The Collected Connoisseur

by Valentine, Mark

  ‘If you asked a casual passer-by to name as many poets as they could,’ suggested The Connoisseur, reflectively, ‘I doubt if very many would get as far as ten. Poetry no longer has any place in most people’s lives, and its past masters are known only to academics and eccentrics.’ He smiled. ‘So you can imagine that minor poets are having a very lean time of it. And as for those who have never yet found their way into any anthology or critical study—why, they are as good as lost. Yet there are a few of us who search for them still.’

  He passed me a delicate volume bound in dark cloth and I read aloud the silver lettering; ‘The Ghost of Pierrot by Peter Madley’. I confessed I had never heard the name, but remarked upon the freshness of the book’s appearance.

  ‘It is new,’ he replied, ‘I had a hand in seeing it through the press. There are only one hundred copies, for Madley is one of those forgotten figures I have just mentioned. This, his second work, comes to us in rather singular circumstances …’

  I settled back to listen to an account of one of my friend’s experiences in his ceaseless quest for the curious.

  ‘You may have heard of Silverthorn Hall? No? It is an artists’ colony. The old stone four-square house and its outbuildings have been turned into living quarters and studios for a variety of creative workers—indeed, it is virtually the only condition for joining that one’s crust-earner must be in the arts or crafts. Everything runs on a communal basis, but without the somewhat earnest and worthy attitude that usually prevails in such experiments. I’ve scarcely known such a place for sustained, almost lunatic joie-de-vivre. They do not possess many of the electric luxuries of the modern home, yet—or perhaps I should say, therefore—they seem brimful of ideas and excitement. I was the more surprised, therefore, when one of the brightest lights there, Lucy Selincourt, came to see me, looking rather pensive. She is a lovely girl, you know. I swear her eyes are violet, while her hair … Ahem! Anyway, she explained that they had decided one evening—it was towards the Longest Day—to hold a masquerade. Music, dance, mime, masks and costumes, lanterns and candles, wine and plenty of odd food were all within their reach, so they just went ahead. She went as Columbine. I can just imagine her …’

  The Connoisseur sighed rather sharply. The wan light from the arched casement of his study seemed to change my friend’s appearance, so that he looked suddenly withdrawn from the world. As if sensing this transmutation, he rose, turned on a lamp, and pulled a crimson cord which caused intricately worked, glinting curtains to banish the outside from view. Then, resuming his broad-backed chair, he continued his narrative.

  ‘Lucy explained that they had lots of chasing games and hide-and-seek and so forth and these became positively frenetic. The slow descent of dusk was under way, the sky was stained with the first tentative pennons of sunset, and all amongst the wild garden and old woodlands of the Hall could be heard fleet footfalls, hushed murmurings and an occasional squeal of delighted panic. Lucy lay crouched behind a rhododendron bush with great purple blooms, confident that her place of concealment would put her among the last to be caught. She was listening intently for the approach of any pursuer, and drinking in the strange sweet scents which wended through the air from the little copse behind her, when there came to her the sense of another presence, as if a sudden cool breeze had refreshed her face. There seemed, too, a perfect silence and a perceptible deepening of the twilight. She began to wonder if the game was over, and rose to find some companions. As she turned, she saw in the dying light a pale figure standing at a little distance.

  ‘He wore a pure white tunic and pantaloons, offset by black trimmings, and on his feet were elegant slippers. His hands and ankles seemed hardly less white, while his face was like some fine marble effigy. He seemed to have been there some moments, just gazing. She took several steps closer, curious as to his identity. Their stares met, and in his dark eyes—she says—was a sad gleam like the first star of evening. And yet she fled from him …

  ‘Partly she ran from sheer instinct, because this was her role in the game, and she thought he must be one of the others in disguise; but, contrariwise, she was seized also by the fear that he was not in fact another player in the masquerade, that he was some spectral herald, perhaps, of the silver moonlight which was soon to add its glamour to the scene.

