The Anatomist - Bill Hayes [74]
Joe adds more details in a later letter: H.V. uses the main room for drawing, he notes, and also for seeing “his visitors,” a reference to the medical students Carter had begun tutoring. As for himself, Joe boasts, “I have got a ‘bona fide’ attic upstairs for my studio,” evoking an image of a garret lit with candles and with pinned sketches papering the walls. Had he not been sharing the apartment with his persnickety, abstemious Christian brother, his life in London would almost sound Bohemian.
By this point, Joe, who would turn twenty-two in December 1856, had definitely begun taking himself more seriously as an artist (lest there be any doubt, he signed his letters to Lily “J. N. Carter, Artist,” as if imitating the signature of his idol, the English painter J.M.W. Turner). But the fact is, he was not an inspired one. I have seen some of Joe’s paintings; at best, they look inspired by his father. Ironically, the truly gifted artist was not up in the attic studio but down in the main room, drawing anatomy on wood and smoking late into the night.
H. V. Carter would never have seen himself this way, nor would he have viewed his art as Art. Art was framed and hung on a wall and admired. His work for Gray’s Anatomy was scientific and academic, chiefly, and, by its very nature, too morbid to be displayed or even discussed in polite company (which might explain why Carter didn’t write to his mother about it). His drawings were meant to benefit the student, not to bear evidence of his hand. Even so, even without a tiny H.V.C. in the corner, his style is so distinctive that I, for one, can easily tell a Henry Vandyke Carter drawing from that of an imitator.
Joe Carter also had a blind spot when it came to his own gifts, I believe. He describes himself to Lily as an “indifferent correspondent” and apologizes for his careless writing, but he was quite mistaken. He was a wonderful, evocative writer, much more so than H.V., who, despite keeping a diary for many years and writing hundreds of letters, did not have Joe’s ease of language. Lily must have loved getting her little brother’s letters. They are full of clever wordplay and fresh observations—they are, in a word, charming, as Joe must surely have been. For instance, he opened one letter to her with a lovely riff about the persistent nature of one’s own history: “It often surprises me to find how intimately the past becomes interwoven with the present, and the apparent future,” he begins. “And I have, at times, immensely wondered to find that what is past—the past—does not, nor will it, detach itself and remain where it was (or where it might have been intended to have remained) but it must bring itself forward, and smilingly, or otherwise, present itself as an old friend, and will not be denied. It is not till we try to remove or change old ideas or facts that we find how deeply rooted they are.”
OVERNIGHT, THE FUTURE has arrived in the dissection lab: eight sleek new computers were installed on the north side of the room for the purpose of playing CD-ROMs of virtual dissections. One of them is stationed right next to our table. The CD-ROMs are an adjunct to the students’ studies and, incidentally, something to keep them occupied while waiting for a spot at the prosections table. Nevertheless, the presence of computers in the lab signals a momentous shift. This is where the study of human anatomy is headed, some experts say, to 3-D re-creations and simulations that do away with cadavers entirely.
Until then, there is still “cadaver splatter” to worry about, not to mention gunky hands. Hence, the computer keyboards and mouses are covered in Saran wrap; high tech meets low tech. There are also skeptics to convert,