‘What’s the moral of all that?’
‘There isn’t one, except that the story used to haunt me. I don’t quite know why. It seemed to start so well, and end so badly. Perhaps that’s how well constructed stories ought to terminate.’
‘She never saw the bloke again?’
‘No. I don’t think it really made a ha’p’orth of difference to her. All I say is that for a while the story haunted me.’
‘You were in love with the heroine?’
‘Naturally. In a way that wasn’t the point, which is that, in due course, you find girls are really perfectly well able to look after themselves, most of them. Even allowing for the fact that les chiens sont fidèles, mais pas aux chiennes. To retain the metaphor – bring it up to date – in sexual matters, as in others, the dogs bark, the Caravelle takes off.’
I never knew what Delavacquerie really felt about the Fiona business. Afterwards I wondered whether the heroine of the story he had told was really his dead wife. As Canon Fenneau had observed, we go through life lacking understanding of many things, though I think the Canon inwardly made something of an exception of his own case, where knowledge was concerned. That, at least, was modestly implied in an article I came across later that year, in which he contrasted Chaldean Magic with the worship of Isis and Osiris.
7
BAD WEATHER, OTHER ODD JOBS, mere lack of energy, had all contributed to allowing the unlit bonfire, projected as a few hours’ clearing and burning, to become an untidy pile of miscellaneous debris; laurel (cut down months before), briars, nettles, leaves, unsold rubbish from a jumble sale, on top of it all several quite large branches of oak and copper beech snapped off by the gales. In spite of fog, something calm, peaceful, communicative, about the afternoon suggested the time had come to end this too long survival. A livid sky could mean snow. That dense muffled feeling pervaded the air. The day was not cold for the season, but an autumnal spell of mild weather – short, though notably warm that year – was now over. It had given place to a continuous wind blowing from the west, dropped the night before, after bringing down a lot of leaves and the sizeable boughs. There was a great stillness everywhere, except for a monotonous thud-thud from the quarry; a persistent low rumble, like a faraway train making laborious headway along a rough stretch of track. White vapour, less thick over by Gauntlett’s farm, where a few ghostly trees penetrated its mists, wholly obscured the quarry’s limestone platforms and Assyrian rampart.
For kindling, I shoved twists of newspaper in at the base of the heap. At the moment of ignition, the match flared against capital letters of a headline displayed on the outward surface of one of these scraps of newsprint.
EDWARDIAN SYMBOLIST
SEASCAPE VOTARIES
The enigmatic antithesis topped an article read a week or two before. Even allowing for contemporary changes in art fashions, the critic’s enthusiasm had then seemed surprising. After seeing the pictures, remembering the piece, I vaguely thought of glancing through the notice again, to see if I now felt more agreement with the opinions expressed. By then the newspaper had been thrown away, or disappeared among a heap of others; kept for such uses as lighting fires. A search, likely to be unfruitful, seemed scarcely worth the trouble. Now, inclination to read about what had been said of the exhibition – the two exhibitions – was reanimated. In any case the visit to the gallery had been rather an historic occasion; setting something of a seal on all sorts of past matters.Lighting another screw of newspaper under the stack, I extracted a handful of crumpled up pages, and straightened them out. On the back of one of these was a paragraph reporting Quentin Shuckerly’s end in New York (battered to death in Greenwich Village), while on a cultural mission of some kind. I tore out Edwardian Symbolist/Seascape Votaries, committing Shuckerly’s obituary lines to their funeral pyre. The paper flared up, dry twigs began to crackle, damp weeds smouldered, smoke rose high into the white mists, merging into grey-blueness. The atmosphere was filled all at once with the heart-searing bonfire smell.
