What’s Bred in the Bone tct-2
Page 24
Knows a few other things, too, and I kept my eye open for those. Nothing to be seen except that Roskalns has just the teeniest inclination to deal from the bottom of the deck now and then, though not very injuriously, so far as I could tell. I enjoy a mild flutter, and shall go to BBB’s evening game from time to time, though I can play cards more comfortably in several other places.
Why go, then? You know how inquisitive I am, godfather. Why has BBB one Dutch name as well as his genuine Bulgarian one? Does he float his heavy hospitality on what he makes at the table? Is Charles Fremantle really as hellbent on ruin as he seems to be? And why, as I was leaving, did BBB give me an envelope that contained a pretty good horoscope which said, among other things, “You are very shrewd at piercing through what is hidden from others”? Sounds like a come-on. I have never found anything in my horoscope that suggested unusual perception—beyond what a caricaturist might have, of course.
Obedient to your advice, I am not writing this on College stationery, as you see. I swiped this paper the other day when I visited the Old Palace to pay my yearly respects to the R.C. chaplain, Monsignor Knollys, as my Aunt Mary-Benedetta strictly charged me to do. The chaplain is a queer bird and rather dismissive to Canadians, whom he merrily terms “colonials”. I’ll colonial him if I get the chance.
Yr. affct. godson,
Frank
Two days after his evening with Buys-Bozzaris, Frank was working in his sitting-room when the door burst open after a short, loud knock, and a girl burst in.
“You’re Francis Cornish, aren’t you?” said she, and dumped an armful of books on his sofa. “I thought I’d better have a look at you. I’m Ismay Glasson, and we’re sort of cousins.”
Since his visit to Cornwall and Chegwidden House five years ago, Frank had forgotten that he had a cousin named Ismay, but he recalled her now as the terrible older sister of the obnoxious Glasson children, who had assured him that if Ismay had been at home, she would have given him a rough time. He had been rather afraid of girls then, but in the interval had gained greatly in self-possession. He would give her a rough time first.
“Marry come up, m’dirty cousin,” said he; “don’t you usually wait to be asked before you barge into a room?”
“Not usually. ‘Marry come up, m’dirty cousin’—that’s a quotation, isn’t it? You’re not reading Eng.Lit., I hope?”
“Why do you hope that?”
“Because the men who do are usually such dreadful fruits, and I’d hoped you’d be nice.”
“I am nice, but apt to be formal with strangers, as you observe.”
“Oh balls! How about giving me a glass of sherry.”
During his first year, Francis had become thoroughly habituated to the Oxford habit of swimming in sherry. He had also discovered that sherry is not the inoffensive drink innocent people suppose.
“What’ll you have? The pale, or the old walnut brown?”
“Old walnut. If not Eng.Lit., what are you reading?”
“Modern Greats.”
“That’s not so bad. The kids said something about Classics.”
“I considered Classics, but I wanted to expand a bit.”
“Probably you needed it. The kids said you mooned about and talked about King Arthur and said Cornwall was enchanted ground, like a complete ass.”
“If you judge me by the standards of your loathsome and barbarous young relatives, I suppose I was a complete ass.”
“Golly! We’re not precisely hitting it off, are we?”
“If you burst into my room when I am working and insult me, and tuck up your muddy feet on my sofa, what do you expect? You’ve been given a glass of sherry; isn’t that courtesy above and beyond anything you’ve deserved?”
‘“Come off it! I’m your cousin, aren’t I?”
“I don’t know. Have you any papers of identification? Not that they would say any more than your face. You have the Cornish face.”
“So have you. I’d have known you anywhere. Face like a horse, you mean.”
“I have not said you have a face like a horse. I am too well-bred, and also too mature, for this kind of verbal rough stuff. And if that means to you that I am a complete ass, or even a fruit, so be it. Go and play with your own coarse kind.”
Francis was enjoying himself. At Spook he had learned the technique of bullying girls: bully them first and they may not get to the point of bullying you, which, given a chance, they will certainly do. This girl talked tough, but was not truly self-assured. She was untidily and unbecomingly dressed. Her hair needed more combing than she had given it recently and the soft woman’s academic cap she wore was dusty and messy, as was her gown. Good legs, though the stockings had been worn for too many days without washing. But in her the Cornish face was distinguished and spirited. Like several other girls he had seen in Oxford, she might have been a beauty if she had possessed any firm conception of beauty, and related it to herself, but in her the English notion of neglected womanhood was firmly in command.
“Let’s not fight. This is good sherry. May I have another shot? Tell me about yourself.”
“No, ladies first. You tell me about yourself.”
“I’m in my first year at Lady Margaret Hall. Scholarship in modern languages, so that’s what I’m doing here. You know Charlie Fremantle, don’t you?”
“I think I’ve met him.”
“He says you met at a card game. He lost a lot. You won a lot.”
“I won seven shillings. Does Charlie fancy himself as a card-player?”
“He adores the risk. Says it makes his blood run around. He adores danger.”
“That’s expensive danger. I hope he has a long purse.”
