Look Listen and Love

by Barbara Cartland

  A number of those painted by Wilhelm Van de Velde the Elder, not in oils but with a reed-pen on a painted white background, were in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich.

  She told herself that this was important only if the Duke had the same tastes as his father. If he had he would expect his wife to be as interested in pictures as he was himself. Tempera sighed.

  It was almost impossible to make her stepmother understand paintings or remember for more than two minutes at a time the name of the artists, let alone being able to recognise their work.

  When she had first married Sir Francis and was anxious to please him, Lady Rothley had allowed Tempera to take her to the National Gallery. But after half-an-hour she had sank down on a seat and refused to go any further.

  “It is no use, Tempera,” she had said, “I shall never be able to tell one picture from another and quite frankly they bore me! All those smug faces, flat landscapes, and naked goddesses give me indigestion! Your father wants to think me beautiful and for me to admire him. He does not care about anything else.”

  Tempera had to admit that this was the truth and she had given up trying to educate her stepmother.

  Now she thought it was a pity that she had not persevered, and she could only pray that the Duke would not realise how ignorant she was.

  ‘I must find my way downstairs,’ she planned, ‘and try to look at the pictures myself. If I can tell Belle-mère a little about one she can impress the Duke with her knowledge and forget the rest.’

  But it was not easy.

  She found that the household, admirably organised by Colonel Anstruther, ran on very much the same lines as the houses in England, with the exception that all the servants, except the Butler, the valets and the Duke’s special footmen whom they had brought with them, were French.

  Because Colonel Anstruther had learnt by bitter experience that the two nationalities did not work well together, the French were kept apart from what Tempera was sure they thought of as the ‘English intruders.’

  Further, Colonel Anstruther had arranged that the three lady’s maids should eat alone in a small Sitting Room by themselves, while the English men-servants used another.

  This occasioned quite a lot of grumblings from Miss Briggs and Miss Smith who enjoyed the company of the valets. Especially one of the Duke’s valets who had a sense of humour and kept them informed about what was going on in the house party.

  Mr. Bates the Butler would never gossip, Tempera learnt. He considered himself above the chatter-chatter of the other servants and moved about the Chateau like a pontifical Bishop.

  He kept everybody in order and was in fact so awe-inspiring that even the French were impressed by him. Tempera was therefore left to learn what was happening from Miss Briggs and Miss Smith.

  They were undoubtedly extremely outspoken and Tempera was soon aware that Lady Rothley had not exaggerated where Lord Eustace Yate was concerned.

  “He was pursuing Lady Massingham’s daughter last year,” Miss Briggs announced. “But her Ladyship soon realised what was going on and whisked her daughter away north and married her off to the Earl of Hincham.”

  “He’ll have to take an American,” Miss Smith said in the voice of one who proclaimed doom.

  Miss Briggs laughed.

  “You don’t think an American with any real money would fall for Lord Eustace, do you? People like the Vanderbilts expect no less than a Duke in return for their millions.”

  This, Tempera realised, was true, remembering that May Goelet, whose father was reported to be the richest man in New York, had married the Duke of Roxburgh the previous year.

  Another American, Helen Zimmerman, had become the Duchess of Manchester in 1800, and Consuela Vanderbilt the Duchess of Marlborough four years earlier.

  She had only been interested in these marriages because the newspapers and magazines described the priceless pictures owned by the bridegrooms.

  They also revealed how many European treasures had crossed the Atlantic purchased by the parents of those three brides.

  “American heiresses have the dollars,” Miss Briggs was saying, “but they wants their pound of flesh in return for them.”

  Tempera began to feel quite sorry for Lord Eustace, knowing only too well what it was like to be without money.

  She expected he was trying, as she and her stepmother were, to keep up with the smart, sparkling set that circled round the Duke and had unlimited millions to spend.

  Even if Lord Holcombe’s income could not be compared with that of Sir William Barnard, the Holcombes certainly lived in style.

  They had a large house in London, a country seat in Hampshire, a Hunting Lodge in Leicester and, Tempera heard, considerable estates in Scotland.

  Everything she learnt from the lady’s maids made her feel more and more depressingly sure that she and her stepmother were asking too much in expecting an offer of marriage from the Duke.

  She began to feel she had made a great mistake in not discouraging Lady Rothley at the beginning from setting her cap too high.

  There must be other wealthy men who would find in her exactly what they longed for in a wife, and who would therefore be prepared to sacrifice their freedom without condescending, as the Duke would be doing, to somebody far beneath him in Social Rank.

  But it was too late for second thoughts.

  “The only thing I can do now,” Tempera told herself, “is to go on hoping that by some miracle Belle-mère will pull it off.”

  Lady Rothley certainly seemed to glow with optimism when she came up to dress for dinner and she never looked more beautiful when she sailed downstairs in a new gown by Lucille.

  The following morning she could not wait to tell Tempera how much she had enjoyed the evening, how the Duke had paid her many compliments, and she had been put on his left at dinner.

  “Tonight we are going to a party in Monte Carlo,” she said, “and when I told him I did not know how to gamble he said he would teach me.”

