Birdman's Wife

by Melissa Ashley

  ‘Call me Edward,’ he said, letting my hand go. ‘It’s just a winter niggle. Nothing I cannot master, I assure you.’ He gave me an infectious smile, recalling our first meeting.

  ‘If you say so,’ I said sceptically. ‘Please, if you feel ill, you must tell me. It is no trouble. We can resume when you feel better.’

  Lear nodded, dismissing my concern. He glanced around the room, his eyes shifting from one sloped desk to the other. He removed his hat, his hair its customary floppy mess, and clutched his battered artist’s valise, as if unsure where to place it.

  I moved to take the valise and pointed to his new subject: ‘John has found a mount of a golden eagle for you to start with.’

  ‘It’s magnificent,’ said Lear, playfully returning the eagle’s stern gaze with one of his own. He pulled a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles from a case in his pocket and fixed them on his nose, grinning at me. ‘I’ve been studying your prints from A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains,’ he remarked, as I fussed at my desk. ‘I cannot tell you how impressed I am with your industry. It took me two years to draw forty parrots; and here you are, banging out eighty plates in under half the time. You must lend me your recipe.’

  ‘You are too kind. I learned much from observing your techniques. Indeed, I plan to learn even more as we work alongside each other.’

  As Lear sharpened his pencil, I explained the task John had set for us. My husband was starting our European project with a set of raptor plates and wanted us to begin preliminary sketches that we might later work into designs.

  Lear straightened in his chair and raised his pencil, as if he was poised to start a race. ‘Shall we?’ he challenged.

  I picked up my own pencil, holding it in the air. ‘One, two, three,’ I said, giggling, ‘go!’

  As if threatened by the clock, I began a quick sketch of the red-footed falcon I had been given to draw. However, it did not take me long to realise that Lear had not yet started his sketch. Rather, he began a meticulous study of his specimen, turning it this way and that to observe it from every possible angle. He removed his spectacles and, taking a monocle from his drawing case, he pressed it to his left eye, squinting, leaning in close to examine the eagle’s legs and talons. He discarded the magnifier and tucked the hooked ends of his spectacles behind his ears, bit his pencil, and started to make lines on his paper.

  I stared at my mount, its wings spread and raised, as if ready to take to the air. Its white tail was banded with dark rings, and brown flecks decorated its pale apricot chest. I examined the teardrop-shaped markings beneath its eyes. Although I felt somewhat self-conscious in the presence of such an immensely talented artist, I stuck to my own approach, soon losing myself in my habit of rapidly sketching my first impressions.

  ‘Let’s compare,’ said Lear, laying down his pencil. He showed me his study of the eagle’s bill and head, the brow over its eye, its open mouth and dark nostrils, the bristles at the base of its hooked beak. What I found most interesting about the drawing, if I put aside its canny proportions and the confidence of Lear’s lines, was the detail he gave to each individual feather. It was as if the bird had fluffed out its plumage and the disturbed feathers had not quite settled back into place. His skill was outstanding.

  ‘May I see yours?’ asked Lear. I had drawn the feathers of the tail and wing of the falcon with accuracy. However, Lear thought that the raptor’s eyes and the shape of its crown were slightly out of kilter. ‘Focus on your subject’s eyes,’ he suggested. ‘Make them the centre of the composition and, from that point, think where you want your viewer’s gaze to travel.’

  ‘That’s helpful,’ I said. Comparing my efforts to Lear’s, I felt a little depressed by the effects he’d achieved with just a handful of strokes. My own approach seemed overly formal, a little tight, if I were to be brutally honest.

  ‘One day I’ll take you to see some live birds,’ said Lear. ‘Nothing substitutes for the practice of observing them going about their routines. Learning how their bodies move, studying them preen and play, capturing them as they take flight or dip their bills in a pond of water to drink.’

  He was right. I’d not been giving enough thought to the life my specimen had lived, surveying fields from its eyrie for movements, swooping on mice and voles and bringing them to its nest, tearing apart the flesh to feed its young. In my anxiety to produce a scientifically accurate specimen, I’d forgotten to use my imagination, treating the model as it appeared on my studio perch: a stuffed mount.

