The Parasol Flower Page 7

  Most importantly, I’d discovered the only art school admitting women in the year that Strangler Fig was painted was the Academie Julian, a college in Paris. This was a remarkable breakthrough. The art school was still in existence, incredibly, and, as Parisian institutions tended to, Julian had its own archives. When I mapped the Julian address, I saw that the art school was a stone’s throw from Richelieu library. I must have walked by the place dozens of times before. Now, I would go inside.

  It was time for me to return to Paris, I told Daphne and Bob when I came down one morning.

  “My…uh…phrenologist friends have invited me to a party,” I said. This was perfectly true.

  “What kind of a party?” Daphne asked. “Hopefully some other singles are there, Nancy, and some dancing.”

  “I have no idea,” I said, picturing a sixteen-year-old Daphne doing a foxtrot in her nursing uniform. “I think it’s just dinner.” I flicked on the electric kettle and prepared the French press. It was another grey day—rain pelted the patio door that opened to their yard—and I came to the glass to look out at Bob’s garden sanctuary, no more at that time of year than humps of burlap-wrapped shrubs and ice-covered garden beds.

  “And I really shouldn’t impose on you any longer.”

  Bob had the newspapers out in front of him on the table and Daphne was standing at the stove, boiling eggs. They both looked up and insisted that I hadn’t been imposing.

  “Bob,” I said, turning back to the window, “have you ever heard of a plant called a parasol flower?”

  That was how the whole story came spilling out—about The Parasol Flower, The Descent, Alvin and the Strangler Fig painting, my visit to Fulgham House, the rise of Impressionism in the art salons of Paris, where the saying running amok originated. (Answer: British Malaysia, of course.) Everything. In the middle of this, the egg timer buzzed. Daphne transferred the soft-boiled eggs one by one into our waiting cups (mine was a bunny), and brought them over to the table. I contributed a steaming French press. Bob plunged, then poured.

  “I really can’t wait on this Dr. Munk guy any longer,” I told them. “Miranda said he was amenable to being contacted, but clearly he isn’t amenable.”

  Neither of them had said anything so far. Daphne’s mouth was open and she looked confused.

  I said, “Miranda emailed me… She’s the one at… Never mind. The point is the lepidopterist ancestor is not replying and I really need to move forward.”

  Bob rubbed under his scruffy chin, pondering this a moment before cracking into his egg.

  “And since there are only so many files that the academy has converted to digital holdings, I can’t do it from here.”

  “I thought you’d stopped,” Daphne said quietly.

  I spouted something about conducting real research, the kind that people had forgotten how to accomplish, what with everybody Googling and Googling! “Stopped what?” I replied.

  “Well, obsessively researching!” Daphne’s head shook rapidly, like she was short-circuiting.

  I’d sat down across from Bob, who was spooning out his egg with deliberation. I said, “Ooooh. Actually, this has nothing to do with my dissertation.”

  “Pardon me, sweetheart?”

  Bob said, “If this has nothing to do with your dissertation, then why are you so keen on finding this parasol flower woman?”

  “Parasol flower?” said Daphne.

  “Daph, you weren’t listening to her!” he growled.

  I had their full attention now. The Plewetts drew themselves up as straight as their backs would allow and waited for me with wide eyes.

  “Why? I don’t know why!” I laughed outright at myself.

  They looked at me warily as I cracked into my egg.

  I had no reason to care about Hannah Inglis and her parasol flower. Not this much. And when had I ever done something for no good reason? When had I ever acted on instinct? Never. Well, at no time that I could remember. Probably not since I was a small child. I told my eighty-something-year-old friends all of this in my rambling way, spearing toast crumbs with the tips of my fingers. No, there was no good reason for me to care, but I did.

  Whatever I said seemed to brighten their mood considerably. Two days later, they dropped me off at the station with a toot from their little red car. I promised to email them regularly.

