‘Whatever are you looking at?’ asked Mr Orleigh late one afternoon.
‘Forgive me. I was daydreaming.’ I had been thinking about the peculiar sunlight and landscape of New South Wales. But my reverie had trailed off, distracted by my portraitist at work.
Over the next few weeks, as Mr Orleigh laboured at bringing the elements of my likeness together, I began to carry out a private study of him. Perhaps it was the long hours of keeping still or, more likely, that my artist’s eye could not resist picturing him as one of my subjects.
Everything about him was overdone. His whiskers were twice as thick as those of my husband’s – and John’s had a reputation, at least in zoological circles. His moustache wax had been liberally applied and his teeth were a fraction too long. His puff-sleeved shirt showed pale striations like the downy plumage of the zebra duck – though where the duck sought camouflage among reeds, Mr Orleigh’s garments simply needed laundering. Mr Orleigh, like the toco toucan, seemed to wish to draw one’s attention. Of special interest were his movements at his easel. He would stand on one leg and, with a sudden jerk, make a decisive daub. But it was his habit of smearing mixers across his brow and chin that betrayed his membership of the pigment-grinding tribe.
Throughout my sittings, Mr Orleigh remained secretive about his masterpiece, refusing me even a tiny peep at the board he poked and dabbed at and frowned over. And yet the day arrived when he gave the announcement that he was ready to unveil the finished picture. I met his news with a mixture of trepidation and sadness. As was the convention in the course of business between a married woman and a young gentleman, the service’s conclusion dissolved all connection between us. I was to lose my great diversion and ally.
‘Please wait, Mr Orleigh,’ I said. ‘I’d like my husband to be present.’
‘But of course,’ he replied. ‘How foolish of me.’
An evening appointment was arranged for John to visit my portraitist’s studio. Mr Orleigh answered our knock wearing what I noticed with relief was a freshly laundered shirt. Little could be gauged of my husband’s thoughts. Only I knew that he was unsettled, though I was unsure why. It did not help that Mr Orleigh had made an unwitting blunder in placing his bottle of gin and tin of cigars – offered, but politely turned down – among the brushes and notes on his busy workbench, instead of on the sideboard. To my consternation, John refused to take off his gloves, which added to the tension in the room. While John looked every inch the gentleman, boots buffed, his trousers ironed, his cravat elaborately knotted, I knew it was not Mr Orleigh for whom John had made the effort. He was to present a paper to the Zoological Society about the grey falcon, which I had illustrated from the single specimen of the species procured in the Swan River colony by John Gilbert.
In some further confusion of manners, my portraitist seemed to be waiting for a cue.
‘Are we ready?’ asked John.
Without further ado, Mr Orleigh flipped back the curtain and I met the steady gaze of my counterpart in oils. I posed before a troubled sky, dressed in the silk gown with generous puffed sleeves. Gold earrings and chain accentuated my neck and jawline. My head had been positioned at the same tilt as Mr Orleigh’s early sketch. But this was where the similarity ended. My likeness radiated the calm authority of oils. Mr Orleigh had dredged the depths John liked to tease me about; my painted double regarded her audience with quiet confidence. This woman held an artist’s palette in her right hand; the fingers of her left gripped a brush. All in all, Lear’s colleague had created an impression that was more attractive than I dared hope, with a refinement and dignity I had not known I possessed.
My eyes sought Mr Orleigh’s. He could see at a glance how delighted I was with the portrait. I put my palms to my cheeks and felt their heat. Remembering my place, I broke his gaze and sought my husband, touching his wrist and steadying my limbs.
‘I can have it wrapped for you to take home this evening,’ said Mr Orleigh, pleased.
‘No need to go to any trouble,’ said John curtly. His hand was tucked between the third and fourth button of his coat, a gesture he made when his thoughts were unresolved.
‘I’ll have it sent by coach next week, then.’ Mr Orleigh twisted his moustache.
‘Thank you – it’s magnificent. You’ve made me very happy,’ I said.
