In connection with family traditions and family portraits there are
bound to be some grimly humorous episodes with the lapse of time, owing
to the exactions of those Chancellors of the Exchequer who have held
office since the creation of the Death Duties, as they are called. When
a man with no ready money of his own inherits an estate that has not
paid its expenses for many years, and a splendid mansion containing
about fifty pictures, which, according to the most recent auction-room
prices, may be worth from £100,000 to £150,000--people at picture sales
think in pounds and bid in guineas--the question that at once presents
itself is how to meet the demands of Somerset House. The fortunate heir,
without a penny in his pocket, is called on to hand over from £10,000
to £15,000, according to his relationship to the late owner, and he
wonders how he is to do it. In some cases that have come under my notice
the only feasible way out of the difficulty has been taken, and some
of the pictures have been sold in order to pay for the privilege of
retaining the others. In the case of some historical mansions, however,
every picture in the gallery is perfectly well known to the world, and
the heir has a good many more qualms about selling any of them than
Charles Surface had about disposing of his collection, with the
exception of “the little ill-looking fellow over the settee.” He
feels--if he is capable of any feeling at all--that he is selling his
own flesh and blood, and he always wonders what people will say when
they come to visit the historical house and find blank panels in which,
for perhaps two or three hundred years, stately figures of men and
graceful figures of women had appeared.
What is he to do in such circumstances, while he is thinking his
thoughts on a settee in the hall, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer
is pulling away like mad at the wrought-iron bell handle outside and
telling the butler that his instructions are not to leave the place
until his bill is paid?
It seems that there is only one way by which the honour of the family
can be preserved. There are trusty agents who can negotiate for an
immediate and a secret sale of certain of the pictures. These are taken
out of their frames or out of their panels, copies are made and put
where the originals had been for years, and when the latter are passed
on to New York or Chicago, unsuspecting lovers of Art stand beneath
copies in admiration of the power of the Masters!
That is how the honour of the great family remains untarnished, while
the Chancellor of the Exchequer strikes a match on one of the stone
columns of the porch, lights his cigarette, and goes jauntily down the
avenue with a large cheque in his breast-pocket.
All very well this for the time being; but a little comedy may possibly
take place some years later, when once again Death Duties have to be
paid, and probably at an increased rate per cent. No note may have been
made of the pictures that were sold, and the copies have been subjected
to the admiration of visitors without a misgiving. There are, I
happen to know, copyists of Sir Joshua Reynolds and others of Thomas
Gainsborough, Romney, Raeburn, Lawrence, and the rest, of such skill in
reproducing the style of their particular Master that only the cleverest
connoisseur could say, after the lapse of a year or two, which are the
originals and which the copies. How, then, is a valuation to be made
when the new owner enters upon his inheritance?
I fancy that it will be discovered Masters than were suspected of it had
made replicas of their greatest works, and shipped off one to Chicago
while selling the other to the great English families who gave them the
order a hundred years or so ago.