The Collected Connoisseur

by Valentine, Mark

  ‘When I called on her one blustery, gloom-engrained day in November, she was huddled in particular contemplation of a collection of brass cogs, springs and coils, and fine circlets of silver. Open on her workbench was a velvet-lined box of old polished, cinnamon-tinted wood, with a striking marquetry of rays and spirals in a darker timber: and inside this nestled a number of glinting metal orbs of varying dimensions, which at first glance seemed to be inscribed and enamelled with faded characters or designs. Whenever Thomasina was thoroughly absorbed in some enigma of her craft, it was mutually understood that I should pass through the studio in silence and make my way to the living quarters at the back of the chapel. Here, she had rigged up a den which, with hanging fabrics, tabourets, deep quilts and cushions, and an ancient black stove at its heart, contrived to be quite a snug corner of the otherwise rather austere edifice.

  ‘After not many moments, Thomasina joined me, stirred the stove fire rather fiercely and flung herself down on some cushions with a sigh of exasperation. After running her hands through her cropped, wildly tufted mahogany hair, hardly held back at all by a dark band, she sank deeper back into the makeshift divan, and stared upwards for several minutes in silence. Then she rummaged in the pockets of her bilberry-coloured overalls and drew out a neatly folded white rectangle which she passed over to me without a word. It was a banker’s draft, drawn at a distinguished London house, for a very tidy sum: something like the equivalent of four or five months’ work for Thomasina, I supposed.

  ‘I congratulated her on attracting such a prosperous client—for her fastidiousness about her work sometimes meant she did not earn all she needed, notwithstanding a fairly modest existence—and asked what the commission was.

  ‘At this, she said it was a damned awkward one and probably just somebody playing the fool. But, mind you, what they’d sent her was the real thing all right. Very rare, early 18th century certainly. But something all wrong about it. How in the name of Hades it was supposed to piece together, she could not say. Nothing like the only other one she’d done, for the Royal Aberdeen Institute. Now that was bad enough, like re-learning an ancient art. But this one should work on the same principle. And it didn’t … With much more of the same.

  ‘After a while, I began to get more of the picture. A few weeks ago, she had received a letter from the client, which read something like this: “The Trustees of the Most Ancient & Sublime Society wish to commission you to restore, as far as you consider appropriate, an 18th century astronomical instrument. This task calls for the utmost delicacy and caution. The Trustees are aware of your background and work (‘Are they indeed!’ murmured Thomasina to herself, when she read this) and consider it is appropriate you should take care of this. If you assent to this proposal, kindly mark this letter accordingly and return it to the undersigned, together with details of your terms.’ The signature, apparently, was indecipherable, resembling if anything more a pair of entwined serpents than a name. The title of the society did not cause her more than a passing bemusement, because many learned institutions, founded in the Age of Reason, delighted to give themselves such resounding sobriquets. The return address was care of a Cambridge college: and so she responded at once, indicating her assent and remarking that the terms she outlined were a preliminary estimate, given that the instrument was unseen and the condition unknown.

  ‘A few days later, a stout parcel had arrived, carefully tied with string and sealed with red wax, which she had broken casually without observing the design, though it seemed not dissimilar to the serpentine signature on the letter she had returned. Inside was the box containing the globes, that I had glimpsed on my way in, a similarly polished wooden stand, and many minute pieces, each individually wrapped in muslin. There was also the cheque in an unmarked envelope.

  ‘By the time she had told me all this, it was early evening and murky outside, and so even with her powerful work lamps and spectacles it was not the best time for Tom to be returning to the frustrating chore of reconstructing an artefact that did not obey the rules. So we made a simple supper in what had been the vestry, and now did service as a kitchen, and returned to her den to talk through this curious commission.

  ‘ “It’s a kind of orrery, of that I’m sure,” she explained. I had wondered as much. “You turn a brass handle and the globes, one for each planet, revolve on thin wire around the sun, imitating the circuits that they do in the sky. At any point their orbits relative to each other have to be astronomically exact. Of course, there’s only the seven spheres, counting Earth and the Moon. This was before Herschel. They’re quite wonderful contrivances to watch—once you get ’em working, that is,” she added bitterly.

