A Mad, Wicked Folly

by Sharon Biggs Waller

  “Go on,” Bertram said, leaning forward over the table. “Give us an example.”

  I cast about for one, and my eyes lit upon the woman in the corner. “Take a woman who has imbibed too much absinthe. If you choose her as a subject, how do you want the viewer to see her? Happy? Indifferent? Hopeless? If you want to depict her in despair, a hopeless expression on her face, her boots turned out, instead of together like a lady would sit . . . the viewer might feel her despair and have sympathy for her plight, and look on her differently from just an unladylike wretch who doesn’t merit a thought.

  “The same can be said of a mother and child. Perhaps they are bidding farewell to a father as he marches off to war, the family knowing not when they will see him again. Such art can awaken feelings inside us for which there are no words. And that is hardly maudlin.”

  “What if the critics say that is ugly?” asked the teenage boy who had knocked over his easel.

  “They are entitled to their opinion,” I said. “But an artist should only worry about his or her own expression. An artist shouldn’t let the critic hold the paintbrush.”

  “Ha!” Bertram said. “I couldn’t have said it better, Pierre. I win!”

  Pierre, unhappy with losing, flicked his cigarette ash in the direction of a plate. “Do you paint, mademoiselle?”

  “Only watercolors,” I admitted. “But I so want to learn to paint with oil. I hope Monsieur will let me progress soon.”

  Oils were my favorite, but they eluded me. I had no idea how to mix them to create the depth of color so sought after in the medium. My attempts in the past had been dismal. I couldn’t get the feel of the paint. Worse, I constantly overloaded the brush and ended up creating an unspeakable mess on the canvas. Oil paints were terrifically difficult and most intimidating, but when one understood how to use them, the results were magical. And magic was what I craved. But Monsieur would only let students progress to painting when they had mastered drawing. Drawing was the alpha and omega of painting, he always told us.

  “Oils are not a woman’s medium,” Pierre said. “Best to stick with watercolors, eh?”

  “For God’s sake, Pierre,” Bertram said before I could protest. “You don’t have to have un phallus to work with oils.” He turned to me. “Don’t take any notice, Vicky. He doesn’t know one end of a paint tube from another. You’ll get there; have patience.”

  I smiled at Bertram gratefully, taking care to avoid meeting Pierre’s steady gaze.

  All too soon, I had to make my good-byes. I reluctantly left the artists shouting over one another and smoking their cigarettes. But before I left, I quietly settled their bill with the proprietor and paid for extra bread and a hot cassoulet to be sent over.

  I walked quickly through the village, needing to get back to school. But I paused when I reached the square. I saw Étienne’s latest poster plastered to the side of the boulangerie where Lily and I always bought our chocolate croissants.

  Étienne, like many French artists, made extra money illustrating advertisements. His efforts, however, tended toward the more risqué commerce. This one was for a cabaret the next village over.

  FORMIDABLE

  was written in bold lettering across the top. Underneath posed a woman who looked like our model Bernadette. Quelle surprise, I thought. Étienne had scribbled a froth of orange tulle over her lower body, but her breasts were left bare. I smiled. The poster would probably last only a day before a disapproving villager tore it down.

  When I rounded the corner of the bakery, I saw that Étienne had thought of this and had managed to stick a poster high up, where no one could reach it. He must have climbed the roof and leaned over the eaves to paste it on. Already the baker was outside eyeing the poster, most likely working out a way to remove it. His wife stood at his side, clucking with irritation like a maddened hen.

  Mindful of the time, I picked up my skirt and broke into a run. When I arrived at our meeting place, Lily stepped out onto the path from behind the tree.

  “Lily, I have so much to tell you! You wouldn’t believe . . .” But my voice trailed off when I reached her. Her face was white as milk, and she held my uniform bundled against her chest.

  “Oh, Vicky. Tell me it isn’t true!”

  “True? What are you talking about?”

