Sunrise with Seamonsters (46 page)

"Biddy," said I, after binding her to secrecy, "I want to be a gentleman." ...

"You know best, Pip; but don't you think you are happier as you are?"

"Biddy," I exclaimed, impatiently, "I am not at all happy as I am. I am disgusted with my calling and my life. I have never taken to either since I was bound. Don't be absurd."

And he goes on to say:

... understand once for all that I never shall or can be comfortable—or anything but miserable ... unless I can lead a very different sort of life from the life I lead now.

He confesses that his wish to be a gentleman has something to do with Estella, and Biddy wonders whether this aspiration is meant to spite the girl, or to win her over. She observes, "Because, if it is to spite her, I should think—but you know best—that might be better and more independently done by caring nothing for her words. And if it is to gain her over, I should think—but you know best—she was not worth gaining over."

Shortly after this seemingly fruitless plea for patronage, Pip is visited by the lawyer Jaggers, who informs him that his expectations have been fulfilled: someone wishes to give him a great deal of money, clothes, a tutor, a new life—in short, wishes to make him a gentleman. Pip is delighted, within a few pages he is a raging snob; a few pages more and he is dreaming of becoming a philanthropist. His reflection is like a paraphrase of Andrew Carnegie's
The Advantages of Poverty.
Pip feels a "sublime compassion" for the church-goers in his village, for their low state and their mean lives. But he is rich now and "I promised myself that I would do something for them one of these days, and formed a plan in outline for bestowing a dinner of roast-beef and plum-pudding, a pint of ale, and a gallon of condescension, upon everybody in the village."

One advantage of charity, Carnegie said, was that it allowed the rich to "find refuge from self-questioning."

Pip assumes that Miss Havisham is his benefactress, and in that reverie of philanthropy that I quoted, he remembers the convict he met, the brief friendship, and he concludes that his comfort is that the felon has been transported and is probably dead. Pip is consoled by the thought that this foul creature is out of the way and that he, Pip, is in no danger of further contamination.

It would take too long to show how Pip squanders his money in London, preens himself, dispenses charity and is jilted by Estella. Suffice to say, he is in for a shock, for his patron turns up. It is, much to Pip's embarrassment, the convict Magwitch.

Magwitch is a fascinating character. He is the unwelcome aspect, the unacceptable face of patronage. And he is like many patrons, many starters of foundations. Like Carnegie, he made his pile far from his native land; like Guggenheim and others, he is a bit vague about his methods; like Joe Kennedy, he is rather sanctimonious; and like James Buchanan Duke, his syntax is somewhat twisted. He is also the soul of generosity; he has not forgotten the kindness that was done to him so many years ago by the boy who gave him "wittles" and a file to free him of his manacles. It is another characteristic he shares with philanthropoids—he has a very long
memory. Lastly, he passionately craves respectability. You might easily mistake him for the show business comedian and buffoon who solemnly reveals himself as a patron of the fund to combat muscular dystrophy, or that other unlikely combination, the tobacco man and the sportsman who seem anxious to associate smoking and money with tennis-playing and health (in the Virginia Slims Tournament there is the added factor of Triumphant Woman, a sort of chain-smoking world-beater). Magwitch's victory is that he has turned Pip into a gentleman, through patronage—funnelling the funds through the lawyer, Jaggers—without the young man knowing. Pip is appalled and ashamed. There is something about his shame that cannot fail to remind us of the combined outrage and embarrassment evinced by writers and scholars, when they learned that the distinguished magazines
Encounter
and
Preuves
were funded by that other Magwitch-like patron, the CIA.

Magwitch has been living in Australia and denying himself luxuries in order that Pip might prosper. If there is something pitiful in his self-denial, there is also something quite horrible in his gloating over what he has achieved.

