Of Irish Blood (39 page)

Ed picks up the photo where Mrs. Lawrence seems to have Paris at her feet, and walks over to the window. Damn, he thinks they’re only snapshots made with one of those Brownie box cameras that every American seems to have now.

“What was your light source?” he asks.

“The sun,” I say.

“No fill, no reflectors?”

I shake my head.

“Well, Kelly, you have an eye and imagination.”

I wait for the “but” as Jeanne Paquin grabs the photographs.

“Impossible,” she says. “I don’t even see the dress. I do not wish to sell the Tour Eiffel.”

“Oh, I like Kelly’s photographs,” Eddie says. “See? This woman is having an adventure, flying high before she settles down in Utica.”

“Boston,” I say.

“Look how relaxed she is. Not easy to get that natural look. What other photographs do you have?”

“Well, I did a series of shots of Notre-Dame. Took them at all different times of day. Got some great shadows.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“You don’t like cathedrals?”

“I love cathedrals,” he says. “But I’d say your strength is people, regular people, women probably. Show the faces that others ignore.”

Now we’re speaking English but Jeanne Paquin seems to follow us. She knows “ignore.”

“Ignore?” she says. “I do not want my fashions ignored.”

And he tries to explain but within minutes, the interview is over.

“So, I’d better learn to type,” I say to Eddie Steichen as we walk down the rue de la Paix. “At least I could get some kind of a job.”

“Don’t give up on photography,” he says.

“But no one will pay for pictures of ordinary people. Even the most fashionable outfit has to be worn by a famous actress to make it into a magazine,” I say. “That’s why Maud portrays ancient queens.”

Of course, he doesn’t understand what I’m talking about.

“It seems to me all these Europeans, even the Irish, assume that only the upper classes have any real value. They worship noble families with royalty at the top of the heap. Even some so-called republicans,” I say.

“Oh, come on, Kelly,” Eddie says, “Frenchmen killed each other for equality, fraternity, and liberty.”

“And now, in the very place where that happened, is a whole industry caters to the elite and makes them the models for all women,” I say. Quoting Stefan, wherever he is.

Eddie doesn’t reply.

“You know what should happen, Eddie? These designers should make clothes the way Henry Ford turns out cars. Hundreds of thousands of dresses, cheap enough so that regular women can afford them. That’s equality, liberty, and sorority.”

“But women’s clothes are mass-produced now,” he says.

“Cheap stuff,” I say. “Inferior fabrics, bad fit. No, I mean beautiful clothes, designed for American women who don’t think you have to be a blue blood to want to look nice.” I stop. “Then again, maybe women should just wear some kind of a uniform, like Gertrude Stein’s brown habit. Forget fashion entirely.”

Now I have lost him. But a nice well-brought-up Milwaukee boy is Eddie Steichen. So he offers to buy me a coffee or a glass of wine.

I tell him, “No, I have to report to Madame Simone on the interview with Jeanne Paquin.”

“Well, at least stop by my studio and see some of my work. I’m packing up to leave.”

And now I wonder just how well-brought up he is. So I say, “And is your wife in Paris with you? I’d love to meet her.”

But he laughs. “Don’t worry, I really do have something to show you.”

And he does. His studio is one large room off the boulevard Saint-Germain. He hands me a copy of a magazine called
Camera Work
. Pages and pages of wonderful photographs, many of ordinary people.

“I thought you’d like this one,” he says, pointing to a photograph. “It’s Gertrude Käsebier’s work.”

“Gee whiz” is all I can think of to say as I look at the Indian who is staring back at me. Talk about getting beyond appearances into the soul.

“Gertrude did portraits of the Sioux Indians in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show when they were at the World’s Fair in Chicago,” he says.

“But I was there,” I say. “I’ll never forget looking down at the tepees from the Ferris wheel.”

“Me either,” he says. “Funny how many of us used a camera for the first time there at the Fair.”

“Yes,” I say, “I remember my brother Mike rented a Kodak camera to take our pictures.”

“And look how far we’ve come,” he says. “A gallery in New York’s exhibiting our work and even manages to sell the photos. Gertrude got a hundred dollars for one of hers.”

“This one, maybe?” I say, and push the magazine over to him. Two oxen turn their faces toward the camera. One has a yoke and the other, a muzzle. The photo is entitled “Marriage.”

