the little girl was intrigued. The original owner of this head was no murderer, or idiot, or cunning boy.
‘Is he an artist, Papa?’
‘He is, you clever child. What makes you say so?’
‘He has Constructiveness and Ideality very large. Who is he, Pa?’ She stroked the head, as though smoothing away its cares. ‘He seems to lack Firmness completely, what a shame. I’ve got enormously big Firmness, haven’t I?’
Lorenzo smiled. It was true. There was no denying it.
‘Can we feel my enormously big Firmness later, Pa?’
Jessie removed her blindfold to look at the name on the base.
‘Benjamin Robert Hay-don,’ she read. She stuck out a lip. ‘Haydon. Who’s he?’
‘Mr Haydon was an English painter of great historical canvases and murals, Jessie, who killed himself before you were born.’
‘Killed himself?’ She opened her eyes wide. ‘Oooooh.’
Lorenzo felt very proud. This kid was such a chip off the old block.
‘Was he famous?’ she asked.
‘Famous, but poor. Artistically, some might have called him rich – but no, I’m lying. To be honest, even artistically Haydon was very, very poor. In other words, a useful case for lecturing purposes! He was also a phrenologist, Jessie – from the earliest days of our great science, when few people believed.’
Jessie was intrigued. Her whole life revolved around the heads of dead people, and mostly odd, sad, idiotic or self-slaughtering ones at that. Any other eight-year-old would have changed the subject to Humpty Dumpty or twinkle-twinkle-little-star, but Jessie wanted the full grisly biography. She knew as well as her father did: this stuff would be dynamite on stage. ‘So why did he kill himself?’
‘Indebted. Disappointed. Nobody wanted his paintings, except a back view of Napoleon –’
‘Did you bring Napoleon? I love doing Napoleon!’
‘– Except a back view of Napoleon on St Helena,’ continued her father (whose Organ of Firmness was more than equal to Jessie’s), ‘which he was obliged to paint again and again, some twenty-three times.’
Jessie tried hard to imagine the disappointment that drove Benjamin Robert Haydon to kill himself. It didn’t work. After a short pause, she tried again.
‘That’s silly,’ she said, at last. ‘To kill yourself just because you have to keep doing the same thing, again and again.’
‘I agree,’ said Lorenzo. He had been doing the same thing, again and again, since 1834. He absolutely loved it. He looked out of the window to the deserted morning bay, with its bathing machines drawn up on the sand, its cheerful patriotic flags straining in the stiff breeze. He cracked his knuckles. ‘But luckily for us, my darling, there are a lot of very confused and unhappy people out there.’
As Jessie had said, it was hot in London. Queen Victoria had already quit for Osborne, this being the first and last period of history when the Isle of Wight had a fashionable cachet, and well-appointed people longed – positively longed – for an invitation to East Cowes. The centre of London stank, and even in the relatively rural Kensington setting of Little Holland House, it was hot enough to broil lobsters without putting them in pans. On Thursday evening, the renowned, long-bearded painter G. F. Watts and his pretty young wife Ellen were sticky and agitated, and had reached the usual point in their near-to-bedtime arguments when the noted painter pleaded ‘Stop being so dramatic!’ – which was a reasonable enough entreaty until you considered that the wife in question was that glory of the London stage, the sixty-guineas-a-week juvenile phenomenon, Miss Ellen Terry.
Watts was fed up; Ellen was fed up. He was forty-seven; she was sixteen, so they both had their reasons. But it was a bit rich to call Ellen ‘dramatic’ in the derogative sense, even so. ‘Dramatic’ had been a continual reproach from this weary grey-beard husband ever since that overcast day in February when foolishly they wed. Ellen wished ‘artistic’ carried the same force of accusation, but somehow it didn’t. Yelling ‘Don’t be so artistic!’ – though perfectly justified when your dreamy distant husband seriously calls himself ‘England’s Michelangelo’ and affects a skullcap – never sounded quite as cutting.
On the other hand, theatricality was certainly in the air. ‘Drrramatic, am I?’ demanded Ellen in a deep thrilling voice (the sort of voice for which the word timbre was invented). She clutched a tiny butter knife close to her pearly throat, with her body leaned backwards from the waist. It looked terribly uncomfortable, and Watts was at a loss, as usual. He stroked his beard. He adjusted his skullcap. Something was clearly ‘up’.
‘I only said Mrs Prinsep is very kind!’
Ellen groaned and whinnied, like a pony.
‘But she is our host, my patron. Really, Ellen, surely you see how lucky we are to live at Little Holland House! I hope I may live peacefully here for the remainder of my life.’
‘Painting huge public walls when they fall available, I suppose?’ she snapped. ‘For no money?’
‘Yes, painting walls. What insult can be levelled at the painting of walls? You make it sound trivial, Ellen. Yet when I beat Haydon in the Westminster competition –’
‘I know, you told me about Haydon and the Westminster competition, you told me so many times!’
‘Well, then you know that the poor man died at his own hand. Painting walls is of significance to some people, my dear. My designs for the Palace of Westminster were preferred to his, and Haydon was shattered, poor man. Walls let him down! Walls collapsed on him!’
Ellen narrowed her eyes.
‘But on the main point, my dear,’ continued Watts, ‘Why – why – should I want to earn an independent living from my art when we can abide here quite comfortably at someone else’s expense?’
And then Ellen screamed. Loud and ringing from the diaphragm, exactly as Mrs Kean had trained her. Watts ran to the door and locked it. This wayward Shakespearean juvenile was always transforming the scene into some sort of third act climax, butter knife at the ready. (The effect was only slightly ruined by the knife having butter on it, and crumbs.)
Watts collapsed on one of Little Holland House’s many scented sofas. He had married this young theatrical phenomenon in all good faith, assured by his snooty patrons that she would thank him for his protection; he had been in love with her profile, her stature – in short, her beauty with a capital B! But within five months he looked back on that marriage with confusion and even horror. This beauty was a real person; she was not an ideal form. She expected things from him that he could not even name, let alone deliver. This regular money argument, for example: it always went the same way. Here they were, comfortably adored and protected, and Ellen had to show off about it.
‘If you would let me work, George –’ she would say. And then all this sixty guineas nonsense would be rolled out again. Watts did not want sixty sullied guineas a week. He did not want to paint lucrative portraits, either. No, Watts was the sort of chap who loses his invoice book down
