Birdman's Wife

by Melissa Ashley

  Daisy began to bring her children to visit me, and their easy laughter and innocence slowly rekindled a sense of hope in me. The long winter months passed and summer arrived, bringing a welcome lift to my spirits that could not have been more timely, for it seemed that I might be pregnant once again.

  While I struggled to overcome my grief, John had thrown himself into work. He was still filling his days and often nights with research and writing, though without the boundless energy and enthusiasm that used to sweep us all up in his wake. He had stoically finished a commission for the King, embarking upon the challenge of stuffing his pet giraffe. It was said the King was so fond of the giraffe that after an especially trying day taking petitions he would seat himself outside the animal’s enclosure with his newspaper and pipe to watch it being fed its evening meal. A gift from an Egyptian Pasha, the giraffe had been transported across the Sudanese desert on the back of a camel. Although its Arab handlers fed it leaves of mimosa and pails of fresh goat’s milk each day, the rough manner in which the animal had been lashed to the camel’s back damaged the young creature’s pelvic joints so badly that it was never able to stand in its pen.

  Like many who dwelled in the capital, I was devastated when the King’s beloved giraffe died. Grieving children visited Windsor Castle with their mothers and governesses to lay wreaths of flowers in mourning. The King donated his former pet to the public, commissioning John to transform it into a taxidermied mount. While my husband was honoured to receive such a prestigious assignment, his degree of interest in the project was unusually reserved due to its timing. His grief may not have been as open as mine, but it was no less real.

  In the wake of our son’s death, the light-heartedness and intimacy that had strengthened our bond in the early days of our marriage and brought such pleasure seemed to have deserted us. But just as John would never falter in his dogged pursuit of knowledge, neither would he give up on finding a way to renew my old sense of purpose. I finally gave in to his goading and accompanied him on an outing to the zoological gardens. He was eager to introduce me to a young artist he thought I would like very much, hoping he might entice me back to my drawing. As soon as we arrived John propelled me through the crowds of visitors directly to the bird aviary.

  ‘There he is,’ John announced, ‘the extraordinary Mr Edward Lear.’

  A young man sat on a wooden chair inside the macaw cage, an array of drawing materials scattered at his feet. I watched as he swept his hand under the fronds of an African palm, enticing the indigo parrot he was making a study of to move closer. A drawing board lay across his knee, a pencil clamped in his teeth. His rolled-back shirtsleeve revealed a bony arm, white as driftwood. It was open day on Fridays and caped governesses and gentlewomen, children in twill suits and ruffle-sleeved dresses pressed their inquisitive faces against the wrought-iron partitions of the parrot aviary. They wished to capture each movement of this crumple-shirted, bespectacled curiosity everyone was talking about. Lear, who could hardly have been more than twenty, fixed his audience with a clownish grin and dipped his hand into his purple waistcoat pocket. His palm outstretched, he beckoned to the macaw. The bird, large as a well-fed cat, clambered out from the palm frond it had been hiding behind and climbed onto the artist’s shoulder. The parrot walked in jerky sideways movements, a feathered crab, towards Lear’s offering of food. Neck stretched, it snatched a seed, expertly levering off the casing. Glancing at the crowd, the parrot husked the skin, chewed the nut and opened its beak for more. It ate another seed, and then another and another until, out of supplies, Lear dusted his hands, pale flakes coating the ground of the pen. Leaning forward, the artist puckered his lips and made a loud kissing sound. The parrot drew in close to Mr Lear as if to return his affection, to the crowd’s enthusiastic applause.

  ‘That creature belonged to Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of the Zoological Society,’ whispered John. ‘It’s survived captivity for three decades.’

  ‘What remarkable plumage,’ I said, unable to look away from the macaw’s yellow eye ring and cheek patch, which contrasted magnificently with its bluish-purple feathers.

  ‘Can you imagine mixing the pigment to paint it?’ said John. ‘You’d have to come up with a sort of sheen, to catch how the sun glints off its back.’

  ‘Maybe we should ask your friend?’ I ventured. I lifted John’s gloved hand into mine and smiled. ‘I hope you’ll forgive me, but I find Mr Lear a more fascinating exhibit than his parrot.’

