We were speaking of the man whose career was written in terms of huge
corporations and incomparable art collections.
"What a life it was!" said Cooper. "From his office-desk he controlled
the destinies of one hundred million people. His leisure hours were
spent amidst the garnered beauty of five thousand years. Isn't it almost
an intolerable thought that the same man should have been master of the
Stock Exchange and owner of that marvellous museum in white marble on
Thirty-sixth Street?"
"Cooper," I said, "you sound like the I. W. W."
"I am that," he retorted. "I express the Inexhaustible Wonder of the
World in the face of this thing we call America. A nation devoted to the
principle that all men are born equal has produced the perfect type of
financial absolutism. A people given up to material aims has cornered
the art treasures of the ages. Need I say more?"
"You needn't," I said. "You have already touched the high-water mark in
lyricism."
But Harding waved me aside.
"I have also been thinking of that marble palace on Thirty-sixth
Street," he said. "I can't help picturing the scene there on that
critical night in the fall of 1907 when Wall Street was rocking to its
foundations, and a haggard group of millionaires were seeking a way to
stave off ruin. I imagine the glorious Old Masters looking down from
their frames on that unhappy assembly of New Masters--the masters of our
wealth, our credit, our entire industrial civilisation. I imagine
Lorenzo the Magnificent leaning out from the canvas and calling the
attention of his neighbour, Grolier, to that white-faced company of
great American collectors. The perspiring gentleman at the head of the
table had one of the choicest collections of trust companies in
existence. The man at his elbow was the owner of an unrivalled
collection of copper mines and smelters. Facing him was an amateur who
had gone in for insurance companies. Others there had collected
railroads, or national banks, or holding companies. No wonder old
Lorenzo was moved at the prospect of so many matchless accumulations,
representing the devoted labour of years, going under the hammer. Around
the walls the wonderful First Editions stood at attention and some one
was saying, 'Naturally, on the security of your first mortgage bonds--'"
"Putting poetry aside," I said somewhat impatiently, "what I should like
to know is whether this garnered beauty of five thousand years, as
Cooper calls it, really has any meaning to its owners. I understand that
most of our great collections are bought in wholesale lots, Shakespeare
folios by the yard, Chinese porcelains by the roomful. Does a man
really take joy in his art treasures in such circumstances?"
"Of course he does," said Cooper. "If we buy masterpieces in the bulk,
that again is the American of it. I am certain that this man's
extraordinary business success is to be explained by the mental stimulus
he derived from his books and his pictures. His business competitors
really had no chance. Their idea of recreation was yachts or cards or
roof-gardens. But he found rest in the presence of the loveliest dreams
of dead painters and poets. Can't you see how a man's imagination in
such surroundings would naturally expand and embrace the world? No
wonder he thought in billions of dollars. Why, I myself, if I could
spend half an hour before a Raphael whose radiant beauty brings the
tears to your eyes, could go out and float a $100,000,000 corporation."
"Having first dried your tears, of course," I suggested.
"Well, yes," he said.
Harding had been showing signs of impatience, a common trait with him
when other people are speaking.
"When a rich man dies," he said, "the first thing people ask is what
will the stock market do. They were putting that question last week.
Your Wall Street broker is a sensitive being. Nothing can happen at the
other end of the world but he must rush out and sell or buy something.
Returning, he says to the junior partner, 'I see there has been a big
battle at Scutari. Where's Scutari and what are they fighting about?'
'Search me,' says the junior partner, 'but I think you did right in
buying.' 'I sold,' says the broker. 'Who won the battle?' says the
junior partner. 'I don't recall,' says the broker. But he is convinced
that no big battle should be allowed to pass without being reflected in
Wall Street.
"But that is not what I wanted to say. Suppose the market does go up two
points or loses two points. What is the effect on the Stock Exchange
compared with the crisis that ensues in the art world when a rich
American dies? There's where things begin to look panicky. The
quotations on Rembrandts and Van Dycks are cut in two. There is
consternation in London auction rooms and Venetian palaces. In some
half-ruined little Italian town the parish council has almost made up
its mind to ship to New York the thirteenth-century altar piece which is
the glory of the cathedral. The news comes that Croesus is dead and
the parish authorities see their dreams of new schools and a new chapel
and a modern water supply vanish. That is the crisis worth considering."
"Not to speak," I said, "of that little shop on Fourth Avenue where they
paint Botticellis."
"I admit that Harding has made a very interesting suggestion, though
probably without any deliberate intention on his part," said Cooper.
"This steady drain by Wall Street upon Europe's art treasures is a
civilising process which scarcely receives the attention it deserves,
except when some Paris editor loses his temper and calls us barbarians
and despoilers. I am not sure who is the barbarian, the American trust
magnate who thinks a million francs is not too much for one of Raphael's
Madonnas, or the scion of Europe's ancient nobility who thinks that no
Madonna is worth keeping if you can get a million francs for it.
According to the European idea, the proper place for a masterpiece is a
corner of the lounging-room where the weary guest, after a hard day with
the hounds, may be tempted to stare at the canvas for a moment and say,
'Nice little daub, what?' Their masterpieces are made to be seldom seen
and never heard of.
"Now see what we do with the same picture over here. Before it is
brought into the country all the papers have cable despatches about it,
and they have impressed its value on the public mind by multiplying the
real price by five. Then we advertise it by raising the question whether
it is genuine or a fake. Then we put it into a museum and countless
thousands besiege the doorkeeper and ask which is the way to the
million-dollar picture. Then the Sunday papers print a reproduction in
colours suitable for framing, but it isn't framed very often because the
baby destroys it while papa is busy with the comic supplement. Then the
New York correspondents of the Chicago papers write columns about the
picture. Then it is taken up by women's clubs, the reading circles, and
the Chautauqua. Before the process is completed that picture has entered
into the daily thought and speech of the American people."
Harding interrupted.
"The members of the European nobility have seldom been interested in
art. They have been too busy wearing military uniforms or pursuing the
elusive fox all over the landscape."
"But that is just the point I was making," said Cooper indignantly.
"Yes, but not so clearly as I have formulated it," said Harding. "The
fact is that art has always flourished under the patronage of the
merchant class. The Athenians were a trading people. Lorenzo the
Magnificent came from a family of pawn-brokers. Rembrandt sold his
pictures to the sturdy, and quite homely, tea and coffee merchants of
Holland. It is preposterous to suppose that because a man is lucky in
the stock market he is incapable of appreciating the very best things in
art. He is not incapable; only he keeps his interests separate. From ten
o'clock to three our patron of the arts is busy downtown attending to
the unfortunate financiers whom he has caught on the wrong side of the
market. If Cooper here were a Cubist painter, and you gave him the run
of a great art collector's front office on settlement day, he could
produce any number of pictures entitled Nude Speculator Descending a
Wall Street Staircase."
"The European aristocracy doesn't always despise us," I said.
"Occasionally an American will be decorated by the Grand Duke of
Sonderklasse-Ganzgut with the cross of the Bald Eagle of the Third
Class, the person thus honoured being worth nine hundred million
dollars and the area of the Prince's dominions being eighty-nine square
miles."