Birdman's Wife

by Melissa Ashley

  I had no choice but to clutch the sensible tweed of our secretary’s forearm. I slowed my movements further, aware of a door pulling open, a stair, the noise of our steps absorbed by a woollen carpet. I could detect a tinge of camphor and heard the lustrous notes of cello, viola and violins drawing closer.

  We came to a stop, and Mr Prince ordered me to hold still. I waited while fingers fumbled in my hair. The blindfold removed, I found myself blinking into light. As my eyes focused on the magnificent sights before me, John, resplendent in his formal beaver hat, fawn double-breasted frock-coat and cream, snug-fitting breeches, took a champagne goblet from a waiter’s tray. ‘Your thoughts, Mrs Gould?’ He offered me the glass.

  So this was what the past month’s whispers and averted eyes had been leading to. ‘I’m quite astounded,’ I said, tilting my head to better admire the elaborate decorations. The Zoological Society’s dining hall blazed with lamp and candlelight. Bunting fashioned to resemble emus, parrots and honeyeaters in celebration of our masterwork, The Birds of Australia, looped above the linen-covered main dining table. Alongside the gleaming silverware and polished tureens was a special touch: the articulated skeletons of finches and jays perched in among the china and crystal. Only the members of the Zoological Society, those unusual individuals who I suspected took tea and dropped cake crumbs over the opened bellies of the bird skins they worked on, would appreciate such a bizarre decoration. Each place setting sported a robin’s nest, a fat brown chicken’s egg resting proudly in its centre.

  John, beaming with pride, excused himself to greet Dr Thomas Eyton, a specialist in pelagic species, and his wife. I noticed a woman fussing over a napkin at the head of the table. It was Mrs Owen, wife of the renowned anatomist and palaeontologist Professor Richard Owen, our host for the evening. Catching sight of me, she dropped the piece of fabric and rushed over. I grasped her outstretched hand and leaned in to kiss her powdered cheeks.

  ‘Did you suspect anything?’ she asked.

  ‘I knew something was afoot.’ I smiled.

  ‘My husband is thrilled with the work you and Mr Gould have produced on The Birds of Australia. We couldn’t let it pass unnoticed.’

  ‘It’s most certainly a spectacular celebration,’ I said, at a loss for suitable compliments to pay. It was beyond anything I could have imagined.

  Mrs Owen led me towards the table. ‘First of all,’ she said, excited, ‘our guests are to crack their eggs. They’ve been blown clean – we’ve been living on omelettes all week. Here,’ she said, inspecting the contents of a large bowl, ‘I have yours, see your name? Crush it open when you’re ready. The identity of your dining companion is hidden inside.’

  ‘Extraordinary,’ I said, delighted by the inventiveness of the game.

  ‘It was in the Lady’s Weekly,’ confessed my hostess. ‘And, by the way, I’ve seen to it you have the perfect partner.’

  ‘I can’t wait to find out. I know I can trust your judgement,’ I said.

  Mrs Owen gave me a cheeky wink.

  The Owens must have spent weeks designing and setting up the elaborate and impressive display – and clearly with assistance from my husband, if I were to go by his cryptic behaviour of late.

  Mrs Owen flashed her fan. ‘Come, there’s more to show you.’

  I followed the lead of my energetic hostess, savouring the opportunity to study the intricate pleating at the waist of her gown. The fabric had been gathered into many folds, drawing in sharply at her waist and then spreading again below, her lower half accentuated by the donning of many petticoats, including a crinoline. I marvelled at how smoothly she moved inside the horsehair-reinforced stays. As fascinated as I was by the attractive silhouette it produced, I knew I did not share the discipline required to carry such effects.

