That came about because Francis was a member, though not a very active one, of the Oxford Union. He would not have joined if he had not been assured in his first year that it was the thing to do. He sometimes attended debates, and on two or three occasions he had even spoken briefly on motions related to art or aesthetics about which he had something to say. Because he knew what he was talking about, when most of the other debaters did not, and because he spoke what he believed to be the truth in plain and uncompromising language, he gained a modest reputation as a wit, which amazed him greatly. He was not interested in politics, which was the great preoccupation of the Union, and his interest in the place was chiefly in its dining-room.
In his second year, however, a House Committee that was looking for something significant to do decided that the lamentable state of the frescoes around the walls of the Union’s library must be remedied. What was to be done? The budding politicians of the membership knew nothing much about painting, though they were sufficiently aware of the necessity to have some sort of taste to decorate their rooms with reproductions of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers or—greatly daring—the red horses of Franz Marc. The library frescoes were, they knew, of significance; had they not been done by leaders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood? This was just the kind of thing the Union liked and understood, for they could make a debate of it: should relics of a dead past be brought back to life, or should the Union advance fearlessly into the future, getting the frescoes replaced by artists of undoubted reputation, but equally undoubted fearless modernity?
The first thing, of course, was to find out if the frescoes could be restored at all, and to this end, guided by a couple of dons who knew something about art, the Union House Committee invited the celebrated Tancred Saraceni to examine them.
The great man appeared, and demanded a ladder, from which he examined the frescoes with a flashlight and picked at them with a penknife; descending, he declared himself ready for lunch.
Francis was not a member of the House Committee but he was invited to lunch because he was supposed, from his three or four brief speeches, to know something about art. Did he not do those drawings, almost but not quite caricatures, for Isis? Was he not known to have drawings—”originals”, not reproductions—in his rooms? Just the man to talk to Saraceni. And, when asked, he was eager to meet the man who had the reputation of being the greatest restorer of pictures in the world. Even French museums, so reluctant to look outside their own country for art experts, had called upon Saraceni more than once.
Saraceni was small, very dark, and very neat. He did not look particularly like an artist; the only unusual aspect of his appearance was a pair of discreet side-whiskers that crept down beside his ears and stopped modestly just at the point where they could be described as side-whiskers at all. His customary expression was a smile, which was not mirthful, but ironic. Behind spectacles his brown eyes wandered, not perfectly synchronized, so that he sometimes seemed to be looking in two directions at once. He spoke softly and his English was perfect. Too perfect, for it betrayed him as a foreigner.
“The points to be considered are, first, whether the frescoes can be restored at all, and second, are they worth the cost of restoration?” said the President of the Union, who saw himself as a cabinet minister in embryo, and liked clarifying the obvious. “What is your frank opinion, sir?”
“As works of art, their value is very much a matter of debate,” said Saraceni, the ironical smile working at full force. “If I restore them, or supervise their restoration, they will appear as they were originally seen when the artists took down their scaffolds seventy-five years ago, and in their restored form they will last for two or three hundred years, if they are properly cared for. But of course then they will be paintings by me, or my pupils, painted precisely as Rossetti and Burne-Jones and Morris originally meant them to be, but in greatly superior paint, on properly prepared surfaces, and sealed with substances that will preserve them from damp, and smoke and the influences that have turned them into almost incomprehensible smudges. In short, I shall do professionally what the original painters did as virtual amateurs. They knew nothing about painting on walls. They were enthusiasts.” He spoke the last word over a tiny giggle.
“But isn’t that what restoration always is?” asked another committee member.
“Oh no; a picture that has suffered damage through war, or accident, may be repaired, re-backed, re-painted where nothing of the original remains, but it is still the work of the master, sympathetically and knowledgeably revived. These pictures are ruins, because they were painted in the wrong way with the wrong kind of paint. Faint ghosts of the original paintings remain, but to bring them to life again would mean re-painting, not restoration.”
“But you could do that?”
“Certainly. You must understand: I make little claim to being an artist in the romantic sense of that mauled and blurred word. I am a fine craftsman—the best at my trade, it is said, in the world. I should rely on what craft could do; I should not call upon the Muse, but on a great deal of chemistry and skill. Not that the Muse might not assert herself, now and then. One never knows.”
“I don’t follow you, sir.”
“Well—it is an aspect of my work I do not talk about very much. But if you work on a painting with all your skill, and sympathy, and love, even if you have to re-invent much of it—as would be the case here—something of what directed the first painter may come to your aid.”
It was at this point that Francis, who had been listening attentively, felt as though he had been given a sharp, quickening tap on the brow with a tiny hammer.
“Do I understand, Signer Saraceni, that the spirit of the Pre-Raphaelites might infuse you, from time to time, as you worked?”
“Ah—ah—ah! This is why I do not usually speak of such things. People like you, Mr. Cornish, may interpret them poetically—may speak of something almost like possession. I have had too much experience to speak so boldly. But consider: these men who painted the pictures we are talking about were poets; better poets than painters, except for Burne-Jones, and as you probably know he wrote very well. What was their theme? The pictures illustrate The Quest for the Grail, and that is much more a theme for a poet than a painter. Surely one can evoke the Grail spirit better in words than in images? Am I a heretic to say that each art has its sphere of supremacy, and invades another’s at its deep peril? Painting that is illustrative of a legend is only that legend at second-best. Pictures that tell a story are useless because they are immobile—they have no movement, no nuance or possibility of change, which is the soul of narrative. I suppose it is not unduly fanciful to think that the poets who made asses of themselves with these old, dirty, obliterated pictures might have something to say to somebody who was a masterly painter, even though he might be no poet?”
“You have known that to happen?”
“Oh yes, Mr. Cornish, and there is nothing spooky about it when it happens, I assure you.”
“So we might get these pictures back on our walls as Morris and Rossetti and Burne-Jones would have painted them if they had understood fresco-work?”
“Nobody can say that. Certainly they would be much better pieces of craftsmanship. And such inspiration as the original painters possessed would still be there.”
“Surely that answers all our questions,” said Francis.
“Oh no. Pardon me, there is one question of the uttermost importance that we have not touched on,” said the cabinet-minister-in-embryo. “What would you judge the cost to be?”
“I couldn’t tell you, for I have not thoroughly examined the walls under the pictures, or even measured the extent of wall that is covered,” said Saraceni. “But I am sure you know the story about the American millionaire who asked another American millionaire what it cost him to maintain his yacht? The second American millionaire said, If you have to ask that question, you can’t afford it.”