The Collected Connoisseur

by Valentine, Mark

  ‘And the food? Ah, yes. January 30th, you see, was kept as a day of fasting by the order of King Charles II, out of devotion to his murdered father: this custom lasted until Victoria had it suppressed. But it could hardly be flouted in a room so redolent with Stuart sympathies. I think there was indeed much to this discarded king, Charles IV, which we shall never now know: and that my dream, the blanching of the roses and the ending of our meal were all his work, to prepare us for the brief, too brief, audience we were granted. And if his purpose was to gain posthumous adherents, why, then, he succeeded; for now Rebecca too keeps the vigil of the cavalier saint.’

  In Violet Veils

  Amethystine cirrus clustered on the far horizon, tendrilled and slender, and faintly darkened by the dusk. I turned from dwelling upon this delicate aeromancy to regard my reclusive friend, The Connoisseur, who was watching from the other side of his quiet room. There were scattered, hieroglyphic notes upon his table, fragments of thought and suggestion on the revived art of the tableau vivant: sleeping actresses, caged youths and sullen boys had begun to be used again for the re-rendering of archetypal moments or motifs.

  We had discussed this renewal of an ancient art, and The Connoisseur had diffidently proposed that such curious re-enactments were not to be essayed without some peril of affecting, in unforeseen ways, those involved: who could tell what might result from such a hearkening back to the original power of the mythological image portrayed? He went further: he said that this commingling of the mortal and the eternal strayed too close to the classical concepts of apotheosis or epiphany. I soon sensed that there lay behind his speculations some particular experience. I put this to him, and he became more thoughtful, hesitant. It was in order to give him time to consider what to tell me further, that I had gone to the tall, arched windows of his study, to contemplate the twilight.

  ‘Yes,’ he conceded at last, ‘There was one experience a few years ago which has influenced this line of thought. I was a guest at Evermoor, the house that Ivo Tradescant had made his own, deep in the Peak District. It is old, grey, lichened and situated in the lea of a cluster of dark hills, at the end of a narrow lane which accompanies a vigorous young stream. But for all its hoariness, Ivo had made it a haven for the avant-garde and it was often festooned with the maddest effusions of sculpture, garden-art, futuristic devices, mirror-mazes and other half-forgotten projects. There came a point when Ivo decided to hold an evening of tableaux vivants, as a new spectacle for the edification of the diverse companions he beckoned at intervals to his remote retreat: he had been reading some feature about a Paris Cabaret—La Fumiste Jaune, I think it was—which had human artworks draped around its interior in various tantalising guises. We all supposed he wanted to emulate this simply because it might very well be the coming thing: but in fact Ivo had rather more profound ends in mind, as we were soon to discover. The feature he had read was purely the touchpaper that lit his restless, far-ranging vision.’

  The Connoisseur smiled wanly and attended thoughtfully to the smouldering wick of a purple candle which was faltering a little.

  ‘There were about seven of us, I suppose, besides Ivo, who were deemed to be fitted to be admitted into the presence of this strange work. Some of the party I have told you about on other occasions—Flavian Paravine of course was one: probably that neo-Orphic philosopher, Dr Macchioro: Colonel Gaspard, the explorer and esotericist; Penrose, the sybarite and freebooter who opened the Club of the Heavens in a dirigible off the coast and scorned what he termed the petty moral by-laws of these isles, especially in regard to liquor, gaming and illicit passion; Lady Vesperine Wane, the society sensitive; and—yes, I am sure, Lucy Selincourt.

  ‘Before the exhibition or performance began, Ivo addressed the party. He said he had composed six tableaux which were to be sought out in any of the various rooms of the house, which would be plunged into darkness for the duration to add some extra zest—a hint of hide-and-seek, I rather thought, for Ivo had a childlike taste at times. The tableaux themselves would be illuminated by lamps or firelight and so would be easier to find, if we looked for the caves of brightness in the otherwise gloomy interior. Entering a room, we should close the door so that no-one else might enter and disturb our reverie upon the work. There was to be no idle chaff or banter such as might disturb the models, who were under orders to remain silent and still.