But John’s lack of response to the painting hurt and disappointed me. He was silent in the hack, and while I wondered what had displeased him, I was too dejected and angry to pursue it. We rode the crowded streets in silence. I would have my say, but for now we went our separate ways, John to his meeting, while I continued home.
I revisited the scene over and over in my head as I waited for John to come back from his lecture. As soon as he returned to his office, I went to speak with him. He sat behind his desk, volumes of illustrated plates open in a fan around his field journal, the skins of a small species of passerine laid across several drawings for comparison. I stood at the entrance to his study, waiting for him to pause in his work and invite me in, but he laboured on as if I were not present. I cleared my throat.
John put his pen next to his inkwell and glanced up. He folded his arms, rocking back on his chair. He looked at me for a long moment before standing and coming around to the side of the desk.
‘I wish to speak with you,’ I said.
‘About the painting?’
‘Why, yes. Do you not like it?’
‘It’s an extraordinary likeness,’ said John. ‘You are very beautiful in it, very regal.’
‘But?’
‘You are a gentlewoman, Eliza,’ he said.
‘And you a gentleman,’ I replied.
‘You know I will always support you as my wife, as the mother of my children.’
‘And as your artist?’
‘Of course, of course.’ John sighed. ‘But does it have to be so obvious? The palette, the brushes? I am not quite sure if they are—’
‘Appropriate? Is that what you’re saying? But this is how I pass my days. I’m afraid I do not understand.’
‘Eliza, you’re not some bohemian living at the edge of poverty. I do not wish to confuse our clients. To cause controversy or, Lord knows it, offence.’
‘And how would you have me pose?’
John spoke slowly, choosing his words. ‘You could have your artist fellow paint out the palette and brushes.’
‘And replace them with what, precisely?’
‘I do not know, Eliza. He’s an artist, he can think of something.’
How strange, the vice of pride. In my mind I could understand John’s position – after all, it was shared by the vast majority of our class. But I felt bitterly disappointed by his lack of sensitivity for my position – dare I say it, for my sacrifices. It rankled that my husband did not seem to have the generosity of spirit to recognise my work as he might the work of his colleagues. It was as if in drawing attention to my illustrator’s labour, my portraitist had violated some unwritten code of feminine conduct.
‘It seems to me you would forbid me to publicly celebrate my profession.’
‘I don’t know what to say, Eliza. Your name is printed on every lithograph you design.’
‘It’s my initial, actually, and always shared with yours.’
‘Your work is respected and you are highly respected. I am not questioning that.’
‘Fine.’ I shook my head. ‘Have it your way.’
There would be no compromise here that would make either of us happy. There was nothing to be gained by arguing further. I would have to live with this. I bit down on my tongue.
‘How was your presentation? I hope my illustration of the grey falcon was useful.’ I stroked the wing of a striated pardalote, trying to calm my mind.
‘It was indeed. Thanks to Gilbert, I have learned the native name for the grey falcon – gwet – and its nickname is “ghost bird”,’ he said.
‘Like your ghost painter,’ I said.
‘Come now,’ said Joh
n. ‘We needn’t argue about this.’
I shrugged. ‘I suppose we will find a solution.’ I felt a wave of nausea.
‘Eliza, you know I could not be more proud of you, more thankful for your contributions. Without you—’
I leaned into the doorframe, mopping at the beads of sweat that had formed on my upper lip.
‘Is something wrong?’
‘Call for Daisy,’ I said, trying to catch my breath. ‘I feel ill. Tell her to bring something – a bowl, a pot, anything.’
Seeing my distress, John lunged for the only receptacle to hand on his desk, a large beer tankard, which he passed to me in the nick of time. I bent forward, spilling the contents of my supper into it.
