Temporary Kings (9 page)

‘It seems Louis
Glober is house-guest at the Palazzo.’

‘The publisher?’

‘Glober was that one
time. He’s been a heap of other things too.’

‘When I met him years
ago he was in publishing. That’s why I think of him as a publisher. I was in a
firm that produced art books myself. He came to see us.’

‘Glober’s been more
associated with pictures.’

‘Paintings, you mean,
or films?’

‘Movies. I guess he
owns some sort of a modern picture collection too.’

‘He was keen on
paintings thirty years ago. He wanted my firm to do a series on the Cubists.
That was when we met. It was quite a funny occasion. I wonder whether he
remembers. Do you know him?’

Gwinnett shook his
head.

‘I just saw a
paragraph about him in the Continental
Herald-Tribune
. It said
the well-known playboy-tycoon Louis Glober was here for the Film Festival, and
was staying with Mr Jacky Bragadin.’

‘I thought Glober an
amusing figure. Since then I’ve never done more than read about him in the
paper in his playboy-tycoon capacity. I suppose he’s a typical Jacky Bragadin
guest. Did the
Herald-Tribune
name any others?’

‘Just Glober. It
seems he’s come on here from the German Grand Prix.’

‘Racing?’

‘Automobile racing.
World Championship.’

‘He’s in that game
too?’

‘Sure.’

To the eye of a
fellow American I saw Glober must present a very different outline to that of
my own remembrance. If not exactly the daily meat of the columnist, Louis
Glober was a reasonably tasty snack, always available on the back shelf of the
larder, where public personalities of a minor sort are stored in case of need.
He was neither dished up too often to cause surfeit, nor left too long on ice
to become stale. Contradictory features hampered his definition. The
Herald-Tribune
had termed him playboy-tycoon, this type-casting
to cover publisher, film-producer, sportsman, ‘socialite’, a lot of other more
or less news-valued labels, most with some basis in fact. The last photograph I
had seen of Glober had been driving a vintage car. Gwinnett thought activities
like sailing or motor racing had latterly taken the form of promotion, rather
than too laboriously personal a role. That did not prevent Glober from still
figuring as a noted rider, shot, golfer, yachtsman, or whatever else was
required by the context. A taste for amusing himself had not inhibited making
money, though again Glober was said to lose fortunes as easily as win them.

‘The
point I remember about Glober was that he seemed rather intelligent.’

‘Ah-ha.’

The
answer was non-committal, possibly disapproving, either because Gwinnett
thought such a judgment, even if favourable, impertinent to pass on another
human being, or because he was himself reluctant to allow the laurels of
intelligence to decorate a brow of Glober’s type. As not seldom when Americans
utter that sound, hard to transliterate, I was uncertain. We talked of some of
the reputed exploits; the blazing Hollywood restaurant from which Glober had
carried shoulder-high down a ladder a famous film star – Dietrich, Hepburn,
Harlow – neither of us was certain of the heroine; the methusalem of champagne
that burst celebrating the return from Europe of Texas Guinan; the fight
(almost won) in some night-club with an ex-middle-weight champion of Australia.
A reporter never seemed far away to chronicle these vignettes of Glober as a
picturesque or glamorous figure, his own clear-cut sense of the dramatic
occasion endearing him to press and public wherever he went. Even in England,
where he was not much known, editors instinctively printed the intermittent
Glober item, compressed into a couple of lines on the back page. I mentioned
that.

‘Would
they report him today?’

‘Perhaps
not.’

‘Glober
must be about washed up.’

‘What
is he? In his sixties? Just about.’

Gwinnett
gave the impression of not greatly caring for the idea of Glober, at the same
time granting some respect to a romantic so unusually successful at giving
public expression to his romanticism; showing ability too, even if a
fluctuating one, in making a success of financial ventures. My own memory of
Glober was far from unsympathetic, even
if he now sounded rather different – though not all that different – from the
young American first set eyes on. The mere fact that he was staying with Jacky
Bragadin for the Film Festival, that he had been car-racing in Germany, argued
survival powers of a sort; resilience not always found in characters of his
type.

