The Cunning Man

by Robertson Davies

  You’d be surprised what an erotic undercurrent there is in the musical life here. Or probably you wouldn’t. Another great focus of itchy gossip is Joyce Barma, who is a pretty good cellist but a genuine beauty in the Garbo manner—you know, as if she were rising above a quite bad pain in the gut.3 She is married to a competent artist, Feofan Barma, so they seem exotic, though she is really an Australian, born McVittie. She is a stunner, and I must say Dear One talks about her rather a lot in a way that disturbs me. But Joyce is assotted of a young pianist, Adair Scott, who is a good ten years her junior, and of god-like beauty, so they are an astonishing pair. Poor old Feofan consoles himself with our cream scones and black-currant jam. Dwyer says, but not too loudly, that there is not a man in Toronto who doesn’t long to be Joyce’s cello when she takes it between her knees and makes it sing.

  I’ve told you about Dwyer, and he certainly isn’t one of those who long to be between Joyce’s knees. He recruits people for our Sundays, in order, he says, that we may have the best and not just be running a soup kitchen. He and McWearie have appointed themselves our mentors and occasional chuckers-out. I have mentioned McWearie,4 haven’t I? Must have. He is often about the place and a great pal of Dr. Hullah.

  It was Hullah who suggested that we should rate our guests on the VELAWIG Scale. You remember it? It was all the rage when we were at art school. You rate everybody with a mark out of ten on their proneness to Vanity, Envy, Lechery, Avarice, Wrath, Idleness, and Gluttony—the Seven Deadlies. But it was McWearie who said that was utterly useless unless you balanced it against a rating on the Scale of Virtues, which is Faith, Hope, Charity, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance, and Prudence—which doesn’t accommodate itself to a neat acronym (McWearie throws words like acronym around very casually) like VELAWIG, which sounds positively scientific! (Named after Dr. Melchisedek Velawig of Brno.)

  This provides hours of by no means harmless or edifying entertainment. I mean, look at two of our regulars, Anton Moscheles and his wife Antonia (another Australian but because of marriage to Anton has acquired a powerful Russian accent). Anton is a cellist and a member of the top local quartet. Chubby, piggy-faced but very intelligent, side-whiskers, tremulous thick pince-nez and always wears one of those wraparound black stocks and a high collar, so that he looks very like Schubert. Well! Eight for Vanity, at least, the very lowest for Idleness, maybe four for Lechery, (Antonia takes care of all that, I suppose), call it five for Envy and three for Wrath—but Gluttony! A bulging, insufficient ten! (“Splendid sandwiches these, dear lady. And, my friend, I cannot resist another of those excellent scones before my slice of cake!”) But on the Scale of Virtues I think old Anton must be eight on all but Temperance. And Antonia is really not far behind, if she is behind at all, except physically where she is very much behind (ha ha).5

  Vanity is where they all score high, as I suppose all artists must do. Without vanity how could they survive? Even the austere Scot Neilie Gow rates high, though he holds it in check, and some, like Arne Gade, the Danish pianist,6 are crafty about it. Arne plays superbly, and about sevenish on Sundays (by which time all the musicians with church duty to attend to have gone) he plays for us, pretending reluctance as we urge him. And he invariably says, “I’m not at all sure of this. Haven’t looked at it for months and my memory may betray me”—and then launches into a stunning Schumann Fantasie or something equally demanding that several of those present have heard him practising as they passed his house on Saturday. And when he has finished, and been applauded heartily, he hangs his head and says he is sorry to have done such a poor job, and he hopes some time we will hear him play it as he hears it in his head. Tiresome, but understandable. But he is perpetually aware of his great rival Augusto DaChiesa, a Chilean who is not in the little brotherhood that runs the local Conservatory, and who plays Scarlatti like an angel. DaChiesa is said to have a pupil who will make them all sit up and take notice in a few years. But we can’t get him to our Sundays; stomach is bad and he seems to live on milk and crackers—and Scarlatti, of course. Has a mistress—would you believe it?

