“Not so much, perhaps, as you might think, conditions being what they are … What have you to say of these beautiful pavements where we walk? Each of these tiny stones is shaped and fitted and levelled by hand—there could be no other way. Ah, there’s much to be said for a land where machinery is costly and labour cheap and plentiful. Great wealth in the hands of a few, my dear Bowen, and petitioners at the gate, oh yes indeed.”
Wondering urgently whether he was going the right thing, Bowen pulled him out of the path of a small fierce-looking yellow tram. This failed to quieten Buckmaster down in the least; indeed, he turned up the volume so that Bowen should miss as little as possible whenever a pedestrian or lorry might momentarily part them. The theme had now shifted from political theory back to the attractions of Lisbon. Bowen understood Buckmaster to say that getting to know a city was like getting to know a person: those that held themselves always a little aloof, that would not yield their secrets to the importunity of a mere acquaintance, that shrank back from a presumption of familiarity—these, and these alone, were they that no custom could ever stale, if he might be pardoned the phrase. Bowen thought not, on the whole, and hey, were cities really like that? Were people really like that, nice ones at any rate? Oh well, it had to be remembered that the old fellow either was or was pretending to be a great writer. Funny how those alternatives seemed to draw nearer and nearer together in his presence. He did look impressive, admittedly, loping along with his acutely white hat throwing half his prominent nose into shadow, his shoulders squared and his arms not swinging much. There was almost something of the prophet about him, the kind of prophet who got on rather better than elsewhere in places like Long Beach, Calif.
Bowen marvelled at the number of statues they passed: over the years, evidently, this part of the world had produced far more than its fair share of chaps who were pretty hot in their various lines. Not that the lines were all that various—the figures went in mainly for horse-riding, sword-brandishing, vestment-wearing and (a favourite pursuit) telescope-holding. Yes, the locals had been a tough little bunch in their day. The statues faded out and they went through some cobbled streets, empty except for old women in black who peered at them. Buckmaster suddenly rang a doorbell. A girl who was a nurse, or had dressed herself up to look like one, appeared. Buckmaster sounded as if he was asking after someone called Harry Grainger. Perhaps it was a password, for they were let in, then taken along a passage. Before Bowen could get properly started on wondering just what the hell was going on, they emerged into a churchyard, thickly planted with trees and tall shrubs. It was quiet and very lonely. In a few moments they were standing in front of a white stone sarcophagus raised on a platform. There was a good deal of Latin inscription. Everything was so clean and well looked after that it might have been put up the same year.
Buckmaster, just when he might have been expected to fly into a hortation, was silent. Bowen thought about Fielding. Perhaps it was worth dying in your forties if two hundred years later you were the only non-contemporary novelist who could be read with unaffected and whole-hearted interest, the only one who never had to be apologised for or excused on the grounds of changing taste. And how enviable to live in the world of his novels, where duty was plain, evil arose out of malevolence and a starving wayfarer could be invited indoors without hesitation and without fear. Did that make it a simplified world? Perhaps, but that hardly mattered beside the existence of a moral seriousness that could be made apparent without the aid of evangelical puffing and blowing.
Bowen was anxious to dissociate himself from the way Buckmaster was going on—hat in hand, head bowed, breath whistling through nostrils—but any remark might open the floodgates of English Men of Letters Series eloquence. In a moment the old boy replaced his hat and let his face relax into the stand-easy position. “The darling of the comic muse,” he said efficiently.
“I admire him very much,” Bowen said.
“I too. I feel it an honour to stand in a company that is adorned by the presence of such a one.”
This was Buckmaster’s way of saying, Bowen assumed, that he was as good as Fielding, or alternatively was putting on an act as one who thought so. In the circumstances no reply was possible. Bowen tried again to read some of the Latin on the tomb.
“But we are surely not to say,” it came rolling out, “that the utterances of comedy, whatever their purity or power, can move us as we are moved by the authentic voice of tragedy. That alone can speak to us of the loneliness and the dignity of man. And this, my friend, means that much as I reverence this assured master of the picaresque I am unable to consider him my equal. In the field of the novel he is indeed the colossus of the eighteenth century, but I cannot feel that posterity will place him beside … will care to place him beside the colossus of the twentieth.”
A monosyllable of demented laughter broke from Bowen before he had time to arrange a coughing fit. Too good to be true, eh? And so
