Christmas Holiday (2 page)

The Leslie Masons had gone a long way in artistic appreciation since their marriage and on the walls of the handsome new house they now inhabited in Porchester Close were pictures by Wilson Steer and Augustus John, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell. There was an Utrillo and a Vuillard, both bought while these masters were of moderate price, and there was a Derain, a Marquet and a Chirico. You could not enter their house, somewhat sparsely furnished, without knowing at once that they were in the movement. They seldom missed a private view and when they went to Paris made a point of going to Rosenberg’s and the dealers in the Rue de Seine to have a look at what there was to be seen; they really liked pictures and if they did not buy any before the cultured opinion of the day had agreed on their merits this was due partly to a modest lack of confidence in their own judgement and partly to a fear that they might be making a bad bargain. After
all, John Peron’s pictures had been praised by the best critics and he had sold them for several hundred pounds apiece, and now what did they fetch? Two or three. It made you careful. But it was not only in painting that they were interested. They loved music; they went to Symphony Concerts throughout the winter; they had their favourite conductors and allowed no social engagements to prevent them from attending their performances. They went to hear the
Ring
once a year. To listen to music was a genuine delight to both of them. They had good taste and discrimination. They were regular first-nighters and they belonged to the societies that produce plays which are supposed to be above the comprehension of plain people. They read promptly the books that were talked about. They did this not only because they liked it, but because they felt it right to keep abreast of the times. They were honestly interested in art and it would be unjust even to hint a sneer because their taste lacked boldness and their appreciation originality. It may be that they were conventional in their judgements, but their conventionality was that of the highest culture of their day. They were incapable of making a discovery, but were quick to appreciate the discoveries of others. Though left to themselves they might never have seen anything very much to admire in Cézanne, no sooner was it borne in upon them that he was a great artist than in all sincerity they recognized the fact for themselves. They took no pride in their taste and there was no trace of snobbishness in their attitude.

“We’re just very ordinary members of the public,” said Venetia.

“Those objects of contempt to the artist, the people who know what they like,” added Leslie.

It was a happy accident that they liked Debussy better than Arthur Sullivan and Virginia Woolf better than John Galsworthy.

This preoccupation with art left them little time for social life; they sought neither the great nor the distinguished, and their friends were very nice people who were well-to-do without being rich, and who took a judicious interest in the things of the mind. They did not much care for dinner parties and neither gave them often nor went to them more than civility required; but they were fond of entertaining their friends to supper on Sunday evenings when they could drop in dressed any way they liked and eat kedgeree and sausages and mash. There was good music and tolerable bridge. The conversation was intelligent. These parties were as pleasantly unpretentious as the Leslie Masons themselves, and though all the guests had their own cars and few of them less than five thousand a year, they flattered themselves that the atmosphere was quite bohemian.

But Leslie Mason was never happier than when, with no concert or first night to go to, he could spend the evening in the bosom of his family. He was fortunate in it. His wife had been pretty and now, a middle-aged woman, was still comely. She was nearly as tall as he, with blue eyes and soft brown hair only just streaked with gray. She was inclined to be stout, but her height
enabled her to carry with dignity a corpulence which a strict attention to diet prevented from becoming uncomfortable. She had a broad brow, an open countenance and a diffident smile. Though she got her clothes in Paris, not from one of the fashionable dressmakers, but from a little woman ‘round the corner’, she never succeeded in looking anything but thoroughly English. She naturalized whatever she wore, and though she occasionally went to the extravagance of getting a hat at Reboux she had no sooner put it on her head than it looked as if it had come from the Army and Navy Stores. She always looked exactly what she was, an honest woman of the middle class in easy circumstances. She had loved her husband when she married him and she loved him still. With the community of interests that existed between them it was no wonder that they should live in harmony. They had agreed at the beginning of their married life that she knew more about painting than he and that he knew more about music than she, so that in these matters each bowed to the superior judgement of the other. When it came to Picasso’s later work, for instance, Leslie said:

“Well, I don’t mind confessing it took me some time before I learnt to like it, but Venetia never had a moment’s doubt; with her flair she cottoned on to it like a flash of lightning.”

And Mrs. Mason admitted that she’d had to listen to Sibelius’ Second three or four times before she really understood what Leslie meant when he said that in its way it was as good as Beethoven.

“But of course he’s got a real understanding of
music. Compared with him I’m almost a low-brow.”

Leslie and Venetia Mason were not only fortunate in one another, but also in their children. They had two, which they thought the perfect number, since an only child might be spoiled, and three or four meant a great expense, so that they couldn’t have lived as comfortably as they liked to, nor provided for them in such a way as to assure their future. They had taken their parental duties seriously. Instead of putting silly, childish pictures on the nursery walls they had decorated them with reproductions of pictures by Van Gogh, Gauguin and Marie Laurencin, so that from their earliest years their children’s taste should be formed, and they had chosen the records for the nursery gramophone with equal care, with the result that before either of them could ride a bicycle they were familiar with Mozart and Haydn, Beethoven and Wagner. As soon as they were old enough they began to learn to play the piano, with very good teachers, and Charley especially showed great aptitude. Both children were ardent concert-goers. They would scramble in to a Sunday concert, where they followed the music with a score, or wait for hours to get a seat in the gallery at Covent Garden; for their parents, thinking that it proved a real enthusiasm if they had to listen to music in some discomfort, considered it unnecessary to buy expensive seats for them. The Leslie Masons did not very much care for Old Masters and seldom went to the National Gallery except when a new purchase was making a stir in the papers, but it had seemed to them only right to make their children acquainted with the great paintings of the
past, and as soon as they were old enough took them regularly to the National Gallery, but they soon realized that if they wanted to give them a treat they must take them to the Tate, and it was with gratification that they found that what really excited them was the most modern.

