Keeping the World Away

THE NOISE, THE dirt, the grey gaunt buildings, the filthy front door, the knocker all greasy, the smell in the dark hallway (of cabbage cooking), the broken light, the worn-into-shreds stair-carpet, the missing banisters – and then her room. At the back, overlooking the dustbins. The net curtain a grimy veil which she tore away at once and bundled into a corner, not caring what the landlord would say. A little more light came in, but not much. The dirt on the window panes was both inside and out. Gwen rubbed at it. Interesting. The smears were yellow, like a darkened egg-yolk. Smoke, someone had smoked heavily in this dungeon.

She smiled. Everything looked dingy and dreary, but, for the time being, it was hers. She had come to this room a stranger (only seventeen and away from home for the first time), but she would make it familiar and not be afraid of it. The noise of the trains shunting in and out of Euston was loud, but only the piercing whistles of the guards alarmed her. The noise of the trains themselves, of the wheels on the rails, was a rhythm she could get used to. She would have to. There was no money for a better place and she did not want to go out to St Albans, as Gus at first had done, to stay with their aunt. She wanted to be close to the Slade, able to get there and back with ease every day. Gower Street, she had already established, was a mere ten minutes’ walk away.

A dull walk. No greenery, only pavements and tall houses cutting out the light except on the brightest days. And so many people, hurrying along from Euston Road all the way down to Bloomsbury. She had not expected beauty here, she had known there would be no exhilarating sights to match those of the sea at home, but the grimness of her surroundings was a shock. She had had to hold herself together very firmly, tell herself to wait. What she had come to this part of London for would soon be made known to her and nothing else would matter.

She surveyed her room, hands on hips, and decided to change nothing. The bed would be better turned the other way, but she would leave it. Sitting on its edge, she felt the mattress sag. She must find a board and slip it between the springs and the old mattress. But the linen was clean: it gave off a fresh smell when she sniffed it. There was no mirror in the room, either on the wardrobe door or over the mantel. No wonder – this room did not want to reflect itself in any particular. There were no ornaments either, which was a relief. The surfaces of the chest of drawers and dressing table were bare, not even a cloth to cover the scratched tops. Too much furniture, though, in too small a space. She had to edge sideways to get from the bed to the door. Where was she to wash? There was a washstand with a jug and basin upon it but no water in the jug. Would someone bring it each day, or would she have to fetch it herself?

She unpacked quickly. The narrow wardrobe seemed to receive her clothes reluctantly. There was no rail inside it, only a row of hooks. She had brought four dresses only, and two skirts, and six blouses that she would wear to the Slade. Two pairs of boots, one pair of galoshes. Her stockings and underclothes went into the drawers of the chest, leaving plenty of room. Her nightdress and robe she spread out on the bed. They looked vaguely indecent sprawled there, the white cotton startling against the brown counterpane, too pure for its old face. The problem was her drawing equipment. There was nowhere to put her sketchbooks and charcoals, her rubbers and brushes. Gus had told her not to bring anything but she had disobeyed him. She put them in the long bottom drawer of the chest, and her valise under the bed.

It was late. She had not eaten since she left the Bayswater establishment, Miss Philpot’s, where she had previously stayed, but hunger did not plague her. She was too excited, by the thought of the morning and making her way to the Slade, and beginning, at last. Getting undressed and into bed, after the adventure of finding the water closet down the passage, she lay with her arms behind her head and stared at the wallpaper. Maroon and brown with an inexplicable green that appeared every foot or so. What was the green? She concentrated. The pattern made no sense. She had left the curtains open and the lamps outside, shining in the street above, gave only a murky glow. The green, she decided, was meant to represent stems of flowers, but flowers of a sort she had never seen. It was enough to give anyone nightmares, but she slept well.

Oh, the size of it! Gwen had never been in such a large room, the ceiling so high that the space seemed to diminish her. Not an empty room – in fact it was crowded with busts and statues and easels – but there was a feeling of emptiness that thrilled her. The air was cold, the light harsh. She stood, solemn and hesitant, in the doorway, unsure where she should go. A girl, with long wavy hair, worn loose, turned from her easel and saw her. She stood up and came towards Gwen, smiling, welcoming, her arms outstretched in an extravagant intention of a greeting to follow. Gwen quickly held out a hand to forestall an embrace. The girl laughed, took her hand. She said she was Edna Waugh and that Gwen should come and sit by her. Gus had told her of his sister’s arrival and they were all eager to meet her. Gwen sat, as directed. She had no desire to talk. She was impatient to start, and picked up her charcoal at once. There seemed to be no teacher to tell her what she should do, so she did as Edna was doing and drew what was in front of her. Everyone began in the Antiques room, men and women. She had her box of charcoals with her, and her sheets of papier Ingres, and a chunk of bread, as instructed. She set herself to toil over the casts of Greek, Roman and Renaissance heads, and waited to be corrected.

