John William Waterhouse painted Hypnos and Thanatos—Sleep and His Half-brother Death—resting together, on a bed like the one which waited for me, propped on its chair. Sleep, eyes closed, clutches his red poppies for laudanum. Death, seemingly sightless, slumps beside him. But my two figures seemed too alive for Death, and too anxious for Sleep. Somewhere in the attic the whispered stories explained it all, but I could not hear and had to hope someone else had gained their confidence and broken the oral tradition.
The frame looked to be mid- to late-nineteenth century. It was too generic for earlier Victorian works, when each frame was individually designed to complement and extend the canvas it held. A flat inner frame overlapped the edges of the canvas, then gave way to a gently curving, concave surround moulded with intertwined flowers and leaves. The accumulation of dust and soot over the years had darkened the gilded relief, deepening shadows and softening highlights. At the top, the inner frame arched over the corners of the painting, pressing the walls in towards the bed and breaking any sense of depth which the painter had tried to achieve.
I scanned the surface looking for a signature, a date, anything that might give me a clue to the subject, but there was nothing. I turned the picture over. The back of the canvas showed between the wooden stretchers which kept it taut. On the top stretcher a fragment of paper read “ord”: all that remained of the manufacturer’s details. A green cloakroom ticket, number 734, was held in place by browning tape which curled at the edges and came away in my hands as I touched it. Simeon Solomon was arrested and charged with attempted sodomy. The man and woman on the bed wanted to tell me something, or to be told something, and either way I could not understand, and neither hear nor speak. Waterhouse’s mother and younger brothers were taken by tuberculosis, Sleep and Death, his first Royal Academy exhibition. Solomon’s soul showed him the way.
There was a fresh mug of tea on the table by the time Emily shook me by the shoulder. I thought her opening the front door would have awoken me, but no, not through purple pills. She sat down on the edge of the couch and ran her hand gently through my hair.
“Where did you find that?” she asked, nodding in the direction of the painting.
I propped myself up on one arm, taking the mug in my free hand and drinking slowly. The warm liquid made me realize I had not eaten all day.
“I’m hungry,” I said.
“I brought Chinese. I’ll get it.”
Emily went into the kitchen and I sat up, still a little foggy, sipping my tea and looking at the painting. It was dark outside and the lighting in the room was too low to save the shadows from a return to their night. The woman peered out over a smudge of tunic, the wall behind her slipping away with the exhausted candles. The man stared ahead of himself. At what? There was no suggestion of light from an unseen window.
“So, tell me about the painting,” said Emily, returning with a plate in each hand and cutlery sticking out of a trouser pocket. She gave me a fork and a helping of sweet-and-sour something with rice. I answered her between mouthfuls.
“Found it in the attic. And a doll’s house with mice. But I left that. Don’t know much about it. Late nineteenth century, I think. Not amazing. Not terrible. No signature.”
I paused for another sip of tea and Emily took the chance to speak.
“I’m not sure you should have been up there. It’s the owner’s private stuff.”
“Well,” I said, “I won’t go up there again. And I only brought this one thing down. And art is my thing after all. They wouldn’t mind, probably.”
Emily ate a few forkfuls of food before replying.
“Well, anyway… Did you say mice?”
“Just one. I thought more, but now I think one. It was living in the doll’s house but I opened the front up and there it was. I’m sure it’ll leave our house alone if we leave its house alone. What do you think of the painting?”
Emily stood up and stepped over to take a closer look.
“It’s a bit dark,” she said. “I wonder what the story is. There’s always a story behind chocolate-box art.”
“Chocolate box?”
“You know. The sort of picture you get on boxes of chocolate, for Mothering Sunday or grandparents’ birthdays. Why is it two women, do you think?”
“It’s a woman and a man.”
“Are you sure? I know there’s only one in a frock, but the one at the front reminds me of what’s-her-name in that Twelfth Night painting.”
She looked at me, knowing I could not allow her comparison to remain in such vague terms. And I knew she meant Lizzie Siddal. Poor, dead, Lizzie Siddal. She was Ophelia in a painting by John Everett Millais. Ophelia, floating, drowned, and Lizzie, addicted to Sleep’s red poppies, lying in the cooling water of Millais’s bathtub as he painted. She was buried with a little book of her husband’s poems: her husband, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who disinterred her, who took his poems back from the coffin, stole them and returned her to the ground, alone. I walked over and stood by Emily.
“You mean Walter Deverell. Twelfth Night was his masterpiece, really. You’re thinking of Lizzie Siddal as Viola.”
“Letting concealment feed on her damask cheek,” said Emily, and then, seeing my look of surprise, she added, “What? Shakespeare. You’re not the only one with an education. Do you think this might be the same subject?”
“Maybe. There are certainly pictures of Viola and Olivia together. Deverell did an etching of them, with Siddal as Viola, again, disguised as Cesario. But I don’t see why they’d be on a bed together, particularly. Even if that isn’t a man.”
I readied myself for an argument, but Emily just shrugged and said, “Now what? I suppose it wouldn’t hurt if you did a little research.”
