Claude & Camille

by Stephanie Cowell

  He straightened. “You’ll stay at least the week, Auguste?” he asked. The painting was finished and they gathered around the table again for lunch. Lise came down the road carrying her parasol. She kissed all of them and talked of her tedious rehearsals. They sat for a long time drinking coffee under the trees, Lise’s stocking feet in Auguste’s lap. They had reconciled.

  “Both the chicken and the boy moved,” Claude said later, looking at the paintings. “I look weary and fat. Madame, if possible, is more beautiful than ever.”

  Manet left at dusk on the train back to Paris.

  Claude thought of that year and the one that followed always as summer, but there was also the winter, when he braved the cold and snow to paint outdoors and then returned to the warm, bright room where Camille was reading or sitting on the floor playing with Jean. She went frequently to Paris to buy hats and gloves and to visit her dressmaker, chattering of lunch with friends, with her sister. She had told him she passionately wished to have another child. He replied with a smile that he would continue to do one of the things he loved best to make that happen.

  One soft early autumn day more than two years after they had moved to Argenteuil, a letter came from Pissarro in Louveciennes. “I am overjoyed to tell you, Claude,” it said, “that not all the work we left in my stable was destroyed during the occupation. A group of paintings has been discovered in a neighbor’s attic. I don’t know who hid them. Perhaps since we all have a little more money now, we could think once more of our independent exhibition.”

  1874

  This [painting] school does away with two things: line, without which it is impossible to reproduce any form, animate or inanimate, and color, which gives the form the appearance of reality…. The scribblings of a child have a naivety, a sincerity which makes one smile, but the excesses of this school sicken or disgust.

  —ART CRITIC EMILE CARDON IN

  LA PRESSE, APRIL 1874

  THAT WAS HOW THEIR FIRST EXHIBITION FINALLY HAPPENED after nine years. Claude retrieved from Pissarro his painting of the sun rising over the harbor that he had painted with his old friend Boudin three years before. They borrowed for the following April a few large rooms on the boulevard des Capucines that belonged to a photographer and were wonderfully light. Many colleagues would participate: Pissarro, Auguste, Degas, and Berthe Morisot; Sisley and Cézanne. Manet refused; he told Claude that the established art circle would look upon them as vagabonds and turn their backs on them.

  “Oh, we’re vagabonds, are we?” Paul Cézanne growled.

  Boudin sent a grateful note saying he would join them and sent a few paintings.

  In the cool days of early spring, they hung their work in the gallery. The gray walls sang with the colors of the gardens of Pontoise, piles of flowers and portraits of women by Auguste, and the water and island of La Grenouillère. There were ballet dancers and laundresses from Degas, and from Cézanne, the remarkable House of the Hanged Man. They had included a few of Frédéric’s paintings: a gorgeous vase of flowers with a black woman behind them, a fair nude girl being dressed by two attendants.

  Camille arrived on the morning the exhibition was to open, wearing gray silk-wool. Her eyes shone. “You’re all ready,” she said breathlessly. “You’re all here. ‘Un pour tous, tous pour un.’” She walked slowly into the other room. Claude had the oddest feeling then that she would walk into one of the paintings and disappear. His heart began to beat rapidly. He was going to rush forward when she appeared again.

  She said quietly, “It is as we dreamt the day after they threw you out into the snow. It’s as I thought it would be.”

  More than two hundred people came that day, some delighted, some critical. In the days that followed they sometimes had only two lone souls wandering shyly amid the rooms. Claude had somehow expected them to push in by the hundreds; that reading the announcements they would trample one another. But compared to the Salon, it was a tiny endeavor.

  Two weeks later at ten at night the doors closed for the last time. One by one the painters departed until only Claude, Auguste, and Pissarro remained and, sitting a little apart from them, Durand-Ruel, who had returned to Paris a few years before and reopened his gallery. From the boulevard below, the gas lamps reflected up with the chatter of people.

  Auguste took off his new shoes and rubbed his stocking feet. “We sold a few things, at least,” he said.

