Katherine Keenum (9 page)

“Kitty!” exclaimed Effie, joyfully. “Oh, the one with the white paws!” she said, lifting the kitten out and holding him up high in the air. “Boots, Boots I’ll call you. Ouch!”

“Maybe you should call him Claws.”

“No, no, Bootsie, mustn’t scratch, mustn’t. What you need is cream.”

The kitten spat and bit until presented with the saucer of cream, whereupon he drank and consented to be petted. His sides began to vibrate in violent purring until, with equal violence, he fell sound asleep.

Jeanette propped herself on the edge of the deep windowsill where the geranium had sat. She pulled back a faded, checked muslin curtain to gaze greedily at the façades and roofs of the buildings opposite, the up-and-down clusters of chimneys and chimney pots. Soon every long crack in the stucco, every slipped roof slate, every sign on the shops below and window grille above was going to be familiar. She would know where all the nearby streets went. Out of the whirl of merging impressions and possibilities from their first few days, this room, this view came into focus as her first fixed point of reference. She had, after all, some small claim of belonging in Paris—a claim she must make good by succeeding. On Monday, they must find the Académie Julian.

CHAPTER EIGHT

One Step Back

O
n Monday morning, supplied with directions by Miss Whitmore, Jeanette and Effie walked across the river and up to the Rue Saint-Marc. In the middle of a block, two bushes in tubs flanked gates that stood open under a sign reading
Passage des Panoramas
. Jeanette paused to take a deep breath. “Now!” she said.

Inside, restaurants and small specialty shops crowded both sides of an arcade. Painted signs hung out at right angles overhead like banners; a tiled mosaic floor ran for two blocks. Above a second story of shops, the whole length was roofed with a peaked ceiling of glass. Jeanette and Effie walked slowly among the beautifully dressed shoppers, all of whom seemed to take for granted displays of jewelry, fancy stationery, and fashionable hats. Two blocks later, they emerged onto the busy Boulevard Montmartre. “But I know this is what Miss Whitmore said!” exclaimed Jeanette, in exasperation.

A grizzled
commissionaire
, with a numbered badge to certify he was licensed, stood at the entrance, waiting to pick up an errand. Effie nudged Jeanette.

“
L’Académie Julian?
” said the man, in response to Jeanette’s question.
“Mais oui, mademoiselle.”
He led them back to the middle of the main arcade and along a transverse passage to a service staircase near a restaurant. Gesturing with his hands, he urged them to ascend.
“Montez-vous, montez-vous, mesdemoiselles. L’académie, c’est au-dessus.”
While Effie handed him a coin, Jeanette started up doubtfully.

Unlike the appealing shop fronts of the arcade, the staircase was dark and smelly from refuse in a back alley; and unlike the stairs at the Tenth Street Studio Building, it lacked the width to accommodate large canvases. Yet at the top was an office with a sign reading
Académie de la Peinture
. Jeanette glanced back at Effie with a gleam in her eye and knocked.

“
Entrez, entrez!
” came the voice of a young man.

He was laying aside a newspaper and bringing his feet down from the desk when they opened the door. The walls of the office, which was little more than a cubbyhole, were hung with drawings and paintings—nudes, caricatures, and portrait heads. The young man himself wore a paint-daubed smock.

Was this the Académie Julian? Jeanette asked, shyly but eagerly.

“Oui, bien sûr, mademoiselle!”

Jeanette explained her errand. She wanted to take lessons; perhaps she could observe a class. He listened with a mischievous air of amusement but put on a solemn expression to send her down the hall to the classroom where she would find M. Julian. He assured her there was no need to knock.

Afterward, she would remember how crowded and smoky the room was: heads, backs, shoulders, and the triangular tips of easels everywhere—men standing in back, blocking sight of others on low stools near the front; everyone working away with pencil or brush. Yet at the time, Jeanette hardly took in the students; for her eyes followed theirs to a round dais where, in a twisted heroic pose, stood—to her momentary astonishment and horror—a muscular, hairy, and completely naked man. Years before, she and her giggling girlfriends had spent one Circleville summer spying through the bushes on their skinny-dipping brothers and classmates; since then, she had seldom seen a man with so much as his undershirt showing. She heard a gasp behind her. Effie.

A large man, whose black hair and beard emphasized an anvil-shaped head, was perched on a stool near the door. Under a short jacket, his chest and arms seemed as muscular as those of the model.

“
Bonjour, mademoiselle
,” he said, in strangely accented French, as he turned to greet Jeanette. She was perhaps looking for him. His name was Rodolphe Julian.

“Bonjour, M. Julian. Oui, s’il vous plaît.”
Jeanette squared her back against Effie.

M. Julian’s quick, dark eyes took in everything: the nervous chaperon, the youth of the applicant, the American white cotton gloves clutching a portfolio.

