The Adventures of Allegra Fullerton (23 page)

“For my part,” Gibbon was saying now, “all this face-making we American painters do has lost its luster, if it ever had any luster!”

I tried to forget Tom and return to my convivial friends.

“But it
is
necessary to get one's living, Gibbon,” Mrs. Spooner said.

“Of course, Mother. I don't doubt the necessity of our doing it—more's the pity—but don't we all feel inspired to paint as well from nature … and from history? Would we not do better to go out into the fields and rivers and mountains much more than we do? I begin to think that I prefer biblical scenes even to all this face painting.”

Julian made an expression of repugnance. “You have a point, Gibbon,” he responded, “but I have as little taste for biblical allegories as for the isolation of lengthy expeditions among God's temples. Portrait painting is, after all, a much more social art, and of honorable lineage as well. And then, as Mrs. Spooner has so aptly said, there's one's living to get, after all.” He made a slight bow to her. And he and I raised glasses to one another.

Julian looked about to see the effect of his argument. Then he added, “But let us be honest on this count: Unless one has visited Italy—and this you have to see for yourself, Allegra—you cannot form any idea of the privileges and respect an artist enjoys there. Here, there is simply no point of reference, no understanding of such a thing.”

“Wasn't it Mrs. Trollope, George,” Mrs. Spooner asked, “who said … what was it now? … That we Americans speak only of the finish of drapery and resemblance in a portrait … never of ‘drawing' or ‘composition' or the like. Never of ‘inspiration.' And that we ask ‘only how long it takes to paint a painting and then divide up the price by the number of days, as if years of invention and study go for nothing with those people!'”

“I believe you are correct, dear. The indomitable Mrs. Trollope!” Mr. Spooner laughed. “But to take your other point, Julian, what one paints finally is a matter of temperament, as well. Cole always said he was constitutionally repelled by cities. ‘Never go to New York,' he once told me, ‘without a presentiment of evil.' I, on the other hand, have found myself comfortable in the wilderness, in rural society, and in the city. So I do a bit of everything, eh? But I live here, for, as Mother says,” and he too made a slight bow to his wife, “we have a living to get, after all.”

“I wouldn't dispute that, Father,” Gibbon said. “As to this business of necessity, I quite agree, let there be portraits galore.” He nodded to me and I nodded back. “The country is a good place to study and paint. And then the city is a good place to sell the products of a cultivated mind. Let those who would display their wealth, as offensively as they wish; let those who would devote whole lifetimes to this swelling and swaggering and strutting in the marketplace, but let them also, I say, purchase our renderings of beauty and sublimity … and even their own faces flattered out of recognition.”

“Precisely why old Cole is too massy and umbrageous!” Julian snapped and laughed. “He is at once too besotted with his own wanderings in the wilderness and too servile from keeping a sharp eye, at the same time, ever on the marketplace.”

Mr. Spooner, who had by now imbibed several glasses of wine, gave out a great laugh. “Julian, you too often overreach yourself for the telling phrase, but it is most amusing to listen to you, eh?” He smiled and looked at each of us. Then he laughed again. “An artist must follow his own talent and his own soul first, for if the masters teach us anything it is that art must be a thing not merely of fidelity but of the spirit. And it is the masters who offer us the corrective of timelessness, of what lasts. If we wish to avoid the mire of mannerism, narcissism, and … ephemeral fashion in the arts.”

“To the masters, then!” Gibbon said. He stood up and raised his glass. “To the Italian masters.”

We all stood out of our chairs and toasted.

How much I must have lost, I thought, from having seen so few of them!

Mr. Spooner put down his glass. As he seated himself, he began to laugh again. “As you were speaking, son, you put me in mind of something old Stuart once said, apropos of all this American face painting. Mind you, this was years ago. ‘By and by,' he said, ‘you will not by chance kick a dog kennel, but out will start a portrait painter!'”

Everyone laughed but Julian.

“Shall I ever travel to Italy?” I asked musingly once the laughter abated. “For all my travels in New England, still
that
seems an impossible voyage. It has taken me what?—five years to make a partial circuit of the Commonwealth!”

