Koré
Sir Edward Leithen finds himself revising his opinion of the ‘detestable’ Koré Arabin.
1926
King George V 1910-1936
Cleopatra, as imagined by John William Waterhouse (1849-1917).
By John William Waterhouse (1849-1917), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
Cleopatra, by English artist John William Waterhouse (1849-1917). Ned Leithen compared Koré to Cleopatra, one of those women who exert a potent fascination over men by being “all the brothers as well as all the daughters of their father’s house”. The Dancing Floor was published in 1926, just a year after Leithen’s last outing in the Scottish comedy John McNab, and is an altogether more serious adventure, reminiscent of Prester John (1910) in the prominence given to superstition.
Introduction
Sir Edward Leithen, a forty-something lawyer of great distinction, ran across Corrie Arabin at a dance party given by his cousin-of-sorts, Mollie Nantley. ‘The girl is detestable’ was his first thought. But after Corrie — or more rightly Koré, a Greek name — turned to him for help in resolving a legal dispute with Athens, Ned’s feelings for the young woman began to change.
I ONCE read in some book about Cleopatra that that astonishing lady owed her charm to the fact that she was the last of an ancient and disreputable race.* The writer cited other cases — Mary of Scots,* I think, was one. It seemed, he said, that the quality of high-coloured ancestors flowered in the ultimate child of the race into something like witchcraft. Whether they were good or evil, they laid a spell on men’s hearts. Their position, fragile and forlorn, without the wardenship of male kinsfolk, set them on a romantic pinnacle. They were more feminine and capricious than other women, but they seemed, like Viola,* to be all the brothers as well as all the daughters of their father’s house, for their soft grace covered steel and fire. They were the true sorceresses of history, said my author, and sober men, not knowing why, followed blindly in their service.
Perhaps Koré* Arabin was of this sisterhood. At any rate one sober man was beginning to admit her compelling power. I could not get the girl from my thoughts.
* Cleopatra VII Philopator (70 or 69 BC – 30 BC) was Queen of Egypt from 51 BC to 30 BC. As a direct descendant of Ptolemy I of Egypt, one of Alexander the Great’s generals, she was hardly the last of a ‘disreputable race’: Ptolemy was a high-born Macedonian Greek from Pella. She was courted by both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. See also Mark Antony Catches a Kipper.
* The daughter of James V of Scotland, and mother of James VI. Mary’s short and turbulent reign ended when her cousin Elizabeth I of England, to whom Mary had fled for protection despite resolutely intriguing against her, found it necessary to have her beheaded in 1587. Mary had been married to Francis II of France; following her return in 1561 she married her cousin Henry Stewart, Earl of Darnley, but carried on an affair with Italian musician David Rizzio that was abruptly cut off when Darnley murdered him. Darnley was subsequently murdered by James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell. Bothwell was acquitted in a farcical trial that disgusted all Europe, and married Mary in 1567, probably after raping her. See also Mary Queen of Scots.
* A reference to a character in William Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night, who has adopted the guise of a young man named Cesario in order to run errands between Orsino, Duke of Illyria, and the Duke’s lover Olivia; in saying that she is ‘all the daughters of my father’s house, / And all the brothers too’ she is trying to prompt Orsino to look a little closer. See Viola Draws a Blank.
* Koré corresponds to the Greek word κόρη, a maiden, pronounced much as Ned Leithen first heard it from Mollie Nantley, ‘Corrie’. It is applied specifically to a style of ancient Greek sculpture showing a young woman standing stiffly upright, and draped in a loose garment. Koré Arabin was, as Leithen expressed it, “Pure English, but lives abroad”; her flamboyant and frankly disreputable father, the late Shelley Arabin, had owned the (fictional) Greek island of Plakos, where she was brought up.