“You wish to join a class,
mademoiselle
,” he said in French, addressing only Jeanette.

She collected herself. “A life class,
monsieur
.”

“May I suggest that one commence with studies of plaster casts? It is normal. Come this way.”

“But I have already—”

M. Julian wagged an admonitory forefinger and winked. “Allow me to show you the class,
mademoiselle
. It will calm your esteemed aunt, and there you may show me your samples.”

In a second studio, thirty or forty students, male and female, were drawing various objects: classical busts and statues, plaster-of-Paris body parts, torsos on stands like dressmakers’ dummies. Many of the female students seemed to be Jeanette’s age; some of the boys were younger. There were also older students, including a few ladies whose lace cuffs and enrapt glow of amateurish devotion could not have been better calculated to reassure Cousin Effie.

M. Julian cleared a space on a table to look at Jeanette’s portfolio. Silently, he turned the pages of drawings and the two small oil studies she had included.

“
Bon, mademoiselle
,” he said, “my compliments. You draw with decision. You are indeed ready to move on to the live figure. For ladies, at this moment, I offer three ateliers.

“In the first, the model is fully dressed, often in costume from what I can boast to be the largest collection of antique and regional attire in any private teaching establishment in Paris. But,
mademoiselle
”—he held up his hand to forestall Jeanette’s protest—“if you work there, you will be surrounded by artists from whom you can learn nothing. In the second, the model is partially draped with ample opportunity to study limbs and torso. That is the class for you. In the third, the model is completely nude as in the class for men, but—”

Jeanette was bracing herself to request the third when again M. Julian forestalled her.

“I reiterate,
mademoiselle
, for you the draped figure.” He glanced quickly to Effie and back. “In a month or so, when your venerable companion is accustomed to your coming here, you may advance if you so desire. In the meantime, there is much to be learned about the fall of cloth as well as the articulation of limbs; you will need both in your career. You agree to my suggestion?”

“Oui, monsieur!”

With a bow, he swept them down the hall and, from the busy arcade below, out onto a side street, talking all the way. Jeanette understood little of what he said and Effie none, but he was so obviously in charge that she followed docilely.

They climbed stairs to another classroom crowded with easels and artists. Here the students were all women, and the seated model female. She was partially covered by a thin tissue of cloth across her lap. Again, Effie halted in the doorway, overcome by distress; but Jeanette found herself more curious than she wanted to admit. If dormitory life had exposed her to many half-clad girls, they had seldom been bare breasted. She would have felt freer to stare without M. Julian beside her.

A painter who had looked around when they entered set down her palette and made her way quickly around the edge of the room and into the hallway. M. Julian introduced her as the
massière
of the class, the student monitor who was in charge of collecting fees, paying the models, and attending to all such administrative duties. Also she would translate into French
comme il faut
anything that his Provençal accent had made incomprehensible.
Mademoiselle
would be studying drawing.

“
Ah, non, monsieur, pas le dessin—la peinture
,” said Jeanette. Not drawing—painting.

He wagged a finger. “
Le dessin
,” he repeated, and was gone.

“Oh, dear, shall we sort this out in English? American, are you?” said the
massière
, in a crisp British accent. She was in her late twenties, with light-brown hair pulled neatly back from a face of regular features and an enviably clear complexion. Her manner was that of the very capable only daughter of a widowed sea captain turned parson, which she was. “My name, in case you didn’t catch it in M. Julian’s murderous pronunciation, is Amy Richardson. Now what’s all this about painting?”

“It’s just that I’ve already moved on to working in oil at home. I didn’t come to Paris to go back to drawing—and M. Julian did say that I drew with decision.”

“Ah, yes, well, I’m sure you do; of course, you can always try another school—the Colarossi on the Rue de la Grande-Chaumière, for instance, takes women—and there are always private masters. But a word to the wise, Miss—
Paumeur
is Palmer, I take it? Right. A word to the wise, Miss Palmer: Julian’s assessments are seldom wrong, however maddening they seem at the time. Were you working from the live figure in your previous studies?”

“No,” admitted Jeanette.

“Well, it’s quite different from still lifes and landscapes. I promise you, we all need to draw in life class before we try to paint the human body. Tell you what, why don’t you come look at what some of the girls are doing and see where
you
think you fit.”

The best of the painters could have been professional portraitists (some were); worse, the difference between the drawings of those who could make flesh look soft and those whose work still resembled plaster casts was all too evident. Between growing intimidation and embarrassment at disturbing a class in progress, it was all Jeanette could do not to bolt and find a place to cry. Her mother was right: Coming here was a pipe dream; she had been deluding herself.

“Take your time to think it over,” said Miss Richardson, back outside in the hallway. “You know where to find me if you decide to join the class.”