  ‘One or two of his private rooms were of course out of bounds but these would be unlit so we should have no need to stray into them. The party was to gather again in the library after an hour and a half—a gong would sound to draw us all back. Ivo then told us with all solemnity that his approach to the art of the tableau was not purely decorative as was that of the Paris cabaret. He wanted to see whether the power of certain mythic images could be captured by creating a close, living replica and seasoning our receptivity to it by the careful use of light and dark and other elements we should soon uncover. He finished, with a flourish, by proclaiming:

  ‘ “The full potential of the tableaux to stir the hidden recesses of our consciousness has not yet been explored. I hope to start that journey tonight …”

  ‘Having completed this peroration, Ivo made a swift gesture—somewhat too like a stage prestidigator—and lights began to be extinguished one by one around us. A surge of whispering followed amongst his guests as we commented on what he had outlined: and the faint tinge of trepidation which the less hardy of us felt was almost tangible in the air. Slowly and self-consciously we moved off and took our leave as we diverted from each other into the corridors fitfully lit by the white light of a cloud-harried moon.

  ‘The first tableau I found was in one of the older rooms. Pushing open the door in quest of a subdued lustre that my craning eyes had sensed ebbing into the otherwise undisturbed darkness, I was taken aback by a sudden inrush of uttermost scarlet, for the room was adorned with hangings of a bright poison-berry red, like banners of war. Vigil lamps in a drawn and faded roseate glass were the source of the wan seepage of light that had drawn me here. In the middle of this salon, upon a divan of high vermillion, a young woman enwrapped in a long velvet robe of deep ruby lay asleep, or at least with closed lids: all about her were scattered frostbitten curled rose petals which exuded a ripe ichor of imploring scent. I approached more closely so that I could sense the steady breathing of the supine girl and I saw that she wore around her auburn hair a circlet of rose buds and thorns: and on her pale forehead were minute tears of what was meant, I supposed, to be taken for blood. It was a compelling scene, seeming as if drawn perhaps from some lost tale of Poe’s: yet as I stared in a dreaming admiration, there was some other resonance too that I could not quite grasp.

  ‘The second room was a place of green and yellow-green, gamboge and viridian, with murals and painted screens depicting serpents and lizards and saurian creatures, with tainted sickly breath emanating from verdigris-blighted censers studded with malachites, with dank mosses erupting from several surfaces: and in the midst of it all, a squat dome-headed old man seated on the dessicated skeins of dead rushes, in, as it seemed, a narcotic trance. If the first tableau had been a vision of lovely mystery, with just the faintest taint of sombreness, then this scene was its very antinomy, a pageant of corruption only redeemed by its sinuous, glistening vigour: but for all that, I found myself equally transfixed.

  ‘As I processed stealthily around the house, passing at intervals fellow guests and exchanging curt nods or breathed confidences, I began to get the sense of a curious deepening of the darkness not wholly due to the greater onset of night. The corridors began to seem like passages in a subterranean labyrinth, and I think that Ivo had commissioned other unseen participants in his masque, for sometimes I heard whispers and odd echoes whose source I could not discern: and there were also sudden bursts of mournful, wailing flute and shivering hisses as if from struck cymbals.

  ‘By the time I had reached the third of Ivo’s creations I had begun to surmise that they all drew upon a common theme:
and suspected that this theme was rather more than simply the many ways of death. For in the third a boy and a girl garbed in white Grecian tunics lay entwined on pale silk, with lilies strewn liberally around them, and close by, as if just fallen from their grasp, two long white, stripped wands of soft pliable wood.

  ‘Winged white discs of tautened skins were placed upon the walls. Lanterns held honey-coloured candles of lively, lambent flames. Both the youth and the maiden, who had a certain semblance of face and form, had hair of white-gold and they seemed to sleep obliviously, rapt in the same far distant dreams. For many uncounted moments, as it seemed, I joined them in a high reverie of great bliss: and yet always there lingered in the recesses of my mind a doubt, a fear, about the utter paleness of the scene, as if too readily it might fade altogether … and so with some pang of strange sadness, I stole away.

