heard the door opening behind me. I turned and saw a handsome, dark-haired, sturdily built woman of sixty or so, wearing a plain grey dress and a white apron. Her eyes stared past me towards the crowd at the gate. Her sallow, heavy-featured face wore an expression of infinite, exasperated sadness, such as you might see on a nurse who discovers her charges, yet again, doing something they know is wrong. To my astonishment, that look alone was enough to restore order: the two opposing factions melted away without a word, and the boys, as if suddenly released from captivity, scampered at full tilt down the street.
‘Mrs. Booth?’ I said.
She turned towards me. She inclined her head slightly, but did not smile.
‘I am Marian Halcombe,’ I said. ‘I believe Lady Eastlake wrote to you …?’
‘Yes,’ she said. There was a rural lilt to her voice, but its tone was perfectly neutral, neither friendly nor unfriendly. ‘Will you please come in, Miss Halcombe?’
The hall was so poky and dark that I could see almost nothing, and had to rely on the bobbing beacon of Mrs. Booth’s apron string to guide me. But the little parlour she led me into was pleasant enough, with a lively fire burning in the grate, and a strange-looking tailless cat stretched on the rug before it. A canary chirruped in its cage in the window, and a stout grandfather clock ticked soothingly by the door, as if Time, too, had been caught and tamed, and put in a corner to add his voice to the domestic chorus.
‘Please sit down,’ said Mrs. Booth, ‘while I fetch the tea.’ She was immediately gone again, and a moment later I heard her clumping down into the basement. I rose, and looked about me. The room was, for the most part, quite unexceptional, and such as you might expect to find in the housekeeper’s quarters of any well-run large house: neat cupboards, with white-painted panelled doors, flanked the fireplace; a cavalcade of china milkmaids, led by a Macready toby jug, marched across the mantel-shelf; and on the chimney breast above hung a water-colour of a church and some miniatures in oval frames.
It was only when I turned back towards the hall that I noticed something unusual. Two oil-paintings, stacked one behind the other and half covered by a sheet, leant against the wall between door and window. Seeing the corner of a gilt frame, and a whirl of leaden colour, I was overcome with curiosity, and immediately bent down and lifted the cloth. The images that greeted me were so terrible, and yet so vague, that they seemed to have been conjured from a nightmare. The first showed a wild, grey-green sea stirred into an implacable fury; in the foreground, indistinct figures clung desperately to a queer, serpentine lump of wreckage which rose from the spume like a sea-monster, and, further off, a cutter sailed to their rescue. The second, behind it, was perhaps the same scene the following day: a crowd gathered on the shore, dumbstruck at the frightful proof of nature’s destructive power littered all about them; while on the horizon, lit by an ulcerous, unforgiving yellow sun, a disabled ship with two masts gone was just visible through the haze. Their impact – at least on me – was almost physical, and somewhat as I imagine the effect of mesmerism to be; I lost all thought of where I was, or what I was doing there, and was still staring when Mrs. Booth re-entered.
‘Ah, yes,’ she said, colouring slightly. ‘Those are his. He gave them to me.’
‘What, Mr. Turner!’ I exclaimed. I must have sounded, I fear, more amazed than I should have done – partly because the only Turner I could remember seeing was the stately engraving in the hall at Brompton Grove of London from Greenwich Park, showing a tranquil classical landscape with a distant view of the smoke-covered city and its river, which seemed to bear no relation to these desolate scenes at all; and partly because it had never occurred to me that Mrs. Booth might have any of his pictures in her possession.
‘Yes,’ she said, setting her tray down. I expected her to go on, but she busied herself instead with the tea, pouring two cups and then perching the pot at the edge of the fire basket to keep warm. Hoping to revive the subject I said:
‘That was very generous of him.’
I regretted the words even before they were out of my mouth. She coloured again, and said:
‘What, you think I didn’t deserve so much kindness?’
‘No, of course not. I merely meant…’ I could not, of course, say what I really meant: that few successful artists would have dealt so handsomely with a servant. To cover my confusion, I said:
‘Why do you not hang them?’
‘I had them upstairs, but I feared they might be stolen. My son is going to keep them safe for me.’
I confess I found myself wondering why she did not sell them, for they must surely be worth a great deal of money; and in doing so she could simultaneously remove the cause of her anxiety and ensure herself a comfortable old age. Perhaps she guessed what I was thinking, for she said:
‘I could not bear to part with them.’
‘They remind you of the sea?’ I said.
She nodded.
‘You have naval connections, perhaps?’ I said. ‘The boys outside mentioned -’
‘The Admiral?’
‘Yes.’
She nodded again, but wearily. ‘That is what they called him.’
‘Mr. Turner?’ I said; for, though it seemed unlikely, we had talked of no-one else.
‘Yes,’ she said. They called him Admiral Booth.’ She paused, and looked coolly at my astonished face; then, as if I should have divined it for myself, went on: ‘They thought he was my husband.’
