The Dark Clue

by James Wilson

  Yours very truly,

  Mary Ann Fletcher

  XXII

  Letter from Walter Hartright to Laura Hartright,

  2nd October, 185–

  Brompton Grove,

  Saturday

  My dearest Laura,

  Your strange letter arrived by this morning’s post. You silly girl! How can you think – let alone write – such things? Do you really imagine that I can bear this separation any more easily than you (who at least have little Walter and Florrie to comfort you)? – or that I would willingly protract it an hour longer than was necessary?

  It grieves me – as it would any man – to hear that our children ask, ‘Has Papa forgotten us? Does he not love us any more?’; but what wounds me a thousand times more is that you say you are at a loss how to reply. Great God! How can you be at a loss? Does not your heart answer for you: ‘Of course not, my darlings; he thinks of you, and misses you, every minute of every day; but he is engaged on some great undertaking that shall one day make you proud of him.’? Or do you think so poorly of me that you no longer believe it yourself, but really suppose that I care nothing for family and home, and that I linger in London, like some shallow, worthless man of the world, merely to indulge the whims of idleness and pleasure?

  You say that my letters no longer sound like your ‘old dear Walter’ – that while they are addressed to you, you feel I am really directing them to someone else entirely. My dearest – have I not explained?! I have not time enough to keep a journal and to write to you (if I did so, I should be always at my desk, and have to delay my return still further!), and must consequently depend on my letters to preserve a record of my thoughts and impressions. So, yes, others (God willing!) shall one day read some of my words – but would you sooner I confided them all to a diary, and so excluded you, my life’s companion, from the very marrow of my experience?

  This book – let me state it plainly, when I should have hoped I had no need to – is very dear to my heart. Through it, I believe, I shall be able to say something of true value about the life of a great artist, and about the nature of art itself. If I do as you ask, however, and return to Limmeridge now, all my efforts (and the hardship we have both endured) will have been in vain; for there are more doors I must open, more corners I must peer into, more questions I must ask, before I can confidently reach a judgement on this elusive man and his work. I shall not, therefore, deceive you (as I unwittingly did before) by saying: I shall be home in so many weeks. I shall be home when I have done what I must do; and that – trust me – will be as soon as I can possibly contrive it.

  My love as always, and kisses to the children.

  Walter

  XXIII

  From the notebook of Marian Halcombe, 5th October, 185-

  Sandycombe Lodge, Twickenham

  Neat, plain, geometrical

  Whitewashed walls, low slate roof

  So small, at first think it’s a real lodge – expect to see gate, and long drive, with great man’s house at end of it

  Only inside see it for what it is – Lilliputian classical villa, conceived on different scale from modern houses surrounding it (presumably not there in Turner’s time?)

  Even on a dull day – first impression (like Turner’s paintings): Light

  Tiny hall – barrel-vault ceiling – simple decoration – entrance to an elegant dolls’-house

  To left: curving staircase, lit by oval skylight, up to two bedrooms

  Beyond hall, transverse corridor: dining room at one end; library at the other; in the middle, Turner’s studio, with a great window overlooking garden. Light! light! light!

  Miss Fletcher – answered door herself. About 40 – long, pale, anxious face, eyes rather close together. Frail, trembled, as if with cold. Sat with her while Walter went outside to sketch house and garden.

  Semi-invalid – amuses herself finding out ‘all I can about Turner, and his odd mode of life here’. Thinks he was ‘a funny little man’. [There – ‘funny’ again]

  Turner moved here 1813.

  Why Twickenham? Air. Light. View of Sir J. Reynolds’ house – also poet James Thomson’s.

  Solus – Solis

  Blackbirdy

  ‘Billy’

  Pony & trap – sketching

  ‘Daddy’ or ‘Old Daddy’ – looked after house

  Also gallery [strange!]

