The Other Alcott

by Elise Hooper

  Last week we took the train out to Gare du Champ de Mars to attend Paris’s Exposition Universelle. Although the day was full of wonders, the best part came in the evening when we followed the crowds to the Place de l’Opéra, and suddenly streetlamps flickered to life brilliantly all around us. The whole crowd sighed with awe and then applauded wildly. The pavilion had been wired to show off Mr. Edison’s newest developments in electricity, and Ernest and I danced cheek to cheek under the lights as an orchestra played—you would have loved the romance of it all.

  May smiled to herself and paused in her writing, thinking about when twilight had fallen at the Exposition Universelle, and shadows purpled the dusty streets while the smell of buttery popped corn blew in the air. The warble of laughter, a trumpet’s call, and the swishing of bustled skirts had faded into a distant hum as May delighted in the space in between the tilt of her husband’s cheek and the curve into his neck, the solidity of his shoulders and back, the warmth of his chest pressed up against hers, and the slow steps they took together in the mass of dancing couples. A trace of his shaving soap from the morning had still clung to his collar, and the musky smell of sweat at his temples had made her lean in deeper. Her own head had fit perfectly in the negative space of his body. Oh, this world, she thought as she nuzzled up against him. It amazed her to live in a time where people could light the night and build replicas of whole countries and continents within the space of a few city blocks. She smiled and returned to finishing her letter.

  That evening Ernest came home with a stack of mail, including a letter from Massachusetts. She opened it to find an update on Concord happenings from Anna, but another piece of paper lay behind the letter. It was a bank check for one thousand dollars with a small piece of paper wrapped around it that said: a wedding present for you. Louisa’s spidery scrawl sent prickles up the flesh of May’s arms. Was this an apology? A dare? A test? May’s hands shook as she placed it back into the envelope. Ernest had gone outside into the back garden. She quickly took her watercolor painting of Orchard House down from the wall, tucked the edge of the envelope into the back of the frame, and placed the painting back on the wall. By the time Ernest entered the drawing room with the newspaper under his arm, she had resumed painting.

  LATER IN THE week, May ventured into the city to meet Mary Cassatt at her studio to view her most recent paintings. Mary had included cryptic remarks in her letters warning May to expect some major departures from earlier work, so May was eager, and even a little anxious, to see the newest paintings. From her window aboard the train, she studied the pale blue sky marbled with veins of wispy clouds. As the train rolled toward Paris, the landscape changed sharply from farmland to low-lying buildings to tall dense city blocks. When the maid let her in to 19 rue de Laval, she found Mary setting white sheets over seven canvases leaning against the walls of the room.

  “You’re going to make me wait to see your newest work?” May said, from the embrace of her friend.

  Mary held May out in front of her. “Yes, but first, I want to hear all about your new life, Madame Nieriker.”

  May feigned a puzzled expression and looked around the room. “Who’s she?” Both women laughed and sat down to a spread of peach slices, strawberries, a wedge of Gervais cheese, and a pâté douceurs.

  Mary said, “Tell me what you’ve been doing to occupy yourself.”

  May watched as the femme de ménage served her some fruits and cheese. “I’m painting and settling into our new little home. I’m enjoying freedom such as I’ve never had before.”

  “How so?”

  “Since I’m not running back and forth to a studio all day long and filling my evenings with social events, I’m much more focused and productive about my art. Our tiny corner of France is quiet but nice.”

  “And Ernest is every bit the husband you expected?”

  May blushed. “Yes, when we visited the ruins of Château du Diable on the coast, he held an umbrella over me while I painted. You’ll like him.”

  “So, he admires your work?”

  “Yes, he’s a trained classical violinist—all art seems to interest him.” May smiled. “Have you gone to the Exposition Universelle yet? We went last week and it was full of wonders. That personal printing machine! I tried to imagine my sister writing her stories on it, but I can’t imagine people will ever use such a cumbersome impersonal thing when we can simply write with our hands. The machine made a terrible clanging noise every time a letter was struck. They call it typing.” She shook off the memory, imagining the terrible headache all of the noise would cause. “Oh, and you know how I love Meissonier’s horses—there’s a whole room dedicated to his paintings.”

  “Did you see Cabanel’s work?”

  “I did. His Death of Francesco da Ramini and Paolo Malatesta gave me the shivers.”

  Mary raised her eyebrows. “It’s that same cursed Exposition that’s causing me great distress.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  Mary swept her hand around at the canvases propped up around the room, a ruby ring on her index finger shining scarlet like a drop of blood. “I prepared all of this for a show with the Impressionists, but it was canceled. Mr. Degas said it would be too hard to compete with the Exposition.”

  “But you’ve been preparing for this show since—”

  “Since you left for London? Yes.” Mary sat back in her chair, crossed her arms, and her brow crinkled in consternation.

