Work Text:
The first time Lucy Snowe had been to an art exhibition with Graham Bretton was in Labassecoeur - an event of great importance, as exhibitions were held only once in two years. It had been Graham who suggested they went; though Lucy was the greater lover of art, her tastes were necessarily narrow, for she had been brought up in a Yorkshire village, and consequently had seen little of the world, and knew very little of what to expect.
That day found a tall, auburn-haired young gentleman and a slight, very tiny lady in a dark-grey dress inspecting a row of allegorical pictures. A strange duo they made, for they belonged to no party; many visitors came in larger parties, and unlike many of the other visitors, who were crowded around a work called the Cleopatra (depicting a fat female in scanty white wrappings, though Miss Snowe scathingly) in a section that seemed devoted to pictures of ladies in fanciful dress against an idealised Oriental setting (Graham Bretton, a keen student of botany, noted to his companion that these Eastern settings boasted of primarily English shrubs nestled in Turkish-looking jars), they had chosen to examine instead the less striking landscapes, consigned to languish in a corner.
The companions, too, were an unlikely duo, for the gentleman was tall, handsome and distinguished; he spoke French with a good accent; he looked refined and cultivated, and would certainly feel at ease with the various nationalities of Labassecoeur's residents. His face would not have been unfamiliar at the various scientific soirees of Villette; though only twenty-six, he had gained some minor recognition in his medical studies. The lady, on the other hand, English as her companion was, displayed her nation's distinctive features - on the surface, at least. To Labassecoeuriennes with whom she was unacquainted, she spoke French with a strong English accent - an accent fairly pure, to be sure in her native England, but strange to Labassecoeurian ears. Though she was perfectly fluent in French, her nervousness gave way among strangers; then, her English accent grew thick and strange. One would have supposed the cultivated Dr Bretton to command a superior fluency in French, but Mademoiselle Snowe had read far more of French poetry than him; his interests, I am afraid to say, were primarily scientific. She was a curious case. She was certainly educated and not without some refinement, but her awkwardness in society did not belong to one who was accustomed to good company. Young daughters of burghers, who had learned manners too late in life to be properly adept at them, appeared to better advantage than quiet, nervous Miss Snowe. Respectable she was - respected she was not. Still, there must have been something in her that made Dr Bretton seek her society and opinions.
At the moment they were discussing what pictures they had seen.
"I have seen similar paintings in London," Graham was speaking of the section which boasted The Cleopatra, "but what I see here are miserable compared to our Pre-Raphaelites."
"Do you like the Pre-Raphaelites?" Lucy asked.
"I like them pretty well," laughed Graham, "though I personally believe they are overrated. One ought not to overanalyse them - they ought to be seen as pretty pictures, nothing more - they are not as great as Ruskin would have us believe." Both inspected a row of landscapes painted in a rather romanticised style; Lucy thought the trees were too purple to be true, the skies too red, and the storm too calamitous.
"This reminds me of Turner," said Graham, indicating one of them. "Have you seen his paintings, Lucy?"
"Yes, I did, when I was in London." The few days she had spent in London before taking the steamer to Labassecoeur had been dedicated to the galleries, though back then, she had had nobody to share these pursuits with. A strange figure she had cut beside the smartly-dressed ladies and gentlemen, and those literary Bohemians!
"What do you think of his paintings?"
"They are curious visions - interesting to a spectator for the first time - but I cannot like them. They seemed too designed to attract one's attention, rather than to express a sincere truth."
"You think so?" said Graham, smiling. "I rather like Turner - don't you see the power and energy transmuted on canvas? They seem to convey a sense of life."
"And in life, there is destruction," thought Lucy. She said, "Oh, yes, he is certainly forceful, but I really cannot see what on earth his subjects are; they are so vague, so uncertain."
"And is not life vague, Lucy? I think that is why Turner is so revered - the very vagueness of his pictures could well speak for many other subjects - they are universal."