Correction did not come that day. Henry Tonks, the teacher, duly arrived but he was much engaged with others in the vast room and beyond a polite greeting to his new student said nothing, though he stood and watched her for a moment. This did not make her as nervous as she had anticipated. She knew, from Gus, who had been through this a year ago, what Tonks expected: his students’ taste must be formed by studying sculpture before they proceeded to Life drawing. Simply to be sitting in this room drawing all day was a privilege, and one she did not need to be told to value, so there were no complaints from her about what others, sighing over the repetitive drawing, considered tedious. Five o’clock came too early for her, and she was last to leave, a sheaf of drawings in her folder but none of them, in her own estimation, good enough. Tomorrow she would try harder, and the day after that harder still, and she would not be deflected from her purpose.

There were those who wished to deflect her, though. Sirens everywhere, singing of the pleasures of gathering in cafés and going to boxes at the theatre and meeting in each other’s homes. Temptations all around, to which Gus was always ready to succumb. She was not sure that she could resist entirely, or that she should.

‘Come home with me,’ Ida said, ‘it isn’t far.’ They crossed Tottenham Court Road, Ida talking all the while and Gwen with head bent, not looking at her new friend but listening intently, and carried on along Goodge Street – she was noting the names, memorising them – and so into Wigmore Street, where Ida lived. The house was intimidatingly tall. It spoke of grandeur and wealth to Gwen but, once through the front door, that impression disappeared. The hall was cluttered with what seemed to be bales of material, and large sealed cardboard boxes. But Ida was leading the way up the stairs, rushing up them, beckoning Gwen to follow, and laughingly repeating, ‘Not far now, not far now.’ On the fourth floor, she flung open a door and said, ‘Here we are, now sit, do, catch your breath.’ Gwen had no need to, she was not out of breath, but she sat on the nearest chair to the door, an odd, straight-backed chair painted gold.

She caught the room’s life instantly. Crowded, friendly, dimly lit, full of colour and texture, messy, somewhat shabby, worn and faded fabrics everywhere. Ida brought tea, and behind her came a fat, soft-looking woman moving slowly, like a ball rolling across the floor. ‘My mother,’ Ida said, and, to her mother, ‘Gus’s sister.’ Gwen thought she saw Mrs Nettleship’s eyes harden. ‘His sister,’ Mrs Nettleship said. ‘I see.’ It was not an approving comment. Bells rang somewhere in the house, and Mrs Nettleship sighed and said she must go, she was needed. As she left the room, a girl came running in. ‘Ethel,’ Ida said, ‘this is Gwen, Gus’s sister.’ Ethel smiled and was friendly, offering to bring more tea, but Gwen felt vaguely insulted. She did not want to go through her new life as Gus’s sister. She was herself, people must see that.

Leaving the Nettleship household an hour later, she felt relieved, and then immediately guilty. The Nettleship girls were charming and had exerted themselves to make her feel wanted and at home. But that was where the problem lay. No. 58 Wigmore Street was a home. It breathed ‘home’, though in fact, as she had already learned, it was three-quarters a place of work, with Mrs Nettleship running a dressmaking business on two floors and Mr Nettleship painting on another. But there was a closeness and comfort that had been entirely lacking in Tenby. Walking back to Euston Square, Gwen wondered if her disturbed feelings while she was with the Nettleships were to do with envy. Did she want what Ida had?

‘Let us have lunch,’ Edna said. She had found Gwen wandering down a corridor in the Slade, seeming lost. Gwen did not want lunch, she never ate lunch, she had no money for lunch, but she went with the irresistible Edna, pausing only to put on her hat. ‘Your hat!’ Edna said. Was she laughing? ‘Oh yes,’ Edna said, ‘wear your pretty hat and I will wear mine, though I was not thinking of a lunch where hats are needed. We will look very smart, very proper, nobody at Bella’s will recognise me.’ There was a joke somewhere, Gwen knew. Bella’s was a café in Charlotte Street, a tiny place squashed between two other grander restaurants. There were four small circular tables and round each table four stools upon which the clientele could perch (uncomfortably). Gwen saw that the two young men already seated in the café could not take their eyes off Edna. She was not surprised. Edna was lovely, she radiated brightness, as though sparks were coming off her hair and clothes. But she was not flirtatious or frivolous. Gwen wanted to tell these ogling men that Edna was a serious student of art and that they must not mistake her prettiness for a coquette’s. She knew no one would doubt her own seriousness. Everything about her spoke of it – her dark, restrained clothing, her solemn expression, her aloof, detached demeanour. But there again they would be wrong. Her mind raced with millions of violent and spectacular thoughts and ideas, and in the centre of herself she stored a passion which might terrify people if they suspected it. It lay coiled inside, powerful, making the occasional twist and thrust through her veins to remind her that it was there, waiting, but still dormant. Edna bought her coffee, and a boiled egg, and toast, and invited her to come home with her, to St Albans, at the weekend.