  May knew her friend felt acute pressure to produce new work. The distraction of family loomed over Mary, for her parents planned to move from Philadelphia to Paris in the fall. Any time Mary could take away from working in her studio was spent house-hunting and preparing for the arrival of her convalescent sister, Lydia. “Well, I’m eager to see your newest work.”

  Mary rose, extending her hand out for May to take. “Yes, come, let’s see what I’ve been doing since you left.”

  When Mary pulled the sheets off the canvases, May sucked in her breath with surprise, struck by her friend’s unapologetic use of vibrant unmixed colors. The vividness of crimsons, blues, and yellows did not have the luminosity of color achieved by the Dutch masters and their endless, painstaking thin layers of color, but the brightness dazzled nevertheless. Shouts of color splashed along the canvases in loose brushstrokes to create the implication of action and light.

  The first canvas showed a young girl slouched on a riotously patterned upholstered turquoise chair, her plaid skirt wrinkled up around her waist with layers of lacy white underskirts revealing splayed legs. More of the dreadful-looking chairs could be seen behind her, and the ground was tilted unnaturally toward the viewer to create odd shapes of negative space on the floor of the scene. The bored-looking little girl did not resemble the neatly posed figures normally displayed in portraiture, yet the child’s sentiments were clear. Once May got over the shock of the horrid print on the chairs, she felt some sympathy for the girl. Despite the distractions of the composition and colors, May could see there was an understanding between painter and sitter—she felt it, thanks to the dreamy expression on the child’s face and her informal positioning.

  “She reminds me of my nephew Freddy. This is exactly how he would probably look if I asked him to pose for me. Minus the skirts, of course. He’d forget I was even painting him and simply start telling himself a story or singing to himself in an entirely unselfconscious way.”

  “So it feels real?” Mary twirled the ruby ring on her finger.

  “Oh, yes, although the interior space looks so strange that it shouldn’t. I’m hoping those hideous chairs aren’t real.”

  “Do you see them?” Mary laughed, gesturing around the sunny room.

  “Thankfully, no, so at least I know you haven’t fully taken leave of your senses.”

  May walked to the next canvas of a woman clad in black sitting in an opera loge studying something outside of the frame. The background of the opera was bright with sketchy brush lines, but a figure lurked in a loge across the
way with his opera glasses trained upon the woman in the foreground. May realized the man in the picture was unabashedly ignoring the stage and focusing on the woman instead.

  “I like your sense of humor here, but don’t you feel uncomfortable leaving the background so unfinished? It goes against everything we’ve been taught.”

  “I’m experimenting. You may think I’m crazy, but I’ve been completely invigorated working on these. It’s liberating to move beyond what I see and to incorporate what I feel.”

  “But aren’t you worried about what your viewer may feel? What they’ll think about you?”

  “All I can do is put out my own expression.”

  May raised a knuckle to her lips and moved along to a canvas showing a woman in a morning dress sitting in the privacy of her own small garden. Rather than following the formal portrait convention of having the woman with a book in her hand seated in a space fit for public scrutiny, this painting felt very voyeuristic, as if the woman did not know she was sitting for a painting. May stepped back as she took in the chaos of flowers framing the woman’s head; roses, peonies, and geraniums were worked onto the canvas with sweeping circles and daubs of paint that reflected flowers while not giving any of the particulars. Colors used for shadowing were audacious and looked unnatural yet somehow the cerulean blue visible in the woman’s hair, along her cheekbones, and in the folds of her dress and the newspaper felt beautiful. How did Mary accomplish this? May glanced at the other canvases and could see more of the same style.

  “It’s very spontaneous. Mr. Hunt used to talk about the importance of color value and light and dark . . . you’re really experimenting with this concept. Are you mixing your colors at all?”

  “Often they’re just coming straight out of the tube.” Mary pointed to the woman in the garden. “This has sold and is traveling to Boston tomorrow.”

  “These are selling?”

  “Don’t sound so shocked. I felt confident about exhibiting these until the cursed show was canceled.”

  “They’re just so unexpected. So different from what you’ve always done.”

  “But that’s the point. And I would argue they’re not entirely unexpected. You, of all people—with your love of Turner—you should appreciate these.”

  May recognized a pleading tone within the bravado and knew what this critique cost her proud friend. Turner also used sketchy atmospheric effects in his paintings and placed an emphasis on values over detail—Mary had a point. And yet, in Turner’s seascapes, his loose paint strokes and big splashes of color felt truer and evocative of the natural elements, whereas Mary was playing with these ideas within small interior spaces, personal moments. As she considered the changes in her friend’s work, the floor seemed to be tilting underneath May, almost like the painting of the dreadful chairs. All that May thought she knew was shifting. The whole world was shifting—all of the innovations on display at the Exposition Universelle certainly proved that. Or did they? At the root of Mary’s painting talent lay a well-honed sensibility and skill set achieved through years of study.

  “My father told me I must finally make my artwork support my studio.”

  May looked at her friend in amazement. “And you’re still taking these chances?”

