emotion was present it was controlled and in the correct proportion;
that is, to the extent that emotion in living creatures
is a functional, constituent part of the entire created order.
And Bach himself, if not exactly anonymous, in his own time
possessed the status and reputation, not of some Gauguinesque
genius on his doomed way to self-sanctified immolation,
but rather of an honest, competent craftsman not
greatly dissimilar from his clay-handling Staffordshire contemporaries
- Robert Wood, say; or Astbury, making practical
use of Dwight's powdered calcined flints to increase
whiteness much as Bach made use of Reiser's music in the
development of his own ecclesiastical style. To be sure, one
did indeed become excited over pottery. It was Mark Twain,
of all people, who said, with characteristic American hyperbole,
that the very marks on the bottom of a piece of
crockery were able to throw him into gibbering ecstasy. (I'd
like to have seen that.) I have found my own hands trembling
dangerously while handling a Whieldon mug, with its
abstract decoration of runny, manganese glaze streaked with
green. But - or so I felt - much as Bach's fervour made no
direct, secular assault upon his hearers' private and personal
emotions, approaching them rather upon the (to him) universal
ground of Christian belief and the scriptures, so the
emotional excitement stimulated by the potters, their shapes,
glazes and decorations, was kept decently and soberly at
one remove by the utilitarianism of their work, by their
necessary concentration upon the practicalities of craftsmanship
and, ultimately, by the plain fact that they belonged
to an age when it was not the job of their sort, even when innovating,
to shock and disturb, but on the contrary to enhance
and beautify the accepted order of existence. In addition
they had, and retain, one all-important source of charm
- namely, all their imperfections on their head. Again and
again I have found delight in the clodhopping provincialism
of Felix Pratt, Obadiah Sherratt and their fellows. It is from
their very naivet6 and maladroitness that their appeal flows.
Do they not exemplify the very essence of the human situa39
tion - scrabbling in the mud to get their bread by creating
something attractive at a price which ordinary folk can
afford?
I worked hard at the business in Northbrook Street, not
because I felt I ought to, but because I enjoyed it; and certainly
not on account of any pressure on my father's part.
Indeed, within a year he and I had got into the habit of
driving to work in two cars, for as often as not he would be
ready for the cool verandah, the six o'clock news and a limejuice
and gin while I stayed to set up a window-display of
Royal Doulton, write to an agent about a consignment of
Spode, or perhaps, over dinner at the Chequers, pick the
brains of some new sales representative. For - and this, in my
view, is the second touchstone of a vocation - I found I was
not content simply to do what I was told. Though diffident
in other walks of life, when it came to buying and selling
ceramics I was not afraid of making mistakes and must continually
be learning someone else's job, or setting myself to
master the ins and outs of some fresh aspect of the business
with which, strictly speaking, I need not have bothered.
For recreation I fished, drank beer in pubs, walked over the
downs and through the fields and copses of Enborne and
Highclere, or sometimes, on a Saturday, drove over to Bradfield
to watch a match. London I seldom went to, except to
buy and sell or to see an exhibition.
Soon I began to travel and to use my languages; first,
simply in order to widen my knowledge of ceramics, but later
in the way of serious business. Of course I had been to Paris
several times before, but never for the express purpose of
visiting the Sevres Museum and talking to the people who
run it. I went, too, to the Schlossmuseum in Berlin, to Nymphenburg
and to the Bayerisches National-Museum at
Munich. With less difficulty than I had expected, I obtained
a limited visa to visit East Germany, and made my reverent
way not only to the Kunstgewerbemuseum and the Landesmuseum
at Leipzig, but also to the Meissen factory itself. On
this trip I encountered no Iron Curtain complications. As
with chess players, so with lovers of ceramics: the barriers
dissolve.
40
I went to Rorstrand in Stockholm, where the idea first
occurred to me of expanding the family business into the
fields both of antique pottery and porcelain and of fine modern
ceramics. It was here that I first saw high-quality modern
wares which I thought I could sell in the shop, and found out
what I needed to know about importing them. I knew I
would be risking precious capital, yet somehow I felt little
anxiety. What I meant to do was so obviously right and important
that if the Berkshire public did not like it they could
make that their question and go rot. I would go down with
the ship.
However, it didn't go down. From the outset my idea was
so successful that I determined to spread a wider net in
Scandinavia. And thus it was that, ten years after my parting
from Kirsten, I came at last to Copenhagen - sea-girt, greenspired
K0benhavn - on the Sound.
For me, K0benhavn leapt forth immediately as the nearest
thing I had found to the ideal city. I did not actually go the
length of deciding that you could burn Paris, Rome and
Madrid, but from the outset I fell headlong in love with
K0benhavn, and was never so foolish as to try, from any
misplaced respect for generally-accepted values, to reason
myself out of this spontaneous joy. Le cceur a ses raisons
que la raison ne connait point.
