Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell [52]
The suggestion thus given of a kind of carnival, devoted to the theme of Past and Present, was heightened by the contrasted attire of the guests. White ties and black tailcoats, orders and decorations, mingled with dinner-jackets, the intermittent everyday suit. The last were rare. Those who despised evening-dress usually adopted an out-and-out knock-about-the-studio garb, accompanied by beard and flowing hair. The odd thing was that the appearance of these rebels against convention – alienated against a background of stiff white shirts, coloured ribands, sparkling stars and crosses – made the rebels themselves seem as much survivors from an early nineteenth-century romantic bohemianism, as swallow-tailed coats and medals recalled the glittering receptions of the same era.
The seating plan showed my own place between an actor and a clergyman, both professions to strike the right archetypal note for an evening of that sort. The actor (who had performed a rather notable Shallow the previous year) was now playing in an Ibsen revival, of which Polly Duport was the star. The clergyman’s name – the Revd Canon Paul Fenneau – familiar, was not immediately placeable. A likely guess would be that he was incumbent of a London parish, a parson known for active work in some charitable sphere, possibly even the preservation of ancient buildings. Celebrity in such fields could have brought him to the dinner that night. The last possibility might also explain the faintly scholarly associations, not necessarily theological, that the name set in motion.
A crowd of guests was already collected by the bar in the gallery beyond the circular central hall. Members was there, talking to Smethyck (recently retired from the directorship of his gallery), both of them, Members especially, giving the impression that they intended to make a mildly uproarious evening of it. The flushed cheeks of Members enclosed by fluffy white hair and thick whiskers, contrasted with Smethyck’s longer thinner whiskers, and elegantly shaped grey corkscrew curls, increased the prevailing atmosphere of Victorian jollification. Both were wearing white ties, an order round the neck. I had not seen Members since the Magnus Donners dinner, nor should we meet in future in that connexion, the panel of judges having been reconstituted. He was still taking immense pleasure in the scenes there enacted.
‘I’ve been telling Michael about the Quiggin twins. Do you know he had never heard of them? What do you think of that for an Ivory Tower?’
Smethyck smoothed his curls and smiled, gratified at the implications of existing in gloriously rarefied atmosphere.
‘True, I live entirely out of the world these days, Mark. How should I know of such things as stinkbombs?’
‘I may have done some indiscreet things in my time,’ said Members. ‘I’ve never fathered any children. That’s notwithstanding a few false alarms. Poor old JG. The great apostle of revolt in the days of our youth. Do you remember Sillers calling him our young Marat? Marat never had to bring up twins. What a couple.
Dids’t thou give all to thy daughters?
And art thou come to this?
It won’t be long before JG’s out on Hampstead Heath asking that of passers-by.’
Smethyck pedantically demurred, thereby somewhat impugning his claim to know nothing of contemporary life.
‘In Lear’s case it was the father seeking an alternative society. The girls supported the Establishment. They’re my favourite heroines in literature, as a matter of fact.’
Members accepted correction.
‘Lindsay Bagshaw told me the other day that he regarded himself as a satisfied Lear. Since his wife died, he divides his time between his daughters’ households, and says their food is not at all bad.’
‘Your friend Bagshaw must be temperamentally equipped to accept the compromises that Lear rejected,’ said Smethyck. ‘I do not know him — ’
He had evidently heard as much as he wanted about the Magnus