  On my visit to Julian, a new world opened for me. I leafed through the notebooks of former students, some of them women, some written in French, some written in English, even some in Japanese. The academy had been a cosmopolitan crossroads. An experiment ahead of its time, whose young women were “educated as human beings, first and foremost,” wrote Amelie Beaury-Saurel. A former student, Amelie had married the founder, Rodolphe Julian, and went on to manage the women’s atelier that opened in 1880. Like her classmates, Hannah must have been intimidated by the feisty “Madame Espagne.” (Amelie had been born in Spain.) If Hannah, my Hannah, had indeed attended. There was no “Inglis” on the rosters or any of the documents I scanned, where everyone was recorded by surname.

  It was a conversation with my Welsh phrenologist friends that renewed my hope. I’d never seen so much of Chris and Zoe. They were leaving Paris soon, to be married in Zoe’s home town in Wales, and I suppose they were trying to cram in as much casual socializing as possible. The three of us had always bonded over bookstores and cheese markets, so we alternated visits to their favorite venues. Our conversations were wide-ranging, as usual, but now suddenly our lives struck me as wide-ranging in random ways; it wasn’t just that we jumped topics readily, but people like us jumped the globe and jumped into different lifestyles, jobs, habits, relationships. We were making changes, huge, irreparable changes to our futures, based on precarious circumstances. We joked about it, but opening a bookshop or becoming cheese experts seemed just as likely as anything else we might do. I asked Zoe and Chris about where they were going to live and work after they graduated in spring. They were both gunning for history and philosophy of science instructor positions.

  “The rule is whoever gets hired first,” said Zoe, “the other person has to follow.”

  “Whoever gets hired first,” Chris repeated, “the other person has to follow.”

  They locked eyes, smiling goofily, then pulled each other close, mashing their faces together.

  “Good rule,” I remarked.

  When they didn’t let up, I turned away to sample some Brie-like cheese and experienced an epiphany. Hannah had gone to Malaysia. Why? Why all the way to Malaysia? Not to paint it. No, she’d gotten married! Inglis was her married name, and she’d had a different one at the academy.

  God only knew what that name was.

  Still, I kept snooping around the archives. As it turned out, I wasn’t in need of Hannah’s maiden name. During my second week, I was working my way through the books on hand and encountered The Late Godot: Conversations with Young Artists, written by one Edward Coles. Henri Godot had attended Julian himself. A portraitist by specialty, he graduated and went on to be a charismatic young teacher for the academy. Later, he emigrated to America and became a founding member of the Ashcan School.

  Skimming the book’s index, I froze at “Inglis, Hannah.” Twenty-two of her letters to Henri Godot were included in the volume. I still get chills, recalling that moment. Godot had kept in touch with many young artists, apparently, and communicated fervently and publicly about art-making as the right of every human being. I reckoned that his correspondence with Hannah was not unusual. Though it felt like a private banquet all my own.

  Edward Coles made several claims about Hannah, some of which were borne out by the published letters. (Had there been more letters from which to choose, I wondered? What other sources did he have at his disposal? The citation was spotty, quite frankly.) Born Hannah Bliss, she was the illegitimate child of a prominent English politician and an innkeeper. She’d gr
own up in a London neighborhood, presumably in her mother’s care. There were no details on her parents’ liaison or whether her father remained part of Hannah’s life. Had art school been his idea? Almost undoubtedly his money had funded her to attend; he must have at least consented. Coles stated that Hannah had married one Colonel George Inglis, a distant relation, and relocated to Kuala Kangsa where Inglis was stationed as a customs officer.

  By then of course I could already picture the village, having read a variety of memoirs, government reports, and historical documents associated with the young colony. Small though it was, Kuala Kangsa was the de facto cultural capital of Malaysia by the time Hannah arrived. It had acquired a cricket league, a barbershop, and even a traffic warden.