  ‘Not long after I had found the promise of light which I thought must beckon me to the fourth tableau, I had also had time to think through what Ivo might be enacting for us: and I began to sense the possible peril. I stepped softly inside what proved to be a stone chamber flaringly lit by an archaic athanor of lunging flames, and caught a glimpse of a great brazen mask with a sinister, twisted maw, a visage exuding an awful, fascinating power.

  ‘With a great effort, I tore myself away. Though there was a part of me that yearned to see all the evocations, I also knew I was not fully ready for further experiences which would heighten my emotions to a singular, lingering rapture of wonder or revulsion, such as had happened in each of the previous tableaux.

  ‘I therefore returned somewhat pensively to the library, where I found several of the others who had been moved by the same scarcely-understood unease and had stopped their procession before seeing all of Ivo’s creations. Yet one of us at least had ventured into the light of all of them—and more, as it seemed.’

  The Connoisseur paused. ‘I can still remember the scene with utmost clarity, down to Penrose’s faltering admission that he had violated one of his host’s explicit interdicts:

  ‘ “I … I could not help myself, Ivo,” he pleaded. “I know you said we were not to touch any of the—the works, but really one of them was just too enticing. It was the last one I found—I had been very forbearing until then. But really, the exertion has perhaps been a little too much … I must just …” He sagged onto a chair and signalled for some refreshment.

  ‘ “What are you saying Penrose? What did you do?”

  ‘ “Well, it was the darkest of the rooms. You cheated a little, Ivo, really you did. There was hardly any light in there at all. But o it was so worth seeing: you surpassed yourself. The others—the scarlet, the green, the white—there was a certain overt artifice about them that intruded itself a little upon true appreciation and I …”—he winced and shook his head a little—“dear me, I have over-tired myself …”

  ‘Ivo, standing to one side of the fire so that a half of his face was in darkness and a half strangely lit, stirred in some impatience.

  ‘ “Penrose! What did you do?”

  ‘ “I—I saw this boy with—o grape-black hair and obsidian eyes, and he was all entwined in strange gauzy folds of violet and lying on a dark chaise-longue, black as a raven’s wing—and all around him were very frail flower heads in many pale colours, and he twined one in his hand, a very white hand—and and there was such a look of gentleness about him and so I—well, I crept nearer and I felt as if this was perfection, true perfection, and so, so …”

  ‘Colonel Gaspard strode quickly from out of the depths of the room, seized Penrose by the jaw and stared fiercely into his eyes for a few taut moments. Then he turned slowly to Ivo:

  ‘ “Was there a seventh tableau, Tradescant?”

  ‘Ivo shook his head, numbly.

  ‘ “There was not. Not of my making. But—what he is describing—it seems so like …”

  ‘Gaspard interrupted him with a furious stare, then turned back to Penrose.

  ‘ “Come now, you’ve been overdoing it, Penrose. You had a snort too much of young Tradescant’s port after dinner. Probably fell asleep in that darkened room. Let’s get you up …”—and with a few signals and commands he arranged for the rapidly succumbing adventurer to be helped to his room and watched over.

  ‘After some of the guests had also chosen to retire for the night, and others had sought to divert themselves in less ennervating pursuits, Gaspard and I drew Tradescant aside. I think we had both formed the same conclusion about the unifying theme of the tableaux he had prepared.

  ‘ “It was beautifully done, Tradescant, I give you that,” Gaspard conceded.

  ‘ “I don’t blame you for making the experiment, nor for keeping us in the dark. Had you been freer in taking us into your confidence, our responses to the—shall we say, passages, and rituals?—would have been less authentic. But if the seventh of these was not of your doing, then what is it that we have caused to happen here? You should not have travestied the Way.”

  ‘Ivo swallowed hard, then beckoned us to follow him to a far spur of Evermoor through what seemed a veritable processional way of draped and garnished corridors until we came to closed double doors of some glistening dark wood. He opened one, hesitantly and ushered us in. Silver censers and strangely wrought miniature cressets gave us a first sensation of coiling fumes and flickering little tongues of flame. “He should not have come here,” Ivo said, suddenly. We stepped further inside. Our host took up two slim candlesticks, lit them, and held them up slowly and reluctantly.

