The Dark Clue by James Wilson

fashionably dressed in the style of sixty or seventy years ago, in a brown coat, with a white stock carefully tiedat his throat, and his hair neatly parted in an inverted ‘V’. On the back was a handwritten label which read: ‘Turner,
aet
c. 24 years, by himself. Given by Hannah Danby.’
    â€˜Who was Hannah Danby?’ I said.
    â€˜His housekeeper. At Queen Anne Street,’ murmured Ruskin, without looking up.
    I turned the picture over again. As I stared at it, I found myself – already unnerved by my conversation with Ruskin – thrown into turmoil; for, yet again, instead of deepening my knowledge of Turner, I seemed merely to have discovered a different version of him. This was not a portrait of Travis’s buffoon, or Davenant’s good fellow, or Ruskin’s misunderstood martyr: it seemed to be of someone else entirely – and someone who, in the enigmatic image he had left of himself, challenged me to find him out, and declared that I should fail. For a moment, I felt something akin to panic; and only finally succeeded in bringing myself under control by reasoning that, in view of the young age at which he had drawn it, it was perhaps not surprising that it bore no resemblance to the man remembered from later life.
    As we drew up in Red Lion Square, Ruskin at last looked up from his work, and closed his box, and said:
    â€˜Well, Mr. Hartright, here, I fear, we must say goodbye.’
    I wrapped the picture up again, and handed it to him.
    â€˜I shall show it to my working men,’ he said. ‘To inspire them.’
    The coachman held the door; and, as I followed Ruskin out, I said:
    â€˜Are there any other portraits of him?’
    â€˜Very few,’ said Ruskin. ‘He hated being painted. I believe he went several times to Mayall’s photographic studio in Regent Street. You could ask there.’
    And so we parted, he already nine-tenths in his lecture, and I so distracted that I barely remembered to thank him.
    And all the way home my mind churned; and I found myself asking, again and again:
    What is it you have undertaken to do? Where will it lead you? What if you cannot do it?
    And I am still no nearer a resolution now; but it is nearly onein the morning, and, though sleep feels an impossibility, I know that if I do not go to bed I shall never think straight again.
    So let me end with a kiss, and that which I
do
know:
    I love you.
    Walter
    IX
    Letter from George Jones, R.A., to Walter Hartright,
14th August, 185-
    The Royal Academy, Trafalgar Square,
14th August
    Dear Sir,
    I write in answer to yours of July 24th. I have already communicated a brief memoir of Turner to another gentleman, whose subsequent conduct – to speak plain – has resolved me to hold my tongue in future. I fear, therefore, that I shall be unable to accommodate you with a meeting.
    Yours truly,
    George Jones
    X
    Memorandum of a letter from Walter Hartright to
J. Ruskin, Esq., 14th August, 185-
    1. Thank you for seeing me – very helpful.
    2. Have written to Lord Egremont and Mr. Fawkes.
    3. This afternoon will go to Covent Garden as you suggested (if the rain eases!)
    4. If – as I feel sure it will – it would be helpful to talk further at a later date, may I accept kind offer to see me again?
    XI
    Letter from Walter Hartright to Laura Hartright,
15th August, 185-
    Brompton Grove,
Tuesday
    My dearest love,
    Lord! The rain today! – it continued without let, from dawn until the middle of the afternoon. And not just a downpour, but a biblical deluge, so that you might suppose God had tired of the filth and squalor to which we have reduced His world, and sent a second Flood to wash it away. Indeed, the spectacle filled me, for an instant, with a superstitious awe; for the violence of the weather seemed of a piece with my discouraging letter from Jones (which, though it had been provoked by Thornbury, yet I could not help taking as a personal rebuff) and my pained