Mungo's Dream

by J. I. M. Stewart

‘He was already a good Anglo-Catholic. But, no – it was then much more only a part of the man. I confess, Mungo, that had I known then how David would develop . . . but I need say no more.’

  ‘Do you think it has been a good idea, all the same?’ One of Mungo’s reckless questioning bouts had come over him. ‘Has your friendship confirmed itself with the years? Do you irritate each other a lot? Because it does seem to be an awfully solitary life you lead.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. I was remarking on it a few minutes ago, was I not?’ Sedley was perhaps making an effort to remain unperturbed in the face of Mungo’s seizing the initiative in this way. ‘We do get across one another from time to time. It would be unnatural not to. I shouldn’t be surprised if you and Ian had managed a row or two already.’

  ‘Oh, yes – we had a row about a girl.’ Mungo believed that this odd conversation was now marked by confidence and frankness on both sides. ‘I’ll tell you about it one day.’ He was about to add, ‘I’m sure Ian wouldn’t mind,’ when he realised that this would be untrue. He and Ian were developing markedly different attitudes to Sedley. So he paused, disconcerted, and was aware of Sedley staring at him strangely. This somehow made him want to change the subject entirely. But he managed only another direct question. ‘Had you come to live at Mallachie before you wrote An Autumn in Umbria?’

  ‘It was some time after that.’

  ‘Was your coming to Mallachie connected with your deciding pretty well to stop writing?’

  ‘My dear Mungo, I am sure you have a future as a novelist. But, if not, you can certainly become a television inquisitor.’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry.’ Mungo was properly confused. ‘Asking these questions is the most frightful cheek.’

  ‘Not a bit, Mungo. And I propose to have my own turn later. If I may say so, there is a good deal about you that interests me very much. But tell me – why should you conclude that I have stopped writing?’

  Mungo’s confusion grew. This was not merely because he had made an ass of himself; it was also because he perceived that Sedley’s ease of manner had become strained and spurious. Quite without meaning to, he had touched the author of An Autumn in Umbria at the quick.

  ‘It’s just,’ he said weakly, ‘that you haven’t cared to publish anything for some time. And it seems such a tremendous pity.’

  ‘Ah! You see, Mungo, there are artists in whose career these intermissions – perhaps long intermissions – simply happen. So far as publication is concerned, I mean. But the work, the travail, may be going on – and own a complexity that forbids the giving of instalments, of bits and pieces, to the world. Not all chefs-d’oeuvre are like Finnegans Wake.’

  ‘No – of course not. I can see that.’

  ‘An artist loses his identity, abnegates his personality, if he ceases to work. You remember what Sainte-Beuve once said? Je ne suis complêtement moi que plume en main et dans le silence du cabinet. You will come to feel it yourself – to prove it on your own pulse, my dear lad – one day.’

  This was impressive, and Mungo didn’t at all know why he suddenly found himself rather disliking it. He was even irked, he noticed, by Sedley’s calling him ‘my dear lad’ – whereas when his tutor occasionally addressed him as ‘my dear boy’, or even ‘most acute juvenile’, he didn’t mind a bit. But the main point, of course, must be that he had come on something uncomfortable in Leonard Sedley – and just how uncomfortable, he couldn’t guess. Perhaps self-deception was an element in it. At any rate, Mungo – whose enquiring mind had so happily addressed itself to exhibiting to Ian his dangerous state of uncle-eclipse – just felt that he didn’t, for the present, want to lift any further lid from Leonard Sedley. Perhaps he had invested rather heavily in Sedley as a great writer – a process which is held often to render disillusioning at least a first contact with the man behind the books.

  ‘But of course,’ Sedley was saying, ‘there are other factors which may make a writer fight shy of the printing press from time to time. A great deal of nonsense is talked about the artist’s independence of his public. One can battle against active misconception – rising to it as to a challenge. But mere disregard, the absence of any slightest sign of being wanted, may make one – well, may make one resigned to bide one’s time.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that.’ Mungo had been aware of Sedley as pausing for a token of acquiescence.

  ‘And one may have to fight against changes in taste, or the almost universal vogue of what is precisely not one’s thing. When that happens, one can become very lonely among one’s peers. I don’t know whether you ever glanced at that novel of mine you mentioned: An Autumn in Umbria—’

  ‘I’ve read it and reread it. It’s a marvellous book.’