He laughs.

“Actually it was another shot. This one, ‘Manger.’ Religion still sells. Even in the twentieth century.”

“Come on, Eddie. Think of Michelangelo, da Vinci, all of the masters—saints and the Bible were their bread and butter.”

“Stieglitz hates her for becoming commercial.”

“Who’s he?” I ask.

“A fellow who’s determined to have photographers accepted as fine artists,” Eddie says.

Fine artists. Titled ladies. Noble families.

“That’s not for me,” I say. “I’m a regular girl from Chicago. I’d like to take pictures but…”

“Oh, come on, we’re all from somewhere. How many regular girls are living in Paris and trying to be artists?”

“An artist. Me? No. I just need to earn money,” I say.

“So did Gertrude Käsebier. And she does. Turn back to the Indian. Look at his face. See the way he stares at the camera? Can’t you hear him thinking, ‘I fought the whole United States cavalry and now I’m reduced to being a show business Indian pretending to attack the stagecoach so the palefaces can scare themselves’?”

“Yes, I see that,” I say. “But something else, too. He’s chuckling to himself. ‘They’re paying me.’”

Eddie turns a page. “Gertrude relaxes her subjects the way you do. See that mother and daughter? The family at the window? Nothing stiff or contrived there.”

“Is that what art does?” I ask. “Makes people see something in a different way?”

“I’d say so,” he says.

“Henri Matisse told me something like that,” I say.

“You know Henri?” he says.

I tell him about our meeting at the Steins’. And he says that Matisse shows his work in the same gallery where Gertrude’s photos are displayed.

“And he doesn’t mind his paintings mixing with photographs?”

“He’s delighted,” Eddie said.

I tell him about the “Hairy Mattress” incident in Chicago and he laughs.

“When artists can’t laugh at themselves, we’re done. Now, show me more of your photographs,” he says.

I spread out the ones that I’ve taken of Molly Childers, of Alice Milligan and Alice Stopford Green and the other conspirators.

“Now, these faces are very interesting. Something going on in these women, some purpose. These aren’t casual tourists.”

I fan my photos in front of him.

“Yes, my first impression is correct. You have a special talent. Wait a minute.”

Eddie goes into a closet and comes out carrying a box. He sets it down on the table in front of me. There’s a drawing of an Indian chief on the top.

“More Buffalo Bill?” I say.

“Not exactly.”

He lifts out a camera. First, I think it’s a Kodak box camera. Oh, great, I think, all I am to him is an amateur. But then he pulls the camera apart and shows me the accordion-like center.

“It’s a Seneca,” he says, “made by a company in Rochester that was once part of Kodak. But now they’re independent. They manufacture amateur cameras, but this one’s for professionals. It’s got a good lens and the film’s light-sensitive. It’d be good for you.”

“Hmmm,” I say. “And are they expensive?”

How much can I come up with?

“This one isn’t,” he says. “I’d like to give it to you.”

“Oh, thanks. But I can’t.”

“Take it,” he says, and thrusts it into my hands.

So light. I could carry this anywhere.

“I have too much stuff already,” Eddie says. “And I can get another one in New York. Just got their latest catalog. New models coming out.”

He turns around, opens a drawer, and holds out a thick paper catalog to me. I set the camera down to look. The cover shows an Indian chief holding the Seneca camera. Inside, more braves and Indian princesses urge photographers to give this camera a try.

“Why Indians?” I say to Eddie.

“Why not?” he says. “Photography’s still a novelty. I suppose, the noble savage is as good a pitch man as any.”

“The noble savage,” I say. That’s how the English see the Irish. Do leprechauns advertise British tea? I wonder. Insulting. But what the heck? I do like this camera. If I had this, I could have taken much more interesting photographs of Molly Childers and the three Alices. Dear God, Maud would love to pose for me. No end to what she’d come up with.

“The best thing about this camera is that you can catch your subjects unaware,” Eddie says. I think of the moments I have observed—Maud stroking Iseult’s hair; Seán crossing his eyes; Peter Keeley bent over a manuscript; Father Kevin stretching his legs out to the fire. Revealing. But, is there money to be made from the ordinary?