‘… albeit his roots lie in Continental Symbolism, Deacon’s art remains unique in itself. In certain moods he can recall Fernand Khnopff or Max Klinger, the Belgian’s near-photographic technique observable in Deacon’s semi-naturalistic treatment of more than one of his favourite renderings of Greek or Roman legend. In his genre pictures, the academic compliances of the Secession School of Vienna are given strong homosexual bias – even Deacon’s sphinxes and chimaeras possessing solely male attributes – a fearless sexual candour that must have shocked the susceptibilities of his own generation, sadomasochist broodings in paint that grope towards the psychedelic…’
The writer of the critique, a young journalist, with already something of a name in art circles, had been less enthralled by the late Victorian seascapes, also on view at the gallery; though he drew attention to the fact that here too, as with the Deacons, an exciting revival had taken place of a type of painting long out of fashion with yesterday’s art critics. He expressed his welcome of these aesthetic reinstatements; noting the fact that at least a few connoisseurs, undeterred by the narrow tastes of the day, had followed their own preference for straightforward marine subjects, painted in an unaffectedly naturalistic manner. Most of those on view at the gallery had come from a single collection. He praised the ‘virtuosity’ and ‘tightness of finish’ of Gannets Nesting, The Needles: Schooner Aground, Angry Seas off Land’s End, all by different hands.
Although a card had arrived for a Private View at this gallery, a new one, these two exhibitions had run for at least a fortnight before I found opportunity to pay a visit. Returning to the newspaper article – having been to the gallery – I felt less surprise at the critic’s warm responses, not only to the Deacons, but also to the Victorian seascapes. That was probably due, as much as anything else, to a desire to keep in the swim. There was also a sense of satisfaction in reading praise of Mr Deacon (to me he always remained ‘Mr Deacon’), given by a responsible art critic; a young one at that. The last quality would have delighted Mr Deacon himself. He had once remarked that youth was the only valid criterion in any field. He himself never quite achieved a fusion of the physical and intellectual in propagating that view. Certainly the notice marked how far tastes had altered since the period – just after the second war – when I had watched four Deacons knocked down for a few pounds in a shabby saleroom between Euston Road and Camden Town. At the time, I had supposed those to be the last Deacons I should ever set eyes on. In a sense they were; the last of the old dispensation. The pictures on view at the Barnabas Henderson Gallery (the show specifically advertised as the Bosworth Deacon Centenary Exhibition) were not so much a Resurrection as a Second Coming.
If the rehabilitation of Mr Deacon’s art had not in itself provided an overriding inducement to visit the exhibition, the name of the gallery – proving all curiosity was not at an end – would have gone a long way as an alternative inducement to do so. A single-page pamphlet, accompanying the Private View card, outlined the aims of this new picture firm, which had just come into being. They seemed admirable ones. The premises were in the neighbourhood of Berkeley Square. It was rather late in the afternoon when I finally reached the place, a newly painted exterior, the street in process of being rebuilt, the road up, several Georgian houses opposite looking as if they had been recently bombed. In the window of the Barnabas Henderson Gallery itself a poster proclaimed Mr Deacon’s name in typography of a size, and fount, he would have approved, an aureole of favourable press notices pinned round about.
Within, I found myself surrounded by Deacon canvases assembled on an unprecedented scale; more Deacons than might be supposed even to have been painted, far less survived. The Victorian seascapes were segregated in a room beyond, but an arrow pointed to an extension of the Deacon Centenary Exhibition on the upper floor, which I decided to explore first. The red tag of a sale marked a high proportion of the pictures. Two of those so summarily dismissed at the down-at-heel auction-rooms were immedi
ately recognizable from their black-and-gold Art Nouveau frames, Deacon-designed to form part of the picture itself; a technique Mr Deacon rather precariously supported by quoting two lines from Pericles:
In framing an artist, art hath thus decreed:
To make some good, but others to exceed.