  Market gardener – cart – gin

  Left 1826

  House sold to Mr. Ford – sold to Miss Fletcher’s fath

  From the diary of Marian Halcombe, 5th October, 185-

  I have sat here a full hour, and written no more than ‘5th October’ – and shall soon be obliged to change even that, for looking at the clock I see it now wants but ten minutes to be 6th October. Walter depends on me for an account of the day’s events, and all I shall finally be able to give him is my notes.

  And yet as soon as I start to write for myself rather than for him – see! – the words begin to come. Why? Do I all of a sudden no longer feel at ease with him? No longer trust him?

  Certainly I was puzzled, and not a little embarrassed, by his manner today. He was so withdrawn, so wound about with his own thoughts, that for whole minutes together he said nothing at all, but acted as if he were quite alone, opening a cupboard door, or unfolding the shutters on the window, without question or comment. Miss Fletcher seemed not so much offended by this off-handedness as astonished by it; perhaps assuming that such behaviour would be considered quite normal in London society, she watched him open-mouthed, like a child bemused at the strangeness of the adult world but determined to learn its secrets. Only once did she try to engage him in conversation, as he stood sketching the fireplace in the dining room, and she burst out admiringly: ‘Oh! I wish I could draw like that! How fortunate – to have the Muse of Art as well as of Literature!’

  To which Walter did not reply at all (surely a modest ‘You overstate my talents, I’m afraid’, or a polite ‘I’m sure you have remarkable gifts, Miss Fletcher’, would have cost him little enough?); but merely looked away, with a half-smile that seemed to say: Yes – you are right – I am infinitely your superior; and you are of so little consequence that I needn’t waste breath denying it. The poor woman was left staring and gulping like a stranded fish; until at length, unable to bear the humiliation any longer, she was forced to resort to the pitiable fiction that she had been talking to me the whole time, and muttered:

  ‘Hm, Miss Halcombe?’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ I said. I was debating whether to add, ‘But sad that the Muse of Good Manners seems to have deserted him completely,’ when Walter forestalled me.

  ‘I think I shall go outside now, if I may,’ he said suddenly. I should have liked to go with him, but decided to stay and talk to Miss Fletcher instead – partly to show my anger with him, and partly my sympathy for her.

  ‘You must forgive my brother if he seems a little distracted,’ I said as he left. ‘He is very preoccupied with his book.’

  ‘Oh! – no – I quite understand!’

  ‘Turner is proving a difficult subject.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she said sorrowfully, as if living in Turner’s house somehow made her responsible for his vagaries. ‘But I suppose that’s the privilege of genius, isn’t it? To be a little odd?’

  ‘Do you think you would have liked him?’

  ‘What, Turner?’ she said, surprised (as, indeed, I had intended she should be; for jolting her into another train of thought was the only way I could conceive of avoiding a none-too-original lecture on the artistic temperament). ‘I really don’t know.’ She thought carefully for a moment. ‘It all depends, I think. Solus or Solis.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I don’t know why he later changed the name to “Sandycombe Lodge”, but when he first moved here he called the house “Solus” …’

  ‘“Alone”,’ I said.

  She nodded. ‘But my brother thinks he meant “Solis”, S-O-L-I-S. “Of t
he sun.” Or perhaps just “Sunny”. Turner’d barely been to school, you see, and didn’t have Latin, so it would have been an easy enough mistake for him to make.’

  My mind’s eye was suddenly dazzled with the array of suns we had seen at Marlborough House. ‘That seems likelier, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘But you’d certainly suppose he wanted solitude, for he put bars on all the windows, and made the garden a thicket of willows.’

  I looked outside. A few yards away I recognized the top of Walter’s head. Beyond it, sure enough, was a thick wall of trees.

  ‘And the boys called him “Blackbirdy”,’ said Miss Fletcher, ‘because he wouldn’t let them bird’s-nest.’

  That might, I thought, have simply been because he liked blackbirds; but before I could say anything she went on:

  ‘And there were only the two of them in the house.’

  Two? Was there a wife, then? A young Mrs. Booth? I could not, for a moment, think of a delicate way to phrase the question; but she must have see it in my face, for she said:

  ‘Turner and his father.’

  ‘His father!’

