The Fountain of St. James Court; Or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman

by Sena Jeter Naslund

  Daniel’s hand itself would blur, always efficient and ready to do anything he could to make things easier. Hadn’t Daisy heard a church bell strike one o’clock? But there was Daniel now—not gone to the country after all.

  “PETER,” KATHRYN CALLED AFTER HIM, from her porch, though he and the white poodle were already descending the three stairs to the public sidewalk. Royal turned his head to look at her, but Peter just stopped and said, “What?”

  All right, she had irritated him, interfered, placed herself at the controls.

  “What about the little girl?”

  Now Peter turned to face Kathryn. There was a soft wonder in his eyes. “Daisy was taking care of her.”

  “Why?”

  “She just learned her father died.”

  Had someone died in the park? Kathryn remembered an unshaven old man curled on a bench. Homeless. Asleep, she had thought.

  As though he followed her train of thought, Peter explained, “The girl’s father died in the hospital, but she’d gotten the message in the park. Cell phone.”

  “Oh.” Without saying good-bye again, Kathryn reentered her home and closed the heavy wooden door against the world. She leaned her shoulders and the back of her head against the wood. Her heart was beating fast as she remembered what it was to lose a father.

  In her psyche Kathryn knew she still cradled that bereft inner child, but she had also had another self as companion—a little trouper, stalwart and strong willed. An explorer. She stood up straight, breathed deeply, and opened the door to the Court again. Yes, she could hear Leslie practicing the cello, a mellow sound. Like the smell of autumn apples, juicy, plump, blushing.

  V

  IN THE FRENCH MANNER

  PORTRAIT

  BECAUSE OF THE PLEASURE (and attention) my mother and I receive strolling the grand boulevards and enjoying the summer concerts of Paris, my stepfather has taken a small house in Chaillot, away from Paris. It pleases him to call this place “the country” and to imprison us there on weekends so that we cannot enjoy the advantages of Paris. There are no trees in “the country,” and the sun beats down on the so-called garden relentlessly. This sterile place is in no way worthy of the name “the country.” My stepfather has planted some haricots and nasturtiums, but both refuse to grow in this hostile environment.

  The garden itself is divided into quarters, and each weekend young men come to the country to practice shooting birds. They are such poor marksmen that I fear they will accidentally shoot me. Even inside the house the racket from the continual gunfire plays havoc with my nerves. Certainly I cannot even sketch with my hand jumping like a rabbit at the surprise of yet another blast from their guns. I cannot think or even have a conversation with my mother. It is torture, of a sort.

  “Gunfire,” my stepfather says, “a kind of country music, heh-heh.”

  When my mother’s friend Mme Suzanne and her husband come to dine with us at Chaillot, they witness the state of terror and boredom in which we exist. My stepfather interrupts every interesting conversation to change the subject to a trivial one, and he does not give us two minutes alone with our old friends. It is another sort of torture. But while my mother diverts her husband, Mme Suzanne seizes the opportunity to whisper to me that next Sunday, they will return and rescue us.

  BETWEEN BLASTS OF SUNDAY GUNFIRE, I listen for the approach of horses and go to the window to look out. When I see our friends approach in a tiny conveyance, I cannot stop myself from announcing, “Here they come,” in an excited tone of voice. “Heh-heh,” my stepfather agrees, but soon he will have to swallow his glee. Even as we greet our friends, they absolutely insist that we go on an excursion, and they whisk us away immediately (their conveyance has room for only four) to the castle and grounds of Marly-le-Roi.

  They convey us from limbo to fairyland!

  Behind the castle at Marly-le-Roi, fountains fall in cascades from a mountain to form sparkling streams upon which swans swim. Summer houses flank the castle and are joined to one another by luxurious arcades of honeysuckle and jasmine. The four of us, in our little party, inhale deeply, all together, and then smile with delight. Here is a place that smells like “the country.”

  One of the jetting fountains rises to such a height that its plume disappears into the clouds. The castle itself is a vision of ethereal loveliness, but at the same time it possesses the grandeur of the Sun King, Louis XIV. For the first time I realize that here on earth a place of magical enchantment might actually exist. Many times I whisper the question into my mother’s ear: Is it real? And she always replies, looking deeply into my eyes, “Quite real.”

