Scandinavian Society - there is, or was, a society for everything
at Oxford, including apiary and medieval mysticism and
bought a grammar and some Parlophone records. It
was not a very shrewd choice for the expenditure of extra
mental energy, for Danish is the difficult language of a tiny
European minority and has little literature of international
importance: anyway the Danes all speak English. I never
30
really thought out my reasons, but what I think now is that
Kirsten's misfortune had affected me more deeply than I
knew, and this was a kind of obscure tribute to her. Under
pressure of Schools I dropped Danish half-way through my
second year; but I was to return to it later, and that to some
purpose.
I was happy at Oxford, of course - almost everyone is.
Like others, I made friends, met interesting people and did
a good many things besides work. At first I continued fencing,
but soon gave that up. It proved, of course, a great deal
more competitive and demanding than at Bradfield, and having
realized that without a lot oT application I had no
chance of a half-blue, I decided that there were better things
to do with my time.
Swimming, however, was another matter. There was no
need to join the swimming club or be drawn into any cutthroat
atmosphere. At Bradfield the fifty-yard expanse of
the open-air bath on a summer morning had been good. The
rivers of Oxford - watery, conducive lanes running between
willows, buttercups and meadow-sweet - were better still,
and offered a variety of delightful choices. All one needed was
a friend with a towel and one's clothes in a punt (or sometimes
a rowing-boat). I swam from the Victoria Arms to the
Parks; from the Rollers to Magdalen Bridge; from Folly
Bridge to Iffley Lock; from the Trout the length of Port
Meadow. I even toyed with the idea of swimming down the
culverted Trill Mill stream, underground from Paradise Square
to Christ Church gardens, but concluded that it would be too
dark and claustrophobic. It always seemed to me strange
that I seldom came upon anyone else engaged in such a
pleasant sport. Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto. (No
doubt the multi were all slogging competitively up and
down the chlorinated Cowley baths.)
Towards the end of my second year I began at last to
think seriously about what I was going to do when I went
down. The hard fact was that I would have to set about earning
my own living as soon as possible. Although my father
(now in his fifties and somewhat indifferent health) was not
badly off, and the china business in Newbury was as sound as
31
his good sense and hard work had made it, nevertheless, like
virtually everyone else of the middle classes, he had found
the years since the war increasingly difficult. Though he
never referred to it, I knew that almost all his capital had
gone into educating my sister Florence and myself. Flick, as
we called her at home, had done an honest Beta double plus
job both at Malvern and Durham, taken a very decent Second
in History and was now teaching at a school near Bristol.
Strictly speaking she was off my father's hands, but I knew
that he was augmenting her salary with a small personal
allowance; nor did I grudge it, for Flick and I were very fond
of each other (as far as I can see, people don't always feel
warm affection for their brothers and sisters) and I both admired
and felt proud of her. She had turned out a pretty girl,
out-going and warm, and far better at getting on with people,
young or old, than I should ever be. On coming down she
had unhesitatingly gone straight into the hurly-burly, and I
had never heard her mention the possibility of doing anything
else. What with her example and the financial situation,
there could not really be any question of my 'looking round
for a year or two'.
Contrary to what many people vaguely suppose, fluency
in modern languages is not good for much commercial exploitation.
Valuable as an adjunct, it is not a great deal of
use in itself. Neither the Foreign Office nor the Civil Service
attracted me, and teaching certainly did not. The last thing I
felt I had any bent for was putting myself - or anything else
- across to groups of youngsters. In this situation, as the
wind of the impending adult world of getting and spending
began to blow more bleakly about my ears, I began, as have
many others similarly placed, to perceive in a new light the
merits of a modest, sheltered valley which I had hitherto disregarded,
but now saw as having a good deal to recommend
it. There was an established, respectable family business.
Why on earth not go into it?
One August evening after dinner, when my parents, Flick
and I were drinking coffee on the verandah and looking out
towards the dry, high-summer downs, I told them that this
was what I now had in mind. No one had anything to say
32
against it. My father's questions were directed simply to
making sure of my motives: he wanted to be satisfied that
this was what I really wished to do; that there was nothing
else I was sacrificing for his sake and that the idea hadn't
stemmed merely from a sense of duty or filial obligation. As
we talked, I realized that in fact there was a good deal more
in my mind than the attraction of a safe billet. To begin
with, it wasn't all that safe, and I knew it. The trade would
have to be learned, and not very long after I had grasped it
- certainly within the next ten years - I was going to find
myself, as Jerome K. Jerome or someone puts it, 'in sole
command of H.M.S. Horrible'. All business is competitive
and, as in a game of backgammon, uncertainty is something
that the most adroit have to learn to live with. To say the
least, I had not so far shown myself much of a lad for the
rough-and-tumble. Would the business be safe in my hands?
If not, my parents and I would be the first to know it, and
the next would be various people who had known my father
and mother for years and me all my life.
