Under the Wide and Starry Sky Read Online Free PDF Page B

the ruined sketch. “Hang it all,” she muttered, crumpling the paper and starting over.
    The room held its fair share of Americans. Fanny suspected they were, as she was, positively gleeful to be out of their old element. When Belle learned one of them was the sister of Louisa May Alcott, she nearly fell off her chair. “It’s Amy!” she had whispered.
    For every
pas mal
Fanny garnered from the instructor, her daughter received a more enthusiastic appraisal. It was slowly dawning on Fanny that it was too late for her to be an accomplished painter. When she first arrived at Académie Julian a month ago, she harbored fantasies of becoming good enough to make a little money with her art. She worked hard to improve, as she had done with her writing. Now she saw her talent with a brush was rather ordinary compared to others’ in the class. Oh, she may have won a silver medal for her work at Virgil’s studio in San Francisco, but here, she saw she was outclassed. Belle had a chance, though. More than once, Monsieur Julian had put up her drawing as the best of the day. If only she opened her eyes to it, Belle could experience a finer kind of beauty in Paris than Fanny had encountered in Indianapolis or San Francisco. With enough study, she could actually be a professional artist—a portraitist rather than a painter of pottery. That was what many of these women would do: return home and make a reputation by doing portraiture or pursuing teaching.
    Fanny glanced at the clock and saw their time was nearly up. She worked faster, adding shadow to her study. But the model was breaking her pose. The woman stepped off the platform and slipped a camisole over her head. The sight of her red pubic hair caused Fanny to feel awkward. An underskirt came next, then a dress.
This is no place for modesty,
she reasoned. And yet it seemed somehow unprofessional for the model to be so abrupt as she slipped out of her classic pose and climbed into her clothes right there in front of all the students. The models should go behind a screen to avoid creating the reaction Fanny was feeling now—as if a lovely dream had been interrupted.
    The apartment on Rue de Naples was in Montmartre, the highest point in the city. Fanny was pleased to get a whole floor for fifteen dollars a month, plus two dollars for the concierge. It had a formal dining room with tall mirrors, and a kitchen with a porcelain stove and a hydrant that brought artesian water up to the apartment at no extra charge. Her building was full of artists and poets who had formed a tight little community.
    Once Hervey’s health was improving, Fanny went out with the surgeon she’d met on the ship from New York. He would show up with a liveried attendant whose sole purpose was to remove the surgeon’s elegant cape when he arrived, and put it back on him when it was time to leave. Fanny didn’t doubt Hendricks’s interest and delight in her, but she suspected he was only pretending to be a serious suitor, and that his annual trips were personal dramas in which he acted the dashing American abroad. He needed a ladylove on his arm, and she found it amusing to play the part as he gadded about Paris looking romantic, with his shirt collar turned up and his cravat tied in a bow à la Byron.
    Mr. Hendricks would help Fanny into his perfect carriage and ride through Paris with her, seeking cheap furniture for her flat. They delighted in looking for the whimsical old painted tin signs that designated a particular business. Enormous gray eyes peering through round spectacles signaled an eye doctor. They saw huge scissors above a tailor’s door, a Napoleon-style red and gold bicorne hat outside the milliner’s, a black tin lobster for a fishmonger, and an enormous fork for a hotel restaurant. When they found a sign portraying a chair, they knew they were in the right neighborhood. Mr. Hendricks ordered the driver to halt.
    â€œI’m an old