The Acceptance World - Anthony Powell [50]
In fact to get rid of a secretary who performed his often difficult functions so effectively was a rash step on the part of a man who liked to be steered painlessly through the shoals and shallows of social life. Indeed, looking back afterwards, the dismissal of Members might almost be regarded as a landmark in the general disintegration of society in its traditional form. It was an act of individual folly on the part of St. John Clarke; a piece of recklessness that well illustrates the mixture of self-assurance and ennui which together contributed so much to condition the state of mind of people like St. John Clarke at that time. Of course I did not recognise its broader aspects then. The duel between Members and Quiggin seemed merely an entertaining conflict to watch, rather than the significant crumbling of social foundations.
On that dank afternoon in the park Members had abandoned some of his accustomed coldness of manner. He seemed glad to talk to someone—probably to anyone—about his recent ejection. He began on the subject at once, drawing his tightly-waisted overcoat more closely round him, while he contracted his sharp, beady brown eyes. Separation from St. John Clarke, and association with the firm of Boggis & Stone, had for some reason renewed his former resemblance to an ingeniously constructed marionette or rag doll.
‘There had been a slight sense of strain for some months between St. J. and myself,’ he said. ‘An absolutely trivial matter about taking a girl out to dinner. Perhaps rather foolishly, I had told St. J. I was going to a lecture on the Little Entente. Howard Craggs—whom I am now working with—happened to be introducing the lecturer, and so of course within twenty-four hours he had managed to mention to St. J. the fact that I had not been present. It was awkward, naturally, but I did not think St. J. really minded.
‘But why did you want to know about the Little Entente?’
‘St. J. had begun to be rather keen on what he called “the European Situation”,’ said Members, brushing aside my surprise as almost impertinent. ‘I always liked to humour his whims.’
‘But I thought his great thing was the Ivory Tower?’
‘Of course, I found out later that Quiggin had put him up to “the European Situation”,’ admitted Members, grudgingly. ‘But after all, an artist has certain responsibilities. I expect you are a supporter of the League yourself, my dear Nicholas.’
He smiled as he uttered the last part of the sentence, though speaking as if he intended to administer a slight, if well deserved, rebuke. In doing this he involuntarily adopted a more personal rendering of Quiggin’s own nasal intonation, which rendered quite unnecessary the explanation that the idea had been Quiggin’s. Probably the very words he used were Quiggin’s, too.
‘But politics were just what you used to complain of in Quiggin.’
‘Perhaps Quiggin was right in that respect, if in no other,’ said Members, giving his tinny, bitter laugh.
‘And then?’
‘It turned out that St. J.’s feelings were rather hurt.’
Members paused, as if he did not know how best to set about explaining the situation further. He shook his head once or twice in his old, abstracted Scholar-Gypsy manner. Then he began, as it were, at a new place in his narrative.
‘As you probably know,’ he continued, ‘I can say without boasting that I have done a good deal to change—why should I not say it?—to improve St. J.’s attitude towards intellectual matters. Do you know, when I first came to him he thought Matisse was a plage—no, I mean it.’
He made no attempt to relax his features, nor join in audible amusement at such a state of affairs. Instead, he continued to record St. John Clarke’s shortcomings.
‘That much quoted remark of his: “Gorki is a Russian d’Annunzio”—he got it from me. I happened to say at tea one day that I thought if d’Annunzio had been born in Nijni Novgorod he would have had much the same career