The Optickal Illusion Page 6

  Mr West turns towards his speaker with a smile, but when he sees who he is, he looks as repelled as if he were being addressed by a pile of dog excrement. There stands James Barry, an Irish painter with a face soured by perpetual discontent – the man who is by far the most prominent of his critics.

  ‘Mr West, this is indeed an interesting theory, and you have presented it well. But why do we let ourselves be seduced by colour over and over again? For all your claims tonight about its contribution to structure, it is like the paint on a harlot’s face – it draws us in, without giving us any sense of the body beneath it.’

  A few of the men in the room laugh, but the comment is greeted by the majority with a roar. Opie takes a deep breath.

  ‘Maybe Mr Barry has more experience with harlots than the rest of us,’ he declares equally loudly.

  He well knows the statement to be untrue, but he speaks with the intention to maim, and he succeeds – a little too well.

  ‘That is not what your patron claims,’ shouts Barry back across the table.

  Opie’s intention to maim shifts to the desire to mortally wound. ‘Let me finish, Mr Barry, you trade too greatly on what you mistakenly apprehend to be an easy target.’

  Around them the whole room goes quiet. Opie feels a strange sense of calm descending. Despite his early signs of genius, he has not had the elite schooling of many around him. But years of associating with educated fools has shown him the advantage of simply speaking his mind.

  ‘Just because colour delights doesn’t mean that it deceives. Different colours can stir us in different ways – and I will concede to you, Mr Barry, that certain shades, like red and gold, are more seductive than others. But in the hands of painters of true talent – like the Venetians, like Rubens – they are not strumpets’ tools, but a device for unlocking our hearts. Mr West’s demonstration is one way of trying to understand why these colours strike us at such a profound level, and a demonstration of how they contribute to a painting’s structure. Of course you can only perceive this if you have the sensibility to do so. If that sensibility has been blunted by greater knowledge of the whorehouse than of love, then there is no hope for you.’

  A loud clinking of glasses round the table and guttural laughter indicates that his point has hit home. Barry seizes his own glass as if he is about to use it as a weapon, but after a few glowering moments decides to hurl the drink down his own throat, before getting up and leaving.

  ‘The love of the strumpet as opposed to true love?’ declares Richard Westall. His wiry frame slips unceremoniously into the seat next to Opie at the meal after the discussion. ‘What flatulent nonsense is this?’

  Around them servants have set the table with plates of roast beef, fine green beans, and crystal glasses glinting with different hues of alcohol. Opie laughs.

  ‘I concede the merits of true love can be praised too greatly. It has certainly caused me nothing but pain recently.’

  ‘Our debates on colour always provoke strong passions, but this has proved by far the most animated,’ says Smirke, lowering himself elegantly into the seat on the other side of Opie. The silver greyhound’s head of his cane gleams in the candlelight as he leans it against the table. ‘I was convinced Barry was going to strike you.’

  ‘Indeed, it could have been the first time that blood was shed at an Academy meeting,’ says Farington, making up their four. ‘I thought both you and Mr West spoke rather well tonight.’ He pulls in his chair and spears a bean with his fork.

  ‘There will be other opportunities for bloodshed soon, I am sure,’ declares Westall, raising his glass. A muscle flickered in Farington’s cheek, while Smirke coughs quietly.

  Opie looks at all three of them quickly.

  ‘I comprehend not your meaning, gentlemen,’ he declares.

  ‘I shall state it plainly then,’ says Westall.

  Smirke flips open the top of his cane and takes a pinch of snuff.

  ‘Barry may be Mr West’s most crude opponent,’ Westall continues, ‘but he is not the only one. I believe it is time for us to rid ourselves of Benjamin West as our president.’

  Farington shakes his head and raps his hand on the table. Westall waves his finger. ‘Mr Farington, you know I speak truth; do not try to rebuke me. The first president of this Academy was Sir Joshua Reynolds. Though he has been dead these past four years, most believe there to be more talent in his decomposing cock than there is in West’s entire body.’