Eddie puts the camera back into the box. “Somebody needs to photograph what’s going to be happening in Paris during the next few years, when this war really gets going.”

When again. Not if.

“The city deserves to be remembered as it was,” he says.

“Oh God, Eddie, you sound so glum.”

“I am,” he says.

“No job,” I say to Madame Simone. I get back to her studio just as she’s closing up. “But I do have my very own camera.”

I start to show it to her when we hear shouting from the street. We open the window. A newspaper boy calls out:
“Archduke Ferdinand assassiné. Austria et Serbia en guerre.”

I run down and buy a paper and bring it up to Madame Simone.

“Imbeciles!” she says. She tells me a Serbian student has killed the crown prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

“And what does he accomplish?” she says. “Only war.”

And I remember how Maud told me that she and MacBride had gone on their honeymoon to Gibraltar because King Edward was going to be there.

“We planned to shoot him and then die together,” she told me.

“A great way to start a marriage,” I said to her.

And what if they had succeeded? I imagine the British army punishing Ireland the way Austria will punish Serbia.

“Serbia can’t really fight long,” I say. “A short war, maybe.”

“Russia is allied with Serbia,” Madame Simone says. “And France with Russia. And the Germans with Austria.”

“But really, Madame, won’t they all see this is the action of one crazy student? Look at us Americans, when John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln, we didn’t restart the Civil War. Surely, some of these politicians have sense.”

“The Boche,” she says. “The Boche will march. You will see.”

Now I’m devouring the newspapers like everyone else, parsing the French as best I can. Surely, the whole world won’t go to war because a nineteen-year-old student goes a little nuts. Lots of negotiations happening and much speculation about the outcome. The Serbians are eating humble pie but the Austrians aren’t satisfied because the Germans are backing them up. Go ahead, grab Serbia, they’ve told the Austrians. We’ll help you. And if the Russians don’t like it, let them try to fight us. So what if the French join in? Our army’s strong enough to defeat them all. The German chancellor was heard to say, “Might as well have the war now before the enemy gets any stronger.”

*   *   *

Lots of prayers for peace from the altar at the Irish chapel this last Sunday in July. Warm and sticky, one of those days when breathing’s an effort. I’m fanning myself with a holy card as I sit in my pew. Still, no Peter, and Father Kevin hasn’t heard a word. Great. It doesn’t take a military genius to look at a map and see that Belgium is stuck right between France and Germany. I think of the German soldiers in Strasbourg, those spiked helmets on, with Peter at Louvain in their path. One good thing. Father Rector and a number of priests have decided not to return to Paris from their annual leave in Ireland. Father Kevin’s in charge.

When I come back from Communion, I hold the wafer in my mouth, shut my eyes, and do some very serious praying. I’ll give up sweets, I tell Jesus present inside me. Wine even. What else? Sex? Not much point in giving up something I don’t have. OK, I’ll forgive Henrietta. I’ll stay dead without complaining. As I search for more things to promise, I sense someone slipping into the pew beside me. I half open my eyes. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Him. Peter Keeley. I gulp and swallow the host before I can say a proper thank-you.

Talk about the power of prayer. And he smiles at me, right there in church. The reserved Professor Keeley smiles at me.

After Mass, I invite Father Kevin and Peter to have lunch with me at L’Impasse. Please. Please, I say, a celebration. Suddenly, I’m sure God’s not going to let war come after all.

We walk along the rue de Rivoli. Banks of rainclouds move slowly over the scene. We need a thunderstorm to cool things off, lighten the heavy air.

As we walk, I’m bursting to tell Peter how I collected money for the rifles then carried it to Strasbourg, and how I outsmarted the German general and …

But I know to keep quiet.

I only say, “Have our friends the Childers started their sailing trip yet?”

But neither one replies. Both stare at everyone who passes us, though I doubt if that woman and her son are secret agents.

Finally, Father Kevin says the British navy’s blockading German ports. Makes any travel difficult.

I imagine Molly Childers and Mary Spring-Rice stuck with a yacht full of rifles at some dock in Germany. Millions of men and machines mobilizing all over Europe and we’re relying on a small yacht sailed by middle-aged women. Is this another Irish uprising dead at birth? I wonder.

Not many in L’Impasse. Most restaurants are already closed for the
grande vacance
.