And you, Clare, are you drawing? You’ve talked about the beach with the nets stretched over boats, the market with the fishmongers, and the green house, but nothing of the sketches I am sure you must be making of all this. None for me? I’ve never been to Portugal, but I’ve never before wanted to see it more than I do from your eyes.
Luc
Seville, Spain
14 March 1912
Dear Luc,
They say that the streets of Seville smell like oranges. They do. I almost feel like I’m back in the Fairy Woods with you, eating oranges until we had stomachaches. Remember how all you’d have to do is hold one under my nose to make me smile?
They have a museum here, a museum of fine arts. Grandfather brought me, thinking I’d like it. The paintings, they’re so unlike what your father does. Dark, raw, Spanish. Haunting paintings, centuries old. With all of the sunshine and music out on the street, I didn’t expect the museum to be filled with so much murky sorrow. They made me sad like I hadn’t been in years. When we left, I had to run off for a moment to be alone. I found a narrow street that reminded me of the caves at Brindeau and I pressed my face against the stone of the wall until the waves of sadness passed. When I returned, Grandfather didn’t scold me. But he gave me a box of paints, real paints, and a palette to mix them. “I know you can see more color than they could,” he said. He’s a funny man, isn’t he?
So here’s a painting, just a small one, and not on proper paper either. Of what else? An orange.
Clare
Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, Paris
Samedi, le 13 avril 1912
Dear Clare,
Don’t be cross, but I sent on your little painting of the orange to Papa. It was too dear a painting and he promised to only look quickly and send it right back to me. He does ask about you, you know. Well, he sent it back, and also a letter for you, which I include here. Not a letter; a treatise. All about your technique with paint and your mixing of colors and “mademoiselle, your form.” He seems quite put out with you for forging ahead into a new medium without instruction. “All shades of yellow and reds. So fiery a palette!” On a more cheerful note, he does say that your practice with fruit shows. I told him about the apricots and the thrown pencil. “Like your first lesson, Luc,” he said. “No?” So, you see? Everyone begins with fruit in Monsieur Crépet’s classroom.
I do think your grandfather is right in fixing his sights on Spain next, after leaving Portugal. He’s tracing the path of the Moors in reverse, isn’t he? Following that dialect back to its source? You mock, but I think it all sounds fascinating. This delving into the depths of a language, plumbing its origins, is new to me. I didn’t know there were historians who did more than look at facts and dates and dusty old manuscripts. Words and sounds? I see what draws your grandfather.
As for me, not much draws me these days. We are on to Charlemagne, and I wish him as little as I wished Alexander. I’d much rather be studying about kings and emperors who didn’t do too much, at least nothing beyond a page or two in the history books. Clovis the Lazy? John the Posthumous? Perhaps next term.
Until then I am playing as much tennis as I can. I’m currently ahead of Bauer, 89-62. He avoided me all autumn and then moped through the winter. He clearly does not have a friend in Spain sending him cheering paintings. Did you take his good humor away with you?
So, if you can forgive me for showing Papa your orange, know that it’s tacked inside my desk drawer here at school. Know that it’s brought me a bit of sunshine in the middle of a gray French spring. Know that it’s made me think of you.
Luc
Mercredi, le 1 mai 1912
Dear Clare,
I wanted to tell you, Papa has taken on another illustrating commission. It’s for an edition of la Fontaine’s Fables. Of course Maman is ecstatic; it’ll be a return to the sort of stuff he painted with Mère l’Oye all those years ago. Poor Papa, though, has tried to separate himself from that style for too long. But he’ll do it. He’ll do it for her. I’ve been watching him work on the preliminary studies. Never fear, le Monsieur Crépet still has the golden brush.
Since Papa is quite occupied, Maman took it upon herself to write to you, and has instructed me to include her letter (really, almost a novel) with mine. Papa told her that she must write to you about color and brushstrokes, that someone must, so that you can capture the sands of Iberia or Africa (or wherever else you venture next) without resorting to nothing but Indian yellow.
Enclosed (also from Maman) is a packet of brushes, as they are both quite certain that you can’t find a decent brush outside of Paris. Do you even have badgers there? Papa’s guess is no. He’s added a postscript onto her letter (if you can call a whole page of cross-writing a “postscript”) with instructions as to the proper care of said brushes.
Since a parcel was already coming to you, I added my own bit of inspiration to the bundle. It’s not much of a pebble, but it’s from the caves below Brindeau. I even took a step and a half inside to fetch it for you. Perhaps it will lead you to a fairy or two.
This will be my last carefree, unhurried summer, did you realize? I’m already planning weekends at Mille Mots: lying beneath the chestnut tree reading Dumas and Hugo and Nodier, eating all of the mushroom potages coming from Marthe’s kitchen, wearing out a bagful of tennis balls against the wall of the chapel, pleading with Maman yet again to install a clay court.
Because come next autumn, I’ll be in army camp, for my two-year compulsory military service. Can you think of a greater misuse of youth than that? When I’m done, there will be a couple more years to finish my course at École Normale Supérieure and then hopefully a steady job at a school somewhere. In the meantime, Bauer and I are planning for one last hurrah (he’s also bound for military service, in Germany). In only a few months, the Olympics are in Stockholm. We’re doing what we can to get there. He has a cousin with a yacht (but of course) and a Swedish dictionary. I have nothing but crossed fingers. Will it be enough? Cross yours for me, Clare.
Luc
Seville, Spain
3 June 1912
Dear Luc,
You talk of plans for a steady job. But no plans for taking the tennis world by storm? Of sketching Paris? Of taking sail in search of pirate treasure?
I’ve seen your face glowing as you talked of the Championship of France and of all those tennis players. You speak almost with reverence. Your mentions of your games and the practices you sneak in when you really should be studying or working. I’ve watched your face as you played at Mille Mots, so focused, so devoted, so good. I never feel the same passion when you write to me about your studies, about the history and rhetoric and philosophy. I never see the same excitement underlining your words.
Of course your future is your future. But is it the one you want it to be? Would you be content, sitting in the stands at the Stockholm Olympics, already resolved to never standing on the courts?
Clare
Stockholm, Sweden
Mercredi, le 10 juillet 1912
Dear Clare,
Eight days of tennis. Can you believe it, Clare? I shook hands with Otto Kreuzer and fetched balls for Albert Canet during a practice. He gave me advice and a ball he had used. I even saw the King of Sweden, who sat straight down the row from me. One day when the competitions were interrupted because of a downpour, Bauer and I snuck onto the outdoor courts for a stolen game (because what is a little rain to the pair of us?). Halfway through, a man in a dripping overcoat approached us and I was sure we were caught and would be deported straight away. Bauer, rule-following German that he is, was terrified. But it wasn’t the Swedish police. Our audience of one was none other than Monsieur Thibauld, the writer and coach. He said that if he didn’t see us on the courts at the Berlin Olympics, he would eat his left shoe. Bauer and I shook on it right there.
You’re right, Clare. The way I feel when I’m on the court, it’s nothing like how I feel in the classroom. Out here, the sun in my eyes, arms burning, feet aching, I feel alive. The way Papa feels with his paintbrush, you with your pencil, even Uncle Théophile with his Iliad. Like this is what I was put on earth to do. Like this is my Something Important.
The games are over, the prizes have been given, and the boat sails tomorrow, but my head is still in the clouds. Clare, do I ever have to come down?
