Alan Bennett: Plays, Volume 2

by Alan Bennett

  Now smartly suited, wearing an overcoat and Homburg hat and carrying an umbrella Burgess stands in the spot stage left, the picture of an upper-class Englishman. Accompanied as if on the pianola he starts to sing ‘For he is an Englishman’ from Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore.

  Burgess

  For he might have been a Roosian,

  A French or Turk or Proosian,

  Or perhaps I-tal-ian.

  For in spite of all temptations

  To belong to other nations,

  He remains an Englishman,

  He remains an Englishman.

  As Burgess sings he is drowned out by the full chorus and orchestra in a rousing climax, but before the music stops the light has faded on Burgess and the screen drops in, bright and blank and Coral stands in front of it as though after a film screening.

  Coral At supper one night, after a showing of the film of this story in 1983, I met Lord Harlech, who as David Omsby-Gore had been Minister of State at the Foreign Office at the time Burgess was wanting to come back and see his mother. The Foreign Office and the security services were in a blue funk apparently. All the threats of prosecution that were conveyed to Burgess were pure bluff. Harlech said there was nothing it would have been safe to charge him with. Egg on too many faces, I suppose.

  ‘And what about the others?’ I said. ‘What others?’ he said. I said I’d heard there were others. Still. But he just smiled.

  A QUESTION OF ATTRIBUTION

  An inquiry

  in which the circumstances are imaginary

  but the pictures are real

  A note on the paintings

  A Question of Attribution is concerned with two paintings, Titian’s Allegory of Prudence in the National Gallery and the Triple Portrait, formerly attributed to Titian, which is in the collection of HM The Queen. The play owes a great deal to two articles in which these paintings are discussed, ‘Titian’s Allegory of Prudence’ by Erwin Panofsky (in Meaning in the Visual Arts, Peregrine, 1974) and ‘Five Portraits’ by St John Gore (Burlington Magazine, vol. 100, 1958).

  One of the points made by Blunt in the play is that there is a strong resemblance between the ‘third man’ in the Triple Portrait and Titian’s son, Orazio Vecelli as he appears in the Allegory of Prudence. Should anyone be interested enough to compare the actual paintings they would be in some difficulty as at the moment the Triple Portrait (which has recently been re-titled Titian and Friends) cannot be seen. It used to hang at Hampton Court but since the 1986 fire it has not been on public view. Indeed, I have not seen it myself, knowing it only from the photographs which illustrate Mr St John Gore’s article. There is a certain appropriateness about this, though, as one of the criticisms made of Anthony Blunt as an art historian was that he preferred to work from photographs rather than the real thing.

  AB

  FIGURE 1 The Triple Portrait before cleaning: Titian and a Venetian Senator (Witt Library, Courtauld Institute of Art).

  FIGURE 2 The Triple Portrait after cleaning: Titian and Friends (Royal Collection Enterprises Ltd).

  FIGURE 3 Allegory of Prudence (copyright the National Gallery).

  FIGURE 4 Details from the Allegory of Prudence and Triple Portrait.

  Characters

  Blunt

  Chubb

  Phillips

  HMQ

  Colin

  Restorer

  A Question of Attribution was first performed at the Royal National Theatre, London, on 1 December 1988 as part of a double bill entitled Single Spies. The cast was as follows:

  Blunt, Alan Bennett

  Restorer, David Terence

  Chubb, Simon Callow

  Phillips, Crispin Redman

  Colin, Brett Fancy

  HMQ, Prunella Scales

  Director, Simon Callow

  Designer, Bruno Santini

  Lighting, Paul Pyant

  Music, Dominic Muldowney

  Anthony Blunt’s room at the Courtauld Institute where he is the Director. The time is the late 1960s. There is a large eighteenth-century double door and a fine ormolu mounted table serving as a desk but in all other respects the room is a functioning office, the bookshelves crowded with reference books and with piles of octavo volumes on the floor. Above the desk and upstage of it is a projection screen with a slide projector on a nearby side-table.