  “I have to. Otherwise what’s the point? It would be inauthentic to myself to do anything else.”

  May thought of Louisa, hiding the writing she loved under the name A. M. Barnard, and could have cried. She thought of her own Turner copies and her still life from the Salon. When she tried to push her life drawing into something more complex back at Monsieur Krug’s studio, she had been all too quick to give up. A little criticism left her scrambling back to familiar territory. Since then, she had played it safe and striven to create sellable work, telling herself it was out of necessity, she needed to support herself. The colors on the canvas in front of her blurred, as if she had looked directly at the sun.

  “You’re terribly brave,” May said, but Mary no longer faced her.

  The other artist stood with her back to May, looking out of the window. May joined her to watch a farmer’s wagon trundle down the street below. It was loaded with crates filled with squawking chickens. The wagon seemed lost, an interloper here in the artists’ district near Place Pigalle, perhaps off course from its route to the market at rue Cler. White feathers trailed the wagon, gracefully floating through the air in meandering curlicued paths that defied gravity. The women watched the cloud of feathers hover behind the wagon as it reached an intersection and paused before turning and vanishing out of sight.

  Chapter 38

  May arrived back in Meudon to find Ernest not yet home. Without noticing what she was doing, she unpacked the ingredients for supper she had purchased in Paris and spread the contents out on the table. She wandered out the kitchen door to stand in the back garden. Shadows consumed the space, yet heat still radiated off the bricks of the courtyard. Warmth worked its way upward through the soles of her boots. The skin of her face felt grimy from the city. If she clenched her teeth together, the grit she’d inhaled all day ground against her teeth, as if she had a mouthful of sand. She longed to change out of her dress but could not leave the sweet air of the valley, so she remained in her spot, gulping in the refreshing feeling of twilight as if it were pink lemonade. From inside the house, the front door squeaked open and banged shut. She could hear footsteps, and then Ernest stood behind her, wrapping his arms around her while he rested his chin against her shoulder.

  “How was Miss Cassatt?”

  May squeezed her eyes shut against the unexpected arrival of tears and felt her husband’s arms tighten against her.

  “What happened?”

  She didn’t know how to answer and gave a shake of her head. How could she explain Mary’s newest work both intrigued and repelled her? How could she describe the feeling of competitiveness and envy that pulsed through her when she heard Mary describe her exhilaration over her new style? As she had walked along Montmartre, she had felt conflicted between the pleasure of being removed from the tumult of city living while missing the excitement and grandeur of Paris.

  “Maybe I should return to studying art in Paris.”

  “Do you miss the city?” Ernest’s voice was low and steady in her ear. May opened her eyes and could see the circling trail of a bat flapping up in the sky above her.

  “I don’t know. Apparently the Académie Julian has a class for women now.” She ran the tips of her fingers through the hair at her scalp. How could she explain her mess of feelings over Mary’s new body of work? It all served as a suggestion—or was it a challenge?—for her to return to studying art in Paris. There was no way to deny the lure of the city and all of the benefits it offered to an artist, but May was afraid to upend the joy she had been feeling since she and Ernest moved to Meudon. A return to an atelier could threaten the security and comfort she felt now. Joining a studio was a surefire way to welcome petty jealousies and self-doubt back into her life. On the other hand, she worried she could not stay content painting Turner copies in her little garden forever.

  Ernest moved to stand beside her, his arm slipping down to wrap around her waist.

  “When the Salon accepted my still life, it felt as though everything fell apart, even though it should have been one of the most marvelous moments in my life. It made me question if all of my hard work really resulted in anything good. I lost a good friend, and no commissions came my way.”

  “Well, did anything good come from it?”

  “Not at first. I moved to London, became terribly homesick, and lost my mother. Eventually I recovered, but—” She trailed off.

  “So you found you were stronger than you expected, correct?”

  May nodded. Yes, she had discovered a newfound confidence in the wake of crushing disappointment. Just like when her Little Women illustrations were ridiculed, she had risen up from that humiliation and worked on improving herself. She couldn’t stop now. To stay in place, to not push for more�
��she realized these were no longer acceptable options. The fear she felt after leaving Mary’s studio receded, and she folded her arms against her chest. “You’re right, now I don’t want to settle on being an artist creating predictable work because I’m afraid to try for more. I should go to Monsieur Julian’s studio in Paris.”

  Ernest looked at the ground as he gently kicked at a loose stone in the wall edging their garden. “But your work is beautiful now. And it sells. Couldn’t you create new work from here? How much will it cost to take lessons at the Académie Julian?”

  May’s fervor was brought up short by the shift toward caution in Ernest’s tone. His job as Inspector General at a mercantile was far from lucrative. The flame of ambition that had reignited in her again, suddenly guttered with an apparent lack of oxygen that accompanied the realization there could be a price beyond the tuition money if she started to work in Paris.

  “Four hundred francs a month. The prices have gone up since I left.” She held her breath as her words hung between them.