“I'm going to return some day, Mrs. Fullerton,” Gibbon said. “And I should be delighted for your company. But as father has suggested, now is the time for dedication and absorption, the time for me to begin garnering commissions in earnest. If we both proceed in that direction, why should we not be able to make such a voyage eventually?”

“Thank you, Gibbon,” I said. “Let's hope that some day… .”

“Who knows but that we shall all return!” Julian quickly suggested. “It would make a rather pleasant entourage, as before, but with the happy addition of Allegra.”

“But for now we all have work before us,” Mr. Spooner said. “And we must for a time devote ourselves to the work at hand in the city we have come to love. Here and now, my friends, this place and these moments are what we need to improve. I hope, Allegra, that you will find the rooms I have in mind suitable when we visit tomorrow afternoon. If not, we will soon find something more acceptable to you. Fear not. And then we shall gladly, all of us, return to our work.”

“May the devotion of the masters inspire us,” Gibbon said, standing up and offering his glass.

When that toast was finished, I began to explain that I had a note from Miss Fuller. “Apparently, Mr. Dana had notified her of my return to Boston, because she had once written to him of her concern over my abrupt departure from Newspirit. She wished to express her relief at my having been ‘found, yet again.' …”

“As we too are relieved at having the long burden of our sorrow lifted,” Gibbon interrupted, and made a gallant little bow toward me. “You understand, of course, Mrs. Fullerton, that it was only when we heard from Mr. Dana, as a result of his inquiries of us, that we knew of your being found in the first instance, even though we'd been back in America some months.”

“To our dear friend and fellow artist,” Julian leapt up and said, “that she has found herself and been found once more. Nay—that she has survived and, by the look of her, flourished. That she may continue to paint beautifully and … be beautiful.”

Everyone stood as he spoke and toasted me. It was a remarkable moment. Gibbon beamed upon me. Julian laughed pleasantly, even at his own stumbling. Mrs. Spooner held her glass as high as any. And my dear, formidable master looked upon me with affection.

“Thank you all,” I continued. “Miss Fuller made mention in her note of John Neal's lecture this week. She herself hopes to be able to attend and has offered to introduce me. I wonder if we might go as well, all together.”

“When is it to be?” Mr. Spooner asked.

“Thursday evening,” I said.

“Why not, then?” he said, looking at each of us quickly. “I like Neal. Always have. He is a man—at least when he considers the arts—without any nonsense about him.”

The entire company assented to attend. And we toasted Mr. Neal before finally leaving our jolly table.

We all slept late, as Mr. Spooner had predicted, the following morning. When he took me around finally, I was quite satisfied with the rooms he had held for me—a kind of third-floor bachelor's apartment with a parlor and small bedchamber, which we thenceforth called my painting garret, although I still worked a day each week in his more ample atelier. I discovered from a window of my quiet little sanctum in Roxbury that I could survey the neighboring city (which I often did as my way of keeping the Sabbath, when all commercial sounds had stilled to open the air for occasional church bells and the songs of myriad insects, who always seemed to raise a shriller hymn of joy on this day).

But it was not long after I had settled in my rooms that such peaceful interludes were interrupted by my interviews with the authorities. Mr. Dana had prepared me to tell the truth, and I had been worrying about just how I would construct it.

My first interview was with a man and woman in street clothes who appeared at my door, saying they were from the county prosecutor's office. The man was rather a dour, mustachioed old figure, but as soon as they were seated, the woman, perhaps a year or two beyond my age, smiled and handed me a brief account of my abduction published in the
Friend of Virtue
.

“Can you tell us please, Mrs. Fullerton, whether you find this article correct in the essentials?” she asked.

I read it quickly. Neither my nor Dudley's names appeared in this particular account.

“Yes,” I said. “In the essentials. His name was Joseph Dudley, by the way.”

“We know,” the man said. His voice was deep and quiet. “A general list of malefactors was published in a later issue. Mr. Dudley appeared on that list.”

