The Collected Connoisseur

by Valentine, Mark

  ‘ “Surely,” I said, “There was Comus and in his crew a hound, a boar, a cat and a wolf.”

  ‘There was a strange silence.

  ‘ “Oh, you must mean me,” suggested the hound, I mean to say Verity.

  ‘ “No,” I replied, “for once I saw you and the wolf-headed figure in opposite directions. Oh, this is just more of your fun. There must have been a fifth reveller. Did they have to leave early?”

  ‘But they denied it all vehemently, and perhaps thought that I was having a little jest of my own with them.’

  Gabriel Larkland paused, and put in excitedly to us:

  ‘Yes, but I quite decidedly saw another figure too, you recall? On that moonlit knoll?’

  Dr Dowerley gazed at him thoughtfully. ‘Indeed? Well, I parted from the little company of players at last, and as I journeyed back on the train, reflected upon the insight the evening had given me into the more vital side of Milton’s character. Here was a man whose milieu made it necessary for him to pay obeisance to the supremacy of Virtue and Reason, and who honoured them truly enough, but who knew enough of passion and wild instinct and the secret arts to give them their due part too! I now feel that I should not be at all surprised if there were some real magic in the Masque. Where it was first played, you know, above Ludlow, it is said they still hear signs of the chase and the frolic today.

  ‘These things I mulled over in my mind, as the train wound on its slow way back, but most of all, and much more simply, I was conscious that I had got out of myself, and had had, indeed, a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

  ‘We scholars ought to extend our horizons a little more, I feel. Indeed, I said as much to my great friend Isabel Ewart, you know, the music critic, in urging her to go to some rather unusual musical event this evening. In fact, I may very well join her. Now, my dear sir, what do you think you can do to help me renew my acquaintance with this charming young troupe?’

  The Connoisseur again did not respond directly, but instead put a question. ‘What time is your concert this evening?’

  Dr Dowerley raised her eyebrows. ‘About seven-thirty, I believe. Why?’

  ‘And where is it?’

  ‘At The Wharfeside, you know, one of those warehouses they have converted into—what do they call it—an arts studio?’

  Gabriel Larkland groaned.

  ‘That is where we shall find them,’ said The Connoisseur, ‘We dress, I believe.’

  ***

  The Lair of the Hesperian Dragon

  My friend made arrangements for Professor Hirth to join us, and we met Larkland and him at a pre-agreed rendezvous in Great High Gate, beneath the Old Tower, all of us in evening attire.

  As we strode along the lamplit thoroughfare, in a fine, fresh breeze, our swordsticks and the other’s dark canes swinging by our sides, my friend spoke crisply to the young student of anarchism. ‘I should advise against any precipitate action on your part,’ he urged. ‘Things are not always what they seem.’

  Larkland was scarcely to be consoled, for he was brooding over the undoubted fact that the young woman he so esteemed was an associate—one might indeed say the leader—of those he was convinced were a villainous crew. ‘I shall leave things to the last possible moment,’ he murmured, half to himself, ‘so that she has some chance of escape from our forces.’ Then, more alertly, ‘I say, we have got those, haven’t we?’

  ‘Oh,’ smiled The Connoisseur, ‘I think there will be extra forces all right.’

  We were greeted at the arched door of the old warehouse by a tall, dark young man in a black travelling-cape, and it hardly needed the hissed denunciation of Larkland to identify him to us. He bowed politely to our party, held aside a fall of dark curtains at the door, and invited us inside with a gesture.

  All of the cavernous space within was engloomed, except for a couple of slowly moving shafts of dim light, which proved to be torches. One of these advanced more nearly to us, and I could just make out a shadowy form of medium height, wearing rather rakishly slanting headwear—a beret perhaps. We were shown to a bench, and, as our eyes became more accustomed to the lack of light, we could see other figures occupying similar forms around the perimeters.

  There was a general undertow of murmuring which was flicked off in an instant when tall chrome lamps dazzled into brilliance in the body of the vast room.

  There before us were the curious devices which Larkland had evidently seen, elegant on tripod stalks, gleaming, with glass vials, black and white dials, dark valves which wheezed hoarsely, and little sparks of flame from copper cylinders. Two dark figures moved among them, then a sudden spray of white cloud gushed forth from all four devices simultaneously, billowing around the display.