It was Grilda who asked her, which was strange because she had been thinking of asking Grilda, and not Ida or Edna. Grilda, whose real name was Maude, seemed the most like her. She flitted in and out of rooms, never quite settled, and this had made Gwen notice her. She drew well. Gwen had watched her in the Antiques room and had seen how careful she was, how she took pains to understand the anatomy of a head or body. Now that at last they had progressed to the Life room Grilda showed the same scrupulous attention to detail.

They had not exactly become intimate friends, but that was another mark in Grilda’s favour. She moved among the young women students easily, included in their gatherings, but she was not close to any particular girl, she did not pair off with any of them. Gwen had hardly spoken to her. They sat next to each other in the Life class and it was not till almost five o’clock in the afternoon, and time to pack up, that Grilda asked her, in an offhand way, making nothing of her request, whether she would serve as a model for her. Gwen nodded, giving the suggestion no thought. She wanted someone to model for her, too, but had delayed asking anyone because she did not think she could draw them in her room and she had no other place to take them. Grilda, she heard, had two rooms, which were spacious and attractive. Gwen had already thought of offering herself as a model, hoping that the modelling could take place at Grilda’s and the arrangement would become mutual.

But Grilda asked first. That evening, Gwen went home with her, neither of them speaking. Grilda was tall, with long arms and legs, and a chest Gwen assumed flat until she saw her naked and realised that Grilda hid her breasts. There was no embarrassment on either side. As soon as they were in her rooms and the curtains had been drawn, and the fire lit, Grilda sat down with her sketchbook on her knee and said, ‘There, I think, to the right of the fire, near the lamp.’ Gwen undressed rapidly, draping her clothes neatly over the back of a chair. She had not been told how to pose so she sat as the model they had been drawing that day had sat, knees together, hands resting on them, head slightly raised. The room was not yet warm and her nipples were erect. Grilda drew in silence, studying her more than sketching. There was a jug of lilies on the round table near which Grilda sat, waxy white flowers with orange stamens. Their scent filled the room and made Gwen feel slightly nauseous.

‘Thank you,’ Grilda said, closing her sketchbook. Gwen did not ask to see her drawings. She hesitated, wanting Grilda to offer to pose for her. It was her room, it might seem impertinent to ask. ‘This light is bad,’ Grilda said, ‘we should wait until the summer.’ And then, at last, ‘Are you rushing? Do you want to draw me?’ She took Gwen’s place, throwing her clothes on the floor, but her pose was different. She perched on the very edge of the chair, arms behind her back, legs stretched out. Gwen did not like this pose but there was an impatience about Grilda which made her reluctant to say anything. She drew badly, unable to capture the quality of Grilda’s awkwardness. Her body split into two distinct halves, the torso rounded and in proportion, the limbs almost jagged and too long, too heavy. She didn’t look at Grilda’s face at all, leaving it blank.

The evening was not a success.

She allowed herself to be taken, just sometimes, to one of the Tottenham Court Road cafés. Ida pleaded with her to come, at the end of the day, and it was hard to resist Ida. But when she went, the first time, Ida had company with her. ‘This is Ursula,’ she said, ‘back from Paris, fancy!’ Ursula was elegant and rather beautiful, and Gwen was drawn to her at once, knowing that this was the girl Gus had been infatuated with in his first year. Ursula did not mention Gus. She talked of Paris and Gwen listened carefully. Did Ursula have money, to have been able to afford this visit, she wondered. Ursula was quiet beside the animated, talkative Ida, but Gwen read into her reserve a sensitivity which she felt might match her own. She needed a friend and it could not be Ida, or not in the way she wanted, much though she liked her. Ursula, she thought, might be the one. She would see.

She wrote to Winifred often, but could not seem to catch in words what she could catch in drawings and in the end, as writing became ever more stilted and laborious, she resorted to sending sketches upon the back of which she scribbled other information. She drew her fellow student Ambrose McEvoy with his flat, straight black hair, his monocle, his immaculate clothes, and on the back of her drawing she wrote that his voice was strange, it had a cracked sound, and that she was learning a great deal from him about building up colour in painting and how to emphasise light and dark. This did not tell the whole story, of course, but she lacked the language to do that. A tiny trickle of feeling had been cautiously running through her from that deep hidden well she knew was there, but she was afraid of its turning into a torrent, and of being engulfed by it before she was ready. So she dammed it up and set her face against it. There was so much to learn and nothing must get in the way. She knew she was born to love, but not when or whom. There was safety in numbers and she kept to them for the most part. She did not care for groups, but within a group, she felt secure.

