The Fraud (20 page)

Later the romantic story was often told: how the famous Italian Portrait Painter fell in love, how he sat all night, unbelieving, gazing at what he had created - his Portrait; how he would not release the painting from his studio until he had captured the original. The young and fiery lord who had originally brought the beautiful young lady to be painted by the fashionable artist challenged the usurper of his lady to a duel: luckily (for the Italian) the noble lord was accused at this very time of some sort of underhand behaviour at the card-table and was bundled out of the country hurriedly by his noble father. So Filipo di Vecellio won the beauty
and
the portrait - and then had to make further decisions.

Perhaps it took a fraud to recognise a fraud. Perhaps he married her because he understood they would keep each other’s secrets - secrets he would never have been able to share with a woman of quality, should one of them have fallen under his dark-eyed charm. Perhaps the only instinctive thing Philip Marshall ever did in his new life was to fall in love with Angelica, who had the name of an angel but who had secrets also.

Whatever the reason, the well-known portrait painter and the beautiful young woman were married and lived happily ever after: she became Angelica, Signora di Vecellio, and it is likely he married her because he could not live without her.

If they were not exactly respectable, or noble, they were, indeed, truly, madly fashionable - and after all what better
entrée
into London society now, than fashion? Her exquisite beauty and his flattering skill and charm and wealth made them a success in the wild, bustling, dangerous, scheming London world; they became part of the fashion because he painted the fashion: indeed they
were
the fashion. They were seen at the theatre and at opera houses and regattas. They were seen promenading in St James’s Park, walking through the candle-lit trees in Vauxhall Gardens, or laughing beside the Rotunda at Ranelagh Gardens. After their marriage, when Filipo di Vecellio was at the height of his fame, he moved to one of the most expensive addresses in London: to a huge house in Pall Mall, not far from where Royalty sometimes resided, indeed the gardens at the back of the houses backed on to the wall of the King’s Garden, and windows looked out across the garden and over St James’s Park, and the sister, the housekeeper, had a room at the top of the house and was heard to say how very, very glad she was to have a sewing-room attached, how very, very useful it was, for a housekeeper.

And upon the turn of the stairs in the elegant house in Pall Mall hung, always, that first wonderful portrait of Angelica: the powdered hair, the extraordinary pale oval face, and the large dark eyes. The most beautiful woman in London.

The much-talked-of marriage (and perhaps their air of mystery) had made them celebrities. Angelica’s eyes sparkled brightly, made even larger by the definition of black (so carefully applied), and colour-shading the eyelids emphasised the eyes’ dark depths. The fashionable white, white skin, leading down to the white, white bosom, seemed to gleam; the cheeks held a delicate blush of beauty, matching the colour (so very carefully, so very tastefully applied) of the perfectly shaped, slightly-smiling mouth. She wore gorgeous gowns of beautiful colours, with tight waists and low-cut bodices, and her shoes were made of embroidered silk and her silk- and satin-petticoats rustled seductively as she passed by, trailing a drifting hint of musk, or jasmine. Other painters clamoured to paint her: beautiful portraits certainly, yet none, somehow, caught her as Filipo di Vecellio, just once, had caught her.

The house in Pall Mall was always full of people: sitters for portraits, and dealers and framers and assistants, and hairdressers and dressmakers and visitors to Angelica’s dressing-room, and tradesmen bringing canvases and boards and paint, and extra new servants. And there, in the large house, Filipo and Angelica presided over the same hospitable afternoon dinners, where Art was always the main subject of discussion, where the painter’s quiet and retiring - but indispensable - sister, Francesca, was always in the background in her grey gown and the white cap on her dark hair, to make sure all was as required. This quiet, retiring sister very seldom joined in the artistic conversation; almost you might not notice her as she sat there: who would notice that she was listening and watching so carefully? She observed how light from the window, or from one of the candles, caught the smooth white cheek of her beautiful sister-in-law, or the charming face of her famous brother, or the papery skin of the indomitable Miss Ffoulks. Once she watched the fading light from the late afternoon, how it crept along the table, slowly shadowing the china plates, the wine-glasses, the old hand of Miss Ffoulks as it lay there upon the fine linen tablecloth, up towards John Palmer’s wig, hanging on the back of his chair. It was summer, late summer, almost time to light the candles but for a moment she did not move, watched the long shadows, thought she heard in the distance the evening starlings calling as they made their way home to St James’s Park. ‘Leonardo, Michelangelo, Rembrandt,’ cried Mr Hartley Pond, and the face of Mr Burke almost in complete shadow now except for his listening grey eyes; that night in her sewing-room at the top of the house she tried to paint the fading light and the dining-table and the colour of the wine in the glasses and the beautiful, shadowed face of James Burke.

