Chapter 23
BEGINNINGS
Ennis recounted the details of his life to HG, who was infinitely curious to know everything about him. Herself, she came from an old and wealthy family that had its roots in what had once been a distant outpost of the British Empire. At times Ennis asked himself if she was not trying to build some kind of a story to make him presentable to her family. It was not exactly what he had in mind but he amused her by telling her about his beginnings in London, a city that had once been at the centre of an Empire. London maintained a strange relationship with the Commonwealth, a vestige of Empire, whose peoples at the same time revered it and resented it. The twentieth century was coming to an end, a century during which Great Britain lost an Empire and was uncertain of its future, geographically and historically attached to Europe, separated by a few miles of water, and ideas that belonged more to Kipling than to more pragmatic European thinkers.
His father had been born a citizen of the Empire and had fought as a young man in North Africa during WWII as a junior officer, after the war he had built a steady career in the Commonwealth Office. Ennis grew up in the London of the sixties when the wind of change was transforming Britain and its relations with its last colonies. There were no new worlds to conquer and boys of his age were more interested in Rock and Roll than anything else. He regretted a past he had never known, little really exciting ever happened to him, he was a day dreamer, at school his performance was mediocre, where he was constantly urged to more efforts by his teachers. Only when menaced by an angry head or a threatening maths teacher did he put on a spurt, shinning briefly in end of term exams but only in subjects that interested him, then he slid back into dull complacency. Apart from those more stressful moments all the ordinary things happened, he was brought up in Pimlico, living in a comfortable apartment in Morpeth Mansions in the shadow of Westminster Cathedral; convenient, as his parents were Catholics.
He graduated from London University, where he managed a dull degree in 19th century British history, and only just. He had little interest in entering government service and in desperation his father judging his son’s academic qualifications as being totally inadequate to earning a respectable living proposed that he pursue his education at De Montfort University in Leicester, where Ennis gained a Degree in Fine Art and Antiques Valuation. With that safely in his pocket he entered a Bond Street auction house, where the family had connections, and married a girl he had met at university.
Life up until then had been fairly easy, during his university years his finances had been assured by his parents, his holidays guaranteed near Biarritz where they rented a villa each year. At twenty-seven things changed abruptly; he now had a job, a wife and bills to pay, life became humdrum, a never ending journey on British Rail, shuttling in and out of dull suburban Cheam, where they rented a modest suburban house. He resigned himself to the future.
To be precise, it was the very instant he disembarked in Hongkong that his prospects suddenly changed, he realised the world was larger and more exciting than he had previously imagined. Almost at a moments notice he had been co-opted onto a team that was leaving for the firm’s first major Asian auction of antique Chinese porcelain and furniture. At the last moment his director belatedly discovered that they were short of hands, a flu epidemic had hit the firm and Ennis was told to pack his bags, he would be replacing a junior assistant for the auction. Thinking back, the only event prior to his departure he could clearly remember was his panic at the passport office after he discovered his own was out of date.
In Asia he discovered an exotic world that he had never even suspected existed, vibrant with life and colour, a world that excited and beckoned him, like one of those forbidden women he had often seen in the doorways of Soho, a short walk from the Bond Street auction house.
His attitude changed and the germ of ambition stirred. Up to that time he had not been remarked in his work but his newly discovered enthusiasm was noted by one of the senior partners when Ennis had debated the fine points of British history with a wealthy client during the Hongkong pre-sale viewing. John Ennis turned his attention to oriental ceramics and over the following years spent with the auction house he built a reputation as an up and coming specialist in Oriental fine art. At the same time he developed an interest in Asian languages, studying Mandarin Chinese and Indonesian and was posted to the firm’s branch in Singapore where he remained for three years. He divorced. He was entirely taken-up by his work, spending a great deal of time cultivating friends and business relations, though enjoying life, eating in good restaurants, night clubbing and with expensive holidays in Thailand and Bali.
The auction house grew and was bought-out by a New York firm, Ennis became successful and after a particularly generous end of the year bonus and a friendly bank manager he bought a fashionable apartment near to the park in Battersea, London. He then met Laurence, a French girl, an art expert in Chinese antiques. They decided to branch out and together set-up a gallery in Paris, he sold his stock options in the auction firm and bought a small gallery on the left bank on rue Bonaparte from an elderly specialist who was retiring to the South of France.
At first a member of the Oriental Ceramic Society in London, then member of the Société Francaise d’Etude de la Céramique Orientale, he became an ‘Expert en antiquities’. Business was good when the economy was on the up, and less so when things turned down. During a period of speculation in property prices he sold his Battersea apartment for a large profit and they opened a second gallery in London.
His life was an untroubled stream that flowed smoothly on, until looking ahead, he suddenly realised nothing more was going to happen, his path was laid out before him, no adventures, no wars, no revolutions and no cataclysmic events. He would become moderately wealthy, grow old, retire and finally die and nothing would have happened in his comfortable though unremarkable life as Parisian art dealer.
His partner, Laurence, accused him on being perpetually discontent whenever he questioned the future of the gallery. That was not entirely true, he was pleased with how orderly his life was, he was successful, he was modestly wealthy. But nothing ever happened, he yearned for something, but what exactly he was not sure.
To palliate his desires he had decided to seek out his own modest adventures, searching for ethnic art in obscure places. He was used to travelling, buying objects to stock the gallery, but had limited his search to the art centres of Asia and selling in Europe or the USA.
He followed with interest the discovery of ancient wrecks in the South China Sea and negotiated the purchase of lots on behalf of the large auction houses buying choice items for his own galleries.
There were moments when he dreamt of discovering his own treasure ship, but his business commitments and obligations prevented him from dedicating time to the exploration of such enterprises, filled with financial risks and perils, it was the business of rich men, naval archaeologists or adventurers, which he was not. Behind the desire for change and adventure lingered a need for continuity and comfort, in the knowledge that his future would be assured in a style he had become used to.