I felt quite lost, like a traveller who suddenly discovers he is without both map and compass. What could I ask that would not appear rude – the most obvious question, Why?, would certainly have fallen into this category – or, on the other hand, risk eliciting some new piece of startling information which would only bemuse me further? At length I said, cautiously:
‘How long did you know Mr. Turner?’
‘Twenty years,’ she said. ‘He first came to me when I had a boarding-house in Margate. Then, after Mr. Booth died, he wanted a retreat by the river; so he asked me to move to Chelsea, and keep house for him here.’
‘He must have had great confidence in you,’ I said.
She nodded, a proud woman briskly acknowledging her due. ‘He used to call me the handmaiden of Art.’
‘You helped him in his work, then?’
‘Oh, yes, I’d set his palette every morning, and make sure everything was ready,’ She said this with a certain warmth, as if she had begun to feel easier in my presence. A second or two later, the cat unexpectedly furthered my cause by getting up and jumping into my lap, where it stood lazily sinking its claws into my dress. For the first time since my arrival, Mrs. Booth smiled.
‘Oh, you’re very honoured,’ she said. ‘Jason generally only likes men. Mr. Turner, especially. He’d sit on his knee, his shoulder – even his head, sometimes.’
I laughed, and decided this would be a propitious moment to venture a little further.
‘What kind of a man was Mr. Turner?’
‘There were times’, she said, ‘when I thought he was a god.’
‘A god!’ I said. ‘Why, did he resemble a Greek statue?’
Mrs. Booth laughed. ‘Oh, I don’t mean to look at!’ she said. ‘In his work.’ She w
aved a hand towards the two oil-paintings. ‘You or I could stand where he did, and see nothing but a rough old day, or a wintry sun. But he saw what ordinary mortal eyes can’t see. He saw into the heart of things.’
I found myself thinking: Dear Lord, I hope the heart of things doesn’t look like that. But I said:
‘Yes, they are magnificent.’
That seemed to please her. She brightened, and – as if surprised by her own candour – said:
‘Would you like to see the room where he died, Miss Halcombe?’
In truth, I should have preferred to stay where I was, and finish my tea, and ask her more questions; but I could not very well refuse, so I replied:
‘Yes, I should. Very much.’
We went up the cramped staircase, which squeaked under our weight like a procession of complaining mice, and entered a small attic at the front of the house. The feeble sun seeped through a square, deep-set dormer, casting a watery pattern of light and shadow on the neighbouring wall. The left-hand side of the room was dominated by a simple brass bed, and a single wheelback chair stood before the window. The boards were bare, and there was no other furniture save a plain cupboard, a small table set with a bowl and ewer, and an iron ladder leading to a trapdoor in the ceiling. It looked like the kind of lodging where a struggling actor or a poor travelling salesman might seek refuge from the disappointments of the day.
‘This was his room,’ said Mrs. Booth. ‘Every morning he would rise before dawn, and throw a blanket round him, and go up there’ – here she indicated the ladder – ‘on to the roof, and sketch the sunrise.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘That’s why the parapet’s railed?’
She nodded. ‘And then he’d come back to bed, and rest till breakfast time. And so he went on, right up until his last illness. He was indefatigable, Miss Halcombe. Even when I was nursing him, I had to make sure he always had pencils and paper to hand.’
‘Was he still able to paint, then?’ I asked.
‘Not at the very end,’ she said. ‘But not to have the hope of it would have killed him that much sooner. So I always kept up the pretence: Perhaps tomorrow, my dear.’
How many housekeepers call their master ‘my dear’?
‘He was very lucky to have you, Mrs. Booth,’ I said.
She did not answer, seemingly lost in her own thoughts. At length she said:
‘I’ll tell you a strange thing, Miss Halcombe. A few weeks before he died, the police dragged out of the river some poor girl, who had fallen into disgrace, and drowned herself.’ She moved towards the window, and pointed down to the embankment steps, where the watermen were still idling the afternoon away. ‘Just there. And Mr. Turner was very troubled by it, and kept waking me in the night, and saying he saw her face, and feared to sleep. “I must draw it,” he said. “I must draw that face, or I shall have no rest.” And so he drew it, and it was almost the last picture he ever made.’
‘And was he still haunted by it?’ I asked.
‘He never spoke of it again,’ she said. ‘Leastways, not that I recall.’
She was quiet then, and I feared I had lost her to her own memories. I said:
‘How did he come to see her, if he was in bed, and she outside?’
‘It was a terrible winter,’ she said. ‘Nothing but fog and smoke for weeks on end. He’d say, “I wish I could see the sun again” – but he could barely more than whisper it by then, it’d break your heart to hear him. So he’d roll on to the floor, and try to crawl to the window to look for it.’
‘I see,’ I said. ‘So he was there when the police found her?’
She nodded abstractedly, as if her mind were on something more important. ‘Sometimes’, she said, ‘he was too weak even to go that far, and I’d find him here, by the chair, and have to help him back to bed.’
