rolled off to the left and right, laid against the blue night like the silhouette of a mighty forest, and red-gold sparks drifted above in long, scattered trails. The handling was loose, even for Jimmy – the darks smeared on, blocked in; the lights barely more than raw dabs of colour.
‘A notice has been published,’ Miss Corder announced, ‘and much circulated, in the art press and beyond. A famous critic, keen for attention it would seem, has penned something far beneath him, beneath any right-thinking person – an assault, essentially, intended to blind his readers to this painting’s obvious virtues. Fortunately, Charles has been on hand to offer Jimmy advice. If he hadn’t, I scarcely dare to imagine what might—’
She stopped talking, distracted by a trio of young gentlemen, about their age – smart types, city fellows – who were grinning by her shoulder.
‘Custard,’ said one, indicating a falling rocket.
‘Gulls’ droppings,’ offered another.
‘Who was the critic?’ Maud asked.
‘Ruskin,’ said Miss Corder shortly. ‘And you can see right here what his authority has licensed. Stupidity Miss Franklin, has been allowed free rein.’
With that she swivelled another quarter-circuit and launched herself into battle, informing the young gentlemen that they were plainly insensible to art, hopeless cases indeed, embarrassing themselves further with every utterance; that they might as well take their tweed and their watch-chains and their primped whiskers and go back to their desks, in whatever godforsaken office they scratched out their existences.
Ruskin. Maud knew the name, of course; it had an association of stature, of the kind you might see spelt out on book spines in austere, golden letters, or heard being dropped into conversation as a display of knowledge. She hadn’t read any of it herself, but gaining the fellow’s ill opinion was surely a serious reversal. She wanted to ask what had been written, but Miss Corder was caught up entirely in her skirmish.
Thrown at first by her vehemence, the young gentlemen had rallied, rather pleased to have any form of attention from such a woman. They declared that the Nocturne was plainly the work of a drunkard, a staggering sot, and not very much work at that. Pictures of this type, one of them continued, might well appeal to ladies of a – they exchanged glances, starting to laugh – bohemian persuasion, but to the wider population they were nothing but a joke, an act of imposture, as Mr What’s-his-name had asserted.
Imposture, thought Maud. There it was.
Miss Corder listened, nodding as if some deep suspicion was being confirmed, the orchid bobbing atop her vast hat. Then she gestured contemptuously at the opposite side of the gallery, towards a spread of large paintings with a good deal more people gathered before them. All by the same hand, they had the look, from a distance, of stained glass.
‘That is more to your taste, I suppose – old Ned Jones?’ she demanded. ‘That is excellence, is it, all that laboriousness, all that misspent labour? Is that English art? Is that honestly what we deserve?’
Maud studied these paintings more closely. The colours had a delicate glow, as if the pictures were lit from behind; the forms were flawlessly arranged and drawn. She could see a row of beautiful angels bearing large crystal balls. Half a dozen women kneeling by a lake, gazing at their own reflections as if entranced. St George in his armour. Every one of them had virtually the same face – both the men and the women, and the ones who were neither men nor women. Their expressions held only the merest hints of thought or feeling. The effect was mildly unnerving. When considered next to the work of this Mr Jones, it could well be true that Jimmy’s pictures would not seem pure and peaceful, but crude. Lacking somehow. This notion came to Maud unbidden and it startled her with its disloyalty. She made to look back towards the Whistler display, for reassurance; and instead spotted attendants in livery, closing in on them from opposite sides, censorious glares on their faces.
Miss Corder was growing yet more impassioned and voluble about the various deficiencies she’d observed in the other artworks of the Grosvenor display. Maud was wondering whether she should interrupt, to point out the attendants perhaps, when her companion withdrew abruptly from this somewhat one-sided debate, casting not so much as a parting glance at her chortling adversaries.
‘Come Miss Franklin,’ she said, starting towards the curtained entrance, and the wide stairway beyond. ‘I believe we’re due at the Café Royal.’
*
Outside, the heat was starting to lift, a breeze snapping the shop awnings taut in their frames. Miss Corder walked along New Bond Street with a pronounced, leisurely sway, her hips swinging out a couple of inches with each footstep, unperturbed by either the clash in the gallery or the manner of their exit.
‘Ned Jones,’ she said. ‘Good God. Or Burne-Jones, as we must call him now. Charles knows the fellow. Used to know him. Even back then his style was said to be ponderous and overworked. All those hard lines, all that intricacy. And for such a wretchedly insipid result. But I suppose I should hope that the popularity of his pictures grows yet further. The blasted things would be easy indeed to replicate.’
Maud frowned a little, and began to ask what was meant by replicate, but Miss Corder was crossing a side street, moving around the back of a carriage, out of earshot. While Maud bent to gather up her hem, Miss Corder was just letting hers trail where it would, dragging through the summer dust. They were drawing stares – being unaccompanied and rather conspicuous – none too pleasant, some of them. The attention fell upon Miss Corder like sea spray on the prow of a gunboat.
‘I understand why you wished to leave so soon,’ she said, when Maud caught up. ‘To be honest, Miss Franklin, I can only stomach brief visits myself. The Grosvenor is a worthy venture, all things considered. It provides a place of exhibition to the occasional true talent, like your Jimmy. But I cannot help thinking it corrupt. They do it by invitation, you know, rather than merit. Amateurs, friends of Sir Coutts Lindsay and his wife, shown alongside proper artists. It is a game, a game for the rich.’ Her lip twitched. ‘But works are shifting nonetheless. They are going for hundreds of pounds, if Charles is to be believed. I am beginning to think that I should have tried to get something of my own in there.’
There was a pause. Maud looked at a bolt of burnt-orange silk arranged in a draper’s window. ‘You’re an artist,’ she said.
‘More than that,’ replied Miss Corder, lifting her chin. ‘I am a professional, Miss Franklin. I make my living at it. But I am also a woman. And my father was a lighterman, down at Rotherhithe. And so I am kept always at the margins. Versatility is demanded of me, if I am to survive – a versatility that I’ll bet Mr Millais or Mr Leighton, or Lady Butler even, would struggle to summon.’ She stopped, checking the fervour that was returning to her voice. ‘But of course you know all this. You are an artist yourself. Charles says that Jimmy rates you highly – that he had you at work on the Peacock Room, in fact, repainting flowers. Before he brought the scheme to its final form.’
‘Before he covered them all up, you mean. Painted the whole thing blue.’
Maud was embarrassed, and faintly annoyed; Jimmy knew she didn’t like him telling people about her attempts at art – boasting about them, as he couldn’t help but do, despite having obliterated her painstaking labour at Prince’s Gate with barely a second’s hesitation. She’d protested about this, just once, trying to sound as if she was joking.
‘I had to Maudie,’ he’d answered simply. ‘It didn’t go.’
‘That was necessary,’
