"Haul away, Sam. This is the real thing" came from the depths of the well. Sam Cleghorn stumbled in the gloom towards the windlass, avoiding on the way a rude handpump and two heaps of dirt and broken pottery that sloped threateningly upon the low curb, where balanced a perforated disc of marble, the great bottom-stone of the well. All these properties caught a little light from a beam that came through a slit in the wall, casting most of its uncertain bloom up into a low groined vault, the heavy round arches of which were separated from squat piers by clumsy brackets. Outside at the level of the reticulated stone floor one could hear the rushing of a river. As Cleghorn leaned over the well-mouth before seizing the crank, a glimmer of yellow light flooded his face and again came up the hollow impatient cry, "Haul away, Sam. This lot's a good one, and it's mine." Replying "All right, Dick," Cleghorn bent to the crank. With much creaking the coils crept along the spindle and the light burden began to rise jerkily.
* * * * *
Although neither the well nor the vaulted cellar chamber belonged to Sam Cleghorn or to Dick Webb, their presence and actions there were not surreptitious. Stanton Mayhew, who ignorantly owned the well, had given them plenary permission to pump and dig, mildly pitying their apparent lunacy. The palace above was his in virtue of his sensible preference for living twice as well on the Arno for half the cost on the Hudson. This rule of two, like so many foreign residents of Florence, he unquestioningly obeyed, and it constituted practically the whole of his philosophy and maxims. Hence he was not the man to prize a Tuscan well dug in the fourteenth century, cleaned perhaps never, and gradually filled to the brim with what the forwardlooking past benightedly took for rubbish. So when Cleghorn and Webb made him an overture for the right to clean the well, he had genially replied, "Why, go ahead, boys, and enjoy yourselves. It's you who ought to be paid, but for your healths' sake you really ought to wait till I've punched some decent windows through that damp cellar wall and let the air in."
If neither Sam nor Dick waited even a day, it was because each was a bit afraid that the other would begin alone. College mates, collectors both, they were fast friends in a way and rivals beyond dispute. Their common taste for antiquity and adequacy of means had made their graduate course chiefly one of travel. And when travel wore out its novelty they naturally settled in the easiest, as the least exacting, European city, occupying two halves of one floor in the same palace. Their apartments started full, and quickly overflowed with objects of curiosity and art—all old, for their knowledge was considerable; some fine, for neither was without taste. But taste neither had in any austere sense, for they collected art much as a dredge collects marine specimens. Nothing came amiss to them. Wood, ivory, silver, bronze, marble, plaster—they repudiated no material or period. Stuffs, glass, pictures, porcelains, potteries—it was all one to them so the object were old and rare. Inevitably, then, they had come to primitive pots, and simultaneously, for they not only watched each other closely, but almost read each other's minds. And when they came to primitive pots it was certain that they would beg, borrow, or steal a well, since in old wells, and cisterns, besides less mentionable places, primitive pots abide. Many pots were there, as we shall see, from the first, and the maids and children of the centuries, by way of concealing breakages, have usually made notable secondary contributions. So when amiable Stanton Mayhew freely conceded a most ancient well to Cleghorn and Webb, it was like receiving Pandora's box, with the difference that the well might safely be opened.
Here had ensued a most delicate negotiation concerning the division of the spoil. A mathematical partition of the fragmentary material that an old Italian well contains is extremely difficult if at all possible. After much debate it was agreed that after they struck pay dirt, each should dig in turn, each to have the bucketful that came under his trowel or fingers. Scattered fragments of the same pot and other complications were to be adjudicated by Mayhew, whose ignorance and disinterestedness were safe to assume. But the well gave up quantities of noncontentious matter before Mayhew's services were required. The first five feet had revealed nothing but fragments of kitchen pottery of our time and a fairly perfect hoopskirt of Garibaldian date. A little lower had emerged the skeleton of a cat. Similar tragedies were in evidence, on an average, at every quarter century of depth. Between the second and third cat, lay Ginori imitations of Sevres and Wedgewood, scraps too of gilded glass—the earnest of better things below. Five cats down, some eighteenth-century apothecary pots, damaged but amenable to repair, had inaugurated the alternation of buckets under the agreement. It were tedious to follow the ascending scale of excellence as the digging went deeper. Enough to say that below the mixed ingredients and the nethermost cat they found a homogeneous layer of beautiful fourteenth-century shards, affording many buckets full, and promising delicate adjudication to the referee.
