Little Kingdoms (28 page)

That summer William and Sophia prolonged their stay at Black Lake to mid-September. It was during the second week of September, on a bright and unseasonably warm day, that Elizabeth held an interview with William which she recorded briefly in her Journal, but which Sophia reported at greater length in a letter to Eunice Hamilton (12 September 1845). Lying on her sickbed, her long hair strewn about her, her eyes “glowing with unnatural brightness,” Elizabeth asked William to watch over her brother “if he should ever be left alone,” for Edmund was “like a child, in some things.” William gave his solemn pledge. When he stepped from the room, Sophia noted that his face was wet with tears.

[26]

SELF PORTRAIT
1845?–46
Oil on canvas, 36 1/4 × 30 3/8 in.

In October 1845 Moorash spoke to Elizabeth of a self-portrait, but it is not clear from the Journal whether he had actually begun
it. A self-portrait is mentioned again in December, although in a way that suggests he may still have been only dreaming his way toward it (8 December 1845: “E hard at work on
The Devil’s Dream
[a lost painting]. Spoke of paradox of self-portrait: what is a self?”) He was clearly at work on a self-portrait by May 1846, and he appears to have worked on it steadily from that time, setting aside all other work, until his death on 27 July.

Elizabeth rallied in the fall of 1845. Despite a small setback in November she had recovered sufficiently by mid-December to enjoy a ten-day Christmas visit from Sophia and William, during which all four took long walks in the wintry woods and fields, went skating on Black Lake, and hired a sleigh with “handsome carvings and cushioned seats, drawn by two horses, a black and a white,” in which they took long rides through wild country. She was still well in April, when Sophia and William returned from Boston to their cottage on Black Lake, but in mid-May she took a turn for the worse, staying in bed for three days with headaches and violent vomiting. By June she had returned to her semi-invalid life, receiving visitors in her bedroom or on the sagging sofa in the kitchen-parlor. The Journal entries for June and July are extremely irregular: long, detailed entries on days of relative good health alternate with abrupt, fragmentary notes or utter silence. Despite the gaps, we are able to follow the progress of the
Self-Portrait
in some detail, for Moorash spoke about it to Elizabeth more than he was accustomed to speak of his work in progress; and we can trace the evolution of a strange scheme that quickly became an obsession.

The first mention of the scheme occurs on 6 June, a month after he had begun the
Self-Portrait:
Moorash intends to show the picture to Sophia in order to “open her eyes.” The painting is not
for
Sophia; but he intends that she shall “be wakened by it from her slumber.” Is he here perhaps thinking of himself as the triumphant prince, climbing to Dornröschen’s tower? Elizabeth is skeptical of the plan: apart from Sophia’s lack of understanding
of Edmund’s work, there is the question of the proper
aim
of a work of art. Moorash argues that a painting is intended to “excite feelings”—why then should he not wish to excite the feelings of Sophia? Elizabeth asks if that is all he intends. Moorash laughs harshly and replies that the devil works in mysterious ways—perhaps he’ll possess her soul by means of his portrait. Elizabeth, disturbed by his answer, remains silent. On 18 June Moorash is discouraged and thinks of destroying the painting, but on 20 June he is hard at work. On 26 June Elizabeth is attended by Dr. Long after a bad night. The next day Moorash, who has been painting in the barn, moves to his cramped upstairs studio in order to be near Elizabeth. There is a gap of eight days, but on 5 July Elizabeth reports that she has taken a walk with Sophia and William. On 7 July Moorash tells Elizabeth that it’s enough for him if Sophia is simply “presented with the evidence.” His intention appears to have shifted: he now wishes to address her moral sense. Within a week he is filled with doubts and is on the verge of destroying the picture, but he recovers his enthusiasm and returns to work “with a vengeance.” On 17 July Moorash states that “a painting is a dagger aimed at a heart.” His intention appears to have changed again: he now wants to
wound
Sophia with his art. On 18 July Elizabeth asks whether he plans to woo Sophia with his portrait. Moorash grows thoughtful and replies: “No, I want her to look at me. She has never seen me.” The continual assertion of contradictory intentions during the painting of
Self-Portrait
is perhaps indicative of an overwrought state of mind, but it should be noted that the shifting esthetic positions of June and July are connected by a consistent theme: Moorash is insisting on the power of painting to affect a beholder, to enter another mind. On 22 July he is “almost done with” the portrait. On 23 July he asks Elizabeth if she is willing to look at it and decide its fate. He shuts himself up for three days of feverish work and on the evening of 26 July brings down the canvas, covered with a white
cloth, and sets it up on an easel at the foot of her bed. Facing Elizabeth, he watches her closely as he lifts the cloth.

