What's Bred in the Bone Trivia Quiz

Answer: He had recently died, and much of the plot arose from the settling of his estate.

Cornish never actually appeared in "The Rebel Angels" as a living man, although his nephew Arthur did turn up as executor of his business interests. His legacy, however, ran all through the book. He had named three professors to settle the collections that had been his life's passion -- three apartments crammed full of paintings, sketches, manuscripts, and statuary -- and a combination of scholarly avarice and poor bookkeeping ultimately led to a theft and a murder. If that's what the death of Francis Cornish accomplished, what must he have been like in life?

Answer: Write a biography of Francis Cornish

The three of them -- Darcourt, Arthur, and Maria -- have recently launched the Cornish Foundation for Promotion of the Arts and Humane Scholarship. As the Foundation's opening act, Darcourt has been attempting to write a "solid, scholarly, preferably not deadly-dull biography" of Francis, but the effort has met with two serious obstacles.

First, the nephew, Arthur, is an upright banker, and he is horrified at Darcourt's suspicion that Francis might have forged a set of Old Master drawings that he left to the National Gallery. The scandal could damage the family banking business, he argues; the book should be quashed.

Second, Darcourt is an historian, and he is frustrated at his inability to find much information about Francis's early life, or about how Francis came to be mixed up with a few shady figures and scandals in the art world. He might not be able to construct a solid and satisfying story, he fears; the book should be quashed.

It's Maria, the medievalist, who finds meaning and substance in the gray areas, and who urges the men not to give up. She appeals to the Recording Angel of medieval Catholicism: someone, somewhere, must know all...

Answer: Necessity. Cornish needs wealth, and Mary-Jacobine needs a quick marriage to cover up an out-of-wedlock pregnancy.

Mary-Jacobine's father, a Canadian senator who made a fortune in logging in Blairlogie, Ontario, pulls a loom's worth of strings to get his teenage daughter presented at the royal court in London. Dazzled and dreamy, Mary-Jacobine is swept away by the glamor of the Season, and ends up going all the way with a hotel footman. Her devastated mother attempts various tricks at abortion, but all are unsuccessful, so to save their daughter's reputation the McRorys must marry her off to the first likely suitor they see. This turns out to be Francis Cornish (senior), a junior member of a landowning family, and a retired soldier looking for a wealthy wife to support his position in society. Cornish's terms are unpleasant to the McRorys -- he demands not only a great deal of money, but also that any children be raised Protestant -- but they don't see a practical alternative.

And so the unlikely couple is wed, and packed off to the Continent so they can return with an infant whose age can be fudged: Francis the First.

Answer: By sketching the dead during the embalming process at a funeral parlor

With his parents almost always in England, in Ottawa, or in transit, Francis is raised by a loose coalition of his maternal grandparents, his great-aunt, and their servants. One of these, Zadok Hoyle, who cares for the McRory horses, is a figure of fascination for the boy. Among his many odd jobs around the town, Zadok does the embalming at DeVinney's funeral home, and he takes Francis there in the evenings to sketch the dead and learn about life.

It's an uncommon artistic and moral education, but the lessons are profound and enduring.

Answer: His disabled older brother, who isn't dead after all

The boy in the attic is Francis the First, conceived in their young mother's first whirlwind experiment with romance. His disabilities, which we know from our supernatural narrators are due to the failed abortion, are severe: microcephaly with seizures and a general lack of understanding or motor control.

The family doctor had him moved to his grandparents' attic before his younger brother's birth, believing he must soon die; instead he has lived, out of sight, with his mother believing him dead and his grandparents too sad or too cowardly to visit.

He is cared for by servants -- Victoria Cameron the cook, and Zadok the groom, who is the boy's own father although even Zadok doesn't know it. The child loves music, and Victoria and Zadok sing to him each night, now joined by the child's morbidly fascinated younger brother who shares his name. Francis the Second watches, and sketches in fearful wonder.

In a frequent refrain of the story, "What's bred in the bone must come out in the flesh," and young Francis imagines what must someday come out in him.

Answer: Ismay is devoted to another man, and to a cause.

Francis spends a few years at Oxford in a love triangle, with Ismay in the corner and a devout Communist, Charlie Fremantle, on the other side. Francis, now a fairly wealthy man thanks to a bequest from his grandfather the Senator, gives Ismay money for her birthday; she gives it to Charlie to settle his growing gambling debts. A more deliberate man might see the writing on the wall when Ismay accepts a ten-pound check from Francis and transforms it into a 150-pound check, but Francis is blinded by infatuation and mythology, and takes it in stride. His chance seems to arrive when Charlie, pursued by the violent sort of debtor, flees to fight for the Communists in Spain; just weeks later, Francis's dreams seem to come true in the ruins of Tintagel. Then Ismay writes that she is pregnant, and the two rapidly marry.