  Farington’s anger sucks his cheeks in – he looks like a pig’s bladder that has suddenly been deprived of air. In some triumph, Westall beckons to the footman to renew Opie’s glass, while he swigs from a flask he has brought with him.

  ‘Mr Westall – your disregard for Mr West has long been noted,’ Mr Farington finally says.

  ‘Oh, come, come.’ Westall’s eyes flare. ‘I am far from alone in my doubts. He is ambitious and vain, yet to my mind has not the ability to justify either attitude. There are several men in this room who think they would make a better President, and we all know it. Including yourself, Mr Farington. Do I speak truth, or do I not?’

  He takes another swig from his flask. Opie suddenly realises that it contains laudanum. Though Westall appears drunk, his pupils are constricted, while the expression on his face suggests the swerves and loops of a faintly disorientated mind. Yet his sharpness has not deserted him. As Farington fights to assume the right expression before making his reply, Opie can see the vulturish ambition flare in his eyes.

  ‘Surely it is for our King to make such a decision,’ he eventually says.

  ‘However long he may last,’ retorts Westall. ‘It must be of great comfort to Mr West that his patron is a madman who pisses blue urine.’

  For a second the older man’s glance whispers towards the laudanum flask before looking back to Opie, who nods in answer to the silent question.

  ‘The King does not favour West as much as he did,’ says Smirke quietly. ‘They say the Queen is mortified that West, because of their friendship, has witnessed him during his worst bouts of madness. She has urged the King to keep him at a distance. Have you not noticed how rarely West is invited to St James’s Palace these days?’

  Suddenly Opie feels weary. The endless suck and surge of the Academy’s power games give him little pleasure. Whoever emerges triumphant only seems to do so for a few months before being sucked back down into a whirlpool of envy.

  He regards Westall and Smirke impatiently. ‘I must confess it concerns me little whether or not Mr West keeps his position as President,’ he declares. ‘With power comes responsibility, and with responsibility comes less time to paint. He has travelled and read as much as most men might do in three lifetimes. I do not begrudge him this presidency if he is foolish enough to want it.’

  ‘He may have read three times as much as most men, yet somehow he has learnt a fraction of what he is supposed to,’ says Smirke drily.

  ‘I am relieved I am not subject to such scrutiny.’ Opie’s smile is flinty. ‘He has made at least one significant innovation in art, and that is more than most round this table can say.’

  ‘But this Academy was founded to promote excellence,’ retorts Smirke. A pause follows his statement. ‘What we achieve is down to individual merit,’ he continues. ‘Yet I believe it does not help our younger artists when they look for guidance and inspiration and see a President who, if not the Joker in the pack, is certainly not the Ace.’

  Opie stares at him. ‘I refuse to participate in making West a scapegoat.’

  ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen.’ Farington’s eyes blaze.

  Opie takes a deep breath.

  ‘Forgive me.’ He rises. ‘I know all too well what it is like to have your name destroyed for no good reason. I take no pleasure in inflicting the same torture on another man.’

  He turns to leave, and Smirke jumps up.

  ‘You have scarcely touched your food, Mr Opie.’ His tone is apologetic. ‘Please stay – there are more entertaining topi
cs with which we could divert you.’

  ‘I have little doubt of that, Mr Smirke.’ Opie bows. Believe me, I have already been amply diverted. I was invited earlier today to a session of poker on Fleet Street. I was not going to attend, but I prefer playing cards to playing with men’s reputations. I thank you,’ he concludes wryly, ‘for your most stimulating company.’

  He dips his head and hurries towards the ante-chamber. As he looks round, he realises Farington is following him.

  ‘Please, Mr Farington, there is nothing you can say that will detain me,’ he declares.

  ‘That was not my intent. I commend you for refusing to denounce Mr West without evidence.’

  Opie pauses wearily. He is all too used to Farington appearing to express one point of view while seeking to put forward another.

  ‘Westall is hysterical,’ the older man continues. ‘Yet there are more serious matters at hand here. West has made several mistakes over the last year in the administration of Academy matters. I believe it will take just one more transgression on his part for his resignation to be unavoidable.’