Later that night Elizabeth recorded the events of 26 July in a rapid, excited hand. The painting “thrills and frightens me—pierces me to the very core.” It is “dark and terrible—the image of Satan—dark.” In the terrible eyes she sees “suffering—and sorrow—and evil unspeakable.” She “cannot bear” to look at it “and yet—and yet.” She begged Edmund to leave the painting with her for the night, so that she might speak with him about it in the morning.

The events of 27 July are occasionally hazy in detail, although clear enough in outline; there is no reason to doubt the accuracy of Mrs. Duff’s
Report.
Edmund rose early and went down to breakfast, which he ate alone in the kitchen-parlor. Elizabeth sometimes slept to mid-morning or later, and he was careful not to disturb her. He returned upstairs to his room, perhaps to work on a painting laid aside months earlier, and was interrupted by Mrs. Duff’s cry. He hurried downstairs. Elizabeth was unconscious and breathing erratically. Edmund hesitated for only a moment before leaving Mrs. Duff with Elizabeth and running the half mile into Saccanaw Falls, where he found that the local doctor was out on his rounds. He promptly hired a trap to take him to Strawson, only to discover that Dr. Long was attending a patient six miles away. In Strawson he was able to find a second doctor, a Dr. Parrish, who returned with him to Stone Hill; Dr. Parrish strode into the sickroom, bent over Elizabeth, and pronounced her dead. About fifteen minutes after the doctor left—it is not clear how long he remained—Sophia and William arrived. At the door Mrs. Duff informed them of Elizabeth’s death. Sophia rushed wildly into the room, followed by Mrs. Duff, and threw herself to her knees beside Elizabeth. Sobbing hysterically, she seized Elizabeth’s hand and began kissing it over and over again and pressing it to her tearstained cheek. William stood for a moment in the doorway, stunned and trembling, before
walking into the room and sitting abruptly on the edge of the bed, where he bent his face into his hands. Moorash sat expressionless in a chair on the other side of the bed. Suddenly Sophia stood up, looked wildly about, and stepped over to a small sewing table, where she pulled open a drawer and removed a pair of sharp scissors. Uttering a cry, she ran to the portrait, which still stood on the easel at the foot of the bed, and began slashing at the face with the scissors. During this outburst Moorash stared at her from his chair but did not move. After striking repeated blows, Sophia dropped to her knees, raised her eyes to the ceiling, and with both hands thrust the scissors into her throat. Even as she raised her arms to strike the blow, Moorash leaped from the chair, but he was too late to prevent the scissors from entering with full force. It appears that he next attempted to wrench the weapon from her grasp, but Sophia, though bleeding profusely, struggled violently, as if she were being attacked. It was only now that William, as though startled out of a dream, tore himself from Elizabeth’s side and with a “wild look” and “strangled cry” rushed over to the struggling pair. Moorash had succeeded in pulling the bloody scissors from Sophia’s throat, and there now took place a fierce struggle between Moorash and William for possession of the scissors, in the course of which Moorash was wounded in the neck—it is not clear how. It is impossible to tell from the
Report
whether William was attempting to prevent a second suicide, or whether, in his half-mad state, he attacked his friend. William suddenly seemed to come to his senses and, holding Edmund gently, laid him on the floor. He became brisk and efficient, tearing strips of cloth to staunch the wounds of Edmund and Sophia, and ordering Mrs. Duff to fetch a doctor. When she returned some twenty minutes later with Dr. Parrish, whom she had overtaken on the road to Strawson, she found William lying on his back on the bed beside Elizabeth, one arm outstretched. She did not know at first that he was dead. On the floor lay one of Moorash’s hunting pistols, which William
had removed from the small deal table in the upstairs bedroom. Moorash was dead (later it was determined that he had died from a stab wound in the throat). Sophia was alive but unconscious; she died early the next morning.

A tableau of bloody corpses presided over by a mangled painting is an effect that Moorash would have deplored; he detested banal visions of the knife-and-cadaver kind. That his life should have ended as an imitation of a mediocre academic painting would nevertheless, one imagines, have elicited from him a wry smile, for it was his conviction that the contrivances of art were always superior to the accidents of life.

The
Self-Portrait
is badly damaged; despite painstaking restorative efforts, much of the face, including both eyes, is so torn and scratched as to be virtually unseeable. Nevertheless, the design or plan remains clear. Moorash retained the motif of lake, hills, and sky that he used in his three late portraits, as well as the method of mythic representation: the shadows of wings are visible, as if he had intended to portray himself as a great dark angel, a fierce and fallen Lucifer. Although even in its mutilated form the portrait retains a certain power, the damage condemns it to an uneasy place in Moorash’s oeuvre, for it seems to hover in a limbo between art and biography, between the realm of imperishable beauty and the world of decay.

Elizabeth and Edmund were buried in the small graveyard in Saccanaw Falls, within sight of Stone Hill. The parents of Sophia and William insisted that they be returned for proper burial in the family plot in Philadelphia.

In October 1846 Charlotte Vail died, after a lingering illness.

Books by Steven Millhauser