I’ve probably told you how, from the age of eight, I was at a Swiss boarding school. I’d come home summers, but, along with most of the boys, would spend my other holidays at the school. Every July I’d arrive in Railleuse, a year older and (I’m sure) a year wiser, yet Maman and Papa acted as though no time had passed. Maman would have last summer’s clothes aired in my wardrobe, last summer’s favorite dishes prepared, last summer’s conversations ready to revive. But, of course, I wasn’t the same boy each July. I’d had a year to grow, to learn, to like and to hate, to have my heart broken and then caught up again by the next passion. Though I may not understand the silence and emptiness you wrote about, I do understand the rest. I understand that mute frustration. I understand the feeling that, for a time, the rest of the world stayed still while you alone kept moving towards the future.
Luc
Perthshire
11 October 1911
Dear Luc,
There is a room at Fairbridge that has always been my favorite. Since I was small, I’d go hide in there whenever I was angry. It’s full of curiosities from around the world—shells, fossils, baskets, bowls, feathers, and bones. On all of the walls hang masks—carved, painted, and generally terrifying. I’d sit in the middle of the room with my knees drawn up and wonder what faces those masks used to hide, what tales of exotic lands they told.
I told you that I used to pretend my grandfather was a pirate. I needed an explanation for him to be gone all of the time. But he wasn’t always a pirate in my mind, you know. I used to imagine he was a sea captain, kept far from us by the whims of Neptune. Sometimes I’d imagine that he was a missionary, bringing holy words and warm blankets to the world’s downtrodden pagans. An opera singer like Caruso, an explorer like Scott, a showman like Houdini—anything where celebrity and dedication kept him, regrettably, from his family back in Perthshire.
As a child, I only saw him occasionally. He’d appear at Fairbridge, without warning, and spend an uncomfortable handful of weeks pacing the gardens and generally avoiding any and all conversation. Mother kept up all pretenses of politeness and studied affection, but when he finally left, she complained bitterly. I realize now that she was envious. She had to stay back at home with me, but Grandfather, he had the world to explore. He was the adventurer she couldn’t be.
It’s funny, though, how sometimes our guesses can be closer to the truth. Grandfather may not be a sea captain, but he’s traveled nearly as far. India, Africa, the South Seas. “Chasing languages,” he says. To each place he went, he sent something back to me. All those hints of the world—each mask hanging on the wall, each shell and woven basket, each dream I had about the lands they showed—were from my grandfather. It was his way of staying close to me, even when he was so far away. So much of the world in one room and, Luc, he promises he’ll take me there.
Clare
Lagos, Portugal
1 November 1911
Dear Luc,
As you can see from the heading, we’re in Portugal now. Portugal! And to think, less than a year ago, I’d never been out of Scotland. Now I’ve been to both France and Portugal. I feel so continental.
Grandfather is happy as a lion, jumping here and there across the city after “smatterings of Berber.” That’s what he’s doing, you know, researching a book that he swears will change linguistic scholarship. I don’t know much about “linguistic scholarship,” but it involves him following lost little bits of a Berber dialect, remnants of the Moorish conquest, through the Portuguese. He’s given me a dreadfully dull tome tracing the paths of the Moors. I don’t understand how he can find this at all interesting. Or, indeed, worth anyone’s time. He tried to excite me about our travels, by saying “Us explorers, we have to stay together!” I don’t know why he thinks of me as an explorer. I’m not, at least not yet.
But I don’t have to pay him much mind. I keep to myself and he lets me. He gives me pocket money and, as long as I don’t stray too far from our lodging, I can explore. I eat fish stew and olives. I ride in donkey carts. I wander in and out of churches laid with painted tiles.
This freedom, it’s nervous. I’ve never had so much space to roam. The first few days, I could only see the shadows between the buildings, the stares, the footsteps behind me. So like Paris. But then I learned to navigate the streets. I caught up a few words in Portuguese. And I began to see the spots of sunshine.
Everything is so different here, at least from Scotland. I’m writing this on a stretch of beach, a beach that doesn’t have rocks or icy water or pale-legged men in striped swimming costumes. The sand is all warm and golden and the water is blue-green. The colors remind me of those landscapes you keep hanging in your room, from that one week your father pretended to be an Impressionist. Has your father ever painted here?
