CHAPTER XV
ENTER SIR SCORP
During all my stay at Bridgely Level I had been hearing more or less—an occasional remark—of a certain Sir Scorp, an Irish knight and art critic, a gentleman who had some of the finest Manets in the world. He had given Dublin its only significant collection of modern pictures—in fact, Ireland should be substituted for Dublin, and for this he was knighted. He was the art representative of some great museum in South Africa—at Johannesburg, I think,—and he was generally looked upon as an authority in the matter of pictures.
Barfleur came one evening to my hotel with the announcement that Sir Scorp was coming down to Bridgely Level to spend Saturday and Sunday, that he would bring his car and that together on Sunday we three would motor to Oxford. Barfleur had an uncle who was a very learned master of Greek at that University and who, if we were quite nice and pleasant, might give us luncheon. We were, I found, to take a little side trip on Saturday afternoon to a place called Penn, some twenty or twenty-five miles from Bridgely Level, in Buckinghamshire, whence William Penn had come originally.
Saturday was rainy and gloomy and I doubted whether we should do anything in such weather, but Barfleur was not easily put out. I wrote all morning in my alcove, while Barfleur examined papers, and some time after two Sir Scorp arrived,—a pale, slender, dark-eyed man of thirty-five or thereabouts, with a keen, bird-like glance, a poised, nervous, sensitive manner, and that elusive, subtlety of reference and speech which makes the notable intellectual wherever you find him. For the ten thousandth time in my life, where intellectuals are concerned, I noticed that peculiarity of mind which will not brook equality save under compulsion. Where are your credentials?—such minds invariably seem to ask. How do you come to be what you think you are? Is there a flaw in your intellectual or artistic armor? Let us see. So the duel of ideas and forms and methods of procedure begins, and you are made or unmade, in the momentary estimate of the individual, by your ability to withstand criticism. I liked Sir Scorp as intellectuals go. I liked his pale face, his trim black beard, his slim hands and his poised, nervous, elusive manner.
“Oh, yes. So you’re new to England. I envy you your early impression. I am reserving for the future the extreme pleasure of reading you.” These little opening civilities always amuse me. We are all on the stage and we play our parts perforce whether we do so consciously or not.
It appeared that the chauffeur had to be provided for, Sir Scorp had to be given a hasty lunch. He seemed to fall in with the idea of a short run to Penn before dark, even if the day were gloomy, and so, after feeding him quickly before the grate fire in the drawing-room, we were off—Sir Scorp, Barfleur, Berenice and Percy—Barfleur’s son—and myself. Sir Scorp sat with me in the tonneau and Barfleur and Percy in the front seat.
Sir Scorp made no effort to strike up any quick relationship with me—remained quite aloof and talked in generalities. I could see that he took himself very seriously—as well he might, seeing that, as I understood it, he had begun life with nothing. There were remarks—familiar ones concerning well-known painters, sculptors, architects, and the social life of England.
This first afternoon trip was pleasant enough, acquainting me as it did with the character of the country about Bridgely Level for miles and miles. Up to this time I had been commiserated on the fact that it was winter and I was seeing England under the worst possible conditions, but I am not so sure that it was such a great disadvantage. To-day as we sped down some damp, slippery hillside where the river Thames was to be seen far below twisting like a letter S in the rain, I thought to myself that light and color—summer light and color—would help but little. The villages that we passed were all rain-soaked and preternaturally solemn. There were few if any people abroad. We did not pass a single automobile on the way to Penn and but a single railroad track. These little English villages for all the extended English railway system, are practically without railway communication. You have to drive or walk a number of miles to obtain suitable railway connection.
I recall the sag-roofed, moss-patterned, vine-festooned cottages of once red but now brownish-green brick, half hidden behind high brick walls where curiously clipped trees sometimes stood up in sentinel order, and vines and bushes seemed in a conspiracy to smother the doors and windows in an excess of knitted leafage. Until you see them no words can adequately suggest the subtlety of age and some old order of comfort, once prevailing, but now obsolete, which these little towns and separate houses convey. You know, at a glance, that they are not of this modern work-a-day world. You know at a glance that no power under the sun can save them. They are of an older day and an older thought—the thought perhaps that goes with Gray’s “Elegy” and Goldsmith’s “Traveller” and “Deserted Village.”
That night at dinner, before and after, we fell into a most stirring argument. As I recall, it started with Sir Scorp’s insisting that St. Paul’s of London, which is a product of the skill of Sir Christopher Wren, as are so many of the smaller churches of London, was infinitely superior externally to the comparatively new and still unfinished Roman Catholic Cathedral of Westminster. With that I could not agree. I have always objected, anyhow, to the ground plan of the Gothic cathedral, namely, the cross, as being the worst possible arrangement which could be devised for an interior. It is excellent as a scheme for three or four interiors—the arms of the cross being always invisible from the nave—but as one interior, how can it compare with the straight-lying basilica which gives you one grand forward sweep, or the solemn Greek temple with its pediment and glorifying rows of columns. Of all forms of architecture, other things being equal, I most admire the Greek, though the Gothic exteriorly, even more than interiorly, has a tremendous appeal. It is so airy and florate.