North West Reads Book 21: Molly and the Captain by Anthony Quinn
Laura Merrymount, the daughter of a highly respected and sought after portrait painter William Merrymount, had been given the affectionate nickname of ‘The Captain’ when a child. She had been a confident individual back then who had both protected and given direction to her younger sister, Molly. This had inspired her father to paint a double portrait of them. The painting shows Laura reaching out to protect her sister from touching a candleflame. Completed in 1763 it was formally known as The Merrymount Sisters at Night, and later called Portrait of the Painter’s daughters, but family knew it as Molly and the Captain. Those who had the privilege to view the painting were enchanted by it, by the subject and its beauty, but no amount of money would tempt him to sell it; he tells Laura the painting is her inheritance.
Laura’s early confidence and assertiveness deserted her when she became an adult. Growing up in the shadow of such a prestigious artist left Laura uncertain of her own talent and ability as an artist herself, even though her father had complimented her work. Molly had given up painting altogether and Laura accepted her father’s assessment that she could become a very good drapery painter, that is an artist who does the background work leaving the main portrait to the famous artist. It was they who then took the credit for the completed work. In the eighteenth-century women of Laura’s class did not have careers as a rule, marriage being the respectable choice for women of this era. For Laura, now at the age of 33, even this was looking a very dim and distant prospect as what was deemed ‘marriageable age’ was at least ten years or more younger than she was now. Her cousin Susan, with whom she regularly corresponds, has good marriage prospects. She lived the sort of life expected of genteelly raised young women, undertaking charitable work, reading and sewing. Laura envied her contentment and her prospect of a stable future, but deep down she knew that this sort of life would not satisfy her. Laura correspondence with Susan and her own personal journal record her thoughts and feelings on her life, family and relationships.
The Merrymounts lived in Bath and enjoyed the social gatherings the city was famous for, and the sisters took their place amongst the well-to-do residents at Bath’s famous Assemble Rooms. Unfortunately for Laura the number of unmarried women surpassed the number of eligible single men. But at one family occasion, Pa’s birthday, Laura’s hopes for a match were raised. Mr Lowther was a musician, a violinist, and had approached Laura to converse with her. Laura hopes he is interested in her, but when he enquires about having his portrait painted she concludes that this was the real reason for him seeking her out. She notices that Lowther dances with her sister Molly and Laura goes to bed at the end of the night feeling in low spirits.
Pa spent part of his time in London, a major source of commissions, so enquiries via members of the family when he was away or busy with his work was understandable, but Laura was still disappointed. She considers a career as an artist in her own right but feels completely overshadowed by her father. More heartbreak and disappointment come her way when her mother gently breaks the news that Mr Lowther was to marry Molly. They had been courting in secret and Molly would not be dissuaded from marrying this man who her father refers to as a ‘sneaking dissembler’. Laura is devastated and this places a massive strain on her relationship with Molly.
She decides to move to the family’s London house at Norfolk Place to get away from the source of this unhappiness. Walks in the city lift her spirits. On one on her walks she bumps into a friend of her father’s, a woman who she had briefly met at her father’s studio. Mrs Elizabeth Vavasor was an actress, and according to her father, a friend of ‘the Quality’. She invites Laura and her father to one of her performances at Drury Lane; from this a close friendship forms between the two women. Laura and Lizzie become confidants, and it is Lizzie who advises Laura not to throw off her sister. Lizzie’s personal life was not conventional, having had a child out of wedlock when younger and now living with a man who would not marry her as she could not provide him with the respectability he wanted. Laura does not judge her and values her friendship and company; even when Lizzie becomes pregnant Laura maintains her friendship and admires her spirit in the face of mockery and abuse from audiences and satirists. Lizzie in turn supports and encourages Laura when she is persuaded to exhibit some of her paintings, but this still does not overcome Laura’s lack of confidence in herself, besides, she had no wish to be famous like her father.
