The Lyre of Orpheus by Robertson Davies
“I meant from his work.”
“His work?”
“I see you did not know of his work.”
“To what work do you refer? He had studied painting, I know.”
The Princess went off into another peal of laughter.
“I don’t think I understand you, Princess.”
“Forgive me. I was just thinking about le beau ténébreux and his studies in painting. But that was not his real work, you know.”
Darcourt glowed with delight; here it was, at last! What had Francis Cornish been up to during those years of which he had no record? The Princess knew. Now was the time to spill the beans.
“I am hopeful that you are going to tell me what his real work was. Because I have undertaken to write a life of my old friend, and there is a long period from about 1937 until 1945, when he became active with the commission that was sorting out all that mass of pictures and sculptures that had gone astray during the war, about which information was very scant. Anything that you can tell me about that time in his life would be most helpful. This portrait of yourself, for instance; it suggests that you knew him on terms that go a little beyond being a tutor in trigonometry.”
“You think so?”
“I know a little about pictures. That drawing was made with unmistakable affection for the subject.”
“Oh, Professor Darcourt! I am afraid you are a dreadful flatterer!”
So I am, thought Darcourt, and I hope it works with this vain woman. But the vain woman was going on.
“Nevertheless, I think it is ungallant of you to suggest that I can remember 1937 at all, not to speak of studying trigonometry at that time. I had hoped that my looks did not betray so much.”
Damn, thought Darcourt; she must be in her middle sixties; I’ve put my foot in it. Never was good at figures.
“I assure you, Princess, that nothing of the sort entered my head.”
“You are still too young yourself, Professor, to know what time means to women. We take refuge in many helpful things. My line of cosmetics, for instance.”
“Ah, yes: I wish you every success.”
“How can you say that, when you mean to expose my very special mark of excellence, my seventeenth-century drawing, as a fake? And yet I suppose you must do it, if your book about le beau ténébreux is to be honest and complete.”
“It cannot be honest and complete unless you will tell me what you know about Francis Cornish during those years for which I have no records. And I assure you I never thought of saying anything about your drawing.”
“If you don’t, somebody else will. It could be ruinous. The cosmetic business is quite sufficiently ambiguous, without any associations of art faking creeping in.”
“No, no; I would never mention it.”
“So long as these preliminary sketches are in your National Gallery collection, there is very great danger.”
“That is unfortunate, of course.”
“Professor Darcourt”—the Princess was flirting with him—“if you had known what you know now, about my drawing and the use I am making of it, would you have sent those five sketches to your National Gallery?”
“If I had thought that you held the key to the most interesting part of Francis Cornish’s life, I doubt very much if I would have done so.”
“And now they are utterly irretrievable?”
“You see how it is. They are government property. They belong to the Canadian nation.”
“Do you suppose the Canadian nation is ever going to attach much importance to them? Can you see queues of Indians and Eskimos, and Newfoundland fishermen, and wheat-growers, standing patiently in line to look at those drawings?”
“I am afraid I do not follow you.”
“If I had those drawings in my own hands, I could tell you things about Francis Cornish that would be the making of your book. They would inspire and refresh my memory.”
“And if you do not get them into your own hands, Princess?”
“No deal, Professor Darcourt.”
(5)
THE CORNISH FOUNDATION was assembled in full palaver. The five members sat at the Round Table, upon which was the Platter of Plenty, heaped high with the fruits of late August. Dusty purple grapes hung from the various bowls of the wondrous epergne; for once, thought Maria, the damned thing looks beautiful even to my eye.
People who live in beautiful surroundings grow accustomed to them, and even indifferent to them. Neither Maria nor the other four members of the Cornish Foundation gave much attention to the room in which they sat at the Round Table. It was a very high room, and had what the architect had called a “cathedral roof” which, in the fading light of day, seemed higher and duskier than it was; below it was a row of small clerestory windows through which the green-blue sky and the first stars could be seen; on the walls below hung Arthur’s fine pictures, which were his own choosing, for the late Francis Cornish, who had enough good pictures to outfit a small museum, had left him none. There was a piano, but there was so much space that it did not dominate, as pianos sometimes do. Indeed, there was not much furniture in the room. Arthur liked space, and Maria gloried in uncluttered space, having been brought up in the more than cluttered house of her parents, even before Mamusia had reverted to Gypsydom, and established the midden in the basement beneath all this beauty. The foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart was what Darcourt had once called the Gypsy camp, and Maria had been angry with him, because it was so true.
The Foundation sat at the Round Table in candlelight, assisted by some discreet lighting under a cornice. A stranger coming suddenly into the room would have been struck and perhaps awed by its look of wealth and privilege and the elegant quietness which is one of the avails of wealth and privilege. Such a stranger was Professor Penelope Raven; she was impressed, and determined not to show it.