  She nodded. ‘“Billy” and “Daddy”.’

  ‘And not even a servant?’

  ‘Daddy was the servant, Miss Halcombe. I know – an eccentric arrangement, but there it is – while Billy was out in his pony and trap, sketching, Daddy was here, taking care of the house and garden. And as if being his son’s cook and valet weren’t enough, he was also expected to stretch his canvases, and varnish them when they were done, and go up to London to open the gallery.’

  ‘What gallery?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh – did you not know? – Turner kept on his house in Queen Anne Street, even while he was living here; and there was a gallery there, where buyers could view his work. And Daddy, of course, was a tight-fisted old man – it was something of a family trait, as I’m sure you’ve discovered – so to avoid paying the coach-fare he’d give a market gardener a glass of gin to take him into town on his cart.’

  She started to laugh, but then stopped abruptly as Walter entered the room. All through my conversation with Miss Fletcher, one part of my mind had been silently composing a thinly veiled rebuke to him, with which I hoped, on his return, to jar him back to some semblance of politeness; but I at once saw that it would not now be necessary. His languor and aloofness seemed to have evaporated like mist before the sun, and he was once again – as he’d been on his return from Petworth, and during our visit to the Bennetts – all enthusiasm and attention. I couldn’t imagine the cause of this transformation, but I quickly realized it was not simply a bad conscience: there was an unmistakable sense of direction in his manner as he sat next to Miss Fletcher on the sofa, and complimented her on her garden, and amused her with a silly anecdote about a black kitten which had leapt on him from behind a currant bush, and half-killed his boot. After a minute she started visibly to relax, and shot me a glance so brimming with gratitude – See! He likes me, after all! – that I shuddered with pity.

  ‘What I was wondering’, said Walter – after a tiny pause that told me that this was his true purpose – ‘was where are the kitchen and the other offices?’

  ‘Ah, yes!’ said Miss Fletcher eagerly. ‘A good question, Mr. Hartright. Let me show you.’

  She rose, and led us back into the miniature hall.

  ‘There,’ she said, pointing to a plain, inconspicuous door beneath the stairs. ‘Turner’s triumph. You’d never guess it was there, would you, if you didn’t know?’

  ‘No,’ said Walter.

  And I must own that I hadn’t noticed it before, either, and that if I had I should have assumed it was nothing more than a modest cupboard.

  ‘Why his triumph?’ I asked.

  ‘Why, he designed the house,’ she said, with the complacent air of a woman giving a well-tried performance, and seeing from my startled expression that it was having its usual gratifying effect. ‘Oh, yes, he quite fancied himself the architect. So this’ – reaching for the handle, and turning it – ‘must have been in his mind.’

  I confess I couldn’t (and still can’t) imagine what ‘this’ might have been – unless it was that Turner, the master of chiaroscuro, having contrived to make the upper floors wonderfully light, decided, by way of contrast, to leave the basement as dark as possible; for beyond the hidden door you could see nothing but the top of a mean spiral staircase, which disappeared after two or three steps into the gloomy grey haze of a dungeon. Any urge I might have had to explore further (and I felt little enough, faced by this uninviting prospect) was immediately quelled by a sickly waft of cold air, laced with the smells of stale cooking, which rose from the darkness like the breath of a dying animal; so I contented myself with turning back to Miss Fletcher and saying:

  ‘Yes, very ingenious.’

  But Walter was not to be so easily deterred; pressing past me and Miss Fletcher (who seemed on the point of closing the door again), he descended the first few steps. After a few seconds he stopped, and cried, ‘This is remarkable!’ and then continued on his way.

  ‘You are wise to stay here, Miss Halcombe,’ said Miss Fletcher, backing away from the doorway. ‘It’s rather cold down there, I’m afraid, and you might easily catch a chill.’

  I have wondered, since, whether there was anything in her manner – some hint of foreboding or secret knowledge – that might have alerted me to what was about to happen; but all I can recall is a frail, hunched woman, her hands crossed and rubbing her arms, and a smile of humorous apology on her thin lips.

