to attend.’
‘It’s the Jacky
Bragadin one reads about in gossip columns?’
Dr Brightman nodded.
‘The Palazzo wasn’t
inherited. All sorts of people have lived there at one time or another. Jacky
Bragadin – though I’ve no right to speak of him in this familiar manner – bought
it just after the war.’
Gwinnett, who had
been looking about him without paying much apparent attention to what Dr
Brightman was saying, joined in at that.
‘Jacky Bragadin’s
mother’s was one of the big American fortunes of the last century. She was a
Macwatters of Philadelphia. That’s where the funds for the Bragadin Foundation
come from.’
‘Which have been of
good use to most of us in our time,’ said Dr Brightman. ‘My knowledge of the
benefactor, like that of Mr Jenkins, derives chiefly from gossip columns. His
well publicized personality remains, all the same, for me an elusive one,
beyond an evident taste for entertaining persons as rich as himself. Remarkable
that he should have found time enough from that hobby to have given birth to a
Foundation.’
‘He’s not married, I
think?’
‘Do you imply the
Bragadin Foundation is illegitimate too? A case of parthenogenesis, I expect.
In any case, I am more concerned with his Tiepolo.’
Tiepolo ranking with
Poussin as one of my most admired Masters, I asked the subject of the ceiling,
the very existence of which was unknown to me. The bare fact that members of
the Conference could visit the Palazzo had been announced, knowledge of its
contents no doubt taken for granted in an assembly of intellectuals.
‘One of the painter’s
classical scenes – Candaules and Gyges . The subject, thought to have some contemporary
reference, caused trouble at the time the ceiling was painted. That’s why the
tradition of playing the picture down, keeping it almost a secret, has persisted
to the present day. The owner is in any case said to be more than a little
neurasthenic in approach to his possessions, and much else too.’
Gwinnett knew about
the ceiling.
‘I’ve been told it’s
not unlike the Villa Valmarana Iphigenia in composition,’
he said. ‘The owner won’t allow it to be photographed.’
He turned to me.
‘Speaking about the Iphigenia again made me think of what we were talking about at
that luncheon.’
He picked up from the
table the paper he had brought with him, opened it, folding back a page. It was
Détective,
Içi Paris
, or another of
those French periodicals that explore at greater length cases, usually already
reported, which through expansion promise more pungent details of crime or scandal.
Gwinnett singled out two sheets, the central spread. He was about to hand them
over, but Dr Brightman, catching the name under a photograph, intercepted the
paper.
‘Good gracious,’ she
said. ‘That ugly little man? I should never have thought it.’
I looked over her
shoulder. The headline ran along the top of both pages.
L’APRES-MIDI D’UN MONSTRE?
Two large cut-out
photographs stretched across the typeface, the story, whatever it was, fitting
round their edges. In spite of Dr Brightman’s lack of principle in
appropriating the letterpress to herself, and although I was not close enough
to read the sub-titles, the likenesses of the two persons portrayed were
immediately recognizable. Both photographs had manifestly been taken some years
before, ten at least. In fact that of Ferrand-Sénéschal made him look a man in
early middle-age. He had been caught on some public occasion, mouth wide open,
hands raised above his head in a passionate gesture, almost as if he, too, were
singing
Funiculì-Funiculà
, miming the ascending cable. No doubt he had
been snapped addressing a large audience on some political or cultural theme.
The other photograph,
also far from recent, though less time-expired than Ferrand-Sénéschal’s, was
more interesting. It was of Pamela Widmerpool. Her hair-do suggested the
‘It’s the Jacky
Bragadin one reads about in gossip columns?’
Dr Brightman nodded.
‘The Palazzo wasn’t
inherited. All sorts of people have lived there at one time or another. Jacky
Bragadin – though I’ve no right to speak of him in this familiar manner – bought
it just after the war.’
Gwinnett, who had
been looking about him without paying much apparent attention to what Dr
Brightman was saying, joined in at that.
‘Jacky Bragadin’s
mother’s was one of the big American fortunes of the last century. She was a
Macwatters of Philadelphia. That’s where the funds for the Bragadin Foundation
come from.’
‘Which have been of
good use to most of us in our time,’ said Dr Brightman. ‘My knowledge of the
benefactor, like that of Mr Jenkins, derives chiefly from gossip columns. His
well publicized personality remains, all the same, for me an elusive one,
beyond an evident taste for entertaining persons as rich as himself. Remarkable
that he should have found time enough from that hobby to have given birth to a
Foundation.’
‘He’s not married, I
think?’
‘Do you imply the
Bragadin Foundation is illegitimate too? A case of parthenogenesis, I expect.
In any case, I am more concerned with his Tiepolo.’
Tiepolo ranking with
Poussin as one of my most admired Masters, I asked the subject of the ceiling,
the very existence of which was unknown to me. The bare fact that members of
the Conference could visit the Palazzo had been announced, knowledge of its
contents no doubt taken for granted in an assembly of intellectuals.
‘One of the painter’s
classical scenes – Candaules and Gyges . The subject, thought to have some contemporary
reference, caused trouble at the time the ceiling was painted. That’s why the
tradition of playing the picture down, keeping it almost a secret, has persisted
to the present day. The owner is in any case said to be more than a little
neurasthenic in approach to his possessions, and much else too.’
Gwinnett knew about
the ceiling.
‘I’ve been told it’s
not unlike the Villa Valmarana Iphigenia in composition,’
he said. ‘The owner won’t allow it to be photographed.’
He turned to me.
‘Speaking about the Iphigenia again made me think of what we were talking about at
that luncheon.’
He picked up from the
table the paper he had brought with him, opened it, folding back a page. It was
Détective,
Içi Paris
, or another of
those French periodicals that explore at greater length cases, usually already
reported, which through expansion promise more pungent details of crime or scandal.
Gwinnett singled out two sheets, the central spread. He was about to hand them
over, but Dr Brightman, catching the name under a photograph, intercepted the
paper.
‘Good gracious,’ she
said. ‘That ugly little man? I should never have thought it.’
I looked over her
shoulder. The headline ran along the top of both pages.
L’APRES-MIDI D’UN MONSTRE?
Two large cut-out
photographs stretched across the typeface, the story, whatever it was, fitting
round their edges. In spite of Dr Brightman’s lack of principle in
appropriating the letterpress to herself, and although I was not close enough
to read the sub-titles, the likenesses of the two persons portrayed were
immediately recognizable. Both photographs had manifestly been taken some years
before, ten at least. In fact that of Ferrand-Sénéschal made him look a man in
early middle-age. He had been caught on some public occasion, mouth wide open,
hands raised above his head in a passionate gesture, almost as if he, too, were
singing
Funiculì-Funiculà
, miming the ascending cable. No doubt he had
been snapped addressing a large audience on some political or cultural theme.
The other photograph,
also far from recent, though less time-expired than Ferrand-Sénéschal’s, was
more interesting. It was of Pamela Widmerpool. Her hair-do suggested the
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