What's Bred in the Bone

  During and after the 1939–45 war he was a valuable member of the group of Allied experts who traced and recovered works of art which had been displaced during the hostilities.

  In his later years he made generous gifts of pictures to the National Gallery of Canada.

  He never married and leaves no direct heirs. It is authoritatively stated that there was no foul play in the manner of his death.

  “I’M NOT MAD about that,” said Maria. “It has a snotty undertone.”

  “You don’t know how snotty a Times obit can be. I suspect most of that piece was written by Aylwin Ross, who thought he would outlive Francis, and have a chuckle over the last sentence. In fact, that obit is Ross’s patronizing estimate of a man who was greatly his superior. There’s a question in it that is almost Ross’s trade mark. It’s quite decent, really, all things considered.”

  “What things considered?” said Arthur. “What do they mean, ‘no foul play’? Did anybody suggest there was?”

  “Not here,” said Darcourt, “but some of the people on the Continent who knew him might have wondered. Don’t find fault with it; obviously Ross chose to suppress a few things the Times certainly has in its files.”

  “Like—?”

  “Well, not a word about the stinking scandal that killed Jean-Paul Letztpfennig, and made Francis notorious in the art world. Reputations fell all over the place. Even Berenson was just the teeniest bit diminished.”

  “Obviously you know all about it, though,” said Arthur, “and if Uncle Frank came out on top, that’s all to the good. Who was Tancred Saraceni?”

  “Queer fish. A collector, but known chiefly as a magnificent restorer of Old Masters; all the big galleries used him, or consulted him, at one time or another. But some very rum things went through his hands to other collectors. Like your Uncle Frank, he was rumoured to be altogether too clever with his paintbox; Ross hated him.”

  “And that Times piece is the best that was said about Francis?” said Maria.

  “Do you notice they say he went to school in Canada but was educated at Oxford?” said Arthur. “God, the English!”

  “The Times was generous in its own terms,” said Darcourt. “They printed the piece I sent to them as soon as I saw their obit. Listen to this: published in their issue of September 26:

  FRANCIS CORNISH

  Professor the Rev. Simon Darcourt writes:

  Your obituary of my friend Francis Cornish (Sept. 13) is correct in all its facts, but gives a dour impression of a man who was sometimes crusty and difficult, but also generous and kind in countless personal relationships. I have met no one who knew him who thought for an instant that his death might have been from other than natural causes.

  Many leading figures in the art world regarded him as a knowledgeable and co-operative colleague. His work with Saraceni may have gained him the mistrust of some who had felt the scorn of that ambiguous figure, but his authority, based on unquestioned scholarship, was all his own, and it is known that on several occasions his opinion was sought by the late Lord Clark. In a quarrel it was rarely Cornish who struck the first blow, although he was not quick to resolve a dispute or forget an injury.

  His fame as an authority on painting overshadowed his substantial achievements in the study and scientific examination of illumination and calligraphy, an area not much favoured by critics of painting and sculpture, but which seemed to him to be significant, as providing clues to work on a larger scale. He was also a discriminating collector of music MSS.

  During his years in Canada after 1957 he did much to encourage Canadian painters, though his scorn for what he regarded as psychological fakery in certain modern movements generated a good deal of heat. His own aesthetic approach was carefully considered and philosophically founded.

  An eccentric, undoubtedly, but a man of remarkable gifts who shunned publicity. When his collections have been examined it may emerge that he was a more significant figure in the art world of his time than is at present understood.

  “THAT’S A LOT BETTER, Simon,” said Maria, “but it’s still a long way from being a rave.”

  “It’s not my business to write raves, but to speak the truth, as a friend who is also a scholar and a man with his eyes open.”

  “Well, can’t you do that in the biography?”

  “Not if it means exposing Uncle Frank as a picture-faker,” said Arthur.