  Lily chewed her lip and shifted from one foot to the other. Her complexion began to change from pale to bright pink. Her curly blonde hair had escaped its combs and formed a wild halo over her head.

  “Give over, Lily, you’re frightening me.”

  She clutched the clothing tighter. “Did you really take your clothes off in front of men?” she blurted out.

  “Pardon?” I was dumbfounded.

  “It’s all over school,” Lily went on, breathless. “Mildred Halfpenny said she saw you undressed, sitting in front of a crowd of men. She must have heard us talking about the art studio and followed you. You know what an eaves-

  dropper she is.”

  Mildred Halfpenny. My nemesis. Mildred had been jealous of me the moment she laid eyes on me. She hated that I was Lily’s dearest friend; the idiot thought she had more claim on her because their families had summered together in Germany once. And she thought she was better than me because my father had a plumbing fittings-and-fixtures holding while her father owned a lingerie company. As if knickers and petticoats put her higher in the social standing than toilets and wash-hand basins. I called her the Royal Princess of Petticoats once, and her face turned so purple with rage that I thought she was going to choke.

  How could Mildred have seen me? The window by the model’s dais looked over the river. She must have tiptoed round where no one ought to go and peered in the window. Who knew that clumsy oaf could be so nimble?

  “Is it true?” Lily stepped forward, her face pleading.

  “Our model didn’t show, so I . . . volunteered.” I tried to sound like I didn’t care, but I wasn’t doing a very good job of it. In a daze, I took my uniform from Lily and went behind the tree to change.

  “You volunteered?” Lily’s voice was climbing higher. “Volunteered?”

  “It was my turn.” My mind whirled, trying to work out what to do. I would just have to brazen my way out of it as best I could. I dressed quickly and stepped back on the path. “It’s Mildred’s word against mine. I’ll say she mistook me for someone else. I wasn’t there. Madame Froufrou won’t bother to check. You know what she thinks about the artists in the village. She won’t get within a mile of the place.” I certainly hoped this was true. It was my only chance. And a slim one at that.

  Lily looked down at the ground and bit her lip. “It’s too late,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, Vicky. You know I’m not very good at hiding things. Madame Édith called me into her study and started asking me all these questions about the art studio and if you went there. I tried to lie, but my face went all red and I started stammering. . . . You know what Madame is like, the looks she gives. She got it all out of me. I had to sneak out just to meet you here. I had to warn you.” Lily paused for a moment and then went on, her face grave. “Madame has already sent a telegram to your father.”

  “My . . . father?” I whispered. The shock of it made my cheeks tingle and my limbs go weak. Panic rose hot and fast inside me. I might have felt like Queen Boadicea before, but I had forgotten one important fact about the Iceni warrioress: in the end, the Romans had crushed her.

  My father. That was it, then. My time in France with the artists was over.

  Two

  Cherbourg, France, Cunard Steamship Line,

  Wednesday, third of March

  I STOOD ON THE deck of the steamship and looked out at the seaside town of Cherbourg. Gray clouds scudded overhead, and a brisk wind whisked the sea into foamy waves. The damp air seeped into my bones. I shivered and wrapped my arms about myself. The weather had chased the rest of the passengers below
long ago, but Cherbourg was my final glimpse of France, and I was loath to look away. My chaperone, one of the school’s maids, stood just behind me at a respectful distance, but I could hear her little noises of dismay as the waves lapping the sides of the ship grew heavier.

  The steamship’s vast engines rumbled to life, the sailors cast off the lines, and the boat began to make its way across the Channel toward England. Toward home.

  I was leaving France under a veil of scandal and humiliation. The scandal was bearable. The girls at the school loved any chance to gossip, and I didn’t care about their chatter, but the humiliation bit through me to the bone. I had just proven myself to the artists, and now I was being sent back home to my parents like a naughty little girl who had mis-

  behaved at a party. What do the artists think of me now?