For a while Laura is happy but more pain and trouble, none of it of her making, comes her way. Lowther turns out to be the scoundrel that Laura and Molly’s father suspected him to be, much to Molly’s distress. Molly had shown signs of mental illness as a child which had reemerged just before she married Lowther. The problems in her marriage cause a relapse from which she does not recover. Laura and her mother, and then just Laura alone would become her permanent carer. But Laura had to face an even greater betrayal at the heart of her family, one that left her wondering who she could trust. The last section of her journal, from the early nineteenth century, finds the two spinster sisters living in Kentish Town. Laura has to fend off people wishing to obtain the painting, by fair means or foul, of her and her sister. These buyers are not attracted to the painting as a great work of art but to its commercial value, it being by the great William Merrymount. This tension between these differing approaches to artworks, what the true value of art is, is a theme throughout this novel. Her late father was regarded as one of the great painters of the eighteenth century, of great interest to art collectors and now the subject of research by a biographer. Laura cooperates with him to a point but is careful how much she reveals about her father’s past. But the past will catch up with them when a young man, working in the theatre, makes their acquaintance. Laura’s journal comes to an end in 1809 and the story moves onto another artist and his family living in London towards the close of the 1880s.
Paul Stransom, who had studied at the Slade School of Art, sits in his favourite place, Kensington Gardens painting the scenes. He lives with his sister Maggie. Their father was long dead, and their mother had died after a long illness. Maggie had nursed her till the end. This had had profound consequences for her as she had been invited to sit the entrance exam to Girton College, Cambridge, but her mother’s illness meant she had to forgo this. By the late nineteenth century women were slowly breaking through into areas and institutions formerly barred to them, but the responsibility for family members and their needs still tended to fall on female members of the family. Maggie’s other sister, Ada, was married and had a family of her own so the responsibility for their mother fell back to her. She also cared for and protected Paul. He had scoliosis and was the frequent subject of unwanted and cruel attention from strangers. Paul took the jibes and unkind comments philosophically, but they angered Maggie.
Not being able to take her place at university affected Maggie’s confidence in herself. She was now 28 years old, and she worked as a teacher at a girl’s school in Camden. She did not like her job but was stuck with it. She was very supportive of her brother’s work, though he was quite shy and modest about it. Paul was very different to some of his fellow artists who displayed more of an ‘artistic temperament’. Maggie has a good eye for paintings and knows a good one when she sees it. Paul’s birthday was coming up and Maggie goes to an auction house to find a suitable gift. She spots two paintings from the Regency period, one of a young man and another of two sisters. The portrait of the man had been ascribed to the ‘School of Merrymount’ instead of to Laura Merrymount. While the name of William Merrymount was still known and respected the names of his daughters had faded into obscurity. The owner of the auction house, Edgar Talmarsh, attributes the painting to ‘some clever fellow’ student of Merrymount’s. Laura name and status as a fine painter in her own right had been lost to history. She is merely ‘the daughter’ who looked after her ‘mad sister’. The other painting, Talmarsh tells Maggie, is a copy, the original having been lost. Talmarsh and Paul were members of a club, the Beaux Arts. Maggie was allowed to attend the club because of Paul’s membership, the art world of the late nineteenth century being masculine world leaving women, whether they were artists, wives, mistresses or models, at the margins.
Maggie can see the quality of the portrait of the man, and it would make a perfect present for Paul. Talmarsh also knows a good painting when he sees it, but he also looks to its monetary value. While at the auction house Maggie chats to another artist, Denton Brigstock. He has a private income that allows him to be an artist in relative comfort. Maggie starts to consider whether marriage would be a wise choice for her, with Brigstock a possible match. Marriage was still the respectable choice for women, as it had been in Laura’s time. It would bring her security and she would not have to do a job she disliked. Then at a ‘pipe and beer’ night at their home she meets one of Paul’s friends, Philip Evenlode. A former actor who stopped performing because of stage fright, Evenlode lived an almost hand-to-mouth existence. He is charming and eloquent, and Maggie finds herself fascinated and drawn to him. Still considering marriage Maggie has to choose between head and heart, and this choice becomes more pressing in the wake of a proposal and the presentation of an unexpected, but not unwelcome, gift. Ada and Paul are keen for her to marry lest she ends up an old maid. Their questioning arouses an outburst of anger from Maggie at the sacrifices she had made in looking after their mother. She felt that Paul and Ada’s encouragement was merely a means to assuage their consciences regarding her lost opportunity for a university education.
Paul was also unmarried and at times, felt melancholic at not experiencing the happiness of finding love. He did feel some responsibility for Maggie’s single status. Unfortunately, many of his friends who inhabited the art world were not suitable matches; he would not want one of his unworldly, feckless or mad associates as husband to her. Paul focusses on his work. He had noticed and become fascinated with a mother and her two daughters who frequented the park. However, when he enquires about them to the park-keeper he replies that he had not seen them at all. Then Paul starts to have recurring dreams about a woman in a white dress in danger of drowning. He’s not sure if there is some supernatural explanation and was certain that he was not taking too much of the laudanum he’d been using to ease the pains in his back. To try and get answer he goes to a Palmist who suggests that the dream could be a warning of danger close to him; with this information, Paul fears for the safety of Ada and her two daughters.