  Claude shook his head. “I can’t believe that critic called Impression: Sunrise ‘a preliminary drawing for a wallpaper pattern.’ Has he ever seen the sun rise over the sea? Why do people with no gifts have to spend their honest hours making up nonsense about others and tell a man who has lived most of his life by the sea what the damn sea and the damn sun look like?”

  Durand-Ruel smiled and, opening a silver case, passed out small, fine cigars. He said, “That critic has done you a favor, Monet. He has given a name to all of you: Impressionists.”

  ON THE SHORT train ride home, a little drunk, Claude looked out the window at the dark countryside. Camille had not come this last day; she did not feel well and thought she might be pregnant, and he was anxious to get back to her. When he reached his station he jumped out and ran down the path by the stars. Once in the house he went straight to the bedroom, undressed, and dropped his clothes on the floor. He thought Camille was sleeping but instead he heard her low sobs.

  He sat on the side of the bed, his hand on her back. “What, dear?” he murmured.

  “I wanted to keep you all together, and one went away to die. It was partially my fault. You are all together but for him, and without him none of you could have gone on.”

  He could not comfort her. Even when he finally slept he could sense her crying in her sleep. He put his hand out to touch her and murmured, “Minou, Minou.”

  ALL THAT NIGHT he dreamt of the sea and of that night he had run into it with his dead friend and fallen with him in the cold water and shouted with joy at the wonder of the dawn rising through the storm. Camille was still sleeping when he woke the next morning. At the table near the coffeepot was the early post, and amid the news journals and letters from friends and collectors, he found a letter from the Normandy coast. For a moment a shiver moved through him and then he knew the handwriting of his old mentor, Boudin.

  Monet, I wanted to express to you my great joy in the exhibition in which you so kindly included me. My pupil had returned any favor I humbly gave him. I thought I was only a lonely artist painting by a windy sea. It seems I am part of a movement of many talented painters: Impressionism. My dear friend, yes indeed. We are Impressionists.

  Interlude

  GIVERNY

  April 1909

  As the opening of his exhibition approached, he canceled it twice. Then he changed the date. At last he was ashamed to once more inconvenience his bewildered art dealer after announcements had already been made.

  He continued to paint thoughtfully, sometimes furiously.

  As he painted, the memory returned to him of a lovely morning the previous June when he had taken his easel and canvas and paint box to the pond and had simply sat looking at the water lilies for some time. He heard birds and the slight movement of the flowers and the leaves.

  A soft rain began to fall on the pond. He opened his large umbrella and held it more over the easel and the empty canvas than over himself. Light rain splattered on the old wood of the paint box and on the pond and the flowers. He stood fascinated, watching the pink blossoms quiver under the soft, small drops. He heard the rain on the leaves, and then it died away and presently the clouds moved and the water stilled; leaves dripped into the pond and the colors and scent of the flowers washed over him.

  Almost without knowing it, he began to paint. He had the feeling that the water lilies came to his canvas more of their volition than his. The flowers and the shadows and the air moved against his brush; they moved from all about him to the canvas. They were outside of him and yet they were inside: they embraced him and drew him ins
ide their world.

  He stopped finally, his arm tired.

  But I have not made them as beautiful as they are, he thought ruefully when he recalled that ecstasy of painting that had remained with him for several days. Nor did I ever really see how lovely my Minou was when I made love to her, only after when I stepped away and saw her lying on our rumpled bed, her look so tender. No, I must postpone this exhibition.

  He did not cancel, though, but wrote again to her sister asking if the letters had been found.

  Part Six

  1875

  This young man will surpass us all.

  —CHARLES-FRANÇOIS DAUBIGNY ABOUT CLAUDE MONET

  THROUGH THE TWO SUMMERS THAT FOLLOWED THE first independent exhibition, Claude painted Camille many times. He borrowed a huge Japanese robe, so heavy with its thickly embroidered birds and a demon, all gold and bright blues against the thick red silk. It flowed around her, down to the floor. They tacked Japanese rice paper fans to the wall of an empty room and he portrayed her holding a fan, her smile bright and charming. She wore a wig the color of golden wheat.

