"Animum pictura pascit inani."
When Panurge was in that dreadful difficulty of his about marrying he
took counsel of all his friends. Pantagruel, as we know, advised him
alternately for and against, according to the view taken at the moment
by his versatile dependent. Gilead Beck was so far in Panurge's
position that he asked advice of all his friends. Mr. Cassilis
recommended him to wait and look about him; meantime, he took his
money for investment; and, as practice makes perfect, and twice or
thrice makes a habit, he found now no difficulty in making Mr. Beck
give him cheques without asking their amount or their object, while
the American Fortunatus easily fell into the habit of signing them
without question. He was a Fool? No doubt. The race is a common one;
especially common is that kind of Fool which is suspicious from long
experience, but which, having found, as he thinks, a fellow-creature
worthy of trust, places entire and perfect trust in him, and so, like
a ship riding at anchor with a single stout cable, laughs at danger
even while the wind is blowing, beam on, to a lee shore. Perfect faith
is so beautiful a thing that neither religionists who love to
contemplate it, nor sharpers who profit by it, would willingly let it
die out.
Lawrence Colquhoun recommended pictures.
"You may as well spend your money on Artists as on any other people.
They are on the whole a pampered folk, and get much too well paid. But
a good picture is generally a good investment. And then you will
become a patron and form a gallery of your own, the Beck collection,
to hand down to posterity."
"I can't say, Colonel--not with truth--that I know a good picture from
a bad one. I once tried sign painting. But the figures didn't come out
right, somehow. Looked easy to do, too. Seems I didn't know about
Perspective, and besides, the colours got mixed. Sign-painting is not
a walk in life that I should recommend from personal experience."
But the idea took root in his brain.
Jack Dunquerque encouraged it.
"You see, Beck," he said, "you may as well form a gallery of paintings
as anything else. Buy modern pictures; don't buy Old Masters, because
you will be cheated. The modern pictures will be old in a hundred
years, and then your collection will be famous."
"I want to do my work in my own lifetime," said the millionaire. He
was a man of many ideas but few convictions, the strongest being that
man ought to do what he has to do in his own lifetime, and not to
devise and bequeath for posthumous reputation.
"Why, and so you would. You buy the pictures while you are living;
when you go off, the pictures remain."
A patron of Art. The very name flattered his vanity, being a thing he
had read of, and his imagination leaped up to the possibilities of the
thing. Why should he not collect for his own country? He saw himself,
like Stewart, returning to New York with a shipload of precious Art
treasures bought in London; he saw his agent ransacking the studios
and shops of Florence, Naples, Rome, Dresden--wherever painters
congregate and pictures are sold; he imagined rich argosies coming to
him across the ocean--the American looks across the ocean for the
luxuries and graces of life, his wines, his Art, and his literature.
Then he saw a great building, grander than the Capitol at Washington,
erected by a grateful nation for the reception of the Gilead P. Beck
Collection of Ancient and Modern Paintings.
Now one of the earliest callers upon Mr. Beck was a certain
picture-dealer named Burls. Mr. Burls and his fraternity regard rich
Americans with peculiar favour. It is said to have been Bartholomew
Burls who invented especially for American use the now well-known
"multiplication" dodge. The method is this. You buy a work by a rising
artist, one whose pictures may be at some future time, but are not
yet, sufficiently known to make their early wanderings matter of
notoriety. One of your young men--he must be a safe hand and a
secret--make two, three, or four copies, the number depending on the
area, rather than the number, of your _clientele_. You keep the
Artist's receipt, a proof of the genuineness of the picture. The
copies, name and all, are so well done that even the painter himself
would be puzzled to know his own. You then proceed to place your
pictures at good distances from each other, representing each as
genuine. It is a simple, beautiful, and lucrative method. Not so
profitable, perhaps, as cleaning oil-paintings, which takes half an
hour apiece and is charged from ten shillings to ten pounds, according
to the dealer's belief in your power to pay. Nor is it more profitable
than the manufacture of a Correggio or a Cuyp for a guileless cotton
manufacturer, and there is certainly a glow of pride to be obtained by
the successful conversion of a new into an old picture by the aid of
mastic varnish, mixed with red and yellow lake to tone it down, and
the simple shaking of a door-mat over it. But then people have grown
wary, and it is difficult to catch a purchaser of a Correggio, for
which a large sum has to be asked. The multiplication dodge is the
simpler and the safer.