Such agreeable and rumbustious afternoons in Pall Mall: good conversation and good food at one of the fashionable London addresses. And Filipo di Vecellio addressed his guests and said,
I like to live in an Avenue named from my own Country
, and then took great delight in informing his listeners that
palla a maglio
, a kind of Italian croquet, had been the favourite game of King Charles II. John Palmer listened inscrutably, staring into his wine-glass; and Miss Ann Ffoulks smiled with pleasure at the success of her
protégé
; and James Burke the dealer continued to wander freely in the house night and day as if he were one of the family, collecting finished canvases, bringing sitters, arranging commissions. Mr Hartley Pond found Angelica charming and brought her small tokens in the manner of a courtier; and painters sat back in their chairs with their wine and talked of the art of portrait painting and sometimes of women and occasionally the subjects came together:
But of course Women must copy Countryside Views and Flowers if they must paint, for it is not becoming for Women to paint Portraits, it is not seemly that a Woman should stare so openly at another person in that way
.

 

In Pall Mall Filipo di Vecellio had a huge studio, and such was the number of his commissions now that he fired that older assistant of St Martin’s Lane days (he may have been very good at his work but in truth he made the studio smell), and nobody noticed how the quiet sister’s eyes shone at this news. Four new, young assistants were employed to paint the drapery and the background, as the portraits were churned out and the money poured in. (The assistants were now charged with washing themselves daily, for they mixed more and more with nobility.) Filipo also acquired a white parrot named Roberto for he had heard that Mr Joshua Reynolds, making such a name for himself also, had an eagle. Roberto would not leave Angelica’s side, he cried bitterly each day when she went out. Sometimes Roberto was allowed to sit on her shoulder after dinner: perched there with his head on one side, his bright eye observing the guests.

And now, in the evenings, in the house in Pall Mall a new kind of gathering was also held, Angelica’s
soirees
, and a new kind of visitor came - younger sons of the nobility perhaps, and ladies with the new high hairstyles and fashions from France. At Angelica’s evening
soirees
the talk was of the theatre, of the
affaires
of fashionable society; small tales of royal connections and corruptions wafted, and perhaps new liaisons wafted also, amid much laughter, as Roberto, close to his mistress again, observed. Occasionally he gave a short, sharp squawk as if he disapproved (as indeed well he might, for the more libation that was consumed, the more disreputable some of the conversations became, behind the fashionable laughter and the flickering fans). Sometimes the evening was musical: they acquired a harpsichord and invited musicians; sometimes a man would play upon a violin and the guests would sit in little rows. Once Angelica asked a black musician who was all the rage to play his own music on the harpsichord; the quiet sister observed not only the black man, but the fascinated faces of all the ladies as they stared from behind their fans, for the musician was dressed as any gentleman. He was wearing a white curled wig, and he was beautiful - but he was
black.
He bowed to the assembled company when he had finished playing and the ladies twittered like birds, and sighed, and some of them wrote in letters or in their journals of seeing such a strange, unsettling sight.

Sometimes, now that the house and the company were so fashionable, Lydia, the wife of James Burke, who of course never attended the noisy dinners in the afternoons, came to these
soirees
. She was elegant, her clothes always of the latest fashion: a fair-skinned, knowing woman with coiffeured hair and jewellery at her throat and stories from the Palace. She was extremely elegant but she was not beautiful as Angelica was beautiful. (Francesca di Vecellio observed the faces of all the women: Angelica herself was hospitable and kind as well as beautiful, but many of the visitors laughed and looked about them and speculated behind their fans as they watched each other with hard eyes, and smiling.)

