The Benson Murder Case / Дело Бенсона. Книга для чтения на английском языке - стр. 5
His Egyptian treasures included a gold jug from Zakazik, a statuette of the Lady Nai (as lovely as the one in the Louvre), two beautifully carved steles of the First Theban Age, various small sculptures comprising rare representations of Hapi and Amset, and several Arrentine bowls carved with Kalathiskos dancers. On top of one of his embayed Jacobean book cases in the library, where most of his modern paintings and drawings were hung, was a fascinating group of African sculpture—ceremonial masks and statuette-fetishes from French Guinea, the Sudan, Nigeria, the Ivory Coast, and the Congo.
A definite purpose has animated me in speaking at such length about Vance’s art instinct, for, in order to understand fully the melodramatic adventures which began for him on that June morning, one must have a general idea of the man’s penchants[14] and inner promptings. His interest in art was an important—one might almost say the dominant—factor in his personality. I have never met a man quite like him—a man so apparently diversified, and yet so fundamentally consistent.
Vance was what many would call a dilettante. But the designation does him injustice. He was a man of unusual culture and brilliance. An aristocrat by birth and instinct, he held himself severely aloof from the common world of men. In his manner there was an indefinable contempt for inferiority of all kinds. The great majority of those with whom he came in contact regarded him as a snob. Yet there was in his condescension and disdain no trace of spuriousness. His snobbishness was intellectual as well as social. He detested stupidity even more, I believe, than he did vulgarity or bad taste. I have heard him on several occasions quote Fouché’s famous line: C’est plus qu’un crime; c’est une faute[15]. And he meant it literally.
Vance was frankly a cynic, but he was rarely bitter: his was a flippant, Juvenalian cynicism. Perhaps he may best be described as a bored and supercilious, but highly conscious and penetrating, spectator of life. He was keenly interested in all human reactions; but it was the interest of the scientist, not the humanitarian. Withal he was a man of rare personal charm. Even people who found it difficult to admire him, found it equally difficult not to like him. His somewhat quixotic mannerisms and his slightly English accent and inflection—a heritage of his post-graduate days at Oxford—impressed those who did not know him well, as affectations. But the truth is, there was very little of the poseur[16] about him.
He was unusually good-looking, although his mouth was ascetic and cruel, like the mouths on some of the Medici portraits[17]; moreover, there was a slightly derisive hauteur in the lift of his eyebrows. Despite the aquiline severity of his lineaments his face was highly sensitive. His forehead was full and sloping—it was the artist’s, rather than the scholar’s, brow. His cold grey eyes were widely spaced. His nose was straight and slender, and his chin narrow but prominent, with an unusually deep cleft. When I saw John Barrymore recently in Hamlet[18] I was somehow reminded of Vance; and once before, in a scene of Caesar and Cleopatra[19] played by Forbes-Robertson, I received a similar impression.