The Optickal Illusion Read online

  She stares for a moment, lightly amused at his consternation. Tries to gauge the tone of his voice, the look in his eye.

  ‘It is well known that you have a taste for danger.’

  ‘Not enough to risk my head as well as my reputation. Besides, I have learnt to avoid idealists whenever possible. They hang people’s corpses on their virtue, and expect the world to applaud them for it.’

  The clock at the palace entrance chimes the quarter hour. Ann Jemima turns.

  ‘Forgive me, Mr Darton, I have a pressing engagement.’

  ‘It is you who must forgive me, Miss Provis,’ he replies. Yet there is no request for forgiveness in his voice – it is like a thin skein of cotton round her throat, both insubstantial and difficult to ignore. She turns back exasperated.

  ‘I wish not to delay you. I simply wanted a quick word with you concerning your father…’

  ‘I have not the time now.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘I am going to see Benjamin West.’

  He frowns.

  ‘He is painting your portrait?’

  ‘He is not,’ she replies scornfully.

  His eyes fall to the brushes protruding from her bag.

  ‘He is giving you instruction in painting?’

  ‘You seem amused by this, Mr Darton.’

  ‘I am not at all. Anyone who has been to your father’s apartment has seen that you have formidable abilities… at least some of them in art.’

  ‘What then would you say if I were to tell you that it is I who am giving the instruction.’

  She delivers this last statement with the defiance of a poker player placing a winning hand on the table. As she has surmised, he knows not whether to respond with flat disbelief or astonishment.

  ‘You are aware that in the eyes of the King that means that you yourself are consorting with revolutionaries?’ he declares softly.

  So you decide to play for time while you figure it out, she thinks.

  Out loud she says, ‘Mr Darton, you are too fond of conspiracy. In what sense might the President of the Royal Academy be a revolutionary?’

  A look of unbridled amusement crosses his face.

  ‘I am surprised I need to explain it. Many Americans feel an affinity with the French Revolution, for somewhat obvious reasons. Now that we are at war with France, West’s loyalties are – at the very least – questionable.’

  ‘Your logic is incomplete.’

  His eyes dance as he steps closer to her. She can smell the scent of shaving soap and expensive snuff.

  ‘He has received sympathisers to the French Revolution at his house on many occasions. Not least Thomas Paine. He was close to his countryman Benjamin Franklin, who acted as a diplomat, but was considered as dangerous to our country as he was eccentric. West also once sheltered a young American painter who was arrested for treason.’ Ann Jemima shakes her head. ‘He may seem to be a friend,’ Darton continues, ‘but surely that only places him in a better position to betray our monarch. I would watch your association.’

  His eyes fix her, and she feels trapped for a moment. Angrily she steps back.

  ‘You play this game simply to disconcert me. What you say is no more than conjecture.’

  But her voice has not the certainty of her words. He stares at her for a moment, before nodding approvingly.

  ‘You have spirit and intelligence. Does this allow you to see, now, how any of us can fall under suspicion?’

  She feels her breath coming more rapidly, and tries to conceal it.

  He tilts his head to one side.

  ‘Let me paint you the other picture,’ he continues. ‘Though many Americans support the French, many have been alarmed by the radical turn of the revolution. Last year they signed a treaty that means they are better off getting fat on British money than in shedding British blood.’ He smiles darkly. ‘The King, of course, still sees America as his Achilles’ heel. But for now his suspicions of Americans have receded.’

  ‘That still does not remove West from the dock you have constructed.’

  ‘In terms of Thomas Paine, West also entertained his sworn enemy Edmund Burke. He considers himself, with misplaced vanity, to be a man of ideas. So he wants to meet such individuals, but it does not mean he is in bed with them.’

  ‘And the young American?’

  ‘The King saw fit to release him from gaol and he returned to America, where he is now a respected painter.’

  ‘So in that light Benjamin West is no traitor.’

