The Acceptance World - Anthony Powell [11]
‘But if you are not really interested in pictures, liking a Bonnard doesn’t make you any happier than liking a Bouguereau.’
‘The act of conversion does, though.’
‘Besides, this will open up a new, much more lively world of social life. One must admit that.’
‘Of course.’
‘You are probably right.’
Perhaps it was surprising that nothing of the kind had happened earlier, because St. John Clarke had employed a whole dynasty of secretaries before Members. But former secretaries had been expected to work hard in the background, rather than to exist as an important element in the household. Members had built up the post to something far more influential than anything achieved by those who had gone before him. The fact was that, as St. John Clarke grew older, he wrote less, while his desire to cut a social figure gained in volume. He began to require a secretary who was something more than a subordinate to answer the telephone and remember the date of invitations. It was natural enough that St. John Clarke, who was unmarried, should wish to delegate power in his establishment, and rely on someone to help him plan his daily life. He was fortunate in finding a young man so well equipped for the job; for even those who did not much care for Members personally had to admit that his methods, often erratic, were on the whole admirably suited to the life St. John Clarke liked to lead.
‘Nothing equivocal about the position of Members in that ménage, do you think?’ said Barnby.
‘Not in the least.’
‘I don’t think St. John Clarke is interested in either sex,’ said Barnby. ‘He fell in love with himself at first sight and it is a passion to which he has always remained faithful.’
‘Self-love seems so often unrequited.’
‘But not in the case of St. John Clarke,’ said Barnby. ‘He is entirely capable of getting along without what most of the rest of us need.’
I had often heard that particular question discussed. Although his novels not uncommonly dealt with the intricate problems of married life, St. John Clarke did not, in general, greatly care for the society of women, except that of ladies in a position to invite him to agreeable dinners and week-end parties. Such hospitality was, after all, no more than a small and fitting return for the labours of a lifetime, and one that few but the envious would have begrudged him. However, this lack of interest in the opposite sex had from time to time given rise to gossip. Those persons who make a hobby, even a kind of duty, of tracking down malicious whispers to their source were forced to report in the case of St. John Clarke that nothing in the smallest degree reprobate could be confirmed. This did not prevent the circulation of a certain amount of rather spiteful badinage on the subject of his secretary. Members was impervious to any such innuendo, perhaps even encouraging it to screen his own affairs with women. St. John Clarke, indifferent to this indulgence himself, naturally disapproved of an irregular life in others: especially in someone at such close quarters.
‘So there he goes,’ said Barnby. ‘Head-first into the contemporary world.’
He hunched his shoulders, and made a grimace, as if to express the violence, even agony, that had accompanied St. John Clarke’s aesthetic metamorphosis. By easy stages we moved off to dinner at Foppa’s.
2
A YEAR or more later Isbister died. He had been in bad health for some little time, and caught pneumonia during a period of convalescence. The question of the introduction, pigeon-holed indefinitely, since St. John Clarke utterly refused to answer letters on the subject, was now brought into the light again by the obituaries. Little or no general news was about at the time, so these notices were fuller than might have been expected. One of them called Isbister ‘the British Franz Hals’. There were photographs of him, with his Van Dyck beard and Inverness cape, walking with Mrs. Isbister, a former model, the ‘Morwenna’ of many of his figure subjects. This was clearly the occasion to make another effort to complete and publish The Art of Horace Isbister. Artists, especially academic artists, can pass quickly into the shadows: forgotten as if they had never been.