Mr. Peters was inventive, a leader, a loving father, and more. He was something that most fathers of my acquaintance were not: a dignified man. One could see, too, that he bore as if he were a block of granite the cares that can fall on any family, taking the full weight, so that life should rest lightly on the shoulders of the others. The reader saw this quality at once, at first meeting, when Mr. Peters was introduced in his study in The Shapely Brunette:
Larry knew that he would find his father in the tiny attic study to which Edgar Peters retired when he needed to think and work undisturbed. Larry stopped outside the door and knocked. Everyone on Kittiwake Island knew that Edgar Peters was not to be burst in upon when he was concentrating in his attic retreat.
“Just a minute,” said the voice of Marie, the maid.
Larry waited impatiently, snapping the nails of the thumb and middle finger of each hand together in his eager agitation. From behind the door came muffled conversation, the sound of something scraping along the floor. At last the door opened, and Marie, flushed, breathing heavily, the rounded tops of her ample breasts heaving above the neckline of her little black chintz uniform, stepped out of Edgar Peters’s attic asylum.
“Oh, it’s you Larry,” she said. “Your father is deep in thought. I was just straightening up around him and—”
She turned suddenly and looked back into the little hideaway. She scampered back inside and emerged with her feather duster.
“—dusting,” she finished, flourishing the feather duster. She giggled and started down the stairs.
Larry stepped inside his father’s narrow lair. Gewgaws were everywhere—along the radiator, on shelves, and tossed indiscriminately on the floor. The walls were lined with cartons of letters from correspondents around the world, all on the subject of knickknacks, the bread and butter of the Peters clan. Just inside the door were displayed documents declaring that Edgar Lawrence Peters was a member of the National Institute of Bric-a-brac Designers, an honorary member of the Institut des Fabricateurs des Bibelots, and an honorary fellow of the Royal Academy of Curio Makers. He had won awards from the Gewgaw Fanciers and the Tchotchke Mavens, among others. On the knickknack ladder, Edgar Peters was tops.
Crammed into one corner, positioned to take advantage of the light from the only window, was a rickety table that served Mr. Peters as a desk. To the casual eye, the desk, heaped with market research reports, rough sketches, and prototypes of next year’s line of gimcrackery from the Peters group, suggested a disorganized and haphazard thinker, but Larry knew that his father possessed a fine analytical mind, and that the disarray was deliberate, calculated to disarm visitors.
Dressed in one of the rumpled tweed suits that he wore in the belief that they gave him a learned air, Edgar Peters was mussing his thick sandy hair with one hand and tracing the lines of an intricate sketch with the other.
Larry wanted his father’s attention, but he was reluctant to disturb his concentration, so he stood across the table from him, fidgeting.
Father and son shared the most pronounced Peters family features: a wiry build, a wacky smile, and bright eyes. Larry shared his father’s affectations too: rumpling his hair now and then as if absentmindedly, and dressing in professorial tweeds, usually a herringbone suit, though Larry’s tweeds were often considerably spotted with oil paints, which Larry considered a bohemian touch. Mr. Peters thought the boy lacked polish.
Edgar Peters looked up from his work at last. He peered at Larry over the top of his glasses, as parents of adolescents (parents who wear glasses) will sometimes do. “Oh, Larry,” he said. “What’s up, son?”
Larry chuckled. “You certainly were deep in concentration, Dad,” he said. “You didn’t even know I was here. I’ll bet you never even noticed that Marie was in here, trying to straighten up and do some dusting.”
Mr. Peters reddened, and Larry wished that he hadn’t said anything, for it was apparent to him that his father was embarrassed by his being, as Larry’s mother so often said, “in another world” when he was concentrating on a gimcrack design.
“Yes—well—I—I—” Mr. Peters’s voice trailed off, and he rumpled his hair. “Did you want something, Larry?” he asked.
“Can you spare a minute to take a look at my latest project, Dad?” asked Larry.
Edgar Peters removed his glasses and slipped them into his jacket pocket. He rubbed the spatulate indentations on either side of his nose. “I could use a break,” he said with a weary sigh. “These damned sketches are giving me a headache.” With a sweep of his hand he indicated the plans that covered his desk.
“Aren’t they any good?” asked Larry.
“On the contrary,” said Mr. Peters. “They’re more than good. They’re brilliant, innovative, ambitious.” He let out another weary sigh. “That’s the problem.” He indicated the clutter on his desk. “These are the sketches for next year’s line. Your Uncle Hector thinks we can make bivalves the next knickknack rage, bigger than the little rococo courtiers we’ve done so well with, bigger than the black ceramic panthers, bigger even than the flamingos. Perhaps he’s right, but frankly it’s an enormous risk. Who can really be sure what piece of bric-a-brac people will want next? And these are supposed to be made of glass. I’m not even sure that we can make these in glass. Even if we can, tooling up will cost us a fortune.” From the clutter on the desk he produced a glass clam, a hand-blown prototype. “Here, look at this one,” he said.
He handed the clam to Larry, who examined it closely, racking his brain for something to say about it.
Edgar Peters waited for a bit, expecting that his son would make a comment or ask a penetrating question. When the silence had grown embarrassing, Mr. Peters cleared his throat and spoke in Larry’s stead.
“First,” he said, “will anyone buy a glass clam? I doubt that clams have widespread appeal. Second, look at how complex this is: the valves are actually hinged. Look at this! A glass hinge.” He snatched the clam from Larry and flipped it open, impatiently, breaking the glass hinge. “Can you imagine what these are going to have to sell for? Well, enough of my worries. Tell me what you’ve been up to.”
In Topical Guide 191, Mark Dorset considers Clams as Objets d’Art from this episode.
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🎧 191: Mr. Peters was inventive, ...