A luncheon in Bologna

HAROLD NICOLSON

Tonnante, la jête s'annonça la bus.

The lines of Verhaeren throbbed in my ears above the dry bum of the elevator. It was Saturday, March 4, 1933. Down there in Washington the crowds were already clustering like bees around the Capitol; already the privileged and the closely related were pushing past each other upon the draped stands in front of the White House. A week before 1 had seen these stands being erected: plain hoards they had been last Friday and today these boards would be draped with stars and stripes. I had been pained at the time by the thought of President Hoover there in his encumbered office listening to the hammer blows outside which presaged his departure. Did these sounds come to him as to a prisoner in the condemned cell who listens at night time to the erection of his own gallows? Or did they echo joyfully as to some entombed miner who thrills with renewed life at the distant thud and scrape of the rescue party? I walked slowly round La Fayette Square, thinking of President Hoover, and the mutability of human fortune, and all he did for Belgium, and the hammer blows which fate had dealt him, and the coming of spring (for there were grey-green daffodil leaves upon the V lawn) and what sort of conversation the ex-President and the Presidentelect would make to each other during that surely embarrassing drive to the Capitol, and the splutter of the motor cyclists, and whether a life of public service was eventually worth while. Thinking such thoughts 1 had surveyed the preparations for March 4. 1933. And when that day arrived, I was no longer in Washington. I was in a brisk bright city of the north. To be more precise, I found myself, at the opening of this story, in an elevator ascending to the roof of a Department Store. I was about to attend a luncheon given by the Women's Club of what, for convenience of reference. 1 shall call Bologna. Wisconsin: although it was nothing of the sort. 1 have never been to Wisconsin, although 1 promised Mr. Glenway Wescott that I should not fail to visit his spiritual home, being myself attracted by the wistful invitation of that lovely name. But to Wisconsin I have never been, although 1 have hope for the future.

■ Upon the very summit of this Department Store spread a vast and variegated dining room. It was not a very high room hut it was broad and long. It had been decorated to represent a Calabrian village, and upon the walls little peasant houses had been depicted, rich with sunshine, bougainvillea, strings of onions, and the heads of picturesque peasants. The doors which led outwards towards the child's Clothing Department were very Calabrian in appearance. The lighting was rural and discreet. And in the centre of this exotic rectangle were grouped some hundred little tables, on which stood brown vases gay with daffodils and the neat halves of some 300 grapefruits. Around each table clustered the simple backs of five hundred Windsor chairs. At one end of the room stood, slightly raised from the rest, a long table for the Chairman, the Honorary Secretary, the foreign guests, and such members of the Programme Committee as had been able, after much battling, to acquire a seat. Neat glasses of iced water (Linked each grapefruit and the whole aspect of the luncheon room was one of dainty sobriety. A jarring note was struck by two workmen on a ladder, who were affixing a large amplifier to the corner there by the campanile. It was by or through this amplifier that the inaugural ceremonies at Washington were to be relayed to us while we sipped our iced water and nibbled daintily at our grapefruit.

I found myself sitting next to the Chairman of the Programme Committee. Her name, and I give it solely for convenience of reference, was Mrs. Jefferson Lockhart. She was an elderly woman with dreamy, gentle eyes, an enormous hat, a double string of what 1 trust were imitation pearls, a determined chin, and a little ivory hammer which she tapped defiantly upon the table when she wished to command attention. I should add also that she possessed a chin of grim determination, which matched the little ivory hammer, and which contrasted curiously with the soft wistfulness which swam behind her rimless pincenez. I dug the tip of my spoon into the outer edge of my grapefruit, extracting by this method a neat triangle of that acid but insipid vegetable.

■ "Yes," I said to Mrs. Jefferson Lockhart. "yes we hope to go to the coast. We are lecturing in Pasadena and at San Francisco at the end of this month. And after that we have a week's rest. We want to see something of the desert country, and if possible we want also to pay a visit to the Grand Canyon."

"That," answered Mrs. Jefferson Lockhart, "will be swell for you, Mr. Nicolson. When 1 first saw the Grand Canyon I said to Mr. Jefferson Lockhart, 'My,' I said, 'if Beethoven could have seen this!'"

"Beethoven?" I asked.

"What a symphony!" she answered. "A symphony in geology. That's what I called it at the time. You see 1 am very musical. I do not see how people can see life either steadily or whole unless they care for music. 1 don't

know—I just feel that way about it. Don't you feel that way about it. Mr. Nicolson?"

I was embarrassed by this question. I do not understand music. I know little about Beethoven. I felt that if 1 told the truth to Mrs. Jefferson Lockhart she might conclude that my view of life was not fragmentary merely, but actually unsteady. I was rescued from my predicament by a sudden yell from the amplifier.

An announcer in distant Washington, perched it seemed upon some prominent cornice of the Capitol building, proclaimed to a listening continent that he was actually there. A note of breathless expectancy, a note of slightly asthmatic excitement, throbbed in his otherwise sympathetic voice. "Ladies and Gentlemen," he yelled, "I am speaking to you from the centre of the Nation's Capital. I am speaking from the Capitol itself. The Inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as President of the United States is about to commence. From where I stand I can see the crowds massed below me, I can see Mrs. Longworth. I can see Chief Justice Hughes, I can see the lectern on which the new President will administer the oath, the lectern, I mean, from which the new President, I mean the President-elect, will have the oath administered to him by Chief Justice Hughes.

