by James Wilson
‘Mad-doctor!’ I cried, remembering Mrs. Bennett.
He nodded and beamed – not, I think, with admiration at my knowledge, but rather with satisfaction at the discovery that his world had not yet entirely vanished, and that a man who had been famous in his time was still remembered in mine.
‘Did you know’, I said, ‘that he was one of Turner’s first patrons?’
He shook his head. ‘But I’m not surprised to hear it; for he was known as a collector, as I recall, and as something of an artist himself. And he must have seen the boy’s drawings at the shop, for old Mr. Turner used to pin them up in the window and around the door, and sell them for two or three shillings apiece. He was also, did you know -?’
But at that moment Mrs. Chambers set the tea before us; and he stopped talking, and watched appreciatively as she poured.
‘There, now,’ she said, when she was done. ‘It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Halcombe.’ She collected the handkerchief from the window and handed it to me. ‘Perhaps you’d be good enough to show this again when you leave, and I shall know to come and tidy up.’
‘Bless you, Betty,’ murmured Mr. Padmore, as she left. ‘She is so … she is so …’ And then, quite suddenly, his eyelids fluttered and drooped, and his head dropped forward.
‘You were saying …’ I began loudly; but he did not stir.
The thought that sleep might succeed where death had not, and deprive me at the last of some vital piece of information, reduced me to a kind of panic, and without pausing to consider I leapt up and tapped him on the shoulder. It was enough, thank God. He twitched, and opened his eyes, and looked up at me. For an instant he did not seem to know who I was; but then he said:
‘Ah, Miss Halcombe, Miss Halcombe, forgive me. Were we progressing?’
‘Indeed,’ I said, feeling the tears start in my eyes.
He laughed apologetically ‘I grow foolish, I fear. I entirely forget where …’
‘Dr. Monro.’
‘Oh, yes, yes. He was a great connoisseur -’
‘Yes,’ I said, impatience getting the better of me. ‘But you were about to tell me something else about him.’
‘Was I?’ He frowned thoughtfully. ‘Ah! He tended the King during his -?’
‘I know that!’ I tried to soften the effect by laughing, but he seemed somewhat taken aback, and sank into perplexed silence.
I vowed I should not interrupt him again. And I was rewarded, for after a few seconds he said:
‘The Hospital?’
‘What Hospital?’
‘I must have mentioned that. Or perhaps I assumed you knew? The Bethlem Hospital.’
‘What of it?’
‘Why, Dr. Monro worked there. He was director, or physician, or some such.’
I knew his words had some great significance – I knew they closed a circle I had thought destined to remain incomplete – but I was too busy writing them down to see their full implications. At length, Mr. Padmore himself saved me the trouble; for after gazing out of the window for half a minute or so, he said falteringly, as if he had only just grasped it himself:
‘And do you know, that was a strange coincidence; for Mrs. Turner herself went mad, I believe, and ended up under his care.’
My mouth was dry with excitement, and I forced myself to take a sip of tea before asking:
‘Do you remember her at all?’
‘Barely. I think perhaps she was kept out of sight; for by all accounts she had an ungovernable temper, and might have troubled the customers. I do recall… I do recall.. .’ He paused and grimaced, visibly struggling to retrieve the fragments of something that had happened almost seventy years ago. At length he nodded, as if he were finally satisfied that he had got them in order, and said:
The family, I think, lived mostly in the cellar or basement. And I do recall one day hearing the most blood-curdling screams and howls coming from downstairs. Mr. Turner was setting my curls, or something like – he was a spry, cheerful little fellow, always bouncing about on his toes, like a sparrow; and at first he just laughed and tried to make light of it. But then the boy came rushing up, white as death, and ran into the street; and Turner made some excuse, and went down to soothe her.’
‘When was this?’
