A Comedy of Masks

Comedy of Masks, A

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and Arthur Moore
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Title: A Comedy of Masks A Novel
Author: Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

Release Date: September 16, 2005 [eBook #16703]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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OF MASKS***
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A COMEDY OF MASKS

A Novel
by
ERNEST DOWSON and ARTHUR MOORE
1893
CHAPTER I
In that intricate and obscure locality, which stretches between the
Tower and Poplar, a tarry region, scarcely suspected by the majority of
Londoners, to whom the "Port of London" is an expression purely
geographical, there is, or was not many years ago, to be found a certain
dry dock called Blackpool, but better known from time immemorial to
skippers and longshoremen, and all who go down to the sea in ships, as
"Rainham's Dock."
Many years ago, in the days of the first Rainham and of wooden ships,
it had been no doubt a flourishing ship-yard; and, indeed, models of
wooden leviathans of the period, which had been turned out, not a few,
in those palmy days, were still dusty ornaments of its somewhat antique
office. But as time went on, and the age of iron intervened, and the
advance on the Clyde and the Tyne had made Thames ship-building a
thing of the past, Blackpool Dock had ceased to be of commercial
importance. No more ships were built there, and fewer ships put in to
be overhauled and painted; while even these were for the most part of a
class viewed at Lloyd's with scant favour, which seemed, like the yard
itself, to have fallen somewhat behind the day. The original Rainham
had not bequeathed his energy along with his hoards to his descendants;
and, indeed, the last of these, Philip Rainham, a man of weak health,
original Rainham had not bequeathed his energy along with his hoards
to his descendants; and, indeed, the last of these, Philip Rainham, a
man of weak health, whose tastes, although these were veiled in
obscurity, were supposed to trench little upon shipping, let the business
jog along so much after its own fashion, that the popular view hinted at
its imminent dissolution. A dignified, scarcely prosperous quiet seemed
the normal air of Blackpool Dock, so that even when it was busiest

--and work still came in, almost by tradition, with a certain
steadiness--when the hammers of the riveters and the shipwrights
awoke the echoes from sunrise to sunset, with a ferocious regularity
which the present proprietor could almost deplore, there was still a
suggestion of mildewed antiquity about it all that was, at least to the
nostrils of the outsider, not unpleasing. And when the ships were
painted, and had departed, it resumed very easily its more regular
aspect of picturesque dilapidation. For in spite of its sordid
surroundings and its occasional lapses into bustle, Blackpool Dock, as
Rainham would sometimes remind himself, when its commercial
motive was pressed upon him too forcibly, was deeply permeated by
the spirit of the picturesque.
Certainly Mr. Richard Lightmark, a young artist, in whose work some
excellent judges were beginning already to discern, if not the hand of
the master, at least a touch remarkably happy, was inclined to plume
himself on having discovered, in his search after originality, the artistic
points of a dockyard.
It was on his first visit to Rainham, whom he had met abroad some
years before, and with whom he had contracted an alliance that
promised to be permanent, that Lightmark had decided his study should
certainly be the river. Rainham had a set of rooms in the house of his
foreman, an eighteenth-century house, full of carved oak mantels and
curious alcoves, a ramshackle structure within the dock-gates, with a
quaint balcony staircase, like the approach to a Swiss chalet, leading
down into the yard. In London these apartments were his sole domicile;
though, to his friends, none of whom lived nearer to him than
Bloomsbury, this seemed a piece of conduct too flagrantly
eccentric--on a parity with his explanation of it, alleging necessity of
living on the spot: an explanation somewhat droll, in the face of his
constant lengthy absence, during the whole of the winter, when he
handed the reins of government to his manager, and took care of a
diseased lung in a warmer climate. To Lightmark, however, dining with
his friend for the first time on chops burnt barbarously