  ‘ “What won’t work?” I asked, though I am completely innocent of any mechanical knowledge whatever. Her reply was somewhat terse and amounted to: “None of it.” But after a pause, she expanded this a little. The orb representing the sun should be fixed in its place in the centre: some models didn’t have a sun and a candle was placed there instead, so that its flickering flame could cast light on the shining spheres as they revolved. But this one did, only the sun could not obviously rest in the hollow where it ought to go. Then, the remaining globes should slot into the circlets of silver representing their orbits, the one with the smallest circumference being Mercury, nearest to the sun, and so on: with the Moon on a separate, minute circlet around the Earth. All the pieces were there: but none fitted as they should.

  ‘ “And it’s a pity,” she exclaimed, “because it’s a very fine piece indeed. A lot of craft went into it. Look.” She fetched the box where the seven spheres rested in deep blue-black velvet. ‘This is Jupiter.” She plucked the largest object from its niche. “Made of tin, as he properly should be, and inscribed with a flourish, can’t quite make it out: and here, there’s just one flake left of cornelian, Jove’s stone, but originally”—she indicated a sequence of small dents—“there was probably a crown of them. Now take Venus”—selecting a smaller sphere, much lighter—“Copper, as you see, with two or three facets of Amethyst, but you can just make out that she would have worn a zone or girdle of them, but the others have gone.”

  ‘With a sigh, she replaced the second planet in its soft socket in the box and closed the lid. We both gazed at the deft, dark marquetry on the lid, briefly. For a moment it seemed as if the darkness without had clambered noiselessly into the little chamber and had clustered to itself all the shadows which lay beyond, so that even the fire in the stove, and the single lamp, were subdued somewhat. We crouched in silence, aware of some strange change in the atmosphere. Sometimes when I was a child I used to think that the darkness was made of thousands of black stars which fizzled and pranced before my eyes. And here again, for a few moments, that is what the darkness seemed to do. There was a density too, about it, that somehow reminded me of the big black discs which are used as weights on scales, thick, solid and heavy: it was almost as if one of these had taken the place of my heart. We sat like this without moving or talking, as if were waiting for something, though I am sure neither of us knew what. At length, we scrambled to our feet, and plunged out into the main body of the old chapel. The wan violet and weak green of the stained glass cast odd patterns on the tiled floor. Tom clicked on the overhanging lights and a blaring yellow burst into our reverie and banished some of the sombreness which had clung about us. Talking deliberately lightly, she remarked that she had probably over-tired herself on this infernal apparatus and would set it aside for a few days in favour of something more prosaic. We agreed I would call again after this space to see how she was getting on. As I let myself out through the narrow arched door, I glanced back at the clustering evergreens, which were deep, dim and slightly agitated by the still-blustering breeze: and a brief surge of the darkness we had suddenly discerned within rose again in my sight and in my thoughts. I half-turned back, but the staid streets and rows of trim Victorian villas reassured me and I walked on home.’

  The Connoisseur pondered a while, and helped
himself to a single black grape from a crescent-shaped dish.

  ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘Although I could not help Thomasina with the mechanical side of things, I thought I could at least do a little delving into the history of the orrery, or even of the society that had sent it to her, supposing they really existed and were not some elaborate blind or hoax. As I did so, I began to work at a half-formed theory—mostly wrong, as it turned out, but in one sense along the right lines. Though there were similar instruments before, elsewhere in Europe, the first orrery to be named as such was made about 1700 for Charles, the Fourth Earl of Orrery. Him I knew of already, for he was a good Jacobite—you recall my interest in the Old Cause?—and he was also a friend of the learned. It is quite likely that he had other orrerys made, both for friends in the gentry and nobility, and for those scholars and experimenters that were within his circle. Now, after the failure of the Fifteen, the sense of despair and of a world put out of its proper order, was keenly felt by the Jacobites: and so I wondered whether the Earl might have had an orrery made in which the spheres do not follow their fated path, in which all is out of true with what it should be: thus the emblem most closely associated with him, the art to which he had given his name, could be used as a memento mori to the lost cause, a constant reminder of the ruin of all. It would be a more elaborate version of the clandestine Jacobite drinking bowls and goblets, engraved with the white rose and other Stewart symbols: and may even have had a similar, ceremonial purpose. I imagined a grave cabal of loyalists gathered on occasions sombrely to contemplate this representation of a world gone all awry. Thus, Thomasina could not restore this orrery to an original order which mirrored the movement of the spheres: for it was never intended to do such.’

