Walter De la Mare

“ But the Lispet and the Vaine of this time were nothing but hidebound old bachelors—intent only on saving the face of convention. The last Double-T died the day after the site of the shrine was decided on. There was no young blood in the firm. And with an almost diabolical ingenuity Anthony seems to have executed only the orders of such clients as wanted the firm's very finest and rarest handiwork. Even those, of course, who coveted or could afford only the commoner materials were already beginning to dwindle in numbers. ”

“ All these centuries, please remember, the firm had been gradually realising why, actually why, their stuff was super-excellent in the eyes of humanity. And that—Oh, I don't know; but to realise that, perhaps, is to discount its merits elsewhere. Anthony, on the other hand, had come to realise, in his own queer vague fashion, that one's only salvation is to set such eyes squinting. And yet, not of set and deliberate purpose. He was not a wit. Art, my dear, dear K., whatever you may like to say, is useless; unless one has the gumption to dissociate use from materialism. ”

“ Not a miserable avenue, of course, but a kind of to-and-fro circuitous chace between village and Works. Once, your eyes might actually have seen that divine chimneyed cluster, tranquil as an image in water, on the dark emerald hilltop in the dying, gaudy sunset. And, shelving down, that walk in bloom! One might almost assume that L.L. & V. weather habitually haunted the scene. Things do react on one another, you know; and Nature wears 14th century sleeves.”
“Oh, for pity's sake. Maunders, let's get back to Anthony. What about Anthony?” ”

“ Aren't we, all of us, myth-makers? Grins not the Lion at the Unicorn? Does not the soapboiler bedizen our streets with Art—and 'atmosphere'? Anthony's myth was from elsewhere—neither from his stomach, his pocket, his reputation, his utilitarian morals, nor his brains. That was all. And as he served her, I suppose, he found himself cherubically treading yet more secretly and inwardly her hesperidean meads.”
I glanced at Maunders in some dismay. “How?”
“Well,” said he, “it is not easy to divine how exactly Anthony began his malpractices. ”

“ But clearly, since he was perpetually haunted by this illusion of a divine, unearthly stranger, a sort of Athene haunting his hill, his one desire could not but be to set the Works working for her. He could bide his time. He could be quiet and gradual. Anyhow, we know the event, though we can't say precisely how it evolved.
“One may assume, I suppose, that he would steal to and fro among the nocturnal looms and presses and vats and dyeing rooms, and, ten times more richly gifted by his insane inspiration than he was even by nature, that he just doctored right and left. ”

“ And yet, do you know, there was really nothing at the root of them but—well, a kind of instinct: to keep themselves clean. Animals share it. That, and the pride with which a single virtue darkens and suffocates a man if he isn't for ever toiling to keep its growth under. The one secret of their stability, of their being, and, in times past, of their success, was simply this—that nothing they should, would, or could ever conceivably offer for sale need disturb for a breath of a sob or the weight of a dewdrop the ashes of their sleeping forefathers in Adderlev Churchyard. ”

“ And so this ageing creature, this extra-Lispetted old day-dreamer, fell in love—with a non-entity.”
“My dear Maunders; pause,” I said. “In mere self-respect! How could such an occurrance as that have been recorded in the Firm's annals? No; no.”
“Weren't there letters?” sighed Maunders, turning suddenly on me, malacca cane in air. “Wasn't there a crack-brained diary? Haven't you a vestige of old-fashined and discredited gumption? Wait till I have finished, and let your sweet-smelling facts have a show. Ask Henrietta. ”

“ Yet I slide my eyes back to that narrow hilled-in strip of sea-coast whence once rose walled Tyre and Sidon, Arvard and Jebail, and—well, I merely remind myself that the Rosetta Stone is but a hornbook of the day before yesterday's children of men. Things do as a matter of fact seem to rot of their own virtue—inverted, so to speak. ”

“ Nymphs!”
“Well,” replied Maunders, imperturbably shoving his “Sheffield” candlestick at last into his slate-covered greatcoat pocket; “I merely mean that there is a kind of goodness in good work. It confers a sort of everlasting youth. Think of the really swagger old boys we call the masters. What do you actually get out of them? The power to be momentarily immortal, that's all. But that's beside the point. What I wanted to tell you about—and you are a poor receptacle—is, of course, the firm's inevitable degradation. ”

“ Lispet, Lispett and Vaine would have as gladly catalogued their goods as have asked for references. Advertise! Why, a lady might as well advertise her great-grandmother's wig. They were merchants of the one true tradition. Their profits were fees. Their arrogance was beyond the imagination of a Tamburlaine, and their—what shall we call them?—their principles were as perennial as the secret springs of the Oceans. It was on similar principles that Satan sold the fruit to Mother Eve.”
“I see,” said I. “If one can, Maunders—through a haze of contradictions.” ”

