The Complete Symphonies of Adolf Hitler (20 page)

Not long after this event, Paul broke up with Christine and went to America. He enjoyed great success in the States where I believe he settled, but I never saw him again. I retained an interest in art which took a less commercial turn than my father’s. I became an academic and lectured in Art History at the Courtauld. My father lived to see the appearance of my book on Adam Elsheimer, the great German Mannerist, which I think pleased him.

I kept my contacts with my father’s world and was occasionally consulted by dealers. One of those who regularly called on my services, and an old friend of the family, was Adrian Martock. A bachelor of the most refined sensibilities and tastes, he operated out of a tiny but exquisite flat in Kensington Church Street. How he worked was something of a mystery, but he was someone who knew everyone and everything in the art world, and, unusually, he was liked by all.

One morning, thirty-four years after the suicide of Victor Lyons, I received a telephone call from Adrian: ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘are you, in any sense of the word, available?’ This was a familiar opening gambit. I replied that that depended. After chiding me for my defensiveness he went on to explain that he had a client who wanted to sell an Elsheimer and that I was the very person to come with him to verify its authenticity and provenance. I was intrigued of course, but I knew that his real reason for asking me along was rather more mundane. One of Adrian’s oddities was that he had never learned to drive, so that if he needed to visit a place that was not reasonably accessible by train or taxi, he would call upon one of his many friends to act as chauffeur. It is testimony to his charm that if ever I was ‘available’ I never refused him.

‘It is, my dear, in the wilds of Lincolnshire,’ he explained to me as we began our journey. ‘We are visiting a Mrs Foxley, the owner of the alleged Elsheimer. Knowing you to be a respectable married man and easily shocked, I think I should warn you in advance about her menage. She is a mature lady who lives with a great many cats and a charming young West Indian gentleman called Sheridan who acts as her companion, shall we say, though liberal shepherds might give it a grosser name. I have an idea that her finances are in decline, hence the need to sell the Elsheimer.’

All the way up to Lincolnshire Adrian kept up a flow of elegant conversation punctuated by the occasional direction. (‘Now, my dear, if you could take a right turn at this forthcoming cross-roads, that would make me very happy.’) I am not quite sure why I did not find him unbearably irritating, but I didn’t. The drive, however, was long and, though Lincolnshire has its advocates, I am not one of them.

Mrs Foxley’s house was to be found up a long, rutted track, amid flat arable land. It was large, rambling and parts of it were in disrepair. (‘I know, my dear, just too
Cold Comfort Farm
,’ said Adrian apologetically.) It seemed a bleak, lonely sort of place for a middle aged woman to live with her young black lover.

Sheridan, who opened the door to us, was tall, spectacularly handsome and very courteous. He seemed calm, but I detected an undercurrent of unease. He welcomed us in assuring us that Mrs Foxley would be with us shortly but was ‘busy just at this moment’.

As we entered I was aware of a familiar atmosphere. There is a kind of squalor peculiar to each of the social classes; and this I recognised as Upper Class squalor. The rooms were modestly sized and dimly lit, not notably clean: little attention if any had been paid to decor. There was fine furniture scratched and neglected, claret stains on chintz, waste bins belching gin and champagne bottles, copies of
Vogue
and
Tatler
lying about, a backgammon board in disarray, a general sense of undedicated idleness. Then there were the cats, roughly a dozen of them, who roamed about, or slept, most of the time oblivious of their fellow felines or any humans who intruded. As we entered the sitting room I noticed one casually eating some leftover curry off a plate perched on the arm of a sofa. Sheridan apologised and removed the plate to a battered Regency side-table.

‘You wanted to see the Elsheimer, I guess,’ he said. We nodded. He pointed to a smallish painting in a gilded frame above the fireplace.

It was indeed by Adam Elsheimer, in his usual medium of oil on copper, the subject being
Judith in the Tent of Holofernes,
a late, mature work of 1608 or thereabouts. The painting, like many of Elsheimer’s, full of atmosphere and Mannerist chiaroscuro, depicts the moment just before the Jewish heroine murders the Assyrian warlord. It is midnight and the scene is lit by a single oil lamp which Judith holds with her left hand over the sleeping Holofernes. In her right hand is the scimitar with which she will behead her enemy. The full glare of the lamp is on Judith’s face and it is her expression, the central focus of the painting, which fascinates. She looks down at her victim with detached curiosity mingled perhaps with faint disgust. Holofernes is sprawled over a couch in a drunken stupor, a great bearded brute, his mouth half open. He is probably snoring. And Judith seems to be saying to herself, quite coolly: so this is what a man looks like a few seconds before his death. She feels no pity; only perhaps, a faint, apprehensive excitement in that strange still moment before she enters the annals of Biblical heroism. Her face is the face of a destroyer, and, like many such faces, it has a kind of vacancy, innocence even.

