Paradisi In Sole
Part Four. Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
The story continues…
That tower of Victorian intellect and artistic sensibility, John Ruskin, had somehow been involved in an arson attack on Crystal Palace in 1866.
Or so that strange old man, Phineas LaTouche had strongly implied. Read his theory.
Now Phineas was surprising me again with his story of Ruskin’s hitherto unknown forensic investigation of the sudden death of Venetia Digby age 33, whose deathbed portrait is one of the striking exhibits at Dulwich Picture Gallery.
Phineas had urged me to go to the National Portrait Gallery to see for myself the wonderful portrait of Venetia Digby as ‘Prudence’ painted after her untimely death, by van Dyck, a close friend of Venetia’s husband. Ruskin, said Phineas, had found ‘clues’ in this picture.
So I went, catching the number 3 bus from Croxted Road and clutching a notebook.
Phineas was waiting for me at the Dog in the Village the next Friday, looking, as usual a bit musty and worn.
‘What’s yours?’ I asked.
‘The usual, thanks,’ said Phineas.
So I bought two pints of best and, at Phineas’ request, two packets of cheese-flavoured crisps and sat down with him.
‘I went to the National Portrait Gallery,’ I said.
‘What did you find?’
As he munched and drank I launched into the details of the Venetia painting. I left nothing out, or so I thought. I even described exactly what she was wearing.
‘Hmm,’ he said, ‘the white shift signifies her purity and the black one signifies death. Do you see that everything in the picture has meaning?’
‘Well, yes I do,’ I said, ‘but I didn’t see a clue to her death.’
‘Hah,’ said Phineas, with a gleam of pleasure, ‘Did you notice the bottom right hand corner?’
I consulted my notes.
‘There are leaves and just a hint of yellow blooms.’
‘But the leaves matter!’
‘How?’
‘Ruskin studied all the leaves and flowers of all the poisons. Van Dyck has painted an unusual flower: a nodding yellow bloom with a distinctive three-lobed and incised leaf.’
‘Which is?’ I said, with rising exasperation.
Phineas savoured the moment with a deep drink. Then said:
Yellow Wolfsbane
‘Aconite, sometimes called wolfsbane or monkshood. Usually it has blue flowers but the yellow flower is special. In Digby’s time people believed it was not a poison but a counter-poison. Here read this…’
And with a flourish, Phineas pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and pushed it to me.
I read:
Parkinson, speaking of the Yellow Monkshood, calls it:
‘The “counter-poison monkeshood” – the roots of which are effectual, not only
against the poison of the poisonful Helmet Flower and all others of that kind,
but also against the poison of all venomous beasts, the plague or pestilence
and other infectious diseases, which raise spots, pockes, or markes in the
outward skin, by expelling the poison from within and defending the heart as amost sovereign cordial.’
‘So you think…’ I said
‘Ruskin thought,’ Phineas corrected me.
‘He thought that Digby tried to protect Venetia from smallpox with a potion containing yellow monkshood using the formula of his friend John Parkinson, the Royal Botanist’
Venetia Digby as Prudence, Antony van Dyck Palazzo Reale, Milan
‘Precisely,’ said Phineas, ‘But the story does not end there, because there is the second painting of Prudence.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it’s in Milan and has a new figure in it: a cupid holding an arrow. What does that mean?’
‘The flower vanishes, the cupid, plus dart appears’ Phineas cried, and explained:
‘Very probably Digby wanted the wolfsbane concealed. So van Dyke painted it out but he put in another clue: the arrow. The name aconite is thought to come from the Greek word for hunting dart: akontion, because it was a poison used by the Greeks for arrows and spears.’
I was stunned by this revelation.
Meanwhile, Phineas had polished off the crisps and finished his drink and was peering meaningfully at the emptiness of his glass.
I bought him another pint. And more cheese crisps.
Then I checked my watch and realized I had to go.
‘One last thing,’ I said. ‘Who was the professor? The one he sent his forensic essay to? Who used it to teach his students?’
Phineas chuckled: ‘Joseph Bell of Edinburgh University’
‘Ah’ I said.
I made my excuse and began to leave.
Phineas said farewell, waved his glass at me and added casually:
‘He taught Conan Doyle, you know.’
I walked out with my head spinning. A poisoning. A mystery solved. A lost Ruskin masterpiece. And the origin of Sherlock Holmes.
Then I thought:
‘Is this all tosh? Just Phineas’s way of getting a free drink and cheese crisps?’
I resolved to find out.
To be continued…
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