Paris, Florence, Venice - those cities have become selfconscious
in their beauty and crowded with people who go
there because they have read or been told that they should;
but K0benhavn possesses, as an integral part of the baroque
splendour of its churches and palaces, a natural ease and
modesty, like that of an aristocrat too well-bred to draw
attention to riches or grandeur. The Amalienborg Palace,
thank God, never set out to rival Versailles. The two were a
long way apart in the eighteenth century, when it was cornpleted,
and to one walking today in that quiet square, where
the black-coated, blue-trousered Royal Lifeguards still stand
sentinel, they seem even further apart now. Peter the Great
could still ride his horse up the 105 feet of the Rundetarn
to the top, but fortunately he happens to have disappeared,
while it - less cruel, nasty and bumptious - has not. In any
41
other city the green, spiral tower of the Frelserskirke might
seem no more than an amusing curiosity, but in K0benhavn
it expresses rather the natural grace an
d light hearts of Danish
people, who have never seen reason to be unduly solemn
or serious-minded even in the matter of churches. And as
for the less obvious, more secluded delights of the city - the
silver birches by the pool in the Bibliotekshaven, or the wonderful
porcelain collection in the Davids Samling - these are
like treasures which the kindly aristocrat prefers not to talk
about, but lets you discover for yourself, if you wish, having
told you that you are free to go wherever you like and amuse
yourself until dinner. No other city's quality is so unassuming
and unself-conscious, and therefore so friendly and reassuring
to the heart, as K0benhavn's. How beautiful, as
Keats remarked, are the retired flowers.
Now the plain truth is that Copenhagen is easily the most
attractive of all contemporary porcelain - Meissen, Wedgwood
and all. Among its beauties is a certain creamy, smoky
quality which fairly wrings the heart. I became well-known,
in due course, both at the Royal Copenhagen factory and
also at Bing & Gr0ndahl, where Per Simonsen, the manager,
would open the private museum for me and show me yet
again the Crusader-and-Saracen chessmen, the complete
series of Christmas plates and the under-glaze blue-and-gold
Heron service of Pietro Krohn. It is not, of course, necessary
for retailers - nor the practice of even a minority of them
- to visit or make themselves known at porcelain manufactories.
As far as mere business is concerned, the retailer deals
with the agent who, if up to his job, is perfectly competent
to tell and show him all he needs to know. Strictly speaking,
my peregrinations were as unnecessary as those of a jeweller
going to see for himself what happens at Kimberley, or a
publican's with a passion to visit Glenlivet and Burton-onTrent.
For the matter of that, Mahomedans, many of them
desperately poor, have for hundreds of years pinched and
scraped to get themselves to Mecca; and little enough there
is to see when you get there, by all I ever heard. Yet to them
it seems otherwise. It is not what they see, but what they
feel in their hearts.
42
My feelings, though secular, were scarcely different in
kind. People in Berkshire knew too little about ceramic
antiques and fine modern porcelain. I was going to change
all that, and whether I made or lost money was not what
mattered. What mattered was the work - the vital and
necessary work. Of course, I would have to start in a small
way. After all, the shop and its capital were not mine and
even to myself I could not justify the idea of urging my
father, at his time of life, to re-orientate the business he
had been running for thiry years. However, he and I had
always got on well, he was pleased with my enthusiasm and
hard work and I had no difficulty in persuading him to let
me borrow, as floating capital, a small sum which I thought
I would be able to repay (plus at least fifteen per cent) within
three years. Thus armed at point exactly, cap-a-pe, I entered
upon a systematic attendance of sales within striking
distance of Newbury and began to cultivate the acquaintance
of travelling dealers who sold to antique shops. Soon afterwards
I turned over part of the shop - near the entrance,
where people would be bound to see - to the sale of antique
pottery and porcelain.
Throughout these years I never felt anything more than a
general, sociable interest in girls. Many people, I suppose,
might feel that this was unnatural, but I was perfectly content
to remain a non-starter. No doubt I retained something
of my childish belief in my physical unattractiveness (the
attitude of years is not easily changed) but if this was indeed
a reason it must have lain deep, for I was seldom
troubled by desire and certainly felt no particular inadequacy.
Indeed, without thinking much about it I was rather proud
of my self-sufficiency, of being absorbed in my work and
content with my friends and somewhat solitary recreations.
In so far as I ever reflected, the idea of taking the trouble to
pay close attention to any individual girl seemed a complication
and distraction not worth anything to be got out of
it. If something like that was ever going to happen to me,
then it would have to be capable of penetrating a sizeable
barrier of diffidence. As for my parents, they made no
43
attempt to influence me. Perhaps they felt in no hurry for my
affections to wander.