  It cannot have been more than two minutes before we once again heard Walter’s footsteps on the stairs. I shall never, I think, forget his appearance as he re-emerged a few moments later: the vigour of his movements, the vitality of his form (which seemed suddenly to have expanded, so that it risked bursting out of his sober town clothes); above all, his face, which bore an expression I have never seen before, and don’t know whether I should wish to see again – an expression compounded all at once of excitement, of satisfaction, and (as it seemed to me) of a kind of wild, desolate terror.

  Perhaps this is the true root of my uneasiness: in that instant, I recognized Walter’s features well enough – but not the mood, the beliefs, the thoughts they expressed. Only last week, I thought he had truly become himself again, for the first time in years (and congratulated myself, poor vain wretch that I am, on having engineered this transformation, by introducing him to Elizabeth Eastlake); now I wonder whether what then seemed his true self was no more than a temporary phase – not a terminus, as it were, but merely a small station, through which he has already passed on his way to somewhere else. And that somewhere else is a place I do not know, and will make him a stranger to me. Or -

  Later

  Heavens! Why did I stop again? A strange storm in my head – my thoughts all lashed together, so I could not unravel them.

  It is now past two in the morning, and still Walter has not returned.

  He told me he was going to Mayall’s photographic studio in Regent Street. He cannot still be there now. Where is he?

  Perhaps my anxiety has deprived me of the power to think and write about him.

  This will not do.

  Concentrate.

  One question, naturally, preoccupied me as we got into our cab, and left Sandycombe Lodge.

  What had Walter seen in the basement?

  Yet I felt I could not ask him directly, for fear that in doing so I might drive him further from me. The truth was, I suddenly realized, I could no longer predict how he would behave. If I revealed that I had seen how deeply he had been affected, he might, indeed, confide in me; but I could as soon imagine his airily denying it (You are too fanciful, Marian; I never thought I should find you guilty of that); or else becoming embarrassed and confused.

  For a few minutes I said nothing at all, hoping that he might be moved to fill the silence himself, and so spare me the necessity of declaring my curiosity; but he on
ly sat quietly staring out of the window. At length, unable to bear it any longer, I said:

  ‘A pretty little house, I thought. Or at least the parts of it I saw.’

  An irresistible invitation, you would suppose, to describe the parts I hadn’t seen; but he merely nodded absently. I must either hold my tongue, or be more direct.

  ‘What was the basement like?’ I asked.

  You would think he had been struck deaf.

  ‘What is it, Walter?’ I said. ‘Why won’t you tell me?’

  But again he said nothing; and after a minute or two opened his notebook, and began studying the drawings he had made.

  It was intolerable – I must discover what he had seen – and yet I was at a loss to know how to prise it from him. It was clear, however, that the more desperately I pursued him now, the more stubborn he would become; so I resolved to ponder the matter in silence.

  What might one find in a basement, to excite such a response?

  Something that Turner had left there – an undiscovered picture, or pictures. But in that case, surely, Miss Fletcher would have shown them to us, or at least mentioned their existence?

  Evidence of a crime – a bloodstain (heaven help us!). Hard to believe – but it was undeniably odd, was it not, that Miss Fletcher seemed to be the only person in the house? Suppose she’d fallen out with the housekeeper, and taken an axe to her in the scullery? Or perhaps she’d had a lover, and he had spurned her?

  No, no – inconceivable – if there had been anything of the kind there, she would not have allowed Walter to find it, and he could not have remained silent about it.

  Why was my mind running on such terrible things? Was it just that the place made me think so powerfully of a dungeon?

  A dungeon. A dungeon. A lightless room. A barred door. Dripping walls, covered in moss. A set of rusting manacles -

  The cry of a hawker in the street brought me out of my reverie, and I looked out of the window and saw that we were entering Putney. The road was crowded with carriages and carts; the pavements thronged with dull, decent people thinking of nothing save whether it would rain, or where the cabbages might be best and cheapest. If they could see my thoughts, they would indubitably suppose I was mad.