He returned to his desk and took up his pen, because an altogether different avenue into these hallowed circles existed. The specifics of his plan were unclear, but his muscles were tense with the purposeful impatience he knew from spotting a winning investment. He would put his money on Miss Jones.
Chapter 4
Ruskin was right: Persephone looked lovely.
The realization struck Hattie not two minutes into her class, and she backed away, her gaze flitting erratically across the painting. The soft scratch of chalk and brushes on canvas and Ruskin’s footsteps among the easels faded into a white roar. How had she not seen it before? Here was Persephone, in the process of being dragged from her flower field into the underworld by a muscular arm around her waist, and while her expression was horrified, it was . . . politely horrified. The dynamic of her body as she twisted away from Hades, god of the underworld, was, at second glance, restrained. This was probably not how one would resist an abduction.
She wiped her damp palms on her apron. Disaster. Without intending to do so, she must have focused on preserving Persephone’s poise throughout her ordeal; now her heroine looked as though she was conscious of her coiffure while fighting her attacker. Where was the passion, the fury, the truth? An Artemisia Gentileschi she was not. In fact, this had to be the most tepid interpretation of the abduction since Walter Crane. . . . At her plaintive whimper, the collective attention of the all male students in the University Galleries shifted onto her with an audible whoosh, and she quickly shrank back behind her canvas. To her right, Lord Skeffington had ceased sketching and was watching her curiously. “Is anything the matter, Miss Greenfield?” he murmured.
Where to begin? The warmth in her cheeks said her face was red as a beetroot. She pasted on a smile. “No. Not at all.”
She dabbed her dry paintbrush aimlessly at a bit of sky, pretending to be immersed. Soon, the attention was drifting away from her. Her distress lingered. Her work, five weeks in the making, was soulless, dead.
It was the kiss’s fault. The kiss.
Three days after the fact, the memory of Mr. Blackstone’s mouth on hers had not faded. On the contrary: during her daydreams and when in bed, she had shamelessly revisited the fleeting contact over and over, and by now it was so thoroughly embellished, it had become a vivid, drawn-out, and voluptuous—rather than shocking—affair. She didn’t really wish to forget it. Several white spots on the topography of her daily life had now been colored in: she could insert the warm pressure of Blackstone’s mouth into all the countless romantic novels she devoured, when before, her understanding of what kissing felt like had been limited to feeling her own lips on the back of her hand. She finally understood what her friends Annabelle and Lucie enjoyed behind closed doors ever since they had paired off with their betrotheds. But she also knew now that being grabbed by an underworld lord elicited shock, disbelief, heat, confusion. She had slapped Blackstone before she could think. None of these base emotions were present in her Persephone. Her painting was ignorant. Now she knew. Blackstone’s kiss had made her see.
She turned to Lord Skeffington. “My lord,” she croaked.
“Miss Greenfield.” He lowered his brush, his expression inquisitive.
“Do you think it is possible to make good art without experience?”
His high brow furrowed with surprise. “Hmm. Are you having trouble with your painting?”
“No, no, it is a general question I ponder.”
“Ah. A matter of philosophy.”
“Of sorts. I wonder: must an artist have personal knowledge about the subject of her art for it to be . . . art?”
Lord Skeffington chuckled. “Thinking grand thoughts before lunch—oh dear.”
His smile briefly edged out her troubles. He was so charming. In the brightly lit room, his fluffy golden hair glowed like a halo around his face. His lips were rosy and delicately drawn—if he were a girl, such a mouth would be described as a rosebud. He was very much how she imagined her favorite Austen character, Mr. Bingley, and it wasn’t a coincidence that she had chosen to work next to him during class.
“Let’s see.” He was tapping his index finger against his chin as he feigned contemplation. “Well, I know that not one painter of classical paintings has ever seen a Greek god in the flesh. Hence, I declare that no, no personal experience is required to create something delightful.”
She hesitated. Did he truly believe the purpose of art was to be delightful? But he looked so pleased with his answer . . . and she could feel the attention of the other students shifting their way again, like ants scurrying toward a fresh carcass. Today, it irritated her. It had taken the young men months to not murmur and stare when she showed up during the lectures. Ruskin’s general drawing class was open to the public and welcomed both men and women without further ado, but a woman properly enrolled in his actual art history lectures? Scandalous. Next she’d want the vote. She did, actually. And a woman with permission to attend the academic drawing courses in the galleries? Shocking, even with her chaperoning aunt stitched to her side. Aunty was presently taking a nap in a specially provided wicker chair, cozy in a shaft of sunlight by the nearest window, and in no position to dole out withering glances.
Hattie caught a glimpse of her Persephone, looking so boring and bored, and her stomach squirmed.
“You see,” she whispered to Lord Skeffington, ignoring the ears straining toward them, “I read an essay by John Dewey a little while ago. He argues that art is art only when it succeeds at creating a shared human experience—a communication, if you will—between the work and the audience. If it doesn’t, it’s just an object.”
His lordship was blinking rapidly; she must have spoken too fast.
“There is a sense of recognition,” she tried again, “between the artist, whose art embodies a universal experience, and the personal experiences of the observer. A moment of strangers’ minds meeting?”
“Dewey, Dewey,” Lord Skeffington said, his expression polite. “The name is familiar—isn’t he American?”
“He is.”
“Ah.” The corners of his mouth turned up. “They usually have funny ideas.”
Funny? To her ears, it had rung true. And with her limited experiences, she might well create something delightful, but how could she create something that was also moving and true? If one’s spirit happened to be born into a female body in the upper classes, the leash was short. The nosy men in this room could draw directly from the rawness of the world if they wished, from ill-reputed or far-flung places she could never go. Acclaimed contemporary female painters existed—Evelyn De Morgan and Marie Stillman came to mind—but they hailed from artistic families or had been allowed to study in Paris. Besides, there was an expectation that women depicted quaint motifs. And while she liked her dresses frilly and her novels swoony, Hattie wanted something different for her art. . . . She wanted. . . . She supposed she foremost wanted.