I know, now, that in some ways I must have seemed - in
fact I was - rather staid and old-fashioned. For a start, an
unreflecting, orthodox Christian (how 'square'!); fastidiously
detached; even, perhaps, a shade precious - though I could
always get on with people and never lacked for friends. But
things - beautiful things - were so much easier and more
dependable than people; consistent, predictable and on that
account satisfying. Porcelain was a simplification, a refinement
of fallible, often-disappointing reality. To be sure, the
style and beauty of girls' clothes had power to delight me. I
could gaze, and take in every detail: but frequently their
owners struck me as frivolously wayward, trivial and demanding,
all-too-liable only to taint or spill the cool pleasure
flowing from pottery or counterpoint. As the sixties advanced
into ever-greater discord and confusion, shattering, in one
sphere after another, the very idea of acquiescence, or of the
need for any commonly-accepted values or restraints, I found
myself, though not yet thirty, less and less in accord with
the spirit of the times, preferring my own world of fragile
craftsmanship, secure, like a walled mansion (so I imagined
it), situated in some quiet street away from the turbulent
market-place given over to protest and half-baked mysticism.
This - as I myself realized - was a too-negative view of a
decade which included much gaiety and sincere ardour, but
I could not help it. There were moments, indeed, when I
acknowledged to myself that Tony Redwood, dog-collar or
no, was more up-to-date than I; both in heart and inclination
more warmly in sympathy with much of what was happening;
and also with those to whom and through whom
it was happening. ' "Proud youth! fastidious of the lower
world" - it'll catch up with you one of these days, Alan,' said
Tony one evening, when I had been remarking how much I
disliked some popular movement or other. He was smiling we
both were - but he half-meant it none the less.
Tony Redwood and his wife, Freda, were my closest
friends. I rather believe that on his arrival in 1965 Tony, who
was only a few years older than myself, seemed to several
44
people in his parish both an alarmingly intellectual and also
somewhat unconventional clergyman. Clever, quick and incisive,
he was certainly a long way fr
om the kindly, noncontroversial,
let's-not-say-anything-specifk-in-case-it-givesoffence
type, with a challenging turn of mind and, often, a
way of startling people by reacting in the opposite manner
from what might have been expected. As it became known,
however, that he was warm-hearted, sensible and unshockable,
he began to gain the confidence of all kinds of people some
of them a long way from Newbury. I remember vividly
the summer evening when he and I got back from a walk beyond
Kingsclere to find waiting in his drawing-room three
hippies, who had hitch-hiked from London to seek his advice
and help about a friend in trouble with the police.
As the years passed and my father's confidence in me increased
with my experience and proved staying-power, he
gradually took a less and less active part in running the
shop. Not that there was any question of supplanting him:
I felt too much affection and respect for him to wish for anything
of the kind. But there came to be an increasing amount
of 'Well, just as you think best, my boy' or 'Perhaps I'll stay
and give Jack a hand in the garden this afternoon'. We understood
each other very well, and I can't recall that we
ever had a serious disagreement about business - or, indeed,
anything else.
Though I remember clearly the February morning when
Barbara Stannard came into the shop for the first time, this
is mainly because of a matter that had nothing to do with
her, but with my so-called secretary, Mrs Taswell. Miss Flitter
and dear old Miss Lee had retired within a few months of
each other - one to her cottage at Boxford, up the Lambourn
valley, the other to live with a brother somewhere in south
London - and had been succeeded by Deirdre, a perky schoolleaver
from Donnington, whose Berkshire idiom ('I dunno as
I thinks a great lot o' that, Mistralan') would have sounded
familiar enough, I imagine, to Jack o' Newbury himself; and
by Mrs Taswell.
Mrs Taswell was one of those people you either have to
harden your heart against and get rid of, leaving her on your
45
conscience even while you argue miserably with the Lord that
you had work to do and it was no earthly business of yours
that she subsequently fell among thieves; or else take on
board on top of everything else. She was not young, she was
not local and she was distinctly odd - though this was not
immediately apparent. She came via an employment agency
in Reading, on whose books we had been for several weeks,
and initially she seemed a godsend, for she was well-spoken
and had a pleasant manner. Not only that, but she could
type and had done secretarial work in the civil service. For
a little more money she was ready, she said, to throw these
accomplishments into the kitty: she wouJd type letters and
file papers as well as serve in the shop. We had known it
was not going to be easy to replace Miss Lee and Miss Flitter
- they were as much creatures of a bygone age as housemaids
- and we engaged Mrs Taswell without more ado.
It soon became clear that, although industrious, loyal and
honest, she was possessed of such a quota of eccentric
stupidity as was hardly in nature. 'She's naturally dull,' said
my father, quoting Dr Johnson, 'but it must have taken her a
great deal of pains to become what we now see her.' As I
gradually learned, it had indeed. Ages long ago Mr Taswell
had fled away into the storm, and there was an eleven-yearold
daughter who had resolutely refused to live with her, running
back to her father time after time, until even the court
gave it up as a bad job. Naturally, this had made Mrs Taswell
unhappy. On top of this, she was ludicrously incapable
of managing her own money and when she first came to us
was not only overdrawn, but writing dud cheques with no
real understanding of why these were proving unpopular. In
short, she was a person quite unable to cope with life unless
there was someone to tell her what to do. I paid off the overdraft
(it was not very large), transferred her account to our
own bank and thereafter, with her relieved consent, looked
after it for her, approving payment of the bills for her regular
outgoings and telling her what spending money she could
The Girl in a Swing Page 5