Gwendolen

by Diana Souhami

  “One would expect no less,” I said drily. She looked disapproving, and I returned to Hans and the Reverend Payne and their musings about the indestructibility of the human soul.

  * * *

  PAUL LEROY SENT a carriage to take me to his studio in Chelsea. He greeted me at the door wearing an artist’s smock and declared himself delighted that I had agreed to be his model; more than his model, his muse. A young man with oriental features, pretty and delicate looking, shorter than I, took my cloak and hat. I was sure his eyes were lined with kohl and his cheeks rouged. Paul introduced him as Antoine.

  The studio was grand with vaulted ceilings and light that flooded in from high windows; there was minimal adornment and a sense of order and calm: canvases stacked around the walls, easels and paints carefully positioned, a chaise where I was to recline, a curtained recess where I would dress for whatever part I was to play. It was quite unlike the chaos and mess of Hans’s studio.

  I had become accustomed to coincidence and strange insights. For our first session, Paul Leroy wanted me to model as Hermione from The Winter’s Tale. He wanted to capture the look in my eyes of the statue who comes alive. Here was the perfect charade. No Klesmer to crash the piano keys. No death’s head in the wainscot. No fear. When Paul walked across to adjust the set of my head, the turn of my hands, his touch was easy.

  I liked looking at him and thought him as beautiful as perhaps was I. I liked the silence and ease of the afternoon. Paul Leroy turned me into art but did not seek possession. Antoine arranged the set, brought water, fruit, and cake. He wore soft slippers, moved silently, did not knock before entering the room, take orders, or wait for instruction. He seemed to anticipate whatever might be wanted, so there was no sense of master and servant or of fawning and scheming as with Lush and Grandcourt.

  I was curious about their relationship, which was unlike any I knew. The ease between them was of the sort that comes from long habit. They needed each other equally; the roles were defined, as with Mr. and Mrs. Lewes. Paul had money and talent, but Antoine was the impresario. Antoine made me think of Julian—the same desire to be beautiful, the same fascination with the performance of life.

  Paul worked for two hours, said he had made a good beginning but did not want to tire me more. He would not let me look at his work until it was completed. We talked, ate food Antoine had prepared, and drank a glass of wine. Paul insisted he pay me a retaining fee and hoped fifty pounds a month was acceptable. I thought it excessive for what was expected of me, but he was adamant that those were the terms.

  I spoke of Barbara Bodichon and my desire to travel and see something of the world: the Moorish architecture of North Africa, the sands of Egypt. “You must come with us,” Paul said. In spring he and Antoine planned a three-month tour across Algeria, Egypt, Arabia. Everything would be arranged. I need bring only smelling salts, a fly swatter, and a sketch pad, he said. I would be Princess Gwendolen, and he and Antoine my retinue. With me heading the party, they could be assured of the best rooms in all hotels, the front of the queue at the watering holes, the liveliest camels across the desert.

  My heart leaped with hope at such a prospect, but I felt compelled to jest. Did he not think it a problem, I asked, that he and Antoine had spent mere hours in my company? Given three days, they might despise me. Three months, and they might choose to sell me as a slave. Paul said that could not happen, he had observed me closely, he and Antoine were experienced travelers, and I would enhance any journey.

  Anyway, he added, the proposed grand tour was not for six months. Before it I would have modeled countless times, we would have visited Paris and Florence, had days of adventures on bicycles and riverboats, and know all too well each other’s peccadilloes and charms. I asked if Hans might come on some of these adventures. Of course, Paul said. To start, we must all go on horseback to the Lake of Landewin and bathe with no clothes on in green water under a blue sky with only sheep to watch and criticize. I said I thought the weather might be a little cold for that, and Antoine laughed and agreed.

  * * *

  ON MY SECOND or third visit to Scalands, Barbara’s husband, Dr. Eugène Bodichon, was there. She had described him to me as the handsomest man ever, but I was not sure. I thought he looked like Moses. He had black hair and brown skin, his clothes were eccentric, he never wore a hat, and his English was scarcely comprehensible, even though he did not have much to say. Violet Greene told me that in Algiers he walked naked in the forest with a jackal. I found him more than strange, most eccentric, but I supposed that had the marriage been of a conventional sort, Barbara would not have made it.