  ‘She does not know for sure if this unknown Pierrot pursued her, exactly. But certainly she caught glimpses of whiteness in the nooks and corners, the vistas and green lanes of the rambling grounds. It was only when she rejoined the main party that she felt secure. And there, enquiries revealed that, yes, one of their number had started the evening as Pierrot, but he had found the costume too lightweight, for he shivered all the time even in the summer haze; so he became a buccaneer instead.

  ‘Lucy explained to me that ever since her encounter with that pallid intangible youth, she had been unable to emerge from a pervasive melancholy. She kept recreating their meeting in her mind, and had even revisited their trysting place at dusk, but to no avail. As she described this soul-sickness to me, my thoughts were racing after an elusive remembrance. Pierrot, you know, was a kind of icon for certain artists of the fin-de-siècle, and he lingered on in the imaginations of their later devotees. Plays in which he and his troupe were the characters are a feature of that longing for childhood innocence and wonder which possessed the Edwardian age. So perhaps Lucy was witnessing the lost echo of some earlier masque?

  ‘I suggested to Lucy that she dress again in the guise of Columbine, for it might be that only thus could she be recognised by the apparition. I offered to follow her as she wandered about the gardens, but she supposed this might deter the frail phantom. My notion that it must be her costume which inspired the Pierrot’s appearance did indeed seem to provide the key, for they met again, so she later recounted, by the old boathouse of the little sedgy lake. He was perched upon the upturned hull of a narrow skiff, long decayed. The faintest of smiles passed over the samite mask of his face, as she approached. He placed a finger upon his lips, then reached for her hand. She said his nearness reminded her of the exhilarating sharp luminosity of fresh-fallen snow—and her fingers tingled with icy pleasure.

  ‘They raced away from the still pool, up the gentle brow of its banks and along the overgrown meadow to the orchard. She felt the stalks of the rank weeds whip at her legs and the twigs of the trees seemed to clutch at her hair, but she did not care. He entered the walled garden by the arched gate, and gently pulled her inside. Each of the smouldering rose bushes cast a wavering lunar shadow upon the white path. The cypress tree, swaying slightly as if in recognition, relinquished some of its deep green breath which carries the taste of the grave. The Pierrot drew her down the mossy flagstones so nimbly they seemed almost to be dancing and as she passed, each flower seemed to surrender up a little of its secret essence, and each tree or shrub murmured their most hidden songs. They came to the cracked sundial whose treacherous style now obeyed the delineations of the moon, and here he halted, parted from her, made a low bow, and held both hands open. She reached for him again but his glimmering form had gone, seeming to step into a veil of vesperal shadows which hid his whiteness from sight: and all the walled garden was suddenly very still.

  ‘Of course, the next day we examined the sundial with a keen interest but it did not immediately yield any clue as to its significance. It was a little grey stone column placed upon a pedestal of three shallow steps. Its brass face was corroded and blurred and the carved motto encircling the dial could only dimly be discerned: “Post Tenebris”—After the Darkness. As I traced these characters I felt a shock of recognition. Where had I read that phrase before, used resonantly, desperately, like an incantation? I raised my eyes and regarded the little cloistered sanctuary, with its plot of herbs, its arbour, the amber statuette placed reverently in an alcove: and then I knew. For all these features were as dear to me as if this was my own retreat. I recalled with delight the slender volume, golden-coloured and adorned with neat paper label
s, which I picked up once—it must be a decade ago—solely for its title, “The Garden of Dreams”. It proved to contain a few verses and some prose vignettes, all evoking the reveries which the author fell into when alone in a walled garden: it was a wistful, yearning selection, apparently a private publication. The final piece was dated summer, 1914 and the poet had composed a litany of the things he loved, and promised he would return to them again—after the darkness had passed.

  ‘My researches then had revealed only that Peter Madley—the author—had no other works to his name, and had met his death at the front in 1916. The records of the Artists’ Rifles gave his school and college and parentage but nothing more.

