John Fenwick

“ And so she came to her second topic of meditation. Gradually as her mind pursued it, her aspect seemed to lose its new and tremulous brightness; the face became once more a little grey and pinched. They had somehow missed all the letters which should have warned them. To find Arthur established here, with his poor invalid wife—nothing had been more unexpected, and, alack, more unwelcome, considering the relations between them and John Fenwick—Fenwick who was practically her father's guest and hers. ”

“ Eugénie sat down in a corner of the Orangerie garden, locking her hands together, in a miserable pity for Arthur. She knew well what a shining pinnacle of success and fame Welby occupied in the eyes of the world; she knew how envious were the lesser men—such a man as John Fenwick, for instance—of a reputation and a success they thought overdone and undeserved. ”

“ A Whistler might be insolent, and gain by it; but the smaller men must keep civil tongues in their heads. Oh, yes, talent of course—enormous talent!—but a poor early training, and a man wants all his time to get the better of that—instead of spouting and scribbling all over the place. No—John Fenwick would do nothing more of importance. Mrs. Wilson might take his word for that—sorry if he had said anything unpleasant of a friend of hers. ”

“ FENWICK, SIR JOHN (c. 1645–1697) , English conspirator, was the eldest son of Sir William Fenwick, or Fenwicke, a member of an old Northumberland family. He entered the army, becoming major-general in 1688, but before this date he had been returned in succession to his father as one of the members of parliament for Northumberland, which county he represented from 1677 to 1687. He was a strong partisan of King James II., and in 1685 was one of the principal supporters of the act of attainder against the duke of Monmouth ”

“ She could see none: but there was an unused half-sheet at the back of one of Madame de Pastourelles' letters, and she roughly tore it off. Making use of a book held on her knee, and finding the pen and ink with which, only half an hour before, Lord Findon had written his cheque, she began to write:
Good-bye, John,—I have found out all I want to know, and you will never see me again. I will never be a burden on a man who is ashamed of me, and has behaved as though I were dead. It is no good wasting words—you know it's true. Perhaps you may think I have no right to take Carrie. ”

“ A man like that—with his weaknesses and his temperament—which are part of his gift really—its penalty—wants his wife at every turn—the woman who loves him—who understands. But to desert him for a suspicion!—a dream! Oh! Mrs. Fenwick, there are those who—who are really starved—really forsaken—really trampled under foot—by those they love!'
Her voice broke. She stood gazing straight before her, quivering with the passion of recollection. Phoebe looked up—awed—remembering what John had said, so long ago, of the unhappy marriage, the faithless and cruel husband. ”

“ Little as Fenwick talked about Madame de Pastourelles, Phoebe understood perfectly that she was a woman of high education and refinement, and that her stored and subtle mind was at once an attraction and a cause of humiliation to John. And through his rare stories of the Findon household and the Findon dinner-parties, the wife dimly perceived a formidable world, bristling with strange acquirements and accomplishments, in which he, perhaps, was beginning to find a place, thanks to his art ”

“ Why should they be written at all to her John, her own husband? No nice woman that she had ever known wrote long letters to married men. What could have been the object of writing these pages and pages about John's pictures and John's prospects?—affected stuff!—and what was the meaning of these appointments to see pictures, these invitations to St. James's Square, these thanks 'for the kind and charming things you say'—above all, of the constant and crying omission, throughout these delicately written sheets, of any mention whatever of Fenwick's wife and child? ”

“ John's smart friend belonged to the pampered ones of the earth, and Miss Anna did not intend to be taken in by her, not for a moment.
'Mr. Fenwick has been terribly overworked,' Eugénie repeated, colouring against her will, 'and yesterday he was quite broken down by your letter. It seemed too much for him. You will understand, I'm sure. When a person is so weak, they shrink—don't they?—even from what they most desire. And so he asked me—to—to come and tell Mrs. Fenwick something about his health, and his circumstances these last two years—just to prepare the way. ”

