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A Bible Shocker

By LORD EGREMONT I RATHER like reading the Bible. My father has done it more than most. I have

• enjoyed talking divinity "Y with him. My Uncle Charles did it too. He was no slouch at it either. Uncle Charles, in the course of a conversation, would come up with some original and interesting— indeed startling—oral com- mentaries. I remember a conversation with Uncle Charles in which I re- ferred with respect to the Epistles of St Paul. I had to admit that bits of them were obscure.

'That's what I mean,' said Uncle Charles, 'you might think that he had written some of those letters after dinner.'

But Uncle Charles went on to say that without St Paul, goodness knew what we might be sup- posed to be professing now. Uncle Charles, that good old simple nobleman, was on the ball.

I am reminded of this conversation because there was hanging in the room where we sat talking a painting by Claude, Landscape, Jacob with Laban and his daughters. and I have been looking at the picture.

The picture is large and of a beguiling, gentle silvery tone. The scene is Italian (of course, we know that Laban lived in Iraq, but there it is) and a very beautiful scene it is too. You have only to look at the picture to wish to be there. The figures in the picture—for example, Jacob, Laban and the girls and a couple of herdsmen with some sheep and cattle—although exquisitely painted, do not predominate in this master- piece. What counts most is a huge vista of a wide valley, stretching gloriously to a splendid mountain distance. In mid-distance there is a small town with a castle in which I should dearly like to end my days.

I am sometimes surprised about how many people have forgotten the story of Jacob and Laban. What Jacob and Laban got up to makes the mind boggle. Neither of those two was the sort of person with whom one would wish to do business.

In the first place, Jacob hotted his stupid elder brother Esau twice. Jacob then got windy about what Esau might do to him in return and so made off to his Uncle Laban's place in Iraq. Laban's hospitality to Jacob was disgraceful; but Jacob repaid him in kind. LOok what happened.

Jacob, having arrived at Uncle Laban's place, wasted no time about making a pass at Laban's daughter, Rachel. Rachel, who is pretty, has an unattractive, dull-eyed elder sister, Lia. Uncle Laban is determined to get Lia off his hands first, but he covets Jacob's ability. He lies to Jacob and agrees that Jacob may marry Rachel in seven years' time if Jacob runs his estate for him well in the meantime. This Jacob does. So the wedding feast happens, after which Jacob (one presumes feeling very nicely, thank you) goes to bed, only to wake up later to find that it is Lia who is in bed with him and not Rachel. Next morning he has a row with Uncle Laban, who had put Lia in the bed on purpose and is a tough bargainer. Uncle Laban says tliat if Jacob (whose management he has come to value highly) will agree to stay on for another seven years, he can have Rachel too. So Jacob stays another seven years and has Rachel too. I am sorry to say that he also goes to bed with the maids, Bala and Zelpha.

Jacob stays on at Uncle Laban's place for another six years, primarily with the object of diddling his uncle out of some valuable live- stock, which he succeeds in doing (I will not go into details, for is it not all written in the Book of Genesis?). Finally Jacob goes home.

In the meantime Esau can't have done too badly. He has got 400 servants. He turns up to meet Jacob with the whole lot, all armed. This puts the wind up Jacob. So what does Jacob do? He puts Lia and the maids in front.

Happily, it all works out all right in the end.

The manure-heap of stories about chicanery, false hospitality and poltroonery has fertilised art in many ways. From the story of Jacob and Laban there grew the orchid of Claude's pic-

ture. Drama in particular, both tragedy and comedy, has crowed from the dung-hill. The Greek gods did some dreadful things and are celebrated for them. We, would all agree, even if Sir Max Beerbohm had not told us so, that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth stand out as the supreme type of all that one's host and hostess should not be. The story of Jacob and Laban would have made a good plot for a Restoration comedy.

To the pure, all things are pure. But instead of re-reading the story of Jacob and Laban, I prefer to look at Claude's picture.

Turner painted a splendid imitation of Claude's picture. But Turner called his picture Appulia in Search of Appulius. There is na record, other than in the title of Turner's picture, of an Appulia. Nor, indeed, of an Appulus either, ex- cept in Turner's bad English edition of Ovid. Until someone read the inscription on his pic- ture, he was supposed to have intended Apuleius, an entertaining writer who. had abso- lutely nothing to do with the matter. Turner illustrated the' story of an Apulian shepherd, who got turned into a wild olive tree by wood nymphs as a punishment for his ribald imitation of their dancing. The shepherd was nameless, ex- cept to the translator who apparently miscon- strued A ppulus pastor; no one was the worse except the art historians who took a hundred and five years to find out. Turner's imitation of Claude, though it has his usual endearing eccen- tricity, is not in the least ribald.

Perhaps, with a flash of delicacy quite out of character, Turner preferred to dissociate his masterpiece from- the other rather questionable tale.