What’s Bred in the Bone tct-2

by Robertson Davies

  “She never put her tongue in my mouth or coaxed me to play with her breast, if that is what you are talking about.”

  “Well—but the possibility—was there never the possibility? If you had been of the pagan world and hot for pleasure, and not frightened out of your wits by Christianity, might you have recognized the possibility?”

  “Maestro, I don’t really follow you.”

  “I puzzle over it sometimes. So much talk since Dr. Freud about fathers who rouse erotic feeling in their daughters: never any talk about mothers who do the same with their sons. Does such one-sidedness seem really likely?”

  “Where I grew up we had lots of incest. I knew one fellow, the son of a logger who was killed in the forest, and from twelve years of age onward he had to stand and deliver for his mother at least five times a week. When last I heard of him he had two brothers who were probably his sons. He never married; no necessity, I suppose. But that was in what the Renaissance would call very primitive conditions.”

  “Don’t be too sure what the Renaissance would call it. But I speak of possibilities, not of completed acts. Possibilities—things that merely float in the air and are never brought to earth—can be extremely influential. It is the artist’s privilege to seize such possibilities and to make pictures of them, and such pictures are among the most powerful we have. What is a picture of the Madonna—and we have seen many of them this week—but a picture of a Mother and her Son.”

  “A Holy Mother and the Son of God.”

  “In the worlds of myth and art all mothers are holy because that is what we feel in the depths of our hearts. No, not the heart: that is where modern people think they feel. During the Renaissance they would have said, the liver. In the gut, in fact. Worship of the Mother, real or mythical, comes from the gut. Have you never wondered why in so many of those pictures Joseph, the earthly father, looks such a nincompoop? In the very best of them Joseph is not even permitted to enter. That is one of the unspoken foundation stones of our mighty Faith, Francis; the love affair between Mother and Son, and according to the Scriptures no other woman ever challenged her place of supremacy. But in these Madonnas there is nothing overtly erotic. There is in Bronzino; in that picture he cast off the Christian chains and showed truth as he saw it, of love despised and rejected.

  “Have you really looked at the picture? You have looked at the artist’s achievement, but have you understood what he is saying? Venus holds an apple in one hand, and an arrow in the other. What does that say: I tempt you, and I have a wound for you. And look at all the secondary figures—the raving figure of Jealousy behind Cupid, speaking so clearly of despair, of love despised and rejected; the little figure of Pleasure who is about to pelt the toying lovers with rose leaves—see at his feet the thorns and those masks of the concealments and cheats of the world, marked with the bitterness of age; and who is that creature behind the laughing Pleasure—a wistful, appealing face, a rich gown that might almost blind us to her lion’s feet, her serpent’s sting, and her hands that offer both a honeycomb and something beastly—that must be the Cheat—Fraude, in Latin—who can so prettily turn love to madness. Who are the old man and the young woman at the top of the picture? They are plainly Time and Truth, who are drawing aside the mantle that shows the world what is involved in such love as this. Time—and his daughter Truth. A very moral picture, is it not?”

  “Certainly as you interpret it, and as I have never heard anyone else explain it I cannot quarrel with you. But I’m horrified that Bronzino thought of love in that way.”

  “So you might well be. But he didn’t, you know. The picture that has enthralled you in the National Gallery in London was half of a design that was meant to be two tapestries. One tapestry is completed and you can see it in Florence, in the Arazzi Gallery. It is called L’innocentia del Bronzino and it shows Innocence threatened by a dog (for Envy), a lion (for Fury), a wolf (for Greed), and a snake (for Treachery); Innocence is being powerfully protected by Justice, a female figure with a mighty sword, and there again you will see Time with his hourglass and his wings (because he flies, as every parrot knows) and he is taking the cloak from a naked girl, who of course is Truth, his daughter. So really the pictures ought to be called the Allegories of Truth and Luxury, and they are splendid Renaissance sermons. Together they tell us much about life and about love, as it appeared to a Christian mind refreshed by the newly found classicism.”

  “Maestro, you remind me very much of my dear old Aunt Mary-Ben. She insisted that pictures were moral lessons, and told stories. But you should have seen the pictures she showed me to prove it.”

  “I am quite sure I have seen many of them. Their morality is of their own time, and the stories they tell are sweet and pretty, suited to people who wanted a sweetly pretty, stunted art. But they are in a long tradition quite different from those innumerable landscapes and figure pictures, and abstracts painted by men who did not want to tell anybody anything except what their personal vision discovered in easily accessible things. The tradition that your aunt and I admire, in our different ways, is not to be brushed aside, nor should its works be discussed as though they belonged to the other, purely objective tradition. There is nothing in the least wrong with having something to say, and saying it as best you can, even if you are a painter. The best moderns often do it, you know. One thinks of Picasso. Think about him.”

  It was impossible to think of Picasso, or of anything but immediate concerns, after Frank had read the letter which was sent on from Corpus and reached him two days before he was to return to England.

