What's Bred in the Bone

by Robertson Davies

  Of course there were other gifts. The Countess gave Francis a book that had been written about the Düsterstein pictures by some toilsome scholar many years before. Amalie, with much blushing, gave him six handkerchiefs which she had embroidered with his initials. Saraceni gave everybody books of poetry, bound in Florence. Francis won high distinction by giving the Countess and Amalie sketches of themselves, done in his Old Master style, in which he had taken special care to emphasize the family resemblance. He had nothing for the men, or for Miss Nibsmith, but it did not seem to matter. And when the gift-giving was finished, they sat down to a dinner of greater length than usual, with venison, and roast goose, and a stuffed carp, which was nicer to look at than to eat. And when cheese had been consumed the Countess announced that in special compliment to Francis they would conclude with a traditional English dish, which the chef identified, he being an Italian-Swiss, as Suppe Inglese. It was a dashing attempt at a sherry trifle, rather too wet but kindly meant.

  The meal was accompanied by what was less a conversation than a solo performance by Prince Max, filled with casual references—fairly casual but by no means inevitable—to “my cousin Carol, the King of Rumania” and one or two stories about “my ancestor, Friedrich der Grosse (though of course we are of the Swabian branch of the family)” and quite a long account of how he had studied canon law as a boy “so that the priests couldn’t cheat us—we had more than fifty parishes, you know.” And at last when toasts were to be proposed and the Countess, and Amalie, and Miss Nibsmith, and the splendours of Italian art “as represented by our dear Maestro, Tancred Saraceni”, and the King of England, had all been drunk, the Prince insisted with much merriment that they drink also to “the Pretender to the British Throne, my cousin Prince Rupert of Bavaria, whose claim is through his Stuart ancestry, as of course you know.” After this toast Francis insisted on smashing his glass (having made sure it was not too precious) in order that no lesser toast should ever be drunk from it.

  Francis emerged somewhat too abruptly from his character as Le Beau Ténébreux, for he was feeling the wines stirring within him. When Amalie, daring greatly, asked him if it were true that there were many bears in Canada, he replied that when he was a boy a child had been eaten by a bear within three miles of Blairlogie. That was true, but not content, he went on to say that the bear had later been seen, walking on its hind legs, wearing the child’s tuque and carrying its satchel of books, making its way toward Carlyle Rural. Even Amalie refused to believe him.

  “My dear Amalie, the English wit tends always toward some fantaisie,” said the Countess with grandmotherly solemnity. And then Prince Max took over again, to tell about a boar-hunt he had once enjoyed in the company of several highly placed relatives.

  “What does Prince Max do now?” Francis asked Ruth Nibsmith, after dinner.

  “Travels for a wine company that has headquarters in London,” she whispered. “Lives on what he makes, which is pretty good, but not of course a fortune. He’s a real aristocrat, a shameless, joyful survivor. Hitler will never down Max. Did you notice the little Wittelsbach thingummy on the door of his car? Max is the real goods, but not tongue-tied, like our English hogen-mogens.”

  CHRISTMAS MORNING. Mass had been heard, breakfast had been eaten, and without any words having been spoken about it—though Prince Max talked without a stop about other things—Saraceni led the way to the shell-grotto workroom, and the Countess, the Prince, and Francis followed. The panels on which Saraceni had been working all through the autumn were propped up on tables and walls and against the pillars of lapis lazuli.

  Slowly the Prince made a tour of inspection.

  “Marvellous,” he said; “really, Tancred, you are greater than your reputation. How you have transformed these dismal daubs! I would never have believed it if I did not have the evidence before me. And you say it is truly undetectable?”

  “A determined critic, armed with various testing acids, and special rays to pick up inevitable discrepancies in the brushwork, could probably see what was done—but I doubt if even then he would be sure. But as I have been telling our friend Corniche every day, our task is to do our work so well that suspicion will not be aroused, and prying investigators will not come with their rays and begin to arouse suspicions. As you see, the pictures are rather dirty. And the dirt on them is their very own. No Augsburg dirt where one might expect Nürnberg dirt. Doubtless they will be given a good cleaning before they are hung in the great gallery.”