  ‘My dear Mungo, I am most delighted and touched that you should say so.’ Sedley flushed as he said this, and Mungo would have been very content to feel that it was a flush of pleasure. Indeed, it was unreasonable to see it as anything else. But was it conceivable that something embittered, even a little crazy, in Sedley found only mortification and annoyance in the praise of a callow grammar-school boy? Mungo had a sufficient sense of this strange and disagreeable possibility to make him resolve not to say anything too enthusiastic again.

  ‘It’s a novel,’ Sedley went on, ‘that now wears an old-fashioned look. It has – I am foolish enough to feel – its subtleties, its own accent, its modest depths. But it remains an almost Victorian affair. It tells a story! You understand me? There is an action, a developing complication of attitudes and relationships, which is resolved and brought to a just close. Now, modern taste scarcely admits of anything of the kind. A long time ago we used to speak of tranche de vie realism, and we knew and acknowledged alike its just claim and its limited scope. And from it there stems today’s dominant aesthetic of the unresolved, the open-ended structure – if it is structure – in fiction. Have you noticed of late, on the television screen, a modish way of concluding – or rather of fading out – debate? A few people, or perhaps a dozen people, are presented to us as engaged in serious argument. But the minute comes when the “feature”, as it is called, must yield place to a news bulletin or, as they say, a “sports-night”, and we begin to hear music. The music grows in volume, and the picture starts to darken. Clearly the contestants are still arguing. But not for our benefit. We are left, very literally, in air.’ Sedley made a whimsical gesture. ‘Nowadays one is expected to end novels like that.’

  ‘And you won’t play? But why should you? You’ve got your own achievement to build on.’

  ‘Thank you, my dear Mungo. But I am only telling you why I—well, why I bide my time. Perhaps—who knows?—I shall be like Landor, and dine late.’

  ‘I’m sure you will.’ Mungo, because he went in for loyalty, said this stoutly. But he had felt something a little fusty in the argument. It all sounded plausible enough, but it didn’t, somehow, add up to a valid explanation of the silence of Leonard Sedley.

  ‘And perhaps it doesn’t matter – if one’s name proves to be written in water.’ Sedley said this on rather a noble note. ‘One has had a go, as you young people say. One has had one’s vision.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Mungo noted dispassionately that Sedley was given to tags out of other people’s books. That last one was from To the Lighthouse. But he did appear to hold genuine views on the craft of fiction. So for a moment longer Mungo pursued this. ‘If it’s not in water, if you are to be remembered, what would you most like to be remembered for?’

  ‘The inquisitor again!’ Sedley said with amusement. ‘At the tail-end of a programme, too. “Finally, Professor X, will you say, very briefly, what are your conclusions about the mystery of human existence.” Just that note.’

  ‘No, that’s not fair.’ Mungo, feeling more at ease with Sedley than during the past few minutes, had received this fancy with his grin. ‘I’m not asking a question as comprehensive as that.’

  ‘Very well. I’ll try to give you an answer.’ Sedley fell silent for a moment, as
if paying Mungo’s true question the compliment of serious thought. But his reply, when it came, seemed disappointingly whimsical. ‘I’d like to be remembered as a supreme illusionist.’

  ‘An illusionist?’

  ‘It’s the name that large-scale conjurors used to give themselves. The real swells, who used enormous mirrors.’

  ‘The mirror of life? Dr Johnson said Shakespeare’s plays are that.’

  ‘No, it’s not of that that I’m thinking. There’s quite enough of real life around, if you ask me, without our industriously stacking up more of it in mirrors. Art as a mode of knowledge, you know, was brought to its logical terminus in the absurd by the Dadaists. You recall how Duchamp put a navvy’s shovel in an exhibition and labelled it “shovel”. One doesn’t, when one is being serious, want to do that. No! We do, indeed, collect our materials from the actual world, since nothing else is available to us. What do I possess to frame a novel out of? Myself, you, Ian, David – whom you will. And then comes the conjuring.’

  ‘Ian said something like that about a story I wrote in Oxford.’

  ‘Did he, indeed? He may have been remembering my holding forth to him in just this vein.’ Sedley was pleased.