‘Who’s
he married to now?’

Glober’s
wives had always been beauties. Once, very briefly, he had been husband of a
world-famous film star. These unions lasted only a few years before being
dissolved; soon renewed in similar fashion to the accompaniment of further
widespread exudations of publicity in the appropriate quarters.

‘No
one, so far as I know. His last wife died quite a long while ago. They’d been
wed only a very short time. It was leukemia, I think. Glober was photographed
kneeling at her grave. There was a blanket of lilies, and, on a card written
large enough to read in a newspaper picture, a message:
Farewell, Fleurdelys, farewell, fair one
.’

‘Fleurdelys
was her name?’

‘It
looked almost as if Glober was lying in the grave.’

Gwinnett
spoke with an odd sense of excitement. He stared at me hard. I did not know
quite whether he were criticizing Glober, or applauding him, expressing irony
or admiration. The thought of what Dr Brightman had said about the dead girl
came back.

‘He
was in a different mood when I met him.’

That
had been towards the end of the nineteen-twenties. Glober had arrived in London
as representative of a recently founded New York publishing house. Even before
he landed, his name went round among the London publishers as a young American
colleague with a head full of bright new ideas; by no means an unqualified
recommendation to that particular community. Glober came to call on my own
firm. He saw Daniel Tokenhouse. One of the bright ideas was the Cubist series.
The suggestion was to produce generously illustrated, cheaply produced studies
of these painters, blocks to be made in Holland or Germany by some newly
devised process. Apart from the fact that the Cubists were still very generally
regarded as wild men, if not worse, certainly unwise to encourage, transactions
that included overseas production always entailed risks not every publisher was
prepared to take. That was where Tokenhouse came in. Tokenhouse did not mind an
element of risk. His predisposition for certain forms of rebellion against a
humdrum approach to life was one of his unexpected sides. He also derived
pleasure from the thought of how much the series would annoy other publishers,
not to mention booksellers. Then, at quite an early stage, something went wrong
in connexion with the issue of the series. I did not remember exactly what
upset the project, but it never went forward. There had been rather a row,
money and tempers lost. I was in too subordinate a position at the time to be
concerned, or greatly interested, except so far as being well disposed to ‘modern
art’. There were other things to think about, better ones, it then seemed, the
business aspects forgotten among elements more memorable.

Tokenhouse
was still occupied when Glober arrived for his
appointment. Negotiations on the matter of St John Clarke’s
Introduction to
The Art of Horace Isbister
had just
begun. St John Clarke was still haggling about payment.
He was too well known a novelist to be dismissed out of
hand, so Glober could not be received. The
manager, with whom I shared a not
over-luxurious office, was wrangling
with a binder in the firm’s waiting-room, a cubicle
from its austerity in any case unsuitable for reception
of another publisher, especially an American one. Tokenhouse
rang through on the house-telephone with instructions
to hold Glober in play for the further
few minutes required to dislodge
St John Clarke. The room where the
manager and I passed
our days, its walls grimly lined with file copies, was almost as comfortless as
the waiting-room, but Glober was shown in. From the moment he entered, there
was no need to provide distraction from the frugality of the surroundings.
Glober himself took charge. In a matter of seconds we seemed already on the
friendliest of terms. That was Glober’s speciality. I made some apology for
this delay after an appointment had been made.

‘Don’t
worry. It’s great to draw breath. There’s a lot of running round in London. I
didn’t get to bed till late last night.’

He
sat down in the collapsed armchair, and looked about him.

‘You’ve
got a real Dickensian place here.’

‘
Bleak House
?’

Glober
laughed his quiet attractive laugh.

‘
The
Old Curiosity Shop
,’ he said. ‘In the illustration.’

