There is an old picture-shop in the West-Central district of London,
notable for the grime of its canvases, in the window of which there
is to be seen at this moment--unless a confiding purchaser has just
borne it off--a girl’s head and bust by some very indifferent Dutch
hand, under which is printed on the frame the startling and courageous
legend, “The Coral Necklace. By Jan Vermeer, of Delft.”
Of course the ascription is inaccurate. Were it accurate and the
picture worthy of it, this little shop would be the Mecca of the
first art experts of Europe and America, and the dealer would be in
the way to affluence; nor does the picture’s present owner probably
believe in it. But what of some previous possessor who did believe in
it--some simple soul who was genuinely convinced that upon his wall
hung a portrait by this rarest and most exquisite and radiant of Dutch
masters? Do you not envy him his easy credence, his want of fastidious
taste? I do.
A little while ago there was a lawsuit--indeed a series of
lawsuits--all turning upon the collection of porcelain left by a
wealthy Regent Street merchant, whose hobby was the acquisition of
china. As a man in the prime of life he had been a good judge; but
as he grew older and his brain weakened his sense of discrimination
left him, and it was discovered that his later purchases, so far from
being the priceless examples of Dresden and other ware which they were
thought to be, were all-but worthless. This naturally was a grief and
disappointment to the heirs who were to benefit from the sale; but for
us to be sorry for him is as foolish a waste of sympathy as I know.
For though there he sat, that old amateur of ceramics, surrounded by
the mediocre, yet in that he believed it to be the choicest he was
enviable. That belief is the heart of the case, since it is not what
things really are, but what one thinks things to be, that is the
important matter.
Truth has a slightly different expression for every one. To this aged
connoisseur with his decaying faculties her expression was falseness
itself, could he have scrutinised it with intelligence, but to his dim
eyes it looked like the finest candour, and therefore it was the finest
candour. He sunned himself in it, and passing his hands lovingly over
the spurious shepherdesses was happy. The point is that he could not
have been happier had the porcelain been truly of the rarest and most
wonderful.
I hope it will never be my fortune to visit a picture collector whose
walls are hung entirely with obvious copies which he believes to be
original, and flagrant daubs which he thinks masterpieces--a collector
in short who relies only on the posthumous activity of artists; yet
if it is, I hope I shall know how to control myself when he displays
his treasures. But of one thing I am certain: that no matter how I may
suffer from the concealment of my true feelings as an art lover, I
shall experience a genuine affection for my host, and a genuine delight
in his transparent, credible nature. Surely the people who live in
fool’s paradises are the salt of the earth. The man who says of a fine
thing, “A fine thing and my own,” I can admire, but not necessarily
with warmth; the man (he is very common) who says of a fine thing,
“A poor thing, but my own,” I have very little use for; but the man
who says of a poor thing, “A fine thing and my own,” him I admire
cordially, and could almost embrace.
But about this Vermeer. I cannot get it out of my head, for Vermeer
is a painter of whom, as you know, I have made some study, and the
thought of any one really sitting down excitedly with this grotesquely
misattributed picture in his room, reading the lying label without a
qualm, even with pride, scanning the commonplace paint with no twinge
of dubiety--it is this thought which beats me. The man who confidently
had the legend printed on the frame must indeed have been a simpleton
beyond appraisement--the very briniest salt of the soil. For consider:
the copyists, the forgers, may do credible things with Corot, even
with Raphael. Every day they are writing David Cox’s signature on old
water-colours; false ascriptions are the life-blood of too many firms.
That is true. But Vermeer--there is only one Vermeer! and yet some man
could know enough about Vermeer to wish to have something by him on his
wall (modest wish--there are not, as I have been saying, forty known
Vermeer canvases in the world), and then be satisfied with this! If
ever I longed to meet a freak it is he--not only to examine his bumps,
but to abase myself before him. For there is a true philosopher, a
really wise man, if you like.
Meanwhile I wish some dramatist with an eye to quaint character,
if there be such a one left, would set upon the stage for us a
paradisiacal fool such as this--a simple kind of enthusiast without a
shred of critical faculty or a drop of guile, whom we might see amiably
fondling his geese and deeming them swans. That would give me, for one,
great pleasure. Lamb, in his Captain Jackson, approached and skirted
the type, but Vermeer’s “Coral Necklace” would not have attracted that
engaging creature. If Anatole France were a dramatist and would return
to the gentle, smiling mood in which he thought out and built up his
Sylvestre Bonnard, he might give us this collector. I can think of no
one else; and even he would probably be a little too much inclined to
whip something on his back, such a castigator and ridiculer as he is.