  ‘Well let us hope he does not make that transgression.’

  ‘Mr Opie,’ Farington’s voice takes on an urgent note. ‘We must be practical. Who will you support to be President if…’

  ‘No, Mr Farington. I will have no more of this. Forgive me, I must be gone.’

  He continues rapidly to where a footman is waiting with his cape. As he puts it on, it strikes him that while earlier this evening it has felt like a dead weight on his shoulders, now it feels weightless, as if rendered so by his relief at escaping the Academy’s cloying intrigues. His feet whir down the spiral staircase before walking him out into the Aldwych. There two link-boys who carry lamps for night-revellers – deprived of their livelihood that night by the brightness of the moon – are fighting and scrapping while five other boys cheer them on.

  He watches for a moment, then, whistling, throws them a handful of pennies, enjoying their look of confusion as the dull metal clatters on the stones around them. The fight stops, one of the boys flings himself to his knees to see what has caused the noise, and then the cry of astonishment sheers into the air. Opie laughs to himself as the seven boys become one animal, a scramble of limbs on the ground frantically foraging for the money. For a brief moment one of the boys detaches himself from the frenzy and yells towards Opie. But before he can engage him further, Opie turns briskly on his heel and sets off through the moon-quietened streets in the direction of St Paul’s Churchyard.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A walk through St James’s Park, December 1796

  ‘[She] has a most remarkable, and for a woman unheard-of, talent; one must see and value what she does and not what she leaves undone. There is much to learn from her, particularly as to work, for what she affects is really marvellous.’

  johann wolfgang von goethe,

  on the Georgian artist Angelica Kauffman

  Ann Jemima steps hurriedly into Green Cloth Court from Mr Provis’s apartment and surveys her surroundings with impatience. She feels around her the clack and flurry of the palace as it stirs into action for the day: heels ticking across stone courtyards, bellowed orders coming from windows. When she first arrived, she often sensed that just stepping outside the front door was to become part of some elaborate board game where she did not yet know the rules. Beneath the palace refinement it felt as if the court insiders were observing her, waiting for her to make a false move that would let them dissect her with silver knives and distribute her in the streets around St James’s.

  In those days she would often wake in the morning feeling as if she were inhabiting someone else’s body entirely. The sounds around her, the way the furniture was arranged in her room, the angle at which the light filtered through the window – all seemed different from the way they should be. She would close her eyes again, waiting to hear the shriek of swallows that had once nested above her bedroom, and the music of voices that were long gone. She would hope that when she opened her eyes once more the walls would be cream-coloured and not deep green, and that the old oak dressing table that had belonged both to her grandmother and her mother would be standing there.

  The coach that had brought her to live in London had felt as if it was abducting her from her childhood. The raw joy of extreme youth – running through frost-spiked fields, stealing seedcake from the baker, paddling in streams on mornings ablaze with light and birdsong – that had all been brushed away forever. Even before she had arrived in this city, she had perceived that the journey from girlhood to womanhood was as much about forgetting as about learning. Forgetting about running wild and free, forgetting about saying what you felt. Gradually putting the body in a cage, and training the mind so that it appeared to walk the pathways of conformity.

  Then the chasm opened up beneath her. Smallpox killed first her grandmother, and then – it seemed – everyone else that she loved. She will never forget the January day three years ago when even the extreme cold could not numb her pain. An archway formed by yew trees to one side, rows of tombs huddled like grey beggars on another. Two gashes in the ground, and the coffin bearers, eyes fixed and expressionless as if they themselves were walking corpses. She wanted to smash open the coffins and haul the dead back into the living world. Wanted to shout that this was not real – how could a person ‘be’ one moment and ‘not be’ the next? Wanted to rage at the skies for their injustice. But instead she watched the coffins being dropped into frozen ground, dimly heard the choked condolences echoing in her disbelieving ears.

