I Am Madame X (26 page)

“If you must,” growled the old lady.

Sargent moved his chair next to mine, and after setting up his palette, he began to paint. Night had fallen, and the room was bathed in warm, golden lamplight.

Millicent had been watching Sargent closely. Now she spoke up. “Monsieur Sargent, in honor of your absence tonight, I ate two servings of chicken, yours and mine.”

“I’m so very glad it didn’t go to waste,” said Sargent without taking his eyes off me.

I picked up my champagne glass, raised it in Millicent’s direction across the table, and said, “To Millicent, who has the great appetite of the great painter John Singer Sargent.”

The poor woman rose from her chair and, nodding dramatically, bowed deeply to each person at the table. Mama stared down at her lap, and Madame Gautreau looked apoplectic with rage, though she said nothing.

An hour passed, and the three women went to bed. I continued to pose for Sargent until I couldn’t keep my eyes open another moment.

“Please let me go to sleep,” I begged.

“Very well. I can finish this tomorrow.”

I slept through breakfast the next morning. When I came downstairs, Mama and Sargent were chatting in the parlor. They both looked happy and relaxed. My portrait sat on the floor, leaning against the wall. On the easel was the oil sketch that Sargent had done the night before.

He had caught me reaching across the table with a glass in my hand, my profile silhouetted against a velvety dark background. The painting was suffused with golden light; the pink roses on the table were rendered with a few bold, impressionistic strokes. My skin looked flushed and healthy under the organza wrap I had worn over a black silk dress. In the portrait’s upper right corner, Sargent had inscribed, “To Madame Avegno, as a testimony of my affection, John S. Sargent.”

Mama was thrilled. “Mimi, look, isn’t it beautiful,” she said as I entered the room. “I was just telling Monsieur Sargent, this is the picture he should send to the Salon.”

The next afternoon, Sargent crated both pictures and made arrangements to have the oil on wood sent to Mama’s
hôtel
and the canvas sent to his studio. Then he, Mama, and I took the carriage to Saint-Malo and boarded a train for Paris, arriving at Gare Montparnasse near midnight. Before bidding us
bonne nuit
on the station platform, the artist turned to me. “If you can stand it,” he said, “I might ask you to sit once or twice more.”

“That would be fine,” I answered.

“I’ll be in touch.” Sargent tipped his hat and vanished into the crowd.

Months passed with no word from him. I had no idea what had become of the picture. Then one afternoon, while I was reading in the parlor, the doorbell rang, and a moment later Julie rushed in, her face bright and her eyes shining. “I’ve seen it!” she cried, throwing her gloves and cape onto a chair. I stopped reading and looked at her.

“You’ve seen what?” I asked.

“Your portrait. Carolus-Duran took me to Sargent’s studio this morning. It’s masterful, absolutely breathtakingly true. I have no doubt it’ll be the hit of the Salon.”

So Sargent had finished the portrait without my help. Why hadn’t he told me? After Julie left, I wrote him a note, and he wrote back saying that actually the portrait wasn’t yet complete. There were still a few improvements he wanted to make, and he’d let me know when he was ready to show it.

Finally, in February, he invited Pierre and me to his new studio to see it. We dropped by one evening on our way to the opera. Sargent had moved to an elegant house at 41, boulevard Berthier, not far from us. The artist lived in a small apartment on the ground floor and worked upstairs in a large studio, where Pierre and I found him. The walls were covered in William Morris prints and were hung with Sargent’s paintings. Long dark-green draperies, against which Sargent planned to pose his elegant clientele—the clientele he expected to rush to his door following the success of my portrait—fell from the ceiling. A couch, a few tables and chairs, and an upright piano made up the furnishings. Sargent displayed his most prized possessions near the door—a suit of Japanese armor and, in a glass-fronted cabinet, his collection of mounted butterflies.

My portrait stood like royalty in the middle of the room, in an enormous gilt frame attached to the easel. It looked larger than I had remembered, more taut and stylized. Since I had last seen it, Sargent had slimmed the contours of the skirt by painting out part of the bustle, and he had removed swatches of the train that had flowed out from my left hand.

“My God, it’s a masterpiece,” said Pierre, his eyes glistening. “She’s so alive. She looks like she’s about to turn and step out of the canvas.”

“Yes, it’s beautiful,” I echoed.