“Maybe tomorrow. I’m getting tired.”
Purple pills. Yellow pill. The two people on the bed, man and woman, two women. White pillow.
I rose a little before dawn, before even Emily was awake, Emily who had to drive to the station and catch the 7:40 train to London, and spend the day at the office. I did not have to work, but I was restless and threw on my clothes and tiptoed downstairs, picking up my keys from the hook by the front door before I left the cottage. I wandered down the lane to the churchyard and shared the dawn with Vincent.
Vincent had been dead for over thirty years when Stanley Spencer—Sir Stanley Spencer, but not yet—painted his own churchyard. He came over and joined us, Vincent and me, on the little bench by the graveyard wall, pushing his easel and brushes along in a pram. He pointed and whispered to us, but his eyes did not focus, and his descriptions were of Cookham, the village of his birth and the setting for his painting The Resurrection, Cookham. There was Christ in the church doorway, and there Hilda, his first wife, still resting in her ivied tomb, and Spencer himself, naked in front of us, his blushes spared by a small shrub. Stanley was amongst his friends, as alive then as when he painted them risen. Just as a little brook ran on, down past my church, so he pointed to the left of his church and spoke of his Stygian Thames, with the pleasure boats and tinkling piano, out beyond another Hilda, watching. The pointing hand darted down and to the right, to a third Hilda, smelling a flower, revelling in its existence. Dead couples rose from other tombs and plots. Wives brushed down their husbands, smartened them up, ready for their arrival in Paradise. I thought Stanley wanted to talk about his elder brother, Sydney, killed during the Great War, but Vincent heard the crows and he was back in Auvers with his wheatfields and dragging me with him and Stanley departed with his pram. Then Vincent left, as it was his time to leave, and I sat alone listening to the morning crow-caw of the trees as a trickle of sunlight lifted the mist. Sometimes, when I worked in the gallery, I had heard the pompous telling their children that to understand a picture one must climb into it, into the image and into the head of the artist. But that was the wrong way round. If you want to understand a picture you have to let the artist crawl inside you, guide you, accompany you and then, if you are lucky, leave yo
u to your own trees and mists, to your own Resurrection.
I came back to the cottage to find Emily rushing around, grabbing bags and papers, a piece of toast hanging out of her mouth. She took a bite and pulled the remainder away with a hand which somehow balanced the weight of the bread against a cardboard folder stuffed with yellowing sheets of office paper.
“I thought you were still asleep,” she said, conveying a delicate blend of concern and accusation. “Where have you been?” The note of concern had faded.
“Well, it was early. I didn’t want to wake you. I went and sat in the churchyard. Fresh air.”
Emily took more bites of toast, replying as she chewed.
“Well… I suppose… it can’t do any harm. How is it… outside?”
“Cold, but peaceful. You’d better get going. You’ll be late.”
She looked around the room one final time, saw nothing she had yet to juggle, and made to leave. When she reached me she placed a kiss on my forehead and told me to call her if I needed anything. I nodded and opened the door for her. One of us said, “I love you.” Then the house was mine again. I made tea and some toast of my own, and sat looking at the painting on the chair by the window, and out to the rose garden, disturbed only by an occasional car heading to work or to the station. For this is the suburb of the great city, belonging to his heavenly palace, in the heavenly Jerusalem. John Donne. Maybe he was thinking of Cookham when he wrote that. Stanley Spencer thought he was. It was time for a closer inspection.
The kitchen cupboards did not appear to have been changed since first fitted, sometime in the 1960s. White paint had stained grease-yellow from years of exposure to cooking fat. Diamond-shaped, frosted panes of glass added decoration to the doors, disguising shelves covered with curling, cracking paper. I found a couple of screwdrivers in the cupboard beside the door to the back garden. I was fairly sure that Emily would have wanted me to leave them in the cupboard, but she was not with me in Jerusalem and the painting needed me, or I needed the painting. Either way, I knew what I was doing. Back at the gallery I had the proper equipment, but a couple of screwdrivers would be enough to start the exploration.
Emily had cleared her papers from the dining table during her morning rush, and I moved my crumb-covered plate and empty mug onto one of the dining chairs. I brought a bedsheet down from the airing cupboard, folded it double and laid it over the table to protect the wood, and to protect the gilding of the frame as I placed it, face-down, in front of me. The canvas, supported by stretchers, was held in place by bent iron pins spaced at intervals around its four sides. Some of the pins had loosened over time, and I pulled them out by hand. Others could not be removed so easily but could be twisted to one side, out of the way. The remaining few I levered out gently with one of the screwdrivers, using my finger as a pivot point to avoid causing any damage. That was enough to release the canvas. I lifted it from the table, leaving behind the outer and inner frames and, around the edges, a set of small, thin spacers which had stopped wood and paint from coming into direct contact. Finally, the whole painting could be seen. I started scribbling notes on a pad from the kitchen, between cooking times and ingredients, don’t-forgets and back-laters.