  The Connoisseur smiled wryly. ‘Ingenious eh? Well, there might have been something of this sort at play with this curious orrery, but if so, there was also rather more. Anyhow, I scurried over to the old chapel to put my theory to Tom. As I entered again between the dark green shrubs and trees, their quiet stirring in the November air reminded me momentarily of our experience here a few days before, and I had to forcibly put this aside in my mind, to concentrate on the idea I wanted to explain. In fact, I found that Thomasina had independently arrived at the conclusion that the instrument had not been intended to work in the ordinary way, and had made her adjustments accordingly, finding out about it by trial and error and painstakingly piecing together a wholly unfamiliar model as she worked. She had not made the Jacobite connexion and found it intriguing, but pointed out that other known owners of orrerys had, outwardly at least, given their allegiance to the Hanoverian succession. Her theory was that the piece could have been intended as an elaborate satire or burlesque on the aristocratic pseudo-scholars of the day. Clearly, an important clue might be derived from the nature of the learned society who owned it. Therefore, she had written to them, at their care of address, explaining that the piece was most unusual, but that she was close to discovering its secret and asking for any information about its origins.

  ‘I left her working on the mock-orrery and strolled to the library, still mulling over my own Jacobite theory, and unwilling to surrender it entirely. In the stacks that are not on public display, to which (as you know) I have access owing to my understanding with young Gale, the librarian, I rummaged through such editions of 18th century memoirs, diaries and chronicles as I could readily call to hand. I learnt much about the early years of the Royal Society, and of its precursor, the “Invisible College”, from which this august body derived: I found, for example, that Robert Boyle, that great pioneer chemist, physicist and alchemist, was a great-uncle of our fourth Earl. I traced a number of similar societies, grandly-named, as Thomasina had remarked, and some with a decidedly masonic or hermetic cast: but no mention was there of the Ancient & Sublime. One fragment only seemed germane, and this I copied out, then made my way back through the clustering dusk to find how Tom had got on with her restoration of the piece.

  ‘The apparatus was displayed proudly on her work bench as I entered, and she was standing back from it, eyeing it meditatively while polishing the last of the globes. She paused as I entered and smiled rather ruefully. “Easy when you know how,” she announced. “I think this will prove, when I place it so,” and she gently dropped a heavy, dark orb into the focal pillar, “yes! to be the fulcrum. You were on the right track, but the planets are not arbitrarily out of true. It is simpler than that. They are all in reverse. So, look, the sun (gilded, not gold, as if to sneer at it more) is placed far out and is made to orbit the others: next comes Mercury, Venus, the brass Earth with its silver Moon, Mars, Jupiter and at the centre: a lead Saturn. And when we wind it,”—she pointed to a handle shaped like a key, also in lead—“if it goes at all, it will go deosil, not the way of the sun at all. Shall we try?”