  I see a shadow in her expression, not all joy, when she remarks on what is real, and I realize that equally real to her is her commitment to my unpleasant stepfather. He is not a brute, but he is oppressive.

  Marly-le-Roi is a place I will keep in my heart. When I need to be swaddled by peace and beauty, I will think of what humankind and nature have created here. Along with the Church of Saint Eustache, for me, the gardens of Marly-le-Roi will always be the hallmark of a sanctuary.

  MUCH AS I LOVE the excursion that took my mother and me to the true country, I know that I must also have the city. Upon my stepfather’s retirement, we have moved to an enormous mansion, which has been divided into many apartments for families and some businesses as well. What sustains me is my bright-burning desire to paint and paint and paint. At nineteen, there is a convergence in me of stamina, knowledge, curiosity, and determination. Whenever I return to Paris from an excursion, I find myself renewing my vows to learn the complexities, subtleties, and finally the power of my art. Each year I want to surpass in quality what I have achieved the year before. I wish that I could travel to Italy and to other centers of art to study the masters there. What lessons I would bring home!

  I have confided my wish to my mother, and she has given me a surprising reply.

  “While I cannot wave a magic wand and transport you to Florence or Rome,” she says, “I can make it possible for you to see some works of the masters without leaving this mansion.”

  Of course I ask my glowing-with-pleasure mother how this might be possible.

  “In this building is the atelier of an art dealer who trades in the paintings of the old masters. I shall inquire if we might visit.”

  MY MOTHER IS TRUE to her word, and the very next day we knock at the door of M. Le Brun. My mother has learned that he is not only a dealer in fine art, but also a great-grandnephew of the famous Charles Le Brun who painted gigantic murals at Versailles for the Sun King. We have never been to Versailles, of course, but Le Brun is a name that has survived in history in connection with monumental art.

  I watch my mother’s knuckles rap on the door, and I memorize the image because I feel intuitively that what lies beyond this door may augment my art in a real way. While I have seen collections of paintings exhibited in grand museums and also admired great paintings in a few private châteaus, beyond this door is the hoard of an art dealer, and it is housed under the great roof of the very place where we already live.

  M. Le Brun greets us pleasantly, but my ears close as my eyes open. On his walls, or displayed on easels, or even propped on the floor and leaning against an artfully carved sofa or chair, are splendid paintings, many of them by old Italian masters of the Northern School. They are arranged and displayed not simply to present their glory as individual works of art but also to complement each other, and above all to make the viewer love and want them all. The paintings are for sale to the highest bidder, and each of them excites the viewer in a most calculated way so that one wants not just to appreciate but also to possess their grand beauty.

  I am like a twig swept away by a stream of color. All my patient habits of viewing at museums are overwhelmed. I cannot fasten on one of these works without being drawn to another. Here is a shade of cerise that awakens everything feminine in me, and here is a use of the color brown—like burnt sugar touched by sunset—that causes my mouth li
terally to water. The scroll on the arm of this chair alerts my eye to a painting that I think might be an early Titian, luminous, with loose brushwork, but isn’t that the Flemish work of Rubens on the wall! How Rubens makes the eye travel the canvas! But I am so greedy! My eyes dart everywhere as I glide on the wings of Mercury through the collection.

  “Oh, may I come again and again to study these glorious works?” I blurt when I return from my survey to my mother and the proprietor.

  There is a silence in which I feel my future may be denied me.

  Quickly my mother says, “My daughter would benefit so greatly, Monsieur, if it would be no inconvenience for you, if she could come back, along with myself, for you can see by her ardor, that she is quite overcome and cannot take in the lessons that she would learn here all at once.”

  M. Le Brun answers in a measured and courtly fashion. “While your daughter is already a fine artist, as all the connoisseurs of Paris know, if I might advance her career in some small way by providing access to my paintings to you, dear Madame, and your daughter, I would be only too pleased to do so.”

