The Center of the World (25 page)

I took the train from Victoria Station to Pulborough and a bus from there to the village of Petworth. The guidebook said that the family made the railroad go through Pulborough, rather than Petworth, because they didn’t want the activity of a station town to intrude on their privacy. They also didn’t want the railroad tracks spoiling their view.

The bus let me off on a nondescript town square. I walked down a narrow cobbled street, past a restaurant and a few shops that sold antiques and hunting prints. At the end of the street was a small church. There was a garden on one side, a door in a stone wall on the other. I could see that I was about to enter a
large structure of some sort, although the approach to Petworth House from the village didn’t reveal anything to suggest folks who had been grand enough to order the railroads around.

I had never been in a house that was anything like this; in the North Gallery the scale of the place finally overwhelmed me. The paintings were hung two or three on top of each other against a dark red background. In the center of the room was a massive sculpture of Saint Michael doing battle with Satan. The hard marble seemed like living flesh, but it was the size of the thing that provoked a visceral sense of the powers that operate in invisible worlds.

It was more a public space—a museum or courthouse—than a private dwelling. Petworth House had become a museum, but people who got up every day and had to use the toilet had lived within its walls. The guidebook said that their descendants, the Wyndhams, still lived in one of the wings. I imagined them wandering around the house after all the tourists had gone, like the ghosts of long-dead aristocrats.

There were too many paintings, too densely packed, for me to really enjoy them. The guidebook said that Turner had been a frequent guest at Petworth and that he had done some painting here. I tried to think of the man who had painted my Helen walking through these very halls and looking at these very same paintings and statues.

I kept my eye out for Turners. Just above the fireplace I spotted one called
Near the Thames Lock, Windsor
. There was a river or stream flowing away from the viewer, some trees, and a shadowy castle in the distance. There were young people
skinny-dipping in the water, looking young and carefree. They were innocents cooling themselves off on a hot summer’s day.

I got distracted by a large painting nearby—the kind of painting that would be just perfect for an old-fashioned Irish bar in New York. A naked woman was sleeping in a forest. She looked as though she was either thinking about sex or had just had sex. There was a chubby and corny-looking cupid flying above her. He was holding his hands over his eyes, as if he didn’t want to see the naked lady, or as if he was ashamed of what she had just done. It was called
Sleeping Nymph with Cupid
, by John Hoppner, someone I had never heard of. I looked carefully at the painting to see if I could discover the nymph’s lover retreating through the underbrush. Suddenly I imagined Susan lying on the bed in a hotel room somewhere, or even in our own bedroom in Princeton, in a similar posture, while her lover went into the bathroom to take a piss. It occurred to me that I was a familiar sight to the guards, the middle-aged American man looking too intently at a mediocre nude.

There was a lot of sex on the walls of Petworth House, lots of naked statues.
The Rape of Europa
, by somebody named Hilton, might pretend to be about mythology, but it was really about desire. There was a portrait of a Mrs. Robinson by Owen. No one knew who she was, according to the guidebook, but there was something knowing and worldly about the look she directed at me that seemed more like Mrs. Robinson in
The Graduate
than like someone who was alive to be painted in the early 1800s.

After about an hour, I stopped following the guidebook and just allowed myself to wander around. It was a wonderful
building, suffused with grandeur and reeking of art. There were only a few other tourists, so except for the elderly docents who were stationed in most of the rooms, I often felt I had the place to myself. What would it have been like to live in Petworth House in Turner’s day? I tried to imagine Turner’s footfalls echoing through the empty hallways, the statues disappearing into the gloom as the light began to fade. Perhaps he would hear the soft tread of an old servant, or the rustle of a silk gown as a lady hurried off to dinner. Perhaps there would be conversation in the distance, perhaps the sound of a harpsichord and a woman singing.

Suddenly I saw her. It was Helen, but she was called
Jessica
. I somehow knew it was her, even though she didn’t look like her at all. My heart started to race. She was leaning out of a complicated window casement. The background seemed ablaze behind her, as if the room was on fire, but her expression was oddly still and resigned, as if she couldn’t decide whether to call for help or retreat into the flames. Perhaps she had set the fire herself and the painting captures that moment when the suicide takes her last look back on the life she is about to relinquish. The jewels and the elaborate gown she wears suggest that wealth and privilege are no guarantee of happiness. Perhaps she regrets her decision.

But when I looked closer, I saw that it was just a gold background. There was no fire. I was painfully upset to see that Turner had reduced Helen, my Helen, to this banality. It was definitely her. The jewels she wore were the same jewels Helen had flung to the floor of her chamber. But Helen’s beautiful
hand, a hand which was meant for touching and pleasing and for creating embroidery of unsurpassed beauty, had become, in
Jessica
, a kind of useless appendage that represented the vague idea of a hand—that thing at the end of the arm which is useful only for closing windows. What upset me even more, however, was her body. The body for which heroes met their deaths had been constricted beyond recognition by Jessica’s bodice and by Turner’s perverse refusal to provide an illusion of depth. I stood in front of the painting for a long time, lost in anger and confusion. Eventually I calmed down and went outside. I walked up the hill behind the house and sat on the grass beneath one of the chestnut trees, where I lit a cigarette and looked down on the view. Smoking, I realized, did not make me any younger. I kept on smoking anyway.