  Lear’s shirt was a little baggy, his coat and pants ruffled, and there were marks of charcoal on his neck. But he had a mad, infectious spirit. A walking cane, the handle carved into a pelican’s head and beak, was propped near the gate. I presumed it was his. Lear’s shirt had droppings on the shoulder and he continually pressed his small round spectacles to the top of his fleshy nose. His hat was battered in the crown, his ink-stained fingers nimble and constantly in motion.

  ‘He’s to sketch all of London’s caged parrots,’ said John.

  ‘What a wonderful project,’ I said.

  John explained that at the Zoological Society’s last meeting, Lear had made a presentation of two life-size, hand-painted lithographs of parrots to the assembled guests. One was a South American turquoise macaw and the other a black cockatoo from Western Australia. Lear had learned of the society through the renowned ornithologist Mr John Selby, for whom he had sketched many specimens. The young artist petitioned the gentlemen of the society for permission to obtain a visitor’s pass so that he might access the aviaries at Regent’s Park. The zoological gardens were home to an extensive collection of parrots, which he wished to draw and lithograph, creating lasting records of each species. The quality of Lear’s macaw and cockatoo plates, and his reputation for providing excellent sketches for Mr Selby, persuaded the Zoological Society’s members of his credentials to take on such an ambitious project. A ballot was taken and he was granted a special pass.

  My husband’s assistant, John Gilbert, appeared from behind a tangle of fronds, bearing a key. ‘Ready, Mr Gould?’

  ‘Shall we?’ asked John, his hand on my back, urging me forward.

  The gate of the aviary was unlocked, and Gilbert beckoned us through a small passage. A clang of iron secured us in the enormous cage with Lear and the macaw.

  Lear stood to greet us, his arms stretched towards John. ‘It’s so wonderful to see a fellow gentleman of science. I’ve been working well all week but come Friday, when the blessed public are admitted, I have the concentration of an aardvark. Or is it a sloth? A gibbous monkey? Whatever extravagantly stupid mammal you can think of.’

  ‘I find hedgehogs rather dull,’ I offered. ‘What about a pretty star-nosed mole?’

  ‘You are quite right. On some days I’m blind as a mole so far as fine drawing is concerned. I suffer from the most dreadful eye strain.’ While Lear spoke, he kept John’s hands clasped in his, though stooping slightly because of his height.

  ‘It’s just as well we’re here to assist your escape,’ said John. ‘You do recall the visit we scheduled?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Lear cheerfully, scratching at the charcoal smeared across his cheek.

  ‘I’m to interrogate you about this lithography business. It’s got me up in the night, my head crazed with plans.’

  ‘Are you not forgetting someone, Mr Gould?’ asked Lear, glancing in my direction.

  ‘Do excuse me,’ said John. ‘I’m a little carried away.’

  ‘Really?’ Lear smiled. ‘How very unlike you.’

  I had to stop myself from laughing. It was so cheeky of him. I offered my hand to the artist. ‘Hello, sir. I’m Mrs Elizabeth Gould, and I’m very pleased to meet you.’

  ‘I suspect we’ll get along splendidly,’ said Lear, grasping my hand and holding it in his warm palms. ‘I can tell already you’re the perfect complement to your husband’s enthusiastic ways.’

  ‘I feel I know you already,’ I said. ‘John’s been rather keen that I should vie
w your illustrations.’ I did not tell him that what I liked even more was his gentle manner of teasing John. I was unsure if my husband noticed Lear’s subtle jibes and politely ignored them, but whatever the case, Lear’s humour allowed me to view John’s absorption in his projects with indulgence rather than my occasional exasperation.

  ‘While I’ve got you, John, do you mind helping out with this blasted measuring business?’ said Lear. ‘We tried with just the two of us, but I’m too clumsy apparently.’

  Gilbert addressed John, ‘It will take but a minute with your assistance.’

  ‘Mind this,’ said John, handing me the lacquered black case he’d been guarding. It contained a blossom-feathered parakeet, rescued from the cabinets of a deceased collector named Mrs Colin Brown, which John had purchased for a steal at auction. Sharing in Lear’s enthusiasm, John promised him access to any interesting parrots, or members of the family Psittacidae, that might pass through the doors of his office.

