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Commander Foxe, as it happened, was the first person I saw when we came through the door. He was talking to Lady Huntercombe. From a certain bravado in his ma
‘How well I remember when Charles brought you to luncheon here. Do you remember that too? It was just before he sailed for Kenya. We all went to the Russian Ballet that night. Such a pity you could not have come with us. What fun it was in those days… Poor Charles… He has had such a lot of trouble… You know, of course. But he is happier now. Tuffy looks after him – Miss Weedon; you met her too when you came here, didn’t you? – and Charles has taken to painting. It has done wonders.’
‘I remember his caricatures.’
Stringham could not draw at all in the technical sense, but he was a master of his own particular form of graphic representation, executed in a convention of blobs and spidery lines, very effective for producing likenesses of Le Bas or the other masters at school. I could not imagine what Stringham’s ‘painting’ could be. This terminology put the activity into quite another setting.
‘Charles uses gouache now,’ said Mrs Foxe, speaking with that bright firmness of ma
She looked a bit pathetic when she said that, making me feel in this respect perhaps Chandler had gone too far in his exercise of power. However, other guests coming up the stairs at our heels compelled a forward movement. Moreland red in the face, appeared in Mrs Foxe’s immediate background. We offered our congratulations. He muttered a word or two about the horror of having a new work performed; seemed very happy about everything. We left him talking to Priscilla, herself rather pink, too, with the excitement of arrival. The party began to take more coherent shape. Mrs Foxe had, on the whole, most dutifully followed Moreland’s wishes in collecting together his old friends, rather than arranging a smart affair of her own picking and choosing. Indeed, the far end of the crimson drawing-room could almost have been a corner of the Mortimer on one of its better nights; the group collected there making one feel that at any moment the strains of the mechanical piano would suddenly burst forth. The Maclinticks, Carolo, Gossage, with several other musicians and critics known to me only by sight, were present, including a famous conductor of a generation older than Moreland’s, invited probably through acquaintance with Mrs Foxe in a social way rather than because of occasional professional contacts between Moreland and himself. This distinguished person was conversing a little loudly and self-consciously, with a great deal of gesticulation, to show there was no question of condescension from himself towards his less successful colleagues. Near this knot of musicians stood Chandler’s old friend, Max Pilgrim, trying to get a word or two out of Rupert Wise, another of Chandler’s friends – indeed, a great admiration of Chandler’s – a male dancer known for his strict morals and lack of small talk. Wise’s engagement to an equally respectable female member of the corps de ballet had recently been a
‘Not colder than Rupe’s heart,’ Chandler had commented. ‘It was my suggestion. He may have a profile like Apollo, but he’s got a mind like Hampstead Garden Suburb.’
The Huntercombes, as well as the celebrated conductor, were certainly contributed to the party by Mrs Foxe rather than by Moreland. Once – as I knew from remarks let fall by Stringham in the past – Mrs Foxe would have regarded Lady Huntercombe as dreadfully ‘slow’, and laughed at her clothes, which were usually more dramatic than fashionable. However, now that Mrs Foxe’s energies were so largely directed towards seeking ways of benefiting Chandler and his friends, Lord Huntercombe’s many activities in the art world had to be taken into account. In his capacity as trustee of more than one public gallery, Lord Huntercombe was, it was true, concerned with pictures rather than with music or the theatre. At the same time, his well recognised abilities in his own field had brought him a seat on several committees co
Lady Huntercombe, as usual majestically dressed in a black velvet gown, wore a black ribbon round her neck clipped with an elaborate ornament in diamonds. She took a keen interest in music, more so than her husband, who liked to be able himself to excel in his own spheres of patronage, and was not musically inclined. I remembered Lady Huntercombe expressing her disappointment after Stringham’s wedding at the ma
Moving towards the i
‘Hullo, my dear,’ he said. ‘Fizz always gives me terrible hiccups, unless I take the bubbles away. You know Buster, of course.’
Commander Foxe, greyer now, a shade bulkier than when I had last seen him, was at the same time, if possible, more dignified as a result of these outward marks of maturity. He retained in his dress that utter perfection of turn-out that stopped so brilliantly short of seeming no more than the trappings of a tailor’s dummy. His ma