“I don’t need time,” said Jeanette. “I need to begin at the beginning or slit my throat.”

“No blood on the premises, please! You won’t be sorry, you know,” Miss Richardson added, sympathetically. “If you have the talent, nothing short of treating it with the proper respect will do. And you will make progress here, I promise. You’ve no idea how much we learn from each other as well as the masters.”

Before they left, Cousin Effie overcame her own dismay about models enough to ask about fees.

“Ah, the grim practicalities. Yes, well, there’s a basic registration fee of one hundred francs, on top of which you pay thirty-five francs a week, or the better monthly rate of a hundred.”

“Twenty dollars to register and twenty dollars a month, oh my.” Effie clucked her tongue. “He’s no gentleman, but he certainly knows his business.”

“We knew there would be tuition,” said Jeanette in an embarrassed undertone.

Miss Richardson’s face twitched, but she said only, “You can also pay four hundred francs for a full six months, much the best deal if you know you’re committed. Any questions, Miss Palmer?”

“When could I start?”

“This very afternoon if you came back with money and a sketchbook. If you do decide to join us, run down to the Quai d’Orfevres, number four, and tell the man you are starting at the Académie Julian. He’ll outfit you at a very decent price. Nothing like the smell of a new sketchbook and all those lovely, clean, white pages.”

Blank, beginner’s pages, thought Jeanette.

CHAPTER NINE

First Interlude: Cincinnati

T
he prospect of a trip to Europe got Edward moving. He went to his tailor, who made him handsome new clothes that hung comfortably and lifted his morale. He began reading again, at least fitfully: history, technical papers on chemical processes given him by Theodore, Goethe. And he kept away from laudanum. His willpower was strengthened when he cut himself off from his secret supply—for as soon as he agreed to let Theodore sell the drugstore to Hans, he withdrew completely from the business. He kept only his little library of books from the back room, a few instruments, and their father’s clock.

Packing up from Mrs. Wiggins’s boardinghouse was harder, but not much. On the day he gave notice, he went over with Sophie to supervise some men from the Murer Brothers factory in loading his belongings onto a van. Before they took his mother’s bureau, he furtively pocketed the almost-new bottle of laudanum he had stashed in it; later, in a moment of resolve, he threw it away. At Sophie’s direction, everything was brought back to the guest room, which she had already partially emptied in a flurry of curtain-washing and cushion-beating.

“This is too much trouble for so short a time,” said Edward. “Just store it all at the warehouse until we get back. Then I’ll look for new rooms.”

“You don’t know when that will be,” said Sophie, “and Mutter Murer’s bureau deserves regular waxing in the meantime.”

When everything was safely in place upstairs, she unwrapped one of his framed etchings, an evocative landscape of trees beside a river. “This is beautiful,” she said.

“One of my little mutilations.”

“Edward!”

“Cut out of a magazine. Five dollars an issue, from Paris. The latest one is in a box with my books.”

“Five dollars an issue? I never suspected you of such extravagance!”

“Once a year, three hundred prints on heavy paper, some good, some not so good. I pore over an issue for months. There are always a dozen or more superb pieces and many more worth looking at again and again.” As he was speaking, Edward pulled out more pictures from their wrapping paper, one by one. “At the end of the year, I sell the whole issue to a dealer I know to cut up for resale piecemeal. He frames my favorite picture for free and pays me three bucks fifty for the rest.”

When Sophie told Theodore about it, he dismissed the exchange with a snort of impatience: “Edward! The mind of a shopkeeper. It’s what holds him back. Why doesn’t he just have his magazine bound and buy real pictures for his wall?”

*   *   *

As spring progressed, Sophie and Edward continued their afternoon walks and rides. He began taking walks by himself, too. At first for an excuse, he took the family dog on a leash; but Jenks was too used to roaming free through the neighborhood, and the battle of wills as he tugged or balked was bad for both their tempers. Edward gave up on the dog and instead went down the hill to buy a German newspaper and a daily hothouse rose for Sophie. “Edward, you shouldn’t. You will spoil me,” protested Sophie, after the third or fourth, but her face always lit up with pleasure. Sometimes, he substituted violets or a gardenia.

The future remained a void. He had nothing in mind for his return. Oddly enough, the store, which had been part of his life since he was a boy, had no hold on him. It seemed simply to vanish. He did not wake up thinking he had to go there; he didn’t care whether Hans maintained his careful inventories; his hands did not miss the mortar and pestle or compounding knife. Something would have to replace them or his demons would rip at him again; but for the time being, he accepted Theodore’s assumption that a year abroad would reveal as much to him as it did to Carl. Meanwhile, he thought no further ahead than the first weeks of touring with the family. They would go first to Paris to see the World’s Fair. He bought a Baedeker and reread Balzac.