  Gilbert gave John a measuring tape and took a handful of grapes from his shirt pocket to calm the parrot. The squawking and flapping animal was unable to resist the treat and it relaxed, tucking away its wings. Whispering and stroking the back of its neck, Gilbert caught the macaw firmly in his hands and unfolded its right wing. John moved quickly, running the tape from the tip of the shoulder to the end of the longest primary feather. He called the figure out to Lear to record in his notebook. Lear planned to represent the parrot life size and needed measurements to sketch the correct proportions.

  Measuring complete, we farewelled the indigo macaw with its exquisite plumage. Lear gathered his sketching equipment and John his lacquered box. Gilbert rustled his keys, unlatching the gate and signalling with his hands for the crowd to allow us passage. A woman holding a green parasol and matching gloves stepped aside, pulling her three chatting daughters close, like a goose its goslings.

  It was the height of summer and families had spread picnics on woollen blankets across the extensive lawns. Around the lake, swans, ducks and peacocks paraded and preened. Clumps of spectators gathered before the animal pavilions. There was the monkey house and a beaver enclosure where the single inhabitant regarded his interlocutors with a lazy intelligence. An awed group clustered at the bear pit, holding their breath as the animal climbed a pole resembling a street lamp to reach a steak mounted on a pike at the top.

  Several yards from the park we struggled onboard a horse-bus and took our places, crushed together on a single hard seat. Lear bent his lanky frame and held his case of drawings and pens close, his shoulders gathered at a strange angle, his hair a thin pale cloud.

  The bus lurched forward, scattering Lear’s papers on the floor. Several passengers helped to return them. He sat uncomfortably, his drawings across his lap. I peered at the top sketch, showing the macaw perched on Gilbert’s shoulder, its long tail fallen like a purple braid down his chest.

  ‘May I?’ I asked Lear, indicating the drawing below.

  ‘Of course.’ In this sketch, the macaw hung upside down from a branch, its extraordinary beak removing the skin from a piece of fruit.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked, amused to discover that in the margins Lear had made studies of the silken-wrapped ladies and gentlemen in dress hats observing him at work. He had sketched a matron in billowing sleeves and ribboned bonnet, stuffing a sandwich into her mouth with glorious abandon.

  ‘It’s my secret amusement,’ said Lear. ‘One simply cannot draw birds all day long!’

  Lear apologised for the state of his top-floor rooms, explaining that he shared the rent with his older sister, Ann, who pressed laundry for a living. The drawing room was taken over by sheets and pillowcases, shirts and bloomers, piled onto every available piece of furniture. Lithograph prints were spread across the remaining space, making me think of a silk farm where white moths, having emerged from their yellow pods, clung to twigs and held out their papery wings to dry.

  ‘Here they are,’ said Lear, leading us to the kitchen table where several jam jars sat on folded cloths, securing the corners of two prints to the wooden surface. The species of parrot depicted was an Indian ringneck, its greenish yellow head cocked to one side, a ring of scarlet around its neck and bluish strokes on the wing tips. The second print, of the same subject, had not yet been tinted, the brown ink of the lithographic pressing contrasting with the creamy paper.

  John peered with great concentration at the uncoloured print. ‘You must tell me about this lithography caper,’ he said. ‘I need to know all your tricks.’

  ‘It’s not a new print-making method if that’s what you’re asking,’ said Lear. ‘My printer tells me it’s been used industrially for half a century. Reproducing patterns on textiles – muslins, drapery and whatnot.’

  ‘It’s hardly known in zoological circles,’ countered John. ‘Which leaves me a little puzzled.’

  ‘Mr Swainson, your colleague, has been conducting experiments in the technique for some time.’

  ‘Really?’ said John, raising a brow at me. Mr Swainson was one of John’s archrivals in the collecting trade. ‘The secretive beggar. Must be something to do with the shipload of specimens he brought back from Brazil.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Lear. ‘Twenty-eight thousand, if I recall.’

