I had listened to her with amazement and some perturbation. I realized for the first time the perils that lay ahead of me. I felt as though I were being dragged at her heels on an absurd knight-errantry, like Sancho Panza at the heels of Don Quixote[106], but in the cause of what she called fun instead of chivalry.
Why are you going to Istanbul, Aunt Augusta? I asked.
Time will show, she said.
A far-fetched idea came to me. You are not looking for Monsieur Dambreuse?
No, no, Henry. Achille is probably dead just like Curran he would be nearly ninety years old by now anyway. And Mr. Visconti poor foolish Mr. Visconti. He too will be getting on eighty-five at least, an age when you need a womans company. There was a story that he came back to Venice after the war and was drowned in the Grand Canal after a fight with a gondolier about a woman, but I never really believed that. He wasnt the kind who fought about a woman, he was up to so many tricks, he always survived. What a long life I have had just like your Uncle Jo.
She was touched again by melancholy, and for the first time I thought that perhaps dahlias were not a sufficient occupation for a mans retirement.
Im glad to have found you, Aunt Augusta, I said on an impulse.
She replied in a slang expression quite out of character, Oh, theres life in the old girl yet, with a smile so speculative, so carefree and youthful, that I was no longer surprised by Wordsworths jealousy.
Chapter 11
The Orient Express left the Gare de Lyon just after midnight. The two of us had spent an exhausting day first at Versailles, which my aunt curiously enough was seeing for the first time (she found the palace a little vulgar). I didnt get very far afield, she told me, in the days of Monsieur Dambreuse, and in earlier times when I lived in Paris I was much too occupied.
I had become very curious about my aunts history, and I was interested to arrange her various periods in some kind of chronological sequence. Would that earlier time have been before or after you went on the stage? I asked her. We were standing on the terrace looking down towards the lake, and I had been thinking how much more pretty and homely Hampton Court was than Versailles. But then Henry VIII[107] was a more homely man than Louis XIV[108]; an Englishman could identify more easily with a man of his married respectability than with the luxurious lover of Madame de Montespan[109]. I remembered the old music-hall song, Enery the Eighth I am.
I had become very curious about my aunts history, and I was interested to arrange her various periods in some kind of chronological sequence. Would that earlier time have been before or after you went on the stage? I asked her. We were standing on the terrace looking down towards the lake, and I had been thinking how much more pretty and homely Hampton Court was than Versailles. But then Henry VIII[107] was a more homely man than Louis XIV[108]; an Englishman could identify more easily with a man of his married respectability than with the luxurious lover of Madame de Montespan[109]. I remembered the old music-hall song, Enery the Eighth I am.
I married the widder next door,
She ad ad seven
Eneries before.
Enery the Eighth I am.
Nobody could have written a music-hall song about the Sun King.
On the stage, did you say? my aunt asked rather absent-mindedly.
Yes. In Italy.
She seemed to be trying hard to recollect, and I was aware as never before of her great age. Oh, she said, yes, yes, now I remember. You mean the touring company. That came after my Paris days. It was in Paris that I was spotted by Mr. Visconti.
Was Mr. Visconti a theatrical manager?
No, but he was a great amateur of what you insist on calling the stage. We met one afternoon in the Rue de Provence and he said I had a fine talent, and he persuaded me to leave the company I was with. And so we travelled together to Milan, where my career really started. It was fortunate for me; if I had stayed in France I would never have been able to help your Uncle Jo, and Jo, having quarrelled with your father, left me most of his money. Poor dear man, I can see him still, crawling, crawling, down the corridor towards the lavatory. Let us go back to Paris and visit the Musée Grévin. I need to be cheered up. And cheered up she certainly was by the waxworks. I remembered how at Brighton she had told me that her idea of fame was to be represented at Tussauds, dressed in one of her own costumes, and I really believe she would have opted for the Chamber of Horrors rather than have had no image made of her at all. A bizarre thought, for my aunt was not of a criminal temperament, even though some of her activities were not strictly legal. I think that the childish saying, Findings keeping[110], was one of her ten commandments.
I would myself have preferred to visit the Louvre and see the Venus of Melos and the Winged Victory, but my aunt would have none of it[111]. All those naked women with bits missing, she said. Its morbid. I once knew a girl who was chopped up that way between the Gare du Nord and Calais Maritime. She had met a man in the place where I worked who travelled in ladies underwear or so he said, and he certainly had an attaché case with him full of rather fanciful brassières[112] which he persuaded her to try on. There was one shaped like two clutching black hands that greatly amused her. He invited her to go to England with him, and she broke her contract with our patronne and decamped. It was quite a cause célèbre[113]. He was called the Monster of the Chemins de Fer[114] by the newspapers, and he was guillotined, after making his confession and receiving the sacrament, in an odour of sanctity. It was said by his counsel that he had a misplaced devotion to virginity owing to his education by the Jesuits, and he therefore tried to remove all girls who led loose lives like poor Anne-Marie Collot[115]. The brassieres were a kind of test. You were condemned if you chose the wrong one, like those poor men in The Merchant of Venice. He was certainly not an ordinary criminal, and a young woman who was praying for him in a chapel in the Rue du Bac had a vision of the Virgin, who said to her, The crooked ways shall be made straight, which she took as proclaiming his salvation. There was a popular Dominican preacher, on the other hand, who believed it to be a critical reference to his Jesuit education. Anyway quite a cult started for what they called the good murderer. Go and see your Venus if you want, but let me go to the waxworks. Our manager had to identify the body and he said it was just a torso, and that gave me a turn against all old statues.