Before the lustred pots themselves shed a baleful gleam over this narrative, something should obviously be said about Italian wells and why they contain pots. Beyond those casually acquired from careless or secretive servants, there is, if the well be old and of good make, a certain number of intact pieces put in to serve as a filter. Often a group of pitchers or similar crocks is imprisoned between the two bottom-stones. Sometimes there are two such layers. After this filter had been made there was frequently scattered a bushel or more of small shards above. From these by careful sorting complete or nearly complete pieces may be recovered. Through all this mass of whole or broken pottery the water had to find its way up, for the cement sides of an Italian well are watertight. Thus, barring the indiscretions of housemaids and cats, the early Italians drank pure water.
Naturally Cleghorn and Webb were conversant with these refinements of mediaeval hydraulics. In fact when Webb, the sturdier of the two, hauled up the bottom-stone all dripping, Cleghorn promptly declared that in the sense of the contract it was a bucketful; hence his first go at the now uncovered pots. So heated grew the debate, that finally the grimy excavators climbed to the upper air and appealed to Mayhew, who promptly denied the quibble, deciding that stones and pots were not interchangeable. The diversion drew attention from the great perforated disc itself, and as the sullen Cleghorn let the exultant Webb down upon the ancient pots, it lay badly bestowed near the curb on the crumbling slope of a rubbish heap. And now Cleghorn with bitterness of heart was reeling up Webb's find. As the coils broadened on the windlass a small iron bucket rose above the parapet, brimming with something that glinted metallically under the dirt. Beside the bucket flapped the rude swing in which the entrances and exits of the partners were made. As Cleghorn grasped the bail and swung the precious cargo clear of the well, came up once more the voice of Webb: "Hustle, Old Man, I'm keen to see them, they feel good."
Good they were indeed. Cleghorn, who for fifteen years had haunted shops and museums had never seen the like in equal compass. As he took them cautiously one by one and held them high in the uncertain light, each revealed a desirable point. Here was a coat of arms, a date, the initial of an owner. There were grotesque birds and beasts. Differing in form and colour, the entire lot agreed in possessing that dull early Italian lustre, which perhaps accidental and less distinguished than that of Spain, is even dearer in a collector's eyes. They hinted of all enamelled things that come out of the East—of the peacock reflections of the tiles of Damascus and Cordova, of the franker polychromy of Rhodian kilns, of the subtler bloom of the dishes of Moorish Spain, of the brassier glazes of Minorca and Sicily—all these things lay enticingly in epitome in these lustred Italian pots, as they glimmered with a furtive splendour. Yes, they were a good lot, thought Cleghorn as he placed them reverently on the flagging. It was the find of a lifetime. A man with nothing else in his cupboard must be mentioned respectfully among collectors from Dan to Beersheba.
Again the impatient voice of Webb below: "Hurry up, I say. It's getting cold: the water is gaining."
"All right," called Cleghorn, giving a few strokes of the pump, but never taking his eyes from the lustred pots. Then as if by a sudden inspiration he asked, "Any more in that lot, Dick?"
"Not a one," cried Webb jubilantly, "there was just a bucketful and a squeeze at that. But there may be others beneath. There's another bottom-stone, and it's your next turn. But why don't you hurry up?"
