‘Edward, I’m so sorry.’ Sarah was out of breath and put a hand briefly on Edward’s arm as if to slow herself down. ‘I’m so glad you waited.’ All the way there on the trains Sarah had been wondering if Edward would write her little notes, as he had with the invitation, or would he actually speak? He spoke.
‘Take a seat,’ he said, escorting her to a wooden bench just outside the house. ‘We’ll go in when you’re ready.’
Sarah wanted to say Well Done. Nine consecutive words from Edward in Queen’s Inn would be a day’s portion, if not a week’s. Now it was tumbling out.
‘Have you been here before, Edward? Can you tell me about the place?’
Sarah watched as Edward collected his thoughts. She wondered if he had realized how much conversation might be involved on this sort of afternoon. Or had he thought they would peer at the pictures in silence?
‘Named after Sir Richard Wallace. Illegitimate son of fourth Duke of Hertford.’ Edward had reverted to staccato prose once again. ‘All Hertfords collected pictures and things. Wallace died. Left everything to wife. Wife lived here for last seven years of life. Famous for smoking black cheroots. On her death left all to the nation. Pictures and stuff, not cheroots. Now here for ever.’
Sarah wondered about the black cheroots. Where had Edward found that out, she wondered? Once a deviller, she recalled, always a deviller. You could root out facts about art galleries as easily as you could those about court cases.
‘Shall we go in? You’d better lead the way, Edward.’
Edward wondered if Sarah had been to this sort of establishment before. He was constantly amazed by the number of people who didn’t even know where the National Gallery was. He had planned a route round some of the more dramatic pictures, the ones that should interest a newcomer. The armour he had resolved to ignore, and the furniture he would leave to the end. Edward was bored to tears by armoires and escritoires and secretaires and writing tables and garderobes and commodes and wardrobes. He led them rapidly across the hall and into the Housekeeper’s Room.
‘This one,’ he whispered, ‘very bloody, but very dramatic. Painter French Romantic, name of Delacroix. Called The Execution of Doge Marin Falier.’
The painting showed the interior courtyard or loggia of a great Venetian palace. White marble stairs led up to a higher level. Lining the stairs and crowded round a figure at the top were noblemen, some dressed in rich costumes. A beautifully dressed Moor with an orange headband stared into the courtyard below, as if he were expecting trouble. At the top a Venetian senator held aloft a bloody sword. At the bottom of the steps, a few feet from the supercilious Moor, the headless body of the former Doge Marin Falier lay flat on the ground.
‘What’s going on, Edward? Why did this poor man have his head chopped off?’
‘Falier Doge of Venice. Meant to be constitutional ruler like our King Edward. Power very limited. Falier wanted to smash the constitution and make himself tyrant. Nobles found out. Nobles cut his head off. Byron wrote poem about it. Byron fond of blood and gore. Painter probably knew poem. Painter also fond of blood and gore, probably fonder even than Byron.’
Sarah looked closely at Edward who was perspiring lightly from all this conversation. She hoped it wasn’t going to make him ill.
‘Going somewhere bit more peaceful now. Still Venice.’ Edward led the way into the small drawing room where a pair of unusually large Canalettos looked across the Basin of St Mark from opposite directions. One showed the view from the mouth of the Giudecca Canal with the Customs House on the left out to Palladio’s Church of San Giorgio Maggiore. The companion piece looked out from the steps of San Giorgio back to the mouth of the Giudecca Canal. The water was pale green, the sky a light blue with fluffy clouds. Small groups of Venetians discussed their business on the quays. Gondolas carried cloaked men and bales of cargo across the bay. A couple of sailing boats lurked at the edges of the picture. The great Venetian symbols, the Doge’s Palace and the huge baroque dome of Santa Maria della Salute, reminded the viewer of the topography of the city. In both paintings there was an air of great calm as if Venice were at peace with itself and the world, as if these scenes had existed for hundreds of years past and would go on for hundreds of years into the future.
Again that hand briefly on Edward’s arm. ‘It’s so beautiful,’ said Sarah. ‘I would so much like to go to Venice, wouldn’t you, Edward?’
Edward nodded. ‘English on Grand Tour bought Canalettos,’ he said, ‘like photographs on your holiday. Only in colour. Time for some froth and fluff now.’
So far, Edward hoped, Sarah had not realized how deliberate their itinerary was. Edward was taking them to the places where he had done his homework. If Sarah had wanted to stop in front of the Greuzes or the Watteaus, Edward would have been lost for words. As it was he was heading straight for Fragonard.
‘The Swing,’ he said quietly. ‘Frenchman. Eighteenth-century. Name of Fragonard.’
In a dreamy forest of varying shades of green an attractive girl rode on a swing, dressed in layers of pink silk. Behind her, in the shade, an elderly gentleman in a dark green suit controlled the strings of the swing. Convention dictated that he was her husband. And on the far side of the girl, who was hiding him from sight of her husband, stood a handsome young lover in a pale green suit with a flower in his buttonhole, his hand stretched out towards the girl. One of her feet was much higher than the other on the swing, giving a view of her legs, and her slipper had fallen off her foot and was flying upwards through the air.
‘Edward!’ said Sarah, giggling to herself. ‘Just look where that young man’s looking! You’re very naughty showing me this one, nearly as naughty as that girl in the picture. Haven’t you anything more decent to show me?’
Edward smiled at her. ‘All right, Sarah. Not naughty, these ones. But fantastic all the same.’
Edward took her to the first-floor landing where the world of Francois Boucher awaited them. This was a world where the laws of gravity and reality, of time and space, had been suspended, a world where naked gods rode chariots across the sky and semi-naked goddesses scattered pink roses among the clouds. Clothes were the exception in these fabulous landscapes although some scanty shifts were included from time to time so the artist could show off his brushwork. There were putti everywhere, plump little cherubs rolling back clouds or performing arabesques in the sky or gambolling playfully on the surface of the sea. Almost everything was subordinate to the naked female figure. A judgement of Paris was constructed in such a way as to give three different perspectives on the female form, groups of nude women frolicked on the waves, a glorious naked Venus caressed her husband Vulcan, god of fire and armourer of the gods. These were the wilder mythological poems of the wilder mythological poets translated on to canvas in shades of pale blue and pink and diaphanous green, a world of rococo and make believe and fantasy.