A Buyers Market - Anthony Powell [105]
As I have already said of Mrs. Andriadis’s party, such latitudes are entered by a door through which there is rarely if ever a return. In rather the same manner, that night at Mr. Deacon’s seemed to crystallise certain matters. Perhaps this crystallisation had something to do with the presence there of Members and Quiggin, though they themselves were in agreement as to the displeasure they both felt in the company assembled.
“You must admit,” said Members, looking round the room, “it all looks rather like that picture in the Tate of the Sea giving up the Dead that were in It. I can’t think why Mona insisted on coming.”
Quiggin concurred in finding Mr. Deacon’s guests altogether unacceptable, at the same time paying suitable commendation to the aptness of the pictorial allusion. He looked across the room to where Mona was talking to Barnby, and said: “It is a very unusual figure, isn’t it? Epstein would treat it too sentimentally, don’t you think? Something more angular is required, in the manner of Lipchitz or Zadkine.”
“She really hates men,” said Members, laughing dryly.
His amusement was no doubt directed at the impracticability of the unspoken desires of Quiggin, who, perhaps with the object of moving to ground more favourable to himself, changed the subject,
“Did I hear that you had become secretary to St. John Clarke?” he asked, in a casual voice.
Members gave his rather high laugh again. This was evidently a matter he wished to be approached delicately. He seemed to have grown taller since coming to London. His slim waist and forceful, interrogative manner rather suggested one of those strong-willed, elegant young salesmen, who lead the customer from the shop only after the intention to buy a few handkerchiefs has been transmuted into a reckless squandering on shirts, socks, and ties, of patterns to be found later fundamentally unsympathetic.
“At first I could not make up my mind whether to take it,” he admitted. “Now I am glad I decided in favour. St. J. is rather a great man in his way.”
“Of course, one could not exactly call him a very great novelist,” said Quiggin, slowly, as if deliberating the question carefully within himself. “But he is a personality, certainly, and some of his critical writing might be labelled as—well—shall we say ‘not bad’?”
“They have a certain distinction of thought, of course, in their rather old-fashioned manner.”
Members seemed relieved to concede this. He clearly felt that Quiggin, catching him in a weak position, had let him off lightly. St. John Clarke was the novelist of whom Lady Anne Stepney had spoken with approval. I had read some of his books towards the end of my time at school with great enjoyment; now I felt myself rather superior to his windy, descriptive passages, two-dimensional characterisation, and, so I had come to think, the emptiness of the writing’s inner content. I was surprised to find someone I regarded as so impregnable in the intellectual field as I supposed Members to be, saddled with a figure who could only be looked upon by those with literary pretensions of any but the crudest kind as an Old Man of the Sea; although, in one sense, the metaphor should perhaps have been reversed, as it was Members who had, as it were, climbed upon the shoulders of St. John Clarke.
I can now see his defence of St. John Clarke as an interesting example of the power of the will, for his disinclination for St. John Clarke’s works must have been at least equal to my own: possibly far in excess. As Members had made up his mind to accept what was probably a reasonable salary—though St. John Clarke was rather well known for being “difficult” about money—his attitude was undoubtedly