"Look'ee here!" he [Magwitch] went on, taking my watch out of his pocket, and turning towards him a ring on my finger, while I recoiled from his touch as if he had been a snake, "a gold 'un and a beauty:
that's
a gentleman's, I hope! A diamond all set round with rubies;
that's
a gentleman's, I hope! Look at your linen; fine and beautiful! Look at your clothes; better ain't to be got! And your books too," turning his eyes round the room, "mounting up, on their shelves, by hundreds! And you read 'em, don't you? I see you'd been a reading of them when I come in. Ha, ha, ha! You shall read 'em to me, dear boy! And if they're in foreign languages wot I don't understand, I shall be just as proud as if I did."

And then the convict, the "warmint" as he calls himself, takes Pip's hands and kisses them, and Pip's blood runs cold. Pip's perplexity arises not from any scruple that he has been unworthy, or that he is a spendthrift and a snob; but rather that his patron is unworthy, an ex-con, a spendthrift and a vicarious snob. Magwitch, in Pip's eyes, has "a savage air that no dress could tame", he sits like a lout, he eats with a jack-knife and wipes it on his leg to clean it. Pip's main objection is that he does not want to be the vindication of Magwitch's obsessive sacrifice. The patron has dirty hands. He has no right to be proud of Pip:

What would alone have set a division between that man and us ... was his triumph in my story ... he had no perception of the possibility of my finding any fault with my good fortune. His boast that he had made
me a gentleman, and that he had come to see me support the character on his ample resources, was made for me quite as much as for himself. And that it was a highly agreeable boast to both of us, and that we must both be very proud of it, was a conclusion quite established in his own mind.

Pip tells his friend, Herbert Pocket, that Magwitch must be stopped in his giving. Herbert says, "You mean that you can't accept—" And Pip replies, "How can I?... Think of him! Look at him!"

It is the moment in literature that most accurately mirrors that moment in history when, for many writers, the CIA's clumsy figure (savage air, jack-knife, dirty hands) appeared behind the dignified façade of The Congress for Cultural Freedom.

Pip disengages himself from Magwitch after a time and takes a humble job with Herbert Pocket. Pip would not have minded receiving the money from the pathetic, crazy, vindictive Miss Havisham; she, after all, is a kind of pillar of the community, the sort of crank who would not miss a few thousand. Pip is penitent, but the irony is that it was Pip's patronage—an anonymous handout—that allowed Herbert to start the firm that redeems Pip and makes him his second fortune. In one ending of the novel he loses Estella, in another upbeat ending suggested by Bulwer-Lytton, he gains Estella.

There are not many novels which deal with patronage.

The Member,
by John Gait, published in 1832, is a brisk, Scottish fictional memoir about political patronage, in which the pious note is struck on the first page, as Archibald Jobbry finagles to get into parliament:

... I began to take shares in divers public concerns, and to busy myself in the management thereof, slipping in a young friend now and then as a clerk. I will not, however, say, that in this I was altogether actuated by affection; for public spirit had quite as much to say with me as a regard for my kindred: indeed, it is a thing expected of every man, when he retires from business, that he will do his endeavour to serve his country, and make himself a name in the community.

Galt's hero buys his way into parliament and finds that he can only stay there by continuing to dispense patronage, though he occasionally allows himself a kickback.

Patronage is conspicuously absent in George Gissing's
New Grub Street,
the best novel ever written about the life of hard-pressed writers, literary journalists, and outright hacks. There is one patroness in Conrad's
The Secret Agent,
and another in James's
The Princess Casamassima
—indeed, it is the princess herself (formerly plain old
Christina Light from his earlier novel,
Roderick Hudson).
The career of Hyacinth Robinson is well worth studying by anyone interested in the ups and downs in the relationship between patron and recipient, for the Princess Casamassima is quite determined that only money stands between Hyacinth and refinement. (Incidentally, it is Hyacinth who says that he would never marry a girl who would have him for a husband—predating by some fifty years Groucho Marx's "I'd never join a club that would have me as a member".)