In fact, I couldn’t tell how I felt about the picture. Even after all my anticipation, it was overwhelming—on a cheery Parisian night, when I was dressed in finery and occupied with thoughts of the opera we were about to hear—to come upon a dramatic life-size picture of myself. My gaze seemed to be galloping frantically over the canvas, tripping over details. The woman in the painting certainly cast a glorious figure, but I couldn’t believe she looked much like me. Her visible eye was nothing but a black smudge, and her mouth a red blob. I kept coming back to the ear. It looked enflamed. My ears didn’t look that red in real life. Or did they? I’d have to study them in the mirror when I got home. Perhaps I should stop rouging them.

As I stood there staring at the portrait, a flash of vertigo overcame me. I reached for Pierre’s arm, and in that dizzying moment I did indeed see myself in the painting. For one confused instant, I wasn’t sure whether I was on the canvas looking out or standing in Sargent’s studio staring back.

The moment passed immediately. “Can I sit down?” I asked and plopped onto the couch without waiting for an answer. Sargent followed me to my perch. “I’m so pleased you like it,” he said. “As you can see, I’ve made some changes. The background was too gloomy, so I dashed a tone of light rose over it.”

“Maybe the ear is a little too red,” I said quietly.

Sargent raised his thick chestnut eyebrows and, with mock annoyance, grumbled, “Women always find something wrong with their portraits.” Then, in a serious tone, he added, “Maybe it isn’t perfect yet.”

He took a long look at me. I could see him thinking, trying to strike an idea. Then he began muttering to himself, “Something’s missing, something’s missing.” I happened to be wearing the diamond tiara that Pierre had given me in honor of Louise’s birth, and suddenly Sargent’s eyes brightened. “That crescent is just the thing!” he cried. “Don’t move, Madame Gautreau.”

Pierre and I watched as the artist mixed some light-colored paints, picked up his brush, and dipped it into a white mound on his palette. With one quick, elegant stroke, he produced my diamond crescent on the canvas. Then he jogged to the other end of the room and studied the picture.

“There. That’s it. A modern Diana,” he said.

About then, I was surprised to notice, leaning against the piano, an unfinished replica of my portrait. The background and skirt were incomplete, and my right shoulder was bare; Sargent had yet to paint the fallen strap.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“A copy,” answered Sargent. “The surface of your portrait was so thick and overloaded from repainting it so many times, that I thought I’d start over. As you can see, I didn’t get very far.”

“What will you do with it?”

“I’m not sure. Perhaps your husband would like to buy it?”

“I’ve got my eye on the original,” said Pierre. “We’ll talk after the Salon opening.”

He and Sargent shook hands, and Pierre and I went to the opera. Mozart’s
Don Giovanni
was on the bill, but I couldn’t get my mind off the portrait. Julie had raved about it, so I had expected to be thrilled, too. But I couldn’t shed a vague feeling of disappointment and foreboding.

Most of my concerns were precise and even petty. If I had known my skin was going to turn out so bluish, I wouldn’t have worn a dress that exposed so much of it. The picture was too stylized, I thought, like a heraldic figure on a coat of arms. I should have insisted on a more languid pose. And so on. Over the next few days, I regaled Pierre with my doubts and regrets. “Mimi! Stop it!” he finally shouted in exasperation. “Sargent is right. A woman can never judge the true worth of her portrait.”

Behind my specific complaints lay a deeper feeling, born of that shuddering moment of confusion when I had studied the painting in Sargent’s studio. He had caught me, and now in a small way he owned me. For one of the first times since my affair with Dr. Pozzi, I had the emptying sense of not being in control.

Still, I fought off those twitches of dread and didn’t even mention them to Pierre. Meanwhile, though no reporters had seen the picture yet, there was great anticipation about it in the press. Rumors had flown around town about Sargent’s mysterious
Portrait of Madame ***,
as the painting was listed in the Salon catalog. It was customary then not to identify the female subject of a painting in the title, but everyone knew it was I. As the opening of the Salon drew near, the society columnist for
L’Illustration
wrote, “Among the four thousand works soon to be unveiled, none are more eagerly awaited than the painting titled
Portrait of Madame ***
by John Singer Sargent. An American painter of infinite talent, Monsieur Sargent has triumphed in previous Salons not only with his portraits of beautiful women but also with a picture of a wild Spanish dance and another of aristocratic little girls in an antechamber. The current portrait, which he worked on for two years, is said to be a brilliant likeness of the stunning Virginie Avegno Gautreau.”

The advance notices enraptured Mama, who had suddenly decided that the portrait was brilliant after all. In her ear, the applause was already building for her splendid daughter. Having been deprived of giving me both a proper debut and a big society wedding, she intended to make up for it by throwing the most lavish pre-Salon party in the history of Paris.