  ‘I told Lucy excitedly of my discovery and was so full of my delight that I forgot for the moment her own unsolved mystery. When I remembered, it seemed to me at once that the two must be connected—how could it be otherwise? I turned again to the sundial and fairly leapt on to its lowest step, which wobbled underfoot. Steadying myself, I stared hard at the ravaged dial, seeking an answer. And then I thought I could make out, scratched into the patina, the initials PM. I asked Lucy to look, and she agreed the markings could be seen in that light, though they were indistinct and capable of other interpretation. I ran my fingers down the column, searching for further graffiti, then, crouching, considered the pedestal below. On an impulse, I drove my hand deep beneath the base and tugged. This was the slab which had moved as I examined the poet’s inscription. With Lucy’s help, I thrust aside clods of earth and clinging weeds, and manoeuvred the stone in its socket. Those above rested on the stones on either side so that we were in no danger of undermining the whole monument. After some minutes’ exertion, during which I did begin to doubt whether my hunch was correct, the kerb eased out from its place, and I began to scrape away the compacted soil. Lucy, more practically, fetched a small shovel, and as it plunged into the earth we were rewarded with a brittle scraping sound.

  ‘Inside the casket which we found was the manuscript, faded and damp but mostly legible, of Peter Madley’s second collection, scribbled in a black pocketbook. Enclosed, too, were some letters, and it was one from his mother which threw most light upon this burial of his work …’

  The Connoisseur went to his old bureau, with its faded inlay work, and took out a creased and tattered piece of paper, from which he proceeded to read:

  ‘ “And now, my own dear Boy, I know you will not reproach me if I am forthright with you. You have a Gift for Poetry as you have shewn—but the Present Time demands that you put this at the service of your Country. I cannot express to you with what warmth I read the “Ballad of War” by Lord Latymer, lately contributed to the English Review! Seventy-four verses which so stir the Blood I have arranged a special recitation.

  ‘ “Now, Peter, do you not think it is time to ‘put away your toys’ and turn to more manly themes? The nation has great need of another young herald like that noble Mr Brooke …”

  ‘We may surmise from this that the poet, who stayed true to his dreaming, fragile vision, even in the bloodied mud of Flanders, realised he could not entrust his work to his family—and doubtless all his friends were at the front too. Therefore he sought to preserve it within the very haven which was his inspiration. Doubtless he secreted it there when on leave, hoping to return to it “after the darkness”—but he never saw his home again.

  ‘ “The Ghost of Pierrot”, which we chose as the title piece for this posthumous collection, is a sad fantasy about how the legendary Pierrot returns to haunt a garden because he has seen Columbine there—yet she was but a character in a fancy-dress charade, and she never comes again. Which makes one wonder—was it Peter Madley who appeared to Lucy, or was it the figure he imagined into his own garden?’

  The Paravine Cries

  The Connoisseur greeted me at his dark oak door, ushered me into a deep green armchair with its daintily embroidered antimacassar depicting a fierce griffin, handed me a liqueur which one seemed to inhale rather than drink, and, pacing the room with one hand in his plum-coloured smoking jacket pocket, thumb protruding, announced: ‘It is time, Valentine, to tell you of the Paravine cries …’

  I arched an eyebrow, and lolled a little further into the cushions.

  ‘Lawrence Paravine I had known since school days. As the youngest son of a sternly puritan father, he was sent out to the colonies directly he reached his majority, and more or less told to support himself. He was away nearly ten years. He only heard at a distance, therefore, of the death of his brother. Flavian Paravine: now there was an individual. In his time—which was brief—famous for being: well, simply for being himself. He early fell under the posthumous spell of the poetry and art of the Aesthetes, and still more their philosophy, their “religion of beauty”. He turned his rooms into a shrine of the exquisite, and received there all those he found soothing or stimulating to his senses or his intellect. Flavian immersed himself, too, in a yearning for all things Celtic: he listened enraptured to a certain poet’s fervent recitations of the weird myths of his land; and became quite a Fenian, in an abstract, inactive sort of way.

  ‘It was fortunate he had some money of his own from his dear mother’s family, for his father was enraged by all this. He was a hearty guardian of that great fat god, Respectability, whose heavy face hides a squirming swarm of corruption. He spent most of his time in Town pursuing politics and other men’s wives, but when he came back to the estate—it was buried in the Forest of Dean—the scenes between them were terrible. I have seen that patriarch wield the thick black stick he carried—more like a club actually—in a mad frenzy in his son’s quarters, shattering pale precious statuettes, chromatically arranged vases and ornaments of jade … all the while calling his son by vile names.’