“Longish. Longer than mine, anyhow. I’m poor but deserving. My scholarship is seventy pounds a year. My people, with many a deep-fetched groan, bring it up to two hundred.”
“Not bad. Rhodes Scholars only get three hundred, at present.”
“Oh, but they get lots of additional money for travel and this and that. What have you got?”
“I look after my own money, to some extent.”
“I see. Not going to tell. That’s your Scotch side. I know about you from Charlie, so you can’t hide anything. He says your family is stinking rich, though a bit common. The kids said you were bone mean. Wouldn’t even stand them an ice cream.”
“If they wanted ice cream, they shouldn’t have put an adder in my bed.”
“It was a dead adder.”
“I didn’t know that when I put my foot on it. Why are you at Oxford? Are you a bluestocking?”
“Maybe I am. I’m very bright in the head. I want to get into broadcasting. Or film. If not Oxford, what? The days are gone when girls just came out and went to dances and waited for Prince Charming.”
“So I hear. Well—is there anything I can do for you?”
“Doesn’t look like it, does it?”
“If you have no suggestions, I suppose I could take you to lunch.”
“Oh splendid! I’m hungry.”
“Not today. Tomorrow. That will give you time to smarten up a little. I’ll take you to the O.U.D.S. Ever been there?”
“No. I’d love that. I’ve never been. But why do you say O.U.D.S.? Why don’t you call it OUDS? Everybody does, you know.”
“Yes; I know, but I wasn’t sure you would know. Well—my club, and ladies are admitted at lunch.”
“Isn’t it full of dreadful fruits? People with sickening upper-class names like Reptilian Cork-Nethersole? Isn’t it crammed with fruits?”
“No. About one in four, at the outside. But dreadful fruits, as you so unpleasantly call them, have good food and drink and usually have lovely manners, so no throwing buns or any of that rough stuff you go in for at women’s colleges. Meet me here—downstairs, outside the door marked Buys-Bozzaris—at half past twelve. I like to be punctual. Don’t trouble to wear a hat.”
Francis thought that he had sat on his young cousin enough for the moment.
Ismay was not the aggressive brat of the day before. She was reasonably compliant, but Francis saw in her eye the rolling wickedness of a pony, which is pretending to be good when it means to throw you into a ditch.
“The ladies in the hats are Miss Johnson and Miss Gunn. They’re playing in The Wind and the Rain at the New Theatre over the way; next week they go to London. Smart, aren’t they?”
“I suppose so. It’s their job, after all.”
But this indifference was assumed. Ismay was positively schoolgirlish when, after lunch, a handsome young man stopped by their table and said: “Francis, I’d like to introduce you and your sister to our guests.”
When the introductions and polite compliments to the actresses were over, Francis said, “I should explain that Ismay is not my sister. A cousin.”
“My goodness, you two certainly have the family face,” said Miss Johnson, who seemed to mean it as a compliment.
“Is that chap really the president of the club?” said Ismay, when the grandees had gone.
“Yes, and consequently a tremendous Oxford swell. Jervase Featherstone; everybody agrees he’s headed for a great career. Did you see him last winter in the club production of Peer Gynt? No, of course you didn’t; you weren’t here. The London critics praised him to the skies.”
“He’s wonderfully good-looking.”
“I suppose so. It’ll be part of his job, after all.”
“Sour grapes!”
Francis had achieved in a high degree the Oxford pretence of doing nothing while in fact getting through a great deal of work. He had learned how to study at Colborne, where success was expected, and he had improved on his technique at Spook. At Oxford he more than satisfied his tutor, hung about the O.U.D.S. meddling a little with the decorative side of its productions, contributed occasional caricatures to the Isis, and still had time to spend many hours at the Ashmolean, acquainting himself with its splendid collection of drawings by Old Masters, almost Old Masters, and eighteenth– and nineteenth-century artists whom nobody thought of as masters, but whose work was, to his eye, masterly.
The Ashmolean was not at that time a particularly attractive or well-organized museum. In the university tradition, it existed to serve serious students, and wanted no truck with whorish American ideas of drawing in and interesting the general public. Was it not, after all, one of the oldest museums in the Old World? It took Francis some time during his first year to persuade the museum authorities that he was a serious student of art; having done so, he was able to investigate the museum’s substantial riches without much interference. He wanted to be able to draw well. He was not so vain as to think that he might draw like a master, but it was the masters he wished to follow. So he spent countless hours copying master drawings, analysing master techniques, and to his astonishment surprising within himself ideas and insights and even flashes of emotion that belonged more to the drawings than to himself. He did not trust these whispers from the past until he met Tancred Saraceni.
That came about because Francis was a member, though not a very active one, of the Oxford Union. He would not have joined if he had not been assured in his first year that it was the thing to do. He sometimes attended debates, and on two or three occasions he had even spoken briefly on motions related to art or aesthetics about which he had something to say. Because he knew what he was talking about, when most of the other debaters did not, and because he spoke what he believed to be the truth in plain and uncompromising language, he gained a modest reputation as a wit, which amazed him greatly. He was not interested in politics, which was the great preoccupation of the Union, and his interest in the place was chiefly in its dining-room.