He shrugged, as much with his eyebrows as with his shoulders. “Eighty-nine. ‘Ninety. ‘Ninety-one. I don’t think I ever saw or heard anything of her again. But a year or two later Turner did tell me his son had taken a painting-room at the other end of the court, and I remember thinking it must have been to get away from the mother.’ He paused, and sighed. ‘Oh! but Bethlem Hospital, Miss Halcombe. That wasn’t kind. It is more humane now, I believe, but then it was a hell – as I can testify, for I went there once, to see a poor friend of mine, who after hanged himself. In the winter he was shut up like a stalled beast, with a straw mattress to lie on; in the summer he was purged and bled and doused in cold water.’ He shook his head, as if that were the only protest he could make. Tears filled his eyes, and his voice broke as he went on: ‘Our Saviour cast out demons, but not by bleeding or half-drowning the wretches they tormented.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I did not mean to distress you.’
He shook his head again, and started to weep silently.
‘Let us talk of something else,’ I said. ‘The theatre. Lady Meesden.’
He nodded; but then, as suddenly as before, his eyes closed, and his chin sank to his chest; and all at once the agitation left his face, and he became so still that – save for his breathing – you might have supposed that he had finally crossed the almost imperceptible boundary separating him from death.
I did not try to rouse him again. I set the handkerchief in the window, and left.
*
I wrestled with myself all the way back to Kensington. Should I, or shouldn’t I? It was late – I was tired – I had done enough for one day. And yet my curiosity would not be quieted. In the end, just before we turned into Brompton Grove, I stopped the cab, and told the driver to take me to Maiden Lane.
I repented of my decision the moment we entered the street. It had started to rain, and the wheels bumped over mounds of rotting leaves which had washed down from the market, filling the air – I could smell it even through the closed windows – with the stench of putrefaction. Crowds of blank-faced children stared in as we passed. Two middle-aged drunkards, their eyes as dull and slithery as oysters, leered and pointed from the steps of the Cider Cellar tavern. Realizing how vulnerable I should be if I got out, I hastily reduced the scale of my ambitions, and told myself that perhaps it would be enough if I saw the shop from the cab.
But since I knew from Walter that it was no longer a barber’s, my only hope of picking it out was to discover which of the dark little alleys leading off the street was Hand Court – and this, try as I might, I could not do: for some were unmarked, and the names of the others so worn and covered in soot that I could not read them from so far away. When we reached the end, therefore, I told the driver to turn round, and to stop outside a pawnbroker’s shop I had noticed as we passed, which I thought I might safely enter (for while my apparent motives might be discreditable, they would at least be easily understood, and not open me to unwanted attentions), and where I could expect a civil answer.
No sooner had I closed the door behind me than a girl of thirteen or fourteen appeared from the back of the shop. She had large brown eyes, and a pale pretty face that was already hardening into calculation and suspicion. She looked at me unsmilingly, saying nothing.
‘I wonder’, I said, ‘if you could tell me where Hand Court is?’
She jerked her thumb towards a narrow arch on the other side of the street.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘You want to see old Jenny?’ she said, as I reached the door again. ‘I’ll take you for a tanner.’
‘No, thank you,’ I said (for the thought of leaving this twilight world and plunging into the evil-smelling darkness of the cou
rt filled me with horror). ‘But here’s sixpence for your trouble.’
She took the money without a word, and scowled at me as I left, as if she feared I had somehow got the better of her, and duped her into parting with something at less than its true value.
I asked the driver to wait a minute or two more, and crossed the street, pulling my cloak about me to protect myself as best I could from the fine penetrating rain. The entrance to the court was a plain classical arch with a heavy keystone; and through the iron gate barring it I could see huddles of people talking in the dull lamplight glow from doors and windows. I had no trouble identifying which had been the barber’s shop – for had not Mr. Padmore said it was to the left of the hall, which meant it must have been the building on the left-hand side of the gateway? – but the ‘long low’ window of his description had long since disappeared, and been replaced by a tall modern double sash extending the full width of the house.