 

Angelica’s beauty was always added to. One might almost say she had a studio of her own where artfulness was applied to nature: her dressing-room. Roberto the parrot presided over the
toilette
of his mistress: talking, chattering, indeed screeching if he did not approve of something. Angelica often had visitors at her
toilette
, mostly gentlemen: it was an accepted social norm that fashionable gentlemen should take morning chocolate in a lady’s dressing-room. Noble gentlemen visited, young men about town; the dealer James Burke was there occasionally, even the critic Mr Hartley Pond was so seduced by Angelica’s charms that he sometimes attended. And Filipo di Vecellio went on painting his fashionable portraits and for those few years at the height of his fame he could charge thirty guineas for a head, the amount some families in London lived on for a year.

They were, indeed, wealthy.

 

Filipo and Angelica were invited everywhere: young and beautiful and above all fashionable. They were very fond:
cara mia
, he would call: all had heard the way Angelica sparkled up at her husband in answer and sometimes she would say ‘Lud,
Signore
,’ and everybody would laugh at the odd juxtaposition of languages. Occasionally Angelica absolutely insisted that the painter’s sister accompany them: Francesca was already nineteen years old and unmarried and must see (and be seen admiring) the fashionable sights of London like any young unmarried girl.

‘You have made yourself old too soon, and you do not show the correct interest, my dear,’ Angelica said often to Francesca, of whom she had grown fond, although she found her a little quiet, spending too much time in her attic room, not enough attending Angelica’s fashionable evenings
.
‘And you must smile with your eyes, behind your fan - you do, if I might tell you, dearest Francesca, not smile enough, and when something so very occasionally makes you laugh, you laugh with your whole face and it is most unbecoming! Laughter like that is a little vulgar and there is much for you to learn if we are to find you a husband!’ And Francesca could not help but smile back at her extraordinary sister-in-law for who would not smile at Angelica? Angelica from the wrong side of the Thames, who had the name of an angel and who looked so beautiful, and who meant so well.

They all took a boat one summer evening from Whitehall Stairs to cross the Thames, and London in the dusk looked strange and thrilling: all the crowded, anchored boats and barges and the Cathedral etched against the skyline and a fading rose light as the sun set over the smoky city and Francesca sat quietly on a little cushion provided and carefully observed everything. Angelica seemed not to notice the dye-factories that, perhaps, had once been part of her life. With extra hair added to her own under a spectacular bonnet, she was wearing the latest fashion: a
sacque
-dress that opened in the front to show a skirt of gay brocade gathered over the hooped petticoats. She looked wonderful; dye-factories were nothing to her; all the little boats arriving at the landing pushing and fighting to disgorge their passengers meant nothing to her; she merely smiled behind her fan, and people smiled back, at such beauty. Arriving to the crowds at fashionable Vauxhall Gardens they saw a small orchestra playing Mr Handel’s music as people wandered in the summer evening (past a statue of the late composer himself, holding a lyre). Filipo and his bride bowed and smiled in fashionable promenade, laughing together as they saw several well-known raddled old dukes, and the dubious old quack everybody knew, Dr Graham, who painted silver on his hair. In the Pavilion artists had decorated the supper boxes with all sorts of scenes: kings and battles and heroics. Ladies in gorgeous hats leant back now against painted horses, and laughter echoed.

‘I do not care for these little Epics,’ said Filipo dismissively, looking around the painted walls.

‘But at least it is somewhere for Artists to display their work,’ said his sister mildly, for there were not many such places in London.

Filipo laughed. ‘Let us hope they do not mind to display their work in the remains of a
bagnino
then, for this is where Ladies of the Night - or indeed the day - plied their trade for many years gone by - just there!’ and he pointed to the fashionable gardens with their long straight walks and their neat trees and the twinkling lights.