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By Root 2252 0

table. There was little furniture—a heavy dining-table, some heavy, mediaeval-looking chairs, a modern box piano. The plainness was contradicted, to an extent, by a scattering of incongruous pots, on the mantelshelf, in the hearth, on the windowsill. There were lunatic mugs with smiling faces, a piece of fine Italian gold and indigo majolica, decorated with arabesques and maenads, an imposing piece of Sèvres-style Minton, in that violent dark sugar-pink, with Pierrot and Columbine on an oval plaque amongst roses and clematis. Standing in a corner, four feet high, was an object that amazed Philip and was immediately identified by Prosper Cain as a version of the Prometheus Vase shown by Minton at the Paris Exhibition in 1867. Prometheus in fleshy earthenware sprawled on the gleaming turquoise dome of the lid. A green-gold eagle perched on his thigh and belly, and tore at his crimson liver. The tall handles were blond-bearded chained Titans in mail shirts. The body of the vase was painted with fury, a whirling scene of mounted, turbaned oriental hunters and hounds, spearing a hippopotamus at bay, its painted mouth wide open, displaying tusks, molars, and a coral tongue and throat. At the foot of the vase snakes were coiled and intertwined with acanthus leaves. Philip stared. He could not begin to comprehend the glazes, let alone the subject-matter.

The puppet theatre was already set up on the dining-table, which had been displaced to make room for the audience. It was a large, black lacquered box, veiled by black velvet curtains, with imitation onyx pillars and a gilded architrave. The table itself was covered by a velvet pall, underneath which the puppet caskets were stacked.

August Steyning offered everyone tea in the garden. His housekeeper, Mrs. Betts, was arranging sandwiches and an urn on the round stone table on the lawn. The garden was surrounded by trees—a walnut, an ash, hawthorns, sloes—and fenced, with a wicket-gate that led to the wild, a little wood on a rising hillside, in which, Steyning said, he had hidden surprises for children bored by adult talk.

Anselm Stern was wearing a soot-coloured, not-entirely-British Norfolk jacket over his dark drainpipe trousers. He stood with his teacup (Minton, Dresden shape, painted with pansies) and spoke in German to Vasily Tartarinov. He was hesitant in English, but became rapid and passionate in German. Tartarinov, much taller, wearing his working smock, bent over him, speaking softly and insistently. The English formed an impression of conspiratorial secrets, partly because the only words they understood were the names of the recently assassinated French President, Carnot, and the guillotined anarchist, Vaillant, who had thrown a nail-bomb into the Chamber of Deputies. Yet a few moments later, Tartarinov joined authoritatively in a discussion about royal treasuries between Olive Wellwood and Prosper Cain with some knowledgeable observations about the gold and silver objects in the possession of the Tsar. Etta Skinner, wearing a shapeless flowing apple-green tent, took her teacup gingerly and stared critically at the sandwich plate, which had the Three Graces dancing on a floral meadow, surrounded by sugar-pink. August Steyning smiled at her. He said she probably thought he should have earthenware plates, bearing the marks of the fingers that made them, was that not William Morris’s diktat? Etta said that was indeed her preference, but everyone had a right to his own taste. August said he liked things absurd and fragile, and that the skill of the painter and gilder was as much skill as that of the moulder. Philip stood, looking sullen, taking in the argument, thinking of his mother. Prosper Cain said he had a weakness for Minton who had designed some bold pieces—including the ceramic pillars—for the museum. Olive Wellwood described how, as a small child, she had made up stories about people on teacups.

“We had some precious ones that only came out on Sunday, and feast days, with girls in pink floating petticoats clinging to craggy ledges with bushes with roots in the