  Blunt stands left of the screen and the Restorer, a humbler figure in a dustcoat, to the right. Their positions resemble those of saints or patrons on either side of an altarpiece and some effort should be made in the production to create stage pictures which echo in this way the composition and lighting of old masters.

  Blunt Next.

  On the screen a slide of the Triple Portrait before cleaning (Figure 1).

  Restorer More of the same, I’m afraid. It’s an ex-Titian. Now thought to be by several hands.

  Blunt Called?

  The Restorer consults a catalogue or printed sheet.

  Restorer Titian and a Venetian Senator.

  Blunt And this is Titian on the left. He’s not by Titian, certainly.

  Restorer No. He’s a copy of the Berlin self-portrait.

  Blunt I don’t know about the other gentleman.

  Restorer He’s been identified as the Chancellor of Venice, Andrea Franceschi.

  Pause.

  Blunt I should warn you. I don’t have an eye. K. Clark was saying the other day (I don’t think the remark was directed at me) that people who look at Old Masters fall into three groups: those who see what it is without being told; those who see it when you tell them; and those who can’t see it whatever you do. I just about make the second category. It means I can’t date pictures. Made a terrible hash of the early Poussins. Couldn’t tell which came first. For an art historian it’s rather humiliating. Like being a wine taster and having no sense of smell. (Pause.) People find me cold. I don’t gush, I suppose.

  Restorer Not much to gush about, this lot. Mind you, wait till you see Holyrood.

  Blunt I’m not saying painting doesn’t affect me. Ravished, sometimes. Well, what do we do? Give it a scrub?

  Restorer Couldn’t do any harm. Blunt On. On.

  A slide of a painting of St Lawrence being roasted over a grid comes up on the screen.

  What frightful thing is happening here?

  Restorer The Martyrdom of St Lawrence.

  Blunt groans.

  Blunt Art!

  Blunt steps from the office set to a podium or lectern, stage left, and we should have a sense that he is in the middle of a lecture. The lecture is illustrated by slides projected on the screen; these slides include Giovanni Bellini’s Agony in the Garden, an Annunciation and other appropriate images, details and martyrdoms.

  Were we not inured to its imagery, however, it would seem a curious world, this world of Renaissance art; a place of incongruous punishments, where heads come on plates and skulls sport cleavers, and an angel, tremulous as a butterfly, waits patiently for the attention of a young girl who is pretending to read.

  Doomed to various slow and ingenious extinctions the saints brandish the emblems of their suffering, the cross, the gridiron and the wheel, and submit to their fate readily and without fuss, howling agonies gone through without a murmur, the only palliative a vision of God and the assurance of Heaven. Remote though all this is from our sensibility, there is a sense in which one might feel that it is all very British. For flayed, dismembered, spitted, roasted, these martyrs seldom lose a drop of their sang-froid, so cool about their bizarre torments, the real emblems of their martyrdom a silk dressing-gown and a long cigarette- holder; all of them doing their far, far better thing in a dignified silence. About suffering they were always wrong, the Old Masters. (Slide.) In Bellini’s Agony in the Garden, for instance, the apostles, oblivious to all considerations but those of perspective, are fast asleep on ground as brown and bare as an end-of-the-season goalmouth, this sleep signifying indifference.

  Above them on a rocky
promontory of convenient geology, Jesus kneels in prayer, an exercise that still goes on in some places, though with less agony and less certainty of address, this praying of less interest to the budding art historian or to the social historian or even to someone who has just wandered into the gallery out of the rain (and it is salutary to remind ourselves, here at the Courtauld Institute, that that is what art is for most people) … this praying, as I say, of less interest to them than the reaper on the edge of a field in a Breughel, say, who has his hand up a woman’s dress, another exercise that still goes on in most places, though with no agony but the same certainty of address. Here is threshing, which we now do mechanically. Here is sex, which we do mechanically also. And here is crucifixion, which we do not do. Or do differently. Or do indifferently. It is a world in which time means nothing, the present overlaps the future, and did the saint but turn his head he would see his own martyrdom through the window.