  ‘Do not look so perturbed,’ said Lear. ‘Your sketch shows much promise. I admire the grace of your pencil, your care at rendering detail. You’ve made fine lines with the feathering around the falcon’s crown, and it works.’

  ‘You are so very kind,’ I said, smiling at him. I knew that the only way to learn from one’s shortcomings was to have them scrutinised without mercy. I felt immensely grateful to Lear for his generosity and for inspiring me to be a better artist.

  Lear came to draw for John three times a week, arriving at the studio trembling with excitement to get back to work.

  ‘I have taken your portrait,’ he said one afternoon, handing me a piece of paper.

  ‘Oh, Edward, you devil.’ It was a rather dubious honour to join the legions of men and women Lear had caricatured, not to mention himself, whom he never spared. Indeed, he had turned my sketching self into a cartoon. I had a fierce concentration in my expression and my hair was falling out of its pins. I had a smudge of paint on my eyebrow and, most impertinent of all, a belly as round as a balloon. I laughed as I pressed the drawing to my chest. He may have made me into a caricature but it was such an affectionate portrait that I would treasure it.

  Among the many other admirers of my friend’s work was Lord Edward Stanley, the Earl of Derby, who had been president of the Zoological Society when Lear first sought permission to sketch in its aviary and who had now become his patron. Lord Stanley had invited Lear to sketch his private menagerie of exotic birds and animals at Knowsley Hall, his family’s estate near Liverpool, which meant I would have to do without my drawing partner for a month. When Lear departed, I realised how much I relied on him to get me through the afternoons of sketching. My confinement was drawing near and I had managed only a few respites from drawing so I might fit out the nursery or take walks with Joanne and Henry while I was still able. The day that Lear returned, I had to stop myself from rushing to grasp his hand and hug him. He wore a new coat and shoes, and he brought stories of Lord Stanley being ferried about the grounds of his stately home in a velvet jacket and a beaver hat, borne on a gilded chair.

  That afternoon Lear was to sketch a Dalmatian pelican, a dusty mount borrowed from a private collector that John had done his best to freshen with a brush and new set of glass eyes. He had provided a key showing the colours of its soft parts: its red eye-ring, the charcoal webs of its feet, the mustard yellow gular sack. I was finishing the template of a pair of great grebes, attempting to find satisfaction in the colour I had mixed to detail the rust-orange of the male’s crown.

  I washed my brush, sighing in frustration. Lear asked if there was anything wrong. I tried to think what had made me restless. ‘I was so excited to see you, but now that you’re in here I find I cannot concentrate on my painting.’

  ‘Here, look at this,’ he said, passing me a leather-bound sketchbook. ‘It’s an album of insect and flower drawings and paintings that I made as a boy. You might be interested in how it shows the development of my skills. It all comes down to observation and practice.’

  ‘I am very much intrigued, even flattered, to be shown this,’ I said, smiling. I opened the fragile pages, moving closer to my desk lamp to see more clearly. My breath caught at the exquisite study he had made of a chrysanthemum. The texture of the petals was so detailed, it was as if he had held a magnifying glass up to the flower and learned the secrets of its flesh. No line or fold of detail of the flower was overlooked. On another page, a depiction of a wilt
ed tuber rose, each seed in its withered heart rendered; every vein in the wings of a pollen-heavy bee. Greedily I turned the pages, feasting on Lear’s exquisite use of perspective, tone and colour.

  ‘The problem with these drawings,’ I said, ‘is that they make me even more restless. I want to run outside and observe afresh the beetles and slugs and moths moving about our summer garden.’

  Lear told me that his older sister, Ann, had been his first sketching tutor. She, too, was talented. They started out painting fans together, barge art and vase decorations. The third-youngest child in a brood of twenty-one, Lear had been just thirteen when his father was thrown into debtor’s prison, forcing him to earn a living immediately. Willing to try anything, Lear made himself known at morgue demonstrations, painting grotesque reproductions of flayed and peeled anatomy for notorious doctors. He sat in on amputations, sketching and rendering beautiful the bony frame of the human skeleton, the red tree of its circulatory system. He had been in rooms with dressed heads, set in formaldehyde, prepared for student physicians to learn their profession. But Lear could not stomach the viscera and began instead to hang around coach stops and inns, accepting a penny here and there, whatever amount he was offered, for his watercolour flowers and insects.