In the shabby saleroom this purpose of the frames had been obscured by dirt and tarnished paint, which cleaning and restoration now made clear. Light in pigment, some of the canvases were huge in size, remembered subjects included Hellenic athletes painfully straining in some contest; another (too grimy at the time to be properly appreciated), a boy slave reproved by his toga-enveloped master, whose dignified figure was not without all resemblance to Mr Deacon himself in his palmy days. The show was stylish in presentation. In fact Barnabas Henderson had done a stupendous rescue job from the Valley of Lost Things; Mr Deacon’s Astolpho, or perhaps one of the well disposed swans, fishing up his medallion for the Temple of Fame. Henderson clearly knew his business. To have supposed him the dim figure he had seemed, only a few months earlier in the same year, under the Murtlock regime, was an error of judgment. Since his self-manumission at Stourwater the Private View card was the first I had heard of him; nor was there any further news of Murtlock and Widmerpool.Even Mr Deacon’s closest friends were accustomed to smile tolerantly, behind his back, about his painting. The few patrons had all faded away by the later stages of his life, when he had exchanged an artist’s career for an antique-dealer’s. All the same, in days when Barnby’s studio was above the antique shop, Barnby had remarked that, little as he approved himself, Sickert had once put in a good word for Mr Deacon’s work. Looking round, more impressed than I should have been prepared to admit, I took heart from Sickert’s judgment; at the same time trying to restore self-confidence as to an earlier scepticism by noting something undoubtedly less than satisfactory in the foreshortening of the slave boy’s loins.
There was still no one about in the first ground floor room of the gallery when I returned there, the attendant’s desk in the corner unoccupied. Through a door at the far end several persons, one of them in a wheel-chair, were to be seen perambulating among the Victorian seascapes. I had not at first noticed that one of the smaller pictures in this first room was Boyhood of Cyrus. Moving across to ascertain how closely, if at all, the palace in its background resembled the configurations of the local quarry, I was intercepted by Barnabas Henderson himself, who came hurrying up a flight of stairs leading from the basement. It was instantaneously apparent that he was a new man; no less renovated than the Deacon pictures on the walls. That was clear in a flash, a transformation not in the least due to adjustments in dress and personal appearance, also to be observed. He had slightly shortened his haircut, reverted to a suit, elegant in cut without being humdrum in style, wore a tie of similar mood. These, however different from a blue robe, were trivial modifications in relation to the general air of rebirth. There was a newly acquired briskness, even firmness of manner, sense of self-confidence amply restored.
‘Oh, hullo, Nicholas. You received our card all right? I was afraid it might have gone astray, as you hadn’t been in.’
‘I couldn’t get to the Private View.’
‘I hope your wife will look in, too, before the Deacon show closes. I always remember how good she was about our turning up once with that awful man. I was quite ashamed at the time. We went crayfishing, do you remember? It was an unusual experience. I can’t say I enjoyed it much. Still, I didn’t enjoy anything much in the circumstances of what my life was then. I hope you like these pictures – and the ones in the next room too, which are by various painters. Bosworth Deacon is one of my own discoveries.’
‘I used to know him.’
‘Know whom?’
‘Edgar Deacon.’
‘Who was Edgar Deacon – a relation of Bosworth Deacon?’
‘He was called Edgar. Bosworth was only his middle name.’
‘No, no. Bosworth is the painter’s name. Are you sure you aren’t confusing your other Deacon man? Bosworth Deacon is a most remarkable artist. In his way unique. I can think of no other painter like him.’
Henderson, possibly with reason, was not in the least interested in whether or not I had known Mr Deacon. Perhaps it was not really a relevant subject; or rather seemed relevant only to myself. It was clear that Mr Deacon – born a hundred years before – seemed in Henderson’s eyes a personage scarcely less remote in time than the kindly slave-master of the artist’s own self-image.
‘I saw you were making for Boyhood of Cyrus, one of Deacon’s best. On the whole I prefer the smaller compositions. He’s more at ease with figure relationships. Several of the critics picked out Cyrus in their notices. I sold it within an hour of the show opening.’
‘The background looks rather like the quarry to be seen from our windows. You may have noticed it on your caravan visit?’
Henderson raised his eyebrows. They could have been plucked. The comparison of Mr Deacon’s picture with the quarry landscape struck no chord. Henderson sold pictures, rather than pondered their extraneous imagery.
‘Surely the palace in the distance represents Persepolis. It’s symbolic.’
‘Well Persepolis isn’t unlike Battersea Power Station in silhouette. An industrial parallel is not excluded out of hand.’