Expectation was high, and even Hollier had returned early from one of his expeditions to Transylvania, where he rooted for what he called cultural fossils. How handsome he is, thought Maria, and how unfairly his good looks lend weight to whatever he says; Simon isn’t in the least handsome, but he does far more for the Foundation than Hollier. Arthur is handsome, but not in the distinguished mode of Hollier; yet Arthur can set wheels to turning and kettles to boiling in a way quite out of Hollier’s range. I suppose I am as beautiful, for a woman, as Hollier is for a man, and I know just how little beauty adds up to, when things have to be done.
About the fifth member of the Foundation, Geraint Powell, Maria thought nothing at all. She did not like Powell, or the challenging way Powell looked at her; he was handsome in an actorly style—lots of wavy dark hair, rocking-horse nostrils, a large mobile mouth—and like many good actors he was better not examined at too close range. If the Cornish Foundation should ever be presented on the stage, thought Maria, Geraint Powell would be cast for the role of Clement Hollier; his overstated good looks would carry to the back of the theatre, as Hollier’s fine good looks would not.
They were all present, and eager, because Professor Penelope Raven had returned triumphant from her search abroad for the libretto to Arthur of Britain, and was on hand to tell what she had found.
“I’ve got it,” she said; “and, as this kind of research goes, it wasn’t too hard to find. It’s always like The Hunting of the Snark, you know; at the very last moment your Snark may turn out to be a Boojum. I guessed it would be in the British Museum library, among the theatre stuff, but as I expect you know, finding things there—if they are as obscure as this—depends a lot on research skill, and a nose for oddities, and sheer baldheaded luck. Of course I traipsed through the opera archives and libraries in Bamberg, Dresden, Leipzig, and Berlin—and I didn’t find a thing. Not a sausage. Lots of stuff about Hoffmann but nothing about this opera. I had to be thorough or I would have been wasting your money. But I had a hunch that London was where it would be.”
“Because of this man Planché,” said Arthur.
“No. Not Planché. I was on t
“Charles adored opera. He was always encouraging composers to write new ones. He was really an awfully nice man, and he encouraged anybody who had talent. He had his eye on our man, James Robinson Planché, because Planché could deliver the goods; he was a first-rate theatre man, and working with him meant success. Kemble had heard about Hoffmann—all the Kembles were awfully well educated, which wasn’t at all the usual thing among theatre people then—and I suppose he read German, or had seen something of Hoffmann’s in Germany. He persuaded Hoffmann to write him an opera, and insisted that Planché, who was still under thirty and obviously started on a successful career, should provide the libretto.
“So—the work was begun, and there was some correspondence between Planché and Hoffmann, which is lost, I fear; poor old Hoffmann was in bad health, and died before anything much came of it. And Hoffmann and Planché fought like cat and dog in the very polite epistolary fashion of the time, so I imagine Planché was relieved when the whole affair came to nothing. As it turned out he wrote a little thing to replace it, called Maid Marian, with music by a clever hack called Bishop.
“The story, so far as I could dig it up, was in Charles Kemble’s papers in the B.M. Want to hear it?”
“Yes, we certainly do,” said Arthur. “But first, can you reassure us that there actually is a libretto, of some sort, for this opera?”
“Oh there is. Yes indeed there is, and I have transcripts of it right here. But I think it would all come clearer if I read you some of the exchange between Planché and Kemble.”
“Fire away,” said Arthur.
“This is the first letter to Kemble that I found.
My dear Kemble:
I have exchanged letters with Herr Hoffmann, and it would appear that we are working at cross purposes, as he has only a very imperfect notion of the English theatre as it pertains to opera. But I am confident that we shall arrive at an agreement when I have explained the facts of the situation to him. We correspond, by the way, in French, and I may say that his command of that language may be at the root of certain of our differences, for he is far from perfect.
As you know, I like to work quickly, and having much on my hands at the moment I wrote to Hoffmann as soon as I heard from you that he would prepare the music for a piece for the approaching Covent Garden season. I outlined a plan I have had in my mind for some time for a fairy piece which might as well be attached to King Arthur as to any other popular hero. In brief, it is this: King Arthur and his companions, wearying of the pleasures of the chase, hit upon the capital notion of establishing a Round Table with a view to raising the level of chivalry in England, which has been the source of some complaint from Queen Guenevere. (Opportunity here for a duet of a comic nature between Arthur and his Queen, who thinks herself ill-used.) Arthur knows how to deal with that, so he calls upon his enchanter, Merlin, to transfer his Court tous sans exception to the Kingdom of the Grand Turk, to see how ladies are treated there, and Merlin calls upon the Fairy Court, led by King Oberon and Queen Titania, to effect this change. But the fairy rulers are at odds, as are Arthur and Guenevere, and refuse their office. (Opportunity for a fairy ballet, which is agreed by everyone at present to be a sure card, and very pretty.) Merlin seeks assistance from Pigwiggen, the only one of Arthur’s knights who is also a fairy, and they unite their enchantments to move the British Court to Turkestan. Lively end to Act One.