  The Connoisseur paused in his narrative and breathed rather more deeply than is usual.

  ‘This could not go on. Flavian was always of a slightly delicate constitution and the sporadic ugliness deeply bruised his soul. He became paler and more slender until at last, it seems, he simply grew too weak to live. And these charges are levelled at Paravine senior by Flavian’s friends: that he did everything in his power to hasten his son’s end, by his brutality and vindictiveness: and that he specifically prevented the local doctor from attending at the critical time. The estate was entailed, so he could not dispossess his son, but several remarked what he had bawled so many a time: “No harlot like you will get Arram House” was, I think, the briefest, but not the crudest, of his rantings; and there were those who accused the father of being, morally, a murderer.

  ‘In fact, I know of a raiding party which swooped on Arram one twilight to carry away with them Flavian’s finest treasures for safe keeping, for we guessed what would be their fate once the father could give his attention to them. A rather grand escapade it was. We were all—ahem, they were all swathed in cloaks and masks and some carried antique muskets and swords. It is perhaps as well the object of our wrath was away, for the confrontation could only have been hard and rather vulgar.

  ‘The father, of course, thought his cause was triumphant. He could not doubt that his younger son, toughened by personal struggle in the colonies and thoroughly trained to duty by the clubbishness of the imperial community, would prove a worthy successor. Had he kept in closer contact with Lawrence, he must have had more misgivings. For that young man shared some of his brother’s ethereal qualities, though not, it must be said, their extravagant outward show.

  ‘Young Paravine was, of course, told the full story of his brother’s passing in letters from friends, and he chose to remain where he was for a while. But not long after, his father died of a seizure. He had become quite incoherent towards the end, and babbled all sorts of nonsense, all the while warding off the light from his eyes …

  ‘And when Lawrence Paravine returned to Arram House, he at once set out to restore the wing which had once been occupied by his brother to its former glory—which was when, of course, the rescued treasures were given back. And
then one day Lawrence came to see me, greeted me quietly as was his way, subsided into your chair, gazed at me beneath his tawny fringe and asked, diffidently enough, how deeply Flavian had delved into Celtic legends and whether he had perhaps tried some unwise experiments. “For,” he said, “I think there is a banshee abroad in the grounds.”

  ‘I surely looked rather startled. But he stared at me quite seriously.

  ‘ “You see,” he went on, “each evening around dusk I hear it, as if from a distance. A desolate, echoing cry which chills me so. It is repeated at intervals throughout the night. When all seems calm and subdued again, suddenly once more that cruel wail resounds. And there seems to me—though this might be merely my nervous imagination—an urgency about the cries, something shrill and desperate.” ’

  The Connoisseur sipped at his glass, reflectively. ‘While young Paravine was telling me this, some unreachable remembrance was fluttering in the furthest regions of my mind, some impression from my few visits to Arram to see Flavian. But I said nothing. And Lawrence had more to tell me:

  ‘ “Then, you know, after some nights of this, when I was scarcely sleeping properly, but always half in dream and yet half conscious, I began to find that my room was full of eyes. Bright, gleaming, unblinking eyes, which stare at me from all corners, and seem so full of purpose, so fixedly do they hang there … and I am seeing them more and more now.” He broke off, ran his fingers through his fine hair, and shrugged. Despite that decade of interrupted friendship, when he was away, I felt I knew him pretty well: and I could see how these incidents perplexed and pained his gentle nature.

  ‘But he had not quite finished. There was one final thing about which he was still more uncertain: “It is the faintest feeling,” he murmured, “that my flesh is brushed by some fine, frail thing, wispy and insubstantial for the most part: but followed on occasions by a quick sharp jab at my neck. Oh no, it does not draw blood, it leaves no mark at all—and so I am not certain if these fugitive touches are real or some dregs of a fevered dream …”