  “Listen, Arthur, you’re going too far. The most you can say is that my book won’t have any Cornish money behind it unless it presents a whitewashed portrait of Francis. You forget that I could find a commercial publisher. I don’t write bad books, and a book you would think scandalous might appeal to them as a good commercial proposition.”

  “Simon—you wouldn’t!”

  “If you bully me, I might.”

  “I don’t mean to bully you.”

  “But that’s what you’re doing. You rich people think you have unlimited power. If I decided to write this book entirely on my own responsibility you couldn’t do a thing to stop me.”

  “We could withhold information.”

  “You could if you had any, but you haven’t and you know it.”

  “We could sue you for defamation.”

  “I’d take care not to defame the living Cornishes, and surely you know the law doesn’t care about defamation of the dead.”

  “Please, will you men stop being silly and threatening one another,” said Maria. “If I understand Simon rightly, it’s this very lack of information and creeping suspicion that’s holding him up. But you must have some stuff, Simon. Anybody’s life can be dug up to some extent.”

  “Yes, and used by cheap writers with lots of spicy innuendo to make a trumpery book. But I’m not that kind of writer. I have my pride; I even have my tiny reputation. If I can’t do a first-rate job on old Frank I won’t do anything.”

  “But all this stuff about Saraceni, and what The Times doesn’t say about this other fellow—the one who died or was killed or whatever happened—surely can be cracked down, and fleshed out. Though if it means a book that suggests Francis Cornish was a crook, I hope you’ll do what you can about that.” Arthur seemed to be climbing down.

  “Oh, that—I can get that right enough. But what I want is what lies behind it. How did Francis get into such company? What was it in his character that disposed him to that part of the art world, instead of keeping his skirts clear like Berenson, or Clark? How did a rich amateur—which is what he was, to begin with—get mixed up with such shabby types?”

  “Just luck, probably,” said Arthur. “What happens to people is so often nothing but the luck of the game.”

  “I don’t believe that,” said Darcourt. “What we call luck is the inner man externalized. We make things happen to us. I know that sounds horrible and cruel, considering what happens to a lot of people, and it can’t be the whole explanation. But it’s a considerable part of it.”

  “How can you say that?” said Arthur. “We are all dealt a hand of cards at birth; if somebody gets a rotten hand, full of twos and threes and nothing above a five, what chance has he against the fellow with a full flush? And don’t tell me it’s how he plays the game. You’re not a poker-player or a bridge-player, Simon, and you just don’t know.”

  “Not a card-player, I admit, but I am a theologian, and rather a good one. Consequently I have a difference idea of the stakes that are being played for than you have, you banker. Of course everybody is dealt a hand, but now and then he has a chance to draw another card, and it’s the card he draws when the chance comes that can make all the difference. And what decides the card he draws? Francis was given a good, safe hand at birth, but two or three times he had a chance to draw, and every time he seems to have drawn the joker. Do you know why?”

  “No, and neither do you.”

  “I think I do. Among your uncle’s papers I found a little sheaf of horoscopes he had prepared for him at various points in his life. He was superstitious, you know, if you ca
ll astrology superstition.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I reserve judgement. What is important is that he obviously believed in it to some extent. Now—your uncle’s birthday fell at a moment when Mercury was the ruling sign of his chart, and Mercury at the uttermost of his power.”

  “So?”

  “Well? Maria understands. Isn’t her mother a gifted card-reader? Mercury: patron of crooks, the joker, the highest of whatever is trumps, the mischief-maker, who upsets all calculations.”

  “Not just that, Simon,” said Maria; “he is also Hermes, the reconciler of opposites—something out of the scope of conventional morality.”

  “Just so. And if ever there was a true son of Hermes, it was Francis Cornish.”

  “When you begin to talk like that, I must leave you,” said Arthur. “Not in disgust, but in bafflement. Life with Maria has given me a hint of what you are talking about, but just at this moment I can’t continue with you. I have to catch a plane at seven tomorrow, and that means getting up at five and being at the airport not much after six—such is the amenity and charm of modern travel. So I’ll give you another drink, Simon, and bid you good-night.”

