The Acceptance World - Anthony Powell [45]
I glanced at the cardinal next door, notable as the only picture I had ever heard Widmerpool spontaneously praise. Here, too, the reds had been handled with some savagery. Sir Gavin shook his head and moved on to examine two of Isbister’s genre pictures. ‘Clergyman eating an apple’ and ‘The Old Humorists’. I found myself beside Clapham, a director of the firm that published St. John Clarke’s novels. He was talking to Smethyck, a museum official I had known slightly at the university.
‘When is your book on Isbister appearing?’ Clapham asked at once. ‘You announced it some time ago. This would have been the moment—with the St. John Clarke introduction.’
Clapham had spoken accusingly, his voice implying the fretfulness of all publishers that one of their authors should betray them with a colleague, however lightly.
‘I went to see St. John Clarke the other day,’ Clapham continued. ‘I was glad to find him making a good recovery after his illness. Found him reading one of the young Communist poets. We had an interesting talk.’
‘Does anybody read St. John Clarke himself now?’ asked Smethyck, languidly.
Like many of his profession, Smethyck was rather proud of his looks, which he had been carefully re-examining in the dark, mirror-like surface of Sir Horrocks Rusby, framed for some unaccountable reason under glass. Clapham was up in arms at once at such superciliousness.
‘Of course people read St. John Clarke,’ he said, snappishly. ‘Though perhaps not in your ultra-sophisticated circles, where everything ordinary people understand is sneered at.’
‘Personally, I don’t hold any views about St. John Clarke,’ said Smethyck, without looking round. ‘I’ve never read any of them. All I wanted to know was whether people bought his books.’
He continued to ponder the cut of his suit in this adventitious looking-glass, deciding at last that his hair needed smoothing down on one side.
‘I don’t mind admitting to you both,’ said Clapham, moving a step or two closer and speaking rather thickly, ‘that when I finished Fields of Amaranth there were tears in my eyes.’
Smethyck made no reply to this; nor could I myself think of a suitable rejoinder.
‘That was some years ago,’ said Clapham.
This qualification left open the alternative of whether St. John Clarke still retained the power of exciting such strong feeling in a publisher, or whether Clapham himself had grown more capable of controlling his emotions.
‘Why, there’s Sillery,’ said Smethyck, who seemed thoroughly bored by the subject of St. John Clarke. ‘I believe he was to be painted by Isbister, if he had recovered. Let’s go and talk to him.’
We left Clapham, still muttering about the extent of St. John Clarke’s sales, and the beauty and delicacy of his early style. I had not seen Sillery since Mrs. Andriadis’s party, three or four years before, though I had heard by chance that he had recently returned from America, where, he had held some temporary academical post, or been on a lecture tour. His white hair and dark, Nietzschean moustache remained unchanged, but his clothes looked older than ever. He was carrying an unrolled umbrella in one hand; in the other a large black homburg, thick in grease. He began to grin widely as soon as he saw us.
‘Hullo, Sillers,’ said Smethyck, who had been one of Sillery’s favourites among the undergraduates who constituted his salon. ‘I did not know you were interested in art.’
‘Not interested in art?’ said Sillery, enjoying this accusation a great deal. ‘What an idea. Still, I am, as it happens, here for semi-professional reasons, as you might say. I expect you are too, Michael. There is some nonsense about the College wanting a pitcher o’ me ole mug. Can’t think why they should need such a thing, but there it is. ‘Course Isbister can’t do it ‘cos ‘e’s tucked ‘is toes in now, but I thought I’d just come an’ take a look at the sorta thing that’s expected.’
‘And what do you think, Sillers?’
‘Just as well he’s passed away, perhaps,