To get away from these family worries Paul and Maggie take a trip to Hastings. It is here that Paul faces the fears that have been plaguing his dream and has a dangerous encounter, and Maggie makes her choice between head and heart. As their lives move on, we are left with what appears to be a happy home. Whether Maggie made the right choice is lost to time, and just under 100 years later the special gift she received would touch the life of another artist.
Kentish Town, London, 1983 and Nell Cantrip’s fame is on the rise. It was a strange situation for her as during her career as an artist she’d never sought wealth, fame or celebrity. One of her paintings had been spotted gracing the walls of Downing Street piquing people’s interest after many years of her quietly working and exhibiting. Now her art dealer had seized the opportunity to organise a retrospective of Nell’s work, and, of course, she had sales in mind; Nell’s work would be sought after, and this could be very lucrative for both of them. Nell had never saw her work in this way; she’d never been rich and the idea of a large amount of money coming her way was almost alien to her. One of her paintings, however, was definitely not for sale. This was portrait of her late husband, Johnny, a fellow artist and tutor at the Slade School where she studied. Unfortunately, Johnny was an alcoholic and had affairs. He abandoned Nell and their two daughters, Natasha and Billie, and died in 1956 of alcoholism in doss house. Nell’s subsequent relationships fared no better, with her regularly falling for difficult and unreliable men.
The Victorian terrace in which she lived was spacious enough for her to have lodgers, two of whom were just moving on when the journalist from BBC Nationwide (the One Show of that time) Jolyon Truefitt, came with his crew to interview Nell. Nell’s daughters and her grandson watch the interview. They love it but Nell is upset by how old she looks. She had been a model in the 50s and 60s, but she was 62 and had been confronted with the fact that she was now old. Her reaction to this loss reminds Billie of how Nell had broken down with grief after her father’s funeral. Billie’s sister, Natasha ‘Tash’, had married well to a good man but Billie’s choice of men mirrored her mothers. Billie was an actress as was her estranged husband, Bryn. Like her father he enjoyed having affairs, but he now wanted to get back together with Billie. Nell had never liked Bryn, but she left Billie to make her own decisions. At least there was some work coming up, a film in which she plays alongside a young rock star, Robbie Furlong. He wasn’t an actor but had been cast in order to bring in a younger audience. Beneath the rebellious punk image Billie finds a seemingly thoughtful young man who she takes a liking to. She mentors Robbie during the making of the film. Billie realises that she is attracted to Robbie, who is a lot younger than her. She was still negotiating a reunion with her husband and is conflicted at what to do. When Robbie shows that the attraction is mutual, this further complicates her personal life, and as Robbie has become Nell’s lodger she would be pulled into this messy, difficult relationship.
Meanwhile the Nationwide interview has some interesting repercussions for Nell. A distant cousin gets in touch with her. Hilary Polden tells Nell they are both related to William Merrymount and fills her in on the family history. Laura’s journal was found mouldering in a trunk, their contents bringing her life out of the shadow of her father. Furthermore, the journals confirm that she was the artist who painted the portrait of the young man that had so captivated Maggie Stransom. This portrait, long in private hands, was coming up for auction. Nell wonders if she could purchase it, thus bringing the family story full circle.
Three and timelines focussing on mothers, daughters and sisters, this novel is a fascinating exploration of how women’s roles and responsibilities within their families compete with their own ambitions and desires. The men in this novel have a sense of entitlement to have or do whatever they want that they never question or doubt. The experience of their womenfolk could not be in greater contrast. Service to the family, placing their own needs and ambitions aside, comes first; the downplaying or complete abandonment of personal aims or achievements becomes internalised, so that any thought of putting what they wish to do first is unthinkable, it would just be selfish and wrong. It was easy for female lives to stay hidden or forgotten, only being discovered by chance or luck. The discovery of Laura’s incomplete journal is reminiscent of the discovery of Anne Lister’s diaries behind a panel at Shibden Hall. Maggie may remain a name behind the more well-known brother unless some pioneering researcher chooses to bring her life to the fore. At least for Nell the times had changed, and full recognition was given to her and her work; but it would still be decades before women began to shed the fear of pursuing and owning their talent and success.
Written by Janet - Library Assistant
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