“ Was it only a week since, under a sudden impulse, she had written to Miss Anna?—from the Surrey lodging, where for nearly two months she had hidden herself after their landing in England. Each day since then had been at once the longest and the shortest she had ever known. Every emotion of which she was capable had been roused into fresh life, crowding the hours; while at the same time each day had flown on wings of flame, bringing the moment—so awful, yet so desired—when she should see John's face again. ”

“ We're selling this house. It's hers, of course. Papa settled it on her, years before—'
She stopped—then drew herself together.
'So, you see, I got that picture out of mother. I've never forgiven Mr. Fenwick for taking it home, saying he'd improve it, and then sending it back as bad as ever. I knew he'd done that to spite me—he'd disliked me from the first.'
'John never painted a portrait to spite anybody in his life,' cried
Phoebe. 'I never heard such nonsense.'
'Well, anyway, he can take it back,' said the girl. ”

“ And then—then!—she would be so obliging as to make a 'cushion,' and a home, for Phoebe Fenwick's husband! As to his not being grand enough for her, that was all nonsense. When a man was as clever as John, he was anybodies equal—one saw that every day. ”

“ And, in this state, the obsession of the winter seized her again. She brooded perpetually over the doleful Romney story—the tale of a great painter, born, like her John, in this Northern air, and reared in Kendal streets, deserting his peasant wife—enslaved by Emma Hamilton through many a passionate year—and coming back at last that the drudge of his youth might nurse him through his decrepit old age. She remembered going with John in their sweetheart days to see the house where Romney died, imbecile and paralysed, with Mary Romney beside him. ”

“ John, William, and Thomas sat down as quickly as they could, and began to devour the chickens and tarts, and all the good things at a great rate; and Alfred, who now began to be very hungry, would gladly have been one of the party; but when he was going to sit down, his papa said, 'No, sir, this feast is [Pg 149] not for you; there is nothing here that you like to eat, you know; so you will wait upon these boys, if you please, who seem as if they would find plenty that they will like.' Alfred at this began to cry again, and said he wanted to go to his mamma ”

“ His wife persevered in her attempts to save his life, but her efforts were fruitless, and Fenwick was beheaded in London on the 28th of January 1697, with the same formalities as were usually observed at the execution of a peer. ”

“ Fenwick."
"Life and Death."
The four last I think the best. There is an objection to "Dr. Fenwick" because there has been "Dr. Antonio," and there is a book of Dumas' which repeats the objection. I don't think "Fenwick" startling enough. It appears to me that a more startling title would take the (John) Bull by the horns, and would be a serviceable concession to your misgiving, as suggesting a story off the stones of the gas-lighted Brentford Road. ”

“ As for Lord Findon, except for a certain teasing vagueness on the business side of things, he had shown himself a good friend. Several times since the first variegated evening had Fenwick dined with them, mostly en famille. Lady Findon, indeed, had been away, nursing an invalid father; Madame de Pastourelles filled her place. The old fellow would talk freely—politics, connoisseurship, art. Fenwick too was allowed his head, and said his say; though always surrounded and sometimes chafing under that discipline of good society which is its only or its best justification. ”

“ All round, the trees stand close—the lawns spread their quiet slopes. On this sparkling autumn morning, a glory of russet, amber, and red, begirt the white figures and the gleaming grotto. The Immortals, the champing horses, locked behind their grilles lest the tourist should insult them—all the queer crumbling romance of the statuary, all the natural beauty of leaf and water, of the white clouds overhead and their reflexions below—combined to make Fenwick's guilty bewilderment more complete, to turn all life to dream, and all its figures into the puppets of a shadow-play. ”

“ Half an hour later Lord Findon, who was traversing the drawing-rooms after having taken the Ambassadress to her carriage, found a regenerate and humanised Fenwick sitting beside his daughter; the centre, indeed, of a circle no less friendly to untutored talent than the circle of the dinner-table had been hostile. Lord Findon stopped to listen. Really the young man was now talking decently!—about matters he understood; Burne-Jones, Rossetti—some French pictures in Bond Street—and so forth. ”