  Lear threw down his pencil. ‘Shall we run away, then? Sneak out? I’m sure your beloved husband has kept you slaving away up here while I’ve been gone. There is a place I have longed to show you. We could visit this afternoon.’

  I agreed without hesitation, feeling a wonderful sense of rebellion. ‘Let’s creep away. John is so absorbed in his accounts he won’t even know we’re gone.’ I rang the bell for Daisy.

  ‘What is it, ma’am?’

  ‘Fetch our coats,’ I whispered, ‘and be quick about it.’

  Lear awakened a daring spirit in me. He also inspired me. Despite all his trials, he managed to rise above it all and still create sublime art.

  We would visit the zoological gardens, I thought, full of anticipation. But when the hackney we had hired rumbled down an unfamiliar route, I began to grow nervous. ‘Where are you taking us?’ I asked, prodding Daisy in the shoulder and turning my head to catch her eye.

  ‘It is a surprise. You won’t be disappointed,’ said Lear.

  I started to regret leaving my studio without forethought. But then, looming before the carriage rose the new brick and glass pavilion of the Covent Garden Market. My spirits picked up. ‘We must buy a treat for the children,’ I said to Daisy.

  Lear did not allow us long to linger in the bustling trade halls where we were barely able to hear ourselves think over the din of the hawkers. He ushered us past arrays of fruits and vegetables piled in great pyramids. We walked through the blooming daffodils, tulips, roses, wallflowers and carnations of the flower market, drawing deep, delicious breaths.

  Finally he led us to a row of shopfronts at the very end of the enormous hall. As with the food pavilion, pungent smells reached our noses before our eyes had the chance to take in the merchandise: scents of grain and hay, raw meat, dirt and manure. Closer, we heard the shrieks of parrots, the murmuring of pigeons, the tremulous singing of canaries and larks.

  Leaning against the tile of the first shopfront was a man in a scruffy cap, shirt untucked, lazily smoking a cigar. He saw Lear, gave him a businesslike nod, and tossed away the cigar. We were swept into the shop. Daisy held her ears to the deafening mewls of cats, the muttering of monkeys and yapping puppies. Inside glass tanks a rainbow aquarium of fish drifted; fat lizards dozed and spiders the size of one’s palm crawled in glass domes lined with earth. A father and daughter examined a pair of American ferrets, a young man inspected a warty-skinned toad, an elderly woman in mustard gloves tickled the jowls of a shaggy-coated cat. Two grimy boys, their hands making emphatic gestures, darted between the aisles of the caged animals, shouting prices.

  ‘However did you find this place?’ I asked Lear.

  ‘Mr Selby introduced me, to make drawings for the Zoological Society’s brochures.’

  ‘Why have you brought us here? Are you to buy me one of those horrid spiders?’

  ‘We’ve come to draw.’ Lear beamed. ‘I know the proprietor. I give him a few shillings and he leaves me alone. So, take your pick, what would you like to study?’

  ‘Are there goldfinches?’ I asked on a whim. Sketching the red-faced creatures flitting about, preening, pecking at seed and perching on their roosts would be a great delight.

  A sharp-eared huckster must have overheard, and before I knew it Daisy and I were led to a brightly lit corner of the shop.

  ‘Here, Elizabeth, take this,’ said Lear, thrusting a pencil and several pieces of paper at me.

  I murmured my thanks distractedly, too struck by the spectacle of the male European goldfinch’s plumage to comment further. He was the prettiest fellow I had ever seen. Spurred by the bird’s energetic flutter, I sketched him drinking from a shallow bowl; pecking at seed; opening his beak to trill, his white throat trembling, and, quickly, as he momentarily returned to his perch to preen. Lacking colour, I made notes on his magnificently coloured plumage: forehead and throat, deep red; wings, black and yellow; tail, black with white tips; eyes, black; bill, the palest pink.

  I was enchanted by the finch’s compact perfection and turned to Lear to enquire what he wished to sketch. But my tutor had snuck away. I found him at the other end of the shop, Daisy at his side; he was making a study of a snowy owl, with its magnificent dappled plumage and fierce yellow eyes.