Winifred was coming. Their father had agreed that she might come to London and study music. She was to live with Gwen and Gus and another friend, Grace, in Fitzroy Street. It had been kept from their father that the house, No. 21, had once been a brothel, and that the woman who owned it was an extraordinary character of whom he would not have approved. Gwen had not yet met Mrs Everett, but she had seen her, dressed in her widow’s weeds and men’s boots, and carrying a large bag in which were rumoured to repose a Bible, a dagger, a saucepan and a loaf of bread. One of the students at the Slade, William Orpen, who lived in the basement of her house, had been to a session of what she called her ‘Sunday School’, where religious songs were sung and there was much clapping and swaying in time. William found it hilarious, and so did Gus when he was taken along, but Gwen shuddered. She knew her father would be furious.

She did not know how it would be, the four of them living together, but the financial and other advantages were too obvious to overlook. The lack of space and light at Euston Square meant she could not work there – and she had always known that in her second year she must move. For a while, she shared with Gus when he moved to Montague Place, but this was not a success. They needed someone between them who could keep them apart but also connect them. Winifred was that person, their own sister, intimately acquainted with both of them but like neither of them. She would provide the balance and, being joined by Grace, the burden would not become too great.

She arrived in January, on a bitterly cold day. It had snowed the night before and the blackened buildings of Fitzroy Street had been prettified. Gwen had bought flowers to welcome her, at great expense, six Christmas roses which she stuck in a green glass carafe and put on the washstand in Winifred’s room. They’d given Winifred the room overlooking the street, the best room, though this was not as generous as it seemed since she and Gus both preferred the back rooms where the light was stronger and from the north. Grace was to have the smaller front room, connected by a door to Winifred’s. The rooms gave the impression of being larger than they were (but also, it was true, colder). Mrs Everett did not care what was done to them and so Gwen and Gus had rearranged things considerably and thrown lengths of old velvet, purchased cheaply in a street market, over any especially hideous item. Winifred and Grace were charmed.

In her own room, Gwen had rolled the carpet up and pushed it under the window, leaving the floorboards bare. She liked the feel of them on her feet. There was space for her easel, and she could pretend this was her studio and not her bedroom. But this had a curious result. By placing her easel and her paints, and all that went with them, so prominently, she did something to the room which made her uneasy. The bed was still there, the other pieces of furniture were still prominent, and she felt threatened by them, she wanted to be rid of them. They had no place in an artist’s room; they did not fit.

Winifred was admired by the art students who came to Fitzroy Street but she made no attachments. Gwen watched her being watched, and wondered at her lack of response. It was not, she thought, the same kind of withholding which she employed herself. Winifred was not suppressing passion. She was simply not interested in any of the students. Rather they mystified her with their flamboyance and noise, their apparent lack of seriousness. She was mistaken, of course. Gwen knew how deadly serious they all were about art if not life, but her sister could not discern their strength of purpose. She saw only the drinking, the smoking, the laughter and fooling about and the disregard for convention. It puzzled her that Gwen belonged to this crowd, that she did not spurn it but appeared as involved as Gus in all its activities. She wished sometimes that she could see them all at work in their precious Slade School of Art. It was like a secret society to which they all belonged. Gwen, she decided, was a reluctant member, and not as happy as Winifred had expected to find her.

There were sudden storms of tears which were bewildering. Winifred would come back in the evening to Fitzroy Street and find Gwen prostrate on her bed, fists clenched, body rigid in some kind of sustained grief too awful to speak of. Once, the name Ambrose McEvoy was mentioned when Winifred asked what was the matter, but no explanation followed the muffled reference to him. It was all rather frightening.

Climbing the steps of the National Gallery made Gwen feel important. She was not a tourist, she was not an ignoramus, she had not come merely to gape. This was her work. Tonks had had no need to urge her to make this gallery her second home, to visit it often and learn from all it held. The very stones of the building felt sacred to her and when she was settled in front of a painting that she had come to study, she lost herself completely for hours. She sat on her folding stool perfectly composed, staring, seeking the internal structure of one picture before her. She looked for the muscles beneath the sleeves, the bones beneath the skin and the sinews of the neck, the veins in the eye. Then she opened her sketchbook and copied the line, leaving aside all colour and texture.

She had finished with Gabriel Metsu’s A Woman Seated at a Table and a Man Tuning a Violin. Today she had come to look at Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait, aged thirty-four. Young, but fourteen years older than she herself was now. She had fourteen years to reach Rembrandt’s standard, a thought which made her shiver. She wished he had looked straight at himself but his gaze was slightly off-centre. Why? How? Where was his mirror? And was he left-handed? If not, why was his right hand folded across his body? He was leaning on something, a banister perhaps, or a shelf. The clothes, the hat, were striking, but she was more interested in the face, especially the chin and the sparse growth of hair around it. Her own chin made her despair. Gus hid his chin, which like hers receded slightly, with his beard, and she almost wished that she could do the same. Always, she drew herself full-face, and then the chin did not bother her as much. Full-face and, increasingly, one hand on her hip. She liked the feeling this gave her, of defiance, even arrogance. She hoped it suggested that she was in control and able to face herself without shame. It was a lie, but she wanted it to be a successful lie, one that would not be questioned.

