The Fountain of St. James Court; Or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman

by Sena Jeter Naslund

  This light here at Louveciennes could spawn a school of painters whose delight it is that we live on an earth kissed by sunlight. Even the shadows have their color. They are pockets in which light hides her secrets.

  And to the woods and the wild softness of nature I have come again, soon to be visited not only by Eugénie Le Brun but also by the daughter of my brother Étienne, Caroline. My gratitude to each of these nieces, who do so much to enliven my days, is unbounded. Through them I experience maternal emotions again: those feelings of sheer pleasure that they exist and are within my sight so that I can enjoy all the nuances of their natures and also their immediate interests and hopes.

  In the countenance of Caroline, I see something of my beloved brother, whose death was such a blow, but Caroline is also the embodiment of her mother, Suzanne, whose vivacity and expressiveness resided in her wide, intelligent eyes. Caroline follows her mother in her interest in music and both her parents in their interest in the literary arts, especially the theater. In the good days before the Revolution, my dear sister-in-law Suzanne often played leading roles in performances at my salon, and of course dear Étienne made a name for himself as a playwright.

  It is for her overall charm that Caroline so delights the heart—her conversation, her music, her vivacity—while Eugénie has not forsaken her painting despite her marriage and understands my artistic nature as only another artist can do. In the two of them, I see two different aspects of myself, the woman who so loved the society of writers and musicians and the woman who best defined her passion when wedded to her brush.

  And where would my Julie have fit between them? Oh, they would have made a place for her as friend, and more than that, as cousin who shared the blood of each, and between them they would have set her on a happier course. Like Caroline, my Julie was of a literary bent, even when she was a child, and she wrote not mere stories but an entire novella by the time she was nine.

  I but blink and the present replaces the past, or vice versa.

  Now I follow my walking path downward through a lower, damper part of the woods of Louveciennes where the yellow flags bloom in the late spring, but it is too early for them in May. Here are the aromatic narcissi to greet my nostrils. Something sharp and pungent, almost cutting. They seem fragile scattered hither and yon among the great trees. They will never grow even as tall as my knee. And I see the last of the purple crocuses, too, starting to wither, their petals thin and dry as tissue paper.

  Knowing I would walk this day to this particular natural temple, I asked that an extra folding chair be brought here and placed in the shade. And here are the cushions, of a dull green velvet so as not to disturb nature’s harmonious colors. Here I will have my reverie. I will recall the truth of the difficult days with Julie, my fragile child. This morning I conjure up my Julie—pain and all—for this evening I shall be visited by Caroline, my brother’s daughter, who is always so loving to me, who has, in some sense, become my daughter after the loss of my own, and even more so after her loss of her own parents.

  During the days of my exile from France, throughout my sojourns in Italy and Vienna, the journey through Prague and Berlin, and our long residence in St. Petersburg, I kept Julie ever at my side as she grew from child to willful young woman. On the other hand, I was not present during the maturation of Caroline, my dear brother’s child, now woman, whose life has been so much more natural and happy than that of my Julie. Perhaps Julie would have better found her true sense of self if I had not been ever present in her life; perhaps if I had left her in a convent school in Italy (after all, I was sent to the sisters in France when I was very young), and she had not been in Russia as she became a young woman, she might have had a longer, better life.

  After we fled France together in the common stagecoach and reached Italy, I gave Julie the advantage of an education that many would have envied, for it went far beyond the course of study even Rousseau had recommended in Émile for Sophie, who was to become the suitable companion of Émile. For Julie, I hired tutors not only in music, which was common for young girls, but also in writing and geography, and in the study of foreign languages—Italian, of course, as we were residing in Italy (and traveled much of its geography together, including Milan, Rome, Spoleto, Florence, Siena, Parma, Venice, Verona, and Turin); she had masters also in English and in German, which was the favorite of her languages.

