11. Kosher
From 'Passages' by Jean de Lier
It was well said of Alfred Carver né Kannman that he combined Prussian charm with Jewish modesty. The description was not original but fitted all too well. He had been born before the turn of the century in Koenigsberg now Kaliningrad, then a free city and Hanseatic port in East Prussia. Destined by his family for medicine, he studied law in Munich and graduated in time to fight in the World War I, as an officer of the Kaiser. After the war he became a successful magistrate and minor collector of old and modern art. He played some part in the cultural life of Lübeck, where he had settled, but this promising career was interrupted by the rise of the Nazi government in 1933.
In England his law degrees were valueless but his taste, knowledge and culture allowed him to make a living as a dealer in antiques and paintings and in due course, after the renewed interruption of WWII, he became a well known and respected member of the Society of London Art Dealers. His fat Havana cigar advertised his presence wherever he went.
He was tall and rather lean, formal and stiff. Well dressed and by the time of the events related here, slightly stooped, he had a prominent hooked nose, aquiline it could be said, and a bald head. He would have fitted well into a London Club but he was not a member. Probably he had been quite imposing, even good looking, in his youth. He pervaded an air of self-confidence and even self-importance, which perhaps made him less popular than he deserved to be, given the total propriety of all his dealings, his scrupulous honesty and when appropriate, even kindness. But his kindnesses were discrete and usually hidden, his donations to charity anonymous, and, taciturn by nature, even the briefest kind words of sympathy were often beyond him. Human contact rendered him gruff, with an appearance of unfriendliness. In addition his obvious, sometimes ostentatious, cultural knowledge intimidated many. He was a man of habit. His life, like Crabbe’s Jonas Kindred “.. stood in its place or moving, moved by rule.”
He felt he had been deprived of asparagus in his youth; they may well have been a far greater luxury in Prussia before the Great War than in England after the second, though my guess is that they ought to grow well on Baltic shores. I remember he walked to Brewer Street on many a lunchtime and bought a large bunch of asparagus when they came below £1 per bunch and he bought them every day thereafter till they went back up above £1 (today they cost nearly £5). That was the season and he ate them every day.
He was a man of order. He left the house at a certain time, though different for each day of the week, but he returned at the same hour each day. He could be reached by phone after that time. His wife was not Jewish and they were totally devoted: she had emigrated with him, facing the rigours of an uncertain future to support and love him. They had been married for some forty years, built up a life together in a strange country and raised two children, who were now integrated, assimilated and happily married. Their daughter had presented them with grandchildren. Though he was not at all religious, Alfred seldom ate pork or shellfish, except that every single Friday, if he was in London, he lunched alone at Wilton’s on a large red lobster. And he had a second one wrapped up to bring back home to his wife.
After his lunch he took a taxi to Sloane Avenue, where in Nell Gwynn House he visited Mandy (or was it Topsy?). “Very important” he used to say gravely “very important indeed, to exercise all the parts. Keep in trim. If you once loose the practice of sex you will never be able to pick it up again.” He laughed, almost twinkled “Never take it up again”. And so Mandy did what was required and later maybe Topsy replaced her. Later still he admitted that even Goldie was not able to elicit the full service but he went nevertheless, partly out of pleasure, out of well used habit, and partly in hope, maybe, that it might work after all.
It makes one wonder whether Viagra has been good for businesses of this kind or on the contrary, bad. Be that as it may, by four o’clock he was home on time in another taxi and presenting the second lobster to his grateful wife.
He was also getting rather absent minded. On one occasion he bought a fine painting, a Fragonard oil sketch Fête Galante, fluffy and colourful, from Maréchal in Paris. Maréchal were at the time the doyens of the Paris art dealers, (after Wildenstein, who did not deal with trade); Old Jean Maréchal, chairman of the Syndicat, President of the CINOA, sold to museums and private collectors, dealers and little drawings and sketches by minor artists to needy students. On this occasion he merely sold the Fragonard to Alfred, who rang him up again when he got it back to London and asked whether he could perhaps tell him where he had got it from, the sort of provenance request which is routine. "Oh yes," said Maréchal "I bought if from Quail’s in London ".
Now Quail’s was perhaps the top dealer world wide in French art at the time and therefore a good address to have bought from, a sort of certificate on its own. Oliver Quail, Chairman of the firm, respectable and dour, Etonian second son of an English nobleman was perhaps even more intensely private a man than Alfred. But here was a snag – he lived exactly opposite Alfred Carver, the two houses abutting, front doors turned face to face at the end of an alley. The following evening the purchaser lay in wait and confronted his neighbour; he asked him first whether it was true that the little sketch came from him and receiving assent, why, why when he knew that he liked these things so much he had not offered the Fragonard to him straight away.
"Yes I know. But I just couldn't" said Oliver.
"Why ever not?"
"Because" and here even the ever phlegmatic, rather dry but normally perfectly articulate Oliver Quail was rather lost for words, embarrassed to admit the truth - "because you see, ..er ..you see – how shall I put this, I couldn’t because I, I bought it .. . from . . er . . you"
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