The smoking room in Bedford Square had in it a large writing-desk and Mr. Darby therefore used the room not only for the purposes of digestive leisure but also as his study. Arrived back from Eaton Square, he instantly hastened to this retreat, anxious to get back to real work. ‘Society,’ he thought to himself, ‘is all very well, but for serious-minded and public-spirited persons there are more important things in the world than dinner-parties, house-parties, public meetings, H.C.S’s, and suchlike trifles.’ He entered the room with the same businesslike precision as that with which he had been accustomed to enter Messrs. Lamb & Marston’s, rubbing the palms of his hands together to show his eagerness to get to grips with work; cast an authoritative glance round the room; then seated himself briskly at his desk. He got out pen, ink, and paper, fumbled in a pigeonhole, found a scarlet notebook, opened it and laid it before him. He was about to construct a descriptive catalogue of the Darby Collection. On the sheets of paper in front of him he wrote the number, title and artist’s name of the pictures, leaving a large space under each. When this was finished he rose with the same industrious precision, took up the sheets and a stiff-backed blotter, brought from his pocket a gold pencil case, and went to the door. Passing Princep in the corridor on his way to the Picture Gallery he said: ‘I shall be busy until lunch-time, Princep. Please see that I am not disturbed.’
If Princep, instead of his formal ‘Very good, sir,’ had asked him in what way he expected to be disturbed, Mr. Darby, for the life of him, could not have told him, for nobody ever called, even at the appropriate hours for calling, and the telephone was seldom used except by Princep and Mrs. Princep for the purposes of housekeeping. Mr. Darby’s order could therefore have been nothing more than one of those meaningless formalities which add dignity to a dignified occasion.
Having entered the Gallery he switched on the full force of light and heat with a commanding gesture, and it was only the pale unreality of the electric light that reminded him that it was broad daylight and summer weather. But Mr. Darby did not, even to himself, confess to a mistake. He had changed his mind, that was all, in the autocratic, almost petulant way that millionaires do,—decided that daylight and summer would suffice, and with another commanding gesture he abolished the artificial aids.
Then, crossing the polished floor and stationing himself in front of No. I. Portrait of a Young Lady by Romney, he began to take notes. ‘The young lady,’ he wrote: then he paused, crossed out young lady, and substituted figure. That was better. ‘The figure is dressed …’ Dressed sounded to Mr. Darby’s practised ear a little commonplace. He cancelled it and pursued for a moment with knitted brows an elusive rabbit of a word. Suddenly his brow cleared, his spectacles shone, and with the pursed lips of the epicure he wrote, in place of the word dressed, the word garbed. With head on one side Mr. Darby considered this happy find. Yes, garbed was certainly much better. ‘The figure is garbed in white muslin, the head slightly inclined to the left.’ Then, recalling the phrase he had coined when he first caught sight of the picture in the little shop in Greenwich, he added: ‘Observe the natural elegance of the pose.’ Now for the pink sash. What was that word, rather an effective word, that writers on art often used when speaking of colour? Chord? Harmony? No. Note! That was the word. ‘The pink sash introduces a pleasant note and contrasts well…’ No, not well, a better word than well. Effish …? Effic …? Efficaciously? Not quite! Effectively! That was it,—effectively! ‘… contrasts effectively with the head … the mass … the shock! … with the shock of golden curls.’
So, for nearly two hours, Mr. Darby continued, lost to the world, completely absorbed in his fascinating task, often hurrying, in the throes of literary composition, to one of the settees in the middle of the room, so as to enable himself, with the pad on his knees, to scribble more rapidly and legibly and so diminish the risk of losing some particularly admirable phrase before he could put it on paper. By lunch-time the work was well in hand and Mr. Darby in great good-humour. He had begun it in a spirit of protest, almost of vengeance, against Sarah. His object had been far less to produce a catalogue for its own sake, than to prove to himself that his work was of infinitely more importance than hers, with her hospitals and societies and Savershills. This object had now been perfectly achieved. He was thoroughly pleased with himself and with the world in general and he was also extremely hungry.
