Paula Cohen - What Alice Knew - A Most Curious Tale of Henry James and Jack the Ripper

Emily also had enormous respect for the relationship of Alice and Katherine and was the one person, even above Henry, they allowed to enter the sickroom when Alice had one of her “spells.” “Emily is a creature who makes me temporarily put aside my spiritual skepticism,” Alice liked to say. “I feel sure she is modeled on the angel you see in the background of those paintings, the one who makes sure that the Lord doesn’t trip on his robe. Of course, John is an angel too.”

Indeed, John Sargent, a towering figure who stooped slightly when he walked, as though not wanting to assert his height too aggressively, had a quality of such gentle goodwill about him that even those of his peers who, for reasons of jealousy or aesthetic prejudice, were scornful of his work, found themselves disarmed when they met him. The Jameses spoke of these friends as one would of family members who had been raised in a different part of the world and spoke a different language. The Sargents were not cerebral people and would as soon listen to music or, in John’s case, paint or play the piano, as talk. Not that he was simple—he spoke half a dozen languages without an accent and knew his way around every city in Europe. But his very cosmopolitanism made him a kind of innocent. Alice’s father had traveled far and wide in search of the proper place to educate his children, finally settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as the best he could do, but Sargent’s parents had merely traveled, with no destination in mind, and had never settled anywhere. John Sargent had thus been spared the pressure of expectation that the Jameses had suffered. He had started drawing when he was a boy and simply kept on doing it.

While Emily was occupied with pulling the armchair nearer to the bed and arranging the curtains, John sauntered over, embraced Alice, and kissed Katherine’s hand.

“How is your mother?” asked Alice. She knew that their father had died in April, a loss that both Emily and John had handled with equanimity, as had their mother, though she had maintained the convenient social prerogative of a long mourning. Alice sometimes envied her friends for having a father who had effaced himself so completely during his life that his death was a gentle slipping away. Her own father had been a towering presence, and his death three years earlier had been a crushing, incapacitating blow, not just for her, but also for her brothers, who dwelled on it continually and were constantly trying to get over it—without succeeding.

“She’s getting along,” said John mildly.

“She always asks about you and can’t wait to be in a condition to visit,” added Emily.

It was hard for Alice to imagine that Mary Sargent was not in a condition to visit, and assumed that she was simply not in the mood to visit, which was, upon consideration, the same thing.

“Please sit,” said Alice, motioning to the chairs beside her bed.

Sargent lowered himself into the armchair, stretching his long legs out in front of him, while Emily, in her usual compulsion to be helpful, ignored her hostess’s command and began preparing the tea that Sally had brought in.

“I’m afraid you just missed Henry and William,” explained Alice, once the tea had been served. She added casually, “William’s here to help investigate the Ripper murders for Scotland Yard.”

Emily clapped her hands in delight, and even Sargent, constitutionally phlegmatic, opened his eyes in surprise.

“You must keep this entirely confidential,” warned Alice. She knew she could depend on Sargent to say nothing, but Emily, rather like Henry, was an excitable person, likely to blurt things out inadvertently.

“We’ll be quiet as a tomb,” Emily assured her.

The door opened a crack, and Archie peeked in. The boy had reported to the house that morning and seemed to have taken to his new responsibilities with alacrity. He entered the room boldly; he was holding two blankets in his hands. “Sally says as how Madame James might be needin’ a blanket as it’s a bit chill in here today,” said the boy, looking at the group with the unselfconscious gaze possible only in a total innocent. “She tol’ me to bring this wool’un here, but I says as it’s too rough for her ladyship, and the mohair’s the one I’d like.”

“Quite right,” said Alice, casting an amused glance at the Sargents. “Her ladyship prefers the mohair.”

“I knows it!” exclaimed Archie triumphantly, bringing the blanket to Alice and, though Emily seemed eager to take it, insisting on draping it over the bed himself.

“Archie is a new addition to the household,” explained Alice to her guests. “William engaged him to help Sally out.”

“Really?” said Emily. She knew that Sally did not need help.

“These are two friends of mine.” Alice addressed the boy: “Miss Sargent and Mr. John Singer Sargent. Mr. Sargent is a painter.”

“A painter?” said the boy. “I likes pictures!”

“Very good.” Sargent nodded. “Liking pictures is good.”

“What pictures is it the gentleman paints?” asked Archie. “I likes them pictures they paste on the walls to tell o’ what’s playin’ at the music halls. But I don’t know as gentlemen does those.”

“You’d be surprised what gentlemen do,” said Sargent. “Posters are the least of it. But I’m in a different line myself. I paint pictures of real people.”

“Real people?” queried the boy. “Like me?”

“Most certainly like you. You would make an excellent subject.”

“People pay Mr. Sargent a great deal of money to paint their portraits,” clarified Alice.

“I coulden do that,” said the boy.

“Nor would I expect it,” said Sargent. “I don’t paint only for money; I also paint for pleasure—subjects that interest me.”

“Like that,” said Emily helpfully, pointing to a small painting over the table that Sargent had given Alice for her birthday. It was of a young woman in a red cloak standing in the portal of a building.

“Tha’s beautiful!” breathed the boy, gazing at the painting intently. The woman had a dark, delicately pretty face. He moved closer and studied the figure a moment. “She looks like me mum,” he finally said.

“Archie’s mother passed away recently,” explained Alice.

“Poor child!” murmured Emily.

John had risen from his chair and stood beside the boy, looking at the picture. It was one of his gifts to be able to relay sympathy and understanding without saying a word. In the present instance, he focused his attention on the painting, but in such a way as to include Archie in the act of assessment. They might have been two casual connoisseurs touring a gallery together. “The lady was a very interesting subject,” he noted, then squinted a bit. “Don’t you think it looks dull?”

“I woulden know,” said the boy. “It looks beautiful to me.”

“And to me,” seconded Emily.

“I’ll brighten it up with a coat of varnish,” said Sargent, ignoring these opinions, as he would more expert ones, and taking the painting off the wall. He turned to the boy. “A little dressing up always helps.”

“I sees as that’s so,” said Archie, looking down at his own new clothes, which had been bought with Sally at a haberdasher that morning.

“It doesn’t really change what’s there,” continued Sargent sagely, “but most people don’t know that. I’ve made many a mediocre work appear better with a coat of varnish.”

“Nothing you do is mediocre, John,” insisted Emily, turning to Alice proudly. “He just had his portrait of Mrs. Marquand sent over for submission to the Royal Academy show. It’s said to be a masterpiece.”

John waved his hand dismissively. “It’s a flattering likeness, which, to the subject at least, qualifies it as a masterpiece.”