Minorca 1856
Tonight, she looked at the world with her artist's eye----the eyes for which the outlines of conformity became blurred. She passed into the world of color and shade.
The sunset was violet red, a contrast to the bright and almost painful hot blue of the daytime sky. The water off the beach sometimes had that same bright blue, too---blended with a greenish cast that looked like the green of old copper on buildings. It called to mind the tiles the ancient Greeks and Romans baked for the villas built on the island so long ago. Tonight, as evening approached, the sea turned to a velvet midnight blue, meeting the remains of the sunset.
In the distance, the artist could hear the faint speech and laughter of others as they walked the path above her hidden cove. She supposed, since the speech was English, that they were other expatriates on holiday. She shut away their speech---she supposed it was all the same theme anyhow. She caught snippets of "I cannot walk here" "Where is my bonnet" "Good gracious, how the native people do not wash" and shut that world away. Their speech became fainter as they returned to the inhabited part of the island. England, its constraints, its xenophobic prejudices were washed away in a dark warm Mediterranean sea.
They used to winter in a white villa in Marseilles. He owned it for many years as a place to hide his mistresses. Somehow, she did not feel comfortable there. Yes, she knew that she was his salvation and that his past was a closed chapter, but sometimes the ghost of shallow hyena-like laughter and past dissipations seethed through the walls of the Marseilles house. And, the city was too close. She argued that Marseilles was becoming too expensive, that the influence was too French and dissolute. A growing family needed to be in a place that was simple and pure. She needed to be in a place that was hers.
Minorca beckoned. Even though England had returned it to Spain, it yet had a British aura. The houses had sash windows, the men could drink a locally made gin. The wine was dark, dry and very Spanish. Minorca was remote, quiet, warm and had just enough minor luxuries to keep someone who was used to living as an upper class British male supplied with good wine, newspapers, simple but elegant cuisine, easy rambles among the ruins of the Greeks, Phoenicians and people even more ancient. The ancient Celts had also visited Minorca. She had made many sketches and paintings of those Minorcan ruins that looked so much like her English Stonehenge—a Stonehenge that was set against that blue sky and dun soil.
Minorca set her free. As fast as her hands could move, as fast as the brush could fly she began to paint the sights and colors. In her fevered artist's brain, she saw the ancient ships, the old gods and goddesses and transported them into her wild colors and lines.
The waves rolled in as the stars appeared in the night sky. It was too late to blend the strange tints of the Minorca sunset. She put away her paints and brushes in their box. Could she remember the hues? "Ah, if I could only paint the sounds of the sea" she murmured as she rolled up the canvas and folded the easel.
Each day she came to the beach to sketch to and work at her canvas----feverishly mixing new colors, new paints from Paris or Vienna. The task was to capture the colors and sights from the inside. It always eluded her. It began as a vision in her artist brain. It took form, as if she were on a ship that was coming closer to port on a fast wind.Then, it would vanish like a dream. It was as if some angel was laughing at her as her inspiration never matched the results on the canvas. She always returned to the painting, even more frantic to collect her frayed visions. Sometimes she frightened her children with her intensity.
Yet, her line sketches of the neolithic ruins, of the wildflowers and dry grasses growing wild about the base of the formations were published in every magazine in England. And, the paintings of the beaches and water and sky were at this moment on display in a gallery in Paris. Of course, she did not use her real name. Her alias was the androgynous turn of her former name; in Paris, all the art world, tout le monde was praising the paintings of the mysterious Jaimet Airey.
The small spare Englishwoman, the woman in the plain blue dress, the tanned and freckled face was, to the world, simply another genteel Englishwoman in her thirties. Not a beauty and someone who did not wear her bonnet. She was someone who supervised two school aged children, tied the bonnet of a six year old girl and fussed over a sickly toddler. She gave orders to the cook and was seen walking on the arm of a half blind English gentleman, her husband. He wore a white suit, always had a cigar and spoke in a booming baritone voice. She demurred to him and he, in turn, doted on her. The disguise was complete---none would connect Mrs. Jane Rochester with the wild sea, the feverish imaginings, the lurid tints, the bold colors of the Minorcan collection in the Paris gallery.