intellectual refinements? Even our great universities fail there, Mr Telfer, sir! In their emphasis on Classical studies, they put a higher premium on memory than originality!’ Mr Phillpotts was a veritable fount of exclamation marks.
‘Quite,’ said Magnus after a moment, remembering his own brief excursion into Classical studies. ‘Oh, quite! I’d certainly prefer that brat of mine not to be condemned to all that declining and memorizing and construing.’
Lucy, not very sure what ‘construing’ meant, said, ‘No, indeed!’ and then visibly wondered whether she oughtn’t perhaps to have said, ‘Yes, indeed!’
Vilia swallowed a giggle. Henry Phillpotts was a perfect fraud. He looked clever, with his piercing blue eyes, shock of badly cut black hair, and high complexion. His clothes were eccentric. Indoors, he wore a cassock of Madonna-hair brown with velvet cuffs, supplemented outdoors by a wide-brimmed, shallow-crowned hat in bright red, not unlike a cardinal’s, or a kind of brimless toque that bore a perilous resemblance to the papal mitre. And his mind was the most complete ragbag, stuffed with unrelated shreds and tatters. Quotations from Dante and Paracelsus, Chaucer and Racine, Avicenna and Machiavelli, tripped from his tongue when the literary mood was on him. When he felt theologically inclined, it would be Clement of Alexandria, or St Thomas Aquinas, or John Davenant. But it always sounded as if he had been studying some eclectic dictionary of quotations rather than the originals. And he was utterly fascinated by figures from the past of whom no one else had ever heard. Not Dionysus the god, but Dionysus the Areopagite. Not St Paul of Tarsus but St Saturninus of Toulouse. Not King George of Merrie England but King George of Podiebrad.
Fortunately, he and Luke took to each other from the start. Henry was just what the boy needed to shake him out of the sullens. He was loud, he was slightly mad, but he was full of life, and it was impossible to be dull when he was around. Luke, once more the centre of someone’s attention, began to improve.
It was perfectly clear to Vilia that Magnus and Lucy were congratulating themselves on having made an excellent choice of tutor. Neither of them was precisely needle-witted, and since Henry – who, though silly, wasn’t a fool – took care to sound intellectual in their company, they failed to realize that his views were anything out of the common run. They decided their son was in good hands, even if they weren’t very peaceful hands.
And then Vilia’s comfortable sense of superiority suffered a reverse. Lucy began to wonder whether the house at Ramsgate was, after all, quite spacious enough to accommodate not only Mr and Mrs Telfer and their servants, but Luke and Vilia and Henry Phillpotts and the schoolroom staff as well. Magnus made a show of resistance, but not for long. In the end it was decided that Mr and Mrs Telfer should have two peaceful months at Ramsgate on their own while the children went to Kinveil, under the eminently responsible supervision of Luke’s new tutor. Even without knowing what she later discovered – that Lucy had hinted to the Duchess of Argyll, who had passed the message on to the Duke, that the Telfers’ need for a tutor was of the most vital urgency – Vilia’s conviction grew that Lucy was a good deal cleverer than she had supposed. With exasperation, she also discovered that she was beginning to feel a kind of amused affection for her.
3
The journey north was a sensational success. The party travelled in a majestic berline, with servants tacked on wherever there happened to be space, and a pile of boxes and the kind of trunks known as ‘imperials’ loaded on the roof in such a way as to make the carriage look like a mobile mountain. Magnus had decreed that, since they were in no great hurry, they should take their own horses, which meant that they could only cover three ten-to-twelve-mile stages in the day.
With
‘Quite,’ said Magnus after a moment, remembering his own brief excursion into Classical studies. ‘Oh, quite! I’d certainly prefer that brat of mine not to be condemned to all that declining and memorizing and construing.’
Lucy, not very sure what ‘construing’ meant, said, ‘No, indeed!’ and then visibly wondered whether she oughtn’t perhaps to have said, ‘Yes, indeed!’
Vilia swallowed a giggle. Henry Phillpotts was a perfect fraud. He looked clever, with his piercing blue eyes, shock of badly cut black hair, and high complexion. His clothes were eccentric. Indoors, he wore a cassock of Madonna-hair brown with velvet cuffs, supplemented outdoors by a wide-brimmed, shallow-crowned hat in bright red, not unlike a cardinal’s, or a kind of brimless toque that bore a perilous resemblance to the papal mitre. And his mind was the most complete ragbag, stuffed with unrelated shreds and tatters. Quotations from Dante and Paracelsus, Chaucer and Racine, Avicenna and Machiavelli, tripped from his tongue when the literary mood was on him. When he felt theologically inclined, it would be Clement of Alexandria, or St Thomas Aquinas, or John Davenant. But it always sounded as if he had been studying some eclectic dictionary of quotations rather than the originals. And he was utterly fascinated by figures from the past of whom no one else had ever heard. Not Dionysus the god, but Dionysus the Areopagite. Not St Paul of Tarsus but St Saturninus of Toulouse. Not King George of Merrie England but King George of Podiebrad.
Fortunately, he and Luke took to each other from the start. Henry was just what the boy needed to shake him out of the sullens. He was loud, he was slightly mad, but he was full of life, and it was impossible to be dull when he was around. Luke, once more the centre of someone’s attention, began to improve.
It was perfectly clear to Vilia that Magnus and Lucy were congratulating themselves on having made an excellent choice of tutor. Neither of them was precisely needle-witted, and since Henry – who, though silly, wasn’t a fool – took care to sound intellectual in their company, they failed to realize that his views were anything out of the common run. They decided their son was in good hands, even if they weren’t very peaceful hands.
And then Vilia’s comfortable sense of superiority suffered a reverse. Lucy began to wonder whether the house at Ramsgate was, after all, quite spacious enough to accommodate not only Mr and Mrs Telfer and their servants, but Luke and Vilia and Henry Phillpotts and the schoolroom staff as well. Magnus made a show of resistance, but not for long. In the end it was decided that Mr and Mrs Telfer should have two peaceful months at Ramsgate on their own while the children went to Kinveil, under the eminently responsible supervision of Luke’s new tutor. Even without knowing what she later discovered – that Lucy had hinted to the Duchess of Argyll, who had passed the message on to the Duke, that the Telfers’ need for a tutor was of the most vital urgency – Vilia’s conviction grew that Lucy was a good deal cleverer than she had supposed. With exasperation, she also discovered that she was beginning to feel a kind of amused affection for her.
3
The journey north was a sensational success. The party travelled in a majestic berline, with servants tacked on wherever there happened to be space, and a pile of boxes and the kind of trunks known as ‘imperials’ loaded on the roof in such a way as to make the carriage look like a mobile mountain. Magnus had decreed that, since they were in no great hurry, they should take their own horses, which meant that they could only cover three ten-to-twelve-mile stages in the day.
With
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