  He painted her reading in the garden under a tree with her luminous white skirts spread about her and then with Jean in a foliage of flowers so thick that she seemed to be rising out of them as something from the earth. She stood by him after, gazing at the work on the easel, leaning her head against his.

  “I can’t believe I’ll be twenty-eight this June!” She sighed.

  “I want to give you a birthday party.”

  Over the past four years their circle of friends had grown and now included not only his fellow artists but the art collector Leclercq, the Durand-Ruel family, and a few physicians and musicians. Her sister, who visited occasionally with her frail, coddled daughter, would also come. He planned the menu himself and gave the cook directions. He hired an extra maid.

  The day was overcast, and the trees in the garden above the long tables where they ate rustled now and then as if shivering in the wind. By the time the cheese dish came the branches were swaying, and darkening clouds hung heavily from the sky. Rain fell suddenly, splotching the tablecloths and moistening the cheese. Guests leapt up and began to bring the dishes inside. The maid ran out, and the cook. Everyone was shouting and laughing as they collided with one another trying to get through the door. Crowded in the parlor, the women worried for their hair. Now the rain fell torrentially, beating against the windows.

  “No matter! We’ll have coffee here,” Claude said. He opened the doors to the dining room. “Some can go there,” he said. “And some can sit on the stairs.” The rooms smelled of coffee, which the maid brought on trays and served, pouring from the silver pot.

  “Edmond must play,” Pissarro called from his chair by the window. Edmond put down his cigarette and sat down at the piano. “Will you and your sister sing, Madame Monet?” he called. “I recall how you sang that song from La Périchole together at your wedding party!”

  Edmond played the introduction and the two sisters took hands. Camille’s voice began clearly but shortly died away. She shook her head. “I don’t think I can,” she said. “Oh, I can’t.” Her face darkened and she looked around. “I don’t want to sing that; I don’t want to sing anything. I don’t want to sing for you.” She ran across the room and up past the few people sitting on the stairs. A door closed above.

  Claude stood up at once, but Annette put her hand on his arm. “I’ll go,” she insisted. “Lise and Julie can come too. The women will go,” she said, and the three of them hurried up the stairs with a rustle of skirts past Jean and Annette’s daughter, Nannette, who were holding hands, biting their lips.

  Edmond remained at the piano, touching the keys with delicate fingers. “I shouldn’t have asked her,” he said. “When she sang that before, our friend was there. Everything brings back memories. People who suffered through the siege and Commune suffer still; some of us will never be the same again. Some losses can’t be made up. You think you’re over them and they return; it’s no longer yesterday but now.”

  After ten minutes Claude could not bear any more and jumped up, exclaiming, “That’s it; I must go up to her!” He was crossing the parlor when the door opened above and the two sisters descended arm in arm, followed by the other women. Camille had been crying. Once downstairs, she went from one friend to another, kissing their cheeks repentantly. Claude felt her remote kiss on his lips; she seated herself in a corner by a lamp, taking out her sewing.

  Pissarro and Julie knelt beside her, picking up her thread and touching her sleeve. “There you are, Minou,” they said. “Be well, darling Minou.” She smiled a little, but tears ran down her cheeks and Claude felt he could not approach her. How strange to feel this, and yet he sensed that something would not let him in.

  EARLY IN THE morning he came down to the kitchen, leaving Camille to sleep. He made his own coffee and sat down at the table to drink it. He had slept badly, mulling over not only last evening but also something he had sensed about Camille now and then over the past few years. The changeability of her interests and moods had increased. She had decorated the house, making sure every color was right, and afterward had thrown herself first into writing poetry and then into trying watercolors. She now took piano lessons. She spoke again of the theater and returning to her novel. These things delighted and depressed her both. She told him one evening that if she kept changing her art she would never be anything extraordinary. Does she really want to be that? he asked himself, bewildered. Does she know the cost? Even living with me for so long, she doesn’t know it?