  Tempera gave a cry of horror.

  “You cannot risk your own money, Belle-mère.”

  “I have no intention of doing so,” Lady Rothley answered. “I am not so stupid as you think! If I say I do not understand how to play, he will of course show me what to do, and if we lose he pays and if we win I keep the money.”

  There was sometimes, Tempera thought, quite a lot of shrewdness in her stepmother’s pretty head.

  While she questioned the morals of such an attitude she knew in their case it was an absolute necessity.

  Privately she made up her mind that she would see that her stepmother took none of her own money with her in the small satin bag which matched the gown she would carry with her.

  “What are you going to do today?” she asked aloud.

  “We are going to steam along the coast in the Duke’s yacht,” Lady Rothley answered, “have luncheon on board and just ‘peep’ at the Casino. It was Dottie Barnard who insisted on that. She is an inveterate gambler.”

  “Will you promise me on your word of honour that you will not try to gamble unless you are with the Duke?”

  “Of course,” Lady Rothley agreed. “But he will be with us. We are going with him.”

  “Then that is all right,” Tempera said with a sigh of relief. She felt like an anxious hen who was always worried when her chick was out of sight, but she knew she could not trust her stepmother not to do something stupid just because she was too good-natured to say ‘no’.

  She dressed her in one of the attractive thin gowns which they had brought from London. At the same time she gave her a short close-fitting jacket to put over it and insisted on her also taking a light cloak.

  “It can often be very cold at sea,” she said. “I remember Papa telling me that a storm can spring up in the Mediterranean without any warning.”

  “If it does I shall lie down at once,” Lady Rothley said. “I hate the sea unless it is smooth.”

  “Do not tell the Duke so,” Tempera begg
ed. “I am sure he enjoys yachting and would be bored with a woman who was squeamish at the first sight of a wave.”

  “I am not so stupid as you seem to think, Tempera,” Lady Rothley answered, with a sudden assumption of dignity.

  “Of course you are not,” Tempera agreed.

  She bent and kissed her stepmother’s cheek, and Lady Rothley put her arms round her and hugged her.

  “Thank goodness I have you here with me,” she said. “It is so exciting that we can discuss things together, and I know I should make a thousand mistakes if you were not here to guide me.”

  “As soon as you have gone,” Tempera said, “I am going downstairs to look at the pictures. To make it easy for me, Belle-mère, will you hide this handkerchief in one of the armchairs before leaving for the yacht? It will be the excuse I need if anyone finds me in the Gentry’s part of the house.”

  “I will do that,” Lady Rothley promised, “and when you choose a picture for me to talk about, for Heaven’s sake find one painted by someone with an easy name to remember. You know how they all become tangled in my head.”

  “I will find one,” Tempera said confidently.

  Carrying her white gloves, her hand-bag, her sunshade, and the handkerchief which Tempera gave her, Lady Rothley walked serenely down the stairs.

  Tempera tidied away her stepmother’s things, arranged her silver brushes and combs on the dressing-table and then, because it was irresistible, went to the window.

  She could see the Port of Villefranche to the right and she wished she could be one of the party that was setting off towards Monte Carlo.

  Tempera loved the sea and she was sure that unlike her stepmother she would be a good sailor. She wondered if there would be any chance of her seeing the Duke’s yacht and perhaps putting out to sea in it.

  Then she told herself she was being greedy.

  ‘It is so wonderful to be here, to be in the sunshine and to see the flowers after the cold of England. How could I be so ungrateful as to want more?’

  There was nothing more she could do in the bedroom, and she thought that by this time the party would have left the Chateau and it was her opportunity to go downstairs.

  She set off a little nervously, but she saw nobody as she went down the main staircase and entered the Sitting Room which her stepmother had described to her as being ‘quite nice’.

  It was a great deal more than that.

  It was very large, the walls were white, and so were the coverings on the furniture and the carpet.

  It was quite unlike any room Tempera had ever seen before, and yet instinctively she knew that it was both right in its proportions with its huge windows looking out to sea and that it was a perfect setting for the pictures which were hung on the walls.

  She glanced at them and was instantly entranced on seeing first an elaborate and colourful painting by Sebastino Ricci which seemed to glow with a brilliance that was only echoed by an enormous picture by Rubens on the adjacent wall.

  There was a Poussin which Tempera liked, but she much preferred a delightful Bouchet of Madame Bergeret.

  Her gown was painted in the manner of which he was a master, while the pink roses in the foreground seemed so real that one could almost pick them from the canvas.

  Entranced, Tempera walked from picture to picture. Then she realised that the Sitting Room contained only very large ones chosen, she thought, to make a great splash of colour against the white background.

  Then she saw a door leading into another room and going through it drew in her breath.

  Here was a collection of small pictures that were after her own heart.

  This room she thought at a glance must be the Duke’s special Sanctum.

  Again there were white walls and a white carpet, but there was an exquisite inlaid Regency desk with gold feet on which there lay a number of papers.

  But it was the pictures which held Tempera’s attention and there was such a profusion of them that it was hard to know where to begin to look.

