“It’s about your sister’s husband, Walter Sickert.”
Jane’s face seemed to go blank for a moment; then her brow furrowed. “An impossible man,” she said shortly. “Why Ellen married him is beyond me.”
“She must have seen something in him.”
“Of course she saw something. He’s a seductive flirt. All my sisters were in love with him and were surprised when he chose Ellen. Maggie is just as pretty and much closer to his age.”
Alice looked curiously at Jane. It was a passionate diatribe, and Jane usually reserved these for the plight of the poor. “You don’t like him,” she said.
“I disapprove of him,” clarified Jane.
“They say he has talent.”
“I have no idea.” Jane’s face had grown flushed, presumably at the notion that such a man might have redeeming virtues. “All I know is that he makes Ellen miserable.”
“Could you be more specific? How does he make her miserable?”
Jane coughed uneasily. “He disappears. Sometimes for weeks on end. Ellen says he has studios, ‘hovels,’ she calls them, throughout the East End, where he paints his ‘subjects,’ the more squalid the better. Here I am, trying desperately to help the poor, and my brother-in-law wants only to paint them.”
“Does your sister know the location of these studios?”
“No, she knows nothing about his whereabouts when he leaves for one of his ‘artistic sojourns,’ as he calls them. He gives her no warning and no sense of when he will return. Yet she always takes him back. It’s beyond me why she does.”
“Perhaps she loves him.”
“That’s what she says,” said Jane, her face growing redder. “It wouldn’t matter so much if she had work of her own. But she was always a clinging, romantic-minded sort of person. Even when Father was alive, she worked out of devotion to him, not for the causes themselves. She says she cannot think in generalizations the way I do, only in particulars. That would be fine if the particular that she settled on had a bit more to recommend him.”
“But perhaps that’s the appeal,” mused Alice. “She views the particular the way you view the general—as a vehicle for reform.”
“She’ll never reform that man. He has no…moral compass.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Alice softly.
“He’s an artist, and artists don’t think in terms of usefulness or justice. It’s not a commendable vocation, in my opinion, as much as some people worship it.”
“Have you seen his work?”
“I don’t care for pictures,” said Jane curtly. “But as I say, his subjects are the people I try to help, the more squalid and miserable, the better. He does portraits too, for income, though those he paints can’t expect to be flattered. They hire him because they’ve heard he has talent and that he may replace Whistler and fetch high prices in a few years. Art is a commodity in this society, like everything else, and what people pay for it rarely corresponds to what it’s worth.”
Alice wondered if Jane would be joining one of the communities that had begun cropping up, where wealth was shared and the children were cared for in common. It struck her as an unpalatable sort of life, but she could imagine that it might produce healthier human specimens.
“You have been extremely helpful,” said Alice, for whom the excitement of what she had learned had begun to make her head ache. She was relieved to think that Jane was probably as eager to go as she was to have her go. “You must come to dinner when you have more time.”
“I never have more time,” said Jane bluntly, “and I don’t take regular meals.”
The idea of not taking regular meals made Alice’s eyes open wide. She herself relied upon regular meals, even if she didn’t eat them, to structure her day.
“But I will send you a prospectus on the project I mentioned earlier. There’s also a woman’s suffrage bill that might interest you.”
“I could write letters,” agreed Alice. “It’s the least I can do, given that I cannot be a crusader like you.”
“We each serve as we can,” said Jane matter-of-factly. There was no hint of irony in her makeup, a fact which Alice, who had grown up in a household thick with irony, much appreciated. Indeed, Jane’s response to Walter Sickert had been helpful not only in supplying a number of suggestive details regarding his life but also in calling into question his character. Other people might have ulterior motives for their dislike, but with Jane, one didn’t worry about such things. One felt confident that she spoke what she believed, plainly and without subterfuge. If she was not a particularly amusing companion, she was a trustworthy one, and that, Alice knew, was a markedly rare attribute in the human population.
Chapter 31
Leaving Wilde’s house, the brothers crossed to 13 Tite Street, where Sargent had both his home and his studio. His was probably the most auspicious house in the neighborhood. It had originally been built by Edward Godwin, the architect, for himself and his wife, Beatrice. James Whistler had bought it from him. It was an irony not lost on his friends that Whistler had taken over Godwin’s house and, then, with Godwin’s death, had taken over Godwin’s wife, a kind of double usurpation very much in the Whistler style. A few years back, however, he had decided to decamp from Tite Street, and the house had eventually been purchased by Sargent, who had transformed the space entirely to his own use. There seemed to be no prospect that he would ever leave.
It was a large house, commodious in its design, that had been made even more inviting through its current owner’s tasteful furnishings. It was Sargent’s great talent, as Henry often noted, to do everything beautifully without appearing to try. Every item associated with him, from the cut of his waistcoat to the position of the pillows on his bed, seemed to be just what it should be, no more, no less. This was the case with the drawing room that they entered. It was a well-proportioned space, paneled in cherrywood, beautifully accessorized with raw silk curtains of a champagne color. There was a sofa of salmon velvet, a carpet in pink and green, a set of delicate tea tables in an indeterminate French style, and a collection of worn but elegant easy chairs scattered carelessly about.
The men were let in by Sargent’s butler, Niccola, a former gondolier whom Sargent had taken into service during his last trip to Venice. Niccola was also enormously decorative and, though not the best servant, apparently good enough for Sargent.
In the corner of the drawing room, Sargent was having tea with his sister. Emily did not live with him, but she dropped by all the time, so that no sooner did she leave than she seemed to come back. William and Henry made chitchat with her for a while until she said she had to go, and after a good deal of fussing about when she would return, she finally left. It had been agreed between the brothers that Sargent should be apprised of their suspicion of Sickert. He was a clearheaded observer of life, an invaluable resource as a testing ground for ideas.
“I can’t see Sickert as a murderer,” Sargent responded after William presented the idea.
“But that’s the point,” said Henry. “If you could, he would be locked up by now.”
“I don’t see that as an argument for his guilt,” countered Sargent.
“We’re just saying that a man’s nature is not necessarily transparent,” explained William. “And this Sickert is a good actor. It’s one of the elements that makes him suspicious, though there are quite a few more.” He proceeded to tick off the various items that had been gathered, to which Sargent listened with close attention. He was not impressed by the “ha ha” episode or the studios in the East End or the age of Sickert’s wife. There was only one thing that seemed to interest him: the P/W crossed out in the margin of the De Quincey volume.
“Could you draw what the notation looks like for me?” Sargent asked, handing a pencil to William, who drew, as best he could, the letters as they had appeared in the margin of the book. “There is a line between the letters, though not a straight line. We can’t make much out of the thing,” William explained after he finished the drawing.