Last night, they had all gone to the Café Royal, she and Gus, and Ida and Ambrose and Grilda. (She would rather have been with Ursula, but Ursula had gone home to her father’s vicarage in Essex.) They had eaten sandwiches and drunk lager, and watched what was going on around them though none of them sketched. Winifred would not go with them; she had said she would be out of place and feel uncomfortable, and this had made Gwen realise that she herself felt perfectly at ease. To be part of a group, a gang, was not a situation she had either wanted or anticipated – surely, she was a solitary being, more solitary than her sister. It was Gus who needed people around him and liked to be at the centre of activity, not she. And yet there she had been, as she now often was, sitting with friends, drinking and eating and talking, quite comfortable. She had caught sight of herself in a huge mirror fixed along the wall opposite and she could not credit it was herself. Ida on one side, Ambrose on the other, squashed up together on the banquette, smoke wreathing their heads and the light from candles casting their faces into shadow. She looked so small and demure beside Ida who was dressed in crimson and wore a flower Gus had given her in her hair. Nondescript, that was the word that had come to her as she looked at herself. Dark dress, plain hairstyle, pale unpainted face. Only her necklace sparkled, her mother’s diamonds brilliant against her black velvet dress. She hadn’t known whether she should wear them or not: they looked out of place on her and might draw attention in a way she did not want. But wear them she did.

It was the beer, she supposed, but towards the end of last evening she had become convinced that Ambrose was singling her out for meaningful attention. So often he evaded her eyes but then suddenly he looked into them and his expression changed. It was exhilarating and yet tantalising. She wanted him to take her hand, or put his arm round her, as Gus had his round Ida. And then she could lay her head on his shoulder and close her eyes and feel him embrace her … But he went no further than a look and it made her want to cry. What did she have to do? Ida needed to do nothing, Gus did it all. And Ambrose had not come back to Fitzroy Street with them afterwards, as he usually did. They had parted in the street. He and Grilda walked in one direction, she and Gus and Ida in the other. She had felt bereft and cold, and once home had flung herself onto her bed and bitten her pillow in fury.

It was all gone now, the anger, the frustration. So long as she was here, in the gallery, in front of Rembrandt she was safe from unseemly emotion. It was people, people who were alive, who caused disturbance in her. What she must do was cut herself off from them, and yet to do so would be perverse. She loved her group, all women artist friends. They had taken her to their hearts and enriched her life immeasurably – what folly to discard them. Men, then. They were the disturbance, even Gus – especially Gus. Look at Edna, only nineteen and about to be married and already her dedication was wavering. Was it, then, to be a choice? Was Ida going to make this choice?

Gwen stared at Rembrandt. She would paint herself and try to bring into her portrait all this seething beneath the surface and with it the determination to save herself.

The summer vacation came and her money did not stretch to staying on in London, so she was obliged to go to Tenby, though she no longer thought of it as home. Agony to take the train back to Tenby, knowing that Ida and another Gwen, Gwen Salmond, were going to Paris where she had never been and longed to go. They were to try to study at the Académie Julien, where Bonnard and Vuillard had studied, and were in a state of excitement so extreme that it came off them like heat. It was quite unbearable. Is this jealousy, raw and ugly? Gwen asked herself, and the answer came quickly enough – yes, she was jealous to the point of angry tears.

Her father had no patience with tears. She knew that. They only irritated him. But tears trickled down her pale cheeks every time she confronted him in his cold, dull house and she could not seem to stop them. ‘Please,’ she said. She would do anything, she would go without anything. For long enough she had existed merely on bread and nuts and a little fruit and could exist on bread and water entirely if only he would finance a brief trip to Paris. Her begging – and she had held her hands out, like a beggar – maddened him. Why, he asked, was she not content? Once, London, the Slade School, had been all she craved. He had given it to her, and now – he was reading Oliver Twist again – she wanted more.

So for three days, Gwen ate nothing. She drank water and weak tea but closed her lips firmly against food. She sat at the table with her father and Winifred and refused all sustenance. On the fourth day, she fainted. It was no ploy. She rose from the table as her father rose, at the end of the meal, and she could not get to the door. Silently, gracefully, she slid to the floor, her skirt crumpling around her, rustling as it settled. Winifred told her how alarmed their father had been, how he had rushed to Gwen’s side and anxiously felt her pulse and – Winifred vowed it was true – kissed her forehead. But she knew nothing of that. When she came to, her father was not in the room. Winifred was kneeling beside her, pressing a damp cloth to her face. ‘You must eat,’ her sister said. ‘You must eat, or you will not be strong enough to travel to Paris.’