  The first one which attracted her was of St. George and the Dragon, painted by the Sienese artist Giovanni Bazzi. It was a picture about which her father had often spoken and which she had always longed to see.

  The monstrous dragon was convulsively coiled back upon itself, while St. George thrust at it with his spear, his red cloak flying behind him against an exquisitely painted background of trees, castles, ships and sky.

  “It is quite lovely,” Tempera exclaimed, thinking that she could go on looking at it forever.

  Then she realised there was another ‘George and the Dragon’ almost adjacent to it.

  It was a small picture by Raphael, and again St. George, this time on a white horse, was piercing a writhing dragon while a lady he was rescuing knelt in prayer in the background.

  ‘How Papa would have loved this!’ Tempera thought. Then next to it she saw a picture which she knew would have delighted her father more than anything else.

  In fact she was sure he had talked to her about it when he had spoken so often of the painter Jan Van Eyck.

  It was a tiny painting entitled ‘The Madonna in the Church’ and yet so exquisite in its miniaturesque manner that it was like a jewel.

  The glittering sunlight reflected in warm bright patches on the stone floor, the faint breeze vibrating through the cool semi-darkness, and the sparkle of the precious stones seemed to Tempera to belong to the world of the spirit.

  She felt it stir something within her, delving down into the depths of her being to evoke a response that was a part of her very soul.

  “It is lovely – quite unbelievably lovely!” she said aloud and wondered if she could ever explain to her stepmother what it meant.

  No man, she thought, could possess anything so precious and priceless and not be moved by it.

  “All Van Eyck pictures,” she remembered her father saying, “reflect extreme sensitivity, as do his portraits of men and women.”

  But this was more than sensitivity, it was spirituality, and Tempera knew she would gladly give everything she had ever possessed just to be able to look at it every day of her life.

  She remembered how her father had told her that some of Jan Van Eyck’s paintings bore the inscription, Als Ik Kan, written in his own hand.

  These words referred to the Flemish proverb meaning, “As I can, but not as I would.”

  “Perhaps that is a motto for us all,” Tempera reflected. She stood looking at the painting for some time. Then as she turned to look at the others in the room she was suddenly still.

  To her astonishment on the wall facing the desk was a picture she recognised. It was in fact the angel from the painting ‘The Virgin of the Rocks’, by Leonardo da Vinci. It was her father who had said to her when he took her to the Louvre, “I have often wondered, Tempera, of whom you reminded me, and now I know. That is how you will look when you are older.”

  He pointed to the angel in Leonardo’s great masterpiece and Tempera had followed his direction with surprised eyes. Now she knew that she had in fact grown in the years very much more like the angel than she had been at that time. Yet she told herself humbly it was a very idealised portrait and she could not possibly aspire to such beauty.

  But undoubtedly there was some resemblance in the heart shaped face with its small pointed chin, in the dark auburn hair parted in the centre over an oval forehead, the large tender eyes and the half-smiling lips.

  There was something very delicate and ethereal in the softly rounded long neck and slim body which was in fact very like Tempera’s.

  “I wonder why the Duke has it?” Tempera asked herself.

  It was strange that in a room full of original world-famous pictures he should have a copy of one figure from Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece.

  Tempera had first seen ‘The Virgin of the Rocks’ in the Louvre, and there was a version of the same picture in the National Gallery.

  She had often looked at it with interest although her father had informed h
er that it was generally agreed that the authentic and original version was the one in France.

  The angel in each version looked very much the same, except that in the Louvre painting the colours were brighter and lighter and conveyed a translucency which was missing in the National Gallery version.

  ‘It is strange – very strange – that the Duke should hang it here,’ Tempera thought.

  She turned to look again at the picture by Van Eyck and decided that this was the one she would describe to her Stepmother and try to put into her mouth the right words in which to express her appreciation.

  She could always say to the Duke, “Shall I tell you which of your pictures I like the best?” Tempera planned.

  He would be surprised that she had chosen something so small and exquisite when she herself was so large and he thought of her as a goddess by Titian.

  Rehearsing exactly what her stepmother should say, Tempera went back upstairs, taking with her the handkerchief she was pretending to look for.

  At the same time she was determined that every moment while she was in the Chateau Bellevue she would find an excuse to look at the pictures, to see them, if possible, with her father’s eyes and to listen to what she thought they could tell her.

  “All beauty talks,” Sir Francis had said often enough. “All great pictures have something to say. Do not only look with your eyes, Tempera, but listen to what your senses tell you, to what your heart says and what you feel deep in your soul.”

  “That is what I must try to do now,” Tempera said to herself, “for I shall never often have such a marvellous opportunity as this.”

  She and the other two lady’s maids ate in their Sitting Room at noon.

  There were both French and English dishes to choose from, and while Miss Briggs and Miss Smith sniffed at anything that was strange and unusual, Tempera enjoyed mussels marinières and the chicken cooked à la Provençale in a casserole.

  “I intend to lie down,” Miss Briggs said as the meal finished. “I never sleep when I’m travelling, and with all this unpacking I’m completely exhausted!”