  Blunt turns and on the other side of the stage, right, we see the double doors open to reveal a man in a trilby and raincoat carrying a briefcase. This is Chubb.

  Judas takes the pieces of silver in the Temple at the same moment as in the next field he hangs himself. Christ begs God in the garden to free him from a fate that is already happening higher up the hill.

  As the lectern or podium disappears Blunt steps back into the office where Chubb is waiting. Chubb is seemingly vague, seemingly amiable. Socially he is not in the same class as Blunt, who is sophisticated and metropolitan; Chubb, while not naïve, is definitely suburban. The slides on the screen have changed to photographs of various young men, taken singly or enlarged from group photographs of colleges and teams; all date from the thirties and are in black and white. Following each denial by Blunt a new photograph comes up on the screen.

  Blunt No. No. Ν … no.

  Chubb Sure?

  Blunt It’s the neck. The neck could be Piero della Francesca.

  Chubb Who’s he?

  Blunt Well, he was many things, but he wasn’t a member of the Communist Party. (Pause.) And in answer to your earlier question, the larger question, I would only say… again … it seemed the right thing to do at the time.

  Chubb One more?

  Blunt Do I have a choice?

  Chubb switches off the screen,

  Chubb You’re probably tired.

  Blunt Not particularly.

  Chubb All these functions.

  Blunt I don’t go to what you call ‘functions’.

  Chubb If you’re in charge of the Queen’s pictures you must often have to be in attendance.

  Blunt Yes. On the pictures.

  Chubb I’m disappointed. Don’t you see the Queen?

  Blunt The Crown is a large organization. To ask me if I see the Queen is like asking a shopgirl if she sees Swan or Edgar.

  Chubb My wife saw her the other day. When she was visiting Surrey.

  Blunt Your wife?

  Chubb The Queen. She was up at six o’clock and secured an excellent vantage point outside Bentall’s. Her Majesty was heard to say ‘What a splendid shopping centre’. I wonder what she’s really like.

  Blunt Look her up. You must have a file on her.

  Chubb Yes, we probably do. I meant, to chat to. Hob-nob with. As a person. You can’t, of course, say. I appreciate that.

  Blunt Why can’t I say?

  Chubb Royal servants can’t, can they? Keeping mum is part of the job. It’s like the Official Secrets Act. (Pause.) I’m sorry. That was unkind. More snaps?

  Blunt says nothing.

  Some people do this for pleasure, you know. Holidays. Trips abroad. ‘This is a delightful couple we ran into on the boat. He’s in the Foreign Office and he’s a lorry driver.’ You must often get asked round to watch people’s slides.

  Blunt Never.

  Chubb You don’t live in Purley.

  Blunt No.

  Chubb switches on the screen with another photograph.

  How many more times. There is no one else that I know.

  Chubb This morning I got up, cup of tea, read the Telegraph, the usual routine. Nothing on the agenda for today, I thought, why not toddle up to town and wander round the British Museum, sure to come across something of interest. Just turning into Great Russell Street when I remember there is something on the agenda. Your good self! What’s more, I’m due at the Courtauld Institute in five minutes. So I about turn and head for Portman Square.

  Pause.

  Blunt And? I was under the impression this narrative was leading somewhere.

  Chubb The point is, we sometimes know things we don’t know. A bit of me, you see, must have known that I was coming here. (He switches the screen off.) Have you ever caught Her Majesty in an unguarded moment?

  Blunt I thought it was my unguarded moments you were interested in.

  Chubb It’s just a titbit for my wife.

  Blunt My function here is not to provide your wife with fodder for the hairdresser’s.

  Chubb She thinks my job is so dull. Blunt And mine?

  Chubb I’m sure you have colleagues who’d be delighted to be in your shoes.

  Blunt Really? Having to see you all the time?

  Chubb Oh. I was under the impression you enjoyed these little get-togethers. I always do.

  Blunt You nearly forgot.

