Mark Lambert's Supper

by J. I. M. Stewart

  “I know Poyle, Sir Charles – but I don’t think I’ve come on anything of his that could be called criticism. Not, that is to say, literary criticism. But literary folk and artists are frequently among his exhibits.”

  “His exhibits?” Sir Charles was at a loss.

  “Rupert Poyle is generally reckoned a wit.”

  “Dear me!” Sir Charles’s bewilderment was now tinged with alarm. “Let us hope that he behaves himself with reasonable decorum in the presence of genius. I have no taste for buffoonery in that neighbourhood, I candidly own. Still, it is all part of what one of those young men spoke about – Mark Lambert’s supper. And I may tell you, confidentially, of another step forward that I hope to see taken soon. Anthea, you have already heard of this. There is every likelihood of a new collected edition. It will be a great thing – and a very right thing, too.”

  “Well, that’s certainly something to look forward to.” Making this very proper reply, Garth Dauncey set down his tea-cup and squared his shoulders. At the same time, what the witty Miss Chipchase had described as the empty stadium of his features began, as it were, to fill up – so that Anthea was almost prompted by the association to expect some sudden athletic performance: a rising on the toes, it might be, to plunge amid invisible waters. Yet all that came from Dauncey by way of justifying this was a question by no means urgently phrased. “I wonder, sir – would this new edition include the last major Lambert?”

  Sir Charles Shaxby was puzzled. “But of course – most certainly. It is a complete Lambert that is proposed. And Lucia’s Changeling will certainly be there – I hope in its traditional two-volume form. My own first edition – with a generous inscription which I shall presently be weak enough to show you – is among my most cherished books. And I read it every year.”

  “I shall enjoy very much seeing that. But I’m not thinking of Lucia’s Changeling. I’m thinking of a novel completed, or almost completed, before Lambert died, and still to be given to the world.”

  “A novel!” Sir Charles appeared so startled that his poise was in danger of forsaking him. “Anthea, is this what you mean by saying that Mr Dauncey believes himself to have found a field for literary research into your father’s work?”

  “Yes. And didn’t I say it would surprise you?”

  “It finds me merely at sea, I am afraid.” With restored equanimity Sir Charles turned back to the young man. “I can only say that I wish you were not deceiving yourself. One would give much, surely, for an unknown Mark Lambert. And for something more from the inspired years one would give—well, almost anything.”

  “One certainly would. But I’m not just imagining the possibility of some absolutely unknown and unsuspected work. I am supposing a manuscript that some people at least must know about – a completed or almost completed novel – which there have been reasons for not publishing. You, sir, don’t believe that anything of that sort exists?”

  “My dear Mr Dauncey, had I reason to suppose that I could lay my hands on anything remotely answering to such a description it would be my duty to act in the matter most vigorously.” Sir Charles, perhaps because he had delivered himself of this with marked astringency, reached for a silver cigarette box and opened it courteously for his guest. “For I am in fact, as Anthea may have told you or as you may already have known, one of Mark Lambert’s two literary executors. I have knowledge, as a consequence, of a good many unpublished papers of his. Several are in this room now, and it will give me great pleasure to fish out some of the more interesting things – none has any very substantial importance – should you care to look at them. But I certainly haven’t a scrap of unpublished fiction. In Florence, it is true, there exist in manuscript two or three abortive short stories from Lambert’s early period, none of them carried beyond a couple of thousand words. And since he was not then the inspired artist that he later became, there would be little point, to my mind, in solemnly giving these to the world at the present stage. On anything faintly resembling an unpublished novel, whether of the great period or of the earlier, I can assure you that I have never set eyes. I am curious to know how the notion of such a work being in existence can have got about.”

  Miss Shaxby intervened. “It is certainly altogether strange.” She accompanied this opinion with a glance of some suspicion at the girl beside her. “Anthea, you have not been amusing yourself with some tall story at Mr Dauncey’s expense?”

  “Certainly not. I don’t need to think up tall stories in order to get entertainment from Mr Dauncey. His idea is entirely his own, so far as I know, and perhaps he will explain it now.”