Mama planned her fête for the night before
vernissage,
the grand social opening of the show. Historically,
vernissage,
or varnishing day, represented the moment when artists put the finishing touches on their pictures that already hung on the Salon’s walls. But it had evolved in my time into the season’s premier social event, when the
gratin
viewed the exhibit before the democratic hordes arrived for the official opening the next day.

Mama wanted her party to be perfect, and she began preparations months in advance. She spent lavishly and scrutinized every detail, making life miserable for the maids, the driver, the gardener, and the upholsterer. She hired the most expensive florist in town, Vaillant-Roseau, to erect trellises pinned with pink and red roses in the parlor. The carpets were rolled up, and the floor was strewn with petals. Mama had the glass removed from the floor-to-ceiling windows so guests could step directly from the faux garden into the real one, where she arranged to hide a small orchestra behind a wall of palm trees that were potted in gigantic ceramic tubs.

Bignon’s prepared a buffet for 150 people. On the morning of the party, the restaurant’s manager came to the house to set up two long tables that were soon laden with turkeys, roast beef, wheels of cheese, colorful fruit molds, and mounds of pastries. He brought with him an army of waiters, whom Mama outfitted in her pink-and-black livery.

The night before the party, I stayed at rue de Luxembourg and slept in my old room. Mama claimed she wanted me around to keep an eye on me, to make sure I’d be on time to her party. But I think she was so excited and eager that she really just wanted the company. That morning, while the staff worked downstairs, Mama and I got dressed in our white morning gowns and sat upstairs in her sitting room, sipping coffee and reading the papers. With the doors shut tight, we heard none of the commotion downstairs, only the occasional faint clomping of horse hooves wafting through the window from the street below.

Mama looked serene, happier than I had seen her in a long time. Tonight meant so much to her. I had vowed not to argue with her and to be charming to her friends at the party.

By now, I, too, was starting to feel more serene. I let myself imagine my portrait on a wall of the Salon, at the center of a large light-filled gallery, surrounded by admirers. I was in the middle of this pleasant reverie when Mama gasped.

“Is this some kind of a joke?” she whispered, clutching the newspaper.

“What?”

“Look at Etincelle’s column.”

I grabbed the paper and read out loud: “The party scheduled for this evening at Madame Virginie de Ternant Avegno’s in celebration of John Singer Sargent’s portrait of her daughter, Madame Virginie Gautreau, which will be exhibited at this season’s Salon, has been canceled.”

“Canceled? What is Etincelle talking about?”

“Get dressed. We’re going to see her immediately.”

Mama and I dressed hurriedly, roused the driver, and set off in the carriage. Fifteen minutes later, we arrived at rue Beaujon, where Etincelle’s
hôtel
rose from the center of the street like a miniature medieval castle with crenellated towers and the Peronny coat of arms carved in stone above the front door.

A butler greeted us, and we crossed a vast foyer decorated with marble busts of Etincelle’s husband’s ancestors. We entered a rectangular salon. The room was decorated with spindly chairs that were covered in white plush threaded with gold; carved wood tables; and an enormous mantelpiece supported by two marble statues. Ancient tapestries hung on the bright-blue walls.

Soon Etincelle burst into the room, her intelligent dark eyes bright with curiosity. In her haste to complete her toilette, she had forgotten to secure two of the buttons on her bodice. A yellow satin ribbon had escaped her camisole and lay across her bosom.

“Bonjour, Mesdames. To what do I owe this pleasant surprise?”

Mama’s face was flushed, her eyes blazing. She waved a folded copy of
Le Figaro
in the air. “Why did you cancel our party?”

Etincelle looked bewildered. She glanced at me, then at Mama, then at me again. “Because you asked me to.”

“I did no such thing.” Mama’s voice jangled. “You know I’ve been preparing for this party for months. Why would I cancel it?”

“But you sent me a letter. It arrived yesterday.”

“What letter?”

“I’ll get it. Just a minute.”

Etincelle flew out of the room, leaving a trace of violet scent. Moments later, she returned with a sheet of white stationery bordered in blue that I recognized as Mama’s. “Here.”

Mama snatched it from her and began reading out loud as I looked over her shoulder. Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to imitate Mama’s delicate handwriting.

“It’s a forgery!” Mama screamed.

“Who would have done such a thing?” wondered Etincelle. She looked at me, scrunching her brow. “Do you have enemies, dear?”

“None that I know of.”

I ransacked my memory to recall any disgruntled servants or others whom Mama and I might have offended. Of course, our lives were spiced with petty misunderstandings and disputes. But nothing I could think of came close to inviting a retaliation this large, this horrifying. Even the festering grumbles about the fact that I was an American were just grumbles, as far as I could tell—not the kind of rage that would lead someone to strike back with cruelty like this.