A Lesson in Composition

Late Autumn, 1797, Wiltshire.

The wind came east over the fields and forests alike and brought with it a wicked scent of the death of autumn. The twilight-lit reeds that covered the hills blew with a fierceness that signaled the impending snowfall that was shortly to arrive. The kitchen window panes at Fonthill House were alive with percussion from the lively nearby tree branches gently tapping on the ancient glass but inside the kitchen staff did not notice over the noisy bustle of the dinner preparations for the Beckford family and their guests. The Beckford's 'Fonthill House' sat on the western slope of one large hill among nearly 5000 acres of land dotted with dense forest just outside Gifford. The eminent and sprawling Elizabethan house was home to Lady Maria Beckford and her grown son, William Beckford, known in close circles as Will.

That evening, awaiting the dinner bell, seventeen-year old Kitty Courtenay sat in the velvet reading chair by the window of the library at Fonthill House with his glass of port, fingering casually through a text on fox hunting. There was a pre-dinner routine he and Will Beckford had settled upon over the years, playing at the grandeur of their family's formidable names, but always anxious to crack into the filthier talk of young men of lower standing. Kitty's face had resigned itself to an indifferent expression of combined boredom and consternation. His dark hair fell across his porcelain face and blue eyes briefly before it was absentmindedly brushed away by a well manicured hand.

Across the warm, candlelit room that smelled of ancient pages and decaying binder glue, Will Beckford sat on the chaise, holding a book on horticulture, but looking mischievously across the room the young man on the velvet chair before blurting out.

“Those hunting foxes giving you a good rise over there, Kitty? Seem rather rapt with that book old boy.”

Kitty promptly threw the book in Will’s direction, followed by a pillow from his seat. Just then Alexander Cozens walked in the doorway and laughed.

"I say! What a way for two lords to behave before dinner!” he pretended to scold. “I’m put out by the thought that you were my promising art student, Sir Will!” His jolly laugh rang out once more before he took a sip off his brandy, happy to play the part of father figure in the trio.

The two younger lads had port in hand, and Alex thought he had counted these glasses as their third so far for the evening. To be young! He sat and listened as Kitty told of his studies and how they drolled, and meanwhile Will relished in the ending of his lessons with his tutor now that he had come of age and was looking forward to traveling to Switzerland. There was talk from his mother that he would be introduced to Lady Margaret Gordon, who would make a good marriage match for the families. Alex caught the thinly veiled lack of enthusiasm toward the meeting as he explained, and made a mental note to catch him later in private and hopefully discuss this in more detail.

“I’m surprised dinner has not yet been announced. You two will be drunkards before first course if they do not get to it soon,” Alex laughed. “I’m going to track down a footman and see what the hold up may be. Don’t go starting fires now while I’m away.”

Alex got up from his seat with the light effort and grunt of the middle aged man he was, and made his way down the hall to see about dinner and the rest of the guests.

Will looked around conspicuously.

“Kitty!” Will said.

Kitty lazily turned his attention to Will, “what?”

Will hesitated, then smiled and burst out with a laugh.

“What? Out with it!” Kitty pressed.

With every ounce of showmanship he could muster, Will stood dramatically and raised his arms up slowly. “What if I told you, that sitting before you was the next great author of our time?” All this effort made him stumble slightly, and he thought to himself he better ease off on the wine before he started dinner.

“What are you going on about?”

“I, sir, plan to write a book.”

“A book? A book about what, you cod.”

“Fantastical things! Exotic things! Mystical places. A prince of ill-repute. Treasure! Sex! Perhaps even the battle between good and evil! Like Arabian Nights, only better,” Will explained breathlessly, and a little to his own embarrassment.

Kitty sat in stunned silence for a moment then said, “Then you shall. Write it, I mean. Who better to pen such a literary adventure than you? One of the most intelligent and well-read gents I’ll ever meet surely.” Will was a little stunned by this quick and sincere endorsement, and found himself unsure of what to say next. He hadn’t planned on those words flowing out of him like that, but the wine and the joy of Kitty’s company had pried it loose like a rusty nail that was stopping a leak in a bucket. Only now there was no putting the nail back, so his mind gently thumbed at it and the hole it had left behind.

Will had of course known Kitteredge “Kitty” for most of his life, though it had been nearly a year since their last encounter, and Will was taken aback to find that the Kitty that had arrived this day was nothing like the young boy of high society he had last said goodbye to nearly a year earlier. Earlier in the evening, nineteen year old Will had dutifully stood at the front entrance of the grand home with his mother and welcomed Lord and Lady Courtenay along with their son, Kitty, into the entrance hall and out of the autumnal winds.