I knew the painting at once, because it was one which, long ago, my father had sold to Victor Lyons. In that moment of recognition I sensed that someone else had entered the room unseen by me, and yet I knew who it must be. I turned round and saw Carmen.

She was dressed very much as when I had first met her. Her feet were bare as before and her dark hair, now streaked with grey hung lustrously down over one eye. Her figure, coarsened by time, was still voluptuous, but it was to her face that the thirty-four years had done the most damage. Something, hidden before, had been uncovered: rage and insatiable hunger. She noticed my stare.

‘Do I know you?’ she said.

‘We met long ago.’

‘You weren’t a friend of Victor’s were you?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Well, thank God for that!’ she said and turned her attention to Adrian, who explained that I was here to verify the painting’s authenticity and provenance. She asked how much she could expect to get for it and when Adrian mentioned an impressive but not unjustified sum she merely nodded.

‘I’ll be sorry to let it go. It’s the only one of Victor’s bloody paintings I really liked.’

I told Carmen that my father had sold it to him and suddenly her dark eyes were on me again. This time they were full of animation, but what feeling lay behind I could not fathom.

‘I know you now,’ she said. ‘You were the young man who came down for the portrait.’ I nodded.

‘I’ve still got it, you know,’ she said. ‘Like to see it?’ I did not reply. I did not want to see it, but she seized my wrist and almost dragged me out of the room.

At the back of the house was a conservatory of sorts. All the plants in it had withered from lack of water and the panes of glass were greened with mildew. It contained little except a few threadbare wicker chairs and some piles of newspapers and magazines, but the portrait was there. At some stage it had been taken off its stretcher; so, to be displayed, it had been pinned up on a wall where it hung, flapping slightly in the draught that filtered through a cracked pane of glass. It was as I remembered it, strangely, horribly animate.

Carmen still held my wrist as if she were forcing me to look at it. Her grip was tight and astonishingly strong. Ten long seconds went by as we stared together at Paul’s portrait of Carmen, then I noticed something which made my stomach turn over. The Persian Blue cat had come out from under the chair and was crouching at Carmen’s feet. It stared at me out of the picture as if daring me to expose its secret.

By this time Adrian and Sheridan were also in the conservatory. Carmen let go of my arm and said: ‘Now, you three go away and make the arrangements about the picture. I’ll stay here for a while. Go on! Off you go!’ And she made that shooing gesture with which she had impelled me upstairs to see Victor.

When we were in the sitting room again Sheridan said: ‘She spends hours sitting in there with that picture. I don’t like it. It’s not good.’

I am afraid we showed very little sympathy for Sheridan who seemed genuinely concerned for Carmen. I think he wanted us to stay and talk, but Adrian and I were both anxious to get away as quickly as possible. We concluded our business briskly.

As we were getting into the car to return to London, I turned to look back at the house and saw the tall, dark, princely figure of Sheridan framed in the doorway. I told myself that he looked poised and in command, but he also looked horribly alone. Adrian and I said nothing to each other until we were at least a mile from Carmen’s house, then Adrian sighed: ‘Oh, dear,’ he said. ‘I can see that we are going to have problems with this one. Carmen is clearly what your father used to call “difficult”.’

‘What did father mean by “difficult”?’ I asked. ‘I never got a straight answer.’

‘Nor did I. But I don’t think he just meant being an awkward customer. He never called me difficult, despite my being a fearful old nuisance, as you well know. I think he meant people without a centre to them. People without a beginning or an end. People who are empty and so perpetually hungry.’

‘Hungry for what?’

‘They don’t know. That is why they are empty.’

It was only a week later that I heard from Adrian that Carmen had died suddenly. ‘Heart failure due to alcoholic poisoning’, was the official verdict, but the manner of her passing was odd. She had been found dead sitting in front of her portrait, through which she had blasted a hole with a shotgun.

‘Difficult to the last!’ was Adrian’s only comment.

THE CONSTANT RAKE

The 1st Act, Scene the 1st,

St James’s Park
.
Enter Lady
LAVISH

attended by
TOWNLEY
and
CARELESS.

Lady
LAVISH.

Oh, Townley, Townley, as you love me do not mention that word ‘country’ to me. I truly think it is the most odious, provoking sound in all the world unless it be surpassed by the lowing of an ox or the crying of a sheep. Ah, Townley, I never knew till now that the sound of mutton was so mean and unmannerly. I shall never again taste a ragout with composure.

TOWNLEY.

Come, Lady Lavish, I have heard the country commended by some of quality. They say it is a healthy place.

Lady
LAVISH.