  ‘And he needs to publish a catalogue before some other collector beats him to it, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, that’s exactly it,’ said Lear. ‘But the costs of an engraver for such a large catalogue are prohibitive. So he’s been trialling lithography as a cheaper option to reproduce his drawings.’

  ‘Whatever the medium, I fail to see how it can improve his lacklustre attempts to render his subjects,’ said John. ‘Now you, Mr Lear, are a different story.’

  ‘Do not give up all hope with Swainson,’ Lear argued. ‘It’s my firm belief that lithography captures the fur, the skin, plumage, the gleam of an eye, with far more accuracy than etching. The porous limestone absorbs the softest impression. If you examine the print before colour is applied, you can see how I’m able to make many gradations of tone. There is much freedom in shading, in the depiction of fine lines.’

  ‘It’s incredibly exciting,’ I said, peering at the uncoloured press of the ringneck. I told Lear how far the etched plate of my tapaculo had wandered from my original sketch. ‘If I were to have another opportunity to compose a plate, I should be eager to try this medium.’

  ‘You must,’ said Lear. He explained that unlike etching and engraving, with lithography there was no difficult stylus to control, no moving of a metal plate. The tool employed was a simple pencil, or pastel crayon, sharpened with a knife and fitted into a cork and swan quill. Any decent artist could learn to draw on the limestone printing blocks, which, after treatment with a weak acid wash, were doused with a sticky ink and fitted into a printing press.

  John was particularly excited about the business potential of the reproductive method, asking Lear about the public reception of the plates he’d designed. Lear said that on the strength of two coloured lithographic prints, he’d attracted twenty subscribers. He would call the collection Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots.

  ‘And your subscribers are gentlemen scientists?’ said John.

  ‘They’re members of the public,’ said Lear. ‘The mothers and daughters I coach in watercolour painting, for the most part. They tell their friends over sandwiches and my reputation moves in leaps and bounds from one plush Mayfair parlour to the next. They see lithographic illustrations as an exotic novelty, a dainty diversion, like their enthusiasm for scrying the future in their teacups.’

  ‘Extraordinary,’ said John, tracing his finger along the ringneck’s beak. He glanced at me across the table, his eyes bright with an idea. It was a welcome surprise to feel John’s regard beamed in my direction.

  ‘If I could attract sixpence more, I’d no longer make a loss,’ said Lear, rather despondently.

  ‘You should sell the entire monograph for one guinea,’ said J
ohn, slapping a palm on his knee. ‘A respectable price.’

  ‘It’s not about the pounds,’ said Lear. ‘I’m passionate about the actual parrots, about bringing them to life with ink and paint.’

  ‘It doesn’t hurt to make financial calculations,’ said John.

  Lear drew a pencil and notepaper from his front pocket and scratched for several moments. When finished, he passed the notebook to me. I blinked at the drawing of a miserable-looking pelican in a tailcoat. He flew with his bill open, the sterling notes stuffed in his pouch spilling over and fluttering away. ‘I’m afraid to admit it, Mr and Mrs Gould,’ said Lear, bumping his elbow on the table’s edge – indeed, he was rather clumsy – ‘but I’ve an atrocious head for business.’ Lear motioned to the coloured print of the Indian ringneck parrot, its yellow plumage so vibrant and intense that I could hardly look away. ‘I colour each plate myself,’ he explained.

  I was arrested by the confident brush strokes and the bird’s glistening eye, which seemed to return my gaze. I asked Lear how he achieved the effect.

  ‘Eggwhite and sugar,’ he said. ‘Like the ingredients for a macaroon, to sweeten the palates of my subscribers. So what do you think, Mrs Gould?’ Lear turned to me. ‘Would you care to become a subscriber?’

  The feather barbs, individually rendered, had me in mind of clusters of fish scales, of a chrysanthemum’s corolla. ‘You’ve married art and science, and produced an offspring with the strengths of both parents,’ I said. ‘You’ve caused each to surpass the other.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ said Lear. ‘Of the highest order, I might add.’

  ‘It’s heartfelt!’ I turned to John, who’d been following our exchange.

  ‘Put us down as subscribers to your monograph at once!’ John mock-commanded.