Katherine Keenum (35 page)

“You remind me of a story Baron Haussmann once told me,” Grandcourt said. “You know,
n’est-ce pas
, that the ruthless destroyer and rebuilder of Paris was a serious lover of music, eh?
Mais oui.
A graduate of the Conservatoire Nationale no less, where one of his fellow students was the great Hector Berlioz—not yet recognized as great. This was in the days when Luigi Cherubini taught composition at the conservatoire.
Eh bien.
One day, Berlioz submits to the maestro a composition. Cherubini reads the score and says, ‘What is this? You have put here a two-measure rest.
Pourquoi?
’ ‘Why?’ repeats Berlioz. ‘Because by this silence I produce the effect I desire.’ ‘The effect you desire: a little silence. Why stop there?’ cries the old man. ‘Go ahead! Suppress the entirety and you produce the big effect!’”

Jeanette laughed.

“You laugh, and the baron laughed, too. He told me that story in complete agreement with Cherubini—Baron Haussmann who thought that by straightening roads and putting in bold, wide boulevards, by digging his sewers and creating parks he could build a classical city of regularity and purity. And so he did, to a degree. But by means of the big effects, the big silences, the ripping out of so much that had stood for centuries. There are those who mourn the crooked streets of old Paris, the Paris of mud in the gutter. Not I, by the way.”

Nor I, thought Edward, remembering the unreconstructed tannery district.

“Nor Rosa Bonheur,” said Jeanette.

“Eh?”

“From what I hear,” said Jeanette, “she loves the new boulevards because she can walk in town safely and not get dirt on her shoes.”

“Our great painter of cattle, she leaves her sabots on the farm, does she? You delight me. Ah, but you see, besides the baron’s big effects, there is the question of all his little suppressions, too, all the little silences, the holes he left. I don’t know.” Grandcourt shook his head. “There is no answer, no set of rules that can replace genius, no substitute for knowing from the heart when to put something in and when to leave it out. Your academics, they know how to judge the polished surface of perfectly blended strokes; but these new men, these
Impressionistes
, perhaps they have their own sense of which notes and which silences will produce the big effect.

“
Mademoiselle
, I implore you to learn the rules; learn them and learn what it is to break them; and then look with your own eyes. Even we lesser artists, those of us who merely perform what other men compose, we, too, must make decisions. We must play from the heart.”

M. Grandcourt gave Edward a shrewd look and, with a tip of his hat, moved on. A man’s heart may be his own, he seemed to say, but it can be in someone else’s keeping.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The Vanns

A
deline and Harold Vann arrived in Paris toward the end of May and set themselves up in a large suite in the colossal, American-style Hôtel du Louvre for a monthlong stay. Harold would attend to some legal matters for a client, but the timing of the trip was dictated by the dates of the Salon. “Harold claims he won’t buy anything this year, but of course he will, so he wants to know who is making a splash,” said Adeline, when Jeanette and Effie called on her on the Vanns’ first afternoon. “You must show us who is up and coming before the dealers get to him.”

“I’ll show him Louise Steadman; she’s established,” said Jeanette, “and someone really new, Sonja Borealska.”

“No, darling, no lady painters—except family, of course.”

Jeanette was speechless.

“I’m afraid you missed the newest and most daring,” said Cousin Effie. “Dr. Murer took us to
their
show. Oh, but look—here come two perfect little pictures!”

The Vanns had brought their two children to Europe for the first time, along with a nurse, who was now leading in little Laura and Joel. Laura ran straight to Cousin Effie and greeted her with a hug around the knees.

“I’m five now and can say nursery rhymes,” she said. Swinging Effie’s hand vigorously, she chanted at the top of her shrill voice, “
Queen, Queen Adeline / Washed her hair in turpentine
,” after which she dissolved into giggles. Effie encouraged her with a complicit grin, but Nurse had a dangerous That’s-enough-Laura look on her face.

“
Harold Vann’s a handsome man
,” began Adeline, in a drawl.

His little girl is Laura.

She was rude yesterday;

If she’s rude today,

Laur-a will be SPANKED to-mor-ra.

The edge in her mother’s voice as she bit off each of the last syllables partially subdued Laura. Looking up at Effie to make sure of her old ally, Laura settled into prim bossiness. “Show Hanky Bunny to Joel,” she ordered. “I think he’s old enough; he’s two and a half.”

“What do we say, Laura?” interjected Nurse.

“Please,” said Laura, perfunctorily, her eyes fixed on Effie’s pocket.

“Well, now,” said Effie. She pulled out her handkerchief and seated herself on an ottoman to be closer to the children’s eye level. The handkerchief was rapidly folded and tied into a passable rabbit. Joel stood at her knee, his brows fiercely contracted and his lower lip pulled up in a pout of concentration. At a flick of Effie’s wrist, the handkerchief was a handkerchief again. She tied Hanky Bunny a second time; she performed another trick. Joel shook his hands up and down. After a while, he chortled, “Hanky,” with such enthusiasm that Adeline began to laugh, too.