Again she was silent, and, though she faced the window, I thought I saw a tear in the corner of her eye. Finally, she sighed, and said: ‘But he did see it again. One morning, it suddenly broke through; and the doctor and I got him into the wheelchair, and pushed him here to the window, so that it could shine full on his face; and an hour later, as if he was satisfied at last, he died, without a murmur, with his head against my shoulder.’
Her voice did not quaver. And yet something in the way she spoke, bringing the thoughts from the depths of her own being, and then gently replacing them there, as if they were her most cherished possessions, told me, beyond doubt, that this was a woman who had not merely served Turner, but had loved him in every sense. And I knew – however hard it might be to believe – that the man described by Lady Eastlake as the foremost genius of the day had lived and died in this mean little house, under an assumed name, as his housekeeper’s husband.
If I am honest, I have to say this realization prompted in me no other feeling for Mrs. Booth than deep pity, mingled with a genuine admiration. But what, I wondered, would Walter make of it? For the old widow, I was sure, he would share my sympathy and compassion; but would he view Turner himself in the same liberal spirit? Might the discovery of his subject’s eccentricities (to put it as charitably as I can) make him lose interest in writing the Life, even before he has begun it?
It was therefore with some trepidation that I said:
‘You have been very helpful, Mrs. Booth. Would it be possible for me to call again with my brother, who, I know, would like to talk to you himself?’
And it was with relief, as well as disappointment, that I heard her reply:
‘I mean no offence, Miss Halcombe, but Mr. Turner’s memory is sacred to me. I do not like to talk about him; and, to speak plain, I have already said more than I meant to. So, while I shall always be pleased to see you, if you pass this way, I must ask that you do not bring your brother here; for I could tell him nothing more than I have told you today.’
VIII
Letter from Walter Hartright to Laura Hartright,
11th August, 185–
Brompton Grove,
Friday
My dearest love,
Your letter is by me as I write – I glance over, and read ‘I am so proud of you, Walter’; and the words sting me like a slap, for I am sure that had you seen me today you would have been anything but proud. I am just returned from Ruskin, you see, and know not what to make of him, or of what he told me – but I fear he has made a fool of me, and I of myself, and the result is that I am cast down, and quite confused.
The start of my perplexity is the man himself. Strange, is it not, how a famous name may produce an image in our minds, composed of who knows what scraps and trifles and odds and ends, yet strong enough, in the absence of personal experience, to be that person for us? Before today, without in the least reflecting on it, I saw Ruskin as a wild shaggy creature lurking in the dark somewhere (his natural abode has always seemed a cave, or a dungeon), waiting to rush out without warning and impale some poor unsuspecting painter. Perhaps this idea arises partly from my own dread, whenever I exhibit, that he will single out something of mine for particular scorn; and partly from – do you remember it? – that verse in Punch:
I paints and paints, and no complaints;
I sells before I’m dry;
Then savage Ruskin sticks his tusk in
And nobody will buy.
And just think – had I had no occasion to meet him, this fancy might, through sheer force of habit, have finally established itself in my mind as the truth; and so been passed on by our grandchildren to their grandchildren as a lifelike portrait of the great man!
At all events, they, and I, will be spared that; for the revolution of the last twelve hours has entirely deposed all my preconceptions, and despatched them to an exile from which they will never return.
My first surprise came even before I had met him, for 163 Dennmark Hill turns out to be a tall, rambling old house which – far from shrinking into the shadows – announces its presence with the beefy self-importance of a provincial lord mayor. It has its own porter’s lodge (where I w
as obliged to state my business to a burly man with suspicious eyes and licorice breath, who said: ‘That’s Mr. John Ruskin, is it?’ and then, before I was able to reply, peered at me through the window of the cab, and answered his own question: ‘Yes, it’ll be Mr. John’); and a carriage sweep; and walls furred with ivy; and a front door approached by railed steps, and almost hidden in the recesses of a heavy portico. From its size, in short, and its John Bull posture – feet splayed, elbows out – it looked more like the house of one of our fox-hunting neighbours in Cumberland than the home of the world’s most celebrated art critic, on the fringes of the world’s greatest city.
The footman who opened the door seemed ordinary enough; but for a fleeting moment I had the odd impression that the dim square hall behind him was filled with pale, elderly faces (it was difficult to be sure, for my eyes had not yet adjusted to the gloom), which promptly scattered, as soon as they saw me, like rabbits startled by a walker.
‘Is Mr. Ruskin at home?’ I asked.
‘Mr. John Ruskin?’ replied the man, in a stiff parody of the lodge-keeper.
‘Yes,’ I said, wondering secretly how many others there might be, and whether they all had opinions on Art.
He went upstairs; and, as soon as he had gone, two of the rabbits (as I supposed) reappeared. One was an old woman in a bonnet and a black dress; the other, a stocky man with ragged white hair and thick whiskers, wearing a dark jacket and a speckled twill waistcoat. Neither looked exactly like a servant, and there was something proprietorial in their manner; yet they hovered at the margins of the hall, as if they feared to take full possession of it, smiling uneasily at me, and looking away again – like prosperous innkeepers, perhaps, whose house is their own, but who must defer to others within its walls.