"You are very fond of vagueness, for a man of science," observed Lucy, smiling. "Personally, I prefer Constable. I fail to see the raptures over Turner, instead of good, solid Constable. Turner over-dazzles; one suspects his motives for painting - wheres you feel that Constable sincerely felt the truth of every line he painted."
"I like Constable too," said Graham. "He is very accurate to nature."
"Oh yes - he has painted the soul of Suffolk. Sometimes I have dreamt of those scenes - they were so vivid I could feel the reality of the surroundings. It is a pity he is not better-regarded in England."
"Did you know that Constable received far more acclaim in France than in England, when he first exhibited? It is strange how things come to be."
"His work is universal, for all nations and all times. He was not a man of his own country," murmured Lucy.
"I must disagree with you. Surely you cannot say that - Constable painted the Suffolk countryside - it was very dear to him, and he painted his homeland the best. He never sought foreign shores for inspiration - unlike Turner. Perhaps that is why Turner has achieved more fame - he has blent influences from all the places he has visited to create works of interest to all."
"And yet I must insist Constable was universal. Is not a longing for one's homeland a universal feeling? Is not nature common to us all? He painted scenes where one could walk, and not merely gaze upon from a distance. It is easy enough to be interesting by dazzling a spectator. To be interesting and yet sedate and true to nature is a greater feat, in my opinion. One could never live in Turner's pictures. It is my belief, Graham," said Lucy, her cheeks flushed with excitement, "that foreign scenes do not necessarily make a work great or universal. Byron's poetry is set in so many exotic wanderings, and yet how many of his poems still sell well? Wordsworth, on the other hand, wrote of his native Cumbria - he wrote those poems best, for he loved the Lakes, and what he wrote was full of feeling for the land he knew intimately. Yet it is Wordsworth who is revered as the poet of Britain."
To see the quiet schoolteacher flash with sudden fire was a treat in itself; Graham was one of the privileged few to have witnessed it, though he could not know it. But to do him justice he was interested and intrigued by the spectacle; many others would have deemed Miss Snowe's rare outbursts of enthusiasm rather alarming. John Graham Bretton was an astute critic of art, and so he could appreciate Lucy Snowe's eccentricities.
"One's taste in art, I believe, is a matter of one's temperament," Graham mused. "Byron is for the eager and enthusiastic eader, and Wordsworth for the calm and contemplative - so it is with Turner and Constable. Sometimes I envy you, Lucy."
"Why?" asked Lucy, puzzled. There was nothing enviable in her state. She would rather be dull and happy, than perceptive and burning all over with agony within.
"Why, you are capable of appreciating quieter delights, closed to most of mankind. I feel I am a Philistine compared to you."
"And are you not fond of quieter delight?" thought Lucy.
Some months later she would recollect this incident - oh, happy days! - and recall the time she had once thought Graham among her kindred.
"For he seemed to like quiet things as I did," she wrote in her autobiography," those days I took a critical appreciation for art and literature to be among the quieter delights. Such is not the case - there is art to be spoken and displayed, as upon the stage, art to stir excitement for Byronic scenes - these are more social, and therefore the easier to be enjoyed; and there is art to be thought and contemplated, and only then felt - at least such was the impression I received from Wordsworth's poetry. We both appreciated art, and therefore we became friends; but the truth is that the manner in which each of us responded was too different to make us truly kindred souls. Persons of my temperament get into raptures, admire and long for such stirring, agitating scenes of the Byronic mould, but it can only be so from afar; we can never be part of such experiences and be happy. Only the contemplative pleasures of Wordsworth are open to us. And Graham was the exact opposite."
"Our worlds," she said aloud, "were too different." Before her were a pile of books, given to her by Graham Bretton. These she packed into a box and placed at the bottom of her drawer. On her dresser was one of those Catholic pamphlets she had always scorned and laughed at - a gift from Paul Emmanuel. She turned a leaf and began to read the same, much-hackeneyed words.