Jonathan Buckley - The Great Concert of the Night

Sold yesterday at auction in London, to an anonymous private buyer, for a modest sum: The Consultation, c. 1690, the work of an anonymous pupil of Jan van Mieris, eldest son of the celebrated Frans van Mieris the Elder of Leiden. Removed from the public gaze, the painting has been diminished; it has become a possession again. Also sold: the glass jellyfish – a fine example of the work of Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka; our copy of William Hunter’s Anatomia uteri humani gravidi; and René Laennec’s Traité de l’auscultation mediate, in which the stethoscope, Laennec’s invention, was first described.

Though many curators have admitted to considering such sales in recent months, the Museum Association deems our deaccessions to be unethical, and accordingly has barred the council’s museum service from MA membership. But the roof might now be repaired.

Seven or eight people presented themselves for the tour: Imogen the youngest by three decades at least. We would have started at The Consultation. Had it been displayed in a major gallery, The Consultation would not have been conspicuous, but it was the most accomplished painting in the Sanderson-Perceval collection. The gleam of the knives was expertly simulated, and differentiated from the gleam of the pewter jug; likewise the various textures of the maidservant’s dimpled hand, the waxen face of the worried young man, his leather gloves, the dead skin of the chicken on the table, the fabrics. Skill was evident in the glow of the candlelit water, wine and urine. The picture was almost certainly painted in Rome, where Jan van Mieris spent his final years. He died in 1690, at the age of twenty-nine, having been in poor health for much of his life; he might be the patient in this picture, I told the group. Imogen took a step closer, to peer at the pallid young patient.

The Consultation was acquired in 1840 by John Perceval, I would have continued. His ancestor, Richard Perceval, the founder of the Perceval dynasty of physicians, was renowned for the uncommon speed with which he removed kidney stones. The museum has no image of the expeditious Dr Perceval, but it does have an illustration of the procedure as it would have been conducted at the time. I indicated the print that shows a supine man, with legs splayed and feet hoisted by two burly men, stoically accepting the insertion of the rod.

Walking through town, one day before the end of shooting, Imogen apologised for talking too much. ‘But you’re a top-class listener,’ she said. ‘You’d have made a good doctor, in the eighteenth century.’ And she reminded me that, in the course of the tour, I had explained that a physician at that time would have been a listener above all: the patient would relate the story of his or her illness, and on the basis of this story the doctor would pronounce his judgement. Diagnosis by letter was not unusual, I had told the group, pointing out the letter written to Cornelius Perceval by a grateful patient whom Perceval had never actually met. ‘See – I was paying attention,’ said Imogen; then the kiss.

I have not a single line of Imogen’s handwriting. Any day, at the museum, I can examine the letters of Adeline Hewitt and Charles Perceval; I can enjoy that residue of their intimacy. Every handwritten word is intimate: the ink is an immediate trace of the thinking mind, and of the writer’s body. Before long, pens will be employed solely for signatures, if at all.

My grandfather’s pen. ‘Moss-Agate’ the gorgeous mottled green and brown is called, and the material is celluloid, a lovely liquid word, so pleasing to pronounce, I thought as a child. It was from my grandfather that I first heard it, I believe. The beautiful instrument was the first plastic pen to be made by the Waterman company; the plastic feels and looks like a valuable substance. The Waterman name, cut into the barrel, has been blurred by my grandfather’s fingers. I remember seeing the pen in the room in which my grandfather had died. The pillows were still on the bed; the upper one was shaped like a bowl, as if cradling the head of his ghost. The marks of his teeth were on the mouthpiece of the pipe that lay on the dressing table.

An incident, after work. For a few seconds I did not recognise the man who crossed the street from North Parade, calling my name. The beard, profuse and ungroomed, was a disguise; then the features of William’s face became discernible. He ran through traffic to reach me, maintaining the smile throughout, as if this encounter were an extraordinary stroke of good luck.

‘Great to see you again,’ he said. The handshake was forceful.

‘How are you?’ I asked. I would estimate that he was around thirty pounds heavier than when I’d last seen him; an encouraging sign. And his sweatshirt, though not new, was clean, as were the jeans.

‘I’m back,’ said William, taking a step back and raising his hands like a man accepting applause. ‘Older. Wiser. Hairier.’

‘So where have you been?’ I asked.

‘Where haven’t I been?’ said William. The full answer lasted for ten minutes, with no pause long enough to permit anything other than an expression of continued interest. With the van-owning friend he had travelled slowly along the south coast as far as Hastings, where they’d stayed for a while, renting a couple of rooms for as long as the work held out, then they’d cut up through East Anglia, which was a dead loss, before heading west into the Midlands, where the companions had fallen out irretrievably, after many disagreements. William had stayed in Birmingham for a year, fitting tyres mostly, then moved northwards, through Sheffield and Leeds and across to Manchester and Liverpool, then back to Leeds and up as far as Newcastle. He’d been a removals man, a labourer, a warehouseman, a courier, a house painter, a street sweeper and God knows what else. He’d worked in recycling centres and in some of the nation’s nastiest fast-food outlets. ‘Nothing you’d want to make a career out of,’ as he said. At one point he’d had the idea that some sort of reconciliation with his mother might be possible. He lasted less than a fortnight in the spare room. Talking to his stepfather was like standing in front of a freezer with its door open.

Later, when he’d been shovelling asphalt with a lad whose father had recently died, he’d thought he might attempt to make contact with his real father. He had found him without too much difficulty. That too was a disaster. No details given. ‘A self-pitying slob,’ was William’s verdict. Things went ‘downhill a bit’ after William had walked out of the shambles that his father called home. He’d ended up on the streets. Standing on Hungerford Bridge at two in the morning, he had considered whether drowning might be the answer. Instead he asked himself: ‘Where have I been happiest?’ And the answer was that he had been happiest here, he told me. ‘So here I am,’ he said, ‘and here you are.’ Then he added, perhaps observing a reaction: ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to camp on your doorstep.’ He asked me for the time; he had to meet someone who might need a hand with some houseclearing. Patting me on the arm, as if in encouragement, he apologised for having to leave. ‘See you around,’ he said, and away he hurried.