Still, he continued to be nagged by some indefinable yearning and turned his energy towards the idea of creating a new up market gallery. He sold his share in the gallery on rue Bonaparte to his partner, keeping the smaller London gallery. With the capital he bought a more ambitious gallery situated on Faubourg St Honoré just off rue Castiglione; it was a good move, coinciding with a boom in the property and stock market and a flow of clients with a lot of money to spend to decorate their extravagant homes. The business was a success and in spite of his lingering restlessness it brought him a very comfortable life style, shuttling to London to watch over his business, where he still owned his Battersea apartment situated conveniently near to the Kings Road in Chelsea.
As the market boomed he bought a large summer house on the Basque coast in France, a ten minute walk from the centre of Biarritz. He then engaged Helena Springer
to manage the day to day business of running the galleries, who compensated for his adventurous though indolent nature, she was ambitious but resolutely executive, as he was more and more taken up by overseas business in Hongkong or Singapore, where he developed new sources, acquiring objects for the business, and visiting New York and San Francisco where he maintained a network of wealthy clients.
Life was good for John Ennis but he was never entirely satisfied. It was not dissatisfaction but more a yearning for adventure, away from the daily constraints of business, the same feeling that certain men had felt across the ages that drove them to discover new lands and seek fortune. To his great regret, and possible relief, there were no new lands to be discovered at the end of the second millennium, however, what he really wanted was to leave his mark, not reamin one of the anonymous billions who would never leave the slightest trace of their earthly existence. Perhaps he could make some kind of astounding discovery, it was unlikely, he was no scientist, or then again he could discover the tomb of a Chinese prince, but was also unlikely as he was no archaeologist, he was a mere merchant, be it an expert in his field, which in spite of a veneer of glamour consisted of fixing a market value on goods that merely transited his possession leaving an enviable mercantile profit.
Those were the dreams that he palliated by exploring the villages on the edges of the rain forests of South East Asia, in search of ethnic art and heirlooms that ended up in his catalogues of collectors items for sale in London or Paris.
A boat trip up the rivers of Sumatra, Borneo or Irian Jaya were adventures, enjoyable adventures, though not really what could be described as life risking. There were ancient European or Chinese treasure ships to be discovered, such as the wrecks off the coast of Malaysia or Brunei where large quantities of Chinese porcelain were recovered. He visited the museums and sites of archaeological interest on the islands, there were very few, however there were also very few notable visitors and as a consequence he was always warmly welcomed and made friends with some of the venerable specialists in those distant backwaters. To call them backwaters was not to look down on them, it was a fact, and even those honest men of science and history who oversaw their charges were the first to admit it.
At the outset the collectors of ethnic art or heirlooms and ancient porcelains were few, often composed of diplomats, bankers and businessmen who had sojourned for long periods in the region, who after acquiring an interest in the arcane field had built up their own collections. However in more recent years he had seen a growing interest in tribal art from South East Asia and Oceania, as wealthy collectors became interested in an hitherto unrecognised field, previously appreciated by a small circle of specialists but now acknowledged by museums and a much larger public as new domain of art, perhaps not on a level with that of China or Europe but nevertheless highly considered.
Institutions all over Europe were giving more and more importance to the collections such as found in the Musée des Colonies in Paris, which itself was soon to be integrated with the Musée de l’Homme in a one of the largest museums in the world entirely dedicated to evolution and the development of art, to be built on the south bank of the River Seine.
The Musée des Colonies had been, just as its name suggests, a memory of France’s colonial past. For the politically correct government of France, it was a lingering and an apparently shameful memory an age gone by, when undeveloped peoples were the white man’s burden or the object of a ‘mission civilatrice’, and their art forms had been a reminder of their under development and their savage society, which had been forcibly exchanged against a poor copy of the ‘enlightened’ European model.
At the end of the twentieth century a new generation of specialists arrived at the top of the pile, whose only first hand knowledge of the colonial period had been that of young soldiers fighting for France in the last major colonial war, the Algerian War of Independence, they saw tribal or ethnic art as it really was, elevating it to new heights of human art expressed in one of its many forms that was disappearing rapidly as globalisation reached into even the furthest corners of the planet to little visited peoples, be they Aleuts or Papuans.
The development of man and his art forms had become a key to many of the questions posed as God was replaced in modern society by knowledge and facts, as the origins of man and the universe were slowly unravelled by geneticians, anthropologists, astronomers and geologists.
The success of his galleries gave Ennis freedom to do what he wanted most, to travel, explore and discover new cultures, people and sensations. His circle of friends and contacts in East and South East Asia expanded and as his reputation grew with a flow of invitations to visit sites and excavations, where his expertise in the valuation of objects could contribute to demands for funding from governments and institutions. His certificate of authentication and valuation would attract funds and would facilitate sales to museums around the world, enabling archaeologists to finance their work. His main obstacles were the authorities, who naturally wanted the finds to remain in their countries, but lack of funding for local museums meant the many finds were destined to dusty storage rooms where they would be forgotten.
The sale of antique cultural objects to foreign museums funded local museums to make exhibitions, print catalogues and fund research. Collections in foreign museums generated public interest in the countries from which the objects of their collections originated, indirectly stimulating tourism and creating a positive cultural image.
Enlightened politicians saw those advantages and helped, though many governments for nationalistic ideas and home politics often obstructed the export of artefacts even when it was for temporary exportation to specialist exhibitions. Export through legal channels, where records were kept and items were excavated under archaeological supervision, was quite a different thing from the pillaging of wrecks and sites by unauthorised dealers, who sometimes worked in collusion with crooked local authorities.