“We had some precious ones that only came out on Sunday, and feast days, with girls in pink floating petticoats clinging to craggy ledges with bushes with roots in the air. I gave them all names, and worked out how they got stranded on those stony places, and how they were rescued by eagles, just as the North Wind set about to blow them over…”
When Olive spoke, she made an electric silence around her. She was looking lovely, in a tea-gown of cream Liberty lawn, covered with field flowers, cornflowers, poppies and marguerites. She had a straw hat with a scarlet ribbon. When she saw they were all listening, she laughed, and said
“I still do that. People on plates, sipping from glasses they will never empty, plucking roses they never put in their hair. I imagine them escaping, out of their flat circle. I had an idea about two-dimensional beings trying to locate themselves in a three-dimensional world. And then the three-dimensional beings would enter another dimension in just the same way. Catch glimpses, of other life-forms—”
Anselm Stern said something to Tartarinov about Porzellan-sozialismus.
“Ah, yes, m-m-m,” said Tartarinov. “Fyodor Dostoevsky’s definition of utopian socialism, m-m-m, the pleasant and frangible vista on a teacup. Porcelain socialism.”
“Maybe that is all we are,” said Humphry, ruefully. “Porcelain socialists, or in the case of Etta, earthenware socialists. When the just society comes, we will have quite other ideas of beauty. I agree with Morris, Sevres is an abomination. I am shocked at you, August.”
“To be frivolous is to be human,” said August. “To be pointlessly skilful is to be human, as far as I can see. I hope you would not consider legislating to prevent me from having a Sevres vessel.”
Humphry frowned. “We must hope to make a society where nobody wants anything so absurd.”
Etta nodded vehemently. Leslie Skinner said that a new society must produce new patterns, as yet not thought of. Made by craftsmen, not by wage-slaves. Humphry looked round for Philip, but he had sidled away to go back and look at the Prometheus Vase.
The children, most of them, had wandered, as instructed, into the wood. In it they found creatures squatting in hollows, perching on roots, warty toads, scaly lizards, an owl with matted clay feathers and amber glass eyes, a pair of malevolent crows. Tied to their necks and claws were shiny scarlet boxes of sugar flowers, and burnt toffees. They wandered, nibbling, along a rapid little stream, over a wooden bridge. Hedda had brought the shoeful of manikins, from which she would not be separated.
Philip stayed behind. He wanted to stay inside and study the vase, but came out to be given tea and cake, and found something just as interesting. This was a fountain, which was, like the two-faced jars and mugs indoors, and the grotesque creatures in the wood, the work of the Martin Brothers, which appealed to August Steyning’s theatrical imagination. It was shaped in a series of thick dishes, glazed in muddy greens and browns and occasionally vivid ceramic emerald slime. The stem of it was intertwined roots, serpents, worms and creeping ivies. The dishes were inhabited and clung to by toads and newts and fish with legs.
Behind the column, blending into it, was a figure of Pan, knob-horned, bearded, squinting and grinning, with water pouring down his smooth torso and into the shaggy hide of his haunches and over his cleft hooves. He brandished his pipes, through which water and green vegetable threads dripped, slowly.
Philip pretended to be absorbed in it, and then was.
Someone put a hand on his shoulder.
“I am told you are an expert on pots.”
It was Arthur Dobbin, who had accompanied the Fludd ladies. Philip shrugged and shook his head. He muttered that he come from Five Towns, that was all.
“And what do you make of this monstrous creation?”
Philip said it was clever. It was interesting. It was difficult, he should think. Dobbin gave him a little lecture on the Martin Brothers and their strange craft. He said he had been told Philip wanted to make pots. Was this right? Was this why the fountain intrigued him?
Philip said guardedly that yes, he did want to make pots.
“Not like this, exactly. This is—alive and very clever—but I want—I want—”
He remembered that Dobbin was associated with the aqueous pot at Todefright.
“I work with a potter,” Dobbin informed him. “I work with Benedict Fludd, the husband of that lady. I try to help, but he finds me inept. I believe in hand-crafts, but my talent isn’t—isn’t for working with clay. Mr. Fludd is not a patient man. I do believe he is a genius. I should like to encourage a community of artists—that is my dearest ambition—it would be easier if I were more skilful with my hands.”
His tone was a strange mixture of cheerful enthusiasm and stolid gloom. He squeezed Philip’s shoulder. Philip said
“I should like to see Mr. Fludd’s work. I saw the pot—back at the house—I saw it—I’ve never seen anything better—”
Dobbin squeezed again, and relaxed.
“Where do you go from here?”
“I dunno. They seem to be thinking about it.”
“I might be able to help.”
August Steyning came out of his house with a large drum, and beat a tattoo, proclaiming in his high, clear voice, that the show was about to begin.
When they were all indoors, and seated, he stood before the curtained box, and spoke to them.
They were about to see the Sternbild Marionettes, from Munich, perform E.T.A. Hoffmann’s
