The Center of the World (15 page)

Richmond smiled at me. It was one of those smiles that I get more and more from young people. “But I think they did, you see. His feelings prompted him to open his checkbook as wide as he did. The price he paid is now, for better or worse, as much a part of the painting as the canvas on which the paint is smeared. It’s what people see when they look at it. And it doesn’t make much sense to talk about the way a painting looks if that’s something different from what people see.”

I wanted to grab him by the collar and shake him. You have no idea, I wanted to say, no fucking idea of what you’re talking about. The painting is the thing itself. There is beauty and meaning beyond measure on the canvas. It exists in your mind and your body; it gives you a soul. But I just shook my head and said something lame about how I was too stupid for all that postmodernist stuff.

I wandered away and refilled my wineglass. Susan was on the other side of the room, engaged in what looked like serious conversation. She caught my eye and waved; I waved back but didn’t join her. I was afraid she’d recognize that I’d had too much to drink if I got close.

Eventually I settled in with some folks from the foundation
and we traded office gossip. When my glass was empty, I went to refill it. Richmond was helping himself to another glass as well; the crowd around him had disappeared. I had reached that stage of drunkenness where I didn’t realize I was drunk.

“I got so involved in the conversation,” Richmond said, “that I never got a chance to get something to eat. Fortunately, there’s a lot of good stuff left.”

I smiled at him. “In situations like this I always make it a point to deal with my physical needs before attending to the intellectual ones. I was interested in what you were saying back there, although I have to admit it bugged me. I guess I’m old enough or naive enough to think that the value of something beautiful is independent of the thing’s cost, but the more I thought about what you said, the more I could see that you have a point.”

“Well, I was, perhaps, overstating things a bit—that’s what one does at parties.”

“But let’s say, just for argument’s sake,” I went on, “that I’m upstairs cleaning out my grandmother’s attic and I find this old bundle up there.” I was so drunk that I felt clever for using the phrase “for argument’s sake” and for making it
my grandmother’s attic
. “And I open it up and there is a painting in there that I find very beautiful. I guess you’d say it has no value, because there is just my opinion and I may like a black velvet Elvis better than I like a Botticelli or a Vermeer. And that makes sense because this painting doesn’t exist in the world, only in my mind. But let’s say, further, again for argument’s sake, that I see that there’s a brass plaque on the frame that says Turner
or maybe Constable. And let’s say that it’s not a forgery, but the real deal, and that I’m a person of reasonably good, or even educated taste. What is the value of the painting under these conditions?”

Richmond chewed on a piece of bread and cheese and thought for a moment. It occurred to me that even at Princeton it might be something of a struggle to live on an assistant professor’s salary. Getting a free meal at a party might be nothing to sneeze at. I started to feel better, almost paternal, about Richmond.

“Theoretically, of course, it would be exactly the same as in the case of the black velvet Elvis. The painting’s only value would be that which you assigned to it. But if you are like most people the brass plaque will have had an effect. Since you are a person of educated taste, the painting will be more valuable in your own estimation to the extent that you consider it the work of Constable or Turner, because you know who those guys are. But practically, of course, it’s a different matter. It seems to me highly unlikely that you’d be able to leave yourself in doubt as to whether you had something worth perhaps millions and millions of dollars. So you would take the bundle to Sotheby’s. There would ensue a series of technical processes that would result in some statement of authenticity. Then it would be put up for auction and the result would be exactly like the one I described earlier.”

“But let’s say it was a Turner. How much would it be worth on the auction market?”

Richmond laughed. “That’s every art collector’s dream. It’s impossible to say, although it would be some very large sum of
money; it would depend on the quality, the condition, the certainty of the authentication. The Tate has all this North Sea oil money and a stated policy of going after everything by Turner. So the money would get very serious very quickly. Twenty-five, thirty million dollars? That wouldn’t be crazy.”

The number hit me in the head like a hammer blow. I had known, of course, that if my painting was a real Turner, it would be worth a great deal, but I had never allowed myself to consider what that might mean. Even if Richmond was off by fifty percent, I realized that I could do whatever I wanted. Like most people who work for a living, I had allowed my sense of what was possible to be determined by my income. Suddenly beautiful vistas opened before me, which promised, like the sea behind Helen’s tower, to take me to unimaginable lands.

I gave Richmond a weak smile. “Well, I guess I’m lucky that I don’t have that sort of problem.”

“I can’t imagine a better problem to have,” he said.

“Me too, but, like I said, it’s not a problem I have.” I was drunk enough that I thought it important to remind him. I told him that I’d enjoyed our conversation and went off to look for Susan.

 
THE WEATHER HAD TURNED
cold and wet. Egremont had sent word that his business in London would detain him for a few days more. I asked that a fire be made up in the Carved Room and decided to pass the morning with my book and more tea than I would normally allow myself.

Of all the wonderful rooms at Petworth, the Carved Room is perhaps the most wonderful. It is long and narrow, more like a gallery than a common room. Some of Egremont’s finest paintings are here, including four views of Petworth Park that Turner completed just two years ago. It is a testament to the esteem in which Lord Egremont holds Turner that these paintings keep company with two magnificent Van Dycks and an imposing portrait of Henry VIII by Holbein.

But the glory of the Carved Room is the walls themselves. Imagine the carving on the most elaborate and elegant picture frame you have ever seen. Now imagine a whole room covered with these carvings and, further, that the carving is not in vulgar
gold, but natural wood so supple that the wooden leaves and garlands seem to flutter in the breeze, and you begin to get the idea.