  It was all we could do to restrain Larkland, who was evidently for leaping up. As the cloud slowly dispersed itself, there came a quieter sibilance from the devices and in turn they emitted another surge of fumes: but these were finely tinted, ochreous, magenta, pale lambent green and an unearthly flame-blue. There was a noticeable indrawing of breath all around the rooms as this chromatic smoke slowly, gracefully mingled together, producing a melding of tinged whorls and spirals of scarcely conceivable beauty, as if the transfixed designs of marbled paper had been lifted from the page to float free in space. Further effusions from the glinting, whirring devices followed, each waft of painted air a slightly different hue, and we found ourselves watching an ethereal sarabande of rare and frail colour.

  All, I suspect, were transfixed by this unusual craft. I spoke to several of those present afterwards, and found that each of them, as the elegant tendrils floated in convulate dance in the white light, began to become semi-mesmerised by those aery serpent-essences, and seemed to sense the possible emanation, the implied presence of other colours—completely other colours than those we know. It was as if, the gruff and rugged Professor Hirth said to me, the contemplation of that eerie ballet between formlessness and form had drawn into it some spiralling gateway between the two.

  There came at length a point when no further escapes of cloud came forth, the four devices seemed to subside, the clouds of colour began stealthily to clear, and the lamps were dimmed. Whisperings around the room intimated the somewhat stunned delight of the watchers, but there was also clearly an edge of expectancy.

  As if the performance we had just witnessed had indeed called forth something from the very depths, there came from the far end of the lofty studio, a sudden surging drone, in pulsing waves of deep and low growls, which then rose to a succession of quick yelps and was at once joined by a soaring, whistling, howling sound, as of a gale on a dark night. These huge gusts of sibilance, like the harsh blasts of some great beast’s breath, and the high wailing that rode above them, seemed to conjure visions of vast empty wastes where winds roar unimpeded by the haunts of man. As the rushing eddies intensified in rhythm, there came also a fusilade of crackling sounds, sharp claps such as the flames give when they lunge upwards.

  Beneath this pandemonium I could just hear the murmurs of concern and uncertainty rise from all the sides of the hall, and the shapes of heads as people began to leap to their feet. This began to swell to a great jabbering noise which seemed to rebound back and forth over the rushing swathes, the keening cries and the fiery bursts, until I began to fear that Panic, in its old and true sense, was about to manifest.

  Then, the dark veils at the far end of the room were drawn aside, a pale light played upon the stage, and we saw the cause of the wild commotion: a young man turning a great barrel in which twists of sheer fabric shimmered; a calm-faced woman coaxing yelping sounds from some curious reed instrument; and a figure in a blue tunic, wearing a jaunty beret, who turned the handle of a wooden box. There was a palpable descent in the tension of the voices, though they still continued excitedly until the performance plunged to its shivering, wavering conclusion.

  ***

  The young woman with the glinting hazel eyes reclined gracefully upon the stage in the mechanic’s outfit, her fa
ce still streaked with oil and sundry coloured powders, but her white-gold hair released from its pins under the beret. Several of those involved in the exertions of the evening, in one way or another, were gathered around her.

  ‘I am Persephone Vaughan,’ she began ‘and I am greatly in your debt for your participation in the artistic events I have arranged over these past few weeks. I was the impresario of them all, but I could not have done them at all without the fervour and the creativity of these my friends. For you, Professor Hirth, as I think you soon surmised, we arranged our rendition of the lyrical mysticism of the Light Conversationalists, as an antidote to a too, too dry Confucianism.

  ‘I was the satin-tunicked houseboy who served the gathering that day. And, Dr Dowerley—charmed to meet you again—you were kind enough to tell us the extent to which your preoccupation with reason in Milton had been augmented by our playful insight into his other side. And your colleague Isabel Ewart, author of The Great Canon, a stern advocate that only the major composers and the most majestic compositions are worthy of our effort. As I am sure you will have observed, we do not share this view. Hence the subtitle of our première of Verity West’s Sonata for Sheng, Treated Wind Machine & Crepitator, “Firing the Great Canon”, which I have no doubt helped to lure you here.