  There was a moment’s pause before the young man took up this reiterated challenge – a pause conceivably occasioned by an impulse to subject his host’s late utterance to a rigorous interior analysis. When he spoke it was sufficiently to the point. “There’s no notion going about – or not as far as I know. This is a hunch of my own. It comes partly from something my father has said to me, and partly from something that I’ve read. Each of these things, as you will presently see, draws significance from the other, and together they make something of a case.”

  Sir Charles frowned. “Do you mean an indictment of some negligent party?”

  “No, sir – that’s not what I’ve got cooking at all.” Dauncey, relapsing upon his defensive idiom, seemed warily conscious that he had not yet quite taken the measure of the possible touchiness of his entertainer. “I’m speaking in terms of a sort of literary detection or sleuthing.”

  “I fear such a conception is unfamiliar and uncongenial to me. But I am of course interested in what you have to say. Indeed, there is a positive obligation upon me to attend to it most carefully. The written evidence of which you speak is in something of Lambert’s own?”

  “Yes.”

  “A published work?”

  “Not exactly that. In something, as they say, privately printed.”

  Sir Charles raised his eyebrows. “It can’t be, Mr Dauncey, that you mean—”

  “I’ll say you’ve guessed it, sir. I mean the Settignano Memorandum Book.”

  “You have seen that?” Sir Charles Shaxby was again surprised. “I had hardly supposed—”

  “We have a copy at Princeton. I read it there, and felt very grateful to its editor.”

  “It is kind of you so to express yourself.” Sir Charles appeared to be mollified once more by this civility. “And I am very glad to know that the Memorandum Book has been available to you. We printed, as you may know, only a score of copies, and entirely for distribution among Lambert’s most intimate friends. Nothing approaching publication was ever in our thought. In those days—thank heaven!—it would still have been held pretentious to offer to the world at large the working memoranda of a writer comparatively recently deceased. But there were reasons for doing something, and so the little private printing was arranged. It is very proper that copies should now be coming into the great libraries. Regular publication, indeed, may be desirable now that dear Mark’s work has been elevated so unchallengeably into the sphere of criticism.” Sir Charles paused with satisfaction on this august turn of phrase. “You agree with me?”

  “Yes, indeed. And I hope that if that happens, sir, you will add a fresh introductory essay to your original annotations.”

  “It would be a most delightful task.” Sir Charles’s further advance in cordiality was perceptible. “I well remember the day on which the box came up to Settignano from the binder’s on the back of a donkey. If you will come to the farther end of the room, I will show you both my own copy and some of the relevant correspondence. And perhaps Anthea will join us. She is not as practised a cicerone in this sphere as she ought to be.”

  On this, however, Miss Shaxby proved to be of another mind. “Anthea and I will follow, Charles, when we have taken a turn in the garden. I have questions to put to her.” Miss Shaxby looked with some expressiveness at her American guest. “No doubt we shall be in time for Mr Dauncey’s revelation.”

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nbsp; “Then come along.” Sir Charles led the young man across the room. “I will show you what of Lambert’s I have. And then you must certainly produce from the Memorandum Book the basis of your mysterious inference. Now, here is Sargent’s portrait.” Sir Charles had turned into an arm of the apartment entirely lined with books except for a single painting above which he now proceeded to switch on a light. “It was left to me by poor Mark himself, so I need hardly say how much I value it.”

  “It certainly is a very striking piece of work.”

  “I can see that you do not care for it.” Dauncey would have been obtuse had he felt himself by any means to have fallen in his host’s esteem. “But if what disappoints you is an evident absence of the higher qualities of art, pray remember our latter-day weakness in this branch of it.”

  “You’ve had John.”

  “Very well – we have had John. But, behind him, there is nobody until one gets back to Raeburn.” Sir Charles as he delivered himself of this easy professional instruction was unlocking the doors of a small Renaissance armoire that stood directly beneath the portrait. But now, seeing his companion’s attention still engaged with Sargent’s vision of Mark Lambert, he for the moment desisted and stood back.

