Bonnie Macbird - Art in the Blood

Holmes looked at me. Who had been in the apartment with us?

he sleet had turned into a light snow during our visit to Mlle La Victoire. We had several hours to pass before the evening’s performance and, hailing a cab, we proceeded to a small hotel near the Madeleine. To my surprise, Holmes next suggested a visit to the Louvre. I entreated him to rest, but his nervous energy had returned, and he pointed out to me that a short and leisurely perusal of some of the world’s great art treasures would be more restorative than a nap. It seemed a reasonable idea at the time.

I should have known that he had a second, unspoken reason; it was a hallmark of my travels with Holmes. We stowed our luggage, and hailed another cab.

Holmes directed the driver slightly out of our way, taking a scenic route through Paris, heading first east to the Place de l’Étoile. Circling the magnificent Arc de Triomphe, we proceeded next to the Champs Élysées, moving past the impressive Palais de L’Industrie. Arriving at the Place de la Concorde, Holmes pointed out the Luxor obelisk, before directing our driver south to the river. From there the unfinished apparition of La Tour Eiffel loomed vaporously off to our right through the snowy air. It looked ridiculously like something Jules Verne might construct as a ladder to the moon.

‘A monstrosity!’ I commented. Holmes smiled. I wondered how long Parisians would put up with the blasted thing.

Upon entering the Louvre, we began with a tour of the galleries in the southern wing. There Holmes surprised me with his vast knowledge of the collection, and the pleasure he took in introducing me to its finer points. I was happy to see him refresh both mind and spirit, as there were few things other than work and his violin which could relieve his churning, restless mind.

Perhaps I had been wrong, and this trip to Paris would be the exactly the tonic he needed for his recovery.

Moving quickly through several great halls, we came to rest in front of an unusual portrait. The subject was a somewhat eccentric-looking gentleman, dressed in a Bohemian style of eighty years or so ago, with a broad fur collar, a bright red scarf, his white hair in disarray, and a look of devilish, amused intensity on his vivid features. Holmes paused in front of this portrait, apparently taken by it.

I wondered aloud, ‘Who is this strange-looking fellow, Holmes, a friend of yours?’

‘Hardly, the man is long gone. But this painting is a recent acquisition and I have read of it. The subject is the painter Isabey, renowned for his miniatures.’

The slightly odd expression and clothing of the gentleman in the painting struck me. ‘He looks a bit mad!’ I remarked. ‘Or perhaps ready to embark on some shady diversion.’

Holmes turned to me in amusement. ‘Possibly. One never knows with an artist.’

I read the name below the portrait. It had been painted by Horace Vernet – the brother of Holmes’s grandmother! While he spoke little of his upbringing, he had once mentioned this.

‘Ah, your great-uncle is the artist!’ I exclaimed. ‘This is unusual for him, is it not? Wasn’t he more known for historical, and later military and oriental subjects?’ I wondered aloud, proud to demonstrate knowledge in at least one very small corner of the visual arts.

Holmes looked at me in some surprise, and then smiled, returning to his study of the painting.

I had made it a point to familiarize myself with the Vernet family in an effort to understand my friend. Horace Vernet was an odd chap, born in the Louvre itself in June of 1789, while his artist father (Holmes’s great-grandfather), Carle Vernet, hid out there during the violence of the French Revolution.

Carle’s sister, arrested for associating with the nobility, had been dragged screaming to the guillotine. Carle never painted again, but his son Horace went on to become a renowned artist, discarding the trappings of classicism and forging his own path as a renegade painter of a much more natural style whose topics were chiefly soldiers and orientalism.

While the other side of Holmes’s family were English country squires, and therefore probably more conventional (though I could not be sure), I have always felt, after learning of Holmes’s French ancestry, that it explained something of his ‘art in the blood’ theory.

Holmes, the cold reasoning machine, did have a deeply emotional side to him. And some of the leaps of thought which came to him – after amassing the facts, of course – displayed an imagination that could only be termed artistic.

As we strolled out of this gallery and into the next, Holmes leaned in close and whispered, ‘Have you noticed the man who is following us?’

I started and began to turn.

‘Don’t give it away! Continue to walk.’

‘Oh, give me more credit than that, Holmes!’

We drew presently into a room containing some drawings of Ingres. These pen-and-ink studies of women and children might have been pleasing but I could not focus. I glanced behind me. Was there someone who withdrew immediately behind the door to the next gallery? Or was Holmes, in his precarious state, imagining things?

Who would know we were there, or have the slightest reason to follow us? It must be merely another tourist. What was I thinking?

‘The gentleman with the large umbrella is quite skilled at concealment.’ Holmes nodded discreetly in the direction of the gallery from which we had just come.

‘I see nothing, Holmes,’ said I. ‘Most people leave their umbrellas in the cloakroom.’

‘Precisely.’

I glanced around again. I saw no man with an umbrella. A small trickle of worry began to take hold of me, coupled with impatience. ‘May I suggest a coffee?’

‘Follow me, Watson,’ he said, ‘and we shall lose the fellow.’ He took off at a brisk walk.

‘Ridiculous,’ I muttered, hurrying to follow. What could be the point of this mysterious game?

Ten minutes later, and after a breathless trot through a maze of galleries and rooms large and small on a route which seemed to be well known to my companion, Holmes decided we had succeeded in losing our shadow.

‘Good,’ I remarked. ‘Perhaps our follower has joined one of the tour groups of American ladies and will find himself a suitable wife, enabling him to give up a life of crime.’

Holmes ignored me and presently we came to a large, public staircase in front of a remarkable statue. It was the headless form of a woman, striding intemperately forth, wings spread behind her.

‘Behold the Winged Victory of Samothrace, or Nike,’ Holmes announced. ‘One of the finest examples of Hellenistic art in the world, if not the finest.’

But our fictional follower had grabbed hold of my imagination. ‘They are probably charming him now with their astute comments on the art,’ I said. ‘One of them will capture his fancy. Together, they will move to Philadelphia, opening a small umbrella shop where—’

‘I told you, we’ve lost him,’ snapped my companion.

‘He was never there, Holmes!’ I said, exasperated. But he ignored me, lost in contemplation of the statue.

‘Just look, Watson. Isn’t she magnificent? Notice the vivid stance, the spiral structure, the rendering of wet cloth – perhaps as if at the bow of a ship. The style is from the island of Rhodes, and the sculpture probably commemorates an ancient victory at sea. It is said that the Marseilles Nike I mentioned to you in the train bears a resemblance to her – which would make that statue most coveted indeed!’

He stared at it, rapt, entranced by which feature or idea, I could not say. It was lovely, I suppose. It was certainly dramatic, bordering on the histrionic. She was missing her head. Where was the head? I sighed, suddenly tired.