  Over the past few years they also had been drifting into their old habit of not telling each other their difficulties, and slowly the unspoken words lay within him until sometimes the things he wanted to say got trapped between the things he did not. He did not want to tell her that his inheritance had been spent and that his work was selling more slowly; he would not say that to keep up the house and the servants, the party and her dresses, he was promising everyone to pay them later. Still, Claude knew she was aware of it.

  Outside, a blackbird sang.

  He heard her footsteps on the stairs but she did not come into the kitchen. He rose with his coffee and walked barefoot through the rooms. There were the gathered chairs in the parlor where he had sat last night talking late with Auguste, there the piano with its closed keyboard. Early sunlight fell on the moss green velvet of the sofa. One coffee cup from the party still rested on the windowsill behind the curtain.

  Camille was kneeling on the dining room rug, her loose long hair rippling down the back of her dressing gown, gazing up at his painting of her in the green dress, which hung on the wall. He knelt beside her, slipping his arm around her shoulder.

  “Who is that lovely girl?” he asked, kissing her ear.

  “Oh, Claude, look at her! She’s untouchable! Nothing can hurt her; nothing can change her. I’m growing older and will never be her again. Do you remember the Baudelaire poem I asked you about? ‘O you who, like an ephemeral ghost / Trample lightly and with a serene look …’ She’s like that to me.”

  “Minou,” he said softly, though sternly. “You’re still young. What troubled you so last night, eh?”

  “I felt suddenly I didn’t sing well and would make a fool of myself. Sometimes I feel everyone does everything better than I do. I felt … dark inside.”

  “These past months you sometimes seem to sink into sadness. I worry about you.” He added delicately, “Your sister once told me about certain collapses when you were young.”

  Camille drew her pink dressing gown together. “But that was so long ago!” she said, dismissing it. “They came from the endless difficulties with my mother and my desire to please her and to be free. I remember little except that the doctor was kind. He said my nature was too excitable, that I felt things too deeply. My grandmère came and I was better.”

  She played with her fingers; the nails had long since ceased to be bitten but were neatly trimmed, and she wore both h
is engagement and wedding rings. “I can’t talk to Julie much anymore and sometimes not to Lise. Everyone else seems to go on with their lives but me.”

  He left the conversation uneasy, still feeling many things had not been said. From that day, though, he became a little more wary of Camille’s darker moods, which came without much warning. He sensed that the peace of his house was fragile and threatened as the wind worries the outer walls and will find a way to enter. A window shatters, and the wind and rain blow in and lift the curtains and thrust against the flowers in the vase. The mist blows over everything, even the elegant, delicate dresses behind the closed wardrobe door.

  As the winter came on, she not only did not go to her sister or her old friends but also now and then stayed half the day in bed. When he spent the afternoon in Paris negotiating or painting, he never knew what he would find when he came home. Once he discovered nine-year-old Jean sitting forlornly on the steps. “Maman’s not been up all day, Papa!” he complained.

  Claude ran up to the bedroom and opened the curtains to the last of the light. Leaning over Camille, he asked, “What is it, my love? How can I work with you like this? I need all the courage I can get!” and she said, “I’m so sorry. Has Jean eaten? Oh, poor Jean! I only meant to rest a little while.”

  But her mood fell steadily after Christmas until it seemed he had no peace. One winter day it snowed and he stomped out to the riverbank and painted. He felt nothing when he worked, not the cold of his feet on the damp, hard earth, not the weariness of his back. He heard his name shouted and saw her hurrying toward him in her walking dress and hat. She cried, “I’m going to Paris for the afternoon. You’ve hardly noticed me here today.”

  He exclaimed impatiently, “I’m trying to paint something that will sell. Go to Paris to see your sister. Ask friends in.”

  “All you do is paint. You don’t care that I’m not pregnant and you promised me. Perhaps I won’t wait for you. You’ll come back from painting and find me gone!”