  The coach that abducted her from her childhood could never outpace those memories. They clung like cobwebs to the wheels before rampaging through the windows and weaving themselves tightly around her heart. In those brief moments after waking in London, her desolation would be all encompassing. She would feel as if the air were being sucked out of the room, and the sound of a bird’s wings beating against glass would fill her head. Gasping, she would open her eyes, drinking in the morning light like air as she fiercely chastised herself, banishing her tears as she addressed the new day.

  Those who watched her at court would never have guessed at the raw wounds of her grief. To most, it appeared to take surprisingly little time for Thomas Provis’s estranged daughter to be at ease at the palace. Swiftly she absorbed the court’s secret codes and languages. Learnt the titles in all their strange variety – the Gentlemen Ushers, the Embellishers, the Keeper of the Lions, Black Rod. Through Mrs Tullett, she has also mastered the court’s darker knowledge – the women, of both high and low rank, who have had abortions, the equerries who are concealing symptoms of syphilis, the footman with a predilection for choirboys. She has grown to understand how the court’s grand ceremonies are not so much a proclamation of greatness as a gilded screen for all of humanity’s imperfections.

  She sees all this around her, yet at the same time looks beyond it. Today, now she has shaken off the unhappiness of the morning, her preoccupation is with what awaits her outside the palace. She is dressed distinctively in a crumpled silk cape the colour of burnt umber – from the matching embroidered bag that she carries a cluster of paintbrushes can be seen to protrude. Her step conveys her impatience and purpose. As she approaches the palace side-entrance where the sentry stands on duty in his box, she speeds up like a prisoner kept for months in a cell who has just seen a first glimpse of daylight.

  ‘Miss Provis!’

  Her instinct at first is to ignore the voice. Her pace wavers slightly, as if she has stumbled on a small object, but then she continues without looking back.

  ‘Miss Provis!’ the voice repeats.

  She stops, vexed, and turns around. There stands Josiah Darton, Mr Provis’s closest friend and a Gentleman of the Choir. The Irishman is some twenty years younger than the verger, but they share the same eye for unusual artefacts. He comes two or three times a month to their apartment bearing offerings that he often delivers, as Mrs Tullett has noted, with some impr
obable narrative. The Chinese porcelain horseman that he has won in a game of cards. The Venetian mirror with Murano glass – a gift from a dying duke in Marseille. He is also widely rumoured around the court to be a spy. Provis will never be drawn on this, except to mutter that Darton seems to be as well acquainted with drinking songs celebrating revolutionary France as he is with the sung liturgy for Sunday morning.

  As Darton looks at her, his eyes glint amber – the lines around them show that he has in general been more entertained than disappointed by the world. Yet though he affects a wry amusement, she feels the familiar stab of fear when she sees him. Among the sycophants, power-mongers and social peacocks at the court, he is the individual whose motives she feels least able to divine.

  ‘Why, Mr Darton,’ she declares coolly.

  As he walks towards her, her attention is caught by the scar on his left cheek.

  ‘It has been several weeks since we last spoke.’ He bows.

  ‘It has indeed been an unusually long time since my father and I have seen you at the palace,’ she replies acerbically. ‘What has changed to bring about this happy circumstance? The direction of the wind?’

  She studies him sharply as she talks.

  ‘You jest, but you are closer to the truth than you surmise,’ he responds. ‘I have been in France this past month. I would have returned to London earlier had it not been for inclement weather on the Channel.’

  ‘Another of your trips to the continent. What business took you away this time?’

  She finds her eyes drawn again to the scar on his face. For a reason she cannot divine, she suddenly imagines him standing over a corpse.

  ‘I was singing at the new Conservatory in Paris,’ he replies.

  ‘Mrs Tullett says you sang for Robespierre a month before he was executed,’ she says, raising her voice slightly.

  He looks swiftly around them.

  ‘When Mrs Tullett declares a thing once, it is a rumour, ten repetitions later it is a fact, and a hundred times later it might determine your fate,’ he hisses. ‘Do you think I would have any standing here at the court if I had ever sung for the chief architect of the Terror?’