Henderson did not reply. He pursed his lips a little. We were getting nowhere. The subject was better changed. Eleanor Walpole-Wilson had probably sold Cyrus after her parents died. When, in days of frequenting the house, I had once referred to’ their Deacon’, she was all but unaware of its existence, hanging over the barometer in the hall.
‘When I was young I sometimes dined with the people to whom Boyhood of Cyrus used to belong.’
At this information Henderson regarded me with keener interest.
‘You knew Lord Aberavon?’
He was not incredulous; merely mildly surprised. One had to be grateful even for surprise.
‘Not actually. Aberavon died five or six years before I was born. My hostess was his daughter. She owned the picture. Her husband was a diplomat called Walpole-Wilson.’
Henderson was no more prepared to allow that the Walpole-Wilsons had once possessed Boyhood of Cyrus than for Mr Deacon to have been commonly addressed as Edgar.
‘The provenance of Cyrus has always been recognized as the Aberavon Collection. Several Aberavon pictures – by a variety of artists – have been coming on the market lately. They’re usually good sellers. Aberavon was an erratic collector, but not an uninstructed one. Have you looked at By the Will of Diocletian? It hasn’t found a buyer yet. Owing to being rather large for most people’s accommodation these days it is very reasonably priced, if you’re thinking of getting a Deacon yourself.’
‘The younger of the two torturers is not unlike Scorpio Murtlock.’
This time Henderson reacted more favourably to extension of a picture’s imaginative possibilities.
‘Canon Fenneau said the same, when he was in here the other day. He’s someone who knew Scorp when he was quite young. One of the few who can control him.’
‘Where did you come across Fenneau?’
‘Scorp once sent me with a message to him. Chuck and I sometimes go to his church. It was Canon Fenneau who told me that By the Will of Diocletian was painted during Bosworth Deacon’s Roman Catholic period.’
‘Do you ever hear of Murtlock now? Or Widmerpool?’
Henderson, facetiously, made the sign to keep off the Evil Eye.
‘As a matter of fact I do once in a way. Somebody I knew there comes to see me on the quiet if he’s in London. There’s a thing I’m still interested in they’ve got in the house.’
‘Would coming to see you not be allowed?’
‘Of course not.’
Henderson might perhaps have said more on that subject had not Chuck appeared from the inner room. Chuck (perhaps also of seafaring origins) had some of the same burly working-class geniality – now ada
pted to the uses of the art world – that had once characterized Hugo Tolland’s former partner, Sam.
‘Can you come through for a moment, Barney? Mr Duport wants a word.’
Henderson indicated that he would be along in a moment. Towards Chuck, too, his manner had changed. Himself no longer a victim requiring rescue, Henderson had become something not much short of Mr Deacon’s benign slaveowner. No doubt mutual relationship was carefully worked out in that connexion, Chuck showing no resentment at the readjustment. On the contrary, they seemed on the best of terms.
‘There are some rather interesting people in the further room. The actress, Polly Duport, and her parents. Far the best of the Victorian marine painters show come from the Duport Collection. He’s decided to sell now the going’s good. He’s quite right, I think. I expect you’ve seen Polly Duport in the Strindberg play. Super, I thought. She’s an absolute saint too, the way she looks after her father. Wheels him round all the time in that chair. He’s not at all easy. Can be very bad mannered, in fact. He was a businessman – in oil, I’m told – then had to retire on account of whatever’s wrong with him. He’d always been interested in these Victorian seascapes, picked them up at one time or another for practically nothing. Now they’re quite the thing. He comes in almost every day to see how they’re selling.’
‘I know Polly Duport – and her father.’
‘Do you? But you won’t know her mother, who’s come with them this afternoon. She’s lived most of her life in South America. She must be partly South American, I think. She looks like one of those sad Goya duchesses. She and Robert Duport, the owner of the Collection, have been separated for years, so Polly Duport told me, but have been seeing a good deal of each other lately. He’s never brought her along before. She was married to a South American politician, who was killed by urban guerillas. That’s why she came back to England.’