  ‘But he seemed to feel the conjuring to be rather immoral.’

  ‘Amoral, perhaps; but immoral, no. Our allegiance is wholly to the illusion we create. And even if the illusion is itself impermanent, itself written in water, it has had its moment. The intenser it has been, the greater our triumph. Of course we all want to write what will outlive marble and the gilded monuments of princes. But that’s not the real – or at least the only – test of our achievement. The intensity of the illusion while it holds; the clarity with which we have seen, and the conviction with which we have asserted what never has been and what never will be: that is the test of our success as artists.’

  Having delivered himself of this, Sedley made one of his pauses for comment. But Mungo failed immediately to manage anything in that line. His silence was the product of a divided mind. He wasn’t too impressed by the propositions Sedley had offered him; for one thing, they didn’t seem adequate to An Autumn in Umbria. On the other hand, he had never heard an author talk about writing before, and perhaps one had to get the hang of a creative mind’s way of going about it. Mungo’s tutor wouldn’t talk in Sedley’s fashion; he would try to define his terms more rigorously, and would convey a more logical and disciplined effect. But Mungo didn’t often remember what his tutor said, whereas he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to forget at least Sedley’s main assertions. He now seized on this last thought for the purpose of civility.

  ‘I’m going to remember what you’ve said,’ he offered, ‘and think about it quite a lot.’

  ‘Ah, but you have your own ideas on these matters.’ Sedley had glanced at his watch, and stood up. ‘You must tell me about them – and something about yourself as well. Are you and Ian coming up to the house for dinner tonight?’

  ‘Oh, yes – I think so. I doubt whether we have more than a few sausages in stock at present.’

  ‘An excellent reason for joining David, the ghostly Father, and myself.’ Sedley appeared to have been put in good humour by the ingenuousness of Mungo’s revelation. ‘Perhaps we can have a further talk then.’ He picked up his cap, and flicked a finger idly at one of the garish flies stuck in its brim. Then, as if reminded of what was going on in the river, he turned round to look. Ian was in the act of making a long, powerful cast, his eyes fixed upon the widening ripples of a rise. The sinuous movement ended in immobility. Sedley watched for a further moment, and then nodded to Mungo and walked rapidly away.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ian had declared (as part of a gloomy build-up of Mallachie for Mungo before their arrival there) that his Uncle David’s table was served only with pulse and tap-water – except on saint’s-days, when there were locusts and wild honey as well.

  Fortunately this turned out to be untrue. Lord Brightmony certainly drank only water, and had an air of quite failing to notice the little that he ate. But Leonard Sedley was fastidious and Father Balietti greedy, so that the meals and the wine weren’t at all bad. Moreover the morose elderly servants, who knew very well that young Mr Cardower would successively become Lord Brightmony and Lord Auldearn, showed their proper feudal feeling by seeing to it that Ian and his friend got the best of what was going. But all this hadn’t rendered any of these occasions exactly convivial, and tonight looked as if it might be worse than most. Ian’s second spell with his rod had been disastrous. He had hooked an enormous salmon, played it for no end of a time with a mature skill, and then lost it through some miscalculation or unreadiness at the very moment he had appeared sure of it in the net. As a result of this, he was in a foul temper. And Mungo (who was perhaps jealous of the salmon fishing after all) was rebuking this bad behaviour as they walked up to the Castle.

  ‘Just take the trouble to be civil, will you?’ he said. ‘You’re battening on your uncle for the sake of those absurd fish, and the bargain is that you show him the light of your countenance in return. Repeat: the light of your countenance. Not that vintage Cardower glower.’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Mungo!’

  ‘You can scowl at that religious caterpillar Balietti if you like. Not that it’s very civil to a dependent in your uncle’s house.’

  ‘Don’t try to teach me my manners, Lockhart, you. Or I’ll bash you.’

  ‘I don’t see you bashing someone your own size. You tried once, and it didn’t work. I don’t believe you could bash Pons – and he’s a midget.’

  ‘He’s nothing of the kind. Get Pons furious, and he’s pretty well the Mighty Atom itself. I could bash him, all the same.’

  ‘No, you couldn’t.’

  ‘Yes, I could.’