Mr. Beck, as has been already shown, was by no means deficient in a
certain kind of culture. He had read such books as fell in his way
during his wandering and adventurous life. His reading was thus
miscellaneous. He had been for a short time an actor, and thus
acquired a little information concerning dramatic literature. He had
been on a newspaper, one of the rank and file as well as an editor. He
knew a good deal about many things, arts, customs, and trades. But of
one thing he was profoundly ignorant, and that was of painting.
He looked at Burls' card, however--"Bartholomew Burls and Co., Church
Street, City, Inventors of the only safe and perfect Method of
Cleaning Oil Paintings"--and, accompanied by Jack Dunquerque, who knew
about as much of pictures as himself, hunted up the shop, and entered
it with the meekness of a pigeon about to be plucked.
They stood amid a mass of pictures, the like of which Gilead Beck had
never before conceived. They were hanging on the walls; they were
piled on the floor; they were stretched across the ceiling; they
climbed the stairs; they were hiding away in dark corners; a gaping
doorway lit with gas showed a cellar below where they were stacked in
hundreds. Pictures of all kinds. The shop was rather dark, though the
sun of May was pouring a flood of light even upon the narrow City
streets. But you could make out something. There were portraits in
hundreds. The effigies of dead men and women stared at you from every
second frame. Your ancestor--Mr. Burls was very particular in
ascertaining beyond a doubt that it was your own ancestor, and nobody
else's--frowned at you in bright steel armour with a Vandyke beard; or
he presented a shaven face with full cheeks and a Ramillies wig; or he
smirked upon you from a voluminous white scarf and a coat-collar which
rose to the top of his head. The ladies of your family--Mr. Burls was
very particular, before selling you one, in ascertaining beyond a
doubt that she belonged to your own branch of the house, and none
other--smiled upon you with half-closed lids, like the consort of
Potiphar, the Egyptian, or they frisked as shepherdesses in airy
robes, conscious of their charms; or they brandished full-blown
petticoats, compared with which crinolines were graceful, or they
blushed in robes which fell tightly about the figure, and left the
waist beneath the arms. Name any knight, or mayor, or court beauty, or
famous toast among your ancestry whose portrait is wanting to your
gallery, and Burls, the great genealogical collector, will find you
before many weeks that missing link in the family history. Besides the
portraits, there were landscapes, nymphs bathing, Venuses asleep,
Venuses with a looking-glass, Venuses of all sorts; scenes from _Don
Quixote_; Actæons surprising Dianas; battle-pieces, sea-pieces,
river-pieces; "bits" of Hampstead Heath, and boats on the Thames.
Mr. Beck looked round him, stroked his chin, and addressed the
guardian of this treasure-house:
"I am going to buy pictures," he began comprehensively. "You air the
Boss?"
"This gentleman means," Jack explained, "that he wants to look at your
pictures with a view to buying some if he approves of them."
The man in the shop was used to people who would buy one picture after
a whole mornings haggling, but he was not accustomed to people who
wanted to buy pictures generally. He looked astonished, and then, with
a circular sweep of his right hand, indicated that here were pictures,
and all Mr. Beck had to do was to go in and buy them.
"Look round you, gentlemen," he said; "pray look round you; and the
more you buy, the better we shall like it."
Then he became aware that the elder speaker was an American, and he
suddenly changed his front.
"Our chicer pictures," he explained, "are up stairs. I should like you
to look at them first. Will you step up, gentlemen?"
On the stairs, more pictures. On the landing, more pictures. On the
stairs mounting higher, more pictures. But they stopped on the first
floor. Mr. Burls and his assistants never invited any visitors to the
second and third floors, because these rooms were sacred to the
manufacture of old pictures, the multiplication of new, and the sacred
processes of cleaning, lining, and restoring. In the first-floor rooms
were fewer pictures but more light.
One large composition immediately caught Mr. Beck's eye. A noble
picture; a grand picture; a picture whose greatness of conception was
equalled by its boldness of treatment. It occupied the whole of one
side of the wall, and might have measured twenty feet in length by
fourteen in height. The subject was scriptural--the slaying of Sisera
by Jael, Heber the Kenite's wife. The defeated general lay stretched
on the couch, occupying a good ten feet of the available space. Beside
him stood the woman, a majestic figure, with a tent-peg and a mallet,
about to commit that famous breach of hospitality. The handle of the
mallet was rendered most conscientiously, and had evidently been
copied from a model. Through the open hangings of the tent were
visible portions of the army chasing the fugitives and lopping off
their heads.
"That seems a striking picture," said Mr. Beck. "I take that picture,
sir, to represent George Washington after the news of the surrender at
Saratoga, or General Jackson after the battle of New Orleans."