As he opened the door of the Gallery with his pad and papers under his arm, the roar of the luncheon gong greeted him. ‘Really,’ he reflected, as he hurried down the corridor, ‘one never gets a moment to oneself.’
• • • • • • • •
After an excellent lunch, an excellent cigar, and a well earned nap, Mr. Darby found that mind and body were clamouring for physical action. The feverish labour of literary composition demanded a contrast, even an antidote. He summoned Princep, ordered him to telephone for a car to be round in ten minutes. He was resolved on an afternoon of picture-hunting. His pocket-book told him that Streatham was the next objective on the list; and a quarter of an hour later, upright, important, bowler-hatted, a pair of butter-coloured gloves lying on his lap, a single pearl glimmering in his subdued but lustrous tie, he was spinning down Charing Cross Road, while, away to the south, Streatham, utterly unconscious of its impending invasion, flaunted its art-treasures undefended. By tea-time, without a struggle, without even a murmur, it had yielded up a fine Lawrence, a passable Gainsborough, a large work ticketed ‘Salisbury Cathedral by Constable (?) 35 guineas,’ and several less important pieces.
The sack of Streatham was followed in the ensuing weeks by a series of brilliant operations. With an invariable and dazzling success Mr. Darby combed London (and by London is meant Greater London), swept the suburbs, and by a number of bold, sudden, and well-planned sallies rifled towns as remote as Sutton, Cheam, Croydon, Barnet, St. Albans, Bromley and innumerable others. Indeed those days were (or would have been, if all these towns and districts had realized what was happening to them) an artistic Reign of Terror. In a few short weeks a vast area was plundered and laid waste with a swiftness, a precision and a completeness unequalled even by the campaigns of Buonaparte. Few people who saw, through the windows of the smart bloodred limousine as it swept down Piccadilly, Whitehall or the Tottenham Court Road, the plump, upright, correct, and apparently conventional little man, gazing always straight ahead of him as if at an invisible destination, can have realized that a revolution was afoot or guessed at the ruthless determination and the fever of patriotism that burned behind that bland and child-like countenance. Least of all did the Trustees and Director of the National Gallery, wrapped snug and unsuspecting in their hide-bound traditions, or those Madonnas and Saints—Italians, Spaniards, Flemings and the various other undesirable aliens—who smiled in happy ignorance from their frames at the crowds of renegade Britons who stopped to admire them.
• • • • • • • •
When the Darby Collection numbered seventy-five pieces and the walls of the Gallery in Bedford Square were packed as tight as they could hold. Mr. Darby felt that the time was ripe for action. He was now in a position to back his plan for the reform of the National Gallery with a definite offer to carry it instantly into effect. It would be impossible now for the Trustees to plead that the idea, though admirable in theory, was impracticable. He desisted, therefore, from the labour of collecting and cataloguing, arranged for the Descriptive Catalogue to be printed and tastefully bound, and went to Hastings for a few days of rest and change of air.
At Hastings, as he walked on the sea-front or sat listening to the band, he allowed his invention to toy with the letter he would presently write to the Director of the National Gallery, for he had ascertained from an elderly gentleman at the Savershills’ that it was to the Director that he must address himself. ‘My Dear Sir’—Mr. Darby was sitting now in a hired deck-chair in the enclosure round the bandstand. He was dressed in a smartly cut double-breasted grey flannel suit and a soft felt hat, also grey. His spectacles reflected the summer sky. ‘My Dear Sir, It has long been a matter of … serious …’ He scowled at the word serious, turned it over, scowled at it again and forthwith discarded it. ‘It has long been a matter of grave,’ that was the word, ‘of grave concern to me that our National Gallery should so grossly …’ Grossly was perhaps a little strong. He must be careful not to alienate the Director at the outset. ‘… so sadly? ‘Sadly was on the other hand a little weak. Better remodel the phrase.’ … should set so little store by our glorious national artistic heritage.’ He woke with a start from his meditations. Something had struck him sharply on the knee. It was the lady in the chair next to him who had dropped her sunshade. ‘I beg your pardon,’ she said.
‘Not at all! Not at all! ‘replied Mr. Darby with a polite little bow, and bending to the left he fumbled between the chairs, recovered the parasol and restored it to the lady. She smiled her thanks through the crash of the band. Mr. Darby, crimson from the exertion, gleamed affably back at her and then resumed his reverie.
