The Notorious Madame X

The Parvenu and the Arriviste

1877 19th Parc des Butte-Chaumont - Paris

You... are lovely. I would love to paint you.

Jack says to the other American, a girl just shy of his own years and one that is used to these sort of gatherings. He knew she was, if not well born, at least so at ease in its’ company that she may have been the fool to assume any other life. To the manner born, even in Paris but with the easy charm and smile of an Americaine at the height of this belle epoque in the city of lights. But the aroma of linden and cedar and the errant bugs that cluster and cling to everything but her remind him of the reason he is there and he begins to study her. The eyes, the teeth, the tip of her tongue. The nape...

You are American? Moi aussi. Nouvelle Orleans. Creole. Je m’appelle Virginie. Her voice sounds to him like an iris dappled in honey on a summer's evening as the rain begins to fall.

Johnnie, well, tu peux m'appeler, Jack. Jack. Singer and Sargent. My family is from Boston or Philadelphia. I was born on the continent.

And he was as smitten as she is lovely.

You have meringue on your lapel.

It’s actually tempura, Jack returns.

Les meme chose, n'est pas? You are here to work in your suit?

Sort of, cherie. My father is cousins with the groom. I paint today so I don’t have to mingle. The French can be...

Quelle coincidence. Ma mère est cousine de la mariée. She smiles worthy of DaVinci, he thinks. And the French do a wonderful business of being just so. She sends him a wink of her eye and he feels emboldened.

Her Mere stands behind him with one of their looks. Her nonchalance in demeanor and her the wit in her charm and it’s countering charm in wit showed she was educated and at ease even in mixed company. Though she was an American, it was clear she had been on the continent and of course the empire to republic that made her worldly and wiser than those years her senior, but it was her profile that stiffened his resolve from heart to mind. She was the most beautiful lady he’d seen and he knew that he wanted to know her. Her face and hands and nape of the neck. Jack wanted to focus on the nape for hours wondering where the tiny perfections that lay dimpled and creased at any given moment would unveil themselves as she speaks of loss and sadness and grief and joy and love, in the tiny hours of all days in Summer or Autumn and if he were lucky in the Spring. Those memories would warm his heart in a Paris Winter. He told her as much, as their cousins and acquaintances were married in the Butte-Chaumont, a place that her mother called the most beautiful place in Paris only when she realized the property she’d bought in the eighteenth was a far cry from her apartments in the 6th with it’s lovely views of the Trocadero.

Find me in few years and remind me that I was having the time of our lives and you can paint me if I’m as happy as I am in this moment when I've made my way in the world.

I promise Jack says, smiling and she saw and he knew the tiny drool that escaped his lips. And they both smiled that night as their slumbers fell upon them as they clung to the memories of the moment that they knew magic had been made. Or the thoughts of children are the stuff dreams are made on, but not life.

The couple beneath the Temple de les Sybille kiss as Jack touches the wrist of Virginie and she says farewell without words.

La Sagacite de la princesse Americaine

1882 - Paris 6th Arrondisement

It was the third time in as many months that the ariviste had sought to call upon her person the parvenu through her friend. If it were done when it were done than indeed it would make her name but would make his too.

Virginie sits alone at the window looking out over the Seine in the deuxieme opposite Duchesse who is rumored to be the next Princesse Hereditaire of Monte Carlo. It is the end of the night when the fresh powder must make it’s presence known by any woman not still clinging to the morality of the ancien regime.

You are she?

Virginie is startled by the sudden anglais, which was already beginning to sound foreign. But she responds in French.

Si vous pense la Americane c'est vrai.

There are two of us.

I had heard, she whispers back to the duchesse.

Je m’appelle Alice.

Je sais. La Duchesse et la Comtesse. Virginie demures at her insolence for she knew she had said too much of what was well known. Je suis Virginie.

Je sais, aussi.

C'est Vrai ?

Yes, doll. You don’t get to where I am in Paris unless you know everything about everyone who attends your salon. You’re the beauty that could have the city eating out of the palm of your small white hands should you desire.

I only desire my husband to eat from these hands.

And there is your problem.

My problem?

Why yes… Do you think I would acquire titles like an unattended child takes marzipan were it only my husband who ate from these small white hands. With the bon mot, the Prince Hereditaire - Marquis du Baux, Comte de Carlades, appears in the doorway of the boudoir.

“Madeleine… est’il les bonne heure pour une petite… The Prince stops when he realizes Virginie is within site or shot of ear.

Une moment… Prince… Ma Seigneur.

She turns to the thing of beauty.

Do yourself a favor… taste all that the world desires before you commit to one banker who has committed to many.

But he is….

Tsk Tsk Tsk… Your husband. Comme provenciale… Perhaps you should come to my salon in the south of France to see the banquette to feast upon. Alice winks her lazy eye at the girl, smiles and pirouettes out of the room.

Virginie sits alone for a moment longer and in that moment as a boat floats by in the waters of the Seine, below, she vows to change the course of the Parisian conversation about herself.

Dr. Pozzi at Home

On the other side of the river pass the endless wooden scaffolding built for Haussmann’s next efforts, Jack older and wiser paints the doctor. In the sitting room of his suite, the artist picks up the brush and begins the final strokes on the canvas.

I believe in you boy. You believe in what can be seen... and believed. But you are an artist. You only believe in that that can be felt. But what can be felt?

Two of the six-toed felines purr on the counter and a third one joins next to the easel. She is different in color and the length of hair. She stands apart and on her haunches.

Dit-moi, Monsieur? Who is the most beautiful woman in Paris, the most beautiful in all the world.

