The Disciple

Chapter II: Providence-2

He thought it a particularly cruel trick of fate that he should have been born in a place called – of all things – Providence. Even as a schoolboy he had found it odd that there were so many American cities named after classical sites – Troy, Alexandria, Memphis, Syracuse – with which they had not the slightest connexion, but the idea of ‘Providence’ positively discomposed him. Though John had felt both intellectually and socially vindicated when, at the age of fifteen, he learnt that Roger Williams, the founder of Providence, should have taken Hebrew lessons from Milton at Cambridge, he could never bring himself to share Williams’s conviction that it was ‘God’s merciful Providence’ that had delivered him unto the shores of Narragansett Bay, leading him to found the new settlement as a refuge for persecuted dissenters, for refuge Providence had never been to John Forde.

The world all before him and Providence his guide? Had not, he thought, the world all been kept from him and Providence been his gaoler? There was no argument, great or small, that would allow him to assert Eternal Providence, / And justify the ways of God to men.

When he thought of his childhood in Providence, there was neither illumination nor support; that which was murky turned pitch dark, that which was low was forcefully spurned. Sometimes, he was perverse enough to imagine that he would actually have preferred to have been the son of overtly objectionable parents – a drunken father and a shrewish mother, say – in that he would, then, have been justified in shrugging off his origins; as it was, he still lacked the boldness to subject his benign (though aggressively conformist) parents and four uncomprehending (though passively hostile) brothers to the thoroughgoing renunciation of which he fantasised. And yet, abrogate though he might the assertion of both eternal Providence and the sway of natural birthright, the yearning that impelled him to cling to that empty metal bowl was born of a concomitant, though unacknowledged, belief that he could never, in any worthy sense of the word, be master of his own fate.

And so it was that, after having carefully returned the object to its proper place, he continued, hand in hand with wand’ring steps, and slowly took his way through Christopher Noble-Nolan’s kingdom, grafting his own image onto its suggestive surface.

He passed back to the front hall, at the end of which loomed Sir Christopher’s study, while to the right were two doors, one leading up to the loggia and another giving on, John thought, to Sir Christopher’s bedroom. With doubtful and timorous steps, he pushed forward, till he found himself in the latter room.

Except for one gold ground picture, which John was pleased to be able to identify as being by the hand of the Master of Monte Oliveto, the walls were covered with red and black chalk Sienese Baroque drawings, but it was, above all, the seemingly commonplace objects – the shoehorn, the hairbrushes, the clock – transformed into precious possessions by virtue of their dressing in ivory, silver and tortoiseshell, that seduced him. He was similarly dazzled by the long row of sombre suits he found hanging in a mahogany clothes press.

Leaning forward, he gently brushed his forehead against sleeve after coercive sleeve. He felt physically aroused by these clothes – richly textured, perfectly cut, utterly confident – but also deeply threatened by them. He was tempted to plunge himself into this mountain of enticing fabric, to writhe about in it, but, true to character, he continued merely to glide his head along the unrumpled surface.

Pulling himself back, he peeked into the small adjacent bathroom and caught an unwanted glimpse of himself in the mirror. Had he stopped to consider himself, he would have seen an ordinary-looking young man of slightly less than average height, whose studied sobriety did not sit entirely naturally with his wavy hair, green eyes and freckled skin. But as he was not so much interested in the figure of himself as in the shadow of that figure, he turned quickly, almost hostilely, away from the glass.

When a visitor entered this apartment, he was instinctively drawn to the left, in continuance with the grisaille decoration of the L-shaped hall. There was, however, a door on the right, which brought one to another, smaller corridor, leading to an enfilade of three rooms parallel to the façade of the palace. Though high-ceilinged and well proportioned, these chambers provided no view and fronted the much-traversed via de’ Bardi, and it was clear from their disordered state that they were of secondary importance to their governor. And yet, it was precisely the indeterminate nature of these rooms that appealed to John’s imagination. He had heard the first on the right referred to as the ‘box room’, which he took to mean a combination of office and storage; the middle one, where he had set up the writing-table for Sir Christopher was called simply the ‘spare’ – though John still thought of it as the ‘guest room’; the third one, which contained a good deal of disassembled furniture had, so far, eluded labelling.

Dreamily, he wandered through this row of interconnecting rooms and began to imagine himself installed in this realm. Dream? Scheme? Where does the one (passive and harmless) leave off and the other (aggressive and nefarious) take root? In John’s case, it would be difficult to say, and he certainly did not know himself, for his motives, like those of most people, were neither wholly corrupt nor wholly pure. And yet, he did actively eschew the flagrant opportunism of an Undine Spragg or the, to him even worse, corrupting venality of a Lucien de Rupembré, as he felt that an entrance obtained by means of obreption would poison any taste of success. His confusion stemmed from the fact that he did not want to intrude; he wanted to belong.