“ Their wares were as innocent of guile and as beautiful as the lilies of the field. All they needed for mere prosperity was the status quo. Does Nature? The high and mighty sought them out for precisely the same reason as a young man with imagination pursues that Will-o'-the-Wisp called Beauty. Have you ever noticed how different a respect one has for an advertised article and for an article whose virtues have been sweetly absorbed into one's soul? ”

“ You can't. L.L. and V. merely graciously bestowed on their customers the excellence of their wares, of their 'goods' in the true old meaning of the term—a peculiar something in the style and finish which only the assurance of their history and their intentions—their ideals, if you like—made possible.
“Good heavens, man, isn't there a kind of divination between one's very soul and a thing decently made—whether it's a granite Rameses, or a Chelsea porringer? ”

“ For a while the firm seems to have survived on the proceeds from merchandise intended for grown-ups which your cosmopolitan Crœsuses snapped up for their children. At second-hand, of course, since few of them could extort a 'reference' to the firm for love or even for money.
“Henrietta has a few bits of embroideries and silk of the time. Perhaps she will show them to you. Even a human craft can reflect a divine disaster. And the linens!—of a quality that would derange the ghost of an Egyptian embalmer.
“Even worse, Anthony seems to have indulged an extraordinary sense of propriety. ”

“ There is no particular virtue in mere age—except to the imagination. Still, your mere 'facts' are something I suppose. The fact that they were spinning silk—here in England—before the Conqueror came over. The fact that they were world-renowned glovers long before Elizabeth's time. The fact that their Egyptian cotton must have been abob on the Mediterranean when Lancashire, please God, was a verdant solitude, and your forefathers, my poor dear, were gadding about in woad. ”

“ At an extreme, of course, this tradition became the very devil. I don't say they made any claim to be gentry, or that they refused any kind of exalted alliance if nicely and unostentatiously proffered. There's an old tale of one of their apprentices who went sightseeing in the 14th century. Among other little romantic adventures, he hunted the Unicorn, got a siren with child, fought a demon in Babylon, and bartered tiaras with the reigning Pope in Avignon—very much at that precise moment at a loose end.
“Still a tale's only a tale, though none the worse for that. ”

“ The present generation—with its Stores and Emporiums and Trusts and 'Combines'—is blind to the merest inkling of what the phrase Merchant Prince implies. We are not even conscious of irony in little Tommy Tucker's Nation of Shopkeepers. ”

“ But they could no more resist the insidious growth of the creature than Jack's mother could have held down the sprouting beanstalk. He was clearly the fruit of breeding-in, and of a kind of passive vaingloriousness, as you will see when Henrietta exhibits the Family Tree.
“Old John Vaine Lispet Lispett had married his first cousin Jemima Lispett, and Anthony, it seems, was their only child. There is a story that old John himself in his youth had—well, gossip is merely gossip,and gossamer's merely gossamer, however prolific it may be. ”

“ As a matter of fact, of course, only willing and selfless service can bring every human faculty to bear.” Maunders sighed. “He sent a cheque for a thousand guineas or so to a Dutch bulb-farm, and planted the hill-walk with tulips, April-blue scyllas and narcissi poetici. ”

“ It was Anthony Lispett who at the same time finished it off, and who yet—at least according to my notion of the thing, though Henrietta does not agree—and who yet redeemed the complete contraption.
“He must have come into the firm when he was a comparative youngster, say nineteen, towards the end of the 18th century. Needless to say, not a single one of the partners, not at least to my knowledge, ever went to a university or any fallalery of that kind. They held aloof from alien ideals. Their 'culture' was in their history and in their blood ”

“ I mean, not for some time. The Town was almost apologetic. Democracy rarely runs to extremes—unless one may so describe the guillotine. But I am no politician. Enough of that. Even transatlantic visitors are now rare. ”

“ Still, the Lispet tradition was not one of mere honesty.”
“What, then,” said I.
“Well, in the first place,” replied Maunders, sliding me a remote ruminative glance, “it rambles back almost to prehistoric times. You may hunt down the aboriginals of the Firm for yourself, if you feel so inclined. They appear to have been Phœnicians. Tyre, maybe, but I gather non-Semitic. Some remote B.C. glasswork in the Egyptian galleries of the British Museum bears their 'mark'—two inverted V's with a kind of P between. There are others—a cone 'supported by' two doves ”