  ‘I am merely showing you how from one side the facts seem to damn him, while from another he is perfectly innocent. We are living in times where reality swings back and forth like a hanged man from a gibbet. At a certain point, any of us may be condemned.’

  She is silent for a moment.

  ‘I am glad I do not inhabit your mind, Mr Darton. There are such horrors in there that it would stop me from sleeping, and without sleep,’ she pauses, ‘who knows what nonsense I might talk?’

  His eyes flare. She dips her head and turns to continue walking.

  ‘Are you intending your route to take you through St James’s Park?’ he asks loudly as she moves away.

  ‘Indeed I am.’

  ‘Then please allow me to accompany you. You are not in the country any more. You must be aware that few ladies who venture there alone emerge with their virtue intact.’

  He means to provoke me to outrage at every turn, Ann Jemima thinks.

  ‘You yourself are aware that that depends on the time of day a lady ventures forth.’ Her tone is contemptuous. ‘A carriage awaits me on the other side. I have walked there before on my own, and I can hold my head up as high now as I did when I made my first excursion. I cannot account for the other women with whom you associate.’

  The sentry at the gate is racked by a coughing fit. From outside, they can hear an oyster-seller calling in the street.

  ‘I see you have lost none of your pointed wit during my absence,’ he declares, ignoring her pique as he follows her. ‘Tell me, do you upbraid other acquaintances of your father in this fashion? You are noted at the court for your independent spirit. Yet it seems – though maybe I flatter myself – you save your sharper spears and arrows for when we talk.’

  ‘Pray do not flatter yourself, Mr Darton. You receive no special treatment at my hands.’

  ‘Then I am not alone in feeling myself as full of holes as a Saint Sebastian whenever I depart your company?’

  ‘Mr Darton, you are too kind to us both. I can neither imagine that my wit devastates you as greatly as you say, nor that you could on any level compare yourself to a saint.’

  She has goaded him to laughter – it flickers in the air before quickly disappearing.

  ‘I have been trying to find your father as a matter of some urgency, Miss Provis. But he has proved most elusive of late.’

  ‘We have both been much occupied in negotiating the price of a manuscript we are selling to Mr West.’

  ‘The manuscript that your father inherited?’

  ‘He has talked to you of it?’ She cannot stop the chagrin creeping into her voice. ‘It seems there is little that is not shared between you and my father.’

  ‘In truth I was confused by his account of how he received it. Why did he first see it only two years ago? His uncle died twenty years before that.’

  ‘It was not his uncle,’ she corrects him. ‘It was his grandfather.’

  ‘My apologies, I misremember, but my point still holds true. His grandfather worked in the Navy, did he not?’

  ‘He worked for the East India Company. He was sent to Venice to import dyes, but then he encountered a man called Signor Barri, who told him about something rather more interesting.’

  A cold breeze starts to pick up. She draws her cloak more closely around her.

  ‘I never cease to be amazed at the ability of dead people to surprise us,’ he replies quietly. ‘We talk about the silence of the grave, but in my experience the dead are more generous with th
eir secrets than the living.’

  For a moment he sees a look of horror on her face. Before he can comment on it, she collects herself.

  ‘Your father said it was connected to the secrets of the colourmen who supplied the painters of the Renaissance.’

  She smiles fleetingly. ‘In Venice, colour was almost seen as a currency, it was so valuable. Those who betrayed the secrets of the colour shops could go to prison.’ She bites her lip. ‘Some of those secrets were formulas related to specific painters. At some point those relating to Titian were lost.’

  ‘Surely it is impossible that knowledge like that is truly lost.’

  ‘That was Signor Barri’s opinion. He and my great-grandfather set out to trace those who could help them put the formula together again. It became a kind of mission for them. They visited private libraries, tracked down anyone who could provide even a small fragment of knowledge. Everything they discovered my great-grandfather wrote down in a document that he brought back with him to England.’