  Quite often we get the quartet, who do what they call a hauptprobe, a sort of dress rehearsal, for a concert they are preparing. Good chaps, really, though I’m not mad for Jean-Marie Francoeur, the leader, but Achille Moraillon, the second fiddle, keeps him from getting too pompous. George Hambrook, the viola, is a decent chap, and of course old greedy Anton is the cello. Just four varied chaps, but when they play together my dear they are transfigured.7 “Because we are just the voice of Schubert,” said old Anton when I raved about their performance of the Quartet in D minor—the Death and the Maiden one, you know. It moved me to tears, but unmusically, I’m afraid, because it made me think of Dear One (who isn’t in the least ready for Death) and her struggle in this ghastly place where they haven’t the least idea of her quality; it’s bloody. And when I looked at her across the room listening so intently and looking so much her real self, honestly, I found myself blubbing in a most unsuitable way because of course I’m supposed to be the strong one.8 Yes, the Quartet is best in Schubert, and a few weeks ago they gave us The Trout quintet with Arne Gade playing the piano. How do we run to a piano? The Doctor’s, whose mother’s it was and he didn’t want it as he doesn’t play. A very decent Blüthner, oldish but none the worse for that.

  So that’s our Sundays.

  Dearest love from us both,

  CHIPS

  VIGNETTES

  1. The Child Encourager—fat but with the remains of good looks—and Watkin Tinney, a mangy caricature of Irving, in conversation.

  2. Neil Gow, a Scot unmistakably, of the plump Hebridean Order. His hypnotic eye is not that of a man given to “affairs.”

  3. Barma—a stunner indeed and Chips’ fine sketch rouses an old ache in me. A few lines suggest Adair Scott, behind her head.

  4. McWearie to the life. All intelligence and wit: bad teeth, scant hair, poorly shaved—an intellectual sloven, but a dear creature.

  5. Yes, Moscheles did look like Schubert, but I don’t think he got himself up to do so. He was simply the kind of man who must wear a stock.

  6. Arne, a seedy Grieg whose art belies his appearance, as it so often does.

  7. The Quartet: an impression—but what an impression—of their intent musicianship.

  8. A self-caricature of Chips and most revealing—her hatred of her big, powerful, mannish figure—and her face hideous with weeping. But I remember it otherwise and its tenderness toward Emily I shall never forget.

  (11)

  Sorry, Chips, that isn’t quite your Sundays. Your good heart has run away with you and your modesty has blinded you to the fact that you and Emily Raven-Hart have provided something that serves as a domestic focus for the artists who frequent it.

  Neil Gow couldn’t do it. Admirable man that he was, your sort of lavish, easy hospitality simply wasn’t in his Scots soul. It wasn’t just the scones and the cream; it was the welcome, the understanding, and after a while, the affection that made Glebe House so very special. Gow, and DeCourcy Parry, couldn’t embrace these people as you did because they had to work with them, and sometimes wrangle with them, and were inevitably rivals with them.

  You were patrons—not rivals but understanding friends and cheerers-on. They knew you weren’t rich. They guessed—certainly Antonia and Elsie did—what slavery went into those Sunday buffets. They loved you and they mocked you behind your backs (all patrons are mocked behind their backs; it is a way artists have of maintaining self-respect) but they would not have for an instant tolerated any mockery of you by outsiders.

  Besides, you mock them. Don’t you? Isn’t your letter to Barbara written in terms of mockery? You fear to say what you really feel, which is that you love and pity and marvel at these people, and warm your bones at the fire of their talent, so you have to pretend that they are figures of fun. But they aren’t. They make you weep when they play the Death and the Maiden quartet, and when Joyce Barma—yes, I saw that Emily was v
ery much taken with her—plays the Bach D minor solo sonata on her cello, her beauty adds a grace to the music, but it certainly is not a substitute for it, so don’t run Joyce down as a pretty face with a big fiddle. You don’t, I know, and I understand your jealousy about Emily. Ah, Pansy my old darling, it is your upbringing makes it impossible for you to say, directly, what you feel. God, what the English do to their daughters! You had a first-rate upper-class upbringing, and it has left you crippled and tongue-tied. But how eloquently you speak in your vignettes. As for Emily—

  After the Sundays at Glebe House it was usual for McWearie and Darcy Dwyer to return with me to the stables, where we rectified all that cream and jam and cake with generous bumpers of first-rate Scotch. Inevitably we talked about The Ladies.

