Alan Bennett: Plays, Volume 2

by Alan Bennett

  Blunt It can wait, Ma’am.

  HMQ No. Carry on, do it now. Ignore me.

  Blunt Very well, Ma’am.

  HMQ looks at the picture while Blunt scribbles a note.

  HMQ And how did we accumulate this particular picture?

  Blunt It belonged to Charles I, Ma’am.

  HMQ King Charles I?

  Blunt Ma’am. It was thought to be by Titian.

  HMQ And now it isn’t?

  Blunt Not altogether, Ma’am.

  HMQ I suppose that is part of your function, Sir Anthony, to prove that my pictures are fakes?

  Blunt Because something is not what it is said to be, Ma’am, does not mean it is a fake. It may just have been wrongly attributed.

  HMQ Yes. It’s a fine face, though he looks as if he could do with some fresh air. Who is he?

  Blunt His name is Andrea Franceschi. He was Chancellor of Venice.

  HMQ We were in Venice two years ago. Unusual place. So. Now that it’s a fake, what are you planning to do with it? Put it out for the binmen?

  Blunt A painting is a document, Ma’am. It has to be read in the context of art history.

  HMQ Has art always had a history? It’s all the thing now, isn’t it, but one doesn’t remember it when one was young. There was art appreciation.

  Blunt Art history is a part of art appreciation, Ma’am. We know that in this painting the old man is Titian himself; it’s copied from one of his self-portraits. That’s the Chancellor of Venice, but this other gentleman is something of a mystery. I’m trying to identify him, and with your permission, Ma’am, I’d like to remove the painting to examine it at my leisure.

  HMQ Remove it? I’m not sure I want that. It would leave us with a horrid hole.

  Blunt I have something to put in its place, Ma’am. (Indicating the Annunciation.) It’s an Annunciation.

  HMQ Yes, I know what it is.

  Blunt You’re not attached to this particular picture, are you, Ma’am?

  HMQ No, but it’s there, you know. One’s used to it.

  Blunt I think it was Gertrude Stein who said that after a while even the best pictures turn into wallpaper.

  HMQ Really? This wallpaper is pure silk. I was shown some silkworms once in Sri Lanka. It’s their cocoons, you know.

  Blunt Yes. I had understood Ma’am wasn’t going to be here this afternoon.

  HMQ Obviously. I had understood I wasn’t going to be here, either. I was due to open a swimming pool. Completed on Friday, filled on Saturday, it cracked on Sunday and today it’s as dry as a bone. So this afternoon one is, to some extent, kicking one’s heels.

  Blunt That must make a nice change.

  HMQ Not altogether. One likes to know in advance what one is going to be doing, even if one is going to be hanging about. If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means. (She indicates an object on a table.) This ostrich egg was given us by the people of Samoa. It hasn’t quite found its place yet. Titian.

  Blunt Ma’am?

  HMQ That isn’t really your period, is it?

  Blunt In what way?

  HMQ You are an expert on Poussin, are you not?

  Blunt That’s right, Ma’am.

  HMQ Chicken.

  Blunt Ma’am?

  HMQ Poussin. French for chicken. One has just had it for lunch. I suppose it’s fresh in the mind. It was one of what I call my All Walks of Life luncheons. Today we had the head of the CBI, an Olympic swimmer, a primary school headmistress, a General in the Salvation Army, and Glenda Jackson. It was a bit sticky.

  Blunt I’ve been to one, Ma’am. That was a bit sticky, too.

  HMQ The trouble is, whenever I meet anybody they’re always on their best behaviour. And when one is on one’s best behaviour one isn’t always at one’s best. I don’t understand it. They all have different jobs, there ought to be heaps to talk about, yet I’m always having to crank it up.

  Blunt The truth is, Ma’am, one doesn’t have much to say to people very different from oneself. If you’d had the General in the Salvation Army, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the President of the Methodist Conference, they could all have talked about God, and lunch would have been a howling success.

  HMQ Yes. And guess who would have been staring at her plate. And think if they were all actors.

  Blunt At least they would talk, Ma’am.

  HMQ Correction, Sir Anthony. They wouldn’t talk. They would chat. One doesn’t want chat. I don’t like chat.

  Blunt Weren’t we chatting about Poussin?