  In Malaysia, Hannah evidently went on drawing and painting. It was plain from the letters to Godot that she fell in love with the tropics, that “bright, excessive, exotic, HOT, fly-infested clime.” In her first months away, she mailed him sketches of mammoth insects. Of various neighbors’ pets and garden plants. Of the views from her veranda and dragon fruit in a bowl. Then came more polished works of undulating blue-green hills and panoramas of a stunning river valley.

  After a hiatus, Hannah’s trajectory swerved. That is to say, from what I could tell by her resplies to Godot’s responses to the studies she was sending him. She let go somewhat of perspective and dimension. The color work became wilder and bolder. She was sending her mentor dozens of botanicals. Odd botanicals. Trees with roots shooting from their branches. Rotting logs hosting alien mushrooms and vibrantly colored slime molds. Miniature violets growing from a smear of bat dung.

  This shift, this tectonic shift, coincided with a major change in her process: namely, Hannah began painting en plein air. In June of 1895 she wrote:

  Today I will be taking my paints into the forest. I am warned (in gentler terms) that this practice is unsafe and inexplicable. I feel rather that I am being called unsafe and inexplicable. I would throw names back in their faces—de Valenciennes, of course, and Mr. Constable, also Rousseau, Millet, and the entire Barbizon Group. Then there are your Impressionists, especially M. Monet. It is nothing new at all to be out of doors! And quite necessary if I am to produce anything of interest! I thought it prudent, though, to hire a man to assist me in bushwhacking and staving off any troublesome animals. He is one of the Sikh police guard here, a great mountain of a fellow topped with a sky blue turban.

  That said, I can admit to you, monsieur, I am very nervous—!

  (Coles, p.337)

  The strangler fig and kapok duo I had seen at Kew must have been one of the subjects Hannah encountered on a forest trek. I wondered where the other paintings she mentioned had ended up.

  Armed with Hannah’s surname, I reviewed the academy’s archive of images. There was one class photograph taken during her time at Julian, circa 1890, that included an H. Bliss. The ladies in this anatomy class looked young and determined. One or two had bangs cut into their hair, the new fashion. H—the one I felt to be Hannah, although it was not entirely clear from the legend—was seated on a high stool toward the back of the group, leaning forward a little, as if she were trying to see the photographer behind the apparatus. As if she might break from the formation. Her dark hair was swept up like a storm cloud, her regard quizzical.

  Now that I’d found Hannah, how to find her art? The Coles book was of no use here. The Ashcan School inheritors, when they returned my messages, let me know that nothing by Hannah Inglis or Hannah Bliss could be found in their archives either. I debated with myself about bothering barnabymothballs37 with a third follow-up message. Professor emeritus he might be, but he had zilch in the way of netiquette.

  The time came for my friends’ departure for the unpronounceable town in Wales. To celebrate, we went out for moules frites with some of their other friends at the local brasserie. I brought Zoe and Chris a wedding gift: a pair of Bauhaus-looking stainless steel salad servers, which seemed a suitably adult present. I also brought my tiny dilemma with me—to email Dr. Munk, or not to email Dr. Munk—and criticized myself for even thinking of broaching the subject. Here were these two people planning on growing old together, washing each other’s laundry, having children that would need constant supervision. That was serious stuff, and Zoe was already drowning, in my humble opinion, in a sea of rules and expectations that the two sets of parents—opposites, in every way—had applied to the wedding preparations. By dessert, though, I was tipsy enough to ask the people around the table for their opinions on my humble conundrum: how could I find out more about a little-known artist.

  This was an educated, equally tipsy bunch and they pounced on my offering like street dogs on a carcass.

  “Hannah Inglis…is she a performance artist?” Zoe asked. “The one who dresses in drag and scales buildings?”

  “No, no. She was a painter in the late nineteenth, early twentieth century.” I described Strangler Fig and Murdo and Jane to everyone, and they made shiny little offerings: “search eBay,” said one person; “I’ve got a friend who works at Sotheby’s,” said another; “I’m assuming you’ve checked the library”; “Is she in any of the galleries?”, etcetera. The answers to which prompted me to lay out the research I’ve performed to date.