Already they have left the White House. Ladies and Gentlemen. I can hear the sound of distant cheering. . . ." "I always think," remarked the dulcet tones of Mrs. Jefferson Lockhart, "that life without art, music and literature must be a very hollow thing, don't you, Mr. Nicolson?"

I answered that I did, I did. I was not listening much to Mrs. Lockhart, being preoccupied by the verbal difficulties into which the announcer was becoming entangled, and the bad luck he had encountered at the outset over that surely clumsy phrase about "having the oath administered to him". How strange it is. —thus did I ruminate—that the passive mood in English should be so cumbersome.

The announcer by that time had failed entirely to get the better of his excitement. His pants of patriotism, his gasps of hero-worship, the sheer gust of his sensational opportunity, seemed to set the daffodils dancing upon the little tables. "And now," he yelled, "this supremely historic moment is about to arrive. 1 can see the President-elect advancing slowly upon the arm of his son James. There is some obstruction in the gangway and he pauses until it clears. Now he is advancing again towards the lectern. He smiles to right and left. His eyes meet those of his wife . . ." The rest of the phrase was choked by ascending emotion, and by the intervention of a marine band playing Hail to the Chief upon the steps of the Capitol.

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"Of course," said Mrs. Jefferson Lockhart, "it is poetry that I like the best. I write poetry sometimes. 1 suppose all of us do. I find it such an excellent substitute, or I should say sublimation. What I always say to Mr. Jefferson Lockhart is . . ."

The oath, at that moment, was being administered. Mrs. Lockhart became conscious of a hush that had spread over the surrounding tables. She paused. She dropped her head and eyes in reverence, as when people bob downwards into silent prayer on first settling themselves into their seat in church. Rut at the conclusion of the oath she bobbed up again like a duck that has plunged, shook her head slightly, squared her chin, took a long breath, and embarked again upon intelligent conversation. At the same time the tables around and below us broke again into a continuous hum of cultured discourse.

"It is such a pity," began Mrs. Jefferson Lockhart, "that you are so short a time in Bologna. I should wish to have you see our museum. Lord Ernest Dttveen when lie was here said that it was without question the finest museum in Wisconsin. Not the exhibits, of course, we have little to show which can rival the Metropolitan. But the building itself. A lyric in pure marble, I call it. Not an epic, if you understand me Mr. Nicolson, but a lyric. It is a thing of utter simplicity . . ."

And at this she made a gesture with two gloved hands indicating the utterness of the simplicity she meant. It was not a successful gesture, and in any case Mr. Roosevelt by that time had embarked upon his inaugural address and my attention was distracted.

"I always say," continued Mrs. Jefferson Lockhart, "that the really noble things are also really simple. Take the Sistine Madonna, for instance, or the later novels of Mr. Galsworthy. . . ."

"Small wonder," echoed the firm vibrant voice of the President, "that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honour, on the sacredness of obligation, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance...."

You see," persisted Mrs. Jefferson Lockhart, "the inner peristyle is illuminated by hidden lights, orange they are sometimes and pink later in the day. to indicate sunset if you understand, and at night it is all dark blue with just a few stars showing here and there." She jabbed with a gloved finger to indicate the proportion of stars to the circumambient vault of blue..."

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"With this pledge," echoed the solemn tones of President Roosevelt, "I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of the great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems. ... In the event that Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that tin* national emergency is still critical, I shall then not evade the clear course of my duty that will then confront me. . . ."

"You see, Mr. Nicolson, our museum, in fact and not in fantasy, is a dream come true. Now 1 mean that literally, if you understand me. Mr. Sabline the architect actually dreamt that peristyle. He told me so himself. And then came Opportunity and how rarely it must come to dreamers. . . ."

"Mrs. Jefferson Lockhart," 1 interrupted firmly, "I am afraid 1 really must listen to Mr. Roosevelt's address. It is of the very greatest importance. Do you realize that he has just announced that if need be he will make himself dictator of this country?"

"Now isn't that just too interesting," said Mrs. Jefferson Lockhart. "Not that 1 care for the radio very much myself. Mr. Jefferson Lockhart likes it sometimes of an evening when lie gets back from work. What I always say is that the radio sounds so much better out of doors. Have you ever noticed that, Mr. Nicolson? I discovered it almost by chance. You see we have a large bathing pool in our garden and the young people like to swim to music, you understand. So 1 concealed a radio under some really lovely clematis, montana rubra it is called as a matter of fact. I always say those French clematis are the best, and you really would believe, sitting out there as we do on summer nights, that you were listening to an orchestra. Of course they do not often play my sort of music, but the boys and girls like it, and I must say that the effect, especially by moonlight (although we turn on the blue flood lights even on dark nights) is truly poetical. Mr. Jefferson Lockhart always laughs at me about it. He thinks I am such a high-brow but then I like simple things—I always say. . .

"We do not," concluded the President. "distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need thex have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. . . ."

"And how," asked Mrs. Jefferson Lockhart, "do you like our American cooking? 1 always say that in regard to salads, and perhaps also sea-food..."