  HMQ Were we? Well, we mustn’t. We must do it properly. Feed me facts, Sir Anthony. I like a fact. What were his dates?

  Blunt 1595 to 1665.

  HMQ Seventy. A good age for those days. How many pictures did he do?

  Blunt Er …

  HMQ Don’t you know?

  Blunt I’ve never been asked that question before, Ma’am. He wasn’t a prolific artist.

  HMQ Have we got any?

  Blunt Paintings, no, Ma’am, but what you do have is a priceless collection of drawings.

  HMQ Oh dear. So many of my things are priceless. Doubly so, really. Priceless because one can’t put a price on them, and then if one did one wouldn’t be allowed to sell them. Do you have pictures?

  Blunt One or two, Ma’am.

  HMQ Are they valuable?

  Blunt Yes, but they are not invaluable. Though I do have a Poussin.

  HMQ You mean you have one and we don’t? Something wrong there.

  Blunt Do you take any pleasure in acquisition, Ma’am?

  HMQ Why? I’m not asking you to make me a present of it. That was one of my grandmother’s tricks, Queen Mary. Acquired no end of stuff. Accumulated it. But pleasure in buying things? No. I like buying horses, as everybody knows, but why not? I know about them. But you’re right. One more Fabergé egg isn’t going to make my day. Go on with your work. Don’t let me stop you.

  Blunt It seems rude.

  HMQ I’m used to it. My days are spent watching people work. My work is watching people work.

  Blunt Very well, Ma’am. (He goes on making notes.)

  HMQ What is it you want to know about the painting?

  Blunt Many things. It’s a problem picture.

  HMQ Not to me. But then I don’t suppose wallpaper can be a problem, can it? Where will you take it?

  Blunt The laboratory.

  HMQ Oh dear. I don’t know. But I’m inclined to say no. It’s the constant va et vient of one’s things. A monarch has been defined as someone who doesn’t have to look round before sitting down. No longer. One has to look round nowadays because the odds are the Chippendale is on exhibition. (She picks up a bowl.) This rose bowl was a wedding present from the people of Jersey.

  Blunt Do you still have all your wedding presents, Ma’am?

  HMQ Not all. For instance, it was 1947. Clothes were still rationed. Result was, one was inundated with nylons. I don’t still have them. Do you like it?

  Blunt Not altogether, Ma’am.

  HMQ I do, quite. But then I’ve never set much store by taste. That, after all, is your job. In mine, taste isn’t such a good idea. When one looks at my predecessors the monarchs with the best taste … I’m thinking of Charles I and George III and IV … made a terrible hash of the rest of it. I don’t think taste helps. Do you paint?

  Blunt I’m afraid not, Ma’am. I have no skill in that department.

  HMQ Nor me. The Prince of Wales paints, and my husband. They both claim it is very soothing. As a child I found it the reverse. My colours always used to run. I like things to have a line round them.

  Blunt Ma’am must have had more experience of painters than most.

  HMQ In what way?

  Blunt Through having your portrait painted.

  HMQ Oh, that. Yes. Though one gets the impression that as artists portrait painters don’t really count. Not nowadays anyway.

  Blunt They’re seldom standard-bearers of the avant-garde, Ma�
��am.

  HMQ They would hardly be painting me if they were. One doesn’t want two noses. Mind you, that would make one no more unrecognizable than some of their efforts. No resemblance at all. Sometimes I think it would be simpler to send round to Scotland Yard for an Identikit. Still I can understand it when they get me wrong, but some of them get the horse wrong too. That’s unforgivable.

  Blunt It’s true none of them quite capture you.

  HMQ I hope not. I don’t think one wants to be captured, does one? Not entirely, anyway.

  Blunt You sound like one of those primitive tribes who believe an image confers some power on the possessor.

  HMQ If I believed that, Sir Anthony, I am in the pocket of anyone with a handful of change.

  Blunt Portrait painters tend to regard faces as not very still lives. There was one eminent portrait painter who said he wished he could hang his sitters upside down by the leg like a dead hare.

  HMQ Yes. Well, one Minister of the Arts wanted to loose Francis Bacon on me, and that’s probably how I would have ended up. He did the Screaming Pope, didn’t he? I suppose I would have been the Screaming Queen.