  Mrs Owen led me to a spectacular diorama of wild birds at the far end of the table, featuring the specimens I had painted for Parts One and Two of The Birds of Australia. The creatures were arranged in familial groupings, with touches of foliage – dried Australian flowers, gumnuts, leaves – along with painted rocks and soil samples to recreate the textures and colours of the colonies. The chestnut-backed and spotted quail thrush were framed by an acacia-dominated backdrop; the Mallee fowl and brush turkey were laid out with a pile of sticks to represent the mounds in which they deposited their eggs; a grouping of parrots was pinned like earrings and brooches on the silver boughs of a large eucalypt branch; the swift parrot was placed alongside more exotic species such as the scarlet-chested parrot, the blue-winged parakeet, the purple-crowned lorikeet, the budgerigar and the newly figured elegant parrot. There was a perch of raptors with taxidermied lizards and marsupial rats clutched in their talons – the white-bellied sea eagle, the grey falcon, the square-tailed kite and the white-fronted falcon. And lastly, a display of the Galliformes that inhabited the continent’s dry interior: the little button quail, the red-chested button quail and the plains wanderer.

  ‘I was just working on that fellow today,’ I said, pointing to the spotted-collared plains wanderer specimen.

  ‘He’s an odd-looking wee thing,’ said Mrs Owen.

  I laughed. The species was so rare that we were able to collect only two specimens, one of which was later mauled by a dog. Its morphology resembled a quail, except for the additional toe on each foot, making it difficult to assign the particular family of ground-feeding birds to which it belonged.

  A marsupial display also awaited my inspection. What novelty for our guests in the spectacle of the red and grey kangaroo bucks, the cosy wombat and bristling echidna, the striped possum and sweet featured gliders. Perched on slabs of ochre-dyed rock were poison snakes and long-clawed lace monitors, not to mention several hairy, fat-limbed spiders.

  John spied me across the room and rushed over. He could barely contain his excitement about the reception of his exquisite dioramas. He bowed to Mrs Owen.

  ‘I must congratulate you on your wonderful creatures,’ said Mrs Owen.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘It’s gratifying to have so many people here to appreciate Eliza’s and my work. And I must say, you have outdone yourselves in preparing for tonight’s celebration.’

  ‘It was a pleasure. I rather enjoyed sinking my teeth into our ambitious project.’

  John glanced at a rock wallaby mount, his finger to his lip. ‘If I had my way, I’d have included a display of the unique fauna of Van Diemen’s Land – particularly its black badger and striped hyena. I have my collectors on the job, but so far nothing.

  ‘Indeed, to fulfil our mammalian desiderata we should also have that oddly designed monotreme, sister to our echidna friend, the duck-billed platypus,’ John added, turning to Mrs Owen. ‘Were you aware that the animal greatly puzzled the public when it was first discovered? And plenty of natural historians, too. It was thought by many that the Ornithorhynchus was a sort of hoax. A fraud, an invented animal, its bill borrowed from a duck, its pouch from a kangaroo, its feet from a badger, its hide from a possum, all deliberately stitched together to create a monstrous curiosity.’

  I leaned into my hostess, my voice low, ‘He never stops.’

  ‘And neither does my husband.’ Mrs Owen smiled conspiratorially.

  The room had filled with guests, sipping champagne and wine, and participating in Mrs Owen’s egg-cracking game. I noted that many of our zoological colleagues were almost unrecognisable dressed in finery, their wives at their sides. The reputed French ornithologist Mr Charles Bonaparte was elegant in his fashionable tailcoat, his glamorous wife in striped taffeta; the naturalist Mr Hugh Cuming, his drawers of herbs and molluscs closed for the evening, had brought his eldest daughter as his companion; Dr Thomas Eyton, in a dashing purple necktie, nodded at his talkative wife; Mr William Yarrell, a distinguished expert on birds and fishes, appeared to be attending alone. Surveying the room, I caught sight of the prickly artist Mr George Waterhouse, with whom I had become acquainted while working for Mr Darwin.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I
asked, for the musicians had rested their instruments. The chatter in the dining hall had evaporated into hushed quiet.

  I followed the gazes of my hostess and husband, which had fallen on Professor Owen striding towards us across the crowded room. Briefly acknowledging John and me, he extended his arm to his wife, sweeping her away in a blur of frilled taffeta.

  ‘Come, Eliza,’ said John, holding out his elbow, ‘we have a rather special guest to welcome to our feast.’