“If sweetness and light were contagious,” she said to Jeanette, “we’d all float off on clouds of spun sugar. But I didn’t come to Paris to worship Baby. Tell me something worldly. You are looking much improved, I must say.”

Jeanette was almost thrown by this second backhanded slap but pulled herself up to look down her nose. “I saw Sophie Croizette at a party a few weeks ago,” she said, archly, “and if she’s anything to go by, solid colors in a combination of matte and satiny fabrics will be the fashion this summer. But there’s no point in trying to emulate Sarah Bernhardt, who was in silvery white—it takes flame-colored hair to achieve the effect she makes.”

Adeline pulled away to look at her. “My, my. First trick to you. Tell me more.”

Jeanette plunged into an account of the garden party. She jumped from Mrs. Renick’s splendor to the other ladies’ dresses; she named famous guests; she described the portrait and Carolus-Duran’s spectacular entrance. “We had a gracious note waiting for us from Mrs. Renick,” said Adeline. “She wants to give us a dinner party.”

“Say yes.”

Adeline laughed. “Which is it, the food or the company?”

“Both.”

“I’m to call on her as soon as possible. We’ll settle on a date, after which I need a couple of weeks to acquire a new evening dress. And that reminds me—come back in the bedroom, I have some dresses to discard.”

“Adeline!” said Jeanette, following her into the next room. “If you wanted to discard them, why haul them all the way across the Atlantic Ocean?”

“To wear in restaurants here and show Harold how unfashionable they are. Then when I have space for new clothes in my trunks, he can’t complain so much about the money. There’s a satin and tulle that, judging from what you have on right now, should be made over for you. I still like it, but it was never the right shade of blue on me.”

They spent the next half hour spreading clothes on the bed and holding things up to Jeanette. The blue dress was tempting; its scooped neckline from rosettes on the shoulders would give Jeanette her first décolletage. Effie was called in to confer about altering the back. She clucked and cooed and fingered the seams.

“It would be very pretty on you, Jeanette, but—” She made rapid little sucking clicks with her tongue as she calculated mentally. “No! It’s beyond my skill. What about Mrs. Renick’s seamstress?”

“Perfect,” said Adeline. “You must give me her name; maybe I can use her, too. Here, this is yours, and you must both come with me to Worth’s.”

“Cousin Effie and I can’t buy dresses at Worth’s!”

“No, but he has the most tantalizing system of putting together bodices, collars, skirts, and sleeves in different combinations for the staff to wear. All you have to do is study the bits while Mr. Worth bullies me into buying whatever he wants me to wear this year, then you sketch what you like when you get home. It’s no good letting all that training of yours go to waste, you know.”

*   *   *

I was indignant at the way she put the invitation
, Jeanette grumbled in a letter home,
but I have to admit I was curious. Go on, said Amy: I hear it is quite the sybaritic shrine, and I’ll have you know that Frederick Worth is an Englishman. So I went. A man in a frock coat opened the door on the Rue de la Paix and conducted us up a sweeping staircase. It’s the fanciest place you ever saw, with deeply upholstered chairs and squashy ottomans everywhere. There’s perfume in the air and potted orchids and clerks who look down their noses at you. I doubt that Cousin Effie and I would have been let into the place by ourselves, but with Adeline, we were shown right into a private consultation room. It was more like a boudoir than a fitting room except for a big table for laying out fabric.

Although the hauteur of the staff annoyed Jeanette, she was guiltily relieved that Effie was too cowed to say or do anything humiliating. Only when decisions about fabrics were finally being made—fabrics woven to Frederick Worth’s specifications and available nowhere else—did Effie forget herself so far as to finger longingly some of the lengths brought out by an assistant. When Mr. Worth curtly rejected one bolt of watery blue silk, she tried excitedly to catch Adeline’s and Jeanette’s attention. It was almost the very shade of Adeline’s hand-me-down.

“If you’ve picked that out for the young lady,
mademoiselle,
you are right,” said Mr. Worth, catching sight of her in a full-length mirror. His reflected eye flicked from the fabric toward Jeanette and back to Effie. “You yourself should stick to charcoal gray and black. Very nice foulard you have on, but may I—?”

He bowed and with delicate fingers tucked up the hem of Effie’s basque an inch and pinched it where a dart would give it more shape. For an instant, Effie’s image in the mirror had style. After he had turned back to Adeline, she pinched the hem up herself and pulled in the bodice while she studied her own reflection.

Jeanette wanted to feel that the dictatorial designer was overrated, but she caught Worth fever enough to do as Adeline suggested and think about altering the silk dress in the now officially approved blue along lines they had seen on display. Back at the hotel, vanity impelled her to show off, moreover, by sketching neat series of dress parts, ornamentations, and the new horizontal pleats they had seen. She had an idea. “Let’s make paper dolls,” she said to Laura. They did—mother and daughter paper dolls, Adeline and Laura—with bits of Worth costumes to assemble. When he saw the faces, Harold asked for formal portraits of his two children in whatever medium Jeanette preferred. Flattered to be asked and flushed with the fun of playing with her little cousin, Jeanette agreed.

