Marmaduke to his children, conscious for once of his heritage, ‘will be seen by your Children, and your Children’s Children, down through Time,’ and Grace declared loudly: And nothing ’gainst Time’s Scythe can make defence, save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence and Marmaduke, smelling strongly of West Indian rum, nodded morosely. Unfortunately he then fell asleep; Beloved bit Ezekiel; Grace laughed at this (in an unladylike manner); Venus got pins and needles from leaning languorously. Only Philip remained completely still. All the Marshalls watched the Frenchman: how he looked at them and drew, looked at them and drew. Grace observed his eyes and his pencil and his portable easel that he had set up in the small drawing-room; she fidgeted with interest, wanting all the time to see what he had done.
After some hot hours had passed the Artist announced himself content with the first sitting; the Marshall family crowded the easel and then professed disappointment: who were those stick-people? Where were the colours? The Frenchman explained that this was a preliminary sketch only, and that more sittings would be required.
Painting a picture of eight members of this family would have tried the patience of a saint; the Frenchman persevered, finally delivered a rather odd and stiff assemblage of faces and bodies, and a dog: Marmaduke and Philip both immediately stated that they could have done better. This acquisition was hung upon the wall of the drawing-room above Betty’s chaise longue and looked at with some confusion by various family members. ‘Which is me?’ said Ezekiel, and Venus pointed to the poodle: as she had never been known to make a joke in her life she may, indeed, have confused them. To be frank, it was a mediocre work.
It was when the fee was required (nine guineas) that difficulties began. The Artist sent several bills and then appeared in person requiring his money. Betty, with her best hauteur, replied it would be sent ‘in due course’. He went away empty-handed that time, but not the next: he arrived in a fine French rage and wrenched the painting from the wall saying, ‘It is fortuitous that I can scrape this ignoble Family off, and use the board again, Madame !’ and he walked out into Queen’s Square with the mediocre picture under his arm and nobody saw the Conversation Piece of the Bristol Marshalls ever again.
Time’s Scythe scythed; days passed, and months, and years. Marmaduke gambled away what money remained; Juno and Venus sighed and sulked and talked of Nobility and dreamed of Love; Ezekiel and Tobias stole from neighbouring houses; Betty’s cheeks became permanently Madeira-red.
Half-educated, bored with teaching a child, nowhere to use his energy, Philip would stroll the Bristol streets in a supercilious manner as the sons of gentlemen were wont to do, thinking of himself as a fashionable flâneur in the manner of the French (pretending his clothes were not becoming slightly shabby), and then suddenly, urgently, Grace would appear from nowhere, reminding him of a spinning top in her flurried hooped skirt, and then she would just as quickly settle to his pace and stroll beside him, chattering upwards.
‘Why?’ said Grace.
‘What is that?’ said Grace.
‘Can we read?’ said Grace.
‘Look, look, there is a Clock: When I do count the clock that tells the Time ,’ said Grace.
Philip was aggravated by the girl’s persistence, again and again sent her home, obviously no stylish flâneur recognised a young child as a companion: she should stay in the house in Queen’s Square with her sisters and their mother. But over and over again, Grace spun out into the square in her little hooped gown, her bodice cut low - exactly like her mother ’s - and neatly laced over her embroidered stomacher: an exact replica of an adult, only small, and dragging her shawl behind her impatiently as if it slowed her down, as her lace cap bobbed above her dark, dark hair.
Gene Wentz, B. Abell Jurus