  “Perhaps you will be called in to supervise the cleaning. That would be rather good, wouldn’t it?”

  “I should certainly enjoy it.”

  “You know, some of these are so good I almost covet them for myself. You have really made it seem as if some uncommonly clever, and quite unknown and unrecognized, portraitists of authentic German style had been at work among the rich merchants of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in these parts. The one thing you have not been able to disguise is your talent, Meister.”

  “You are very kind.”

  “Look at this one. The Fuggers’ jester. Unquestionably this is one of the Fools whom we know the Fuggers always kept in their entourage after they became Counts, but which one? Do you think it could be Drollig Hansel, the favourite of Count Hans? Look at him. What a face!”

  “Poor wretch,” said the Countess; “to be born a dwarf and kept as a Fool. Still, I suppose it was better than being a dwarf whom nobody kept.”

  “This one will certainly delight our friends when they see it,” said Prince Max.

  “I am sorry, but that one is not included with the others,” said Saraceni.

  “Not included! But it’s the pick of the lot! Why is it not included!”

  “Because it is not a touched-up genuine picture. It is wholly and simply a fabrication, made by our young friend Corniche. I have been teaching him the technique of this sort of painting, and as an exercise I left him to produce something solely on his own responsibility, to show how well he had mastered the art.”

  “But it is superb!”

  “Yes. A superb fake.”

  “Well—but could anybody spot it?”

  “Not without a scientific examination. The panel is old and quite genuine, and it is covered in leather as old as itself. The colours are correct, made in the true manner. The technique is impeccable, except that it is rather too good for a wholly unknown painter. And this ingenious scoundrel Corniche has even seen that the craquelure incorporates some authentic dust. I don’t suppose one observer in a thousand would have any doubt about it.”

  “Oh, but Meister—that observer would surely spot the old Fugger Firmenzeichen, the pitchfork and circle, that can just barely be perceived in the upper left-hand corner. He would pride himself on having spotted it and guessed what it is, although it is almost obscured.”

  “Yes. But it is a fake, my dear Max.”

  “Perhaps in the substance. Certainly not in the spirit. Consider, Meister: this is not imitating any known painter’s work—that would be a fake, of course. No, this is simply a little picture in a sixteenth-century manner. Now what makes it different from these others?”

  “Only the fact that it has been done in the past month.”

  “Oh, that is almost Lutheran pernickety morality! That is an unworthy servitude to chronology. Cousin, what do you say? Isn’t it a little gem?”

  “I say it speaks of the dull, inescapable misery of being a dwarf, of having to make oneself ridiculous in order to be tolerated, of feeling that God has not used you well. If it makes me feel these things so strongly, it is certainly a picture of unusual quality. I should like to see it make the journey with the others.”

  “Of course, cousin. Just the sort of good sense I should expect from you. Come on, Tancred, relent.”

  “If you say so. The greatest risk is yours.”

  “Let me worry about the risk. Is everything ready for the journey, cousin?”

  “The six big hogsheads are in the old granary.�
�

  “Then let us get to work at once.”

  Francis, Max, the Countess, and Saraceni spent the next three hours wrapping the panels—eighteen of them, including the picture of the jester—in oiled paper, after which they were sewn into packages of oiled silk and the seams caulked with tar Saraceni heated on the brazier. To the silken packages a number of small lead weights were attached. Then they carried them to the old granary, where there were no workmen because of the holiday, and there they removed the tops from the six hogsheads, and carefully sank the packages in the white wine they contained—fifty-two gallons to a barrel. When Prince Max tapped the last top back into place, eighteen pictures had been drowned, snug and dry in their casings, and were ready to travel to England, to the warehouses of a highly respected London wine-merchant. It was a good morning’s work, and even the Countess relaxed some of her usual reserve, and invited the conspirators to take Madeira with her in her private room, where Francis had never been before.