  She had first met him in Algiers, where he worked as an army surgeon and anthropologist. I was unclear what he was doing now. Barbara called him a lover of nature. “He is a man who gathers flowers daily for his own pleasure and walks twenty miles to hear the hyenas laugh,” she said.

  Their relationship had problems. Barbara hoped for children, but that did not happen. Dr. Bodichon hated England and the rain and wanted her to settle in Algiers, which she would not do, so they lived apart for months at a time. I thought of how I used to long for an hour away from Grandcourt.

  At Scalands Dr. Bodichon did not appear before eleven in the morning, then breakfasted wearing a long white flannel burnous. He passed his days wandering in the woods alone, with an umbrella under his arm, and he liked to walk miles to see the sun set in the same place each day. At night when we dined, he wore a gray garment like the white one, drank eight or nine glasses of wine, and fed the dogs crackers and cheese, which made them excited and quarrelsome.

  After observing him for a few days, I found it hard to think of him as sane. He would walk naked around the house to the alarm of many of us. Violet told me his bank had declared him incompetent to deal with his own finances for he gave all his money away.

  * * *

  I MODELED EACH week for Paul. Antoine attended to every detail of setting, dress, and comfort. The mood in the studio was always calm, Paul called me a godsend, and Antoine said I illumined their days. Their life was harmonious and ordered, I saw no discord between them, none was directed at me, and I did not question their relationship. Once when Antoine brought in a lavish display of flowers and fruit as adornment for a scene, Paul kissed his neck below the ear.

  An occupation evolved for which I was paid and which I enjoyed. Within a few months my work extended to instructing galleries, purchasers, and framers. I talked to customers and arranged the carriage of paintings. Paul was sensitive to my uncertainty and concerned to spare me pain. He said I enhanced his life with Antoine. He did not make love to me or seek to control me. He wanted to hear what I had to say and to see through my eyes yet not intrude. Antoine cooked delicate food. Every meal with them seemed like a celebration. Each time I left, I knew they wanted me to return.

  We went, Paul, Antoine, and I, to gallery viewings in Paris and Florence and for working visits to Portmadoc, Normandy, and Land’s End. Paul seemed almost as doting as Mama and always wanted to hear what I had to say. Antoine showed no resentment. I always was accorded the more comfortable chair with the better view. If there was a thorn in my finger, it was Paul’s care to remove it. Nothing was too good for me. Both men spoiled me. One night by a fire of applewood logs I told them something of my wedding night.

  * * *

  IN LONDON I went often to Barbara Bodichon’s rooms at Langham Place. Her paintings were on the walls. The Ladies Reading Room there was open from eleven in the morning until ten at night. I paid my subscription of a guinea a year. One could read all the daily and weekly papers, there was a luncheon room attached, and it was a pleasant place to meet Mama, my sisters, Anna, or the Mallinger girls when they were in town for shopping. At the rooms women met to discuss and plan how to have proper schools, and the right to go to university and to vote. I heard the appeal of Emily Davies, who cofounded Girton College with Barbara. I heard of the views of John Stuart Mill, who had argued for universal suffrage.
r />   I did not offer views of my own or go on marches or distribute leaflets. I preferred the opera, theater, shopping, walking in the forest, bowling, and horse riding. Nonetheless, the spirit of such freedoms settled in me. I was one of the cracked. I became unashamed.

  One afternoon at Scalands, Violet Greene cut my hair. I was apprehensive but laughed as I shed my curls like the chains of the past. The shorter my hair, the freer I felt. Cropped, I looked young and daring. I rejoiced to think of my erstwhile husband’s response: his horror at the gossip in the clubs, his wife consorting with feminists and suffragists, discarding her diamonds, shearing her hair. With my short hair and my name restored, I felt reborn.

  * * *

  PAUL TOLD ME he had a special request, which I must refuse if it caused me discomfort. He had accepted a commission to design a sculpture for a square in Toulouse. It was of Marianne, symbol of Liberty in France. Liberty, Reason, France, Truth, the Republic are all feminine nouns, he told me. He asked if I would model for him, with my breasts bare, holding the beacon of Truth in my right hand. He said I would symbolize the breaking with the old monarchy, headed by hereditary kings, and the heralding of the new enlightenment.