Kitty had walked through the door behind his parents, a dark cloak drawn up around his neck in defense against the cutting wind. When through the threshold, he lowered his collar, and his young, pale, porcelain face was lit by the warm household lighting; the flame of the nearby candle reflecting in his slightly glassy yet brightly blue and clear eyes as they peered around the entry room and the faces that stood there to meet them. There was a coldness in his gaze, a learned indifference to beautiful places and attractive faces. Will knew that gaze well; he often wore it himself. When touring drafty cathedrals, attending lavish dinner parties with his mother, or being introduced to other well-bred young people whom he quickly often forgot the names of. When Kitty’s gaze briefly met Will’s own, however, Will felt a small bolt of panic strike its way through him that he could not adequately describe and certainly could not explain if he were asked to. Kitty, however, seemed not to notice this shock, so Will reasoned that it must have spared his face and not altered his expression, thus revealing nothing. Will remained stoic as they made their way through the rest of the formal introductions.

--

“You honestly do not think I’m daft for wanting to be an author?” Will asked now in the library.

“No, I honestly do not. And I shall be the first one to read it, or you should dedicate the first edition to Kitty Courtenay, ‘who made it all possible,’” Kitty smiled in reply, taking another sip off his glass before setting it down and walking over to Will to put his hand on his shoulder. “Look, will your mother hate the idea? Surely. And will that make the endeavor even more worth-while? Surely again!”

As he said this Kitty lowered himself to be eye level with Will, looking him in the face with a glassy-eyed smile and patted Will on the shoulder. With this, Kitty’s dark hair fell across his glassy eyes. He clumsily puffed a breath at it out of the corner of his mouth, but to no success. Without thinking, Will reached up and gently fingered the dair hair off of Kitty’s porcelain skin, his index finger resting a moment on the crest of Kitty’s cheekbone before tracing a light path down the angular curve of his jaw.

“Dinner is”- came Alex Cozens voice from the doorway, “nearly set.”

Will and Kitty jumped aside, despite their effort to maintain the guise of normalcy.

“We all better meet the others in the dining room,” Alex finished. “Will,” Alex whispered to his friend as they went out the library behind Kitty, “See me this evening after dinner. Perhaps in the gallery. I mean to discuss your… future… artistic endeavors.” Will nodded in solemn understanding. “Believe me, I have your best interests at heart, old boy.”

At dinner, Maria Beckford sat at the head of the table with Will to her right followed by Alexander Cozens. Lord and Lady Courtenay and their son, Kitty, sat across the table on the opposite side. The party surrounded the elaborately laid out table, covered with red and gold linens. Silver platters offered an array of options for the first course including a squash soup, meat pies, roasted potatoes, boiled beets, and glazed carrot salad.

Lady Courtenay had been a flurry of conversation from the onset, a lively spark in the otherwise rather dour company of her husband and now also of Mrs. Beckford, who matched Mr. Courtenay’s countenance as if they were close blood relatives, instead of only by marriage and not well-acquainted at that. Alex Cozens took a sip of his drink and looked over to Will who had gone quite quiet in the larger group and seemed to be studying his napkin with great intensity.

There was a dull conversation regarding Parliament that Will was half paying attention to, not because it was interesting in the slightest, but because he was a good host along with his mother and would be ready to make an addition to the conversation if prompted to do so. But his thoughts were elsewhere. He felt warm and slightly ill from the port, but also perhaps because of the ending scene in the library before dinner. He allowed this slight admission to himself very reluctantly, but it was true, and had happened not half an hour earlier, and Alex had been witness to the entire episode of his delirious behavior. Being so busy studying his napkin and keeping a working tally on the Parliament conversation, Will hadn’t the gall yet to dare look toward Kitty at the table. For better or worse, he somehow knew this kept things in a state of purgatory until he was able to make eye contact with Kitty (or Alex) and gauge the true scope of the faux paux.

Half of him was internally repeating a newly found mantra that reassured him nothing had happened. Nothing. Two young men, familiar all their lives, with plenty of drink in them, being silly. Perhaps even acting a bit untoward. But no one had seen. No one but Alex. It could be explained to him. It was nothing. The other part of himself, and he knew the louder- more sure part of himself, said that it was something. It was something because of how Will felt about the something he was desperately trying to convince himself was nothing.

“Don’t you agree, William?” Lady Courtenay broke into his thoughts by asking. Will had lost track of his conversation tally and so was not sure if he agreed or not.