In another world, perhaps Francis and Ismay might grow together, finishing up their studies and preparing for a baby. In this world, just after the birth, Ismay coolly announces that little Charlotte is Charlie Fremantle's baby, and Tintagel was something of a scam. Even after this, they might yet recover -- but Francis leaves Ismay and the baby with her grasping parents while he returns to Oxford, and Ismay runs off to Spain to join Charlie and the Communists. Francis is now married, but has no wife; he never seeks a divorce, and Ismay never offers one. Francis has a child, but no paternal love; he gives some money to Ismay's parents to raise Charlotte, but apparently never sees her again. It is a curious sort of bond, without much substance to it, but nonetheless it pulls at Francis's life and distorts its weave.

Answer: Improving old, mediocre German paintings to sell to the Nazis

Supposedly, Saraceni and his apprentice Francis Cornish are simply restoring a large number of old German paintings that had been secreted away at Düsterstein, so that the Countess may sell them later. They are restoring the paintings, of course, but Saraceni gives each work a little something extra -- a crest here, a remarkable feature there -- to make it more tempting to the Nazis attempting to bring German art back to Germany. The improved paintings are smuggled out to England in wine casks, and then sold to the Nazis in exchange for the far superior (but non-German) treasures that the great German museums are instructed not to want any longer. It is a subversive, and profitable, fraud. Francis learns both an Old Master's craft (for the revisions must be undetectable) and a forger's art; under Saraceni's stern eye, he even takes some ruined panels to produce two magnificent works all his own, which will soon fool a number of expert eyes.

British intelligence knows about the Düsterstein scheme, though not about Francis's wholly forged paintings. They want Francis at Düsterstein because the castle is on the railway line to a concentration camp in the hills, and he can report back on the number of railroad cars that head that way at night. We never learn who is sent to this camp, or whether it is a death camp, or what the British do with this information. Francis's part in "the profession" is a small one.

Answer: It features a monkey with a prehensile tail. Such a monkey can only come from the New World, but the supposed artist died before Columbus.

The forger -- a respected figure named Letztpfennig -- has already fooled several experts; others are suspicious, but unable to point to any definitive proof. These experts are all familiar with brushstrokes, hues and fashions, which after all are often used to date newly unearthed paintings. In his knowledge of biology -- acquired in a serendipitous visit to the local zoo -- Francis brings something new to the table, and makes his name. (It's an event that reminded me very strongly of the beloved children's series "Encyclopedia Brown", in which the main character is constantly solving mysteries using similar bits of trivia.)

It's a triumph for Francis, but a tragedy for Letztpfennig, an artist of consummate skill of a type unmarketable in modern times. Soon after his unmasking, the man kills himself, with a poignant note in his pocket: "Let them say what they will now; in the beginning they said it was a great picture."

Answer: The Alchemical Master

The experts debate the triptych for days. The style and execution are marvelous, but the content is strange; does it really reflect an Old-Master sensibility? Of course, we know, Francis knows, and Saraceni knows that it doesn't reflect that time at all: it's an allegory for Francis's very soul, and features all the most important figures from his childhood. His older brother, Francis the First, appears as a microcephalic angel who announces "You have saved the best wine for last" at the mystical marriage: a union of feminine and masculine selves for which Francis the Second has yearned all his life.

Flattered but guilt-stricken (especially given his role in the fall of Letztpfennig), Francis is on the point of confession when Saraceni steps in and saves him. All can be explained, Saraceni argues, as an allegory for alchemy, and as hope for a truce between Catholics and Protestants. The panel accepts that this masterpiece could have sprung from a medieval mind, and agrees to return it to Düsterstein. Francis has a new title and a new source of pride, though he can never admit it.

Answer: Unable to return to painting himself, he tries to bolster Canadian art.

Francis makes a few halfhearted efforts to transform himself into an artist of his own time, but it never feels right and he always abandons the attempt. The style that feels true to himself as an artist is that of the Old Masters, but he dares not produce more work in that vein, for fear of exposing himself as the Alchemical Master.

He is neither a writer nor a zookeeper by nature, and instead gives art a central place in his life by trying to support Canadian artists. He tries abortively to found a school of art, but ends up functioning as an informal but prestigious art dealer, operating out of three apartments crammed with disorganized treasures. One of his last hopes is that the secret of his masterpiece, "The Marriage at Cana", will be revealed after his death -- and in the sequel, "The Lyre of Orpheus", we find out whether it is.