Sturm und drang

sturm und drang by spitkitten first appeared in issue Issue 92 in 2021.

This story is also availabe on AO3.

Summary

An art enthusiast with a talent for meteorology meets (arguably) the Finest Painter in England. But impressing your idol can be damned hard work, especially when he's all pride and prejudice, and you're all sensibility and no sense. Heavy weather ahead...

or: The Hon. Philip Cavendish's Wet Hot Bohemian Summer

Creator's Notes

Does anybody actually say ‘raining cats and dogs’ anymore? I suspect not, but they were definitely still saying it in 1820.

I was determined to submit something this year and when this silly interpretation of August’s theme popped into my head, I knew I had to go for it because a) I found it funny and b) rain is sexy. So the rain came first, then the artist angle, and then Phil – and then before I knew it I’d written a very long, very sappy, very idiots-in-love celebration of Enthusiasm, and of being brave enough to be cringe. You want artistic fulfilment? You want the dizzying rewards of true romance? Then you have to go through the mortifying ordeal of being earnest! Them’s the breaks.

Apologies to anybody who knows anything about the Romantic movement and practical art techniques at the dawn of the 19th century. You’ll notice that I chose to write from the perspective of a character who explicitly /doesn’t/ paint: kindly pretend that anything I got hilariously wrong was a deliberate expression of Phil’s inexpertise… And though there are similar titles out there, as far as I know there isn’t actually a song called The Bishop of Ely’s Fancy – sorry, I know it sounds like an absolute banger.

On the other hand, Rubens did a couple of Ganymede paintings – here’s one: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Peter_Paul_Rubens_-_The_Abduction_of_Ganymede_-_WGA20282.jpg And there are a few paintings of Io like the one Phil describes, but I was mostly thinking of John Hoppner’s Jupiter and Io: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jupiter_and_Io)_by_John_Hoppner,_RA.jpg It was painted in 1785, and Hoppner really was a Royal Academy artist – so it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that an art enthusiast in London in the early 1800s could have seen it. Any other historical accuracies are probably accidental!

I’ve heard sturm und drang translated variously as ‘storm and stress’, ‘storm and urge’ and ‘storm and desire’ – I think they all apply here! It’s also the name of the German literary movement that kickstarted romanticism in Europe, and to which Goethe’s early work – the kind of sensibility-above-all-else stuff that Phil definitely has read and internalised – belonged. Oh, and any mention of Shakespeare is in reference to The Tempest, which starts with a big storm raised by a prickish magician with the help of his mercurial spirit assistant, Ariel. Further familiarity with either is absolutely NOT essential!

Enormous thanks to the editorial team for kindly shepherding a nervous idiot through her first time submission – and thanks to anybody who gives it a read! I had such a lot of fun writing this so I’ll be thrilled if others enjoy it too <3