And no one, as Pip's experience shows, can truly enjoy patronage unless it boosts his self-esteem. Pip's self-esteem is in for a knock as soon as it is revealed that his money is from an ex-convict. Patronage always works best when both patron and recipient are held in mutual esteem; and each has what the other lacks. So often, it is the uneducated millionaire who founds a university; the scarcely-literate one who starts a library; the artless tycoon who patronizes the artist. Here, the philistine and the publican are happily paired. It is not merely that the patron wishes to become respectable and artistic through his gift; the recipient, too, gains respectability by association with his patron. If the patron is distinguished enough, the actual money may be regarded as no more than a detail. The Guggenheim Memorial Foundation claimed in its
Annual Report 1965—66
that, since its awards, "year after year were seen to be based on rigorous professional standards, the informed public came to realize, in the words of one observer, that a Guggenheim Fellowship constitutes a sort of 'intellectual knighthood'. Thus the Foundation has gradually assumed a role in the validation of intellectual excellence that is quite as significant as its role in the provision of material assistance." Prestige matters. Charles Sackville's patronage may have been no more than a spirited evening at Knole House, but Sackville's friendship was an affirmation that you were of the élite, and if you were a poet, a great poet.

It sometimes works the other way. There are instances where patron and recipient disappoint each other. In 1932, Diego Rivera was hired, for $21,000, to paint a mural on the RCA building in Rockefeller Center. His patrons were of course the Rockefellers, who assigned him the theme, "Man at the Crossroads Looking with Hope and High Vision to the Choosing of a Néw and Better Future." Assisted by Ben Shahn, Diego set to work, but before the mural was finished, Nelson Rockefeller walked by and saw that one of the faces in the mural was that of the first premier of the USSR, V. I. Lenin. Nelson Rockefeller had the painful task of informing Diego that this would not do. He complimented the painter on his work, but added, "As much as I dislike to do so I am afraid we must ask you to substitute the face of some unknown man where Lenin's now appears." Diego refused; work stopped; the mural was destroyed by the Rockefellers, in spite of their prior assurances to the contrary; and Diego
painted a similar mural in Mexico City, enhancing it with a portrait of John D. Rockefeller.

On the whole such failures in patronage as this are not widely publicized, and it is the "intellectual knighthood" conferred on recipients that is stressed, or as the current (1981) report of the Guggenheim Foundation has it, "The Fellowships are awarded to men and women of high intellectual and personal qualifications who have already demonstrated unusual creative ability in the arts." It makes it seem like an award for achievement, rather than a sum of money intended to help start or complete a project. It signals arrival and is, for many, the beginning of self-esteem. And where once appeared in books sycophantic expressions of gratitude to patrons, phrased as fulsome dedications, we have "Thanks to my intrepid editors ... And thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts for a grant which helped" (
Fear of Flying,
by Erica Jong) or "Thanks are due to the J. S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation." These are not always boasts, but it is difficult not to read in them a smug satisfaction, and even a suggestion of
Imprimatur
in their formula.

And there are more candid assessments. Consider these three:

1. "Receipt of the fellowship gave me new confidence in my work and in my choice of writing as a profession."

2. "This was the first time my work had been given credibility by an outstanding outside source. The results were that my family, my colleagues within the local community, the region and the state accepted that I was a serious writer—and that it was all right to be that."

3. "Often the result of such a grant is intangible—it has more to do with your own psychological attitude, toward your work and toward the society in which you're living."

These comments are from the report circulated by the National Endowment for the Arts, their "Literature Program Follow-Up on Creative Writing Fellowships," 1972–1976. The report states, "A large number of writers specifically commented on the added 'prestige' and 'recognition' brought to them and their work by the award." These fellowships were not given on the basis of need; the only considerations were "the talent of the writer and the quality of the manuscript submitted." The greatest boast in this report is that, after having received a National Endowment fellowship, nearly half of them (129 out of 293 surveyed) went on to secure other fellowships or grants—twenty-two Guggenheims, four Rockefellers, four Fulbrights, and so forth. It is almost as if the National Endowment for the Arts is a means by which a writer may attract further patrons, the first rung on the ladder of patronage. Critics may say that this smacks of the kind of acceptance accorded to approved writers in the
Soviet Union. It is true that Soviet authors who toe the line are elected to the Writers Union, but this carries no stipend. On the other hand, if you are in the Writers Union you get published; and if you're not, you don't. How could you? You're not a writer.