“You’ve captured it exactly,” Catherine replied, eyebrows lifting in pleasure and surprise. “It’s striking, is it not?”
The artist smiled. “Yes, all the artists are buzzing about it. Which means it should prove quite popular.” She turned to her pencil box and pulled free a small card impressed with the image of a mythical beast, half lion and half eagle. “I’m with Griffin’s,” she said, to Catherine’s secret delight. “We offer quality mezzotint reproductions of interesting and notable portraits, paintings, and landscapes; commissions by special request. Also selected views of the city, with historical landmarks and points of interest. And of course,Griffin’s Menagerie.”
“I’m an ardent subscriber,” Catherine said as she accepted the card. “Do you have any work in the Exhibition this year?”
“Me?” The woman scoffed. “I’m only an engraver, madam. A copyist. Not an artist. Not one the Academy would recognize, at any rate.”
Catherine looked at the sketch on the easel, at the easy lines and effortlessly perfect proportions that spoke of a gifted eye and willing hand, carefully trained. She bristled. “But surely this is no different, in any essential way. Your sketches would not suffer by comparison with many of the landscapes I walked past just now.”
“But those landscapes were done in oils,” the woman countered. “Or watercolors, or charcoal. Each one done by hand, one stroke at a time.” She tapped her pencil end against the paper. “These are mere copies. Since I did not create the initial portrait, none of them can properly be labeled art.”
Catherine listened to this with dismay, but the engraver seemed to take it in weary stride.
The woman’s mouth crooked wryly up at the corners. “Still, I’ll sell more of them than most of the great artists whose work you’ve just strolled past. Reprints and scenic views and embroidery patterns—which don’t count as art, either, of course.”
Catherine imagined the gallery behind her full of embroidered panels instead of paintings. Tambour and scrollwork and satin-stitched florals, all flung up in one giant patchwork, while the public paid good money to admire them and the critics debated what the embroiderer’s choices of stitch and color signified. It was an absurd thing to yearn for, and yet... she saw it so vividly, she could almost feel the texture of the threads beneath her fingertips.
The engraver began another question, but a clatter on the stairs behind Catherine cut the conversation short.
Lucy appeared in the doorway, breathless, cheeks flushed, framed like a very picture of alarm and dismay. “There you are!” she cried. “Stephen told me—” She stopped, as she registered the presence of the other woman. “Oh, I’m so sorry.” She dropped a flustered curtsy. “Lucy Muchelney,” she said. “Are you a friend of Lady Moth’s?”
Oh, this was awkward. Catherine hadn’t missed how the engraver’s eyes had widened at the use of her title. Nevertheless, there were rules, so Catherine completed the introductions and nodded politely to the other woman, whose name turned out to be Mrs. Agatha Griffin. “We were discussing her work,” Catherine said to Lucy, “but I am glad you found us.” She turned back to the engraver. “Miss Muchelney is nearly finished with a very scholarly translation—we were hoping to approach you about printing a full run of copies.”
“You’ll be wanting to speak to Thomas—my husband, that is,” Mrs. Griffin said. “He oversees the contracts. He’s away at the moment, but he should be back in the shop on Thursday. If that suits you, my lady?”
Catherine replied that it did.
Mrs. Griffin thanked her again and returned to her sketching; Catherine and Lucy went back inside to collect Mr. Frampton.
There were still haloes in his eyes, but his frantic sketching seemed to have run its course. He showed them his pages as the carriage rattled down the street, elation crackling off him like one of Mr. Edwards’s voltaic contraptions. “The trouble I’ve been having is not how to build the calculating machine,” he said. “Even the ancients knew how to use assemblies of wheels and gears to calculate the movement of the moon and the stars. No, the trouble was that this machine would have to run different calculations for different sets of data. How do you tell it which one you want it to run? The French factory-owner’s portrait had the answer right there.” He pointed to a sketch he’d done, a detail of the painting. “Punched cards. That’s how you tell the machine which levers to shift and which gears to turn at the right time.” The rest of his sketches showed an assemblage of dense metal wheels, stacked tightly one on top of another.
Lucy turned sharp eyes on the later designs. “These are going to have to be very precise—how are you going to get them milled?”
Mr. Frampton laughed ruefully. “I’m not even convinced it’s possible. If it is, it will surely be ruinously expensive. But for now it should be enough to work out the design in full and present it in a paper forPolite Philosophies.”
They parted with the euphoric Mr. Frampton at his lodgings and continued home. Lucy reached out with one arm and half of the stellarium shawl and gathered Catherine close against her, as the gray afternoon shaded into a chill evening. Horses’ hoof beats sounded a soft percussion in the quiet.
After a while Lucy asked: “What did you and Mrs. Griffin talk about?”
Catherine squirmed slightly. “Art. What it is. What it’s not.”
“You’ll be as bad as Stephen next.”
“Heaven forbid. What did you and Mr. Violet talk about?”
Lucy sighed. “Art. What it means.”
Catherine plucked at the edges of the stellarium shawl, her eyes downcast. “How long have you known him?”
Lucy laughed. “Sometimes it feels like forever. Especially when he’s in one of his moods. I enjoy when Mr. Violet’s paintings are tortured and tempestuous—but not so Mr. Violet himself.”
Catherine squeezed Lucy’s waist as another pang went through her. “Does the art not mirror the artist’s soul, then? I’m sure I read something about how a truly sublime painting requires the union of spirit and matter. Or soul and will, or I forget what.” She righted herself and leaned back against the seat. “I can’t pretend I’ll ever create anything artistically sublime. There are no geniuses of embroidery, after all.”
Lucy sat straight up. “And why shouldn’t there be?”
Her indignation was perfectly adorable and made Catherine’s fond heart beat faster. “Embroidery is a handicraft, my dear. Domestic and ladylike. Perfectly ordinary. Art is—grander, is it not?”
Lucy rejected this with a firm shake of her head. “Why should you not consider what you make to be art?”