I
supposed him thirty, possibly a year or two more, to my own twenty-two or
twenty-three, but his self-confidence, maturity of manner, separated us by
several decades. Unusually tall, incontrovertibly good-looking, Glober’s
features – in the later words of Xenia Lilienthal – were those of a ‘young
Byzantine emperor’. One saw what she meant. It showed she had taken in that
aspect of him, in spite of her bad cold. His quietly forceful manner suggested
a right to command, inexhaustible funds of stored up energy, overwhelming
sophistication, limitless financial resource. At that age I did not notice a
hard core of melancholy lurking beneath these assets. Perhaps in those days
that side of his nature was better concealed. The instinct he so essentially
possessed was getting on the right terms with everybody, no matter how transiently
encountered. This intuitive impulse caused him to move from illustrating
Dickens to pictures in general, the fact that he himself wanted to buy an
Augustus John drawing before he left England. The gallery handling John’s work
had shown him nothing he fancied. Had I any ideas? I suggested direct approach
to the painter himself, all the time feeling there was some quite easy answer,
which Glober’s flow of questions had put from my head.

‘John’s
out of the country. If I could meet some private person that had a drawing he
was willing to trade.’

Then
I remembered such an opportunity had been announced the previous week. The
Lilienthals were trying to sell a John drawing for Mopsy Pontner. Moreland had
mentioned the fact. Moreland had been searching for a secondhand copy of
The Atheist’s Tragedy
in the Lilienthals’
bookshop, and Xenia Lilienthal had told him that Mopsy Pontner – more correctly,
Mopsy Pontner’s husband – had an Augustus John drawing to sell. The Lilienthals
were accustomed to take books off Mr Deacon’s hands, when included in
miscellaneous ‘lots’ acquired by him at auction to add to his stock of
antiques. Mr Deacon was not above marketing the odd volume of
curiosa
– eroticism preferably confined to the male
sex – but did not care to be bothered with the sale of more humdrum literary
works. The Lilienthals’ shop was just around the corner. They were familiar
with his quirks, like the Pontners, frequenters of The Mortimer, though not
regularly.

Moreland
(these were days before marriage to Matilda) always commended Mopsy Pontner’s
looks, but was a friend of Pontner, who was musically inclined in a manner
Moreland could approve, a qualification by no means common. Moreland tended to
keep off his friends’ wives. Pontner, who knew several languages pretty well,
earned a living by translating. He also bought paintings and drawings, when he
could afford them, partly because he had a taste for pictures too, partly as a
speculation. I ought to have thought of that when Glober raised the subject.
This must have been a moment when money was required to tide over a financial
crisis, take a holiday, or, as likely as either, invest in another work of art,
which Pontner considered a better bet for a rise on the market. Pontner was older
than his wife. The fact that Moreland found Mopsy attractive, liked talking
about her, probably accounted for his passing on the information. At that time
I had never met her, though knew she was reputed quite a beauty in her way.
Suddenly remembering about this drawing, I told Glober it had been on offer a
week or more before.

‘Do
you think it’s still unsold?’

‘Shall
I make enquiries?’

‘Go
ahead. This is great. Mr Jenkins, we just had to meet.’

Glober
was full of enthusiasm. He must have recognized one of his own characteristic
situations taking shape before his eyes. His next reaction was that everyone
must come to dinner with him to discuss the deal. By now he was certain the
drawing remained unsold. Its existence revealed, it was now his by law of nature.
Before the matter could be gone into further, Tokenhouse appeared in the
doorway, having disembarrassed himself of St John Clarke, who could be heard
coughing painfully, in a disgruntled manner, as he made his way down the
stairs. Tokenhouse uttered his characteristically rather brusque apologies for
the delay. Before they disappeared together Glober took my hand.

‘Call
me up at the hotel between four and five this evening, Mr Jenkins. Even suppose
the drawing is sold, I’d like to have you dine with me.’

Tokenhouse
heard that a shade suspiciously. He was jealous
of outside contacts, not least American ones. Glober stayed for about an hour.
I did not see him when he left. In
the course of the day I made several telephone
calls, finding the Augustus John drawing still
available, Pontners and
Lilienthals delighted to scent a buyer. I
informed Glober.

‘And
they’ll all have dinner with me?’

‘Of
course.’