The cramping in my middle parts was familiar. I had missed two cycles, but had passed it off as tiredness and overwork. I felt a sort of clamping around my heart, soft-fisted and fleshy. Not iron. Not tin. A feather-duster sensation in my abdomen. For a moment I indulged in a picture of my sickness increasing, of carrying myself, stooped in agony, to the chamber pot. The proliferation of blood. If this stitch could drop, I thought. Then the image vanished, and I felt ugly and filled with shame.
Light-headed, I vomited a second time. I do not recall much of the rest of the evening: the rustle of my skirt against John’s calf as he carried me up the stairs; the cold press of flannel against my forehead; the moon disappearing as the curtains were drawn. Around nine that night our physician arrived. A glass dropper was held to my lips, bringing pictures of enormous moths batting their silent wings on the ceiling. And then the oblivion of sleep.
After the night’s rest, I awoke resolved to double my output for the day. My laudanum-induced slumber created a thick hedge between my physical condition and the schedule of tasks that gave shape to the morning. I read the catechism to the children and then moved with quickened steps to the studio. I had experienced strange dreams, accompanied by a solution to John’s demand that the brush and palette in my portrait be painted over. What if Mr Orleigh were to paint a bird in their place? I removed my stationery set from the drawer and began to write. I did not need to think on the formation of my letters, my hand sweeping across the page with directions that Mr Orleigh paint a falcon perched on my right hand to blot the palette, and a falconer’s tether in my left to erase the brush. Signing off with my name, I moved my chair before the bookcase and climbed onto its seat. The top shelf was taken up with a row of stuffed, glass-encased specimens. The centre mount was of the red-footed falcon, which I had drawn and lithographed many years earlier, one of the raptor plates in our five-volume collection, The Birds of Europe. Along with the letter, I would have the mount sent to Mr Orleigh’s studio for a model.
As I brought the volume down from the shelf, memories of working on it flooded my mind. I had created the illustrations with Lear, who taught me, by his brilliant example, how to better represent the raptor tribe. I studied his griffon falcon and great eagle – the sensibility and intelligence he worked into their gazes, their fluffed plumages, the brute strength of their talons, the power in their shoulders. I felt vindicated in my recommendation to Mr Orleigh, for I knew raptors. The first lithograph I derived artistic satisfaction from completing was of a Himalayan falcon. For me it marked a turning point. I learned not only how to perfect my art, but also how a subject I loved could transport me, my pencil flying across the page as I recreated the angles of its primary wing feathers and conveyed the tension in its beautifully fanned tail. The family held special meaning for me, and not just of an imaginative nature. My painter’s fingers had memorised the fit of their bones, the hollows of their eye sockets, the fierce curve of their beaks. In my heart, I knew I was an artist, no matter the appearances my husband needed to keep up to meet social conventions.
Mr Prince had delivered the specimen for my next drawing: a white-breasted sea eagle. Viewing Lear’s eagles and falcons equipped me with the confidence to translate a big mount into lines on my sketch paper.
‘The sea eagle glides like a large butterfly,’ read the note John had included. He had recorded a story from explorer Matthew Flinders of discovering two huge sea eagle nests, two feet tall and composed of enough branches and tree matter to fill a small cart. He had also included Flinders’s description of the disgorged balls of matter, a hard compact of the indigestible remains of the sea eagle’s prey. Having examined the pellets’ contents – the scaly feathers of penguins, seal hair, and the bones of small quadrupeds and birds – Flinders was able to deduce the species’ diet.
Holed up in my studio, I summoned the renewing powers of the eagle. I stroked its rough feet, identifying with its fabled strength. For the detail on the eagle’s legs, I selected lark quill, into which was fitted the narrowest grade of nib. Only a fraction of ink touched the paper, the concentration required rendering me temporarily blind, like Saint Lucy and Saint Alice during their raptures. According to my almanac, the mythical eagle was able to gaze at the sun without damaging its eyes. What irony that the creature I drew possessed such powerful sight, yet the visual sensitivity required to render its features carried the risk of endangering my gift. Raptors were associated with feminine mysteries. A tribe of ancient Siberians carried the belief that laying eggs caused the female eagle great pain. To ease her suffering, she kept a magical stone inside her nest, black with yellow flecks, like the field markings on one of Maria Sibylla Merian’s Suriname caterpillars. If a woman afflicted with dangerous pregnancies and miscarriages got hold of such a stone, her pain would be much diminished. I wondered if I would take this grace-giving amulet, promising a healthy babe, were it offered.