  In his excitement, John moved before I was quite ready, and I had to take quick little quail steps to keep up. Professor and Mrs Owen were about to be presented to the dinner party’s most honoured guest, and John and I were next in line. I felt the pulse in my neck throb wildly, and I swallowed with difficulty. In a few moments all eyes would be on me. Formal occasions and protocols made me tense. I was a painter, not a society woman. And then my ears were blessed by a soft, purring trill. I glanced at John, a smile tugging at my mouth. One of the servers passed John a satin pillow, on which clung, for dear life, our feathered yellow and green companions, Graham and Joanne.

  Our moment had come. Professor and Mrs Owen stepped aside. I moved forward, praying that the elaborate hair arrangement Daisy had been so proud of creating for me had not suffered from Mr Prince’s clumsy blindfold.

  Prince Albert stood before us. The Prince Consort looked dashing in a red woollen coat with epaulettes and a double row of brass buttons stamped with the royal insignia. He wore his light brown hair parted at the side and sported a small, rather sparse moustache. I recalled that only a year before, this young man had been shot at by a lunatic while travelling in the royal coach with the expectant Queen Victoria, and had won over many of his subjects by showing courage and a cool head throughout the ordeal.

  John bowed before Prince Albert, effecting great ceremony. I performed a low curtsy. When I stood, I became tongue-tied, for the life of me unable to remember what I should do next. Did I wait for the Prince Consort to address me? Did I curtsy again before I spoke? John, raised on the grounds of Windsor Castle, was not in the least flummoxed. He always kept in the forefront of his thoughts the fundamental rule of the salesman: confidence. It did not matter if the potential client was a member of the general public, a moneyed collector, a knowledgeable scientist or a prince.

  I lowered my eyes and found myself studying the elaborate buttoning on the Prince’s coat. I licked my dry lips and swallowed, in case I might be required to speak. Suddenly Joanne, the friendlier of our two budgerigars, stepped boldly from her satin cushion, fluttered into the air and landed on the Prince’s brocaded cuff. She glanced into his bemused face and squawked the phrase that had wandered into my own head when I first saw the young Prince’s fresh-skinned face. ‘Pretty boy,’ she trilled, before reaching down to pluck at the gold threads on his sleeves. The air rushed from my lungs. My jaw relaxed as the Prince and our fellow guests erupted into laughter and applause.

  Professor and Mrs Owen seated their most distinguished visitor before inviting the lords, ladies and remaining guests to take their places. When the first course had been served, Professor Owen gave a short speech acknowledging John’s and my work in Australia, and highlighting the most unique and puzzling specimens we had brought home for study. I let his deep voice wash over me, pleased beyond reason at the efforts made at our expense. His accolades drifted in and about my ears as my eyes followed the soft glow of the tiny candles flickering inside the halved goose eggs that had been placed near my crystal glasses. Jellies, in the shape of chicks, wobbled on our plates. I stuck my fork through a green concoction, recalling Mr Darwin’s tales of eating salted penguin and fresh rhea onboard the Beagle. Inside each wine glass sat a mock fossil, like an elegant paperweight divided into halves, one side a pressing, the other an impression.

  ‘Were you aware, Mrs Gould,’ asked Professor Owen, resuming his seat, ‘that the ingredients for the plaster to make these little follies were taken from the same place your limestone for printing is quarried?’ The eminent paleontologist, whose name I had discovered inside my hen’s egg, poked at the barb of tail feather imprinted in my mock fossil.

  ‘They dragged you into their preparations, too!’ I said.

  ‘Oh, indeed.’ Professor Owen smiled. He peered at his own pressed ‘fossil’. ‘This is not unlike the natural process. And who knows what we might uncover between the pages of shale rock – a feathered dinosaur, a whale-sized mammal, a horse with wings or some other creature from the folklore of sailors.’

  ‘A hippopotamus with lungs and fins,’ I offered, ‘or perhaps an aquatic cow.’

  ‘Very good.’ Professor Owen laughed.

  I leaned towards him. ‘I can’t begin to imagine your craft of puzzling out bones.’

  ‘It’s no less, surely, than your art of depicting avian novelties? A specialty one builds and draws upon.’

  ‘You’re absolutely right,’ I said. ‘Though I receive enough compliments, few people understand the excavation of thought required to make faithful renditions. Particularly of a creature one isn’t familiar with, that doesn’t have a European ally.’