In his second year, however, a House Committee that was looking for something significant to do decided that the lamentable state of the frescoes around the walls of the Union’s library must be remedied. What was to be done? The budding politicians of the membership knew nothing much about painting, though they were sufficiently aware of the necessity to have some sort of taste to decorate their rooms with reproductions of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers or—greatly daring—the red horses of Franz Marc. The library frescoes were, they knew, of significance; had they not been done by leaders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood? This was just the kind of thing the Union liked and understood, for they could make a debate of it: should relics of a dead past be brought back to life, or should the Union advance fearlessly into the future, getting the frescoes replaced by artists of undoubted reputation, but equally undoubted fearless modernity?
The first thing, of course, was to find out if the frescoes could be restored at all, and to this end, guided by a couple of dons who knew something about art, the Union House Committee invited the celebrated Tancred Saraceni to examine them.
The great man appeared, and demanded a ladder, from which he examined the frescoes with a flashlight and picked at them with a penknife; descending, he declared himself ready for lunch.
Francis was not a member of the House Committee but he was invited to lunch because he was supposed, from his three or four brief speeches, to know something about art. Did he not do those drawings, almost but not quite caricatures, for Isis? Was he not known to have drawings—”originals”, not reproductions—in his rooms? Just the man to talk to Saraceni. And, when asked, he was eager to meet the man who had the reputation of being the greatest restorer of pictures in the world. Even French museums, so reluctant to look outside their own country for art experts, had called upon Saraceni more than once.
Saraceni was small, very dark, and very neat. He did not look particularly like an artist; the only unusual aspect of his appearance was a pair of discreet side-whiskers that crept down beside his ears and stopped modestly just at the point where they could be described as side-whiskers at all. His customary expression was a smile, which was not mirthful, but ironic. Behind spectacles his brown eyes wandered, not perfectly synchronized, so that he sometimes seemed to be looking in two directions at once. He spoke softly and his English was perfect. Too perfect, for it betrayed him as a foreigner.
“The points to be considered are, first, whether the frescoes can be restored at all, and second, are they worth the cost of restoration?” said the President of the Union, who saw himself as a cabinet minister in embryo, and liked clarifying the obvious. “What is your frank opinion, sir?”
“As works of art, their value is very much a matter of debate,” said Saraceni, the ironical smile working at full force. “If I restore them, or supervise their restoration, they will appear as they were originally seen when the artists took down their scaffolds seventy-five years ago, and in their restored form they will last for two or three hundred years, if they are properly cared for. But of course then they will be paintings by me, or my pupils, painted precisely as Rossetti and Burne-Jones and Morris originally meant them to be, but in greatly superior paint, on properly prepared surfaces, and sealed with substances that will preserve them from damp, and smoke and the influences that have turned them into almost incomprehensible smudges. In short, I shall do professionally what the original painters did as virtual amateurs. They knew nothing about painting on walls. They were enthusiasts.” He spoke the last word over a tiny giggle.
“But isn’t that what restoration always is?” asked another committee member.
“Oh no; a picture that has suffered damage through war, or accident, may be repaire
d, re-backed, re-painted where nothing of the original remains, but it is still the work of the master, sympathetically and knowledgeably revived. These pictures are ruins, because they were painted in the wrong way with the wrong kind of paint. Faint ghosts of the original paintings remain, but to bring them to life again would mean re-painting, not restoration.”
“But you could do that?”
“Certainly. You must understand: I make little claim to being an artist in the romantic sense of that mauled and blurred word. I am a fine craftsman—the best at my trade, it is said, in the world. I should rely on what craft could do; I should not call upon the Muse, but on a great deal of chemistry and skill. Not that the Muse might not assert herself, now and then. One never knows.”
“I don’t follow you, sir.”
“Well—it is an aspect of my work I do not talk about very much. But if you work on a painting with all your skill, and sympathy, and love, even if you have to re-invent much of it—as would be the case here—something of what directed the first painter may come to your aid.”
It was at this point that Francis, who had been listening attentively, felt as though he had been given a sharp, quickening tap on the brow with a tiny hammer.
“Do I understand, Signer Saraceni, that the spirit of the Pre-Raphaelites might infuse you, from time to time, as you worked?”
“Ah—ah—ah! This is why I do not usually speak of such things. People like you, Mr. Cornish, may interpret them poetically—may speak of something almost like possession. I have had too much experience to speak so boldly. But consider: these men who painted the pictures we are talking about were poets; better poets than painters, except for Burne-Jones, and as you probably know he wrote very well. What was their theme? The pictures illustrate The Quest for the Grail, and that is much more a theme for a poet than a painter. Surely one can evoke the Grail spirit better in words than in images? Am I a heretic to say that each art has its sphere of supremacy, and invades another’s at its deep peril? Painting that is illustrative of a legend is only that legend at second-best. Pictures that tell a story are useless because they are immobile—they have no movement, no nuance or possibility of change, which is the soul of narrative. I suppose it is not unduly fanciful to think that the poets who made asses of themselves with these old, dirty, obliterated pictures might have something to say to somebody who was a masterly painter, even though he might be no poet?”