“Of course. Yes,” he said as he looked toward her, and offered a small closed-mouth smile. This seemed to be satisfactory because she pitter-pattered on from there.

Will chanced it and looked at Alex, whose friendly eyes briefly met his own before looking back toward Lady Courtenay. Then Will forced his gaze to move in Kitty’s direction. He saw that Kitty was not only meeting his gaze, but had a very slight, inappreciable smile on his mouth.

After dinner most of the guests convened in the parlour, while Alex and Will excused themselves for a trip to the gallery, which was on the other side of the house. Both were relieved when no one tried to invite themselves along, but then they were the only two true appreciators of painting as an artform among the party that evening, so were not surprised.

The gallery was in the north wing of the house, and indeed was much of the entire wing itself. Curated mainly by Maria Beckford, at the sole suggestion of her son, as an investment and symbol of status and cultural enlightenment, the gallery at Fonthill House was nearly 100 yards in length and twenty yards across. The walls were covered in vermilion tapestry where art was not otherwise hanging, and the many windows were flanked by matching vermilion drapery. The many artworks that covered the walls were encased in intricate gilded frames and blazing candles were thoughtfully positioned throughout the space to best light each and every work of art.

Will and Alex had made their way to the two emerald green tufted velvet sofas in the center of the room without conversation. Alex sat on one sofa across from Will on the other and looked kindly toward his friend and former charge. He allowed himself a leisurely intake of breath before he began.

“When I sit in front of a landscape to paint, I never know whether the painting I complete will be the one I began at the start. At times it is a particular slope of a valley and how the late afternoon shadow rests upon it, or the wind will change direction and the trees will shift and so does the perspective. When I was a young painter, I found this fact almost maddening. I thought that my initial vision was strong and steadfast, and glorious to the eye, so when I would feel the wind change at my back, or found that the light had shifted drastically, I tried to hold fast onto that initial scene I had walked upon and capture the ghost of it, though what was in front of me had changed. The product was paintings I was not happy with. My art masters gave me high marks, the works were technically correct; each brushstroke done in accordance with what I was taught, but to me, those works felt like great forgeries. I had known how I felt standing in the field painting the scene that day, and the finished product I returned to my masters was not a faithful representation of that experience. A great forgery, in my mind.”

Will blinked his eyes and shifted slightly on his sofa perch, not sure where this was going.

“I’ve seen your early work, Alex, and it’s beautiful-”

“Beautiful, yes," Alex conceded, "but a lie. A posed portrait, if you will. And knowing the truth of it, it was never enough.”

“So, what did you do?”

“I allowed the paintings to change. I created the landscape I experienced and I felt in the innermost core of my being. At times this meant that the lighting was poor, or the angles of the branches were juxtaposed with the rest of the scene in an awkward manner. I found that my art masters had given me lower marks on several of these pieces, as the compositions were not as pleasing to their eye.”

“Yet, you found you were happy with your work?”

“Indeed. And over the years I have found great success. As it came about, a great many people have seen enough beauty in my sometimes gloomy, awkward, blown-about landscape scenes to provide a very comfortable life for myself.”

Will considered this for a moment, glancing to the nearest walls and their displayed masterpieces with gilded frames.

“I am so obviously pleased that you were not only successful, but that I was able to study under you as your student as well and take lesson from your own mastery, but Alex, I’m afraid I do not understand how this pertains to me,” Will said.

Alex leaned forward, his sturdy and kind middle-aged face getting slightly closer to Will’s very young, thin frame.

“Create a genuine painting you will be happy with, and find a way to make success from it,” Alex offered.

“Alex, I do not pai-” Will was quickly interrupted.

“Don’t play the dullard with me. I know you follow what I am laying out so please do not pretend as if you don’t. I saw a truth tonight and there are clever ways and not so clever ways of making a good composition with any truth, no matter what that truth is. Be clever, you have a challenging truth, to be sure.”

With this, Alex Cozens reached his hand forward and briefly but assuredly placed his large hand over Will’s own, then clapped him on the shoulder with his other hand. He stood from the sofa, leaving Will alone in the expanse of the gallery surrounded by sublime masterpieces in gilded frames.

That night when the guests all retired to their rooms, the eastern winds blew their icy breath mercilessly outside Fonthill House. Inside, Will Beckford was alone in his bed chambers. He fell into a fitful sleep, overcome by dream visions of a complicated, twisted landscape, and a solitary painter on the hillside, struggling desperately in vain to create the correct brushstrokes. The last thought Will remembered before he woke was 'masterpiece'-