The Acceptance World - Anthony Powell [10]
‘You’ll never get that introduction now,’ Barnby said, after listening to my story. ‘St. John Clarke in these days would think poor old Isbister much too pompier.’
‘But they are still great friends.’
‘What does that matter?’
‘Besides, St. John Clarke doesn’t know a Van Dyck from a Van Dongen.’
‘Ah, but he does now,’ said Barnby. ‘That’s where you are wrong. You are out of date. St. John Clarke has undergone a conversion.’
‘To what?’
‘Modernism.’
‘Steel chairs?’
‘No doubt they will come.’
‘Pictures made of shells and newspaper?’
‘At present he is at a slightly earlier stage.’
I asked for further details.
‘The outward and visible sign of St. John Clarke’s conversion,’ said Barnby, portentously, ‘is that he has indeed become a collector of modern pictures—though, as I understand it, he still loves them on this side Surrealism. As a matter of fact he bought a picture of mine last week.’
‘This conversion explains his friendly notice of my book.’
‘It does.’
‘I see.’
‘You yourself supposed that something unusual in the quality of your writing had touched him?’
‘Naturally.’
‘I fear it is all part of a much larger design.’
‘Just as good for me.’
‘Doubtless.’
All the same, I felt slightly less complimented than before. The situation was now clear. The rumours already current about St. John Clarke, less explicit than Barnby’s words, had equally suggested some kind of intellectual upheaval. Isbister’s portraits of politicians, business men and ecclesiastics, executed with emphatic, almost aggressive disregard for any development of painting that could possibly be called ‘modern’, would now certainly no longer appeal to his old friend. At the same time the ray of St. John Clarke’s approval directed towards myself, until then so phenomenal, was in fact only one minute aspect of the novelist’s new desire to ally himself with forces against which, for many years, he had openly warred.
‘That secretary of his even suggested Clarke might commission a portrait.’
‘It is Members, of course, who has brought this about.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Barnby. ‘This sort of thing often happens to successful people when they begin to get old. They suddenly realise what dull lives they have always led.’
‘But St. John Clarke hasn’t led a dull life. I should have thought he had done almost everything he wanted—with just sufficient heights still to climb to give continued zest to his efforts.’
‘I agree in one sense,’ said Barnby. ‘But for a man of his comparative intelligence, St. John Clarke has always limited himself to the dullest of dull ideas—in order to make money, of course, a very reasonable aim, thereby avoiding giving offence to his public. Think of the platitudes of his books. True, I have only read a few pages of one of them, but that was sufficient. And then that professional world of bogus artists and bogus writers which he himself frequents. No wonder he wants to escape from it once in a while, and meet an occasional duchess. Men like him always feel they have missed something. You can leave the arts alone, but it is very dangerous to play tricks with them. After all, you yourself tell me he has agreed to write an introduction to the work of Isbister—and then you ask me why I consider St. John Clarke leads a dull life.’
‘But will this new move make his life any better?’
‘Why not?’
‘He must always have been picture-blind.’
‘Some of my best patrons are that. Don