We were informed by the Bear’s landlady, a Mrs. Pope, that Mr. Lawrence was not at present within, but that she expected him returned at any moment, and would be happy if we condescended to await the painter’s arrival in comfort upstairs.

Upstairs we were duly shewn — to a parlour attached to several commodious rooms, one serving, by all appearances, as bedchamber, and the other as temporary studio. Here we found Mr. Lawrence’s assistant — Job Harnley by name, a lad of perhaps sixteen, who was awash in sweat and very red about the face. It seemed that Lawrence was set upon London at last — and would depart this evening in a post-chaise. Master Harnley was even now intent upon the stowing of his traps, and the arranging of his canvases; for though he should keep his rooms at the Bear in earnest of his return, there were clients in London whose demands necessitated the striking of the studio.

“Perhaps his brush with a band of ruffians has quite overset our Lawrence’s spirits,” Lord Harold murmured.

We assured the young man of our indifference to his continued labour, and charged him to proceed as though we were ourselves invisible; and sat some moments in silence, our eyes wandering the parlour’s walls. Here there were sketches of every size and description — half-lengths, full-lengths, and three-quarters — that seemed to leap from the canvas itself, as though intent upon three dimensions. There were heads in profile, heads resting upon arms or drooping in melancholy abstraction — and they captivated the heart and fixed the gaze immediately.

Lord Harold had once told me that when Lawrence painted women, he contrived to convert them to pieces of confection; and as I surveyed the examples mounted on the walls, I understood what he had meant. They were, in the main, fashionable ladies displayed to decided advantage, of no very great interest to any but their originals. But when Lawrence undertook to paint a man—here was movement, expression, energy, power. The eyes glowed, the lips curled in misery or disdain; the features — freed from the burden of vanity — worked with thought and emotion. To one, in particular, my gaze was often turned; and this was a head of Mrs. Siddons’s brother, John Philip Kemble. Did he play at Hamlet? Or perhaps Macbeth? Some creature surely tormented beyond reason. The ghastly features were mere suggestions — broad strokes of the brush; the neck and chest were naked still in the charcoal of their underpainting; but the agony stamped on the half-finished head was palpable in the extreme. I was moved and horrified at once. As an artist, Mr. Lawrence clearly thrilled to the passion of the theatre.

“Do you observe the sketch on the wall opposite?” Lord Harold said, breaking into my thoughts.

I followed the direction of his eyes.

“That is Mr. John Julius Angerstein, I believe — a highly influential merchant in Town. He has recently undertaken to reform Lloyd’s, the insurers, and is one of the most important collectors of Old Master paintings. In this he rivals the Prince of Wales, who has profited from the confusion in France to acquire the greatest paintings in Europe.”

“It is a noble head, indeed,” I observed, studying the sketch, “though hardly handsome. An honesty of expression — a forthright countenance — and the care of years of trial are stamped upon the features.”[75]

A crash from beyond the studio door, where poor Master Harnley laboured, suggested the overturning of an easel.

“I recollect your saying that Mr. Lawrence rarely painted a woman in the truest light — or at least, that his feminine portraits lack a certain vivid emotion he never denies his men,” I continued. “In viewing these, I comprehend your meaning. But I would direct your eye to the sketch of Mrs. Wolff. It is extraordinary, is it not?”

The portrait was as yet in charcoal on canvas, without a touch of paint; but the curve of her swan-like neck, and the aversion of her glance as she bent over a book, suggested an infinite silence and containment, as though she were a woman complete in herself.

“It is a classical pose,” Lord Harold observed. “Taken, I think, from Michelangelo. One of his Sibyls, perhaps. Lawrence has managed it superbly. You are acquainted with the lady?”[76]

“She is intimate with my sister Eliza. And also, I think, quite intimate with Mr. Lawrence. In fact, I should not be surprised to learn that it is to Mrs. Wolff, in Bladuds Buildings, that he is presently gone.”

“I see.” Lord Harold bent to leaf through a collection of drawings propped in a huddle against the wall, his lips pursed and his eyes narrowing at a few. Of a sudden, however, his gaze was arrested — and the stillness of his entire form, together with the slight tremble in his fingers, fixed my attention.

“My lord?”

He turned and handed me the portrait without a word. Maria Conyngham, if I did not greatly mistake — her beautiful face turned fully towards the viewer, and her long-limbed form arranged upon a divan. She wore a dressing-gown of filmiest gauze, and her hair was unloosed upon a pillow; the expression in her superb brown eyes was dreamy, wanton, half-expressed and half-realised. The face of a creature moved by passion, if not by love.

“It is an excellent likeness,” I observed hollowly. “Perhaps he intended her as Juliet. Mr. Lawrence delights, I understand, in portraying artists of the theatre in their greatest roles.”

“He has portrayed her as a courtesan,” said Lord Harold abruptly, and withdrew the portrait from my hands. “We might wonder when she sat for it. Or should I say—reclined?”

“Lord Harold—”

But his attention was already fled. He had set the revealing image aside and withdrawn another, his brows knit in a scowl. “And who is this, I wonder?”

It was the head of a girl — done in charcoal, with eyes like burning coals. They had been fixed on Lawrence with an expression of some intensity, but whether of love or hate I could not tell. A stormy creature, in any event, with a tangle of short curls about her face, a prominent nose, a pursed mouth, and the suggestion of a hectic flush upon her cheeks.

But most extraordinary of all was the vicious scrawl of red paint — stark and mortal as blood — smeared across the surface. It partly obscured the girl’s features, and rendered the whole slightly lunatic.

“Begging your pardon, my lord, but I would wish you didn’t bother with those things,” said Master Harnley in an anxious voice. We turned as one, and observed him in the doorway of the makeshift studio. “They didn’t ought to be there, in truth, being intended for the rubbish.”

“Mr. Lawrence is disposing of these?” Lord Harold enquired in some astonishment.

Harnley nodded. “So he told me himself this morning.”

“Then I wonder if you might tell us something about this one.” I displayed the image so violently defaced with red. “It is a striking countenance, is it not?”

Harnley’s young face darkened visibly. “That’s the witch what keeps him up of nights,” he muttered, and taking a step backwards, he crossed himself. “Always crying and plaguing him in his dreams. Draws her over and over, he does, to rid himself of her evil charms — but it’s no use. I’ve destroyed a dozen or more like that, and still she comes by night.”

I glanced at Lord Harold, chilled and perplexed at once.

“How very singular,” he said indifferently. “And Mrs. Pope admits the lady to Mr. Lawrence’s presence?”

“Admits her? Lord, sir — she’s been dead these six or seven year! That’s the youngest Miss Siddons, what Mr. Lawrence intended to marry.”

The parlour door was thrust open hard upon the heels of this extraordinary remark, and our three heads turned as one — to perceive none other than the painter himself, preceded by Mrs. Pope and her beaming face. The landlady brought with her a tray of tea and warm cakes whose heady scent quite filled the room; and as she set her burden down upon the table, and bustled about with napkins and cutlery, the unfortunate Harnley advanced upon his master. With a deft and silent movement observed only by myself, Lord Harold turned the drawings to the wall — though not all, I believe, for one at least was secreted in his coat.