  He laughs. She doesn’t. She picks up something else.

  This is charming, isn’t it? It’s antelope horn. A gift from the National Association of Girls’ and Mixed Clubs. Nowadays, of course, they don’t even do sketches; they take photographs, then take them home and copy them. I think that’s cheating.

  Blunt I’m sure Michelangelo would have used the camera, Ma’am, if it had been invented. And Leonardo would probably have invented it.

  He laughs, but she doesn’t.

  HMQ You see, I would call doing it from a photograph, tracing. Art, to my mind, has to be what we used to call freehand drawing. If you paint it from a photograph one might as well have a photograph.

  Blunt The portrait everybody likes best does look like a photograph.

  HMQ The Annigoni. I like that one too. Portraits are supposed to be frightfully self-revealing, aren’t they, good ones? Show what one’s really like. The secret self. Either that, or the eyes are supposed to follow you round the room. I don’t know that one has a secret self. Though it’s generally assumed that one has. If it could be proved that one hadn’t, some of the newspapers would have precious little to write about. Have you had your portrait painted?

  Blunt No, Ma’am.

  HMQ So we don’t know whether you have a secret self.

  Blunt I think the only person who doesn’t have a secret self, Ma’am, must be God.

  HMQ Oh? How is that?

  Blunt There is no sense in which one could ask, ‘What is God really like?’ Never off duty – he must always be the same. It must make it very dull. There can be no gossip in Heaven.

  HMQ Good. I don’t like gossip. This clock shows the time not only here but also in Perth, Western Australia. In certain circumstances it could be quite handy. I suppose for me Heaven is likely to be a bit of a comedown. What about you?

  Blunt I’m not sure I’ll get in, Ma’am.

  HMQ Why on earth not? You’ve done nothing wrong. Your father was a clergyman, after all. Are all owners co- operative about lending their pictures?

  Blunt None as co-operative as yourself, Ma’am.

  HMQ That is the kind of remark, Sir Anthony, were it in a play, to which one would reply ‘Tush!’

  Blunt Truly, Ma’am.

  HMQ Well, I think I’m going to blot my copybook on this one and persuade you to take St Sebastian instead.

  Blunt He wouldn’t be much use to me, Ma’am.

  HMQ Not much use to anybody. I find him faintly ludicrous. Turned into a human pincushion, and he just looks as if it were a minor inconvenience.

  Blunt The saints tended to be like that, Ma’am. Though there’s more excuse for St Sebastian as he didn’t actually die of his wounds.

  HMQ Oh. That was lucky.

  Blunt He survived and was flogged to death.

  HMQ Oh dear. Out of the frying-pan into the fire. And what about this Annunciation you want to foist on to me? Where’s it been? In the cellar?

  Blunt Hampton Court.

  HMQ Same thing. What should I know about the Annunciation? Come along. Facts.

  Blunt The Virgin is traditionally discovered reading. It’s quite amusing that as time went on painters tended to elevate the status of the Holy Family, so that Joseph, from being a simple carpenter, eventually comes to be depicted as a full-blown architect; and the Virgin, who to begin with is just given a book, ends up with a reading desk and a whole library, so that in some later versions Gabriel looks as if he is delivering his message to the Mistress of Girton.

  He laughs. She doesn’t.

  HMQ Girton, Cambridge?

  Blunt Yes, Ma’am.

  HMQ I opened them a new kitchen. Their gas cookers are among the most advanced in East Anglia. You see, one reason why I prefer that to this is that in a home (and this is a home, albeit only one of one’s homes) one doesn’t want too many pictures of what I would call a religious flavour. I mean, this isn’t a church. Besides, this (the Triple Portrait) I think is rather unusual, whereas Annunciations are quite common. When we visited Florence we were taken round the art gallery there, and there – well, I won’t say Annunciations are two a penny, but they certainly were quite thick on the ground. And not all of them very convincing. My husband remarked that one of them looked to him like the messenger arriving from Littlewoods Pools. And that the Virgin was protesting she had put a cross for no publicity. Fortunately, Signor de Gasperi’s English was not good, or we should have had the Pope on our tracks. (HMQ picks up an object.) Do you know what this is made out of? Coal. Given us by the Welsh miners. How long would you want it for, my Titian? My fake Titian.