  Which Arthur did, kissing his wife affectionately and telling her not to dare to wake early to see him off.

  “Arthur pours a very heavy drink,” said Darcourt.

  “Only because he thinks you need it,” said Maria. “He’s wonderfully kind and observant, even if he does make noises like a banker about this book. You know why, don’t you? Anything that challenges the perfect respectability of the Cornishes stirs him up, because he has secret doubts of his own. Oh, they’re unimpeachable so far as money-dealers go, but banking is like religion: you have to accept certain rather dicey things simply on faith, and then everything else follows in marvellous logic. If Francis was a bit of a crook, he was the shadow of a great banking family, and they aren’t supposed to cast shadows. But was Francis a crook? Come on, Simon, what’s really troubling you?”

  “The early years. Blairlogie.”

  “Where exactly is Blairlogie?”

  “Now you’re beginning to sound like The Times. I can tell you a little about the place as it is now. Like a good biographer I’ve made my pilgrimage there. It’s in the Ottawa Valley, about sixty miles or so north-west of Ottawa. Rough country. Perfectly accessible by car now, but when Francis was born it was thought by a lot of people to be the Jumping-Off Place, because you couldn’t get there except by a rather primitive train. It was a town of about five thousand people, predominantly Scots.

  “But as I stood on the main street, looking for evidence and hoping for intuitions, I knew I wasn’t seeing anything at all like what little Francis saw at the beginning of the century. His grandfather’s house, St. Kilda, is cut up into apartments. His parents’ house, Chegwidden Lodge, is now the Devine Funeral Parlours—yes, Devine, and nobody thinks it funny. All the timber business that was the foundation of the Cornish money is totally changed. The McRory Opera House is gone, and nothing remains of the McRorys except some unilluminating scuff in local histories written by untalented amateurs. Nobody in modern Blairlogie has any recollection of Francis, and they weren’t impressed when I said he had become quite famous. There were some pictures that had come from his grandfather’s house that had passed into the possession of the public library, but they had stored them in the cellar, and they were perished almost beyond recognition. Just tenth-rate Victorian junk. I drew almost a total blank.”

  “But are the childhood years so important?”

  “Maria, you astonish me! Weren’t your childhood years important? They are the matrix from which a life grows.”

  “And that’s all gone?”

  “Gone beyond recovery.”

  “Unless you can wangle a chat with the Recording Angel.”

  “I don’t think I believe in a Recording Angel. We are all our own Recording Angels.”

  “Then I am more orthodox than you. I believe in a Recording Angel. I even know his name.”

  “Pooh, you medievalists have a name for everything. Just somebody’s invention.”

  “Why not somebody’s revelation? Don’t be so hidebound, Simon. The name of the Recording Angel was Radueriel, and he wasn’t just a book-keeper; he was the Angel of Poetry, and Master of the Muses. He also had a staff.”

  “Wound with serpents, like the caduceus of Hermes, I suppose.”

  “Not that kind of staff; a civil service staff. One of its important members was the Angel of Biography, and his name was the Lesser Zadkiel. He was the angel who interfered when Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac, so he is an angel of mercy, though a lot of biographers aren’t. The Lesser Zadkiel could give you the lowdown on Francis Cornish.”

  Darcourt by now was unquestionably drunk. He became lyrical.

  “Maria—dear Maria—forgive me for being stupid about the Recording Angel. Of course he exists—exists as a metaphor for all that illimitable history of humanity and inhumanity and inanimate life and everything that has ever been, which must exist some place or else the whole of life is reduced to a stupid file with no beginning and no possible ending. It’s wonderful to talk to you, my dearest, because you think medievally. You have a personification or a symbol for everything. You don’t talk about ethics: you talk about saints and their protective spheres and their influences. You don’t use lettuce-juice words like ‘extra-terrestrial’; you talk frankly about Heaven and Hell. You don’t blether about neuroses; you just say demons.”