  I had no hesitation or alarm in agreeing. I stood on a dais, a soft cloth wound round my waist, my head looking up, my right arm stretched high. My breasts were as much mine as my arms. Think of all you aspire to be, Paul said to me. Think of how powerful you are and the journeys you will make. Stretch as high as you can. Feel as brave as you are. He talked of the “Salon of the Rejected,” of the need to move on from the old order, to discard the orthodoxies, trumpery, and inhibitions of the past and find the courage to be.

  For many sessions I became Marianne, goddess of Liberty. I thought how proud Barbara would be of me. I concentrated and felt safe within myself and without embarrassment or alarm at Paul looking intently at my partly naked body. As I reached upward, my head back, my muscles flexed, I thought how far I had traveled. Whatever the future held for me, no one, I vowed, would again diminish me. I wished that you could have seen me, so strong and free.

  * * *

  BARBARA ACCOMPANIED ME, Peter, Antoine, and Hans to see Mama and my sisters at Offendene. We arrived with flowers, sketchbooks, straw hats, exotic fruits, and special Algerian sweets. Rex and Beatrix visited, and Anna. Bertha and Marjorie Millet joined us all for tea. I expected Mama to be horrified at my new appearance, but she and all the others thought me more beautiful than ever. Mama was girlish and happy with my newfound friends. Barbara flattered her and made her laugh. I thought how different Mama’s life might have been had she been shown a way to determine her own path.

  * * *

  AND YOU, YOU receded but did not disappear. I carried you in my mind. I thought of your compliant wife, her obedience and self-abnegation. I did not regret exclusion from the world your faith imposed. Your orthodoxy seemed another oppression, another man-made scheme. I could not be a Jew.

  Nor could I reach the noble self-effacing ends you advised. Each directive you gave seemed daunting, each aspiration beyond my grasp: I was not to gamble; I was to accept my suffering, nurture remorse, live to serve others. Others were no more to me than trees blowing in the wind. I chose instead to aspire to be myself, responsible for myself, to stand on my own feet.

  * * *

  ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS I visited Mrs. Lewes with Mrs. Bodichon, who always arrived with a gift: a jar of homemade blackberry jam, a basket of mushrooms, a sketch of a friend. Mrs. Lewes had several of Barbara’s paintings on her walls. I observed the generosity of both women and the deep bond of friendship between them. They had been friends since Barbara was twenty-five and Mary Anne, as she called her, thirty-three. Mary Anne was then shy, awkward, suffered with her writing, and spoke of the pain and disgrace inflicted on her family because she lived with Mr. Lewes and her sorrow that her brother would not speak to her because he thought her shameful. Barbara’s view was that it was not for others to say how she should live, but whatever her choice, she would stand by her.

  Mrs. Lewes, I came to observe, had as warm a heart as Barbara. I reviewed what I at first mistook as her dislike of me. I don’t think it was that. I think she was in awe of my appearance and suffered because such gifts eluded her, as her intellect and talent eluded me. And I believe she wondered what direction there could be for me if I had no particular ability or talent beyond my looks, and no strong or determined direction like you. She understood marriage would not suit me, but did not see how, outside of marriage, I might carve my way for myself. I could not be brilliant like Catherine Arrowpoint, capture the admiration and attention of Herr Klesmer, be rooted in a cause like you. I had to brave the world with my shortcomings and still believe myself worthy of an equal place with all the rich, clever people with whom I brushed shoulders, minds, and points of view.

  Barbara would have liked her friend to take part in campaigns for justice, but though Mary Anne wanted to see women socially elevated, educated equally with men, and protected by fair laws, she was not going to write manifestos or make political speeches. Her contribution was to take a man’s name while being truly a woman and to create Dorothea Casaubon, Maggie Tulliver, and Romola. Barbara said I would be surprised were I to read Mary Anne’s latest book, which was with her editor, John Blackwood, for I would recognize many of the people in it. I said I would purchase a copy when it was published. I asked its title, but Barbara could not or would not say.