  Dear Frank:

  The news is that I am well and truly up the spout. Two months gone. I had meant to keep this jolly secret from the parents until you were back in England, but that hasn’t been possible. Not that I am all bagged out, and stumbling about in my bare feet like Tess of the D’Urbervilles, but some determined chucking up in the a.m. gave the show away. So there have been great family conferences, and after Daddy had had his prolonged and mournful say, and Mum had wept, the question was: what to do? My suggestion that I go to London and have the little intruder given what-for by a really competent doctor was shouted down. Daddy is a churchwarden and takes it greatly to heart. What they want is a wedding. Keep your hair on. They do not in the least regard you as an old black ram who has tupped their white ewe. (Shakes.) Indeed there were one or two nasty hints that they thought their white ewe might have been a not-unwilling collaborator. No, they think you a highly desirable parti, as they used to say in Mum’s day. When I said that I didn’t know if you would want to marry me they said that blood was thicker than water (messier, too) and we were cousins (which in other circs they might well have thought an objection), and there was a lot more to be said for it than just saving face. The Glassons, as you will have divined, have an awful lot of face and precious little else. So—what about it? Don’t waste time. Think hard and let me know. If my plan is to be taken, it must be done pretty soon.

  Love, and all that that implies,

  Ismay

  After a morning’s reflection Francis sent a telegram:

  PROCEED WEDDING PLANS INSTANTER STOP WITH YOU IN A WEEK LOVE TO ALL

  FRANK

  The eagerness in the telegram was not from the heart. Francis did not want to marry Ismay, or anybody; he discovered that what he really wanted was to be in love, but not tied down to marriage, of which his experience had not been particularly appetizing. Against abortion he had an insuperable Catholic objection, partnered by an equally insuperable Calvinist objection that sprang from his association with Victoria Cameron. How had it happened? Why had he not taken precautions? The answer to that was that he thought precautions unromantic, and with Ismay at Tintagel, everything must be romantic. A standing prick has no conscience; that was a piece of bleak wisdom he had acquired at Colborne College, and that would certainly be the way the Glassons would look at it. The fact that he had not meant it in that spirit at all simply could not be explained and was irrelevant
to the situation. What was to be done? He couldn’t for a moment think of leaving Ismay in the lurch, quite apart from the fact that the Glassons and his own parents would probably hunt him down and kill him if he did such a dirty trick. His career, about which he had no firm plans but vast, unmoulded expectations, would be a ruin, for Ismay only fitted into that scene as The Ideal Beloved, not by any means as a wife and mother. He was to be the Grail Knight who ventured forth, returning to his lady only between adventures. But after all thoughts of this sort had been rehearsed again and again, the nagging feeling crept into his consciousness that he was really a very dim young man, considering that he was twenty-six and thought to be clever.

  Greeting the Glassons in his new character caused him greater dread than reunion with a pregnant Ismay. He had not then got, nor would he ever get, Dr. Upper fully out of his system, and deep within himself he thought that he had done a dirty thing, and would doubtless be appropriately punished. But when he arrived at the nearest railway station to St. Columb’s Hall the Glasson parents greeted him with more warmth than they had ever shown before, and his most difficult task was to kiss Ismay on the station platform with the proper sort of affection—as accepted wooer rather than as too successful seducer. Nobody said anything about what was in all their minds until after tea, when Roderick Glasson suggested with terrible casualness that he and Francis might take a walk.

  All that was said on that walk was said a score of times afterward, the intention becoming clearer every time. It was too bad that things had been a little premature, but Francis must realize that we were living in 1935, and not in the dark ages of Queen Victoria, and with clever management all would be well. The marriage would take place in a little over a fortnight’s time; the banns had already been called once in the parish church. It would be a quiet affair—not more than sixty or seventy people. Then Ismay and Francis would go somewhere on an extended wedding trip, and when they returned in a year or so with a child, who was to be the wiser? Whose business was it, after all, but the family’s?

  Francis was aware that this was a path that had already been travelled in the family history, but Roderick Glasson could not have known why it struck so coldly into his heart. It was from Victoria Cameron that he had heard of his parents’ return from such a wedding trip with the Looner. God! Would this child be another such goblin as that? Did he carry that dark inheritance? Reason was against it, but a strain of the mythical in Francis’s thinking put reason firmly in its place. Was the Looner a punishment for something? He dared not contemplate what it might be, for he was sure his parents had never put themselves in such a pickle as he and Ismay had done. Everything about them made it unthinkable. In any case he was unquestionably his father’s truly begotten son; the family face was the clearest evidence. The Looner must have been bad luck of some sort. But what sort?

  It was incoherent; it was superstitious; it was irrational, this mass of torturing speculation, but it was unquestionably real. And what did the telegram mean that reached him from Canada?

  NEWS TODAY FROM RODERICK WE SEND LOVE AND CONGRATULATIONS CANNOT ATTEND WEDDING WORD TO WISE BE VERY CAREFUL ABOUT ALL MONEY ARRANGEMENTS

  FATHER

  Money arrangements? He had already had some hint of that. The Glassons, Roderick explained during another walk, were feeling the pinch, as did all landowners. Rents had not kept up with expenditures; taxes were punitive; without heavy investment in equipment agriculture could not survive. New money spent on the estate was imperative if large sales of portions of land that had been part of the Glasson patrimony for generations were to be avoided. Not that sales would bridge the gap for long. Roderick had looked into the future fearlessly, and he saw only one hope for St. Columb Hall and its estates, and that hope was—new money. It was a case of substantial refinancing now or—well, eventual ruin.