“Did I as well? As his victim, I mean?”

“No,” the woman answered. “They are very good about that in cases not yet brought into the courts. This was, as Mr. Wellington said, a general listing of malefactors. They seldom contest such listings publicly, if they are in fact guilty. Too shameful.”

“Thank goodness for their keeping me off any lists.”

“Can you provide us some detail, Mrs. Fullerton,” she asked, “about this period of your abduction, for some months, wasn't it?”

“Yes. Although it seemed forever. Did not Matron tell you my story?”

“She did,” the woman answered. “But we prefer to hear it in your own words.”

“I see. Yes, of course.” I could not speak further.

“Mr. Wellington can step out,” she suggested, “if you'd be more comfortable that way.”

“No. No, that's not it. I don't know where to begin, that's all. You see, other than being imprisoned and turned into an object of amusement, like a mere mouse in a cat's cruel play, there is nothing about which I need to feel shame.”

“Just begin with the moment of your abduction, then, if you please,” she said.

I told them the entire story, in convincing detail I hoped, up until my escape with Mr. Dana's help. Mr. Wellington scribbled furiously in his notebook and Miss Gretchel (for that was her name) asked questions and listened. Then they inquired about my days at Newspirit and my further associations and travels with Tom. I told them all that I have told my reader, save for Tom's own hand in Dudley's demise and my own pangs of vengeance. What Tom and I had agreed we should tell Mr. Dana, I then told my official interlocutors. Their reaction to Tom's flight after Dudley was found, and then later abroad, was more measured than Mr. Dana's, but it amounted to the same thing: an innocent man is a fool to flee. Once again, I reminded them of Tom's credible fears and his reasoning in his innocence. I said that I had not been able to convince Tom to face all accusations directly. These statements they took in; they made no further comments or queries to suggest disbelief.

Taking their leave, finally, they asked me to remain in the city that September while they concluded their investigations in light of my own testimony, a written version of which they promised to bring for my signature within a day or two.

T
HAT THURSDAY WE ATTENDED
Mr. Neal's lecture. The others were rather disappointed in the subject of the evening, but I found his remarks entertaining. I found I was able to cast aside the darker apprehensions Mr. Wellington and Miss Gretchel had elicited. Mr. Neal eschewed the arts in favor of “true womanhood.” Perhaps this was why Miss Fuller had recommended him to me.

After the lecture I met up with Miss Fuller. She said that she had known Mr. Neal since 1838, when he spoke to her schoolgirls in Providence.

“As you heard this evening, Mrs. Fullerton,” she said to me, “Mr. Neal gives a truly manly view of the matter, although not the view of common men. And isn't it pleasing to watch his countenance, whose energy is animated by genius? I always find his striking ideas and phrases an inspiration,” she added. She then told me that she was herself at work on a book about the situation of women.

It was only later, discussing Mr. Neal's interests in phrenology and magnetism, when I discovered from her that she had once gone so far as to let down her hair and submit her “haughty head to his sentient fingers” for a reading.

But this evening, Mr. Neal rose to speak before a full house, and he did not fail to amuse and provoke. He began by pleasing his audience with an admirable summary of Yankee character as “remarkable for sobriety, invincible steadiness, and good faith.” He then, however, proceeded to set them down hard by warning against a “perversion of that remarkable character” into a not uncommon “Perfection of Rascality—exhibited by those among us who go about their business of worldly thrift and absolute fraud precisely as they go about their worship.”

He then boldly connected our Yankee attributes to an insufficient moral passion to work against slavery in the South. The clarity of argument by which he immediately connected our insufficient moral passion against slavery to our failure of women in our American democracy is beyond my powers to replicate. Not that I had never heard such a connection before, as when Tom and I once attended a lecture by the Grimké sisters during their tour of Massachusetts, but it was the force of Mr. Neal's reasoning that I found so remarkable.

I can only relate that he thundered against the legal restraints upon women, comparing us to slaves and apprentices who, as wives, in the tradition of English common law, could not hold or dispose of their own property.