17
Eliza raised the subject with Melville the very next day. He and Caroline arrived at the agreed hour—two o’clock in the afternoon, today, for the best light—and while the ladies had cloistered themselves in the drawing room (“je te trouve belle” floating in through the open door) Melville had cast himself down upon the sofa, as normal. The canvas that stood upon the easel was coated in a mix of yellow ochre and white lead, but otherwise marked only by a charcoaled outline of Melville’s form, and the first assays of color upon his face and torso. Eliza twisted her hands in her skirts. If he did not think the exhibition a good idea—if he did not agree, if he scoffed or thought her deluded—then Eliza would not do it. She took a deep breath, sat down beside Melville and opened her mouth . . .
“Somerset is gone, then,” Melville said.
“Oh—yes,” Eliza said. “I have something I should like to discuss . . .”
“Gallant of him to escort you home from the concert,” Melville observed. “He returned looking mightily pleased with himself.”
“Did he?” Eliza said, as if she did not care.
“I thought he might have proposed,” Melville admitted.
Eliza inhaled sharply, choking back a shrill denial that would give her away immediately.
“You are outrageous,” she managed calmly. “You may see for yourself that my ring finger is bare.”
She waggled her hand at him and Melville took it in his own, pretending to hold it to the light, examining it this way and that as if a betrothal ring might be hidden in plain sight.
Eliza started a little, for that had not been her intention, and she was not wearing gloves—she never did, while painting—and neither was he: it felt shockingly intimate. His skin was warm and smooth, save for the calluses she felt on his fingers—from holding a pen, or riding a horse without gloves, she could only guess.
“So it is,” Melville agreed at last. “And it is all the prettier for it.”
He took a moment more to let go, and Eliza withdrew her hand, feeling a little discombobulated.
“Will you write to him while he is away?” Melville asked, still in that light, conversational way.
“If an occasion calls for it, I should think so,” Eliza said carefully. “Letters of . . . business.”
“I thought they might rather be letters of love.”
Eliza inhaled sharply and willed herself not to blush.
“You thought incorrectly,” she said.
“A shame,” Melville said. “A good love letter is worth its weight in gold.”
As Eliza could attest . . . But now was not the moment to dwell.
“I hear you receive piles of them from readers,” Eliza said, trying to steer the conversation away from Somerset. “Is that true?”
“Not quite piles—perhaps rather a small heap,” Melville said. “Have you ever written to me?”
“I have not!” Eliza said indignantly.
“You can tell me,” he said. “I shan’t make fun.”
“You absolutely would—and I have not! I would never.”
“Your horror is unwarranted,” Melville protested. “Some of the letters are quite affecting: one lady created such an evocative idea of our life together, that I was on the point of agreeing to it until Caro pointed out the billet had come from Coldbath Fields Prison.”
“You are not serious,” Eliza protested.
“I am!” he said, grinning. “To this day I feel a little wistful about dear Mary, for she may well have been the great love of my life. But when I would not send her a lock of my hair, she vowed to murder me and I deduced this indicated the end of our affair.”
“A wise deduction,” Eliza said, laughing.
“Why thank you,” Melville said.
There was a discreet knock upon the door, and Perkins entered with a tray.
“Marvelous,” Melville said. Eliza took a moment to remarshal her thoughts.
“Did you attend Mr. Berwick’s exhibition yesterday?” she asked.
“I did. And to think you would have had him paint my portrait. What that man would have done to my legs!”
“You do not yet know what I may do to your legs,” Eliza said, biting back a smile.
“I know you are the better artist,” Melville said.
There was not an ounce of doubt in his voice and hearing it emboldened Eliza.
“It made me wonder if I might submit your portrait to the exhibition,” she said in a rush. “Only if you approve, of course!”
Melville tilted his head consideringly.
“It may invite spectacle,” Eliza continued hurriedly, “though if I submit anonymously, the secret should be kept.”
“A famous notion,” Melville said. “I wonder I did not think of it.”
He agreed with such ease—no question or hesitation—that Eliza was almost unnerved.
“It could be a fruitless endeavor,” she said, feeling a strange need to clarify matters. “Selection may be more rigorous this year.”