  Dauncey glanced at him. “Did he look like that, sir, the day you took the stroll to the Piazzale Michelangelo, and you spoke of something hectic in his talk?”

  Sir Charles received this obliquely. “I spoke too about the visitation of the Muse. The excitement of that must, one supposes, be of rather a frightening kind. Exaltation and terror doubtless mingle in the experience. One was aware of these things when in the presence of Lambert. Like Tennyson, he carried, so to speak, his singing robes about with him; he was distinctly a man inspired or inspirable. And Sargent can be seen to have gone after that. The portrait shows a man who may be visited at any moment. But is it by the Muse?”

  Dauncey took time to distinguish this question as not merely rhetorical. “It might be by the police.”

  “Precisely.” Somewhat surprisingly, Sir Charles appeared unperturbed by this sally. “The terror and the exaltation are both there, but each is of the wrong sort. Sargent has muddled up two worlds between which he moved, as a rule, with very tolerable ease. A financier controlling vast interests, but whom a powerful combination of rivals may at any time bring down: something of that sort—has it not?—has crept across the canvas. One thinks, in fact, of some of the painter’s worthies in the Tate.” As he offered this opinion Sir Charles glanced sharply from the portrait to his auditor as if to assure himself of the latter’s sufficient understanding and attention, so that Dauncey might have been a little reminded of those humbler members of his host’s confraternity who offer peripatetic lectures whether in the gallery just referred to or in Trafalgar Square. The scrutiny was apparently reassuring, for Sir Charles pursued his aesthetic way. “Sargent has attempted to compass his effect by exploiting a play of feature. It is always a hazardous thing to do, and is almost sure to render a portrait tiresome in the end. Think how one’s eye instinctively glances aside from Hals’s Laughing Cavalier in the popular print shops. You agree with me?”

  Dauncey, although he may have suspected that to his host when in this ex cathedra vein agreement was not of the first consequence, nevertheless gravely offered it.

  “You will understand, then, what I mean when I say that I could wish Lambert to have sat to Watts. Watts was far from a great painter, it is true; but he was one who understood the age to which the novelist essentially belonged – one, let me remind you, anterior to my own by as much as mine is to yours and Anthea’s. Watts, I say, would have caught the stillness, the concentration, the severe pressure of thought characteristic of the greatest—”

  “Is that the Villa Pastorelli in the background?” It might have been distinguishable that Sir Charles Shaxby’s displeasure at this uncivil interruption – surprising as it was in so well-conducted a young man – magnanimously dissipated itself before the plain spectacle of absorbed interest which Dauncey’s gaze revealed. “Certainly. But you have no doubt been there?”

  “I’ve walked up from the village and ventured to look over the wall.” Dauncey smiled a little wryly. “My father actually lived there for a good many years, I believe; and so naturally I’ve been interested. But I’m not sure that the present owner, Miss Lambert’s brother—”

  “Quite so.” Sir Charles glided smoothly over what he appeared to regard as a point of some delicacy. “Well, here the Pastorelli is. The view is of the little cortile with the bronze fountain where Lambert loved to perambulate, and a description of which he introduces in some detail when giving an account of Mrs Temple’s villa in The Cosmopolitans. He was pleased that Sargent also took a fancy to it and used it in the manner you here see. It was no doubt what made Lambert prefer this portrait to the far finer one by Giovanni Segantini in the Uffizi – or even to your father’s delicate crayon now so happily in the National Portrait Gallery.” Sir Charles paused complacently on this courteous allusion. “One must admit, moreover, that Sargent has exploited those citron-tinted walls with considerable felicity. Remark the relationship with the sitter’s left cheek.”

  “Did Lambert regularly haunt that Piazzale Michelangelo?”

  This time Sir Charles was brought up short. “Haunt it?”

  “I’m sorry to be so inconsequent and hark back. But I am very anxious to know whether or not Lambert went up there as a regular thing.”