"Grant after Gettysburg," suggested Jack.
"No, sir. I was at Gettysburg myself; and the hero asleep on the bed,
making every allowance for his fancy dress, which I take to be
allegorical, is not at all like General Ulysses Grant, nor is he like
General Sherman. The young female, I s'pose, is Liberty, with a hammer
in one hand, and a dagger in the other. Too much limb for an American
gell, and the flesh is redder than one could wish. But on the hull a
striking picture. What may be the value of this composition, mister?"
"I beg your pardon, sir. Not Washington, sir, nor General Jackson,
though we can procure you in a very short time fine portraits of both
these 'eroes. This, gentlemen, is a biblical subject. Cicero,
overtaken, by sleep while in jail, about to be slain by 'Eber the wife
of the Kenite. That is 'Eber, with the 'eavy 'ammer in 'er 'and. The
Kenite belonged, as I have always understood--for I don't remember the
incident myself--to the opposite faction. That splendid masterpiece,
gentlemen, has been valued at five 'undred. For a town'all, or for an
altar-piece, it would be priceless. To let it go at anything under
five 'undred would be a sin and a shame, besides a-throwing away of
money. Look at the light and shade. Look at 'Eber's arm and Cicero's
leg. That leg alone has been judged by connisseers worth all the
money."
Mr. Beck was greatly disappointed in the subject and in the price;
even had it been the allegorical picture which he thought, he was not
yet sufficiently educated in the prices of pictures to offer five
hundred for it; and when Mr. Burls's assistant spoke of pounds, Mr.
Beck thought dollars. So he replied:
"Five hundred dollars? I will give you five-and-twenty."
"That," interposed Jack Dunquerque, "is a five-pound note."
"Then, by gad, sir," said the man, with alacrity, "it's yours! It's
been hangin' there for ten years, and never an offer yet. It's yours!"
This splendid painting, thus purchased at the rate of rather more than
threepence a square foot, was the acquisition made by Mr. Beck towards
his great Gallery of Ancient and Modern Masters.
He paid for it on the spot calling Jack to witness the transaction.
"We will send it up to the hotel to-morrow," said the man.
"I shall have it fixed right away along the side of my room," said Mr.
Beck. "Should it be framed?"
"I should certainly have it framed," said Jack.
"Yes, sir; we shall be happy to frame it for you."
"I dare say you would," Jack went on. "This is a job for a
house-carpenter, Mr. Beck. You will have to build the frame for this
gigantic picture. Have it sent over, and consider the frame
afterwards."
This course was approved; but, for reasons which will subsequently
appear, the picture never was framed.
The dealer proceeded to show other pictures.
"A beautiful Nicolas Pushing--'Nymphs and Satyrs in a Bacchanalian
Dance'--a genuine thing."
"I don't think much of that, Mr. Dunquerque; do you? The Nymphs
haven't finished dressing; and the gentlemen with the goats' legs may
be satires on human nature, but they are not pretty. Let us go on to
the next show in the caravan, mister."
"This is Hetty. In the master's best style. 'Graces surprised while
Bathing in the River.' Much admired by connisseers."
"No, sir; not at all," said Mr. Beck severely. "_My_ gallery is
going to elevate the morals of our gells and boys. It's a pretty
thing, too, Mr. Dunquerque, and I sometimes think it's a pity morality
was ever invented. Now, Boss."
"Quite so, sir. Hetty is, as you say--rayther--What do you think of
this, now--a lovely Grooze?"
"Grooze," said Mr. Beck, "is French, I suppose, for gell. Yes, now
that's a real pretty picture; I call that a picture you ain't ashamed
to admire; there's lips you can kiss; there's a chin you can
chuck----"
"How about the morals?" asked Jack.
"Wal, Mr. Dunquerque, we'll buy the picture first, and we'll see how
it rhymes with morals afterwards. There's eyes to look into a man's.
Any more heads of pretty Groozes, mister? I'll buy the lot."
"This is a Courage-oh!" the exhibitor went on, after expressing his
sorrow that he had no more Groozes, and bringing out a Madonna.
"Thought to be genuine by the best judges. History of the picture
unknown redooces the value."
"I can't go fooling around with copies in _my_ gallery," said Mr.
Beck. "I must have genuine pictures, or none."
"Then we will not offer you that Madonna, sir. I think I have
something here to suit you. Come this way. A Teniers, gentlemen--a
real undoubted gem of Teniers. This is a picture now for any
gentleman's collection. It came from the gallery of a nobleman lately
deceased, and was bought at the sale by Mr. Burls himself, who knows a
picture when he sees one. Mr. Bartholomew Burls, our senior partner,
gentlemen. 'The Bagpipe-player.'"