  At the end of his speech he bows his head modestly with a slight smile at the corners of his mouth. He folds his hands in front of his body and fastens his attention on my mother, radiant with gratitude. I understand that I am free to extend the moment of my enjoyment of the bounty of Italy.

  I have never been asked, nor have I ever wanted, to conceal my wonder at something beautiful. As I tread softly among the paintings, I make no effort to curb my admiration or pleasure. I am a bit giddy.

  Then the three of us walk more slowly, yet again, through the rooms, with M. Le Brun sometimes murmuring an informative comment. I am not unaware of the thickness of the carpet under my feet.

  When we return home, I go straight to my cot, lie on my back, and close my eyes. I want to remember, as precisely as I can, what I have seen. I brush aside my memory of the furniture and rugs in the sumptuous atelier and strive to furnish my mind only with the paintings. I know that if I but let myself enjoy their memory-images to the highest degree, important lessons will be attendant on that pleasure. There were so many! And all of their venerable mastery was new and overwhelming to my eyes. The experience differed greatly from revisiting work in a museum over and over, such as the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. At the atelier, sometimes I recognized a master’s technique, sometimes not. And M. Le Brun said we may come again. He also added that the collection is constantly in flux, which both terrifies and thrills me.

  M. LE BRUN OFTEN SENDS WORD to my mother and me that he has a free half hour or so, and that if we should want to step over, why, then, we should come. Sometimes he reports that he has a new acquisition that really almost no one in the city has yet seen, for it just arrived from Florence or Siena. Equipped with such titillating knowledge, I enjoy conversation at salons more than ever before.

  I begin to chat rather freely with M. Le Brun about what I see in this or that painting, especially if it holds a new discovery for me, and in some ways these casual conversations are as unguarded and pleasant as those I had with Mlle Boquet when we were going to art school together at the Louvre. Amazed and delighted by the achievements of the great, I learn and learn. My renaissance occurs in this atelier.

  In my own studio, I feel myself fully fledged as an artist: I paint and large fees flow into the household. I am happy and sure of myself.

  I feel myself to be the equal of M. Le Brun. Though I have not traveled, my eye, as a practitioner of art, is the equal of his as a connoisseur. Thus there is a spontaneity and naturalness in our conversations that fills the gap in my life left by my dear friend Mme Filleul’s (née Boquet) defection from art to marriage.

  When I inquire if M. Le Brun himself has not been tempted to take up the brush, he begins to blush and to exclaim that while he has, it would require him months to accrue enough courage to show me his work. He says he is a rank amateur. Of course I am curious, and before the occasion actually arises when I am allowed to view his work, I think about what might be tactful to say. At this point, I am quite aware how rare genuine talent is. In no way do I want to offend this man who buys and sells great art.

  When my mother and I do view his work, I see what somehow I had already intuited (otherwise why would he not paint instead of buy and sell?), that there is a woodenness about his figures, and, honestly, there is little to praise, except in moderation. Into my silence he says in a genial manner, “I see, dear lady, that your tongue dies in the presence of my paintings.”

  My mother quickly notes, “I especially like this one.”

  I am gratified by Maman’s selection. Possibly a self-portrait, “this one” is indeed the most pleasing one of the group.

  “And I agree,” I add honestly.

  “Perhaps you could be persuaded to be my instructor,” he says.

  Again my mother saves me: “Oh, dear M. Le Brun, Mlle Vigée has such a long list of people waiting for their own portraits or those of their daughters to be painted and by certain dates, that I’m sure my husband would not allow her to take time for giving lessons.”

  He immediately bows his head politely. The truth is I have no desire to teach. I simply want to paint and learn. I want to improve my own knowledge and skill. Maman knows and respects that I wish to be a practicing artist, pure and simple.

  Then I allow myself a small lie. “It has always been the act of painting that gives me satisfaction, whether others warm to my work or not. You must not be discouraged. It merely takes practice to improve.”

  “But truly,” he says, “I myself, like you, Mlle Vigée, have no surplus of time, either in terms of life or business.”