  The enjoyment derived by Mungo and Ian from conversations of this sort was obscure but indubitable. On the other hand, they both at times wondered whether there wasn’t a precarious side to it; whether it didn’t guy some genuine antagonism lurking somewhere in their minds. But as the security of their relationship was an unuttered article of faith with them, they never let this fragmentary perception constrain them to pull their punches.

  ‘And there’s another thing,’ Mungo went on. ‘Sedley. You’re at least not in a state of Sedley-eclipse, so you might treat him at least with decency. He’s fond of you, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Rubbish.’ This was Ian’s most withering word.

  ‘And, what’s more, he believes that you are fond of him.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Mungo, what have you two been yattering about?’

  ‘The stalwart and handsome Ian Cardower.’ Mungo paused wickedly. ‘Who is exciting to watch, as he performs his little water-ballet up to his belly-button in the flood. It hadn’t occurred to me, I’m afraid. But of course I hastened to agree.’

  ‘Oh, Lord!’ Ian halted in his tracks. ‘Look, Mungo – let’s pack up tomorrow and go back to Fintry. If your aunt will have me, that is. Life seems simpler there.’

  ‘No salmon. And a gent from London has the shooting rights. Of course he’d jump at being introduced to you, and let you slaughter as many of God’s creatures as you cared to. But at least we can’t leave until Friday.’ Mungo had turned serious. ‘Your uncle’s having people to lunch, just to meet you. Your visiting Mallachie is quite a thing to him. No kidding.’

  ‘Oh, all right.’

  ‘Besides, I aim at enjoying more of your uncle’s conversation myself.’ Mungo was mocking again. ‘I want his version of the Cardower family history.’

  ‘As I’ve said before, you’re bloody inquisitive. I suppose you intend to use us all for copy. And I don’t go poking about in Lockhart family history.’

  ‘There isn’t any to speak of.’ Mungo was silent for a moment. If he was to be candid with Ian, as he much wanted to be, he would have to tell him here and now that, strictly speaking, Lockhart family history was something with which he, Mungo, had nothing to do. But this, he f
ound, he couldn’t do. He couldn’t, on the strength of what was little more than intuition, however lively, claim as true what Ian had once propounded as a tasteless joke. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘there’s just a very minor family skeleton rattling in the cupboard here and there. I say, are you hungry?’

  ‘Of course I’m hungry, after flogging that water all day.’

  ‘I had an exhausting afternoon myself – sustaining a literary conversation with a real live novelist.’

  ‘Not alive exactly. I’d be prepared to bet you had the impertinence to ask him why he stopped scribbling.’

  ‘Yes, I did. It gave him an opportunity for quite a lot of profound remarks.’

  ‘I suggest you ask my uncle about it. Check up on whether his view of the silence of his dear old friend corresponds with Sedley’s own.’

  ‘That’s quite an idea. I think I will.’

  ‘And then you can write one of your short stories about them. Something sad and tender. Two elderly queens living out the fag-end of their days in the solitude of a mist-enshrouded Scottish castle. A real castle, I’d make it – not a merely titular one like Mallachie. A kind of Moray Castle of Otranto. With plenty of Gothic effects.’

  ‘Good idea. As a matter of fact, I’m beginning to feel Sedley would go quite well into a sinister setting.’

  ‘You would!’

  ‘The raven himself is hoarse. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Yes. And it was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman, which gives the stern’st good-night.’ Ian’s ill-temper had departed, at least for the moment. ‘But, no. Better go easy on Macbeth. The people over at Cawdor might have you up for libel. Serve you right. Scribble, scribble, scribble.’

  This improving conversation brought Ian and Mungo to their dinner.

  It was an awkward dinner – physically awkward. Lord Brightmony and Leonard Sedley sat at either end of a refectory table a good deal too large for common domestic occasions. Mungo sat on Lord Brightmony’s right and Ian on Sedley’s. Between Sedley and Mungo, but nearer to Mungo than to Sedley, sat Father Balietti. As Lord Brightmony chose to spend most of the meal in meditative silence, Mungo and Balietti were more or less in a tête-à-tête situation, as were Ian and Sedley. Balietti, although his more genuine interest appeared to lie in eating as much as he could, owned an impressive acquired skill in making polite conversation at the same time. It was – Mungo thought – no doubt one of the chores he was hired for.