  I could not thank Lear enough for our excursion. Coincidentally, both species we had studied were to be included in The Birds of Europe,so our sneaking off turned out to be useful. My creative spark renewed, I returned to my workroom inspired to practise drawing live subjects whenever possible, and, most importantly, to hone my skills at composition. When I felt in need of a break, I summoned Daisy to sit with me in Golden Square and observe the rooks grouped on the rooftops, as if guarding the busy thoroughfare. I studied the flight patterns of the sparrows, how they held their wings; the pecking and soft squabbling of the dovecote pigeons, nibbling at crumbs.

  We did not plan it so, but while working on The Birds of Europe, Lear gravitated towards depicting waterfowl and raptors, cranes, owls and storks, while I favoured the songbirds.

  The challenge of painting delivered me from worrying about the progress of my pregnancy. Amid the flurry of plate production, the time of my lying-in drew closer. To ensure I did not grow overtired, John and I elected to hire a wet nurse. But several days before I was due to give birth, the baby stopped moving. Dr Russell was called to administer an enema; however, it was too late. Young Edward, whom we named for our dear friend Mr Lear, never drew a breath. He lay perfect as a swan in my arms, as if merely sleeping. It was almost impossible to believe that his eyes would not simply flicker open. John, called to the birthing room, broke into sobs upon seeing my face. He rushed to the bed, taking Edward from my arms to hold him close.

  The weeks following Edward’s loss disappeared. I spent much time in bed, Joanne bringing me Henry to cuddle, though it was hard for me to muster any interest in him or anyone else. John took his meals with me but in strained silence. We were so shocked that for a time neither of us was able to comfort the other.

  One afternoon I opened my eyes to find Lear crouched at my bedside. Daisy had smuggled him into my room.

  ‘Oh, Eliza,’ he said, taking my limp hand. ‘I am so sorry. Remember, you’re always in my thoughts, even as I squint and stroke for your beast of a husband.’ He looked at me intently. ‘I know it may not seem wise but I implore you to visit your studio, even if just for an hour?’

  ‘I cannot,’ I said, turning to face the window. ‘It’s too soon.’

  ‘Eliza,’ said Lear.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Please, can you do it for John? For you? Your husband dares not ask. He’s at his wits’ end.’

  ‘I just need time.’ I sighed.

  ‘Maybe this will cheer
you up,’ said Lear, smiling. He bent towards the floor, bringing a folio case onto the bed. ‘You can keep it near you, to remember our project, if you will.’

  I twisted around in the sheet. ‘What is it?’ I said. I lacked the will to be interested in anything outside my own misery.

  Lear opened the folio. Inside, fresh from the colourer’s workshop, was the finished lithograph of the Dalmatian pelican he had sketched at my side so many months ago. There were two figures represented, a male in the foreground and the female behind. The brilliant yellow-orange of the gular sack, the deep pouch the pelican used for dip netting, provided the central colour for the illustration. The soft red eye-ring moved the viewer’s eye along the red lines running the length of its upper mandible. There before me glowed the full potential of our collaboration. The feathers at the back of the pelican’s neck were like the fur of a wet cat and a brilliant creamy colour; its wings, the same rich shade, were tucked away at rest. I reached out my fingers and stroked the hand-coloured print.

  ‘You must continue what you have started,’ said Lear. ‘You must. Both John and I need your talents, not to mention your delightful company.’

  ‘I will think on it,’ I said. ‘Please leave me now. I need to rest.’

  Lear’s Dalmatian pelican stirred the memory of a story I’d heard at Sunday school. The pelican was revered as a Christian emblem of suffering and sacrifice. In our children’s bible, there was an illustration of a pelican with a bleeding breast, staring at its dead young twins. The picture, to my child’s eyes, was like viewing a carriage accident. I did not want to look and yet could not compel myself to turn away. The pelican, angered by the greed of her hatchlings, had struck them with her great bill. They fell to the ground in death. Regretful, she tried to revive them, making a wound in her breast and letting the blood drip down her feathers and into their open mouths.

  My nerves tingled at the memory, the hairs on my arms rising. I felt an extraordinary pain for the mother whose young had perished. And yet I was troubled by the thought that she might bring her babies back to life. I would feel my sons with me always, twin golden strands spun by Rumpelstiltskin, plaited into the very networks of my veins. But only in our dreams could we bring about the resurrection of our beloved dead.