It was this secret aspect of his work that gave him the air of Civil Servant, a conventional man, a clubman who might turn up anywhere in the art world, the country-house world, the fashionable world, and sometimes even close to the Court. Anywhere, in fact, where there were clever people who did not think him clever, or quite one of themselves—not a Cambridge man—and who therefore sometimes talked less discreetly when he was present than they would otherwise have done. He was thought to be rather a dull dog who somehow managed to have a finger in the art pie. But he was also a useful man who could arrange things.
For instance, he arranged that Aylwin Ross should receive favours that might not otherwise come his way and Ross, being what he was, showed gratitude but not for long, because he thought the favours the natural outcome of his own brilliant abilities. It was through Francis that Ross gained a good appointment in the Courtauld Institute, and began his rapid climb toward influence as a critic and creator of taste.
Saraceni had warned Francis to watch Ross, so watch him he did, and saw nothing but a brilliant, attractive young man whose career it was a pleasure to advance. He would have watched Ross at closer range if Ross had not been so busy with his concerns and a little inclined to patronize Francis.
“I really think you misjudge Ross,” he said to Saraceni on one of his yearly visits to the crammed, cluttered flat in Rome. “He is coming on like a house on fire; soon he will be a very big figure in the critical world. But you hint as though he were somehow dishonest.”
“No, no; not dishonest,” said the Meister. “Probably he is all you say. But my dear Corniche, I mean that he is not an artist, not a creator; he is a politician of art. He turns with the wind, and you stand like a rock against the wind—except when it is Ross’s wind. You are a little too fond of Ross, and you don’t understand how.”
“If you suggest that I am in love with him, you are totally mistaken.”
“You don’t want to snuggle up with Ross and whisper secrets on the pillow—or I don’t suppose you do. That might not be so dangerous, because lovers are egotists and may quarrel. No: I think you see in Ross the golden youth you never were, the free spirit you never were, the lucky man you think you never were. There is some grey in your hair. Youth has flown for you. Do not try to be young again through Ross. Do not fall for the charm of that sort of youth. People who are young in the way Ross is young never grow old, and never to grow old is a very, very evil fate, though the twaddle of our time says otherwise. Remember what that angel, or whatever it was, says in the great painting you have made: Thou has kept the good wine until now. Do not pour out the good wine on the altar of Aylwin Ross.”
Ross met Francis on an autumn day walking along Pall Mall.
“ ‘Thou look’st like Antichrist in that lewd hat,’ “ said he, in greeting.
“Jonson, I suppose. What’s wrong with my hat?”
“It is the epitome of what you have become, my dear Frank. It is an Anthony Eden hat. Sedate, gloomy, and out of fashion. Come with me to Locke’s and we’ll get you a decent hat. A hat that speaks to the world of the Inner Cornish, the picture-restorer—but of the highest repute.”
“I haven’t restored a picture for years.”
“But I have! I most certainly and indubitably have! I’m restoring it to its proper place in the world of Art. And it’s a picture you know, so why don’t you take me to Scott’s for lunch, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Over the sole Mornay at Scott’s Ross told his news with exuberance extraordinary even for him.
“You remember that picture we saw at Munich? The Marriage at Cana? You remember what happened to it?”
“It went back to Schloss Düsterstein, didn’t it?”
“Yes, but not to oblivion. No indeed. I was tremendously taken with that picture—that triptych, I should say. And don’t you remember that I spoke about a link between it and the Drollig Hansel we had seen earlier? The picture that was clearly marked as having belonged to the Fuggers of Augsburg? I’ve proved the link.”
“Proved it?”
“The way we prove things in our game, Frank. By the most careful examination of brushwork, quality of paint, colours, and of course a great deal of flair backed up with expertise. The full Berenson bit. Short of all that really rather inconclusive scientific stuff, I’ve proved it.”
“Aha. A nice footnote.”
“If I weren’t eating your lunch, I’d kill you. Footnote! It makes clearer the whole affair of that unknown painter Saraceni called The Alchemical Master. Now look: this is obviously a man who loves to deal in puzzles and hints to the observant. That device in the corner of Drollig Hansel could have been the Fuggers’ family trademark, or it could have been a gallows. A hangman, you see? A dwarf hangman. And who turns up in The Marriage at Cana but the same dwarf hangman, and this time he is holding his rope! And he is glorious in his dress armour!
“That bothered me for years, until at last I was able to get a grant—never do anything without a grant, Frank—to go to Düsterstein and persuade the old Countess to let me see The Marriage. She’s tremendously chuffed with it now, you know. It hangs in the best gallery. I stayed for three days—she was very hospitable (lonely I suppose, poor old duck)—and I’ve cracked the code.”
“Cracked what code?”
“What The Marriage is really about, of course. The Alchemical Master cloaked it all in alchemical mystery, and for a very good reason, but it’s not really an alchemical picture. It’s political.”
“You astonish me. Go on.”
“What do you know about The Interim of Augsburg?”
“Not a thing.”
“It’s not on everybody’s tongue, but it was important when that picture was painted. It was a scheme to reconcile the Catholics and the Protestants in 1548. It was a compromise that led up to the Council of Trent. The Catholics made certain concessions to the Protestants, the biggest one being communion in both kinds, if you know what that means.”
“Don’t insult me, you prairie Protestant. It means the laity receive both the bread and the wine at Communion.”
“Good boy. So—the Marriage at Cana, where Christ certainly gave everybody the wine, the best they’d ever had. But look who’s the principal figure in the picture: Mother Church, personified as the Virgin Mary, offering the Cup. So that’s one-up for the Catholics because they are graciously yielding something very precious to the Protestants. The married couple are the Catholic and Protestant factions united in amity.”
“There’s a hole in your explanation. Mary may be yielding the Cup to the Protestants, but she certainly isn’t giving it to the Catholics, and they haven’t got it yet.”
“I thought of that, but I don’t think it really matters. The ostensible point of the picture is not to shout its message to every chance visitor to the Düsterstein Chapel, but to offer an altar-piece representing the Marriage at Cana.”
“Well—what about the other figures?”
“Some can be identified. The old man with the writing-tablet is obviously Johann Agricola, one of the framers of the Interim of Augsburg. Who is holding his spare writing materials? Who but Drollig Hansel, the hangman with his rope, but he is in parade armour and thus dressed for a celebration, which he assists by holding the pens. Symbolic of the cessation of persecution, do you see? The Knight and the Lady in the right-hand wing of the triptych are surely Graf Meinhard and his wife—the donors of the picture, just where you would expect to find them. Even Paracelsus is there—that shrewd little chap with the scalpel.”
“And what about all the others?”
“I don’t see that they really matter. The significant thing is that the picture celebrates the Interim of Augsburg, by linking it with the Marriage at Cana. The message of the angel, about the good wine, obviously refers to the Protestant-Catholic reconciliation. Those women quarrelling over Christ—Protestant preaching versus Catholic faith, obviously. And The Alchemical Master has laid out the whole squabble so that the picture, if necessary, could be explained in a number of different ways.”