On the other hand, if I could make a fist of it, how much
there was in favour not only of being one's own master, but
also of remaining in Newbury and living in the beautiful
house and garden where I had been born! If timidity and
reluctance to go out into the great world formed part of the
appeal here, then I was inclined to think it a fault on the
right side. Steadily, during the past hundred years, large
towns have become nastier places to work in, to live in or
to travel to daily, and the phrase 'stuck away in the country'
has become less and less apt as railways, motor-cars, wireless,
television, refrigerators, modern medicine and the rest
have come marching in; until, in fact, everyone who can
flies to the country, helps to defend his rural patch against
all co
mers and thanks his lucky stars if he has the good fortune
to be able to make his living there. 1 was enlarging on
all this, and no doubt over-compensating like mad for the
timidity/great world factor, when my father cut in.
'It's probably a silly question, Alan, but I suppose you're
quite sure that later on you won't unearth any buried feelings
against being in trade - non-U, or whatever it's called
33
nowadays? You don't think the Oxford graduate might regret
it later?'
'Good Lord, no, Daddy! Frankly, I'm a bit surprised you
ask.'
'Silly of me, no doubt, but I just wondered. I didn't know
whether you might ever have entertained ideas of recovering
the former family status, or anything like that. If you
have, you can certainly dismiss them, because the plain
truth, as far as I know, is that there never was any family
status.'
'I thought you once told me we were landed gentry somewhere
in Guyenne in the eighteenth century?'
'Yes, I remember you using the term "landed gentry" a year
or two back. You certainly didn't get it from me: I didn't
think it was worth correcting, though.'
'But the ancestor you told me about - Armand Deslandes
- he came to England because of the French Revolution,
didn't he? Doesn't that suggest that he must have been
some sort of gentleman?'
'Did I tell you it did?'
'I thought you did. I suppose I must have been about
twelve at the time, though quite honestly I've never given
it much of a thought since then.'
'Well, I remember that conversation, my boy: but I left
out a certain amount. After all, you were only twelve. Still,
I don't think I ever said "landed gentry".'
'Well, I could have tacked on the landed gentry, Daddy,
I dare say. When you're that age, two and two often make
five, don't they? But what was it you left out? Was there
some scandal? Surely if our ancestor came here during the
early seventeen-nineties, it can only have been on account
of the Revolution?'
'Well, yes and no, really, according to your great-grandfather.
I knew him quite well, you know. He lived to be
eighty-five. Armand Deslandes himself died in - er - let me
see, 1841, I think, when he was eighty-two, and your greatgrandfather,
who was his great-grandson, was born in 1845
and lived until 1930. I used to go and read him the newspaper
and talk to him about the shop and the business and
34
so on. It only goes to show what a short time two hundred
years really is, doesn't it? He didn't start the china business,
of course. It was my father who did that, in 1907. But old
Grandpa had money in it and took a lot of interest.'
'Anyhow, what about Armand Deslandes?'
'Well, two things, really. A, he wasn't landed gentry and
B, it wasn't really on account of the Revolution that he left
France - or not directly, anyway. What I was told by Grandpa
was that Armand was a kind of peasant-farmer, somewhere
not far from a place called Marmande: and the thing
about him was that he was widely believed to have some sort
of gift of second sight or divination, which he used to exploit
to make a bit on the side - love-affairs, foretelling the
weather for harvest and so on. I dare say thereVe always
been people who've gone in for that kind of thing. Well,
Grandpa said that once Armand used his powers to tell the
French police, or whatever they were in those days, where to
look for a dead baby that some local beauty, a girl by the
name of Jeannette Leclerc, had done away with. And that
didn't do him any good, because in court Jeannette came up
with some sort of "Tu quoque" defence. She didn't say
Armand was the father, but she said he'd become her lover
since the baby was born, and then they'd fallen out and now
he just wanted to get her into trouble.'
'And was it true?' asked Flick.
My father shrugged.
'No telling, is there? Naturally Armand said not, but anyway,
the point is that by some means or other - perhaps her
looks - a wealthy protector - who's to say? - the girl got off
and then, I suppose because she'd lost her respectability and
all hope of a good marriage in the neighbourhood, went off
to Bordeaux, where she became quite sought-after and prosperous
as a thingummybob. Evidently she had aptitude in
that direction. She appears to have been very attractive.'
'So then?'
'Well, then, as Grandpa told the story, Jeannette remained
determined to do Armand down one way or another, although
it was a little while before she could pack enough
punch. But by about 1792 she'd got herself to Paris, still in the
35
same line of business, and there she acquired some influential
lover in the Revolutionary government or whatever it was
called. You'd know more about that than I would.'
'The Girondins. I see. Local boys made good. One of them
may even have brought her up to Paris with him, I suppose.'
'Possibly. Anyway, the long and short of it seems to have
been that in the meantime Armand Deslandes had become
more and more of a suspect personality in the district - sort
of a dupe of his own magic pretensions - claiming to see
funny things, hear voices and so on - rather like a poor
man's Joan of Arc, it sounds. So when an instruction came
down from Paris to investigate him for charlatanry and
witchcraft, he found he hadn't a friend in the world, except
his young wife. She was just a peasant girl, and they'd only
been married a month or two, but she stuck by him all right.'