  Above all, Julie enjoyed writing stories; sometimes when I would send her to bed in the evening, she would get back up in the middle of the night, secretly, to work on her stories, some of which showed a stylistic command of phrases or an investment in some human’s situation that would cause the reader to want to know more. As she wrote Julie tended both the fire of stylistic originality and the fire of human curiosity, for she knew instinctively that excellent writing must embody both aesthetic and humanistic aspects, as even the greatest art in any form must do. Of course Julie also had an aptitude for art, but I think in this area she was overawed by my own work, or perhaps simply by the attention that was given me because of my work.

  I regret that I did not have the skill as a parent-artist that Bernini’s father had, for the son gladly took his father’s instruction and surpassed him, which the father was delighted to recognize. But Julie had the will, perhaps inherited from her father, to live her own life as it pleased her and her alone to do. As she matured, my interpretation of reality became less and less welcome to her till finally, in Russia, I had to abandon any attempt to guide her, not to lose her altogether. Since I could not control or even help to shape her choices, I made the decision to try to support her, for above all I wanted her to feel that my love was ever with her. No human being has ever been more dear to me than my daughter.

  How gladly I would have given my life for her happiness, if that had been a bargain offered by fate. How gladly now, amidst the violets and fading wild crocuses of Louveciennes, I would lay me down on the moss and die, if she might rise up and be reborn in this verdant spring. It is not that I am unhappy; it is not that I do not value life—every drop of it is precious to me; so long as I have eyes with which to see the light, that act alone makes life precious and rich—but given a choice, life is a present I would hand from myself to my Julie, with a smile and eyes aglow.

  From my chair my gaze lifts from the pale greens of the renewing earth to the pale blue skies and the thin clouds forming there. They are like veils stretched across the blue. When I look at the sky, I recall the words of little Julie when she first saw the sea; Julie then felt free to express all her delightful thoughts to me without hesitation, and I’m sure I never did anything but applaud such spontaneity.

  Must I forever defend myself about my own guilt over Julie’s unhappiness? I wanted nothing but joy and fulfillment for her.

  When we left Rome for Naples, where Julie first saw the sea, she exclaimed, Sais-tu bien, maman, que c’est plus grand que nature! That is, she was so surprised by the immensity of the ocean which she had not seen before, except represented within the framed perimeters of paintings, that she said the sea was even bigger than nature, getting her categories confused.

  When I look at the sky, either the day sky full of sunlight or the night sky sprinkled with stars and the moon, I do think that it is even bigger than nature, but that is because I am thinking of the God who created the firmament and its vast beauty.

  I believe that during our time in Italy, Julie was a happy child, one who met the wonders of nature and of art and architecture with an open soul. She continued so during our sojourn in Vienna, which is where we were in 1793 when the terrible news came of the execution of Marie Antoinette.

  Walking! I have come to the woods to walk and to paint, to muse and remember! But this spot does not please me. I’m restless. I need to find some mushrooms for our table tonight. And so I’ll look for a woods not quite so shaded, one penetrated with splotches of light, but not too bright, over closer to the estate where Mme du Barry had her charming abode. Perhaps I’ll sketch
the mushrooms huddled together, having a conversation among themselves, before I gather them. I’ll place a leaf in the composition for contrast. An oak leaf, certainly curled and brown now after its winter, with spines at the tips. They would provide a fine contrast to the roundedness of mushrooms. Something spiky up against the benign humps and fleshy stalks. All rather monochromatic, which suits charcoal anyway. Charcoal is such an old friend.

  At the horizon line of a green meadow, I see the curve of what is surely the grandfather of all mushrooms! But wait, no mushroom at all! It is the crown of a bald man’s head, and there’s his face. A country man, very old, he walks with a twirled stick, one that grapevine has squeezed and forced to grow as though it were a baroque artifact, Bernini’s columns inside Saint Peter’s!

  And I am hurled down on the ground in a wink.