  They are at the edge of the park. Despite the cold of the December day, the fashionable are promenading up and down its canal while the destitute linger at the sides. Ann Jemima sees a dead-eyed duchess in purple propped up by a man with a rash who is at least two decades her younger, while a beggar reaches his hand out to a gentleman and is kicked back towards the undergrowth. A young girl in rags clutches a babe in her arms and shivers as it howls. It is nine o’clock in the morning, and currently there are more waterfowl than debauchees in the bushes. Yet everyone in London knows that the pimps, adulterers and libertines will fully stake out their territory as dusk falls.

  ‘You still have not explained to me why the manuscript was not discovered till two years ago,’ says Darton.

  She glances momentarily at the canal before continuing.

  ‘You say, Mr Darton, that the dead are generous with their secrets. But my great grandmother had never learnt to read, so the papers were no more use to her than kindling for fire. She kept them locked in a chest and no one else ever sought to look at them. When my grandmother died two years ago, I was handed them along with other family papers before I moved to London.’

  He reflects for a moment.

  ‘It would have taken more than mere reading to comprehend them. Your scholarship is quite considerable when one takes into account…’

  ‘… that I am a woman?’

  ‘I was going to say that you were raised in Somerset.’

  She laughs.

  ‘London does not have claim to all the wit in the country. The Lunar Society has some of the finest minds in all of England, yet most of its members live close to Birmingham.’

  ‘Which is also far from Somerset.’

  She does not respond.

  ‘Miss Provis, permit me an impertinent question. Your own paintings are – in all seriousness – most accomplished.’ She is silent. ‘If this discovery is so extraordinary, why do you yourself not use the method so you can exhibit your works to the acclaim of all London?’

  ‘Your sense of humour is most low, Mr Darton. Do you think London is ready to acknowledge the female Titian?’ Her eyes gleam. ‘Dr Johnson has been cold in his grave for just over a decade, and he said that for a woman to preach was like a dog walking on its hind legs. If I myself tried to demonstrate this method, I anticipate the comparisons would be yet ruder.’

  ‘There have been female painters at the Academy.’

  ‘I can think of two. Both forced to marry men much older than them to have money to live on. Each then told she should not paint so much if she wanted to be a respectable wife.’

  ‘Yet the critics see no difference in their art.’ She looks at him in surprise. ‘They savage the women every bit as mercilessly as they do the men.’

  ‘So in that sense we are all rendered equal.’ Her laugh is filled with self-mockery. ‘In any case my talents are modest. This kind of method – for all the knowledge it contains – is of no use if it is not interpreted by a painter of the highest ability. You are a man of the world, Mr Darton. Surely you can see why Benjamin West’s demonstrations of the method will be seen as more valuable than my own.’

  He is about to reply, but a cry goes up from further down the path. A small boy, feral in rags, hurtles past with two men in pursuit. Darton and Ann Jemima watch for a moment as they disappear across the park in the direction of Queen Charlotte’s residence.

  ‘So Benjamin West will receive acclaim, he will pay you a large sum of money, and then you will not be forced to marry a man three times your age.’ She does not reply. ‘Is that what is at stake for you?’ His voice is suddenly much quieter.

  ‘I simply want my father to receive the money he deserves for his inheritance.’ She will not look at him.

  ‘Has Mr West indicated that he will pay the money?’

  ‘He does not possess the manuscript yet,’ she declares.

  ‘How then, is he testing the method?’

  Now she meets his eye.

  ‘I shall reveal its most important elements in three or four demonstrations. Just enough to let him know what he could achieve if he studied it all.’

  ‘Is he paying you for these demonstrations?’

  Briefly she looks disconsolate. Then, collecting herself, she looks fiercely at Darton. ‘He will make the payment. Whether or not the gossips term him a traitor, Mr West is without doubt a gentleman. Believe me, I have no doubt that he sees enough value in what I have shown him so far.’

