Anthony Powell - Temporary Kings

For some little while before taking that decision, Tokenhouse had been behaving in rather an odd manner, having rows with publisher colleagues, laying down the law at dinner parties, in general showing signs of severe nervous tension. This condition must have come to a head when he exchanged publishing for painting; being simultaneously accompanied by a comparatively violent mental crisis about political convictions. No one had previously supposed Tokenhouse to possess strong political feelings of any sort, his desultory grumblings somewhat resembling those of Uncle Giles, even less coherently defined, if possible. To invoke Mr Deacon again, Tokenhouse had never shown the least sign of leanings towards pacifist-utopian-socialism. In making these two particular comparisons, it should equally be remembered that neither Uncle Giles nor Mr Deacon had ever showed any of Tokenhouse’s sexual constraint.

Whatever the reason for this metamorphosis, the final row between Tokenhouse and my father took place on the subject of ‘Munich’. It was an explosion of considerable force, bursting from a substratum of argument about world strategy, detonated by political disagreement of the bitterest kind. They never spoke again. It was the final close of friendship, so that by the time of the Russo-German Pact in 1939 — when Tokenhouse suffered complete breakdown and retired to a psychiatric clinic — there could be no question of going to visit him. There he stayed for the early part of the war, emerging only after the German invasion of the USSR. When I ran across him buying socks in London, not long after I came out of the army, Tokenhouse said he was making preparations to live in Venice.

‘Always liked the place. Couldn’t go there for years because of Mussolini. Now they’ve strung him up, it may be tolerable again. Better than this country, and Attlee’s near-fascist Government. Come and see me, if you’re ever there. Ha, yes.’

Although he had long since shaved off the scrubby toothbrush moustache of his army days, the ghost of its bristles still haunted his upper lip, years of soldiering for ever perpetuating in Tokenhouse the bearing of a retired officer of infantry. He must have carried out this migration expeditiously and in good order. Not long after our meeting, letters with a Venetian address began to appear in the papers, especially the weeklies, excoriating American foreign policy, advocating the ‘Nuclear Campaign’, protesting about the conduct of British troops in occupation of Germany, a great many kindred subjects too, signed ‘D. McN. Tokenhouse, Maj. (retd)’. Once he sent me a roneo-ed letter of protest about several persons imprisoned in South America for blowing up a power station. Since then we had lost touch with each other.

Before coming to Venice, I had felt that I should see Tokenhouse for old times’ sake, at least speak with him on the telephone. We had not met for twenty years or more, so that any such renewal of contact would require tactful handling. In short, I had thought it best to send a note announcing date of my arrival. The telephone, even if Tokenhouse had installed one, might seem too much like holding a pistol to his head. He had always been a man to treat with caution. A note gave time to think things over, make an excuse, also by letter, if he did not wish the matter to be carried further. The Conference he was likely to view with irony, if not open laughter. He had always affected to find the goings-on of self-styled ‘intellectuals’ ridiculous, although not wholly detached from appertaining to that category himself. I reckoned that Tokenhouse must be in his middle to late seventies. One thought of the ancient singer. If he were really the same man, he was much older than that, still going strong enough. His voice or another’s echoed on the summer night.

Iamme, iamme, via montiam su là.

Iamme, iamme, via montiam su là.

Funiculì funiculà, via montiam su là.

The bragadin palace was approached on foot. Gwinnett and I walked together. Shared acquaintance with some of the circumstances of Trapnel’s life had not made Gwinnett’s behaviour less reserved. If anything, he was more farouche than before. Possibly he felt that to speak of the Commonplace Book had been indiscreet. Although he had emphasized that Trapnel’s ‘remains’ contained little of interest, many researchers in Gwinnett’s place might have kept the fact of its existence to themselves. In that respect he could not be called ‘cagey’, as Dr Brightman had characterized him at times. This lack of response was something less crude than ‘caginess’, almost suggesting terms like ‘alienation’ or ‘withdrawal.’ No doubt he was merely one of those persons, not so very uncommon, with whom every subsequent meeting after the first entails a fresh start from the beginning. The anxious air always remained. I should have liked to probe his views on the Ferrand-Sénéschal article, no more than skimmed, but something about Gwinnett’s manner made this not the moment.

‘Did you run across anyone you knew when you reconnoitred the Piazza last night?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘See anyone from the Conference?’

Gwinnett wriggled his neck.

‘No.’

He drawled out the negative, making it sound as if he thought the question in itself uncalled for, a trifle intrusive. I asked if he knew what the Palazzo would be like. Gwinnett was more responsive to that. He began to speak of Venetian architecture, of which he evidently knew something, going on to recommend the book written about Venice by William Dean Howells when American consul here. Then he abandoned porticos and pediments, and fell into a long silence, suggesting a mood to be left alone. We made our way through narrow calles towards an area beyond the Accademia. I wondered how best we could disembarrass ourselves of each other’s company without too blatantly seeming to do so. Suddenly Gwinnett came out of his dream with a sort of jerk, one of his characteristic nervous movements, which were not necessarily resentful. He spoke now as if referring to a matter he had been pondering for some little time, using that habitually low tone often hard to catch.

‘It seems Louis Glober is house-guest at the Palazzo.’

‘The publisher?’

‘Glober was that one time. He’s been a heap of other things too.’

‘When I met him years ago he was in publishing. That’s why I think of him as a publisher. I was in a firm that produced art books myself. He came to see us.’

‘Glober’s been more associated with pictures.’

‘Paintings, you mean, or films?’

‘Movies. I guess he owns some sort of a modern picture collection too.’

‘He was keen on paintings thirty years ago. He wanted my firm to do a series on the Cubists. That was when we met. It was quite a funny occasion. I wonder whether he remembers. Do you know him?’

Gwinnett shook his head.

‘I just saw a paragraph about him in the Continental Herald-Tribune . It said the well-known playboy-tycoon Louis Glober was here for the Film Festival, and was staying with Mr Jacky Bragadin.’

‘I thought Glober an amusing figure. Since then I’ve never done more than read about him in the paper in his playboy-tycoon capacity. I suppose he’s a typical Jacky Bragadin guest. Did the Herald-Tribune name any others?’

‘Just Glober. It seems he’s come on here from the German Grand Prix.’

‘Racing?’

‘Automobile racing. World Championship.’

‘He’s in that game too?’

‘Sure.’

To the eye of a fellow American I saw Glober must present a very different outline to that of my own remembrance. If not exactly the daily meat of the columnist, Louis Glober was a reasonably tasty snack, always available on the back shelf of the larder, where public personalities of a minor sort are stored in case of need. He was neither dished up too often to cause surfeit, nor left too long on ice to become stale. Contradictory features hampered his definition. The Herald-Tribune had termed him playboy-tycoon, this type-casting to cover publisher, film-producer, sportsman, ‘socialite’, a lot of other more or less news-valued labels, most with some basis in fact. The last photograph I had seen of Glober had been driving a vintage car. Gwinnett thought activities like sailing or motor racing had latterly taken the form of promotion, rather than too laboriously personal a role. That did not prevent Glober from still figuring as a noted rider, shot, golfer, yachtsman, or whatever else was required by the context. A taste for amusing himself had not inhibited making money, though again Glober was said to lose fortunes as easily as win them.