  I must have stepped in a gopher or mole hole of some sort, and here he is in three winks, squatting down beside, his age-spotted face quite close to mine, inquiring if I am injured.

  I am not, but I have no inclination to try to stand. I do arrange my akimbo self into a sedate posture.

  He retreats a bit and speaks in rural accents. “How may I best help you, Madame?”

  “I don’t believe I require any assistance,” I reply, “but thank you for your kind offer.” When he makes no reply, I add, “I’ve fallen in a shady spot, I see. And I’ll just rest a bit.”

  “Mushroom hunting, I suppose?” he inquires.

  The hoop handle of the tight little basket is still about my wrist, but one side is rather smashed in. He nods at that minor calamity.

  “In the old days, I would mend that for you, for I was a basket maker.”

  I smile and say cheerfully, “The old days for me would have been far longer ago than for you.”

  “Do you think so?” he asks, and then he tells me his age. He is two years older than I. This piece of information causes me to brighten with pleasure, for I rarely meet anyone as old as myself.

  “Yes, I made baskets of all sorts,” he goes on. “Even the baskets that went under the skirts of the court ladies and held them out to the side to make the ladies look wider in the hips.”

  I laugh out loud, for I never thought that that was the reason for the fashion of my youth. That first portrait I made of the queen, in white silk, she was wearing wide panniers.

  “To make them look capable,” he adds.

  “Capable?”

  “Capable of much childbearing, you know.”

  Suddenly I feel very sober. “Yes,” I say, “that was very important among the aristocrats, and especially for royalty.” Two hundred people had crowded into the bedchamber of Marie Antoinette to witness her giving birth that first time, and the good king himself had smashed out a window so that she might have enough air to breathe, for the crowd was close to suffocating her as she labored.

  The old man reaches out, picks up my sketchbook, and regards it solemnly.

  “So, you remember those times when women wore baskets on their hips?” I ask him.

  “Yes, I remember you.”

  “Remember me?” I say this as gently as I can. I do not wish to challenge him, or any old person whose memory might play tricks on him.

  “You are Mme Élisabeth Vigée-Le Brun, the artist,” he says, handing me my sketchbook.

  How quickly and hungrily my eyes search his face. I almost see a glimpse of my brother, Étienne, in his alive eyes, and then he resembles M. Le Brun, my husband. Vaudreuil? Would he have come to this? Would he arrive yet again in my life? I saw him in England, after I left Russia. He was quite destroyed. His son was dead. But this is not Vaudreuil. “And who are you, Monsieur?” I ask, full of timid wonder.

  He pronounces a name I do not in the least recognize, but then he explains, “I was, briefly, near the end, the French valet to the Swedish gentleman, the one who tried to save the queen and king.”

  “Axel von Fersen,” I say, and then my lips close.

  There was no name more sacred to the queen. I would not ask, nor would this rural gentleman tell, I feel sure, anything that might define the exact relationship of the Swedish count to the queen. Though the top of his speckled head is bald as a mushroom, the side locks are long and straight, and he resembles a gnome. He is more shrunken by age than I.

  When I stir to rise from the grass, he says, “May I offer you my hand?”

  But I settle myself again and say, “Do you recall where you saw me? Was there an occasion when we were in the same room together?” The man seems like a genie to me, for he has the ability to make real in my memory a time and place I have absolutely forgotten. He can give me back a piece of the past. I am extremely curious and delighted. “Would you be so kind as to tell me where and when you saw me?”

  “I saw you here, at Louveciennes. You came to paint the portrait of Mme du Barry.”

  “I did indeed, three times. I wish that I could remember having seen you.”

  “I was only a workman on the property. I had not yet risen to be a valet. It was only on the eve of the Revolution that I rose.”

  I think how disappointing it must have been for him to have fallen back into his old position as laborer, but his face is not that of a man who has been disappointed by life. Saddened, perhaps. “I was only lately thinking about the queen,” I say. “I painted her many times.”