She had only enough money to travel third class but this suited her perfectly. It was September and sunny, and being out on deck was exhilarating. No one noticed her, and she was able to lean on the rail and watch the white cliffs fade. Only the thought of arriving in Calais, and having to get herself on the train to Paris, made her apprehensive. No one seemed to understand her French and the speed with which the French themselves spoke meant that she understood little of what they said. But, though she felt nervous, she was also aware of a kind of relief to be so isolated. The hubbub was great, and in the midst of it she was speechless and deaf and turned in on herself, which thrilled her. There was a sense of containment that she had never experienced before, and when, at the Gare du Nord, she was met by Ida she was almost sorry. Ida laughed and talked and hugged her, and that sense of being remote, untouchable, disappeared.

The apartment thrilled her. Three large rooms, empty. Wooden floors, long windows, dazzling light. They did not need beds. Mattresses would do, and cushions were preferable to chairs and stools. Gwen felt giddy with excitement. In no time the three of them had been to the market and bought the very minimum they needed, and then Ida and the other Gwen went off to Boulogne for the weekend leaving her alone. When the door closed, Gwen let out one of her loud exclamations. ‘Oh!’ she cried with delight. Round and round the rooms she paraded, arms flung wide, dancing in the space. At one and the same time she never wanted to leave the apartment but longed to explore Montparnasse. Out she went in the end, not caring if she got lost, and wandered the streets, the boulevards, feeling carefree and eager. When she returned to her room, she began painting immediately, her easel set up near the window so that she could see the scene below.

But street scenes were not what she wanted. The only reason she wanted Ida and Gwen Salmond to return was so that they could pose for her, so that she could attempt an interior with figures in it. They were obliging when they arrived, understanding her feverish impatience. The other Gwen donned a white muslin dress and Ida a flounced skirt with a pink shawl draped round her upper body, and she posed them standing together, Gwen reading a book, Ida peering at it over her shoulder. Though it was not the figures she had difficulty with – the composition was simple – but the room around them. She struggled to capture the spirit of the room but felt it slipping from her. The eye was drawn to the window in the background but tripped up on its way there by the fireplace and a picture framed on the wall above it. And the plaster rose in the ceiling. There was something not right. She needed a teacher. The teacher she wanted was Whistler, but his fees, for lessons in his Académie Carmen, were double those of other schools. What was to be done?

She borrowed money. It was against everything her father had preached – neither a borrower nor a lender be – and he would be furious if he found out. But his allowance would not pay for lessons at the Académie Carmen and so she took the money Gwen Salmond offered. The moment she stepped into Whistler’s presence, she was happy. He was small and neat, with curly grey hair; she noted his bright inquisitive eyes and his exquisite hands, which were rarely still. There was a passion about him which appealed to her immediately. He was different from Henry Tonks and his ideals not those of the Slade. Art, he believed, was about poetry, about bringing forth the spirit of things and expressing beauty of every sort – line, form, but most important of all, emotion. Art was about speaking from the soul.

She did not want to return to London and the Slade. Paris was right for her, she decided, it was where she must stay. So she wrote to her father, an impassioned letter, trying to make him understand the vital importance to her of Paris and Whistler and the Académie Carmen. Never had she anticipated that he would come to inspect where she was living – ‘Oh!’ she cried out as she read his letter. The others could not understand her dismay. Her father, they said, could not fail to see how happy she was and how her work had improved. But they did not know him. He was not interested in happiness, only in obedience and decorum. He would find fault even with her appearance. The girls said they would help. If she designed a new dress, they would make it up for her. So she tried to make herself look pretty and girlish, abandoning her usual dark colours and choosing a lustrous blue taffeta material and a style she copied from a painting by Manet, a dress with a full skirt and billowing sleeves and a neck with lace round it that showed some bosom.

The stare he gave her … was chilling. Disgust was in it, and horror. He told her that she looked like a prostitute. She was tempted to ask how he knew but instead snatched a cloak off a peg and swathed herself in it. ‘Is that better?’ she challenged. He turned and walked out of the apartment and she did not follow him. Watching him from the window she saw him march back to his hotel, upright, swinging his cane, not caring that he had insulted her, confident that she would have to come crawling to him for money. But she would not. She would never ask him again for money.

Rather than plead for money from her father she would readily have become what he had accused her of being. To stay in Paris it would be worth becoming a prostitute – if necessary.

How long had it been? On the train, she counted the months – only five, and yet they had stretched and stretched to fill her life. To be leaving Paris now was pitiful, but loans from the other Gwen, and income from modelling, was not enough. She would have to return and learn to paint by herself without expensive lessons. Ida’s company helped, but not enough. Ida was going home to Wigmore Street, but where would she herself go? She did not know. Perhaps Gus would help, not with money – he was as poor as she was – but to find a room.