‘Dear Sir, I trust you will forgive the intrusion of one who … ah … who considers himself… or rather, who holds himself… second to none in his … his admiration … enthusiasm … in his zeal ‘—that’s the word—’ his zeal for our glorious national artistic heritage. It has long been a matter of grave concern …’ Charming thing that, and the band was playing it very well, really very well indeed. So much feeling! Very passionate things, those Indian Love Lyrics! Mr. Darby sighed a reflective sigh. He felt that his past life had been full of heartrending farewells and hopeless passions. ‘Pale hands I loved beneath the something-or-other, Where are you now? ’ he carolled inaudibly to the band’s accompaniment. ‘Where are you now? Ah, where indeed? ‘he asked himself with a wistful shake of the head, forgetting that, as a matter of cold fact, he had had neither the opportunity nor any particular desire to love pale hands. ‘Dear Sir, A genuine concern for the art of England prompts me to … Bless my soul, what a ridiculous pup, a cross, surely, between a Pom and a Pekinese: a Pekeranian, one might call it.’ Mr. Darby chuckled to himself at the brilliant invention. The pup paddled up to him and stood staring at him with its head on one side as if it suspected him of being a relation. Mr. Darby shook his head at it. ‘You’re a Pekeranian,’ he whispered. The pup dropped its tail, gave a single half-aggressive, half-cowardly yap and trotted away from him with its ears back. ‘What was it? Yes, a genuine concern … urges me … prompts me to … to … ah … a genuine concern …’
• • • • • • • •
The upshot of these meditations and of the bracing air of Hastings was that Mr. Darby, on his return to Bedford Square, spent a laborious morning in composing the following letter to the Director of the National Gallery:
‘My Dear Sir, I am desirous, on conditions which I should like to discuss with you, of presenting to the Nation my collection of masterpieces of the English School. The collection is housed at the above address.
‘I am
‘Yours faithfully
‘W. JAMES DARBY.’
It may appear to those who have never attempted literary composition that this document is a ludicrously small result of four days of claustration and concentrated thought. Nothing could be more fallacious. Simplicity and directness can be achieved only by the most intense and complicated labour, and to the epicure of style it will be obvious that this letter of Mr. Darby’s is the precious distillation of a whole flower-garden of eloquence. How many fine phrases and dazzling adjectives had perished that this quintessential gem should come into being! Mr. Darby’s study at the end of that laborious morning was strewn knee-deep with a viewless litter of verbs, adverbs, participles (past and present), protases and apodoses, among which the discerning might even have detected here the fragment of a paraprosdokion, there a ruthlessly discarded aposiopesis.
The Director, doubtless a man of taste, must have appreciated the quality of Mr. Darby’s letter, for he went to the trouble of polishing his reply to at least an equal degree. ‘Dear Sir,’ he wrote,
‘I have to acknowledge with thanks your letter of today’s date. A representative of the National Gallery will have pleasure in calling at your house at any hour suitable to you to inspect the pictures to which you refer. Perhaps you will kindly let me know if eleven o’clock on Friday next will be convenient.
‘I am, dear sir,
‘Yours very truly,
‘WILFRED MONTGOMERY,
‘Director.’
Mr. Darby considered this communication carefully as he sat over his breakfast. For a moment he was surprised that the Director should treat the matter so lightly and especially that he should propose to send a representative to view the pictures instead of coming himself. For a moment, but no longer. For one of Mr. Darby’s perspicacity the reason was not far to seek. Obviously Sir Wilfred Montgomery had realized all that lay behind Mr. Darby’s intention. The threat to the old misguided status quo had not escaped him; doubtless he felt that his very position as Director hung in the balance. Small wonder then that he showed no disposition to receive Mr. Darby’s proposal with open arms.
‘Well, my friend,’ said Mr. Darby, nodding gravely at Sir Wilfred Montgomery’s letter which he had propped against the teapot, ‘we shall see! We shall see!’
Meanwhile he despatched a note to Sir Wilfred, to say that eleven o’clock on Friday would suit him perfectly.