But what caught my attention was what lay below it. For there, at right-angles to a grating set into the pavement, was an elliptical basement window, covered with a prison-like iron grille.
The echoes were unmistakable.
Sandycombe Lodge.
The Bay of Baiae.
Thursday
Six days – almost a week – since I last opened this journal. Six days in a darkened room, with Mrs. Davidson almost always at my bedside. Six days of chattering teeth, and a thirst that would not be satisfied, and delirious dreams – of which I can remember almost nothing, save that for some reason I felt horrified by the thinness of my own sheet, which I experienced not only as a chill against the skin, but also as a sick numbness in my mouth, and as a kind of warped moral quality, as if it were the work of the devil.
I should not have gone to Maiden Lane. That is what Dr. Hampson says. To get wet in such an insanitary place, when I was already tired from days of reading and writing and staying up half the night, was little short of madness. The fever could well have proved fatal. I must think myself lucky, and treat it as a salutary warning.
I try to do as he says, and thank God with a grateful heart. Too often, though, I think of it as a week lost, and of how easily I might have avoided losing it, rather than as a life gained.
But at least today I was finally able to send a note to Walter. I excused myself from recounting all my adventures, on the grounds that I am still too weak to write at length. Which is, indeed, true enough; but I cannot deny that I am also aware of a certain reluctance in myself to tell him everything, though I am at a loss to explain it. Am I just being petty-minded and mean-spirited, or will I be more forthcoming once I am confident about my own conclusions?
Tuesday
On Sunday I worked for two hours – yesterday four – today six. Dr. Hampson would not approve, but I must note down my thoughts while they are still in my mind.
There will always be mysteries about Turner. And yet I feel I have come closer to the truth than I could have possibly hoped only a month ago.
What follows is no more than conjecture; but does it not make sense of what we know?
His first memories of the world were of a dark basement, and of a wild, uncontrollable woman who terrified him. She could not give him the love and comfort that any child must crave from his mother – and yet he was powerless before her, and could not escape.
Any wonder, then, that he seems to have had a lifelong horror of intimacy? Or that in later life he painted women not as living individuals, with all the wondrous beauty and variety that he found in landscape, but rather as pale, inert objects – corpses, or dolls, or the dummies he remembered seeing in his father’s window, which had no power to hurt him?
Any wonder, too, that basements and cellars and caverns were always especially sinister for him (think how all those stories of dragons and monsters in caves must have struck his childish mind!), and associated in his work with menace and ruin? Perhaps that is why, when he came to design his own house, he effectively hid the basement out of sight, so excluding its troubling presence from the light-filled rooms where he lived and worked. (Is this what Walter saw when we went to Sandycombe Lodge? Did it make him suppose that Turner was trying to conceal some shameful secret, rather than the painful memory of his own childhood?)
To the same cause, I think, we may ascribe the beginnings of Turner’s taste for mystery and elusiveness. To be at home, as a boy – or in any place where his whereabouts were definitely known by his mother – was to risk, at any moment, having his fragile world invaded and destroyed by a hurricane. Hence his early decision to move to the other end of Hand Court, and then – when he could – to Harley Street. Hence his insistence on privacy, and his anger at being disturbed. Hence his travels, perhaps, and his reputation for reclusiveness, and his flitting back and forth between two or three places, often without letting even those closest to him know exactly where he was.
What now of the pictures? Does what I have learned help me to say anything more about them?
I think it does. For might not the genesis of all those storms and shipwrecks and avalanches lie in his mother’s madness? (Is it even possible to see, perhaps, in those bleeding suns and dripping sea-monsters, a tortured reflection of her eventual fate?)
The tempests he could not subdue at home he sought to portray – and so to master – in his paintings. This may seem fanciful; and yet is it not a very natural human impulse?