  ‘Such was her eagerness that I readily agreed. Sensing at last, after her absorption in her work, the darkness that had descended outside, Thomasina turned on one of her worklamps and shone it directly onto the curious orrery. Then she turned the heavy handle repeatedly in its groove and the spheres began to move, judderingly at first, then more swiftly, gyrating on their strands of silver on their strangely-ordained orbits, in transverse from their true course, all obeying the thrall of the sombre globe at the axis, the pitted, scriven lead ball that did service as Saturn. Though I knew that it was cogs, springs, coils and ratchets that caused all this to happen, still I could not help but gape in wonder at the intricacy with which the orbs danced their dark sarabande, and as one or other of us kept the key turned, we both became as if entranced by this planetary anti-masque. All outside the circle of light cast by the studio lamp upon the gliding, glinting device, was utter darkness and as I watched I began to sense again that sudden clamouring of the shadows at the edges of my sight. While my eyes remained fixed on the strange cycles unravelling in front of me, and my hand mechanically at intervals turned the handle to keep it in motion, I began to be oppressed by an overwhelming sense of loss and extinguishment, as if every remotest chink of light, even the wan flicker through the pale stained glass, even the dim subdued lustre on the old oak furnishing, was giving up its glimmer to an all-pervading pall of black. At the same time, I was transfixed by an impression of stone-hard stasis: as if darkness could be petrified into something immutably hard; and I also felt the darkness trickling in dank droplets into my consciousness, as if forming stalactites and stalagmites of vitrified pitch, which would join to form a palace of basalt pillars and weird obsidian obelisks in my skull. I shook myself and tried to prevent my hand from turning the key that drove the swirling spirals in their unholy homage to the darkest orb of all, but I could not release my grasp. I glimpsed Thomasina, her eyes locked in a similar fascination, claw her fingers as if willing them to move as she wished, but without avail: and still the utter darkness and fixity of things bore down upon me, and I began to see great spans or arms of darkness reaching out beyond the walls of the old chapel, crusting and fossilising all growing things, turning trees at a touch into stark black skeletons, blighting grasses and crops into myriad stalks of rigid ash, striking the few autumn flowers into dark simulacra. Even great old rivers seemed to stop and solidify into a vast slime.

  ‘As I watched these vile transformations, which somehow seemed infinitely wicked to me, so that I shuddered within myself and tried again to break free, it came to me in fitful glimmers and slivers that one other colour only the vast-reaching arms of darkness did not seem able wholly to extinguish: the silver-white of the moon and the stars and of such of the streams and cascades as could still run as free water. I forced myself to focus with all my might on these fitful images and to imagine my arm as turning to silver, into the limpidity and fluidity of a young brook fed by a secret spring and as I did so, with great effort and force, I flung my grip aside from the key to the orrery and tumbled upon the floor. The whirring of the ancient instrument wound down and Thomasina too was released from its thrall.

  ‘Sh
e dashed to the door, flung it open, flicked on every light there was, and quickly and deftly dismantled several parts of the device. It was some hours before we finished talking over what each of us had seen, and before we were sufficiently reassured to go our separate ways, but though we were certain about the impressions of deadening darkness that had been imposed upon us, we could not make sense of what we had seen, of what it meant.

  ‘When I returned to her workshop the following day, I found Thomasina gravely removing the glinting orbs from their circlets and replacing them in their velvet niches in the polished casket. I wanted to ask her much more about her experience of the visions we had seen the night before, but she greeted me tersely and nodded in the direction of one of the old side-aisles. A young man in a dark suit with a green waistcoat and a bronze tie held in place by a gleaming slender slide stepped out of the shadows, adjusting narrow, wire-armed glasses. I introduced myself, and the visitor nodded hesitantly, biting his lower lip.

  ‘ “This gentleman is the Deputy Secretary of the Trustees of the Society in question,” Tom explained, raising her eyebrows at me as if in incredulity.

  ‘ “Is he?” I asked, rather drily. “With credentials no doubt?” He did not seem offended by my query. She held up for me to see, a visiting card on which the name and care of address of the Society were printed, together with a signature very like the one she had described, resembling locked snakes rather than words. I gazed at him inquiringly.

  ‘ “I—I understand you shared Miss Vaux’s—hmm—impressions, once the—hmm—instrument was restored? I offer you my apologies. Who can tell what odd kinds of hypnosis these old devices might possess, hmm? It was very much against my judgement that this commission was initiated. But others of the Trustees, or at least those working behind those Trustees, insisted. I could not prevail. But I will be candid. I have come to ensure that they do not gain possession of the—the work. I will be resigning my post: but you need have no fear. No fear, I mean, that it is proper for you to give the work into my keeping. I also have, if it will reassure you, the Trustees’ bank book and, indeed, if you are out of pocket—”