A scowl passed over Cleghorn's thin face set unswervingly towards the pots. They glimmered in the shadow with an unholy phosphorescence—green, blue, carmine, strange purplish browns. So the glittering coils of the serpent may have bewildered our first Mother. There were other pots below, reflected Cleghorn, yes, but there never could be again such a batch as these. And then his dazed eye for a second left the fascinating pots, and mechanically searched the vaulted chamber. To his excited gaze the rubbish heaps centring about the curb seemed already in movement. The massive bottom-stone overhung the parapet, resting only on loose dirt and shards. With horror he noted that a breath might send it down. If it slipped, whose were the lustred pots? Against his will the phrase said itself over and over again throbbingly behind his eyes, and again he forgot everything in the vision of the lustred pots.
"Damn it, hurry up," came thunderously from below. Cleghorn stumbled with a curious hesitation between the crank and the poised bottom-stone. The clumsy movement loosened a handful of shards which went clattering down; the great stone slid, caught on the parapet, and hung once more in uncertain oscillation. Profanity unrestrained transpired from the mouth of the well.
It was a tremulous Cleghorn that sent down the bucket and reeled up an irate and vociferous Webb. Words abounded without explanations, and blows seemed possible, when Cleghorn, as it were apologetically raised a pitcher and a bowl into the shaft of light that came through the oubliette. "They're all like that, Dick," he protested. "It's your lucky day. I congratulate you." It was a silenced and mollified Webb that clutched at the pots, and noted wisely that every one had been brushed by the peacock's tail. With a kind of pity at last he turned to the deprecating Cleghorn and said, "That was an awkward business of yours about the shards, and the bottom-stone there is a pretty sight for a man who left it so and went down to work under it, but one couldn't wait for such pots as these. On my soul, Old Man, if you had dumped it all down on me I could hardly have blamed you."
Welcomed with a loud laugh by its maker, the joke jarred on Cleghorn, who merely answered, "It's very good of you, Dick, to say so."
"But there may be quite as good ones below," pursued Webb genially."We'll rest up a bit and then you have your go and finish the job."
"If you don't mind, Dick, I'd rather not," was the embarrassed answer. "The fact is I'm too nervous and absentminded for this work." He looked down into the blackness with a shudder and said. "No, I don't want to go down there again. One can't tell what might happen there."
"Then you've dropped your nerve. Sorry for it," came from a baffled and disgusted partner, but as he spoke a smile drew across the broad, amiable face, and he added insinuatingly, "Then the rest are mine, Old Man?"
"Yes they're yours fast enough."
"It's mighty good of you, Sam. I won't forget it. I'll share sometime on a good thing like this. I'm all ready to go down again when you've had a smoke. Only we'll set that stone right and you'll be more careful about the shards."
"If you'll excuse me, Dick, I'd rather not." Cleghorn looked at his watch. "You see I ought to be out of these duds already. I have a very particular tea outside. Didn't I tell you about it? I'll send Mayhew down to help."
"All right, just as you please," was the indifferent reply. But as Cleghorn turned up the narrow steps, Webb muttered perplexedly, "To funk at this point and for a tea! The man is touched or in love."
* * * * *
Webb with Mayhew's dispassionate aid made a considerable haul below the second stone, though in truth there was nothing there to compare with the first lot. The batch of lustred pots is the pride of his eye, and when it is suggested that he values them highly he answers, "Well rather, they're pretty good, you know, and then they nearly cost me a broken head. I was so keen for them that I set a big stone where it might easily have tumbled on me." Then the rest of the anecdote, which Cleghorn, in whose presence it frequently is told, never hears with complete equanimity. The causes of his uneasiness I do not engage to analyse, for, unlike Webb, Cleghorn is imaginative and difficult.
As the dinner wore on endlessly, I consoled myself by the thought of the Balaklava Coronal. There in the toastmaster's seat was Morrison who had bought it, at my right loomed Vogelstein who had sold it, far across, towards the foot of the board, sat the critic Brush in whose presence I understood the infamous sale had been made. I missed only Sarafoff, the marvellous peasant-silversmith, who wrought the coronal in his prison workshop in the Viennese ghetto. Now there was nothing strange about Vogelstein's selling it, nor yet about Morrison's buying it; only the making of it by the illiterate Sarafoff and the silence of Brush when it was sold required explanation. Vogelstein, who breathed heavily beside me, undoubtedly held the secret. I felt so hopeful that time and the champagne which we were drinking for the sake of art would give him to me that I took no pains meanwhile to disturb his elaborate indifference to my presence.