CHAPTER FOUR
Sunday, 23rd October, 1887
Dear Mr. Taylor,
I hope you will forgive me the delay in writing to you, which was caused, as I am sure you will understand, by the increasing demands of the academic term. Thank you again for the time which we shared at the Botanic Garden. Miss Ashdown has asked me to convey her warmest regards.
I cannot lend you my copy of Warber, as you requested—it is in a most fragile condition and I promised my father that it would always remain in my possession—but let me now tell you a little of Samuel Warber himself, and of his book. As you are no doubt aware, the life and works of this man are hardly an appropriate topic for the interests of Oxford students, whether they be man or woman, but I have no doubts that you will exercise the utmost discretion.
As is so often the case with authors of a certain antiquity, little is known of the man himself. He was born around the middle of the seventeenth century into what must have been a relatively well-to-do family, taking into consideration his education and access to literature. After the Restoration he attempted to fit the mould of libertine, and it was this endeavour which led to his publishing The Strange History of Thomasin and Olivia sometime before his hanging in 1676. Neither my father nor I are aware of any extant copies of this first publication, our own History being an example of a second edition, dated 1745. It is possible that the first edition was ordered destroyed, either because Warber’s chosen subject was too prurient or—and I judge the likelihood of this to be the greater given the mores of the Restoration—because, in the telling, it was adjudged to be insulting to the monarchy.
Warber’s story has many antecedents. Indeed, Warber himself writes in a weak imitation of sixteenth-century English: the book’s title is given as Ye Straunge Hystory of Thomysin & Oliuia.
In 1534 an English text of The Boke of Duke Huon of Burdeux was published, translated from the Old French by Sir John Bourchier. Delightfully, the Early English Text Society has recently overseen the reprinting of Bourchier’s work. It may be of interest to you that Bourchier’s translation also brought with it the first mention of Oberon, king of the fairies, in English literature. Bourchier’s main characters are called Olive and Ide—“Howe the emperoure gaue his doughter Olyue in maryage to the damoysel yde…”—but much of the story is unchanged by Warber. Such changes as he does make are surely designed to increase the licentious nature of the work.
Huon of Burdeux is itself translated from an early-thirteenth-century chanson de geste—a French epic romance—and its continuations, which include Chanson d’Ide et Olive. I have not seen the French work, but Father tells me that a printing of it is in preparation in Germany. The themes of Chanson d’Ide et Olive are themselves echoes of the story of Iphis and Ianthe, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book IX: “Fama novi centum Cretæas forsitan urbes implesset monstri; si non miracula nuper Iphide mutata Crete propiora tulisset.” A translation is unnecessary, of course, but I thought you might like to read the poetry of Dryden: “The fame of this,”—the transformation of Byblis into a fountain—“perhaps, through Crete had flown; but Crete had newer wonders of her own, in Iphis chang’d.” My father tells me that some elements of Ovid’s tale are also to be found in the earlier works of Nicander, as retold in Antoninus Liberalis’s Μεταμορφώσεων Συναγωγή. Father read this in Xylander’s sixteenth-century printing, although he hopes to view the original manuscript during his next trip to Heidelberg.
Do, please, forgive me if I have dwelt too long on the history of the piece. It is, no doubt, the story itself in which your interest lies, so let me now relate it here. Please indulge me, however, in allowing a few further observations regarding earlier works: I am, or aspire to be, an academic, after all. I trust you will recognize the extent to which the following has been Bowdlerized and understand the necessity of my removing much which is lewd and inappropriate.
King Florence was a fine king, in possession of a beautiful wife by the name of Clara. The two of them lay together as man and wife are intended to do, with the consequences which one might expect. On the day of the birth the King waited anxiously as the midwives did their duty in the chambers above his day room. After some little time had passed he heard the crying of a child, and his heart was filled with joy. The child, a daughter, was brought to him but as he held her in his arms he noticed the sullen faces of his courtiers and asked them how his wife fared.
“Your Majesty,” replied a knight, “your Queen is departed to God.”
The King handed the child back to the midwives and sat with his head in his hands, lost in grief. Throughout the coming days of mourning and burial, and on into the rest of his life, the King’s only true solace was his daughter, whom he named Thomasin. She grew to be as beautiful as her mother, and t
he King adored her, often holding her in his arms and kissing her, eschewing the company of other women and giving no thought to the taking of a second wife.
So it happened that one day King Florence called together his lords and knights, and presented them with a great feast and marvellous entertainments. Afterwards the King bade them retire to the castle gardens and said:
“Sirs, you all know that I have a beautiful daughter, the Princess Thomasin, who has been courted by many kings and princes. I have never consented to a marriage, and I myself have never married because of the love I held for her mother. Now, however, I desire to be married, to take a wife in whom I might see again my poor departed Clara.”
The lords and knights, hearing this, made much cheer and expressed great joy that their King had finally found a second chance of happiness. One amongst them, a knight called Sir Bartholomew, spoke out, asking the King to name his bride. The King replied:
“My lords and knights, I shall take my daughter as my wife, sharing with her the great love which I had for her mother.”
All the Perverse Angels Page 4