'Good for her!" said Flick. 'So he got out. How?'
'I don't know. Grandpa was always very vague about that.
But get out he did, through Bordeaux, and only just in time
as far as coming to England was concerned, because a month
or two later they executed the king and the war started between
England and France. Armand worked on the land for
the rest of his life - somewhere in Sussex, I believe - but his
son, who was born in England, did a bit better for himself.
'Changed his name to Desland, joined the Navy as a bluejacket
and finished up First Lieutenant. Anyway, my boy,
that's your landed gentry for you.'
'Interesting. I might even look in at Marmande one day
and try to find out a bit more. But as far as soiling my hands
with trade's concerned, I couldn't care less. In fact, Daddy,
if you like, I'll take my coat off and get down into the glass
passage this vac. That is, as often as working for Schools
will let me.'
A year later, in possession of a Second presumed to be no
less 'decent' than Flick's, I had returned from a post-Schools
holiday in Italy and officially become a partner in the business
in Northbrook Street.
36
BEFORE I had been six weeks in the family business I knew
that as far as I was concerned, ceramics containe
d all that
was necessary to salvation. To begin with - and this, I have
often thought, is the first touchstone of any true vocation I
did not particularly care whether I made money or not. The
world, I now realized, existed in order that clay could be
dug out of it and fired in kilns. It necessarily included trees,
flowers, animals and birds, for otherwise we would lack
these admirable models of plasticity. How excellent was
Providence in conferring upon us the necessity to eat and
drink, or else we would have no need for plates, pots,
saucers, cups and cans. Glazes and enamelling showed forth
our superiority to the beasts more validly than music, for
many creatures seem sensitive to the pleasure of vocal sound,
and to find in it joy and satisfaction beyond the mere need to
communicate or to assert themselves; whereas we alone
decorate.
It was necessary for my father to point out, more than
once, that admirable as might be a mentality above base
profit, Josiah Wedgwood and Miles Mason had not been in
the game from purely aesthetic motives, that we needed to
study and observe what we could sell and also to stock it;
and that one of the great charms of ceramics, pre-eminently
among the arts, was that often a perfectly ordinary and not
particularly valuable piece, such as a Worcester fire-proof
dish or a brown glazed teapot, could give much pleasure to a
discriminating and experienced person, whether dealer or
connoisseur, who had got beyond the stage of prizing what
was rare or expensive on that account alone.
Certainly the beginnings of my own personal collection
did not comprise much of value, for I had very little money.
Not only were Chien Lung dishes out of my star (though I
knew a man out Wallingford way who possessed one; broad,
shallow-rimmed and blazing, its decoration cool and raised
under the finger-tips, glowing from its ebony stand like a
37
Chinese pheasant on a nobleman's lawn); so also were Meissen,
Chelsea and Bow. As with stars, indeed, it scarcely mattered
exactly how many light-years each might be distant.
For me, space travel was bunk, and in the humble sphere
where I moved I still had much to learn. Once I burnt my
fingers over a pair of supposedly Plymouth dishes decorated
with dishevelled birds. I ended up more dishevelled than
they, for they were not Plymouth at all. But I kept and still
have - for I loved her in spite of all - the lady copied from
Watteau's 'L'embarcation pour 1'Ile de Cythere' who, notwithstanding
the mark on her base, turned out to be not
Derby but Samson. (I knew too little as yet of hard and soft
pastes.) No, English pottery was the thing, as I discovered.
And what could happen, in the fullness of time, to the value
of a modest collection, I learned not long after my apprenticeship
began, when my father and I attended, at Sotheby's,
the sale of the Rev. C. J. Sharpe's collection of teapots. Not
that financial speculation mattered a damn to me, then or
now. What I was taking in, as a plant through its roots to
transpire through the leaves, was simply what Plato had
presciently set down for my edification more than two thousand
years before: 'The excellence, beauty or Tightness of
any implement or creature has reference to the use for which
it is made.' Nor are such uses merely functional. One of my
happiest enthusiasms was for Staffordshire figures of Nelson.
I collected nine before changing to Garibaldi, but somehow
he never did the same for me. I have often thought of those
under-glaze, blue-coated Nelsons preaching - as silently and
eloquently as Keats's Grecian urn - from Victorian cottage
shelves, to a world innocent of Ypres or Jutland, a universallyaccepted
ideal of courageous aggression, to which all should
aspire and the admirability of which none could wish to
question. As the great collector, Henry Willett, said, 'Much
history of this country may be traced in its homely pottery.
On the mantelpieces of many cottage homes are to be found
revered representations, which form a kind of unconscious
survival of the Lares et Penates of the Ancients.'
In this art, as in Bach, lay something more valid than
mere emotion - or so I felt. Bach, as God's amanuensis, corn38
posed the music of the spheres, mathematically appointed
and ordered as tides or the return of Halley's comet. If