Grandfather says that the sun is putting a little color on my cheeks. I say it’s sunburn. He bought me a straw hat, the kind that Portuguese women plait in the shade of the boats. Of course I won’t wear it. Can you imagine a French woman wearing such a thing?
Clare
Mille Mots
Vendredi, le 22 décembre 1911
Dear Clare,
I am at Mille Mots for Christmas and I wish that you were here. It feels like quite the party. Maman has two new kittens and they are in the punch bowl almost as much as Papa is. Both have new things to wear—Maman a glossy dress the color of mistletoe and Papa a peasant shirt embroidered all around with holly berries. The household is so used to their bohemian wear that no one raised an eyebrow when Papa added to his costume a little round cap like they wear in Bethmale. He bought one for each of the staff, women included. They are completely ridiculous, but, at Christmas, everyone will forgive him.
They even relented to invite Uncle Théophile, the only time of year he will spend the money on a train ticket out to Railleuse. He’s always goggle-eyed at the wine and meat being served, but that doesn’t stop him from eating himself into indigestion. Alain and I hiked out into the woods today for the perfect Yule log and greenery for the réveillon table. Marthe is busy making nougat and candied citron and the sweet orange-water cake she only makes this time of year. She has the fattest goose hanging in the pantry, a behemoth with a black feather in his tail. She stuffs him with chestnuts and sausage, and we are driven mad as he roasts all day for our Christmas Eve feast. Marthe’s midnight supper, it makes up for all those months of eating lentils in the café.
You’d adore the réveillon feast (I know your weakness for Marthe’s nougat) and also the family crèche. With Papa’s help, I built the manger with stones and sticks and bits of straw from the Bois de Fee, and the little figures inside, the santons, Maman sculpted those with clay from the riverbank. She used the faces of those in the household, so Joseph has Papa’s beard and there is an angel, a drummer, and a water-carrier, all bearing an uncanny resemblance to me. She’s put her own face on one of the Wise Men. You’ve seen Papa’s work in the hallways and in Mère l’Oyle, but I think you would be quite impressed to see what Maman used to do.
How are you celebrating Christmas in Lagos?
Luc
Lagos, Portugal
18 January 1912
Dear Luc,
You’ve made me ravenous! We always had goose with chestnut stuffing for Christmas, and black bun for Hogmanay. Here it seems to be salt cod and boiled potatoes. I’ve never eaten so much fish in my life as I have since coming to Portugal. But they have at least a dozen kinds of custard, so I will forgive them the fish.
We are staying in a skinny house painted bright green, one that I worry might lean over in the sea wind. Grandfather borrows the landlord’s bicycle and wobbles around the town with a phonograph strapped to the handlebars. He makes recordings on wax cylinders of the bakers, the fishmongers, the little girls with their baskets of clams. Anyone who will talk to him is duly recorded, both on the cylinder and in one of his ubiquitous black notebooks. His notes are mystifying. Though he says they’re marking down not the words but the way they’re said, I can’t make heads or tails of it. Visible Speech indeed.
I meant to ask, has your papa had another book? I passed a bookseller in the market the other day and there was one propped up that looked so like your papa’s style that I was sure it must be his. No illustrator named and I’m not quite sure what it was about, as it was all in Portuguese, but there was a nymph on the front all covered over with seaweed and rainbows and two bear cubs. Do you recognize it? The trees behind looked almost like the lindens at Mille Mots and there was something of your mother in the nymph’s face.
Clare
Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, Paris
Jeudi, le 8 février 1912
Dear Clare,
Papa has had no commissions for Portuguese books, no. Perhaps it was someone else from the School of Art? He had students who went on to illustrate.
To be perfectly honest, he hasn’t been painting much at all lately. Not even drawing. I was at Mille Mots last weekend and Maman was out of sorts. Really, it’s not my fault that the roof is leaking (again) and Papa hasn’t taken a new commission in months. He’s been tutoring a pair of sisters who have their eyes fixed on L’École des Beaux-Arts, now that women are admitted. Maman is scandalized that a proper artist like Claude Crépet has stooped to tutoring.