  Had Francis ever given any thought to agriculture? No, Francis had not. He didn’t think he wanted to be a landowner and farmer.

  Roderick laughed, almost musically. No question of that. The estate must go to Roderick, his only son. Not that it was tied down by law, but that was how it had always been. However, young Roderick had set his heart on a career in Whitehall, and certainly he seemed to have a talent that way. Now if—just suppose—Francis and Ismay lived at a very decent dower house on the property, and Roderick and Prudence lived at the Hall until at last they were forced by the inevitable to leave it (manly acceptance of age and death here, almost like the “business” of a none too accomplished actor), it would be possible to totally re-finance the estate, and a family property—Francis was already a cousin and would soon be doubly family—would be revitalized in the best possible way. Francis wouldn’t have to worry about the farm; Roderick knew farming like the palm of his hand, and they had an excellent agent who, with real money strength behind him, would put things in apple-pie order before you knew it. In time, young Roderick would return, and anyway he would always have St. Columb’s behind him. Francis could do whatever he pleased. Paint, if he liked. Mess about with Cornish history and legend, if it suited him. He would be, Roderick thought the phrase was, a sleeping partner. It was not said how the sleeping partner was to benefit, except in terms of moral satisfaction.

  Slowly, it sank in. This was why the Glassons were so philosophical about Ismay’s false step, over which they might otherwise be raising the roof. The price of Ismay was—one million Canadian dollars, with accrued interest, because Francis had not been drawing heavily on his income. Of course, they knew all about it; the Cornishes of Cheewidden would have gossiped and probably exaggerated. One million Canadian dollars was rather more than two hundred thousand pounds, which to people like the Glassons was wealth illimitable.

  That was where the price began. The larger part would be his thraldom to life in a dower house, under the shadow of St. Columb’s and the shadow of Chegwidden, free to paint and dream about myth if he were fool enough to want to do that. He was to be the money-bags, that was plain. More kids, undoubtedly. But such a fate could be avoided; the Glassons could not trap him there. No; after thinking about it painfully and honestly, Francis recognized that it was the money that really meant most, and he was brought to the shameful conclusion that he wanted Ismay, but he didn’t like her price.

  Still, as Grandfather McRory always said, nobody has your money so long as it’s still in your own pocket. Roderick Glasson seemed to think that money would be made over to him in lumps. Francis made it clear that the uttermost he could manage, so far ahead as he could see, was four thousand pounds paid quarterly for the first year. This was not true, for not only had he his grandfather’s handsome bequest, but he also received enough from the trust that included his aunts and his mother to make up a good income in itself. But as Francis sat in his bedroom and did reckonings, he was astonished to find how fond of money he was, and how reluctant to let any of it out of his grasp. When he stated his terms to his uncle, Roderick’s face fell, but as he had no way of knowing what Francis really possessed, he had to make the best of it. After all, Francis pointed out, he would have to support Ismay and probably Aunt Prudence somewhere on the Continent for the greater part of a year, and that would be another call on his income. Capital, he explained, was not a thing one ever diminished. Roderick nodded sagely at this, knowing very well that he had himself diminished his capital almost to invisibility, and that this was what had brought him to his present position. But he was optimistic; after the first year things might look very different.

  Ismay and Aunt Prudence on the Continent, said Roderick, as it sank in. But where would Francis be? At Oxford, said Francis. He was determined not to sacrifice his degree and he had another year to go. But what did he need with a degree? It would be useless if he were living the life of a country gentleman. Roderick had no degree; he had come out of the Navy to assume the splendours and miseries of St. Columb’s when he inherited it, and had never felt the want of a university training. It was at this point that Ismay joined in the genteel wranglin
g; she too wanted to complete her studies and receive some sort of university stamp. Francis had thought about that, too. She certainly could not return to Oxford; the colleges did not encourage married undergraduates—indeed objected to them, and understandably so. But she could go to the continent, and pursue her modern-language studies very effectively at Lausanne, and live near by at Montreux; continental universities did not give as much individual concern to their students as did Oxford. Such a stay abroad would dissemble the early arrival of the child, which was also a consideration. He would pay—within reason.

  “You’ve got it all planned, haven’t you?” said Ismay to him when her parents were not near. “You’ve got them completely outgeneralled.” She spoke with admiration.

  “It’s a short plan,” said he; “but it gives us a year to think about what we intend to do. I don’t want to settle here and become ‘Francis Cornish, whose sensitive landscapes follow in the path of B. W. Leader’.” He was really thinking about the profession, of which he had said nothing to Ismay, and which he was determined not to mention unless it became inescapable. Ismay as the Desired One was being replaced in his heart and mind by Ismay the Promised One, not to say the Inescapable One, and there were some things she must not know. She was worse than a blabber; she was a hinter. It gave her pleasure to rouse curiosity and speculation about dangerous things.