Ashman and Hilary, Iver Grove and Andromeda Lodge, whatever my thoughts turn to, said Austerlitz as we descended the darkening grassy slopes of the park to the city lights which had now come on in a wide semicircle before us, it all arouses in me a sense of disjunction, of having no ground beneath my feet. I think it was in early October 1957, he continued abruptly after some time, when I was on the point of going to Paris to pursue the studies of architectural history on which I had embarked the previous year at the Courtauld Institute, that I last visited the Fitzpatricks in Barmouth for the double funeral of Uncle Evelyn and Great-Uncle Alphonso. They had died almost within a day of each other, Alphonso of a stroke as he was picking up his favorite apples out in the garden, Evelyn in his icy bed, cramped with pain and anguish. Autumn mists filled the whole valley on the morning of the burial of these two very different men, Evelyn always at odds with himself and the world, Alphonso animated by a cheerfully equable temperament. Just as the funeral procession began moving towards Cutiau cemetery, the sun broke through the hazy veils above the Mawddach, and a breeze blew along its banks. The few dark figures, the group of poplars, the flood of light over the water, the massif of Cader Idris on the far side of the river, these were the elements in a farewell scene which, curiously enough, I rediscovered a few weeks ago in one of the rapid watercolor sketches Turner often made, noting down what he saw either from the life or looking back at the past later. This almost insubstantial picture, bearing the title of