Healthy! Well, I dare say it is. Indeed there is nothing in it but health. A person may die of health there and not notice she hath done it.

CARELESS.

And I have heard it is a solitary place, not much noted for company.

Lady
LAVISH.

Company! Oh, pish, there is company of a sort, and a deal too much of it. For you must know, Careless, that the country is full of neighbours. There is Parson Dull and my Lady Dreary and Mistress Prattle and Squire Oldsaw. And they must be always calling on one another to tell how the weather is and if there will be rain and how the corn grows.

CARELESS.

But did you not have some amorous swain there to attend you and compliment you? Did you not find a good fellow to be Shepherd Corydon to your Phyllis?

Lady
LAVISH.

Oh, never doubt it, Careless. I found such a man, for I went into the country of a purpose to find him. Since my Lavish died, leaving me little but his bad debts, I found myself in want of a husband of five thousand pound a year and no vices. For there is no man in town, having such a competency, but is not thoroughly debauched. And I would not have such a thing as a debauched husband. They live without consideration and die without warning.

TOWNLEY.

And who is your gallant of five thousand pound a year?

Lady
LAVISH.

Why have you not heard? It is Sir Prosperous Fairacres.

TOWNLEY.

Fairacres. They tell me he is a very worthy man.

Lady
LAVISH.

Indeed, Townley, I never knew such a man for being worthy. But he is a very proper man, truly, though unpolish’d in his manners. Yet that is of small account, for, when we are married, he shall be little in town.

CARELESS.

What: And are you to stay with him in the country?

Lady
LAVISH.

Lord no, sir. I shall keep my town house and servants. I am not to be locked up in a field. It shall suit us very well. I shall hold to the town and he to the country and we will visit one another on occasion like good friends. A husband and wife should not be too often together: it confounds their felicity to be mewed up in the same place.

TOWNLEY.

And so your old acquaintance is not to be forsaken.

Lady
LAVISH.

No, indeed, I shall be seen as often in my box at the Playhouse and my acquaintance shall be as liberal as formerly. But, in deference to my husband, I will not allow any particular friendship among men. Nor will I permit familiarity from any man of low reputation, however polished his wit.

CARELESS.

Then we must all be chary.

TOWNLEY.

And what of that old beau who ever pursues you, Sir Lascivious Overspend?

Lady
LAVISH.

Pish, Townley, pray do not speak to me of Sir Lascivious. I have forsworn him.

TOWNLEY.

He will not be denied.

Lady
LAVISH.

I abominate the man. He is obscenity all over. For there is nothing so unpleasing to me as an old rake: they have neither the freshness of youth nor the wisdom of age. Their eagerness will constantly bring them to a pitch which their parts cannot match. Faith, I never gave old Sir Lascivious encouragement, but he was ever drawn on by his own folly which, even in the very springtime of his wits, can have been no small thing.

TOWNLEY .

Well, my lady, this same sapless shrub told me but yesterday that he was very eager to see you, and to render you a signal service.

Lady
LAVISH.

A service? To me? My gorge rises at it. Faith, I almost wish I were among my good neighbours Dull and Dreary in the country again.

CARELESS.

They say that nature there does not allow the branch to wither much with age but that ancient trees have a robustness you do not see in town. And so with the people.

Lady
LAVISH.

Oh, talk not to me of Nature. It is a very ill thing, I think, unless temper’d with a little civility. For who can view Nature without accusing herself that she wants much of it? And to accuse oneself is an indiscreet pastime, for it leads one on to praise others and then one might lose one’s inclination for the only theme of well-bred conversation: I mean, the disparagement of others and the exaltation of folly.

TOWNLEY,
aside

How just she is, and with how little benefit to herself!

As I read this opening scene I began to wonder if, for once, Montague Summers had been right.

In his monumental work
The Playhouse of Pepys
, he heaps praises on Henry Ovenstone’s comedy of 1683
The Constant Rake, or Sir Lascivious Overspend.
I had made a note of it but held out no great hopes of finding it. Neither the British Library nor the Bodleian had this work in their catalogues, which is unusual, but not unknown. Published plays at that time enjoyed a status little higher than pamphlets and other ephemera. Having established that it was the single dramatic work of a very obscure writer, I was not really expecting it to be any good if I did happen to find it. Summers’ enthusiasm for even the feeblest Restoration comedy had led me astray before. Works trumpeted as neglected masterpieces often turn out to be quite justly neglected. This is something I do not readily admit, as an academic, for whom all ancient documents should be equally valuable, but I am incorrigibly susceptible to literary judgements. It is partly my business, after all. In addition to being Congreve Professor of Theatre History at London University, I act occasionally as dramaturg to the Rose Tree Theatre in Richmond, which is dedicated to the revival of little-known but meritorious plays.