It was an excellent imitation, but of a well-known picture, and it
required consummate impudence to pretend that it was original.
"Oh," said Jack, "but I have seen this somewhere else. In the Louvre,
I believe."
"Very likely, sir," replied the unabashed vendor. "Teniers painted six
hundred pictures. There was a good many 'Bagpipe-players' among them.
One is in the Louvre. This is another."
On the advice of Jack Dunquerque Mr. Beck refrained from buying, and
contented himself with selecting, with the option of purchase. When
they left the shop, some twenty pictures were thus selected.
The seller, who had a small interest or commission on sales, as soon
as their steps were fairly out of the shop, executed a short dance
indicative of joy. Then he called up the stairs, and a man came slowly
down.
A red-nosed bibulous person, by name Critchett. He was manufacturer of
old masters in ordinary to Bartholomew Burls and Co.; cleaned and
restored pictures when other orders were slack, and was excellent at
"multiplication." He had worked for Burls for a quarter of a century,
save for a few weeks, when one Frank Melliship, a young gentleman then
down on his luck, worked in his stead. A trustworthy and faithful
creature, though given to drink; he could lie like an echo; was as
incapable of blushing as the rock on which the echo plays; and bore
cross-examination like a Claimant.
"Come down, Critchett--come down. We've sold 'Cicero and 'Eber.'"
"'Sisera and Jael.'"
"Well, it don't matter--and I said 'Cicero in Jail.' They've gone for
five pounds. The governor he always said I could take whatever was
offered, and keep it for myself. Five pounds in my pocket! Your last
Teniers--that old bagpipe-party--I tried him, but it was no go. But
I've sold the only one left of your Groozes, and you had better make a
few more, out of hand. Look here, Critchett: it isn't right to drink
in hours, and the guv'nor out and all; but this is an occasion. This
ain't a common day, because I've sold the Cicero. I won't ask you to
torse, nor yet to pay; but I says, 'Critchett, come across the way, my
boy, and put your lips to what you like best.' Lord, Lord! on'y give
me an American, and give him to me green! Never mind your hat,
Critchett. 'It's limp in the brim and it's gone in the rim,' as the
poet says; and you look more respectable without it, Critchett."
"That's a good beginning," Beck observed, after luncheon. They were in
Jack Dunquerque's club, in the smoking room. "That's a first-rate
beginning. How many pictures go to a gallery?"
"It depends on the size of it. About five hundred for a moderate sized
one."
Mr. Beck whistled.
"Never mind. The Ile pays for all. A Patron of Art. Yes, sir, that
seems the right end of the stick for a rich man to keep up. But I've
been thinking it over. It isn't enough to go to shops and buy
pictures. We must go in for sculpting too, and a Patron ought to get
hold of a struggling artist, and lend him a helping hand; he should
advance unknown talent. That's my idea."
"I think I can help you there," said Jack, his eyes twinkling. "I know
just such a man; an artist unknown, without friends, with slender
means, of great genius, who has long languished in obscurity."
"Bring him to me, Mr. Dunquerque. Bring that young man to me. Let me
be the means of pushing the young gentleman. Holy thunder! What is
money if it isn't used. Tell me his name."
"I think I ought to have spoken to him first," said Jack, in some
confusion, and a little taken aback by Mr. Beck's determination. "But,
however, you can only try. His name is Humphrey Jagenal. I will, if
you please, go and see him to-day. And I will ask him to call upon you
to-morrow morning."
"I would rather call upon _him_," said Mr. Beck. "It might look like
the pride of patronage asking him to call at the Langham. I don't want
him to start with a feeling of shame."
"Not at all; at least, of course, it will be patronage, and I believe
he will prefer it. There is no shame in taking a commission to execute
a picture."
"Mr. Dunquerque, every day you confer fresh obligations upon me. And I
can do nothing for you--nothing at all."
At this time it was Gilead Beck's worst misfortune that he was not
taken seriously by any one except Gabriel Cassilis, who literally and
liberally interpreted his permission to receive all his money for safe
investment. But as for his schemes, vague and shadowy as they were,
for using his vast income for some practically philanthropic and
benevolent objects, none of his friends sympathised with him, because
none of them understood him. Yet the man was deeply in earnest. He
meant what he said, and more, when he told Gabriel Cassilis that a
voice urged him by day and by night not to save his money, but to use
for others what he could not use himself. He had been two months in
England on purpose to learn a way, but saw no way yet. And every way
seemed barred. He would not give money to societies, because they were
societies; he wanted to strike out something new for himself. Nor
would he elaborate a scheme to be carried out after his death. Let
every man, he repeated every day, do what he has to do in his
lifetime. How was he to spend his great revenues? A Patron of Art? It
was the first tangible method that he had struck upon. He would be
that to begin with. Art has the great advantage, too, of swallowing up
any conceivable quantity of money.