Turkestan is the scene of the second act, and provides opportunities which I am sure the excellent Mr. Grieve will seize upon for scenic display of a lavish and very striking order. We involve the Grand Turk, who lays siege to Queen Guenevere, arousing the jealousy of Arthur. (Great opportunity here for mischief by Pigwiggen.) To Arthur’s dismay his principal Knight, Sir Lancelot, falls in love with the Queen, and he and Arthur quarrel and nothing will settle their difference but a duel. More business for Pigwiggen, who knows that Elaine, the Lily Maid, loves Lancelot and he has encouraged her. Must get Elaine onstage in Act One. The Grand Turk will have no duelling in his kingdom and, by an opportune stroke of chance, Oberon and Titania appear, having resolved their dispute, and transport the whole Round Table back to Britain. I thought of a scene here in which the Fairy Court, all carrying tapers, lead the English away from Turkestan, climbing a mountain in darkness. (You are aware that Covent Garden has such a mountain among its scenes in store, which was used in Barbarossa three seasons ago, and could be easily refurbished to repeat the great effect it made then.) Strong conclusion to Act Two.
Act Three is again in Britain, and the duel between Arthur and Lancelot is in preparation, but first we present a Grand Parade of the Seven Champions—all played by ladies, of course—with plenty of amusing valour for St. Denis of France and St. Iago of Spain; it might be stylish if St. Anthony of Italy sang in Italian, Denis in French, and Iago in Spanish. Follow this with comical songs in characteristic dialect for St. Patrick of Ireland and St. David of Wales and St. Andrew of Scotland, with perhaps a mock combat between the three British Champions which is resolved by St. George of England, who subdues all three. Under the stewardship of St. George—a parade of Heralds at this point and a great show of heraldry, which looks splendid and costs little—Arthur and Lancelot prepare to fight—real horses, don’t you think? Horses never fail with an English audience—which is halted by the appearance of Elaine, the Lily Maid of Astolat, who enters floating down a river in a skiff, apparently dead, a scroll in her hand proclaiming her to be a petite amie of Lancelot’s whom he has jilted. Accused by Guenevere, Lancelot admits his guilt, and Elaine leaps from her bier and claims him for her own. Reconciliation of Arthur and Guenevere, assisted by Merlin and Pigwiggen, and St. George declares the triumph of chivalry and the Round Table. Grand patriotic conclusion.
I do not need to explain to you, my dear Sir, who know the resources of your theatre so well, that I have prepared this plan with singers in mind who are at once available, with the exception of Madame Catalani, who is willing to come out of retirement, and could be tempted with the role of Guenevere if opportunities for her splendid coloratura were plentifully supplied, which presents no difficulty. If Hoffmann proved not up to it our friend Bishop could write something in his usual florid style. Otherwise, who but Braham for Arthur, Duruset for Lancelot, Miss Cause for Elaine, Keeley as Merlin (his voice is gone but I conceive of Merlin as a minor comic figure), Madame Vestris as Pigwiggen—with a costume which would give ample play for her magnificent limbs? Wrench would do very well as Oberon as he can dance, as can Miss Paton, who would be sufficiently petite, despite her growing embonpoint, for Titania. I see Augustus Burroughs as a fine St. George. Neat, do you not agree?
Now there, I should certainly think, we have a splendid opera fitted, and chances innumerable for the fantasy and grotesquerie which you assure me are Herr Hoffmann’s spécialités de la maison. But no. Oh, no!
Our German friend replies with many compliments in very stiff French—honoured to be collaborating with me, conscious of the éclat deriving from association with Covent Garden, etc. etc.—and then he goes on to read me a truly German lecture about opera. As he sees it, the day of the sort of opera I propose—he actually spoke of it as ‘a delightful Christmas piece for children’!—is over, and something musically more ambitious is at hand. There are not to be single numbers, or songs, for the characters, with dialogue to link them together, but a continuous flow of music, the arias being joined by recit
Very well. Music is his business, I suppose, though I am myself not wholly ignorant of that science, as I have shown before this. But when he laughs at my notion for the dramatic part of the piece, I think I have some cause to speak plainly. He wants to go right back to the original Arthurian tales, and dramatize them ‘seriously’ he says, and not in a spirit of ‘un bal travesti’—I suppose that is a hit at my Seven Champions being represented by ladies, which I am certain would go down well, as ladies in armour are, I may say, the rage at present—partly because of legs, of course, but what of that? Spangled tights for each Champion, in the colours of the nation represented, would create a very fine effect, and give pleasure to that part of the audience which is not intensely musical. The opera house is not, and never has been, a nunnery. He speaks of the ‘ambience Celtique’ of the Arthurian legend, not understanding, apparently, that the Arthurian tales have long been—by conquest, I suppose—the property of England, and therefore of her national opera house.
But do not discompose yourself, my dear friend. I am writing a reply that will explain some things to Herr Hoffmann which he clearly does not know, and we shall proceed very amicably, I am confident, once I have done so.
I have the honour to subscribe myself,
Yours very sincerely,
JAMES ROBINSON PLANCHÉ.”