  ‘We were rather afraid the performance might prove too strong for you. Of course, the ensemble was helped by what I believe in orchestras are called “extra forces”, and these certainly added to the occasion. To have a chorus of such consternation was a gratifying tribute to the work.’

  ‘Yes,’ interjected the composer, ‘I shall seriously consider adding “Hubbub” to the title as an additional instrument.’

  ‘And Mr Thurston over there,’ resumed Miss Vaughan, ‘you still look a little dazed, sir—for those of you who do not recognise him, is the self-styled “brutalist” critic, author of Art as Functional Necessity, who must have it that there is a quotidian purpose behind all creative things. I fancy that Eleanor Swift’s exquisitely gentle Smoke Symphony, conjured from her kinetic sculptures, will have intimated to him that the machine can, after all, be an instrument of rare delight. I hope that we have elevated his thought somewhat, if only for a little while.’

  ‘Mmmm, I said he would go up, in smoke,’ interjected the elegant young woman, with a snigger.

  ‘My friends,’ continued the eloquent young woman, ‘such is the sole raison d’être of our little cabal: the revivification of art and learning, the invocation of the vital spark. The art that does not partake of the unpredictable, the whimsical, the enthralled indeed, is no art. We are the votaries of that Hesperian dragon that great Milton saw guarding the “eternal roses and fruits of golden rind” of the paradisal realm: the quickening flame that encoils the sacred verities.

  ‘And, Mr Gabriel Larkland, the scholar of the anarchist in literature, to whom we gave, I hope, a passable, if impromptu, imitation of one of his beloved nihilist novels. Mr Larkland …’ her tone became somewhat softer, ‘I own there was a more personal element in your case. I long ago decided that you might conceivably be worthy of my mettle as a mate. Why else do you suppose I became such an assiduous frequenter of the Octagon Library? Yet you were tediously slow in responding and I decided to put my time there to good use, carrying out my own research to shape the escapades which you have experienced. The adventures in which you have shared were designed to satisfy me as to certain misgivings. Firstly, could you be disinterred from a too precise, a too fastidious adherence to your routine? Could you, in short, welcome the untoward into your life? Secondly, though you certainly had the niceties of a gentleman, did you have the sterner qualities a gentleman must also have? I refer to sang-froid, courage and gallantry. Mr Larkland, you have acquitted yourself well in all of these.’

  The object of this frank avowal had been listening to it somewhat open-mouthed, but upon hearing the encomium at its conclusion, straightened his jaw, and adopted a lofty look, in which was certainly admingled a quantity of trepidation.

  ‘As to you two gentleman,’ she resumed, addressing The Connoisseur and me, ‘I hope that I have been the cause of some diversion for you. I learnt that you were on the case, so to speak, from Adam, one of our troupe,’—the young man who had operated the Wind Machine bowed, ‘who is an assistant at the Octagon Library. He saw that the volumes you were consulting were echoing those I had used to devise our little spree: such as Upholding the Heavenly Mean—The Way of Confucianism: and Milton & The Light of Reason. It was he, also, who found me the addresses of the eminent authors, all members of the library, of course, so that I could invite them to our events. You, I infer, found your way to these authors independently, and started upon our scent. I am glad you joined us at the last.’

  ***

  After we had returned to his rooms much later that evening, The Connoisseur offered me a generous draught of archdeacon punch, one of his special receipts, from a deep bowl, and sighed.

  ‘I am not sure whether to envy or to fear for Mr Gabriel Larkland,’ he said.

  The Lighting of the Vial

  When I admitted myself to the study which was the inner sanctum of my friend’s rooms, with its carefully placed objets d’art, I found him in a state of abstraction, loosely sprawled in his wing-backed armchair, his fingers just enlaced over a little dark ceramic vessel, from which he seemed to draw certain keen tactile impressions, and which had evidently caused in him a prolonged reverie.