  It strikes me as a somewhat curious speech, but I hasten to compliment him. “Your atelier is by far the most attractive in all of Paris. Your collection is truly superior, and you display the paintings as well as the fondant maker displays his sweets. Whenever Maman and I come through your door, it is as though we have entered paradise.”

  Now he bows deeply and murmurs that I am too kind. He offers to show me a little Raphael that has come into his possession. The use of red and green in this painting thrills me with its freshness, and I exclaim with true candor, “Thanks to you, M. Le Brun, I will never see or use those colors again in quite the same way.”

  AFTER WE LEAVE THE ATELIER, Maman remarks, “You are certainly appreciative of his inventory, my daughter.”

  “What a shame that he has little talent as a painter,” I reply.

  “But does that matter much?”

  I am surprised at her remark. “To me, if I were he, it would matter a great deal.”

  “As he said, he is a dealer in art, not an artist. One painter in a family is probably enough.”

  I am shocked. “What can you mean, Maman?”

  “Did you not catch his hint? He said that he had no surplus of years. He is seven years older than you at twenty. You said it makes you sublimely happy to frequent his abode.”

  “As a visitor!” I exclaim, but even as I object, I know it would be not only pleasant but inspiring to live among such paintings. One would not need to own them. And to travel to foreign countries, as well.

  “Would you not be happier in your own place?” She holds my astonished gaze only a moment and then quickly looks away as she continues. “You and I would not be much separated by such a small distance. Still under the same roof. We could visit each other even when it stormed or snowed.”

  This last idea of hers cannot be refuted. I say nothing. But to be married! Why? It is nothing I desire.

  AS TIME PASSES, my mother does not press me to develop an interest in M. Le Brun, yet I am made to know a marriage to him would please her. Can I be sure my own work would in no way be hindered? My mother implies that it would help me to sell my work even more widely and better to be married to an art dealer, but I feel I am already doing remarkably well, quite independently. But another idea, evolved entirely by myself, is a sobering one. I realize my mother’
s own marriage might be more happy if I were not under her roof. This consideration causes me to take special care to be polite and cheerful whenever I am in the presence of my stepfather, but I have always been scrupulously courteous to her husband, no matter the rage and rebellion within, for her sake.

  I must say it takes little effort to be cheerful when my mother and I are under the ceiling of M. Le Brun’s atelier. He is conversationally interesting, lively, and full of good spirits. At times, he reminds me of my father in his savoir faire. Other times he reminds me of my brother in his naturalness. Étienne, as a promising young student, is much about the city with his friends these days, and I realize that I have turned to M. Le Brun for conviviality.

  M. Le Brun has a pleasing appearance. He is of average height, with black eyes, eyebrows, and hair. His eyes are intelligent and keen, and his high forehead also adds to his look of intelligence. He is lively, yes, charming in almost every utterance, and quickly witty. He is at ease with himself as a successful man who is still ambitious.

  And he makes it clear that he admires me, and even that he desires me. To my own wonder, I find desire awakening in myself, or at least a curiosity about desire. He communicates his interest in a perfectly decorous way. I know of his attraction because his eyes shine when he looks at me, and his lips part in a slight smile.

  Strangely, it is when I am in church with my mother that I experience an overwhelming desire to please her and to make her life happy and without care. Wonderful music, whether sacred or profane, makes me want to marry! Our Church of Saint Eustache is famous for its organ, and from time to time, renowned musicians come there to perform secular music. For any such grand concert, the mood is as devout as when people come to Mass, because the audience anticipates being in the presence of rare and transcendent music.

  Most readily, my mother and I embrace the opportunity to attend a performance by a descendant of the Bach family of musicians, from Leipzig. With the first piece, music composed by Buxtehude, we feel gloriously enlightened by harmonies and rhythms of an almost antique era. Because the organ concert occurs in the afternoon, Saint Eustache blooms with colored light. Together the music and the church become a bower for dear memories, and I am recalling how once my father took me to see the back of this church with its exuberant flying buttresses in the Gothic manner and how next we walked around the building so that he might show me its more classical façade. He spoke of these two different styles of beauty. Then he asked me, “To which tribe do we belong, my gifted daughter, the exuberant or the restrained?”