Downcast by his own aspirations, he went back to Sir Christopher’s study and surveyed his own handiwork. He had, he thought, made a good show. Only three o’clock and it looked as if he had done a long day’s work, and so he decided that he could freely begin to browse in the filing cabinets, but now he would approach the matter systematically. In this way, he did unearth some personal papers amongst the welter of professional material, including a bundle of letters written by the schoolboy Christopher Noble-Nolan to his mother, Dame Sophia – a distinguished biographer to whom her elder son, so John gathered, had been passionately devoted – letters which were, to John’s surprise, addressed, ‘Dearest, most preciousest, most belovedest Mamma’, and signed, to John’s near stupefaction, ‘Your ever and always loving Tophereen’.

He also came across a packet of clippings and letters related to the violent death of Sir Christopher’s younger brother, Christian, who, like his mother, was a celebrated biographer as well as an admired travel writer. Content though he was with his discoveries, he was still dismayed to have found no sign of the mysterious Peter Mason.

When it started to get on for four o’clock, he thought that he should resume work with the books, in case Sir Christopher were to come back early. He knelt down and, slitting open a box at random, was arrested by the cover of a little paperback: Romanticism by Peter Mason.

He picked up the skimpy book and, turning to the back cover, read: Peter Mason was born in 1940. He is a recognised authority on eighteenth-century British art. He is also the author of Neo-Palladianism and Fauvism in this same series, Style and Culture. Mr Mason lives in London.

John was momentarily rattled to have learnt that Peter Mason was an art historian, and a seemingly prolific one at that. Flipping through the pages of Romanticism, he was, however, pleased to note that this was a particularly short and superficial bit of work.

In the same box he found another little book by Peter Mason – Post-Impressionism – from the same collection, as well as quite a large one, with more illustrations than text, entitled British Cabinet Makers and Furniture Designers. John noted that none of these volumes was inscribed, though a card, on which was printed ‘With the Compliments of the Author’, was tucked inside each one. He put these books on a shelf of their own and, staring at them, recalled Sir Christopher’s censure – needs someone to spur him on – with satisfaction. Clearly, he thought, an art historian working on the followers of Botticelli would be infinitely more valuable to Sir Christopher than a feckless dilettante living in London. He also did not fail to calculate his own age – nineteen years younger than Peter Mason – as a distinct advantage. Thus encouraged, he went on sorting books for another hour.

Ú

When Sir Christopher returned from Arezzo, John jumped up and offered to make tea, though he suggested that, today, they remain in the study, rather than go up to the loggia, ostensibly so that he might explain the filing system he had devised; in truth, he wanted to probe the mystery of Peter Mason.

After having poured the tea, John began, ‘I’ve blocked this long wall out for monographs. To be honest, I’m not sure if they’ll all fit. They might have to be restricted to only those on Italian artists, but that we won’t be able to tell till all the books are unpacked. In the corner, I’ve started to put books on iconography – Panofsky, Saxl, Gombrich et al. – and other works that should be arranged by author rather than subject.’

‘That all seems highly sensible,’ Sir Christopher said.

‘I think that the biggest remaining cluster of books will be museum catalogues. I thought we might put them along the left-hand wall.’

Sir Christopher nodded approvingly.

‘I suppose that there should also be a topographical section, though I am not sure exactly how much space that will require. And then, we have to find room for all the general books, history as well as art history, on the ah—’ John stumbled before uttering the next word. After a moment’s hesitation he blurted out, in what he hoped was a convincing accent, ‘Ré-nay-ssänce.’ Finding that his pronunciation elicited no discernible reaction – which he took as a favourable sign – he continued, ‘But the real problem is what to do with all those art historical books not directly related to your work – not to mention the stacks of biography, fiction, poetry etc. My idea—’

‘Yes?’ Sir Christopher broke in encouragingly.

‘Well, I thought that maybe the first room along the via de’ Bardi, what you called the “box room”, could be turned into a sort of office, with these filing cabinets lined against one wall and shelves put along the three other walls to house all the miscellaneous books – everything, that is, from the Goncourt on eighteenth-century French painting to surveys of Oriental art. That way, your study would be quite clear, with only the books you immediately needed to hand. I could even then unroll this nice-looking Aubusson carpet in here.’

‘This seems to me a brilliant plan. If you really think it possible, that is.’

‘Oh yes,’ John said confidently. ‘The only thing I wasn’t sure about was what to do with the books with personal associations? I assumed that you would want to keep all of your mother’s books together. I’ve arranged them chronologically, starting with her translation of Novalis’s The Disciples at Saïs in 1903, right up through her studies of Madame de Staël, Queen Christina and so on,’ he said, pointing to a long row of biographies and belles-lettres written by Dame Sophia Noble-Nolan. ‘So far, I’ve only come across two of your brother’s books. I put those next to your mother’s.’

‘Right you are.’

John found Sir Christopher disarmingly laconic on the subject of his younger brother but did not think it the moment to try to draw him out on the matter. Instead, he persevered in his plan – a plan, he hoped, so suitably dissimulative as not to arouse suspicion – for extracting information about Peter Mason. ‘I see that you also have a number of signed first editions by Dame Lettice Brompton-Corlett, who is one of my favourite novelists,’ John said, proud to know that this woman’s given name was pronounced, not to rhyme with Matisse, but exactly like the vegetable. ‘Do you want them filed here, in your study?’