  There is shouting in the distance as the men finally catch up with the boy. Match-thin limbs flail in the air as one man holds him up while the other extracts a wallet from inside the boy’s threadbare coat.

  Darton looks towards them briefly – then nods and turns back to her.

  ‘I congratulate you on your determination, Miss Provis. I have always considered you to be a young woman of ambition.’

  ‘Do not seek to disarm me with compliments. I know you are simply seeking to be diverted by my delusions.’

  ‘You know I would never accuse a young lady like yourself of suffering from delusions.’

  ‘Never directly, indeed not. But Mr Darton, I have seen you flatter half a dozen individuals in as many minutes. To suggest that you think equally highly of all of them suggests both a lack of judgement on your part and an appalling gullibility on theirs.’

  There is a shadow of amusement on his face as his eyes narrow.

  ‘Was it your conception or your father’s to take the method to Mr West?’

  ‘I have had help – but the idea was mine.’

  He nods as if a theory has been confirmed.

  ‘You have proved a most interesting addition to your father’s household. You would not believe how many of us at the court are waiting to see where your ambitions take you next.’

  Anger suddenly runs red through her cheeks. She looks over to where a coachman is raising his hand to attract her attention. Then she looks back to Darton.

  ‘What are you insinuating?’

  ‘Nothing to cause you to take offence. I am one of your greatest admirers. Though I sense that you are a woman with a secret, and I would give much to know it.’

  ‘Do you have so little regard for me that your main fascination is with what you do not know about me, Mr Darton?’ Her eyes spark. ‘If you were not such a slave to conspiracy, who knows what satisfaction you might derive from the real world?’

  He dips his head as if in acknowledgement of the jibe.

  ‘What would you fight to save, Miss Provis?’

  ‘Why do you wish to know?’

  ‘I am asking you what is most important to you in life. In France I have talked to people who have fought to change their society. Liberty, equality, fraternity – these ideals should thrill the heart, yet they are all broken by the very people who say they champion them. Your father and I have often disagreed on political matters. He believes I am too wedded to ideas rather than reality. But now I wish him to advise me on – shall I say – a ma
tter of conscience.’

  She contemplates him as if calculating whether he is worthy of a response.

  ‘I do not believe you to have a conscience, Mr Darton,’ she finally replies. ‘I suspect you want my answer only to taunt me about it. I value liberty, but it is worthless unless it comes with dignity. It is very little to ask – yet too often it can be ripped away from us. Without it we are nothing. I would fight for dignity beyond anything else.’

  Darton is silent.

  Finally he nods gravely.

  ‘I do not know who would try to rob you of your dignity, Miss Provis. But they would find you a daunting opponent.’ He bows low. ‘Let me tell you that each time I see you, my respect for you grows. I will relieve you of my company here. Please convey my regards to your father, and tell him I intend to call on him in the next couple of days.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Mr West writes home

  ‘If you need to learn how this goose quill should be cut, get a good, firm quill, and take it, upside down, straight across the two fingers of your left hand; and get a very nice sharp penknife, and make a horizontal cut one finger along the quill; and cut it by drawing the knife towards you, taking care that the cut runs even and through the middle of the quill. And then put the knife back on one of the edges of this quill, say on the left side, and pare it, and taper it toward the point.’

  cennino cennini,

  The Craftsman’s Handbook, c. 1400

  Benjamin West sits in his study. It is late afternoon, and time is starting to bleed and blur with the onset of evening. He has tried to start the letter several times now. He takes up the crow’s quill and begins again.

  ‘December 22, 1796 Newman Street, London

  ‘William, my dearest brother,’

  He sits back and sighs. ‘I am not certain even of this, my old friend and sparring partner. I have not seen you for almost forty years.’ He remembers their farewell at the docks when his ship departed for Europe. How after all the arguments, William had finally agreed he would take the coach and horse with him early that morning. The smell of brine, the clatter of chains and shouting. How they had stared at each other briefly before hugging fiercely, sensing the uncertainty in the air all around them.