  “This isn’t for your dissertation,” Zoe surmised. Keeping her eyes on me, she slurped a mussel from its casing.

  “It’s not?” said someone.

  “Can you do that?” asked another.

  “Maybe she’s given up on her dissertation. Not everybody makes it.” This, from the American graduate student.

  “Why, then, are you looking for old paintings?” The only French native at the table was a slender, impeccably dressed woman who worked as a labor relations lawyer.

  “To see them,” I said, sensing immediately that this was too simple an answer. I added sheepishly, “For my own personal development?”

  A debate ensued at the far end of the table as to whether my current pursuits should be considered brave or escapist, an anti-capitalist statement or a form of free-riding. A more meandering discussion opened up around me. Was I right to expect to find anything more at all? Was I perhaps tricking myself into thinking there was more to the story, a habit acquired from years of watching films and reading novels?

  “Humans are innate storytellers,” the documentary filmmaker informed us, as if we’d never heard this said before. He was from Colombia, or maybe it was Brazil, and we forgave him a great deal because of his accent. “It is only natural that Nancy is pursuing for something more. Some grand finale.”

  The English redhead, a friend of Zoe’s from some other era, had been agreeing with Mr. Colombia all night. She told me now that I was pinning my hopes on Barnaby Munk because he was all that I had left.

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said, hating her. “I see you what you mean.”

  “Just because he’s all you have left,” she elaborated, “doesn’t mean he has anything good for you. Anything that will help you find this woman’s art.”

  “People disappear into nothingness all the time,” the filmmaker said mysteriously. I wasn’t sure if he was referring to Hannah Inglis or to Barnaby Munk, or possibly someone he’d filmed. The statement carried an air of finality.

  “Yeah, I get it,” I said. “I should just leave the man alone.”

  “No! We’re not saying that,” Zoe told me. She cocked her head at the others. “Have low expectations, that’s all. Don’t make this a ‘big deal.’” She used her faux American accent.

  “Are those two dating?” I whispered in Zoe’s ear, referring to the redhead and the filmmaker.

  “Yes,” she whispered back.

  Down the table, I heard Chris and the labor lawyer sparring about neo-liberalism and the impoverishment of ideals of meaningful work.

  “So, what you are saying is that she is fucked, regardless.” The French woman’s manicured fingertips
stirred the salty air. “Whether she finishes or not.”

  “Yes!” said the American student. “Unless she sells the movie rights!”

  A lull in both conversations having coincided, the seven of us looked around at each other, moorless for a minute or two.

  “Let’s order a round of shots,” Zoe suggested.

  March 11, 1896

  Dear Monsieur Godot,

  We have been struck by that most clichéd of colonial events: a TIGER attack! I am hiding in my writing garret—less from the tiger, mind you, and more from the colonel.

  And I have been re-reading your letters.

  I cannot express to you the reassurance your words have given me over the past years (and continue to give me!). Particularly what you say about seeing, as to how this is the most important aspect, and a more difficult accomplishment for any artist than technique or its mastery. Although I am no longer in a position to study formally, I do try to have my eye on reality—the inner reality—of what I want to convey.

  It is easy here, so far from the hustle of modern city life, to recognize the beauty in ordinary things. I take consolation in that.

  Now if my way of seizing what I see of this inner reality, this inner grace, should be rude and imperfect, as it no doubt is, I must still seize it and drag it onto the canvas. I am compelled to do so, though I fall short of my own standards again and again. (Is there ever any other way? Should I be reassured by my frustration?)

  On a practical level, I do not paint as much as I would like. (How much is enough? Will it ever feel enough?!) I spend most of my days trying to maintain a style of life that neither suits myself nor my situation. And I am expected to take pride in this struggle. I know it’s no more than any woman bears. But I cannot pretend to do it in earnest. I am surrounded by friends who do not see the absurdity—who do not see at all, at least not beyond their own petty noses. The village administration is no different, which I fear has created significant grievances with the natives.