  “Extraordinary how and where the supernatural virtue of Charity manifests itself,” said Dwyer, on one of these occasions. “Who would expect the Grace of God to appear as scones and whipped cream, or in a Sally Lunn, or a generous slice of cherry pound-cake? Yet it does. I assert that it does. The Ladies give, and ask nothing in return. But what they get unasked is the allegiance and respect and love of the people whom they touch by their goodness of heart. Who cares if they have sharp tongues? Not I! Judge them by what they do.”

  “Quite right. And I suppose in the summing-up these Sundays are their great contribution to the life around them,” said McWearie. “They are artists, but that is nothing compared to what they are as human beings.”

  “That’s for you to say,” said I. “I wouldn’t venture an opinion. They are sure I know nothing about art and despise my pictures. The stuff of theirs—of Emily’s really—that I have seen says nothing to me, because I suppose I haven’t the perception needed.”

  “I’ll venture an opinion,” said Darcy; “I know a lot about art—meaning pictures and sculptures and whatnot, which seems to be what people are talking about when they talk of art—and Emily’s stuff isn’t really much good. It’s too good to be dismissed as junk, but it really hasn’t much to say for itself.”

  “Don’t let Pansy hear you,” said I. “She is sure Emily is a great unrecognized genius.”

  “Loyal, but wrong,” said McWearie. “Dear Emily is that very sad human creature, the artist who has a lot of talent but not quite enough. The world is full of them. Some of them fake and blether their way into quite a lot of popular acceptance; they are clever talkers but poor makers. But Emily is a diminished version of—who do you guess?”

  “No use asking me,” said I.

  “Oh, it’s easy,” said Dwyer. “Every little piece she does is a faint echo of Barbara Hepworth. Not imitative. Nothing cheap or me-too about it. Just the same spirit, reduced to the point where it no longer carries conviction. It is good of its sort, but it’s a rather minor sort. It’s school-of. So it’s no use Pansy blaming Canada. It just a sad fact.”

  “Do you suppose she ever knew Barbara Hepworth?” said I.

  “In the world of art you never know who knows or has known who, and what is personal and what is derivative. That’s part of the misery of the lesser artist. People think they copy, whereas they really just think the same way as somebody bigger, but not as effectively.” Dwyer knew a good deal about art and I was ready to accept his opinion.

  “This is a common tale in my consulting-room,” said I. “The gift that isn’t big enough to make a mark, but is too big to leave the possessor in peace. And so they can’t be content to be Sunday painters, or poets who write for a few friends, or composers whose handful of delicate little settings of Emily Dickinson can’t find a singer. It’s a special sort of hell.”

  “Jon, I don’t think your pictures are so dreadful,” said McWearie, who had been drinking his Scotch pacing about my upstairs living-room. “Dürer letting on to be Christ—verra fine. Sweet Nelly O’Morphy looking good enough to eat with a silver spoon—yes, just the thing for over your mantel, bless her rosy little bum. I see you have a new one. What’s this?”

  “It’s a Paul Delvaux, a Sleeping Venus now in the Tate. I had a good deal of trouble getting a suitable reproduction. It’s a superb evocation of the inner world.”

  “Your inner world. Mine isn’t so delightfully populated.”

  “Let’s see,” said Dwyer and joined Hugh in front of my picture. “Hm, yes. Another of your Death and the Lady pieces, Jon. What hold has that theme on you?”

  “Oh, but Death and the Lady in very special circumstances,” said McWearie. “Look—a splendid moonlit classical setting of temples and the mountains of Hellas behind them. Here in the foreground, on a gilt couch lies one verra lovely lady, nude and asleep. Ye know from the fact that she still has the hair in her armpits that she’s no wee whore; she’s a lady of breeding. Perhaps she’s the same lady, dressed in red, who is confronting the skeleton on the left; she regards it with splendid imperturbability and the skeleton is a fine specimen of its kind—male, I should judge, though I don’t know why Death always has to be male. And who are all these distracted girls raving in the middle distance—and see, here’s another entering the picture from down-stage right, with her arms raised in what I would judge to be protest. A verra fine piece, Jon. You could ponder on its meaning for hours.”

  “If you were the kind of blockhead who looks for meaning in pictures,” said Dwyer. “Meaning is out, Hugh.”