In fact she found one herself, in Howland Street, round the corner from their old apartment in Fitzroy Street. A basement, dank and ugly, but which suited her mood. The steps down to it were made of iron and her boots clattered upon them unpleasantly. No light, of course. The window looked out onto a wall streaming with damp, its bricks all mossy. She did not bother to take the net curtain down, it would make no difference. She did not bother to unpack either, leaving most things in her two bags and hanging up only her best red blouse. Then she sat, bolt upright, on the bed and tried to think. How was she to return to Paris? It seemed impossible. Gus was to have an exhibition of his paintings at the Carfax Gallery and hoped to sell them, which he probably would. Could she earn money to get back to Paris, by doing the same? The idea was absurd. She had nothing to exhibit. She knew no gallery owners.

In Tenby, before she went to Paris, she had worked on a self-portrait in oils that she thought might have a future. It was, for her, quite a large canvas, twenty-four inches by fourteen, oblong in shape, and she had laboured over it, staring so fixedly into the wardrobe mirror between brushstrokes that she had felt disembodied – the woman staring arrogantly back was not she but some other demanding taskmaster of whom she was a little afraid. She had left this unfinished painting in her father’s house, and did not wish to go there to complete it and bring it to London. What, after all, would she do with it? Show it to Gus, see if he had any ideas? He always showed interest in her work and had already expressed dismay that in this basement she could not paint. He’d told her she must get away, into the air, into the light. He himself would go mad confined to such a dungeon.

In the spring, he took her away himself. Arriving one afternoon to find her crouched beside her grimy window sketching a stray cat which had perched on the sill, he said she must come with him to Dorset and walk among the primroses and swim in the sea and restore her spirits. The invitation to stay in a boarding house in Swanage had come from their old landlady, Mrs Everett. So she went, wishing only that one of her women friends could go with her (though not voicing this to Gus). It was, as he’d promised, a lovely, wild place and she revelled in the freedom to walk and swim and be outside all the time but the odd thing was that, though she relished the solitude and appreciated the beauty of the landscape, it did not make her want to paint. She did no work while Gus sketched madly. Instead, thoughts of people and rooms, and people in rooms, haunted her. It was as though the wide open skies of Dorset and the vast stretch of the sea inhibited instead of releasing her – she wanted to draw herself in, concentrate on the essence of someone or something containable. She became restless and jumpy, and Gus became irritated.

But he was kind to her. It was his friend who, back in London, let them have his house in Kensington, a whole cottage to herself. She left her basement and once in the cottage began to work again, getting Winifred to bring her self-portrait from Tenby. It was the hand she had to work on, the way it rested on her hip in that deliberate way, the hand and the belt, cinching her waist tightly. It was finished before Gus’s friend returned, and she moved again, this time to Gower Street, on her own, but not for long. Gus was going to France and asked if she would go with him, and because she could not resist the lure of France, anywhere in France, she agreed. There was another factor that lured her. Ambrose was to join them at Le Puy-en-Velay in the Auvergne where they were to stay with another friend, Michel Salaman. Surely something would happen between them? Her yearning had gone on so long now and nothing had come of it.

They began well, travelling to Le Puy together, Ambrose delighted to be leaving London and telling her without embarrassment that Michel had sent him a cheque to pay for his fare. They were united in their poverty and their inability, it seemed, to earn money. But once they reached Le Puy, where Gus awaited them as well as Michel, the ease between them began to disappear. Ambrose wanted to be with Gus more than with her. They were absinthe friends, sitting in cafés listening to an alluring girl singing songs. Gwen was left alone, her arms wrapped round herself, pacing the floor until they returned. When they did, they were most often drunk, but not drunk enough not to want to go on drinking. Ambrose drank even more than Gus did, and then fell asleep and stayed asleep until the middle of the next day. Then, he’d seem a little ashamed, and go off with her picking flowers, though hardly talking. Instead, she talked. She overcame her reticence and she told him of all the feeling that raged inside her and for which she could find no outlet. ‘I am born to love,’ she said, and watched him closely. He turned away.

Her tears were wearying. They exhausted her and yet she could not stem them. ‘Gwen!’ Gus said, and sighed. He never asked her what she was crying about. He knew, and could do nothing about it. There he was, with all his girlfriends and his whores, not for one moment having to control his passion. And there she was, just as passionate, driven mad with frustration. It was not only the sexual adventures she envied but the general unfettered nature of his life. She felt imprisoned and no one, least of all Ambrose, would turn the key and let her out.

The fog was thick and yellow, swirling round the blackened bricks of St Pancras Register Office as Gus and Ida came out, married. It was a secret marriage. Back in Wigmore Street, Ida’s unsuspecting parents had yet to be told and she both shivered and laughed at the thought. It was, Gwen reflected, how she herself would wish to marry, should the occasion ever arise (though there was no suggestion that it might). No pomp, no ceremony, simply a quiet pledging of themselves to each other in the eyes of the law. The eyes of the law that day of 12 January 1901, were set in the narrow face of a thin, weasly man, eyes so very small it was difficult to ascertain their colour. Ida and Gus looked all the more beautiful in contrast to him.