“ If she wouldn't, was he to blame if the cottage was lonesome?
But as though she divined this secret debate she presently said:
'I went to Keswick last week.'
He looked up, startled. 'Well?'
'Father's ill—he's got a bad chest, and the doctor says he may be going into a consumption.'
'Doctors'll say anything!' cried Fenwick, wrathfully. 'If ever there was a strong man, it's your father. Don't you believe any croaking of that sort, Phoebe.'
She shook her head.
'He looks so changed,' she said; and began drawing with her finger on the tablecloth. He saw that her lips were trembling. ”

“ Just like her! He hoped the young man understood her condescension—and that to see her and talk with her was a privilege. Involuntarily Lord Findon glanced across the room, at the décolleté shoulders and buxom good looks of his wife. When Eugénie was in the house the second Lady Findon never seemed to him well dressed.
When Fenwick and Cuningham had departed—Fenwick in a glow of grateful good-humour, expressing himself effusively to his host—Madame de Pastourelles approached her father, smiling. ”

“ It was one of those moments when a man feels a band about his tongue, woven by shyness or false shame, or social timidity. He knows that he ought to speak; but the moment passes and he has not spoken. And between him and the word unsaid there rises on the instant a tiny streamlet of division, which is to grow and broaden with the nights and days, till it flows, a stream of fate, not to be turned back or crossed; and all the familiar fields of life are ruined and blotted out.
Finally, as the great patron was going, Cuningham whispered a word in his ear. Lord Findon turned to Fenwick. ”

“ I have to thank him, indeed, not only as an artist, but as a critic. In the interpreting of Fenwick, he has given me valuable aid; has corrected mistakes, and illumined his own painter's craft for me, as none but a painter can. But his poetic intelligence as an artist is what makes him so rare a colleague. In the first lovely drawing of the husband and wife sitting by the Westmoreland stream, Phoebe's face and look will be felt, I think, by any sympathetic reader, as a light on the course of the story ”

“ CHAPTER IV Fenwick had never spent a more arduous hour than that which he devoted to the business of dressing for Lord Findon's dinner-party. It was his first acquaintance with dress-clothes. He had, indeed, dined once or twice at the tables of the Westmoreland gentry in the course of his portrait-painting experiences. But there had been no 'party,' and it had been perfectly understood that for the Kendal bookseller's son a black Sunday coat was sufficient. Now, however, he was to meet the great world on its own terms ”

“ She felt through every nerve that he was constantly aware of details of dress or ménage that jarred upon him; she suspected miserably that all her little personal ways and habits seemed to him ugly and common; and the suspicion showed itself in pride or brusquerie.
Meanwhile, if she had been restful, if he could only have forgotten his cares in her mere youth and prettiness, Fenwick would have been easily master of his discontents. For he was naturally of a warm, sensuous temper. Had the woman understood her own arts, she could have held him. ”

“ Fenwick stood there tortured by an intense and morbid distress; realising how much this rich and illustrious person had already entered into his day dream. For all his pride as an artist—and he was full of it—his trembling, crude ambition had already seized on Lord Findon as a stepping-stone. He did not know whether he could stoop to court a patron. His own temper had to be reckoned with. But to lose him at the outset by a silly falsehood would be galling. A man who has to live in the world as a married man must not begin by making a mystery of his wife. ”

“ Fenwick began to talk of old friends, and current exhibitions; and presently tea made its appearance. Watson's strength seemed to revive. He sat more upright in his chair, his voice grew stronger, and he dallied with his tea, joking hoarsely with his nurse, and asking Fenwick all the questions that occurred to him. His face, in its rugged pallor and emaciation, and his great head, black or iron-grey on the white pillows, were so fine that Fenwick could not take his eyes from him; with the double sense of the artist, he saw the subject in the man ”