  “Then I’m out with it,” said McWearie. “I cannot resist a picture that tells a story, if it’s a good story. And this one seems to tell a verra fine, elusive, daft story. Something from the dream-world. A Sleeping Venus, eh? I wonder how she can sleep with all that row going on? All those shrieking girls.”

  “You should ask some of my patients,” I said. “They hear the shrieks in their sleep.”

  “But you wisely keep the picture up here out of their way. Have The Ladies seen it?”

  “I don’t ask The Ladies up here,” said I. “Their hard words about my pictures are confined to those in my waiting-room. Dearly as I love them, I can do very well without their incessant, uninvited criticism.”

  “I never criticize anybody’s pictures,” said Dwyer. “It’s a liberty, and one oughtn’t to take liberties, not even with good friends.”

  By which remark I knew that he was drunk and it was time to bring the evening to a close.

  Dwyer continued to astonish me, from time to time, even though I was no longer a university lad, but a man of substantial experience. He knew so much about the way the world wagged, and it never seemed to wag simply, though it always wagged logically.

  For two or three weeks I had been interested in the appearance in the tiny graveyard which was now incorporated in Pansy’s garden of a man whose appearance was utterly commonplace, but who somehow drew my attention. He came only on Sundays, when one of The Ladies’ evenings was about to begin—that’s to say about four o’clock—and he hung about, apparently absorbed in copying the inscriptions on the tombstones. What was he up to? An amateur historian? Somebody tracing family graves? One Sunday I tackled him, because it was a rainy day, and it seemed odd that he should be at his work in such unsuitable weather.

  “Can I be of any help?”

  “No, no, Doctor. Don’t let me bother you.”

  (So he knew I was a doctor. Well, I suppose he read the sign that pointed the way to my door.)

  “You’re interested in the old gravestones.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you speak to Miss Todhunter? This is her garden, you know.”

  “Oh, I don’t want to be a nuisance.”

  “But it’s usual to speak to the owner before you make free with a private garden, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, I hope I’m not intruding.”

  “Well, simply as a matter of curiosity, what are you doing?” The conversation was beginning to take on a slight edge, and might have turned nasty if Darcy Dwyer had not turned up at that moment, and greeted the anonymous little man familiarly. “Hullo Joe. On the job, are you?”

  “Oh, nothing of that k
ind, Mr. Dwyer. How’s everything with you?”

  “As usual. Money, money, money. Jon, this is Joe Sliter; an old business associate of mine.”

  “Oh, nothing as grand as that, Mr. Dwyer.”

  “Picking up a few names, are you? Has Mr. Wagstaff arrived yet? Or Mrs. Yarde? They’ll be along soon, if they haven’t come already.”

  “Just looking at these old stones, Mr. Dwyer—nothing in the line of business, really not.”

  “Come on, Joe. Everything’s business with you. Working for the cops now, are you?”

  “Oh heavens no, Mr. Dwyer. Nothing of that sort. I was just on my way when the Doctor spoke to me, so I’ll be getting on now. Very nice to have seen you again, Mr. Dwyer.” And he hurried away, seeming almost to vanish, but I suppose that was a professional accomplishment.

  “Poor Joe, what an obvious ass he is,” said Darcy, and would say no more at that time.

  That evening was particularly fine. Neil Gow’s choir was approaching its annual performance of the St. Matthew Passion and this evening a young tenor who was fast making a name for himself was going to sing Ich will bei meinem Jesu wachen with Jimmy Scrymgeour playing the continuo on my fine old Blüthner and Peter Erasmus playing the oboe part, which he did with an art of nuance I have never heard equalled. The noble utterance of Bach quite silenced the edge of spite in the conversation of the thirty or forty people assembled, and I was, as so often before, conscious that music made religion real to me as nothing else did. Was this triviality? If so, I must reconcile myself to being a trivial person. The music lifted me to a level which was sharply reduced when Darcy and I talked afterward in my upstairs living-room.

  “Who was that fellow you introduced as Joe Something before we went into the house?”

  “Joe Sliter? Just a snoop.”

  “What was he snooping for?”

  “Information. I suppose one could dignify Joe’s work by saying that he deals in information. He was checking on who went to The Ladies’ evenings.”