“Which might weed out Mr. Berwick,” Melville said. “But you will certainly pass muster.”
“If such a feat is even possible in so short a time,” Eliza said reflexively.
The process for submission to the Summer Exhibition was the same in ’19 as it had been in Eliza’s grandfather’s day: non-members of the Royal Academy could submit their work to a committee of academy council members, in a rigorous five-day selection process in early April. Eliza would have less than four weeks to complete a task that might ordinarily take four months.
“Why are you trying to convince me out of it?” Melville asked. “I should think you perfectly able to meet such challenges.”
Rarely had Eliza encountered such unassailable belief in her abilities. Margaret’s support, of course, approached the evangelical—but it felt profoundly different coming from Melville. Margaret had known Eliza her whole life, after all; it was positively her duty to support Eliza and Eliza her. But Melville had no such motive and nor did he offer praise blindly, as his frequent castigation of Mr. Berwick proved. His belief existed purely because he considered her deserving of it . . . and Eliza felt herself unfurl toward the light he offered.
“Do you wish to enter?” Melville asked, with a quizzical smile.
“Yes,” Eliza said, finally allowing herself to feel the rush of excitement that had been building all morning. “I do.”
“Then . . .” He spread his arms invitingly. “We have work to do, do we not?”
And that very day, with pale morning light streaming through the window, a fire dancing in the grate, the sound of Margaret’s bright laughter filtering across the hallway and a paintbrush in her hand, they began in earnest.
Eliza had always painted quickly—one had to, when one was always on the point of interruption—but in the coming days she moved with a swift purpose, unhesitatingly, as if Melville’s confidence in her was catching. She positioned Melville exactly as she wanted him—facing the window at an angle, for the best light, and began the next layer of the painting, intent and determined. She deliberated over the exact shades upon her palette, returning to Mr. Fasana’s shop to consult him upon new mixes, electing to use as many with linseed oil bases as possible, for the quickest drying time.
Working to a new deadline, Melville had to lend Eliza far more of his time, and he did so without complaint. Indeed, within a se’nnight of Melville’s agreeing to the exhibition, it seemed that she and Margaret were rarely without the Melvilles’ company, so frequently did they encounter one another in Meyler’s library (Lady Caroline and Melville loudly denigrating the poets they did not like upon the shelves), attend the same musical performances (Melville whispering such a wildly inaccurate translation of the opera that Eliza had to press a fist against her mouth to keep from laughing) and drive together in Lady Caroline’s phaeton (for Eliza’s lessons continued at pace).
It was enough, truly, to make Eliza feel a little guilty.
“I am grateful you are sparing so much of your time,” Eliza told Melville the following Thursday, palette balanced in one hand, brush in the other. After weeks of working with oil now, Eliza’s paintwork was becoming freer—in the cursive sweeps of her loaded brush, she could feel her body, her arm, her grip upon the brush were all looser. “I do hope we are not taking you away from your writing desk?”
“Fret not,” Melville said. “I always write in the early hours and I am grateful, indeed, that your driving lessons take Caro away before breakfast, for it leaves the house so blissfully quiet. Long may it continue, I say.”
“She may well lose patience with me soon,” Eliza warned him.
“You are not a nonpareil yet?”
“Hardly,” Eliza said. “I should not think I could drive as she does, if I spent years practicing. Has she always been so absolutely fearless?”
“Caroline?” he said. “About horses, yes, it is how we were raised. My parents were almost as mad for horses as they were for each other.”
Eliza was startled, as always, by the frank and easy way Melville could speak of such warm subjects.
“They married for love, didn’t they?” she asked. She was familiar with the story, of course, but Eliza knew better than to trust a fourth- or fifth-hand account of gossip from before she was born.
“At first sight, if my mother is to be believed,” Melville said, his eyes resting warmly upon Eliza’s. “My father visited Hyderabad in ’85. He was already acquainted with the Company’s Resident there and being the runaway lord gave him glamour enough to be invited to court. Mother never told us quite how they met. She was the youngest daughter of the nawab—the governor—and ought never to have come near him, but I suspect my grandmother helped arrange it.”
