The Squire Quartet. Brian Aldiss

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СКАЧАТЬ looking up at him expectantly before turning to lick its left shoulder. The sound of its rough tongue on the fur was the only noise in the room.

      At one moment Squire looked up swiftly, thinking he saw a black figure at the french windows, peering in. A bird had flown by. Nobody was there. He was alone.

      An early summer day, the sunshine faint on the brickwork of the house. The clumps of rhododendron bushes, which concealed the yard and garages from the front drive, spread a wedge of shadow across the most easterly corner of the house, shading the dining-room window; that window reflected a parade of people approaching the house, and dissected their figures among its glazing bars.

      The parade comprised people of various periods, men and women and children. There were men in the three-cornered hats, knee-breeches and tight clothes of the eighteenth century, women in the high-waisted, low-necked dresses of the Regency, or in crinolines with shawls in a mid-Victorian fashion. There were ladies with shingled hair in frocks with low belts, and gentlemen in lounge suits and spats, together with chaps and chicks in jeans and leather jackets. All climbed the steps of the front porch and went into the house, the door of which stood wide to receive them.

      Squire asked rhetorically, ‘What is man’s greatest invention? Some would say the Wheel, or the control of Fire, or cooking, or perhaps the domestication of animals. Some might say the internal combustion engine or the rockets that have taken men across space to the Moon. All these things have been immensely important in the rise of mankind. The list comprises things because our culture tends to think in terms of things, although we act in terms of style.

      ‘Not the least of the great inventions of the last two centuries is what you are looking at now, on the other side of this lawn. It is not just a house but an embodiment of style, the style of the Enlightenment which still plays its role in shaping our present.’

      The viewpoint moved nearer to take in more clearly the house and the figures entering it.

      ‘There’s a vicar going in, one of Christ’s representatives on Earth. He is walking through a doorway which derives its style from a great portico shrine. He probably doesn’t care about that, as he goes in to sit beside a hearth designed after a miniature triumphal arch or an altar to the Lares. Do the farmer and his wife over there realize that the facade of the house is conceived in terms of a Classical Order, with the windows on its three floors gradated in height? Does that rather corpulent man – perhaps he is a successful draper – have a clear notion of the ideas of the Italian Andrea Palladio or of the English Lords Burlingham and Shaftesbury? And perhaps that young lady with the patched jeans doesn’t realize that she is entering a belated expression of the Renaissance of Roman Architecture on English soil.

      ‘To these people, and to most of the rest of us, this is simply a comfortable Georgian house. There are still thousands of them of all shapes and sizes all over the country, and the style has been imitated on various scales ever since: for almost two hundred years almost everyone had wanted to live in a Georgian house. What all these people do know is that this extraordinary stylistic phenomenon, which imposes on the domiciles of a small Protestant northern island the temple architecture of a long-vanished heathen Mediterranean culture, results in the most pleasant kind of house ever invented.’

      The viewpoint had moved to the interior.

      ‘The Georgian house is sensibly laid out, easier to maintain than any previous style of home, comfortable, adaptable, and homely. “Home” is an English word, for which Palladio’s fellow-countrymen, for instance, have no word; and the Georgian house is a major contribution to civilization and stability. One finds it nowhere but England and Scotland, and Dublin, and its imitations everywhere.

      ‘We cannot live without myth. This house enshrines a myth, the myth that life is subject to constant improvement. The Georgian house is a product not only of architectural orders but of the concept of Order itself, to which the early eighteenth century heartily subscribed.

      ‘Having lived all my life in this particular house, I feel qualified to say that it does promote orderly conduct in the lives lived within its walls – or rather it tends to promote order among the disorderly jumble which constitutes the average life. It doesn’t enforce order, class order, like a Victorian house. It is more than a house: it is a style.

      ‘In the eighteenth century, there was agreement about style. There are now more people in the world and a greater divergence of taste. In consequence, we have wide divergences in style. Some would say that there is also a greater range of possibilities. That is true, although youth always tends to exaggerate the possibilities available. We are not creatures of determinism, but, unfortunately, the number of things we can do in one lifetime is limited.

      ‘We observe an example of that law of limitation in the Georgian style itself. I call it an English invention. So it is. But whilst the comfortable English squires and lords of the manor were busying themselves about these homes, the Continent of Europe was about something else – the Rococo. There is no Rococo in England, certainly none of its glories as we know them on the Continent. After the Civil War, we English seem to have settled down to gardening and a limited amount of religion. Instead of the ridiculously pretty baroque churches which grace Europe and South America, we have utilitarian chapels; instead of Fragonard and the great master of Rococo, Tiepolo, we have George Stubbs – what an English name! – and Tom Rowlandson. It’s all a question of style.’

      As he spoke, he was following the last of the costumed actors to the steps of the house. There, on the upper step, lay a dozen wrist watches, awaiting revelation like hen’s eggs in straw.

      ‘Here’s an interesting question concerning present-day style. There has never been such a variety of watches cheaply available as there is today. For all we know, there may never be again – the notion of the future as a period of multiplied diversity is another of the cheering illusions of youth.’

      He began to pick up the watches, holding them where the sun – reinforced by a conveniently placed spot – glittered on their cases.

      ‘Watches are beautiful objects. Perhaps that is why we are all slaves to them. A watch is really a piece of costume jewellery, one of the few pieces of jewellery society approves of the male wearing, since throughout an average day we can estimate the time to within five minutes; or else we are within reach of a clock or someone else’s watch; or else we have escaped routine and do not wish to know the time at all. But for work-oriented cultures, the watch is an essential, like the camera we take on holiday. Both impress us with the precision with which we live: “We were precisely here at precisely such-and-such a time.” Living with precision is a modern style.’

      Squire began sorting the timepieces, one by one.

      ‘This watch is a Quartz LED, LED standing for Light-Emitting Diode. It presents a blank face to the world until you press this button, when the time comes up on a digital display. For me, LEDs are mean and hostile watches, not unlike those sunglasses people used to wear which looked opaque and reflected back the onlooker’s world, so that one could not see the eyes of the wearer. But quartz LEDs are accurate to a degree unknown a generation ago. Armed with such precision, Hitler’s generals could have overthrown him before he ruined Europe.

      ‘Do you rate your watches for accuracy, or appearance, or reliability, or sheer razzmatazz? Would you like a Mickey Mouse watch, like this one, or a “Star Wars” watch, like this one?’

      The dreaded Darth Vader moved a gauntleted arm to twelve noon.

      ‘This watch is a Quartz LCD, LCD standing for Liquid Crystal Display. It announces clearly that it belongs to the nineteen-eighties. It has forsworn the watch’s traditional association with gold and gold-casing in favour of a heavy dull СКАЧАТЬ