  Blunt A few weeks.

  HMQ Oh, very well. You see, what I don’t like is the assumption that one doesn’t notice, one doesn’t care. Still, we’re off to Zambia next week, so that will cushion the blow. One never stops, you know. Governments come and go. Or don’t go. One never stops. Could I ask you a question, Sir Anthony? Have I many forgeries? What about these?

  Blunt Paintings of this date are seldom forgeries, Ma’am. They are sometimes not what we think they are, but that’s different. The question doesn’t pose itself in the form, ‘Is this a fake?’ so much as ‘Who painted this picture and why?’ Is it Titian, or a pupil or pupils of Titian? Is it someone who paints like Titian because he admires him and can’t help painting in the same way? The public are rather tiresomely fascinated by forgery – more so, I’m afraid, than they are by the real thing.

  HMQ Yes, well, as a member in this instance (somewhat unusually for me) of the public, I also find forgery fascinating.

  Blunt Paintings make no claims, Ma’am. They do not purport to be anything other than paintings. It is we, the beholders, who make claims for them, attribute a picture to this artist or that.

  HMQ With respect, Sir Anthony, rubbish. What if a painting is signed and the signature is a forgery?

  Blunt Forgery of that kind is much more a feature of modern or relatively modern paintings than of Old Masters, Ma’am.

  HMQ Again, Sir Anthony, I find myself having to disagree with you. We were in Holland not long ago and after we had been taken to see the tulips and a soil structure laboratory, Queen Juliana showed us her Vermeers. One has a Vermeer, so one was quite interested.

  Blunt I think I know what you are going to say, Ma’am.

  HMQ gives him a sharp look,

  … but please go ahead and say it.

  HMQ Thank you, and (though you’re obviously ahead of me) she showed us some of the forged Vermeers done by a Mr…

  Blunt Van Meegeren.

  HMQ Quite. Those were forgeries. Of Old Masters.

  Blunt Ma’am is quite right.

  HMQ Moreover, these Van Meegerens didn’t seem to me to be the least bit like. Terrible daubs. God knows, one is no expert on Vermeer, but if I could tell they were fakes why couldn’t other people see it at the time?
When was it, in the forties?

  Blunt It’s a complicated question, Ma’am.

  HMQ Oh, don’t spare me. Remember I could have been opening a swimming bath.

  Blunt What has exposed them as forgeries, Ma’am, is not any improvement in perception, but time. Though a forger reproduce in the most exact fashion the style and detail of his subject, as a painter he is nevertheless of his time and however slavishly he imitates, he does it in the fashion of his time, in a way that is contemporary, and with the passage of years it is this element that dates, begins to seem old-fashioned, and which eventually unmasks him.

  HMQ Interesting. I suppose too the context of the painting matters. Its history and provenance (is that the word?) confer on it a certain respectability. This can’t be a forgery, it’s in such and such a collection, its background and pedigree are impeccable – besides, it has been vetted by the experts. Isn’t that how the argument goes? So if one comes across a painting with the right background and pedigree, Sir Anthony, then it must be hard, I imagine – even inconceivable – to think that it is not what it claims to be. And even supposing someone in such circumstances did have suspicions, they would be chary about voicing them. Easier to leave things as they are in every department. Stick to the official attribution rather than let the cat out of the bag and say, ‘Here we have a fake.’

  Blunt I still think the word ‘fake’ is inappropriate, Ma’am.

  HMQ If something is not what it is claimed to be, what is it?

  Blunt An enigma?

  HMQ That is, I think, the sophisticated answer. It’s curious, Sir Anthony, but all the time we have been talking, there has been a young man skulking behind one of my Louis XV bergères (a gift from the de Gaulles). Do you think he is waiting to assassinate one, or does he have an interest in that particular ébéniste?

  Blunt My assistant, Ma’am.

  HMQ I think it’s time he was flushed from his lair. Come in, hiddy or not, young man.

  Phillips comes on left.

  Blunt This is Mr Phillips, Ma’am, a student at the Courtauld Institute.

  Phillips Your Majesty.

  HMQ What do you plan to do with your art history?

  Phillips I am hoping to go into one of the big auction houses, Ma’am.

  HMQ Jolly good. That should keep you out of mischief. Did you ever consider that, Sir Anthony?