  ‘And yet you manage. I must say, Mrs Gould, I’m impressed by your lyrebirds. Your husband shared a print with me.’ Professor Owen’s smile transformed his face, softening the tired rings around his eyes.

  Although we had known each other for almost a decade, I was never easy with the professor in a social environment. I was used to him grim and serious. He was a large, imposing man with a heavy-boned frame. He had long dark hair combed down at the sides in thin strands, and piercing, inquisitive eyes.

  While working on our toucan monograph, John had sent Professor Owen the skull, tongue and mandibles of the toco toucan to dissect and figure. The professor had pinned out the tongue on a board then described and labelled its parts with his pencil. He had severed the skull and mandibles into symmetrical halves and named each fused bone and its supporting musculature.

  ‘It must be taxing to paint a newly found species,’ he said.

  ‘What a thoughtful observation,’ I said, ‘and how refreshing to talk to someone who genuinely understands the nature of my work. In many ways it’s the ultimate challenge to describe a new species. To stumble upon the right curve or line to capture the essential form of some exotic curiosity. If a specimen has spectacular plumage or strange habits, I’m able to represent it more easily. Then again, I must say I’m immensely pleased with my Mallee fowls. I have only ever encountered them as preserved skins, but I think the lithograph of the pair I’ve produced rather bursts with life.’

  I shuffled in my chair, emboldened. ‘I have never told anyone this but when I was a young woman, I received drawing lessons from a private tutor. One day on a visit to an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art, a troupe of medical students came in and I overheard their lecturer explaining the connection between their studies and the work of artists, how important it was for them to learn how to draw and label their dissections properly. To demonstrate his point, he pointed to nude studies by the Masters.’

  Professor Owen laid down his knife. He gave me a look that combined delight and incredulity.

  I reiterated my impressions of the lesson. How the lecturer had alerted his students to differences in the skin colour of a cadaver to that of a living subject. The young men had just come from a demonstration at the city morgue, where they had witnessed the lecturer dissecting a criminal’s thigh, the subject hanged by the Crown for murder. I had listened avidly. Drawing medical subjects, the lecturer explained, was an art form all of its own, with rules and protocols, like natural history sketching or landscape painting. I had been fascinated when he spoke of the differences between composing an écorché – a drawing of a body that shows the muscles beneath the skin – and the more conventional method of depicting exposed flesh. I recalled the class standing before a Michelangelo engraving, the surgeon explaining how the artist had paid grave robbers to obtain human bodies for him to dissect, to learn of the muscles
, skeleton and circulatory system. The study of anatomy was necessary to aid one in drawing the human form. Not only did anatomical sketchers have to pay meticulous attention to muscle groups and bone structure, but they also had to take care in how they represented the tissue surrounding the dissected body part. Corpses were arranged to represent a classically posed life model, rather than an inert dead form. I remembered that at every stage of the surgeon’s lesson, at least one of his students held a raised hand to make a comment or ask a question. Discussion ranged from the cow’s heart sketched during their first lesson to the skeleton of a human hand they would later be examined on.

  ‘You’ve a remarkable memory.’

  ‘For subjects that arrest my attention, yes. I was absorbed by the description of organs and peeled-back skin, the tools an anatomist worked with, how the interior parts of the body revealed their awkward beauty. I could think of no subject more exciting than drawing what lies hidden under our skin.’

  ‘That professor may have been John Abernethy. He was an exceptional teacher – in fact, he had a great influence on my own career. You should have asked your tutor for an introduction.’

  ‘Oh, I did. Not only that, I pleaded to be enrolled in his classes. But I was told it was inappropriate for my station and gender.’

  Professor Owen looked at me, a half-smile on his lips. There was a glint in his eyes. ‘And now you’ve triumphed. Might I venture to say, Mrs Gould, that you’ve found your calling?’

  ‘You make me well pleased,’ I said, feeling my cheeks flush at the compliment.

  Professor Owen leaned over, whispering, ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me a moment, the fowl calls for my attentions.’

  I watched him walk to the head of the table. Wielding a carving knife and fork, he began to slice into the carcass of a roasted pheasant with great precision.