“And then they married?” Eliza asked. Melville shook his head.
“Not for two more years; her father had to be convinced, and the Nizam—the ruler of Hyderabad—petitioned too,” Melville said. “And meanwhile, they courted discreetly. They conversed first in Persian, which my father knew a little, before he learned Urdu and she English.”
“It sounds most romantic,” Eliza said.
“It did not come without trials,” Melville said. “Her family objected until the last, and when my grandfather died they had to remove to England—to a disgraced family name, an estate on the point of ruin, and an England absolutely consternated to have its first Indian countess. But we were happy, despite it all.”
“They were affectionate parents?” Eliza asked.
Melville smiled.
“Very much so. They told Caroline and me almost every day how precious we were—although it was a shock indeed to arrive at Eton to find it an opinion not universally shared.”
“They were unkind?” Eliza said.
Melville shrugged.
“It is as you might expect. Roughhousing, name-calling: the ‘piebald’ lord they used to call me, amongst other hugely derivative epithets.”
The lightness in his voice was forced. Eliza might not have noticed the change weeks ago, but she could hear the difference now. She lifted the brush from the canvas, to regard him with her full, careful attention.
“It would have been worse, I am told, if we had remained in India. The British there are increasingly hostile toward persons such as us. I would have been dreadfully out of fashion.”
Melville’s voice was beginning to wear at the edges and Eliza was not surprised when he changed the subject soon after.
“What of your parents? Are they happy?”
“They are well suited, I believe,” Eliza said, considering the matter. “They share in each other’s aims and beliefs, although I have never considered either of them particularly romantic.”
“And are you? Particularly romantic?”
It was another terribly personal question, but given what Melville had just shared it did not feel so very strange to answer.
“As a girl, very much so,” she said. “I scarce wished for anything more than to fall, truly and greatly, in love, independent of duty, circumstance, familial interest.”
“The reality did not meet your expectation?”
“Oh, it did, in every conceivable way,” Eliza said. “It was just that I did not marry him.”
It was the first time she had spoken about her relationship with Somerset, however indirectly, and as if afraid she might clam up at any moment, Melville asked his next question very quickly.
“What made you develop such a partiality for him?”
“Oh,” Eliza smiled even to think of it, “I cannot think when, exactly it began—the moment we met, I suppose. He called me beautiful.”
“And?”
“And? I assure you, this was enough to make me notice him—while you, my lord, may be used to drowning in flattery, for me it is a novelty. And then, once I had started noticing, I could not stop. He always was so honorable, so kind, so conscious of his responsibilities.”
“Responsibility is not a word I usually associate with love,” Melville noted.
“I am not the writer,” Eliza said, self-conscious. “I do not know how to say it prettily. We merely had a great deal of mutual admiration and respect a-and enjoyment of each other’s company . . .”
“I shall do my best with it,” Melville said, patting down his pockets. “The difficulty is going to be finding a rhyme for ‘mutual.’ A half rhyme will have to do—contractual, perhaps? I wish I had a quill to hand.”
Eliza threw a small piece of chalk at him and Melville dodged it with a laugh. It was the sort of behavior that would have been unthinkable, not long ago, but one could not spend as much time together, as Eliza and Melville now were, without growing more comfortable in each other’s presence. And in moments such as this Eliza found herself oddly glad for the circumstances that had required a delay to her and Somerset’s official engagement. It was not just the act of working upon the portrait she would have missed out on—it would have been the company, too. As unlikely as it might once have seemed, she was beginning to count Melville as one of her dearest friends.
Harefield Hall
March 9th ’19
Dear Eliza,
Your letter took a veritable age to arrive and the sight of your handwriting, which has not changed in these ten years, had me breathing easier than I have this week past.
Your commission sounds a charming scheme. When I remember the darling little drawings you used to show me—and I do remember them—I can well believe that another has been similarly enchanted. Shall I guess the painting’s subject or is it to be a surprise? Perhaps a view of Camden Place, or the abbey? I look forward to seeing it regardless—but seeing you, most of all.
I cannot now write more, for I am being called away—expect a longer note from me anon.
Yours ever,
Oliver