What? Are you tired of painting men of distinction? Women can offer you nothing in terms of your advancement. Jack knew this to be untrue, and the doctor was trying to trip or bait, surely given his own profession. Jack considers his response carefully. After all was it not his mother who had been the cause of his entrée, his grandmother, the nest egg that cossetted them all? A cosset which they sustained based on the stroking of ego rather than acumen. Feeding the funds for an already adept and adapted source of subsistence and sustenance.

Is your Lady as beautiful as is spoken in the highest circles, Seigneur Pozzi?

She is Monsiuer Gautreau’s Lady, she is my delight, boy. As are you.

Pardonez-moi, Doctor, would you like to see it? Je voudrais vous le montrer, maintenant.

Why do I have the suspicion that the result will cost me a pittance more?

Because you know that if I can produce this portrait with you as it’s sitter, image what I would do with ten thousand francs, three days and one… delight.

Jack unveils the portrait of the doctor. Seigneur Pozzi at home he thinks to call it. The doctor gasps.

You flatter me. I do not look like this. Do I, to you? You think of me quite fondly?

It is a true likeness, some of you longer or smaller, but a true likeness for your erstwhile beneficiary and benevolence. To be of service to your patronage continues to be… a delight.

I’ll ask if she’d like a portraiture. But as you know, I never promise anything that my accounts don’t settle and I would never pay any Lady or beg upon her beauty as a woman. That’s up to her own vanities. As I clearly have reason to have mine drawn as well. It’s what's done. But this is too much. I’m am no saint or any of that. The vanities indeed to me are rather gauche. I am a man of science.

Of course, Seigneur.

I have no title, I work for a living. Yet my comfort provides my opportunities and I am guilty of taking for granted what I have. I give back so that no one will judge me the less or common. But I enjoy the work… Might the red be a little much for a portrait? I mean I adore it but… people will think… I am clergy?

Sir? While reminiscent of the church to me it is more a mastery of your profession.

Oh. I did not think of that at first. I thought it maybe has some leanings with the church. I was told Madame Sarah’s portrait led and read otherwise. Well, I guess the matter means... So, I don’t appear to be some kind of slut-bishop?

No Doctor…

Do you think it is too womanly, not there is anything at all wrong with woman or womanly for that matter?

How do you mean, Seigneur. Jack loved when they got introspective with out the awareness, something all of them did eventually. Those words that give themselves away in the late of the evening sometimes when looking back or in the early mornings when forward was still in the eyes of the days.

Quelle domage pour les mots triste… The sad thing about how beautiful things those that take our eyes and sometimes breath are rarely what does the same with our hearts or any of the other parts of ourselves.

Du te a pie… However… You sure it doesn’t make me look to demure? I mean it has been mounted before, a long time since... at university, it was not for me, so... but it still prefers a more assertive bearing…. Anyway… Let’s just say the lighting in my world is not sooo soft, so pretty. So... red. I prefer pink but it is too late. Listen to me… vanities.

To their bonfire...

Vanities, son, don’t burn, they simmer at the place just before boil. Vanities seethe. Now kiss me good night and don’t forget to touch the sack on the bookshelf before you leave. She will soon be on the coast of Brittany. I will ask her to meet.

1882 Chateau du Chene - Bretagne

The Chateau is well illuminated and the late Spring evening winds carry the scents of hazel, elder and celandine and the salty sea in the distance. The approach in plus four since the train sees his neck jutting, in want of views of the countryside even as he attempts to few sketches of the route. But he is feverish as he never forgets a face and it was surely hers that would finally grace his coal and papers and linen and oils, and yes... egg. He chortles to himself still smitten from a time long since erstwhile.

The years had been kind to both of them in many ways. She now married with a girl at her skirt and lovers in her past, present, and assuredly, her future. The change in seasons and fortunes of the blessed are indeed meant to align, they both think in the moment that they meet again. They stand in awe of each other as the years roll in their minds and he places the sheet of hemp across his cherry easel and begins to finger the coal as he is wont to do as she saunters into her place. First, he will have her on the chaise, with a gesture, and he begins with a question as she comes to life with his hands about the cherry.

Why now? For you? Why do you say yes?

She is matter of fact in those first few moments. Her stilted movements until she lays belies the fact that she is no longer the girl, Virginie, but the woman, La Virginie, La Madame Gautreau.

I’ve practiced my makeup for years and yet even my periwinkle-kissed skin as I've heard you have remarked to the doctor aches... My ttruth... No one will ever be the wiser how much it costs me to only be thought of as beautiful as it is not something I aspired to, nor Maman. It happened and I am better for it. But like any bill, I want to be done with it. The discussions of it- being told... as if it is ma raison d'etre. Yet no one ever hearing me. It is a tiresome conversation. I thought when I had the child it would cease as it does, time and again for my sex. So if I am truly a thing of beauty, I grant the grace of art to say all that can ever be said again. Let the infamy commence so at least I can be something other than a beauty. Make me into something other than my own self. Something other than me. The... Good Doctor says you will flatter. Do me no favors, my own visage has done this, so to you I grant your eyes the right of truth. I will deny it, as I am modest. But do your best to find truth where words lie... but we lie not.

Jack sketches and Jack draws. He blends and Jack smears. He sweats and pouts and shouts. Jack paints and Jack loves. For a Summer or more.

And at the end of the Summer, Jack leaves.

He leaves the Chateau for the last time and he turns to her and knows it will be the best work, un bon travail, of his own life.

La Virginie turns to the infant in her arms and kisses the ringlets at her cheekbone watching him. Wistful, but not overcome.

See Jack leave. It is what men are for. A bit of love and a bit of leaving. You can steal your own flowers, but why, when a man will often do it for you.

Another kiss for the curl and La Virginie is reminded of the soon to be Autumn by the foxglove and salt in the air as she turns back to the chateau and begins her wait for the good doctor.

fin