I found
The Constant Rake
one day as I was browsing in Parsons’, the theatrical antiquarian bookseller in Cecil Court off St Martin’s Lane. It had been bound together with Lee’s
The Rival Queens
and Ravenscroft’s
The London Cuckolds
at some time in the nineteenth century and the pages cropped so that their sizes matched. It was a villainous edition and the price old Parsons had pencilled on the flyleaf was absurd, but I had to have it.

Parsons was an elderly man with a searching look and dirt under his fingernails. I had discovered that he knew a great deal about the theatrical books in which he dealt, but that he guarded his knowledge like a miser. What little he did disclose was nearly always calculated to tease rather than inform.

‘Ah!’ he said, when I tried to ask him as casually as possible what his best price for the book would be. ‘I notice it’s
The Constant Rake
you’re after.’

I murmured that it was quite an interesting group of plays, but he was not deceived.

‘Summers once thought of bringing out a scholarly edition of
The Rake
, you know, and putting it on. In the 1930s, as I am sure you are aware, he ran the Phoenix Players which revived little known Restoration work. Wisely, he thought better of it.’

‘Why? Is the play obscene?’

Parsons smirked. ‘No. Not exactly. No more than others of a similar period and provenance. You’ll see what I mean. There was quite a story behind the first production. Mrs Barry scored one of her greatest successes as Lady Lavish but she never repeated the role.’

‘Why not?’

‘Peculiar woman, Mrs Barry. A
femme fatale
if ever there was one. Think of Rochester and poor Otway. . . .’ He checked himself, as if reining in garrulous enthusiasm. There was a silence while he studied me with detached interest, as if I were a rare insect on a window pane. Finally he said: ‘Do you intend to buy my book or do you merely want to grope it lovingly?’ Parsons had a gentlemanly way of staying just this side of rudeness by maintaining a bantering tone. Ignoring him I turned to the title page opposite which was an engraving of the author Mr Ovenstone. Beneath a luxuriant periwig could be seen one of those characteristic late seventeenth-century faces: slightly puffy with a pouting lower lip and heavy-lidded, protuberant eyes that brooded over you from beyond the grave.

‘Who was Henry Ovenstone?’

‘Illegitimate son of a nobleman, or so they said. Made a brilliant start. Wrote superb Latin verses at Cambridge, that sort of thing. When he came to London he found a patron in Lord Selgrave. Ovenstone wrote this play. He and Selgrave fell out, then Ovenstone died.’

‘How did Ovenstone die? And why did they fall out?’

‘All this information I’m giving you, I ought to be charging you extra.’

‘I thought you already were.’

I am no good at haggling, so I gave Parsons what he asked, and left him to his hoard of literature and information.

To be brief,
The Constant Rake
lived up to its opening scene. As a Restoration comedy it belonged to the boisterous, farcical end of the spectrum. It had none of the refinement of Congreve, or the elegance of Dryden, let alone the sentiment of Addison or Steele, but it was not without wit. It reminded me most of Shadwell, Ravenscroft and Aphra Behn. One scene in particular seems to prefigure one in Aphra Behn’s
The Lucky Chance
of 1686. In it Sir Lascivious has been tricked into a false marriage to Lady Lavish with Townley acting as the bogus parson. The ancient Sir Lascivious is eager to bed his bride but is being constantly put off by Lady Lavish with ever more elaborate and absurd excuses. Meanwhile, she is dallying with her lover Bellcourt on the other side of the bedroom door. Eventually Lady Lavish agrees to submit to the old rake’s embraces but only if he is fully fit for the ordeal. To this end he must enter the Rejuvenating Cabinet invented by a Dr Crankum. Dr Crankum is, of course, her friend Careless in disguise, and he, like Townley has been promised, but hitherto denied, her favours. Sir Lascivious is inveigled into the cabinet which is then heaved into the Thames. This incident is, of course reminiscent of
The Merry Wives of Windsor
but has a much crueller edge. Sir Lascivious emerges half dead from his immersion, though how he manages to escape from the cabinet under water is not explained. The play ends with the arrival of a
deus ex machina
in the form of Sir Prosperous Fairacres who claims the penitent Lady Lavish as his bride and carries her off to the country.

Apart from this slightly tame ending—and one feels that Ovenstone’s heart was not in it—the play is vicious amoral fun, fast-moving, full of a kind of ebullient rage at the follies of high society. Ovenstone spares none of his characters: even the one unequivocally upright person in the play, Sir Prosperous Fairacres, is obviously a booby. But the author’s fury is particularly reserved for the Rake, Sir Lascivious. By the end of the play his humiliation is complete and abject, and no shred of dignity remains to him as he is dragged off to prison for debt, having spent the last of his fortune on the appalling Lady Lavish.