One or two society newspapers seem to refer to him in lampoons as Sir Jesting Peter; but I cannot imagine what the lampoons mean. No doubt they refer to matters well known in his little clique. Boswell does not allude to him. A Voltairean would hardly have been welcomed by Dr. Johnson.
“I believe that he built this theatre and devoted it to the elegant French idea of art as a protest against the government’s policy against France and the American colonies. He must have been a brave man, who put on a translation from the French here, in the days of Squire Western and so forth; but beyond all doubt, he did. Who came to the performance or performances I cannot tell. The local bucks would probably have been much puzzled. The one play which we know to have been performed here was Zimoire the Terrible. The fashion of the theatre has turned away from that kind of thing, which was then much esteemed. It is a play in which the hero rants and the heroine pleads; finally the hero relents and is magnanimous, and the heroine says at great length that few things are so beautiful as virtue. Zimoire is an Eastern potentate; Carbante, his prize of war, is about to be added to his harem; Leandre, her lover, follows her to the capital and plots to rescue her. They are captured as they fly and threatened with torture; Carbante pleads, and Zimoire releases and pensions them. You will see from this that the plot offers good opportunities for both fierce and pathetic declamation. But it was, and was proclaimed to be, a translation from the French, when opinion was hostile to France and French things. One, therefore, concludes that Jesting Peter was a man of intellectual courage, or matchless insolence, according to your political opinions. After this, Sir Jocelyn seems to have faded out; there are no more poems by him in the accustomed papers. I cannot find that he wrote any other thing. He never married. Matilda’s eyes lighted some more favoured swain. I am inclined to think that his health broke down soon after 1777. He died in 1780, aged thirty-five, leaving no will; a cousin succeeded to the property. Local historians have not mentioned him, if we except Trott in 1822, who calls him the Eccentric Sir Jocelyn. Local guide-books mention the theatre. I am sorry that I cannot tell you more about him. I have little doubt that somewhere in England, perhaps not far from where we are, there is some portrait of him, perhaps by Reynolds, perhaps by Gainsborough, or perhaps by one of those lesser elegant painters, who had the favour and the patronage of the exclusives. If there were any such portrait, it was never engraved. I like to think that the elegant young man may have met the vehement young Blake and exchanged sympathies about intellectual liberty.”
After the party, he talked with Margaret about Sir Jocelyn. She said:
“It is very curious, Fram, but all the time while you were speaking, I felt that Sir Jocelyn was here, very happy, that he should be remembered. I am so glad that you have restored the place as a theatre. He must have given very much choice thought and care to make it one; and it is so exquisite; the proportions are so charming. You wondered who came to the performances of Zimoire; don’t you think that a rich eccentric, like this, who was called Jesting Peter, might give the play as a social duty, without caring, really, whether the people enjoyed it or not? He would enjoy giving it, and might have taken great pains with it. And I dare say a houseful of jesting friends, including Matilda, enjoyed watching the contortions of Squire Western during the performance. And all the countryside would have enjoyed the bustle and stir of the carriages and costumes, and remembered the declamations, too, perhaps.”
“This countryside would have been Puritan,” he said. “They would have expected hell to open and swallow the whole lot up.”
“That would have been part of the fun perhaps,” she said, “to wait for them all to be damned,”
“It must have been a puzzle to them,” he said, “when nothing happened. But then, they always get out of that by saying that the ways of Providence are inscrutable. Now what d’ye think, my Peggy? Here we are with this theatre, a very lovely little building; just the very thing, as you notice, for a kennels or a fowl-house. What are we to do with it? I say, why not use it for lectures and picture-shows? There’s lots of talent buried among these country workers; but what chance have they of seeing good modern work or decent design? None. None whatever. For instance, over in Stubbington, they’ve got a monumental mason, employing three or four men. I was talking to them the other day. They were quite clever fellows, but had never seen a decent modern sculpture in their lives. Think what it might be to those fellows, if they could come here and see a chap like old Tick demonstrating with clay or a block of marble. I vote we give shows of modern art here, and get a lot of good chaps in the different lines to come down and talk. I believe a whole lot of working people would be interested.”
“I’m sure they would,” she said. “Have you no thoughts of ever doing plays here?”
“Yes, but not for some time. I want to get a lot of young people into the way of coming here first, for discussion and to see works of art. Then, when I’ve got the people, we can turn them onto that, if they seem inclined that way.”
“It seems a pity not to use this charming little theatre for plays,” she said; “but I do a little wonder where the audience would come from. We are far from any community.”
“The motor has made all communities near,” he said. “If you dangle a good bait, or dangle a bad bait cleverly, you’ll get all the community you can manage. You’ll find that we shall be a good bait, and the fish will rise.”
They had walked out from the theatre into the open. It was a lovely May day; the plum and pear blossom was white in the orchards; some of the apple-trees were touched with bud. They looked at the men busy about the house, and listened to the noise of the work going forward, saws, hammers and the rush of planes. To the west was Spirr Wood, with its fir-trees like dark masts under sail. To the north, the low wooded hills stretched; a noise of rooks came from the rookery in one of the woods.
“What is that wood called?” she asked.
“It’s a part of what is called Stubbington Great Wood,” he said. “It belongs to a crusted old Tory called Colonel Purple Tittup. That’s his name and that’s his nature. He lives in a big house there; lots of land and no money, they say.”
“It’s a very beautiful wood,” she said.
“I don’t believe it really is,” he said. “I was up there not long ago on a wall; it didn’t look so well, near at hand. It’s all on this Waste, as they call it, where nothing really does. ‘Nothing’ll grow on the Waste,’ they say.”
“Fram,” she said, “do you really believe in a Waste? You were saying that art only fails from want of encouragement. Does not an estate only fail from the same cause? This Waste, as they call it, is only a stretch of land with some chemical deficiencies. If you fed those chemicals to the land, things would do there. Don’t you think it would be fun to try?”