At the same time, paint gave him mastery of another world: a glorious, sun-filled Eden where, for a while, he could take refuge. But ‘in the midst of life, we are in death’. Is that not the meaning of The Bay of Baiae, and all those other ruin-infested landscapes? Flee and work and hide as you may, sooner or later the outbursts of a disordered mind and a violent nature, or merely the ineluctable progress of Time and decay, will find you out and destroy you.
We know he had friends – men and women who were able to take him as they found him, and offer him some of the domestic comfort and security he could not find in his own home. These people aroused in him what were perhaps his strongest human emotions – feelings of gratitude and affection so intense that in many cases (Amelia Bennett’s father; Walter Fawkes; Lord Egremont) they seem to have been undiminished even by death itself.
But what of his family?
His art provided his family – a substitute for the human family which (aside from his father) he never had as a child, and never acquired as an adult. Did not Amelia Bennett say he spoke of his pictures as his ‘children’, and mourned them when they were gone? Did not Caro Bibby use the same image, in her description of his gallery? Might it not have been the intensity of his parental feelings that drove him to treat the unfortunate engraver, Farrant, with such uncharacteristic harshness? – for any mother may become a tyrant when she feels her young are threatened. Even gentle Laura, I am certain, would kill, if she had to, to protect Florrie and little Walter.
The idea holds, I think, when we turn to the Royal Academy. Surely his concern for its affairs and traditions, and the deep (if eccentric) seriousness with which he took his obligations as a teacher there, suggest that he felt bound to it by ties far stronger than mere self-interest – as if it were his fellow-practitioners, rather than his parents and uncles and cousins, who constituted the body which most profoundly defined him, and which commanded his most abiding loyalty?
We know that – whether or not he liked them, and whether or not he admired their work – he refused to criticize other artists, and so inflict on them the pain he had suffered himself. Such heroic restraint – which must have been immensely hard to maintain in the gossipy, back-biting, hothouse atmosphere of the Academy – is surely consistent with the idea that he viewed them more as relations (the tiresome aunt we loathe, but must nonetheless tolerate for the sake of family unity) than as professional rivals?
To whom do we leave our possessions? To our families.
Did not Sir Charles say that Turner’s will left his ‘children’ to the nation, and his fortune to provide
for his ‘brother’ artists in distress?
Such despair. Such loneliness. Such bitterness. Such devotion. Such meanness. Such generosity.
Such hope that he might at length be understood.
To take such a man, at the end of his days, and by patience and kindness and devotion to overcome his suspicion, and penetrate the dark thickets that have grown up about his heart, and free the love imprisoned there – that is no mean achievement.
Poor Turner.
His poor mother.
Good Mrs. Booth.
Wednesday
An idle morning. Tired from yesterday.
This afternoon Elizabeth Eastlake called, to ask after my health. My mind was still full of Turner; and so eager was I to put my conclusions to the test that I thoughtlessly started to tell her about them over tea. By the time I realized how foolish I was being, it was too late to stop; and I blundered on, desperately hoping I could still somehow avoid the trap that I had created for myself.
But no sooner had I finished than she drew me into it. Giving no indication of whether or not she agreed with what I had said, she asked:
‘These are your views, or your brother’s?’
‘Both of ours,’ I said, having already decided that this was the lesser of two evils. ‘But predominantly his, naturally.’
In reality, of course, Walter has not even heard them yet; and – as I am only too uncomfortably aware – may well disown them when he has. But the only alternative would have been to claim them entirely as my own, and so risk suggesting that the book’s central conception – if he does accept them – is more mine than his, which would be a devastating blow to his pride.
I am not sure, even so, that she believed me; for she searched my face intently, and there was a caustic edge in her voice as she said:
‘Well, he has certainly made great progress since we last spoke. Remarkable to think that it came merely from sitting in Cumberland, and reflecting. Something in the air, perhaps.’ She smiled. ‘At all events, please give him my congratulations, and tell him this is exactly what I had hoped for. Perhaps you and he would care to come to dinner with us next week, and discuss his ideas further?’