David Dickinson: Goodnight Sweet Prince

‘Where are they taking that Dutch gentleman? Are they throwing him out, do you suppose?’ whispered Lady Lucy as the strange cortege passed within a few feet of them.

‘Maybe the Last Trump has sounded for him,’ said Powerscourt. ‘His maker, or rather his restorer, is probably making the call not for the last judgement, but for his paint to be restored. I fancy he is going to the workshops for cleaning, that sort of thing.’

‘It must be rather upsetting, if you’re a picture,’ said Lady Lucy, gazing at the retreating trolley as it rolled off towards the basement. ‘One minute you’re sitting happily on the wall, minding your own business, and then some horrid men come and take you away.’

‘It’s the same with people, don’t you think?’ replied Powerscourt. ‘One minute you’re sitting happily under the pictures on your wall at home, then Death comes with his trolley, and you’re on your way. Down to the basement with you.’

‘I don’t like that at all,’ said Lady Lucy, laughing. ‘Let me take you to some Turners.’ She steered Powerscourt away to a different part of the gallery. There were storms, shipwrecks, deaths at sea, blazing seconds of steam, sunsets, romantic ruins of ravaged Italian landscapes. Lady Lucy felt light-headed, dizzy, as she looked at them all.

‘But look . . .’ She planted Powerscourt on a bench looking out at The Fighting Temeraire . ‘Is this not the finest of them all?’

At the far end of the room a party of students were rolling up their sketches and collecting their equipment. Two curators looked solemnly on, their faces bored or impassive. Outside the bells of St Martin in the Fields called the hour of twelve.

‘They say,’ said Powerscourt, stretching out his legs until they became a hazard for unwary passers-by, ‘that this is one of the most reproduced paintings in England. There are nearly as many Fighting Temeraires hanging on the walls of Britain as there are portraits of Queen Victoria.’

‘I know which one I would rather have,’ said Lady Lucy disloyally, checking that her hat had not got completely out of hand. ‘What do you think it means, Lord Francis?’

‘What did Turner mean? Or what does it mean to the spectator? I’ve always thought that paintings, like people’s faces, can have multiple meanings.’ He stole a quick glance at Lady Lucy’s face, mesmerized by the iridescent sunset, Turner’s golds and coppers gleaming over the Thames. ‘They say it has to do with the coming of the age of steam, don’t they? This is the valediction to sail, condemned to be pulled by that ugly black tug on its final voyage to the breaker’s yard. Farewell romance, hello smoke, farewell sail, hello mighty engines.’

‘I don’t think it means that at all.’ Lady Lucy was quite vehement. ‘I mean people may think it means that. But I think it’s much more about Turner himself.’ She leant back on the bench, combing her memory for the other Turners she had seen which would help her case.

‘Turner, the Turner who painted this, this glory, was an old man when he did it. But when he was young, he made his name and his fame painting the ships and the battles of the great war against the French. This ship, the Temeraire ,’ she pointed dramatically at the ghostly vessel, ‘took years and years to build in Rochester or somewhere like that.’ Lady Lucy would have been the first to admit that her knowledge of naval construction yards was not that extensive. ‘It sails the Mediterranean. It patrols in the Pacific. Its life is entirely peaceful, in spite of the guns on board and the fearful death toll of its broadsides. It only fights for one day, Lord Francis. Just one day. But that one day was at Trafalgar when the Temeraire was closely involved in the action right beside the Victory and our friend Nelson on his column outside, one day of everlasting glory. And Turner painted it at the time.

‘After that, more patrols, more routine voyages, and then bit by bit, spar by spar, sail by sail, the great ship is taken to pieces. Then finally in 1834 or whenever it was, she is to be taken up or down the river by that horrid little tug to be broken up.

‘But for Turner, for Turner, Lord Francis’ – Powerscourt was bewitched by Lady Lucy’s eloquence and her feeling for the painting – ‘this was a symbol, a reminder of his own life, his past, his present, his future. Here was this ship of all ships, which he had painted as a young man so many years ago in her hour of glory. By the time the Temeraire made this last journey, she would have been a hulk, she would have had no rigging, she would have had no masts. Turner has put them all back. That’s why the painting is called The Fighting Temeraire . This ship, Turner’s ship, his beloved Temeraire , has to make her last journey decked out as she was in her days of pomp and power, not like some beggar being dumped in the workhouse.’

Even the curators were listening intently now, staring spellbound at Lady Lucy.

‘This is Turner’s tribute to his vanished youth. The sunset is not just for the beautiful ship but for Turner himself. He knows that for him too the last journey will be coming soon. The crossing not of the Thames but of Jordan river cannot be very far away. This is Turner’s last elegy to his youth, his past life, his own career, gliding unstoppably away from him. After the sunset comes the dark. Death. Oblivion. No more Temeraire , no more Turner. But we have this to remember them both.’

Lady Lucy stopped suddenly, as if worn out by so much emotion.

‘I cannot tell you how impressed I am by your learning, Lady Lucy.’ Powerscourt gazed at her with a new respect, with more feelings than he had brought with him into this gallery. Could she describe all the paintings with such eloquence?

Lady Lucy was grateful to him for listening. It makes such a change, she thought. So often when she wanted to talk about paintings or about books, men changed the subject to horses or cricket or fishing. But this was a man who could listen. She remembered her mother saying to her when she was just eighteen, ‘Don’t be taken in by their looks or how well the young men whirl you round the dance floors of London, my girl. Find yourself a man who appreciates your mind as well as your pretty looks.’

She turned to look at Powerscourt, who seemed to be inspecting the Temeraire ’s rigging. Had she found such a man?

Christmas came and Powerscourt was still no further with the courtiers in Marlborough House. It was a long tennis match of letters from the baseline, neither player prepared to go to the net.

‘What on earth are they doing?’ Powerscourt had asked Rosebery in his library in Berkeley Square.

‘The Prince of Wales can’t make up his mind, I suspect,’ said Rosebery, pouring them both a seasonal glass of white port. ‘He wants to know who the blackmailer is. But he’s terrified of what might come out of any investigations. Anyway, the Prime Minister has nearly settled the row with the Beresfords. Salisbury told me the Treaty of Berlin had probably been easier to negotiate.’

Rosebery had bought himself a racehorse for Christmas which he was convinced would win the Derby.

Prince Eddy became engaged to Princess May of Teck, to the delight and relief of both sets of parents.

Powerscourt bought Lord Johnny Fitzgerald a case of Chassagne-Montrachet.

His sisters clubbed together to buy Powerscourt a first edition of Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire .

But Powerscourt’s Christmas present to his nephews was the one closest to his heart.

January 1892