There was a small lake perfectly placed in the expanse of manicured ground that stretched out behind the house. There were deer in the distance, ducks swimming in the pond, an odd statue of a faithful dog on the shore. Petworth House itself, massive and grand, dominated my view. If only the sun would go down in a blaze of flame, this would all be a painting by Turner, and I would be one of those peasants or travelers placed on the edge of the composition. I imagined that Turner himself had sat on this very spot. Perhaps he had walked up here with the woman who had become Jessica and Helen. They had looked down on the great house together, feeling a sense of its power. Could she have understood what Turner intended her to become?

 
“I KNEW SIR JOHN,”
Lord Egremont said. “He was no better than the rest of us, but he would not have done such a thing. He was always very considerate of his wife’s feelings. She too was a lady of the world. Their relations were only moderately regular, but they understood each other. They continued to live happily together until his death.”

We were talking about one of the pictures that hung in the North Gallery, Hoppner’s
Sleeping Nymph with Cupid
, which Egremont had purchased at Sir John Leicester’s sale. The painting depicts a young woman sleeping in a forest. She is naked except for bit of gauzy stuff draped most artfully between her legs. She sleeps as no young woman has ever slept, in an uncomfortable but amorous posture, which suggests either an invitation to impropriety or that an impropriety has recently occurred. A chubby and blindfolded cherub flies above her. Given what I have been told about my host’s proclivities when he was a younger man, I am not surprised to find the painting in his collection.

“I too had heard those stories suggesting that Sir John’s mistress had been the model for the beautiful nymph,” Turner said. “You are right, sir. Sir John was a good man. He would never have insulted his wife in such a manner. But what I am about to relate is the true story of the lovely nymph. No harm now, with the present company, for I shall ask you not to spread this about. Besides, Sir John is dead three years and time has done its work.”

The four of us were sitting in the library after dinner, as had become our custom. Turner had asked for, and received, a glass of brandy. He seemed more cheerful than he had in the past few days, and more inclined to talk.

“Although not in my line, I encouraged you to purchase the nymph, my lord. Fits in well with the old Greeks. The mutable body is our link to past times. The spirit of the age may be different, but the body is the same, although it partakes of the age in which it dwells. But Hoppner understood flesh. There is a quickness to it; she almost seems to be breathing.

“There was a pretty poem, you know, written on the painting:

Turner closed his eyes as he recited. I was surprised by the amount of passion he put into his recitation, but also struck by the odd places in which he put the accents.

“Lovely stuff, that. Poetry. A wonderful art, Mr. Grant. I have dabbled with numbers myself, but it’s hard going for me. ‘Roseate shower.’ A wonderful phrase.”

“You were about to tell us the true story of the lovely nymph,” Mrs. Spencer reminded him.

“Ah, yes. Hoppner was kind to me when I was younger and trying to make my way. Twenty-five years ago, you know. His line was mostly portraits, so he was willing to do what he could for a poor landscape painter. One day he invited me to his studio. Sir John was there, and Hoppner was good enough to introduce me to him. We got on well. Eventually he invited me up to Tabley to paint some views of the neighborhood. Lovely locale, a fine house. Not Petworth, of course, but what is?

“Sir John was a frequent visitor to Hoppner’s studio in those days. That is where he met young Molly. Pretty Molly, we called her. Sometimes Polly Molly, but why I don’t know. She was no better than she needed to be, but, Lord, more beautiful than anyone had a right to be.

“She was an artist’s model. Also a temporary special friend to certain gentlemen. A good-hearted girl. Sir John wished to join the ranks of Molly’s friends. But Molly said no. Which seemed odd at the time, given Sir John’s wealth and standing. And he was more than personable enough for a rich man. But no was her answer and she stuck to it. Sir John moped about like a heartsick mooncalf.

“But he was nothing if not persistent. A man of strong character, as you can attest, my lord. And ingenious. He hit upon the happy idea of commissioning Hoppner to paint her portrait. And the still happier idea of suggesting a classical composition. That sort of thing was not in Hoppner’s line, you know, but the result was the delightful
Nymph
—his best work, in my opinion.

“Sir John felt, as most patrons do, that he had the right to stop by the studio and observe the progress on his commission. Try to discourage that sort of thing, myself. Unless, as is the case with the present company, the patron is a respectful man of taste and discretion. Not always the case, you know. Few are the benefactors of art who understand the business well enough to know when not to meddle. Fellows think that the size of their purses gives them good ideas about art. ‘Wouldn’t that tree look more sublime on the left—sublimity very important, don’t you think?’

“But you and Sir John, my lord, are notable exceptions. Both knowledgeable and accomplished in your own line; respectful to artists and their work.”

I looked over at Egremont to see how he was taking this clumsy flattery. His smile suggested that he appreciated it but was not moved. Turner continued with his story. Sir John, he said, had contrived with Hoppner that he would appear at the studio one day while Hoppner was doing some preliminary sketches of the beautiful Molly. At these early sessions Molly was clothed, and it seemed proper enough that Sir John should appear to observe the progress of the work. He took the occasion of his visits to compliment Molly on her charms and to give
her small presents by way of compensating her for her labors. Turner can be very amusing when he tells stories out of school about the artist’s life. As he warmed to his tale he became more and more animated, seeming to forget that terseness which is the distinguishing characteristic of his speech. He did imitations of the various parties in the little drama that had us all laughing heartily. His Hoppner spoke in a barely intelligible deep rumble, while his Sir John talked in an affected drawl which, Lord Egremont pointed out, caught the flavor of the man exactly. Best of all, however, was the way he did Molly. When he affected a high falsetto and squeaked, “Oh, no, sir, I couldn’t,” even the butler standing at the sideboard laughed out loud.