Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [94]
Now a middle-aged woman, scribbling frantically to catch every word, hardly aware of the singular regard upon her. The lines creased beside smiling hazel eyes.
“You needn’t take down everything, Miss Smith,” he chided. “It’s an hour’s lecture, after all—your pencil will never last.”
The woman blushed and dropped her pencil, but smiled shyly in answer to the friendly grin on Frank’s lean, dark face. He had them now, everyone warmed by the glow of good humor, attention attracted by the small flashes of gilt and glitter. Now they would follow him without flagging or complaint, along the path of logic and into the thickets of discussion. A certain tenseness left his neck as he felt the students’ attention settle and fix on him.
“The best witness to history is the man—or woman”—a nod to the pretty blonde—“who’s lived it, right?” He smiled and picked up the cracked horn spoon. “Well, perhaps. After all, it’s human nature to put the best face on things when you know someone will read what you’ve written. People tend to concentrate on the things they think important, and often enough, they tidy it up a bit for public consumption. It’s rare to find a Pepys who records with equal interest the details of a Royal procession, and the number of times each night that he’s obliged to use his chamber pot.”
The laugh this time was general, and he relaxed, leaning casually back against the table, gesturing with the spoon.
“Similarly, the lovely objects, the artful artifacts, are the ones most often preserved. But the chamber pots and the spoons and the cheap clay pipes can tell us as much or more about the people who used them.
“And what about those people? We think of historical persons as something different than ourselves, sometimes halfway mythological. But someone played games with this”—the slender index finger stroked the counter-box—“a lady used this”—nudged the scent bottle—“dabbing scent behind her ears, on her wrists…where else do you ladies dab scent?” Lifting his head suddenly, he smiled at the plump blond girl in the front row, who blushed, giggled, and touched herself demurely just above the V of her blouse.
“Ah, yes. Just there. Well, so did the lady who owned this.”
Still smiling at the girl, he unstoppered the scent bottle and passed it gently under his nose.
“What is it, Professor? Arpège?” Not so shy, this student; dark-haired, like Frank, with gray eyes that held more than a hint of flirtation.
He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring over the mouth of the bottle.
“No. It’s L’Heure Bleu. My favorite.”
He turned back to the table, hair falling over his brow in concentration as his hand hovered over the row of miniatures.
“And then there’s a special class of objects—portraits. A bit of art, and at the same time, as much as we can see of the people themselves. But how real are they to us?”
He lifted a tiny oval and turned it to face the class, reading from the small gummed label affixed to its back.
“A Lady, by Nathaniel Plimer, signed with initials and dated 1786, with curled brown hair piled high, wearing a pink dress and a ruffle-collared chemise, cloud and sky background.” He held up a square beside it.
“A Gentleman, by Horace Hone, signed with monogram and dated 1780, with powdered hair en queue, wearing a brown coat, blue waistcoat, lawn jabot, and an Order, possibly the Most Honorable Order of the Bath.”
The miniature showed a round-faced man, mouth rosily pursed in the formal pose of eighteenth-century portraits.
“The artists we know,” he said, laying the portrait down. “They signed their work, or they left clues to their identity in the techniques and