“It makes one think a bit,” said Leslie to his wife, a smile of pride shining in his kindly eyes, “to see two young things like that taking to Matisse like a duck takes to water.”

She gave him a look that was partly amused and partly rueful.

“They think I’m dreadfully old-fashioned because I still like Monet. They say it’s pure chocolate-box.”

“Well, we trained their taste. We mustn’t grouse if they go ahead and leave us behind.”

Venetia Mason gave a sweet and affectionate laugh.

“Bless their hearts, I don’t grudge it them if they think me hopelessly out of date. I shall go on liking Monet and Manet and Degas whatever they say.”

But it was not only to the artistic education of their offspring that the Leslie Masons had given thought. They were anxious that there should be nothing namby-pamby about them and they saw to it that they should acquire proficiency in games. They both rode well and Charley was not half a bad shot. Patsy, who was just eighteen, was studying at the Royal Academy of Music. She was to come out in May and they were giving a ball for her at Claridge’s. Lady Terry-Mason was to present her at Court. Patsy was so pretty, with her blue eyes and fair hair, with her slim figure, her attractive
smile and her gaiety, she would be snapped up all too soon. Leslie wanted her to marry a rising young barrister with political ambitions. For such a one, with the money she’d eventually inherit from the Mason Estate, with her culture, she’d make an admirable wife. But that would be the end of the united, cosy and happy family life which was so enjoyable. There would be no more of those pleasant, domestic evenings when they dined, the four of them, in the well-appointed dining-room with its Steer over the Chippendale sideboard, the table shining with Waterford glass and Georgian silver, waited on by well-trained maids in neat uniforms; simple English food perfectly cooked; and after dinner with its lively talk about art, literature and the drama, a glass of port, and then a little music in the drawing-room and a game of bridge. Venetia was afraid it was very selfish of her, but she couldn’t help feeling glad that it would be some years at least before Charley could afford to marry too.

Charley was born during the war, he was twenty-three now, and when Leslie had been demobbed and gone down to Godalming to stay with the head of the family, already a member of parliament, but then only a knight, Sir Wilfred had suggested that he should be put down for Eton. Leslie would not hear of it. It was not the financial sacrifice he minded, but he had too much good sense to send his boy to a school where he would get extravagant tastes and acquire ideas unfitted to the station in life he would ultimately occupy.

“I went to Rugby myself and I don’t believe I can do better than send him there too.”

“I think you’re making a mistake, Leslie. I’ve sent my boys to Eton. Thank God, I’m not a snob, but I’m not a fool either, and there’s no denying it, it’s a social asset.”

“I daresay it is, but my position is very different from yours. You’re a very rich man, Wilfred, and if things go well, you ought to end up in the House of Lords. I think it’s quite right that you should give your sons the sort of start that’ll enable them to take their proper place in society, but though officially I’m secretary of the Mason Estate and that sounds very respectable, when you come down to brass tacks I’m only a house agent, and I don’t want to bring up my son to be a grand gentleman, I want him to be a house agent after me.”

When Leslie spoke thus he was using an innocent diplomacy. By the terms of old Sibert’s will and the accidents that have been already narrated, Sir Wilfred now possessed three-eighths of the Mason Estate, and it brought him in an income which was already large, and which, with leases falling in, the increasing value of the property, and good management, would certainly grow much larger. He was a clever, energetic man, and his position and his wealth gave him an influence with the rest of the family which none of its members questioned, but which it did not displease him to have acknowledged.

“You don’t mean to say you’d be satisfied to let your boy take on your job?”

“It was good enough for me. Why shouldn’t it be good enough for him? One doesn’t know what the world’s coming to and it may be that when he’s grown up he’ll be damned glad to step into a cushy billet
at a thousand a year. But of course you’re the boss.”

Sir Wilfred made a gesture that seemed modestly to deprecate this description of himself.

“I’m a shareholder like the rest of you, but as far as I’m concerned, if you want it, he shall have it. Of course it’s a long time ahead and I may be dead by then.”

“We’re a long-lived family and you’ll live as long as old Sibert. Anyhow, there’ll be no harm in letting the rest of them know that it’s an understood thing that my boy should have my job when I’m through with it.”

In order to enlarge their children’s minds the Leslie Masons spent the holidays abroad, in winter at places where they ski and in summer at seaside resorts in the South of France; and once or twice with the same praiseworthy intention they made excursions to Italy and Holland. When Charley left school his father decided that before going to Cambridge he should spend six months at Tours to learn French. But the result of his sojourn in that agreeable town was unexpected and might very well have been disastrous, for when he came back he announced that he did not want to go to Cambridge, but to Paris, and that he wished to be a painter. His parents were dumbfounded. They loved art, they often said it was the most important thing in their lives; indeed Leslie, not averse at times from philosophical reflection, was inclined to think that it was art only that redeemed human existence from meaninglessness, and he had the greatest respect for the persons who produced it; but he had never envisaged the possibility that any member of his family, let alone his own son, should adopt a career that was uncertain, to
some extent irregular, and in most cases far from lucrative. Nor could Venetia forget the fate that had befallen her father. It would be unjust to say that the Leslie Masons were put out because their son had taken their preoccupation with art more seriously than they intended; their preoccupation couldn’t have been more serious, but it was from the patron’s point of view; though no two people could have been more bohemian, they did have the Mason Estate behind them, and that, as anyone could see, must make a difference. Their reaction to Charley’s declaration was quite definite, but they were aware that it would be difficult to put it in a way that wouldn’t make their attitude look a trifle insincere.

“I can’t think what put the idea into his head,” said Leslie, talking it over with his wife.

“Heredity, I suppose. After all, my father was an artist.”

“A painter, darling. He was a great gentleman and a wonderful raconteur, but no one in his senses could call him an artist.”