  “I was never in the same room with Her Majesty,” he replies. “But I saw your picture they took down from the salon. The one in her nightgown.”

  “She was not in her nightgown,” I explain. “That was the style of dress, a simple muslin dress, with a sash. No panniers. She was wearing a straw hat. Remember?”

  He shakes his head. No. “I remember the painting with her children. And the little empty crib. It was at the salon, too.”

  I say nothing. I notice the brown spots across the dome of his head, like a plover’s egg. The conversation has become too painful. That was the last official portrait I painted of the queen, as a kind mother, in soft red velvet, with a sumptuous footstool and tall ostrich plumes in her hair. A state portrait, three children and an empty crib.

  “How is your daughter?” he asks.

  I can feel the blood drain from my face.

  “Your little girl who came with you when you painted the du Barry?”

  “We traveled Europe together. She married a Russian count.” I hesitate. “She died in Paris, still a young woman,” I say, glancing at the sky. Then I look directly into his eyes. “I arrived in time to say good-bye.”

  “And did she have children?”

  “No.”

  Because I see concern in his nice brown eyes, not just curiosity, I add, “She died of a chest congestion and fever.” I begin to rise. “And your family?”

  “My wife was executed in the Revolution. She was seamstress to Mme du Barry and thought to be a sympathizer. Mme du Barry was very kind to her, as she was to the little slave boy Zamore, who betrayed her when he was a young man, before the tribunal. My wife was young enough to have been my child. I am a lucky man, for I live with my great-granddaughter, who loves me. I made baskets.”

  We both stand—I lightly take his hand—and prepare to part company. When he wishes me success in finding mushrooms, I tell him that I think I shall go straight to my watercolors, that I want to paint the bend in the road, around the willow trees before the approach to the house.

  “I noticed the chestnuts are blooming freely,” he says. He’s very small. The top of his head comes perhaps to my ear, but he looks well, only a little stooped in the shoulders as a man would whose work positions his hands in front of his body. I have never painted a commoner at his work, but I think it would be a lovely picture, and the thought makes me feel happy. As though in response to that happy thought, he speaks again.

  “I remember your little girl very well because she came out into the garden, where I was pulling spring onions.”

  I am amazed, and I stare at him in disbelief. What gift is this that he so casual
ly gives me?

  “She was so friendly a little girl, a regular darling. She asked if she might have one of the onions I was pulling. I plucked up a nice shoot from the ground, and I sliced off the roots with my knife, and peeled back the husk so it was slick and slippery for her. She put the bulb between her teeth, and bit it right off.”

  My heart brims with happiness. To see her again! In the sunshine of a garden! What an image, what a treasure, my little accident has given me!

  “Just before she went in the door, she turned and said, “Merci beaucoup, M. Jean-Jacques.”

  Now I must turn away, lest I weep for joy. I say as I turn, “Merci beaucoup, M. Jean-Jacques.” Dazed, I retrace my steps till I find one of the woodland chairs to rest in.

  WHEN JULIE WAS SEVENTEEN and we arrived in St. Petersburg, she was charming in her person, possessed many talents, and had acquired a very good education because of her prodigious memory. She had large blue eyes, sparkling with freshness, a slightly upturned nose which added to her liveliness, with a very pretty mouth and pretty teeth. While she was not tall, she was slender without being too thin. Her manner was one of easy grace; at the same time she had a lively mind and could remember everything she had learned either from her tutors or from her own reading. Her natural aptitude for painting and also for music added to her accomplishments: she had a lovely voice and sang beautifully in Italian, while accompanying herself well on either the piano or the guitar.

  My mind skims over the thoughts without the words, the narrative of Julie.

  I thoroughly admired her bright spirit, intelligence, and responsiveness to art, literature, and music, and it was a joy to be in her company. Although in St. Petersburg I was hard at work at the easel every day, except two hours on Sunday morning when I allowed visitors to come to my studio, I wanted Julie to enjoy every pastime that pleased her.