The Fraud (56 page)

‘Her Brother still makes a living,’ observed Mr Burke finally. ‘He closed up the house in Pall Mall when his son was sent to the country, but I hear that he still paints Portraits from St Martin’s Lane to whence he returned, although I myself am not, you may understand, welcome there. But of course the Art World gossips, and I hear many things.’ He shrugged. ‘People like a bit of Notoriety - he does well enough.’

‘How does he now sign his paintings?’

‘I am told he still signs them
Filipo di Vecellio
.’

Mr Towers laughed. ‘He did not want then, after all, to become himself?’

‘He did not. He always maintained that the whole story was, rather, a figment of his Sister’s deranged Imagination! That Grace Marshall did not exist.’ And this time both men smiled together for the first time, for they knew that, indeed, she did.

‘And the Signorina Isabella?’ asked Mr Towers.

‘The Signorina Isabella is now Mrs Georgie Bounds and seems to be a most contented young lady, and Euphemia the maid has gone to that small establishment.’

‘Ah, Euphemia.’ And Mr Towers nodded to himself. ‘You may like to know, Mr Burke,’ he said dryly, ‘that after Grace had departed for Florence and before I began writing, I managed to speak to one other person, and that person was Euphemia. She was indeed a mine of perspicacious information, having joined the di Vecellio household almost at the same time as Grace. Euphemia did not miss much of what was going on. And it was she who told me about Claudio trying to acquire the seven hundred guinea coins!’ And now both men laughed.

‘Isabella’s Father’s fall, and the witness of Mr Bounds to part of it, was no doubt great good luck,’ said James Burke shrewdly. ‘Mr Bounds would never have been an acceptable son-in-law else, being only a frame-maker’s son. Now I am sure - for he was a most generous Host, but always careful with his Finances - Filipo can get Frames for his Portraits at a good price! So Isabella will perhaps live happily ever after - although I hear from Miss Ffoulks that the girl nevertheless still asks for her Aunt. Miss Ffoulks also tells me that Mr Bounds is very fond, and even agreed that Roberto the parrot should live with them as well as Euphemia, which is love indeed for that parrot is particularly vindictive on occasion as you know!’ and both men smiled slightly again.

Silence. And then Mr Towers said, ‘So the story is over, Mr Burke, in a way. And yet - not quite.’ Mr Towers opened a drawer in his writing-desk and drew out a single sheet of paper. ‘I suppressed one paper that she sent to me last year, when I sent you the Manuscript. Here is her Will.’

James Burke, his face suddenly shocked, moved so abruptly that he knocked a nearby chair to the floor and he did not even notice. ‘
She is not dead? She is
not
!
’

‘She is not dead, no.’ Thomas Towers got up from his desk and offered the sheet of paper to the other man who stood there, shaken, beside an overturned chair in the room in Frith Street. James Burke took the paper almost reluctantly; he looked about him, saw the chair for the first time, picked it up and sat upon it. And then he began to read.

Men of course do not weep but for some time James Burke was unable to speak. He sat for a long time with his head bowed. But when he raised his head his voice suddenly burst out in anger. ‘Perhaps you see yourself as a Puppet-Master, Mr Towers.’ (And Mr Towers observed that there were tears upon his cheeks, after all.) ‘You seem to believe you can change the end of the Story - that you are not just the Author, but that you can have some effect on the Outcome!’

This time Mr Towers did not answer. And so the two men sat on, in the room in Frith Street, with a great silence between them.

 

But when, at last, James Burke had contained himself and stood up from the chair by the window with the paper still in his hand, his face was different: some change: something decided. Slowly he walked from the window and placed Grace Marshall’s will back on the writer’s desk.

‘I am more grateful than I had understood that this is not yet the time for Wills and Testaments,’ he said. ‘You are the Writer of other Lives, Sir, you will know if many are not conflicted by Obligations and Desires.’ One more time James Burke looked about the room: the crowded books and papers and knowledge and history, and the manuscript there on the desk.

‘However, you have made it clear to me, whether you intended to or not, that it is not only an Affirmation of Art that should come in a man’s lifetime.’ And he almost nodded to himself, as if the conversation was really with himself. ‘The Affirmation of Love is necessary also.’

Mr Towers waited.

The visitor picked up his hat.

He moved towards the door.

‘I am gone, Mr Towers,’ said James Burke simply, ‘to Florence.’

With grateful thanks for their information and advice to:

Tony Lane, Maureen Chadwick, Richard Dorment, Danielle Nelson, Gillian Chaplin Ewing and Mic Cheetham.

 

 

I am indebted to the writers of the following books:

 

The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century
by John Brewer; (Harper Collins, London, 1997)

Artists and Their Friends in England, 1700-1799
(2 vols) by William T Whitley; (Medici Society, 1928)

The Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters and Sculptors
(6 vols) by Allen Cunningham; (John Murray, London, 1830-37)

English Female Artists
(Vol 1) by Ellen C Clayton; (Tinsley Brothers, 1876)

Anecdote Lives
by John Timbs; (originally published by Richard Bentley, London, 1872; reprinted: Bardon Enterprises, Portsmouth, 1997)

Art on the Line
edited by David H Solkin; (published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Courtauld Institute Gallery by Yale University Press, 2001)

Rembrandt in Eighteenth Century England
edited by Christopher White; (Yale Centre for British Art, 1983)

London: a Social History
by Roy Porter; (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1994)

Visits to Bedlam: Madness and Literature in the Eighteenth Century
by Max Byrd; (University of South Carolina Press, 1974)

Selling Art in Georgian London: the Rise of Arthur Pond
by Louise Lippincott; (published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 1983)

Three Thousand Years of Deception
by Frank Anau, translated by J. Maxwell Brownjohn; (Jonathan Cape, London, 1961)

A History of Make-up
by Maggie Angeloglou; (Studio Vista, London, 1970)

Hogarth: a Life and a World
by Jenny Uglow (Faber & Faber, London, 1997)

Joshua Reynolds: the Life and Times of the First President of the Royal Academy
by Ian McIntyre; (Penguin Books, 2004)

Thomas Gainsborough
by Isabelle Worman; (Lavenham: Dalton, 1976)

The Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds
edited and annotated by Edmund Gosse; (Kegan, Paul & Co, London, 1884)

Medical Tracts
: Dr James Graham’s lecture on his Celestial Bed; (London, 1783)