“Shall I go with Nurse to the Tuileries Garden for some informal studies after the children’s naps tomorrow?” she suggested. “You should come, too, Adeline, and sit on a bench. I’ll sketch you for a souvenir. The preliminaries can go to Aunt Maude.” It would be worth missing an afternoon class for the chance to work outdoors in natural light.

Adeline’s face lit up. “A picture of me in Paris! You must put in an identifiable landmark.”

“The Champs-Élysées, with the Arc de Triomphe in the distance?” asked Jeanette, with only a trace of sarcasm.

“Perfect. Oh, Harold, no one else we know in New York has any such thing! They’ll die of envy.”

*   *   *

The midweek party that Cornelia gave for Adeline and Harold just before the close of the Salon was a step up from her dinner for the Murers and Monroes. If the Vanns had been entertained purely as Effie’s relations, the invitation would have been for tea; but ever since Marius’s grandfather had engaged Harold’s great-grandfather on some matter, the Renick bank and the law firm of Vann and Vann had done occasional business in New York. Cornelia’s guest list, therefore, included one French and one American couple from among their legal acquaintances; a porcelain manufacturer from Limoges and his wife; and the Norwegian count with his opera-singing countess. She also invited M. Naudet, the art dealer, to hear any rumors he might bring about who was going to win medals at the Salon, and a new plum, an illegitimate half-brother of the present duc de Mabillon, who went by the name of Montrachet. M. Montrachet divided his time between the London stock exchange and Paris, where his connections within the upper regions of the demimonde were extensive. He guarded his privacy as strictly as the old duchess did hers, but he had shown an interest in the house when he met Marius one day at a club, and he proved willing to gossip with Cornelia about the rest of the family in return for invitations. Better still, with his bar sinister, she could put him in the middle of the seating chart, where his equal fluency in French and English made him perfect between Mme. Naudet and Effie, across the table from Edward Murer. For, of course, if Jeanette Palmer was coming, she must invite Edward.

On the night of the party, to the impartial eye, Jeanette in sky blue was incidental to Adeline in iridescent jade green and Cornelia in gold again, a tissue lighter than the satin she had worn for Carolus’s portrait but every bit as extravagant. Yet Jeanette felt anything but incidental, and Edward’s eye was not impartial. From the moment he entered the room, Miss Palmer was to him the most vivid creature there, and her throat and shoulders, seen bare for the first time, more alluring than he could ever have imagined. For an instant, it appalled him that other men should see them, too; but, of course, she was merely conforming to fashion.

Adeline instantly perceived the direction of his gaze and glanced over her shoulder in time to catch Jeanette’s small, bashful smile. So this reserved man with the clipped, graying beard was the man from Cincinnati, the man who figured from time to time in both cousins’ letters to her mother. Cousin Effie’s eyes went to him, too. Adeline wondered whether she had set her cap for him. If so, too bad for poor old Effie! But, no, whatever water had flowed under that bridge was far out to sea. Cornelia introduced him to the Vanns as one of her oldest friends.

When the last guest had had been introduced, M. Naudet, without seeming predatory, made a point of conversing with Harold. Beautiful Adeline attracted admirers, as did the even more beautiful Norwegian countess. As the guests assorted themselves, Edward and Jeanette found they could talk for some time simply by standing still.

Neither wanted to talk to anyone else; neither paid much attention to what was actually said, except once. Jeanette told Edward that Carolus-Duran’s pupils were planning to attend closing day at the Salon en masse so that they could cheer together if he won a big medal. “He’s a man who craves adulation,” agreed Edward.

Jeanette frowned. “Is that such a bad thing?”

“It can be sad if it means a man doubts his own worth, and worse if it leads him to compromise principles to win easy praise.” Worse and worse: Edward could have kicked himself. “But then again,” he intoned, solemnly, “Velázquez, Velázquez, Velázquez.”

Jeanette laughed.

At dinner, Cornelia had provided for their happiness by seating them together. When the compulsory change in partners rippled around the table, Edward heard all about Limoges from the porcelain manufacturer’s wife, while Jeanette, with considerably more interest, listened to tales from M. Naudet about the art trade from a dealer’s point of view. She knew all the while that Edward was aware of her beside him and only keeping up a front with his other partner.

Back in the salon after dinner, Adeline made herself agreeable to Edward. Watching his detached ease with her, Jeanette suddenly realized that men responded to Adeline in much the same way that women did. Adeline was pleasant and attentive, always sure of her own welcome, often good for a pointed remark; yet underneath her polished surfaces, something dissatisfied made it unwise to expect too much from her. Not a woman to take lovers, thought Jeanette, and was shocked by her own premises.