Shoot the Widow Adventures of a Biographer

Chapter One: The Glass Pavilion Before I became a biographer I used to write interviews for theWashington Postand one day I was sent along to interview Kenneth Clark. The British art historian, who was also a celebrated lecturer, author, university professor, gallery director, patron, collector, social lion and courtier, was at the height of his fame as star of the television seriesCivilisation. A wide international audience had, as it were, fallen in love with him. Roses were practically being thrown at his feet and further accolades would follow his disarming, self-revelatory memoir,Another Part of the Wood. I found him in Georgetown at the home of the founding director of the National Gallery of Art. David Finley was, by then, a small, shrunken and noncommittal figure who, I would belatedly discover, had locked away forever secrets of the art world acquired during a lifetime of firsthand observation. It was 1969. Clark entered the room as if he had stepped out of a picture frame, looking exactly right. He was in his sixties and still handsome, with even features, a beautifully shaped head and an expansive brow. The amiably goofy Bertie Wooster, hero of P. G. Wodehouse's comedies, who employs the frighteningly erudite Jeeves, was wont to explain that his butler's brainpower came from eating fish and the way his head stuck out at the back. As I recall, Kenneth Clark preferred lamb or roast beef and Yorkshire pudding to fish, and the only thing that ever stuck out at the back was his hair. For me, the essence of penetrating intelligence is exemplified by the forehead, and his was as serene and sweeping as any I had seen. I took particular note of what the British would call his keen gaze, so full of energy and expression, and the way he caressed one of his host's delicate alabasterobjets. There was something curiously familiar about him. But the fact that I had just viewed all thirteen episodes ofCivilisationmust explain why I seemed able to predict his movements, gestures and shades of expression. Before Clark became a television performer and "national icon," as David Cannadine called him, he had been Keeper of Fine Art at the Ashmolean, director of London's National Gallery, Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford, chairman of the Arts Council and Independent Television Authority, as well as the author of books on art and artists, including works on Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Piero della Francesca, andThe Nude. He talked freely and fluently and, after I sent him the article, wrote to thank me. This seemed to call for a magazine piece. I persuadedSmithsonianmagazine to let me interview him again, which wasn't too difficult. The following summer I flew to England to visit the Clarks in their castle outside Hythe in Kent. It was a Saturday morning, and Lord Clark met me at the station. Lady ClarkJanewas having her hair done. We would pick her up and then go to Saltwood Castle for lunch. I had dressed for the occasion in my latest affectation, what James Laver would have called a Robin Hood outfit, complete with tunic and matching pants. My host met me in Scottish tweeds, a green velour hat and matching suede shoes. (Jeeves would have taken a very dim view of the shoes.) I could not have looked any more out of place if I had been carrying a bow and arrow, but Lord Clark, his manners as always faultless, rose above it. There was a heavy summer rain, and as the wait might be prolonged we went for a quick one. Kenneth Clark pulled the Wolsey right up to the front steps of Folkestone's largest hotel, but not before I had surreptitiously taken note of the ten-year-old car's low mileage (6,000) and the two books inside the glove compartment:Charles Darwin and His WorldandThe Odes of Pindar. "This is what my faSecrest, Meryle is the author of 'Shoot the Widow Adventures of a Biographer', published 2007 under ISBN 9780307264831 and ISBN 0307264831.