  “I feel a splendid glow of achievement,” said Prince Max, sniffing at his glass. “I am rejoicing in the breadth and ingenuity of our cleverness. I am wondering if I shall be able to resist pinching the little Fugger Jester for myself. But no—that would be unprofessional. He must go with the others. You know, it seems to me to be damn funny that our friend Francis has not said a word—not a single word—about what we have done with his picture.”

  “I had a good reason for keeping quiet,” said Francis. “But I would certainly like to know what is going on, if that is permissible. The Meister has quelled me so completely during the past four months that I don’t feel that I have any right to ask questions. I suppose that is what apprenticeship means. Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. But I’d like to know a little, if I may.”

  “Tancred, what an old tyrant you must be,” said Prince Max. “Cousin, do you think we should explain, just a little?”

  “Yes, I do. Though I doubt your ability to explain, or do anything else, just a little, Max. But Mr. Cornish is now in—you shall say in what—farther than he knows, and it would be ill-usage not to tell him what he is letting himself in for.”

  “Here it is, my dear Cornish. You know that our Führer is a great connoisseur of art? Understandable, as he was himself a painter in his young days, before his mighty destiny declared itself. Because of his determination that the full glory of the German Volk should be made plain to the whole world, as well as to the Volk itself, he wishes to acquire and bring back to Germany whatever German works of art are owned abroad. Repatriation of our heritage, he calls it. That will take some doing, of course. There was a great dispersal of German religious art during the Reformation. Who wanted that ridiculous stuff? Certainly not the Lutherans. But much of it found its way to other countries, and travelled even further toward America, from which it probably will not return. But what is in Europe may be persuaded to return. There was another great dispersal of German art during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when every young sprig who made the Grand Tour felt obliged to take a few pretty things home with him, and not all of those pretty things were acquired in Italy. Some fine Gothic things went from here. The Führer wants to get it all together, the first-rate and the second-rate—not that the Führer would regard anything authentically German as second-rate—and he is planning a great Führermuseum in Linz to house it.”

  “But surely Linz is in Austria?”

  “Yes, and not a great distance from the Führer’s birthplace. By the time the pictures have been assembled, Austria will be glad to have the Führermuseum. Austria is ripe for the picking. Are you beginning to catch on?”

  “Yes, but does the Führer really want the kind of thing the Meister and I have been working on? That’s very small potatoes, surely? And why send it to England? Why not offer it here?”

  “Well—that is a complicated story. First, the Führer wants everything that is German; when it has been acquired, somebody will sort the good from the mediocre. And I may say that you and dear Tancred have lifted these pictures above mediocrity. They are bürger-portraits of considerable interest. How intelligent, how German they look now! Second, the Führer, or I should say his agents, are ready to make deals with foreign dealers. They like to do swaps. For a German picture, a picture of roughly corresponding worth that is not German but now hangs in a German gallery may be exchanged. The Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin and the Alte Pinakothek in Munich have already—under the gentle persuasion of the Führer’s artistic advisers—swapped a Ducio di Buoninsegna, a Raphael, some Fra Lippo Lippis, and God knows what else for German paintings that could be made available. There are scores of them in England, you know.”

  “I suppose there must be.”

  “And we are just about to ship some more to England for swapping purposes. Things that might have been found in English country houses. Small things, but the Führer’s principal agent likes quantity, as well as quality.”

  “He has an eye for quality, as well,” said the Countess, with something like a snort.

  “Oh yes, he has, and he has had his eyes on the pictures here at Düsterstein,” said Prince Max. “The Führer’s principal artistic agent, as you may know, is that very busy man, Reichsmarschall Göring, and he has already visited my cousin to discover whether she would like to present her family collection to the Führermuseum as a token of her fidelity to German ideals. The Reichsmarschall is extremely fond of pictures, and he has an enviable collection of his own. I understand,” said Max, turning to the Countess, “that he has asked the Führer to revive in his favour the title that Landgrave Wilhelm III of Hesse gave to his adviser on art—Director-General of the Delights of My Eye.”