  “Certainly I haven’t a scientific vocabulary,” said Maria.

  “Well, science is the theology of our time, and like the old theology it’s a muddle of conflicting assertions. What gripes my gut is that it has such a miserable vocabulary and such a pallid pack of images to offer to us—to the humble laity—for our edification and our faith. The old priest in his black robe gave us things that seemed to have concrete existence; you prayed to the Mother of God and somebody had given you an image that looked just right for the Mother of God. The new priest in his whitish lab-coat gives you nothing at all except a constantly changing vocabulary which he—because he usually doesn’t know any Greek—can’t pronounce, and you are expected to trust him implicitly because he knows what you are too dumb to comprehend. It’s the most overweening, pompous priesthood mankind has ever endured in all its recorded history, and its lack of symbol and metaphor and its zeal for abstraction drive mankind to a barren land of starved imagination. But you, Maria, speak the old language that strikes upon the heart. You talk about the Recording Angel and you talk about his lesser angels, and we both know exactly what you mean. You give comprehensible and attractive names to psychological facts, and God—another effectively named psychological fact—bless you for it.”

  “You’re raving ever so slightly, darling, and it’s time you went home.”

  “Yes, yes, yes. Of course. This instant. Can I stand up? Ooooh!”

  “No, wait a minute, I’ll see you out. But before you go, tell me what it is about Francis you want and can’t discover?”

  “Childhood! That’s the key. Not the only key, but the first key to the mystery of a human creature. Who brought him up, and what were they and what did they believe that stamped the child so that chose beliefs stuck in his mind long after he thought he had rejected them? Schools—schools, Maria! Look what Colborne has done to Arthur! Not bad—or not all of it—but it clings to him still, in the way he ties his tie, and polishes his shoes, and writes amusing little thankees to people who have had him to dinner. And a thousand things that lurk below the surface, like the conventionality he showed when he heard Francis might be rather a crook. Well—what were the schools of Blairlogie? Francis was never out of the place until he was fifteen. Those were the schools that marked him. Of course, I could fake it. Oh, I wish I had the indecency of so many biographers and dared to fake it! Not crude faking, of course, but a kind of fiction, the sort of fiction that rises to the level of art! And it would be true, you kno
w, in its way. You remember what Browning says:

  … Art remains the one way possible

  Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine, at least.

  I could serve Francis so much better if I had the freedom of fiction.”

  “Oh, Simon, you don’t have to tell me that you are an artist at heart.”

  “But an artist chained to biography, which ought to bear some resemblance to fact.”

  “A matter of moral conscience.”

  “And a matter of social conscience, as well. But what about artistic conscience, which people don’t usually pay much attention to? I want to write a really good book. Not just a trustworthy book, but a book people will like to read. Everybody has a dominant kind of conscience, and in me the artistic conscience seems to be pushing the other two aside. Do you know what I really think?”

  “No, but you obviously want to tell me.”

  “I think that probably Francis had a daimon. As a man so much under the influence of Mercury, or Hermes, it would be quite likely. You know what a daimon is?”

  “Yes, but go on.”

  “Oh, of course you’d know. I keep forgetting what a knowing girl you are. Since you became the wife of a very rich man, it somehow seems unlikely that you should know anything really interesting. But of course you’re your mother’s child, splendid old crook and sibyl that she is! Of course you know what Hesiod calls daimons: spirits of the Golden Age, who act as guardians to mortals. Not tedious manifestations of the moral conscience, like Guardian Angels, always pulling for Sunday-school rightness and goodness. No, manifestations of the artistic conscience, who supply you with extra energy when it is needed, and tip you off when things aren’t going as they should. Not wedded to what Christians think of as what is right, but to what is your destiny. Your joker in the pack. Your Top Trump that subdues all others!”

  “You could call that intuition.”

  “Bugger intuition! That’s a psychological word, grey and dowdy. I prefer the notion of a daimon. Know the names of any good daimons, Maria?”