I had been settled there for about half an hour when I heard footsteps. It was Turner, carrying his sketchbook and wearing a disgruntled look.

“Ah. There you are. Not your usual place, I see, but a fine one, nonetheless. Damn rain.” Turner sat down and pulled his chair closer to the fire. He poured a cup of tea. “Don’t mind if I do,” he said. “I had planned to go out toward the edge of the estate. There is some fine scenery there, half wild. When I was younger I often sketched in worse weather, but now I am too old. My bones hurt, my teeth ache.”

I commiserated with him on the state of the weather. I said that I had been looking forward to taking a ramble of some sort, but that I had decided to make the best of it through the generous application of fire and tea.

“Not a foolish notion, young man.” I went back to my book. Turner pulled himself up a few inches closer to the fire. He seemed nervous and slightly uneasy. “Damn weather,” he repeated. “You’d think I had never seen rain before. I went to bed thinking of today’s sketching expedition. Got myself pleased at the prospect. Good work to be done, death approaching, candle against the darkness and so forth. And now nothing but a reminder of my age and weakness.”

“But surely,” I said, “there must be indoor subjects that could absorb your attention until the sun comes out again?”

“Certainly. I learned to draw indoors. The plaster casts at the Academy. The hours I spent in that cold and dusty room,
good Lord, that was my youth, young man. But there are finer things to be studied here—the greatest collection of classical sculpture in all of England, I dare say. It is the hope blasted, not the actuality. Funny creatures, we men.”

I went back to my book again, but was very much aware of his piercing eyes. He took out his sketch pad and his box of chalks.

“Do you mind?” he said. I shook my head and he began to draw.

“Must I do anything special?” I asked.

“No. The best thing for it is just to keep reading. Don’t mind me. As if such a thing were possible! That’s why I prefer landscape: a mountain doesn’t change the way it looks just because a poor fool sits before it with his sketch pad.”

I tried to get back to Homer, but I found it difficult to concentrate on anything but the sound of Turner’s pencil.

“Come now,” he said, “you look as if you suspect that your host’s wife is about to confess to her husband how she has passed the afternoon. If you cannot read, then you must talk to me. So, are you still at your Homer?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Are you a master of the ancient tongues?”

I said that I was a passable Latinist, but confessed that my Greek was not all that it could be.

“I envy you,” he said. “As we were saying the other night. Were the ancients smarter than the likes of us or just the first ones up in the morning?” Turner’s pencil never stopped moving as he spoke; it was as if his hand belonged to some other
being. “Never could decide, but they come to me as an echo’s echo through the dim mists of time. Ancient tongue to modern. Still, more wisdom than I can comprehend.” He worked in silence for a few minutes as I listened to the sound of his pencil.

“You are born for it, sir,” said Turner, “now that you have relaxed a bit. ’Tis a pity you are not rich, for if you were I might break my resolution and paint your portrait if the price were right.”

“If I were rich,” I said, “I would surely be less agreeable. I am not sure that I would be willing to part with my ill-gotten wealth on a portrait by Turner. If Reynolds were still alive he would be more to my liking. And on a horse—I would insist on the horse, you know. Leading a charge against foes foreign and mythological.”

“It would cost you a deal extra.” Turner laughed. “Once you get a horse involved it’s a damn bad business. Not many of my brethren can do a horse to satisfaction. Stubbs, of course, and Landseer, but it doesn’t seem worth the trouble. Gentlemen are very particular about their horses. Make the wife a bit prettier than she is, put the child’s nose in the middle of his face, you shall have no complaints. But make the forelock too short and there’s hell to pay. I make it a rule to stay away from the damn creatures.”

I felt as if he was drawing my soul from my body, and it gave me, in ways that I can hardly bring myself to think of, an intense feeling of pleasure. His serious attention was gratifying to my vanity, of course, but it was more than that: his attention was like a caress that appealed to the more noble aspects of my being.

“So tell me,” he said, “what did Helen look like?”

“No one knows. Homer is too subtle for mere description. The old men on the walls of Troy say she is worth fighting for, but how you would recognize her if she were walking down the Strand is unknown. All we can be sure of, I think, is that all of us would turn to stare at her. Some of us would do things we did not think ourselves capable of.”

“Always fancied her a blonde. Some days a redhead.”

“She is the common type of her time and place, but perfected,” I said. “She is an idea that always lies just beyond our grasp.”

“But what about ‘the face that launched a thousand ships’ and all that? She surely must have looked like something.”

“But that is Marlowe, not Homer. And Marlowe put it as a question. What Faustus saw before him was a boy actor smeared with paint and covered with horsehair. ‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?’ I think not. Shakespeare came closer to the mark when he has Ulysses describe her as ‘a theme of honor and renown.’ He understood that she was not flesh so much as an idea.”

“So you don’t think she can be painted?”

“You would know, not I. But think of all the Eves you have seen. She too was the perfected woman, and painters have often dared to represent her.”

“But Helen,” Turner said. “Another order of being altogether. The Bible and Homer are wholly different. Queer when you think of it, but Helen is much harder to imagine. More beautiful. Eve always partakes of the fall. No fall about Helen, although the world falls about her.”

His hands stopped moving and he looked intently at his drawing. I suddenly ceased to exist for him. He said something to himself that I could not catch, and then gave a shrug. He took his half-empty teacup and dipped a brush in it. He worked the liquid into the paper and then took out paints and began applying them, working in silence. I went back to my book. I was aware that he took occasional glances at me but I also knew that he did not want to talk now. Somehow reading became easier and the sound of Turner working almost seemed like soft music accompanying the battles of the heroes.