  She invited me, Hans, and Paul, with Antoine of course, and Mr. and Mrs. Lewes to spend Christmas with her and a writer friend, Matilda Betham-Edwards. She rented a parsonage on the Isle of Wight. Eugène Bodichon was stranded in Algiers. Miss Betham-Edwards had been a friend of Charles Dickens, wrote poetry and novels, and loved France as much as England. She and Paul spoke mainly in French, and I was pleased to find I understood most of their conversations.

  Mrs. Lewes played Beethoven on the parsonage piano, and Hans and Antoine played practical jokes. We had a goose and vegetables for Christmas dinner. Hans came in with a silver tureen, said it was a Christmas specialty, took off the lid with a flourish, and I screamed because of what looked like a snake; but it was only the vicar’s scourge, which Hans had unhooked from a wall in the study.

  I spoke of the forthcoming journey to the African continent, Arabia, and other exotic destinations and felt Mrs. Lewes was unconvinced that in the company of Paul and Antoine this was the right journey for me to make.

  I was restless to leave England. Paul talked of the beauty and wildness of Africa, and I longed to be there. I wanted not to know what each day might bring, to walk and meet the unexpected, see other colors, distant rivers, a fiercer sunrise, to have if only for a while no fixed receipt. Barbara talked of blue mountains, waterfalls, dark cypresses, white houses among olive trees. I looked closely at her paintings of Moorish arches, white mosques, men in thobes, and Arabian nights.

  I talked with puzzlement to Hans about why Paul wanted me to travel with him and Antoine. Hans said I screened them from too much visibility and eased their path, and perhaps they did the same for me. He said gently he did not believe Paul was my prince on a white steed who would capture my heart and carry me to the castle of eternal happiness. Perhaps, he said, I did not want such capture.

  * * *

  I HAD SAID good-bye to Mama, dried her tears, and promised her my speedy return. Then, on the eve of my departure, Mrs. Lewes arranged a gathering as a way of saying bon voyage. Rex was there with Beatrix Brackenshaw, Hans was with Anna. My uncle and aunt stood to one side like awkward onlookers. Klesmer and Catherine played a piano duet.

  Mrs. Lewes quizzed me about our plans: where were we to stay, whom did we know, what were we taking with us? Paul and Antoine had arranged it all, I explained. I asked her to tell me if the journey would be a success and I would feel happy and free for a while at least. She laughed and said, “My dear Gwendolen, I must tell you again, I am not a soothsayer. I do not know what life holds for myself, let alone you.�
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  “But you knew everything, everything, everything that impinged on my life,” I said. “So surely you must know if I will, for a few months at least, be happy with Paul Leroy.”

  “My dear Gwendolen.” Mrs. Lewes’s voice was concerned, and I at last felt she truly cared about the quintessential me, and not just with the detachment of her novelist’s mind. “I don’t know what the future will bring you. Paul is a talented artist, wealthy but not tainted by wealth; he is good looking and cares for you with devotion. He is inseparable from Antoine, and I do not know the significance of that or whether their togetherness will disconcert you. I cannot see why you should fail to enjoy your journey. The omens are good. But I do not know whether you will be happy or how life will treat you. You know as well as I that nothing is forever, not the good times nor the bad, that our plans are often disrupted and our hopes diverted. I do not know, when you board the boat at Dover, whether the sea will be choppy.”

  And she looked beyond me, so I turned to see at what, and there you were. For a moment I thought I was hallucinating. “Yes,” Mrs. Lewes said. “Daniel is visiting.” She smiled and moved away to talk to a small, elderly, gray-eyed woman with nervous gestures and a hesitant smile who, I think, was a writer too.

  It was as if the years snapped shut. There you were. Your quality of stillness. Your grave demeanor. Your gaze of persistence and containment as at Homburg, as if all I am was known to you. Your skin was darker, you had grown a beard, and you were wearing one of those little hats, a mark of Jewish orthodoxy, a kippah Hans said they were called. You looked biblical.

  You asked, with all caring, how I was, your dark eyes searching, expecting perhaps the old unrestrained outpouring. I saw you had not forgotten me, that you held fixed our unchanging love, though we took it to no harbor. For a brief but eternal moment I could not speak. Then I told you I was going on a journey with friends and was leaving the next day.