  ‘Above the hearth there was placed a painting in a baroque gilt frame. In subdued misty tones there emanated out to us from the black shadows, the figure of a pale youth clad in strange veils of wan violet, scattering faintly hued flowers.

  ‘ “Thanatos the Peace-bearer.” I said. It was one of the last great works of Oswyn Moore, an artist of the Nineties whose work was much influenced by the symbolistes.

  ‘We stood in subdued silence, trying to make sense of what Penrose had seen. Most of us, I think, clung to the assumption that he had been so utterly absorbed by the experience of the six tableaux, that he had been confused and feverish by the time he reached this room and had seen visions of a form that existed only in this exquisite painting. But we remembered also his absolute awe at his encounter, and his insistence on its reality.

  ‘ “After all,” Ivo ventured, at last, “we only have Penrose’s testimony—”

  ‘There was a graceful movement behind us, like a swift obeisance in the presence of a higher power.

  ‘ “And this …” Lucy added quietly, as she rose. In her open hand she held the fine veined petals of a single pale poppy.

  ‘As you may have begun to understand,’ The Connoisseur continued, after briefly reflecting upon this well-remembered scene, ‘Ivo’s work was a masque of the Mysteries, a reconstruction of scenes from some of the surmised initiation rites of that most ancient and most secret of sacred transformations. He had chosen potent images believed to have been used in preparing the votaries for the final revelations of the cult: and he had succeeded in invoking the very state of spiritual adoration and contemplation of these images which was one key practice among several in the journey towards the last veils.’

  The Connoisseur paused and became thoughtful.

  ‘And Penrose?’ I prompted. He sighed.

  ‘I visited Penrose not long before his passing, a few weeks later. It is true he had led a riotous life—the sort the prurient would term “dissolute”, no doubt. And so his sudden illness could have stemmed from any one of numberless plausible causes. But in his hovering consciousness at any rate there had formed a conviction that there was some other source for his prostration, to be found in the incident in the seventh tableau in Ivo’s house at Evermoor. One phrase indeed, from his wandering words towards the time of his final silence, I heard very clearly. He said: “the dark boy, the dark boy, his lips had the taste of pomegranates.”

  ‘Was it then some plain mortal wasting th
at led to his death, induced at last by the bizarre exertion of Ivo’s dark masque? Or could it have been as he seemed to see it: that he had come too close, too unprepared, to the heart of the Mysteries and was fated to succumb to that gentle, bittersweet gift from the lips of an acolyte of the goddess Proserpine?’

  The Lost Moon

  When I called on The Connoisseur one dank November day, I found him lounging against his mantelpiece, enjoying a fine blaze in the grate, and lingering reflectively over a little globe of silver which he held between his thumb and forefinger. As he had perhaps hoped, I asked him what it was, and then settled in to hear about another of his encounters with the singular and the sinister.

  ‘If you wander in some of the quieter Victorian quarters of the city,’ he began, ‘you will sooner or later chance upon the place where this strange sphere came into my possession. Behind rusting silver arrow-headed palings, and partly embowered by laurel, cypress and a young yew tree, there is the old Sandemanian chapel, long since defunct. It is of low and modest proportions, in dulled orange brick with umber tiles on the roof and very little embellishment: a finial in flaking black iron, a few modest round-headed windows in watery stained glass.

  ‘However, before entering the arched doorway, you may notice a neat brass sign which reads: “Thos. Vaux. Clockwork.” This is a rather mischievous statement on two counts. Firstly, those visitors unwary enough to ask Thomasina, when they encounter her deeply immersed in some minute and intricate workings, if they “could speak to her father”; or “whether Mr Vaux was in”, are unlikely to find themselves greeted with much favour; she alone is the artist and artificer behind the name on the plaque. Secondly, Thomasina prefers to work with anything to do with clockwork that is not a clock. So by choice she will make, repair or restore musical boxes and gramophones, mechanical toys and marionettes and other oddities: and her workshop in the chapel will usually be dotted with examples of all these in various states of completion.