Ida would probably never paint again to any effect. Did it matter? Gwen could not decide. She had never felt that Ida burned with ambition, or that within her was a raging urge to express herself through art. Gus had the need, and marriage and fatherhood would not stop his art. But about herself Gwen saw difficulties. She could not say that she did not want love in her life, and intimacy with the one she loved, but that was not the same as wanting to be a wife and mother. She hoped she would be brave, and take, and give, the love without allowing herself to be bound in any way. It ought, surely, to be possible. She intended that it should be.

Ambrose was engaged. Two months after they returned from Le Puy, he had become engaged to Mary Edwards, nine years older than himself, a woman she did not know and was sure Ambrose hardly knew. It was inexplicable, cruel. Gwen gathered from Gus that Mary had declared her love to Ambrose and that he had immediately succumbed. Well, she, Gwen, had declared her love for him, had she not? And he had not succumbed. He had turned away, run away, and now she had to tell herself she was better off without him. But the hurt was there, raw and bitter inside her, and she had to work hard to conceal it. Looking at herself in mirrors, using herself more and more as a model, she had seen the sore place seeping through her flesh, staining her skin, tightening the muscles of her face. She tried not to paint this but increasingly her brush told the tale.

Thankfully, her self-portrait, begun in Tenby, had preceded the damage and did not reveal her suffering. She had completed it before the news of Ambrose’s engagement and was able to exhibit it at the New English Art Club, the first painting she had ever publicly exhibited, confident that the impression it gave was the one she had striven for. She had wanted to show herself as calm and collected, aware of her own strength, a little superior and extremely serious. This was to be a portrait of a woman who was no adornment of the fair sex but a member of a new generation that intended its work to be important. There was no proof in the picture that she was an artist – no paintbrushes or palette, such as Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun had used, or a hand on a painting beside her, as in Mary Beale’s self-portrait. The viewer did not need to know she was an artist. It was enough that her skill should be appreciated. Sometimes, she felt she was a mere shadow of a person. Her portrait reassured her that she was not.

She was an aunt. A boy, David, born 6 January, in Liverpool of all places, where Gus was holding a temporary post at the art school. Gus thought Liverpool ‘gorgeous’, but when Gwen arrived there to see her nephew, she could not share his opinion, not that she saw much of the city, being too occupied with the baby, who truly was gorgeous. He was said to look like her, a nonsense of course. She studied him for hours, stripping off his coverings and examining him in minute detail. Was he not a work of art? She marvelled at his structure, the perfection of his limbs and the contours of his skull. Through her mind went all the paintings of babies she had seen and not one of them, not even by Michelangelo or Raphael, had captured this. It was a shame to cover him up at all, but she did, and took him out in his big black pram to get the air. She walked miles, pushing forcefully, stopping now and again to rest in doorways, squatting down on the steps and rocking the pram when the baby whimpered.

Ida looked beautiful nursing him. Gus drew and drew her, lightning quick sketches, but Gwen merely looked, noting the swell of the breasts lessening as the baby sucked, and the way his nose was flattened against them. She stored the images in her head and thought one day she might make use of them, but not now. Now, she was finishing another and much better self-portrait and it had drained her. She needed this break, it gave her time to stand back and gain some objectivity before she returned to work. It was strange, she could not help thinking, that seeing Ida’s child made her own work more important, not less so. She did not look at their baby and pine for one of her own, nor did the baby make her work seem irrelevant. On the contrary, he made it seem vital. She herself was not going to create a baby. All her creative talents had to go into her painting, all her feelings and emotions, all her ideas and plans, all her hopes and fears, all the turmoil within her, everything that was precious.

She could see now how life, her life, had turned out.

Another baby, another boy, Caspar, born in March 1903, barely fifteen months after David. This time, Gwen saw the baby at once, living as she was in Howland Street, with Ida and Gus back in Fitzroy Street. A newborn infant, she suddenly realised, was more alarmingly fragile than beautiful and she contemplated him with awe, wondering how he could survive and grow into the sturdy toddler David had become. Ida was distracted and not nearly as glowing with motherhood. Her radiance was dimmed and Gwen felt concern for her. Was she eating enough, was she sleeping? Ida laughed at both questions. She ate when she could and she snatched sleep when she could. All was chaos in her household, and Gus nowhere to be seen. Mrs Nettleship was outraged at her son-in-law’s neglect of her daughter, but Ida defended him. She did not want him to be bored. Let him go to the Café Royal, let him mix with his friends. He had a new friend, she told Gwen. He was painting her. It was so convenient since this new friend and model lived in the basement of a house in their street.

Gwen met her coming into the house. She had seen her somewhere before, at a party, given by an artist friend of Gus’s. She stopped, stood stock-still, and said, ‘Dorelia?’ Dorelia McNeill, only twenty-two, sultry and beautiful, with high, prominent cheekbones, slanting eyes and an air of detachment about her.

No wonder Gus was painting her. Who could resist?