  Fine white light streamed in through the twin arched windows of his room and seemed to transform parts of its interior into a hazy nimbus of suspended insubstantiality: and for a moment I almost had the impression that the same effect had been worked upon The Connoisseur himself, so that his languorous form was about to be withdrawn utterly from this familiar world, in a shiver of dissolution. But some movement on my part, or else the sudden dimming of the light as a cloud obscured its passage, broke the moment, and my friend stirred slowly, sighing.

  He saw me, took some seconds to register my presence, then, returning to himself, noticed as if in slight surprise the bronze-hued vial in his palm and gently set it upon the walnut side-table nearby. He rose, stretched his limbs, beckoned me to my seat, and pulled his old frock-coat more closely about him.

  ‘Do excuse me,’ he began, ‘I have returned from a long journey.’ Then, collecting himself still further, he became more definite: ‘I went to a gathering at the Hugh Kerwyn museum, which is really just his old house, preserved with some of his paintings, on its little rise above a quiet town in the Lincolnshire Wolds. The country there is very tranquil, with gently billowing hills, far vistas, unfrequented roads. Kerwyn had settled in a high-gabled Edwardian villa, with wooden obelisk finials, rose-pink brick, a faint afterglow of Arts & Crafts about it, with an arched porch leading to a recessed front entrance, and good silvery glass in the windows. The garden is now rather rambling and shaggy, but none the worse for that, but the house, as one wanders in the rooms, seems somehow at a loss without its gentle, attentive occupant.

  ‘I was there to take part in a somewhat curious enactment, a reconstruction of his secret masterpiece. Hugh Kerwyn was never widely known, perhaps mostly because he produced rather subdued and reticent work and did not actively push himself forward, nor conform to the popular requirement for artists to be overtly eccentric and flamboyant. He chose this out-of-the-way corner of the country, not only for its light and space, but also for its obscurity. Yet the serene accomplishment of his later pieces, achieved in his mid-fifties, could not wholly be concealed from view, and some there were who sought him out and secured his reluctant consent to a purchase; though he always asked for a reversion clause whereby on the buyer’s decease the painting returns to his house—Lanthorn Hall, it is called—that now not-much-frequented museum I have just visited.

  ‘Those who encountered Hugh Kerwyn came away almost as much intrigued by the man as the work—because of his quiet, deflecting, rather gnomic answers to those who pressed him about the sign
ificance of what he did, or his self-questioning, in a wondering tone, about how to capture light, how to convey its absence, how to be clear about both the presence of things and their essence.

  ‘His secret masterpiece, as I called it, was briefly noticed when it was included in an exhibition of English Pastoralists, though that soon passed. It is entitled, simply enough, “A Still Life”, and all it seems to represent is a cluster of humble objects on a well-worn wooden table: a jug, a pair of umber cruets (perhaps for oil or vinegar), a shallow bowl, a lamp, a pointed pewter candlestick, all in fustian shades and suggestive of straightforward rustic utility. Yet each is finely illuminated by a patina of light from an unseen window, a single glow as of caught gold: and they are also pooled with soft darkness around their edges, from each other’s brief shadows. And all is slightly muted, still solid but seeming perhaps only just so, as if the slightest intensification of the light might dissolve them, or deepening of the darkness might fully engulph them.

  ‘Something about the simplicity and yet the implicit significance of this picture meant that in a minor stirring of critical attention it became the object of some little contemplation and speculation. But Hugh Kerwyn subdued this by witholding it from further exhibitions, and refused any reproductions of it. For a while he deliberately moved his work into another, more abstract, direction that most found difficult to follow.

  ‘After a while, the surge of interest in his work died down, and it became the preserve of a few diehards. These cognoscenti, coming into contact with the artist’s hermetic meditations on the sublimity of things properly seen, which he occasionally issued in little hand-made pocket-books, continued to find an almost cabbalistic resonance in his work, and “A Still Life” in particular. There have been speculations upon the selection and arrangement of the simple artefacts depicted, and some have said that they represent the hallows seen in some versions of the Grail legends, or other ritual objects. Others claimed to see patterns inherent in the dapples of light or the groupings of shadows, evidence of symbols or simulacra, hints of hovering presences. If one asked Kerwyn about any of these theories, he would look somewhat bewildered and simply ask, “Do you think so?” or “Could it be now… ?”, but without absolutely denying any of the propositions.