All I knew for certain was the craft I had trained myself in, the one skill I could predict. Outlining the sea eagle’s powerful shoulders, I recalled my portraitist’s face, as I had done so often during the busy season. I drew solace from the thought that while I worked up a sketch of the sea eagle, Mr Orleigh daubed away, putting in the repairs to my portrait to appease my husband. Applying water to my stretched paper, I imagined him delivering a viscous splatter to the palette and brush he had painted to signify my industry. I conjured his brow, puckered and creased with effort. I wished him well in the fine work of feathers.
As Lear drifted to mind, I exchanged the particulars of bird illustration for the panoramic scope of landscapes. Not without envy did I regard my friend’s new medium of oil, more forgiving of mistakes and changes of heart than water, which was mine. Lear’s paintings were layered – deceptive even – absorbing and throwing out light, capturing the moods of the sky, the tumbling ruins of Rome.
I wondered if Lear and Mr Orleigh felt as I did about their roles as artists. Ultimately, the recognition I received could not matter. For it was in the work I completed each day that I found meaning. Drawing was my central preoccupation; perfecting my designs directed the compass of my hours. Pencils, my sloped desk, a study skin, its eyes replaced by cotton wool, were all the materials I required. The plumage brushed and set in place, I flipped the specimen onto its back and sketched the feet, imagining the creature flitting about, incubating eggs, defending territory. Later, as I grew accustomed to my subject’s morphology and was ready to experiment with composition, I mused on other thoughts. My mind drifted. For a time I was so taken by the work of looking – of switching my eyes from the materiality of the bill to the intricacy of the cere – little else existed. It was a kind of marvelling, because in trying to replicate a bird’s form with my brush, I came to admire and to know it. I painted and I studied and, in this constant striving, became me.
Chapter 23
Plains Wanderer
Pedionomus torquatus
Regent’s Park, London 1841
A sigh arose from the camel pavilion. There was an insomniac pacing in the bear pit – the female, in her last weeks of pregnancy, unable to sleep. Snorts and giggles floated from the chimpanzee house as a brother and sister romped. The giraffe, her long lashes drawn across her cheeks, stood fast asleep on all four of her brown-patched
legs. The mandrill and zebra gave out snores and starts, their shoulders nested into hay, their bellies full of fresh fruits and grains. Hours earlier they had been scrubbed by their keepers with long-handled brooms dipped in buckets of cold water. Only the nocturnal animals remained vigilant, the horned owl making an occasional hoot, the panther’s yellow eyes gleaming from between the bars of his cage.
How London’s Zoological Gardens transformed of an evening. Beyond the trellised perimeter walls of Regent’s Park, voices shouted as carriages wheeled to a stop. Fingers of cold tickled the back of my neck. Petticoats swished under my gown, lemon taffeta with a scooped neckline and full sleeves. Daisy had laced the eyelets of my shoes too snugly and I moved with careful steps, aware of damp cobblestones underfoot. Ahead, John walked with purpose along the path, flanked by Mr Baker and his apprentice. All three held aloft pine boxes. Mr Prince had me by the elbow, chaperoning me forward, our way lit by lamplight.
Before the tea pavilion, with its Doric columns and leaded windows, we stopped. Mr Prince met my eye. ‘Here’s the part where you must forgive me, Mrs Gould. I’m only following instructions.’ He shook a handkerchief out of his coat pocket and wound the cloth around my eyes, knotting the ends at the base of my crown. Starch itched my nose and I worried about what the makeshift blindfold would do to the impressive coif Daisy had spent so long on.
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