A Buyers Market - Anthony Powell [37]
“I had dinner at a house where one of your pictures hangs,” I told him, when inquiries about my family had been made and answered.
“Good gracious,” said Mr. Deacon. “Which one?”
“Boyhood of Cyrus.”
“Was that Aberavon’s? I thought he was dead these twenty years.”
“One of his daughters became Lady Walpole-Wilson. The picture is at her house in Eaton Square.”
“Well, I’m glad to know its whereabouts,” said Mr. Deacon. “I always make bold to consider it rather a successful achievement of mine, within the limits of the size of the canvas. It is unusual for people of that sort to have much taste in art. Aberavon was the exception. He was a man with vision. I expect his descendants have hung it in some quite incongruous place.”
I thought it wiser to supply no further details on the subject of the hanging of Boyhood of Cyrus. “Skyed” in the hall was a position even the most modest of painters could hardly regard as complimentary; though I was impressed by Mr. Deacon’s perspicacity in guessing this fate. It is, indeed, strange how often persons, living in other respects quite unobjectively, can suddenly become acutely objective about some specific concern of their own. However, no answer was required, because at that moment Widmerpool suddenly stepped in.
At first, after making some sort of an apology for his earlier clumsiness, he had stood staring at Mr. Deacon and the girl as if exhibits at a freak show—which it would hardly be going too far to say they somewhat resembled—but now he seemed disposed to dispute certain matters raised by Mr. Deacon’s remarks. I had felt, immediately after making this plunge of recognition, that Widmerpool, especially in his existing mood, would scarcely be inclined to relish this company. In fact, I could not understand why he did not at once make for home, leaving us in peace to wind up the reunion, a duty that my own eagerness, perhaps misplaced, had imposed mutually upon Mr. Deacon and myself. Now to my surprise Widmerpool suddenly said: “I think, if you meet her, you will find Lady Walpole-Wilson most appreciative of art. She was talking to me about the Academy only this evening—in connection with the question of the Haig statue—and her comments were illuminating.”
Mr. Deacon was delighted by this frank expression of opinion. There was, naturally, no reason why he should possess any knowledge of Widmerpool, whom I discovered in due course to be—in Mr. Deacon’s pre-determined view and own words—“a typical empty-headed young fellow with more money than is good for him” who was now preparing to tell an older man, and an artist, “what was what in the field of painting.” This was, indeed, the kind of situation in which Mr. Deacon had all his life taken pleasure, and such eminence as he had, in fact, achieved he owed largely to making a habit of speaking in an overbearing and sarcastic, sometimes almost insulting, manner to the race thus generically described as having “more money than was good for them.” He looked upon himself as the appointed scourge of all such persons, amongst whom he had immediately classed Widmerpool. The mistake was perhaps inevitable in the circumstances. In fairness to Mr. Deacon it should be added that these onslaughts were almost without exception accepted by the victims themselves—a fact borne out by Barnby—as in some eclectic manner complimentary, so that no harm was done; even good, if the sale of Mr. Deacon’s pictures could be so regarded.
“Should I ever have the honour of meeting her Ladyship,” said Mr. Deacon, with the suggestion of a flourish, “I shall much look forward to a discussion on the subject of that interesting institution, the Royal Academy. When in need of mirth, I should