And on the way from the Burls's Depot of Real and Genuine Art, he hit
upon the idea of advancing artists as well as Art. He was in thorough
earnest when he raised his grave and now solemn eyes to Jack
Dunquerque, and thanked him for his kindness. And Jack's conscience
smote him.
"I must tell you," Jack explained, "that I have never seen any of Mr.
Humphrey Jagenal's pictures. Miss Fleming, the young lady whom you met
at Mrs. Cassilis's, told me once that he was a great artist."
"Bring him to me, bring him to me, and we will talk. I hope that I may
be able to speak clearly to him without hurting his feelin's. If I
brag about my Pile, Mr. Dunquerque, you just whisper 'Shoddy,' and
I'll sing small."
"There will be no hurting of feelings. When you come to a question of
buying and selling, an artist is about the same as everybody else.
Give him a big commission; let him have time to work it out; and send
him a cheque in advance. I believe that would be the method employed
by patrons whom artists love. At least, I should love such a patron.
"Beck," he went on after a pause: both were seated in the long deep
easy-chairs of the club smoking-room, with the chairs pretty close
together, so that they could talk in low tones,--"Beck, if you talk
about artists, there's Phil--I mean Miss Fleming. By Jove! she only
wants a little training to knock the heads off half the R.A.s. Come
out with me and call upon her. She will show us her sketches."
"I remember her," said Gilead Beck slowly; "a tall young lady; a
lovely Grooze, as the man who grinds that picture-mill would say; she
had large brown eyes that looked as if they could be nothing but
tender and true, and a rosebud mouth all sweetness and smiles, and
lips that trembled when she thought. I remember her--a head like a
queen's piled up with her own brown hair and flowers, an' a figure
like--like a Mexican half-caste at fourteen."
"You talk of her as if you were in love with her," said Jack
jealously.
"No, Mr. Dunquerque; no, sir. That is, I may be. But it won't come
between you and her, what I feel. You air a most fortunate man. Go
down on your knees when you get home, and say so. For or'nary
blessin's you may use the plan of Joshua Mixer, the man who had the
biggest claim in Empire City before it busted up. He got his Petitions
and his Thanksgivin's printed out neat on a card together, and then he
hung that card over his bed. 'My sentiments,' he used to say, jerkin'
his thumb to the card when he got in at night. Never omitted his
prayers; never forgot that jerk, drunk or sober. Joshua Mixer was the
most religious man in all that camp. But for special Providences; for
Ile; for a lucky shot; for a sweet, pure, heavenly, gracious creature
like Miss Fleming,--I say, go on your knees and own to it, as a man
should. Well, Mr. Dunquerque," he continued, "I wish you success; and
if there's anything I can do to promote your success, let me know. Now
there's another thing. What I want to do is to unlock the door which
keeps me from the society of men of genius. I can get into good
houses; they all seem open to me because I've got money. London is the
most hospitable city in this wide world for those who have the stamps.
Republican? Republican ain't the word for it. Do they ask who a man
is? Not they. They ask about his dollars, and they welcome him with
smiles. It's a beautiful thing to look at, and it makes an Amer'can
sigh when he thinks of his own country, where they inquire into a
stranger's antecedents. But there's exceptions, and artists and
authors I cannot get to. And I want to meet your great men. Not to
interview them, sir. Not at all. They may talk a donkey's hind leg
off, and I wouldn't send a single line to the New York papers to tell
them what was said nor what they wore. But I should like, just for one
evening, to meet and talk with the great writers whom we respect
across the water."
Again Jack Dunquerque's eyes began to twinkle. He _could_ not enter
into the earnestness of this man. And an idea occurred to him at which
his face lit up with smiles.
"It requires thinking over. Suppose I was to be able to get
half-a-dozen or so of our greatest writers, how should we manage to
entertain them?"
"I should like, if they would only come--I should like to give them a
dinner at the Langham. A square meal; the very best dinner that the
hotel can serve. I should like to make them feel like being at the
Guildhall."
"I will think about it," said Jack, "and let you know in a day or two
what I can do for you."