  The immediate punishment for posing nude was acceptable to me. I was expelled from Madame Édith’s Finishing School for Girls—good riddance to bad rubbish. No more marching about with books on my head to perfect my posture. No more elocution lessons hammering home the proper diction of words as though one’s fate in life depended upon it. No more listening to inane conversations about how the hockey pitch was flooded or what sort of pudding would be served at Sunday lunch—usually the same old jam roly-poly, so I don’t know why the girls yammered on about it.

  My expulsion would have been welcome if it hadn’t meant saying good-bye to Monsieur’s art studio forever. I had not had a chance to say farewell, not even by letter. When I went to ask Lily to take a note to the studio, she looked at me with red-rimmed, tear-filled eyes, and I put the note back in my pocket. Lily was in trouble enough for helping me; I did not want to add to her burden.

  Yes, the immediate punishment was bearable; the unknown punishment was the one I feared.

  A sailor carrying a coil of hemp rope over one shoulder paused on his way across the deck. “Best you go down below, miss,” he said. “There be weather kickin’ up, make no mistake. Wouldn’t want to fish you out of the water.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll go down in a moment.”

  “I’ll leave you to it, then.” He tugged at the brim of his hat and then continued on to his task.

  “Go ahead to your cabin, Anne-Marie,” I told the maid.

  She bit her lip, looking unsure. “D’accord,” she finally said, and turned for the stairs that led to the cabins.

  I sighed and returned my attention to the shoreline, watching until Cherbourg grew smaller and smaller until it was just a tiny dot in the distance, and then it vanished into the horizon. The first drops of rain began to fall, as the sailor had predicted, and the wind gusted, sending the ship’s flags snapping.

  I made my way below, weaving around my fellow passengers, the deck rising and falling under our feet. I found my cabin, turned the key in the lock, and swung the door open.

  “Hell’s teeth,” I muttered.

  My cabin was a mean little cupboard with only enough room for a cot and a small washstand with a pitcher and basin atop. The bed was dressed with an old woolen blanket that looked like it might be crawling with noisome creatures. The meanness of the accommodation spoke volumes. My father always paid for me to travel in a first-class cabin with a sitting room. I dreaded small spaces, and my father knew it.

  All right, Papa, you’ve made your point, I thought, struggling to wash my face over the little bowl as the ship pitched to and fro.

  The crossing grew even more fitful, and I spent a good part of the night with my head hanging over the basin. When the seas calmed and my nausea abated, I fell into bed, exhausted. But sleep was far away.

  There was enough light from the bedside candle lamp to see by, so I took my drawing book out of my art satchel and opened it. Sketches of my friends from France flipped past: Lily, sitting on a stone wall by the sea, gazing at me with a mix of admiration and exasperation, her eyes so wise and merry; Étienne, smoking a cigarette and squinting, his hair tousled as if he had just woken up. And then I paused on my sketch of a nude Bertram, posing contrapposto, weight on one foot, hips and shoulders twisted to the side, a look of embarrassment and amusement on his face, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he had let himself in for but he found it funny all the same.

  Sadness and longing filled me. Tears threatened and I pushed them back. The aching sense of loss I could do nothing about. Crying about what might have been would take me nowhere.

  I put my pencil to the page and began to sketch the features of the sailor from memory. I was halfway through the picture when the boat tipped so steeply that I tumbled off the bed. I struck my elbow on the frame of the cot and landed on the floor in a heap.

  The cries of the other passengers drifted through the cabin walls, accompanied by the sounds of china crashing to the floor and trunks slamming into walls. A moment later the sea settled and the ship righted itself. I hauled myself up and rubbed the life back into my tingling elbow. My sketchbook had come to a rest upside down against the doorframe. Several pieces of paper had fallen out and lay scattered over the floor. I was always collecting bits of things and shoving them into my sketchbook—posters, leaves, newspaper cuttings. I was a magpie that way. I gathered them all up to shove them back into the book when one of them caught my eye.

  ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART,

  ANNUAL SUMMER SHOW, 1908

  It was last year’s program for the show of students’ work. Bertram had it in a wodge of bumf he was discarding. I wanted some sketches he was throwing out, so I’d fished it all out of the rubbish, and that’s when I found the leaflet. The Royal College of Art was one of the most prestigious schools in England; many of the country’s finest artists had studied there. Bertram had attended the RCA. Although he left after a year, he said he’d learned a great deal about fundamentals. Monsieur Tondreau often said that without fundamentals, an artist would always struggle.

  I sat down on the edge of the cot, holding the leaflet. I could never return to Monsieur’s studio, but I didn’t have to give up on instruction. I could apply to the RCA. My drawing book held proof that I understood the technical challenges of art, especially anatomy. I had a treasure trove of those forbidden drawings. I would need a letter of reference, but I could get one from Bertram or from Monsieur Tondreau. I knew Bertram’s address. He worked and lived in a tiny studio off the village square. I would send letters to both of them as soon as we docked.

  Then I reminded myself that I was in disgrace and my parents might not be so disposed to let me go to art college. Besides, I already knew what my father thought about women going to college: there was no reason to educate a girl as a boy, he believed. The only value to a woman of good breeding was as a wife and mother.

  Forget it, I thought. I slid my feet under the blanket and laid my head on the lumpy pillow, trying to ignore the spring that poked me in the backside. If I were a boy, this wouldn’t be an issue. If I were my brother Freddy . . .

  I sat straight up then. Freddy! Perhaps I could enlist my brother’s aid. A year ago, he’d defied Papa and left the family business. He embarked upon a career in publishing instead of taking the reins of the family business. Papa did not speak to him for nearly six months, and refused to change the name of the business, hoping the “son” in Darling & Son Sanitary Company would see the error of his ways. There was a rapprochement at Christmas, and now my father behaved as if Freddy’s career decision had been his idea. If I could get Freddy on my side, he could speak to my parents for me.

  I imagined myself at the RCA show, standing next to my work of art, wineglass in hand, listening as the president of the Selection and Hanging Committee told the gathered crowd why my painting had been chosen and how I was considered among the best of my generation.

  Maybe bidding France farewell wouldn’t be so unbearable after all.

  Three

  London, Victoria Station,

  Thursday, fourth of March

&
nbsp; IN THE MORNING, we disembarked at Southampton and I put my letters to Bertram and Monsieur Tondreau in the pillar-box. A sailor helped load my trunks into a hansom cab and tipped his cap when I handed him a coin. When Anne-Marie and I arrived at the train station, a porter hurried out, collar turned up, shoulders hunched against the rain, and settled me into a first-class carriage, which heartened me. Even better was the sight of my brother, Freddy, on the train platform at Victoria Station in London, leaning on a walking stick, his homburg hat tilted at a jaunty angle.

  I alighted from the carriage, and Freddy hurried to greet me, a look of affection tinged with concern on his face. “There you are!” He kissed my cheek and then took hold of my valise. “Welcome home. Mother was going to send the footman, but I wanted you to see a friendly face before heading into battle.”

  “What’s the news of home?” I asked as we moved through the station.

  “Oh, the usual. Mother is dragging Dad into the twentieth century, or at least attempting to. She’s had a telephone installed.”

  “That is news. What brought that on?”

  “Mrs. Plimpton had a sudden rush of blood to the head and had one fitted, so now all the ladies in her social circle have to have one, too.”

  My mother was ever the trend follower. Years ago she had taken after Queen Alexandra’s style, which boasted high collars and tiered pearl chokers, all of which were really only meant to hide a scar on the queen’s neck. If the queen’s deformities meant a high neckline, then who was my mother to argue? At least she didn’t parrot Queen Alexandra’s limp by shortening one shoe heel as many of her friends had. When I was home at Christmas, Mamma had changed our Mayfair townhouse from a dark, old-

  fashioned abode to one with a more light and airy sensibility, as was now in vogue. Chintz and pastel fabrics, potted palms and aspidistras abounded. My father was the opposite and clung to the old ways like grim death.