  Chubb I forgot it was today. I thought you looked forward to these little chats. I thought it helped you relax. ‘All the time.’ It’s only once a month. I now feel I’m a burden. (Pause.) We could always scrap them. It’s true we don’t seem to be getting anywhere.

  Blunt I wouldn’t want that.

  Chubb You’ve only to say the word. I don’t know, I must have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. I thought this was the way you wanted it.

  Blunt It is. It is.

  Chubb The alternative isn’t ruled out. If you feel that …

  Blunt I don’t feel that at all I … I had a late night.

  Chubb You were at the Palace!

  Blunt Initially, yes.

  Chubb I knew you were. My wife saw your name in the paper. Well, I’m not surprised you’re tired. You must always be on tenterhooks, frightened to put a foot wrong, having to watch every word. You must find it a terrible strain.

  Blunt This?

  Chubb No. Talking to the Queen. What is she really like?

  Blunt Should we look at some more photographs?

  Chubb In a moment. I’m upset that you find our talks wearisome.

  Blunt I don’t. I don’t. It was an unforgivable remark. And not the case. On the whole I find them … stimulating.

  Chubb Do you? Now truthfully.

  Blunt They keep me on my toes.

  Chubb I’m glad. Are you liked, by the way?

  Blunt By whom?

  Chubb I don’t know. It occurs to me that you work rather hard at being a cold fish.

  Blunt My pupils like me. My colleagues … I don’t know. I have a life, you see. Two lives. Some of my colleagues scarcely have one.

  Chubb They don’t know about your other life.

  Blunt In the Household.

  Chubb I see. In that case, three lives. But who’s counting.

  (He laughs. Suddenly switches on the screen with a new photograph.) You don’t know this boy? Not a boy now, of course. Might have a beard.

  Blunt Should I? Who is he?

  Chubb Nobody.

  The next photograph is of a guardsman in uniform.

  Blunt No.

  The same guardsman now naked.

  Chubb Goodness gracious. How did that get here? Dear me. Just think if one of your students knocked at the door. Two gentlemen looking at a picture of a naked guardsman. What would they think?

  Blunt They might think it was Art. Or they might think it was two gentleman looking at a picture of a naked guardsman. They would be profoundly unstartled by either.

  Chubb switches off the screen.

  Chubb Do you ever go to the National Gallery?

  Blunt One has to from time to t
ime. Though I avoid opening hours. The public make it so intolerable.

  Chubb I went in the other day.

  Blunt Really?

  Chubb First time in yonks.

  Blunt Good.

  Chubb No, not good. Not good at all. Better off sticking to museums. Museums I know where I am. An art gallery, I always come out feeling restless and dissatisfied. Troubled.

  Blunt Oh dear.

  Chubb In a museum I’m informed, instructed. But with art … I don’t know. Is it that I don’t get anything out of the pictures? Or the pictures don’t get anything out of me? What am I supposed to think? What am I supposed to feel?

  Blunt What do you feel?

  Chubb Baffled. And also knackered. I ended up on a banquette looking at the painting that happened to be opposite and I thought, well, at least I can try and take this one in. But no. Mind you, I hate shopping. I suppose for you an art gallery is home from home.

  Blunt Some more than others. Home is hardly the word for the Hayward.

  Chubb But you’ll know, for instance, what order they all come in, the paintings?

  Blunt Well … Yes … one does … quite early on … acquire a sense of the sequence, the chronology of art. Shouldn’t we be getting on?

  Chubb You see, I don’t have that. I’ve no map. And yet I know there’s a whole world there.

  Blunt Yes.

  Chubb I’m determined to crack it. I’m like that. A year ago I couldn’t have changed a fuse. Started going down to the library, the odd evening class; I’ve just rewired the whole house. What I thought I’d do with this was start at the beginning before artists had really got the hang of it … perspective, for instance, a person and a house the same size (I can’t understand how they couldn’t just see). And then I’m planning to follow it through until the Renaissance when the penny begins to drop and they start painting what is actually – you know – there. How does that strike you as an approach? It’s not too sophisticated.