  “By no means, I should say.” Sir Charles glanced curiously at the young man. “It was simply something that he and I did once in a while – and perhaps not on more than three or four occasions, all told. There is that enchanting view, and the little restaurant is great fun. But the Piazzale, then as now, was very much a popular resort; and on the whole Lambert avoided such places. It is true that I was myself very little in Florence during his last years, the Kaiser’s inexcusable war having so tiresomely intervened. But I do not think it could have become a haunt with him. You will forgive me if I say that I don’t quite understand—”

  “Then, sir, I’ll explain. I’ve never, you know, seen much of my father – partly, perhaps, because of a war more tiresome still. And certainly I’ve had very little talk with him. But he once did tell me something that has stuck in my head and teased it quite a lot. Lambert, he said, met—”

  Dauncey broke off. Miss Shaxby and Anthea had returned from the garden, of which their inspection must have been perfunctory, and were entering the book-lined alcove. Miss Shaxby, whose heightened colour perhaps hinted at exchanges not wholly to her satisfaction, glanced at her brother. “Is the mystery resolved? Why, Charles, you have not yet even got out Mark’s notebook.”

  “I was just reaching for it, Hermione.” It might have been guessed that there were occasions upon which, despite his somewhat pontifical manner, Sir Charles Shaxby was accustomed to be taken charge of by his sister. “I assure you that I am more curious than before to know what is in Mr Dauncey’s mind.” As he spoke, Sir Charles opened the armoire and brought down a slim quarto, finely bound. “Here it is.” With some solemnity he placed the volume in the young man’s hands. “Here it is – my copy of the Settignano Memorandum Book.”

  SEVEN

  In the summer of 1923 Lambert made what was to be his last excursion from Settignano, spending August in Siena. Such an annual sojourn had been customary with him as a young man, as indeed it was with a number of the Anglo-American residents in and around Florence. We may connect the impulse to resume the habit with the forebodings mentioned in several entries over the past year. Lambert was now seventy-three; and he had, in fact, four months to live. Although his sense of frustration, bewilderment and even anger at the surcease of his highest powers has been intermittently apparent in the notes for nearly a lustre, it is only at Siena and in this terminal phrase of the Memorandum Book that jottings of a reminiscent or merely ruminative sort begin to replace the long-familiar quest for situations and themes – the restless, urgent and
indeed hungry quality which a felicitous critic has termed the “divine prospectiveness” of his mind. – C.S.

  Palazzo Ravizza, Siena.

  The house is cool, and in the little terraced garden a great horse-chestnut gives generous shade. There, by a clipped yew-hedge, on a curved bench flanked by unalarming lions, I look back across the valley towards Belcaro. The morning’s excursion was not without its rewarding glimpse of the ways of the old faith. Here in the city the Casa di Santa Caterina is accorded every consequence, but at the Castello three miles away – a place so significant in an astonishing life – the cult has not thought to establish itself, and cane mordace is all that greets the pilgrim. A little chapel shows only the bronze effigies of landed proprietors recently dead; its ceiling boasts grotteschi; and, in a sort of summerhouse adjoining, the artist responsible for these has exerted himself to supply a variety of small-scale erotic entertainments proliferating in the same fashion. But the view from the outer walls! This recompensed me for the fatigue of the walk – which I still, incidentally, to a degree of some alarmingness feel.

  From there one sees Siena for what she is – a high-built galleon triumphantly breasting wave upon wave of Tuscan green; a ruddier Aphrodite than Botticelli’s born from a beating surge of oil and wine.

  The city is noisier and motor-cars – here even more than in Florence – make walking tiresome in the narrow streets. Yet there is comparatively little change – nor has been perhaps since that August day sixty-four years ago when Browning delivered Landor, ‘travel-stained and weak’, into William Wetmore Story’s care. There is in Landor’s life what could be both a great panoramic novel and a moving tragedy, and I have more than once blocked out the phases of it. I often think of him now, but all without that fond creative hope. He, at least, had the right acrid words for his own dotages: Last Fruits off an Old Tree and Dry Sticks Faggoted by Walter Savage Landor.