  “What effrontery,” said the Countess. “His taste is very vulgar, as one might expect.”

  “Well, my dear Cornish, there you have it,” said Prince Max.

  “And you are doing this as a sort of quixotic anti-Hitler thing?” said Francis. “Just to do him in the eye? Surely the risk is immense?”

  “We are quixotic, but not so quixotic as all that,” said the Prince. “There is a certain recognition for this work, which is, as you say, dangerous. Friendly English firms are most generous. Certain art dealers are involved. They arrange the swaps, and they sell the Italian treasures that go to England in return for the sort of thing we have been dealing with this morning. Such a group of lesser pictures as this may be exchanged for a single canvas—a Tiepolo, even a Raphael. The work is quixotic, certainly, but—not totally selfless. Some money does change hands, depending on how well we do.”

  Francis looked at the Countess, and although he was pretty good at controlling his features, astonishment must have showed. The Countess did not flinch.

  “One does not restore a great fortune by shrinking from risks, Mr. Cornish,” she said.

  THAT GIRL DID WELL with Francis’s horoscope, said the Lesser Zadkiel. She even hinted at your involvement in his fate, brother. That must have surprised you.

  —I am not so easily surprised, said the Daimon Maimas. In the days when people understood about the existence and influence of daimons like myself we were often recognized and called upon. But she did well enough, certainly. She warned Francis of an impending crisis, and against his increasing preoccupation with money.

  —He has good reason for it, said the Angel. As he says, everybody exploits him and he is open to exploitation. Look at that gang at Düsterstein! Prince Max assumes that Francis will be delighted to be included in the picture hoax—to give it the least objectionable name—because he regards it as an aristocratic lark, and it honours Francis to be one of the jokers. The Countess thinks, in her heart, that a bourgeois like Francis is lucky to be allowed into an aristocratic secret, and to work for his keep to sustain it. And Saraceni has the genial contempt of the master for the neophyte. But if that scheme were ever uncovered, Francis would suffer most, because he is the only one who has actually forged a picture.

  —No, brother, he has forged nothing. He ha
s painted an original picture in a highly individual style, and if any connoisseur misdates it, the more fool he. It is Prince Max and the Countess who are passing it off as what it is not. They are aristocrats, and, as you well know, aristocrats did not always achieve their position by a niggling scrupulosity. As for money, the whole story has not yet been told.

  —I bow to your superior knowledge of the case, my dear Maimas. What pleases me is that François Xavier Bouchard, the dwarf tailor of Blairlogie, is at last about to burst upon the world, and be admired, as the Fuggers’ Jester, Drollig Hansel. And all because Francis learned to observe, and remember, under the influence of Harry Furniss.

  —These are the little jokes that relieve the tedious work of being a Minor Immortal, said the Daimon Maimas.

  “DO YOU SUPPOSE that La Nibsmith will take Prince Max’s broad hint?” said Saraceni. “You heard what he said when he gave her that book: for astrological notations. He is mad to have her cast his horoscope.”

  “And won’t she?” said Francis.

  “Apparently not. He has been begging—in so far as so aristocratic a person can beg—for several months. She is capricious, which is her right. She does not do it professionally, but she is very good. A genuine psychic. Of course, casting horoscopes depends a good deal on the psychic gifts of the astrologer. Germans are just as keen for that sort of thing as Americans. The Führer has an astrologer of his own.”

  “She doesn’t look like my idea of a psychic.”

  “Psychics often don’t—the real ones. They are frequently rather earthy people. Has she cast your horoscope yet?”

  “Well—yes, as a matter of fact, she has.”

  “Have you a good destiny?”

  “Odd, apparently. Odder than I would have thought.”