The Brothers Boswell by Philip Baruth

Author:Philip Baruth [Baruth, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Literature
Publisher: Corvus
Published: 2010-07-31T23:00:00+00:00

14

BOSWELL FINDS THAT, without thinking, he has removed the little watch fob from his coat pocket and opened it up to reveal the bit of cloth with the dark dab that might or might not be Stuart blood, might or might not be the juice of a roast beef. When he was sixteen, Boswell had paid half a crown for the fragment, and he has since alternated between considering himself gullible and blessed.

He is stroking it absently when he feels the sedan slow and dive abruptly toward the ground. In another second, the top of the chair is lifted off, and with it goes the pensive mood. Night sky and cold air flood the chair, and he almost laughs out loud at the shock, the excitement.

Boswell steps down just at the mouth of the Strand, fifteen feet from the central stone arch of Northumberland House. As always, he is infused with a childlike awe, and he feels an impulse to bow, even to kneel. But he contents himself with an actual tip of his hat to the Percy lion perched high up on the long Gothic front of Northumberland House.

Before he’s reached the street entrance, a servant in elegant livery steps out of the shadows and bows. “Mr. Boswell? You are expected, sir. Please do follow me.”

An upstart would have his servants challenge each guest and demand a name, Boswell gloats to himself as he falls into step a touch behind the man, but the servant of a Percy would simply know.

Boswell is led by turns through the inner courtyard, then into the vast vestibule of the house itself. Broad marble staircases curl gently up and away to either side, leading to the apartments themselves, but these the servant ignores and steers Boswell down a newer wing, to the Lady Northumberland’s picture gallery.

If the truth were known, Boswell has surreptitiously paced off the picture gallery—at the tail end of his first visit, with the footman gone to fetch his hat and coat—and he knows it to be well over a hundred feet long. He measured it because he is in love with the Northumberland picture gallery, and has been for weeks now.

The infatuation is based only in part on the impressive amount of gilt covering the cornice and frieze, the columns framing the tall windows. More to the point is the room’s stunning narrative assault: paintings are angled and positioned to catch the eye no matter where in the room one turns. Wall-sized panoramas; historical allegories; Douglas and Percy family groupings, down to and including favored Douglas and Percy pets. But finally Boswell is in love with the picture gallery because every time he enters it, it is packed to the gilded roof with Londoners more powerful nearly than he can imagine. And in his short experience of it, Boswell’s luck is good in this room.

Tonight is no exception. Lady Northumberland glances up from her tea table and then actually rises to come and meet him, trailing satin and lace,

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