Between him and me little love was lost. As the editor of a moneylosing art magazine in the interior, it was my duty occasionally to visit his galleries. After such visits the remnant of my New England conscience usually forced me to diminish or actually to spoil many a sale of the dubious or merely fashionable antiquities in which he dealt. But in the main my power to harm him was slight. He held in a knowing grip the strings of his patrons' vanity and taste. So he regarded me with something between scorn and uneasiness—as a pachyderm might take a predatory bee. For the sake of my steady production of the honey of free advertising he forgave a sting from which he was after all immune. At the beginning of the dinner he had greeted me with what was meant for a civility and then had relapsed into silence. To escape the loquacity of my other neighbour I gave myself to parallel observation of Vogelstein and Morrison—the great dealer and his greater customer.
Both plainly belonged to the same species and it pleased my whim to symbolise them as a mastodon and a rogue elephant. Morrison, the dreaded agent and operator, was unquestionably the finer creature. He moved more precisely and with a sense of wieldy power. His phrases cut where Vogelstein's merely smote. His bigness had something genial about it. He looked the amateur, and indeed does not the rogue elephant trample down villages chiefly for the joy of the affray? One felt that something more than Morrison's preposterous winnings had been involved in the clashes of railroads and cataclysms on the exchange which had for years past been his major recreation. Vogelstein, though evidently of coarser fibre, belonged to the same formidable breed. The mastodon, we must suppose, lacked much of the finesse of the rogue elephant of later evolution. And Vogelstein's Semitism was of the archaic, potent, monumental type. His abundant fat looked hard. For all the sagging double chin, his jaw retained the character of a clamp. Among the strong race of art dealers he was feared. Whole collections not single objects were his quarry. He paid lavishly, foolishly, counting as confidently on the ignorance and vanity of his clients, as ever Morrison upon the brute expansion of the national wealth. But Vogelstein looked and was as completely the professional as Morrison the amateur. There remained this essential difference that if nothing could be too big to stagger Vogelstein, nothing likewise could be too small to deter him. I knew his shop, or rather his palace, and had observed the relish with which he could shame a timorous art student into giving three prices for a print. It afforded him no more pleasure, one could surmise, to impose a false Rembrandt at six figures upon a wavering iron-master, or, indeed to unload an historic but rather worthless collection upon Morrison himself. For Vogelstein was after all of primitive stamp, to wit the militant publican. So he took toll and plenty, it mattered little where or whence.
To Morrison and Vogelstein no better foil could be imagined than Brush. If they recalled the tusked monsters that charged in the van of Asiatic armies, his analogue was the desert horse. Small, spare, sensitive, shy, his every posture suggested race, training, spirit, and docility. Hisflairfor classical art had become proverbial. By mere touch he detected those remarkable counterfeits of Syracusan coins. It was he who segregated the Renaissance intaglios at Bloomsbury only the winter before he exposed the composite figurines at Berlin. To him the Balaklava Coronal must have proclaimed its nullity as far as its red gold could be seen. For that matter the coronal was a bye-word, and why not? The same dealers who had landed the more famous Tiara in the Louvre had the selling of it. The greater museums in Europe and America had refused it at a bargain. On Fifth Avenue and the Rue Lafitte all the dealers were joking about the Balaklava Coronal. The name of Sarafoff, its maker, had even become accepted slang. For a season we "Sarafoffed" our intimates instead of hoaxing them. And in the face of all this Vogelstein had sold the Coronal to Morrison under Brush's very nose. It seemed so wholly incredible that I began counting Vogelstein's heavy respirations, to make sure I was really awake.
Then the pale, tense mask of Brush—so isolated in the apoplectic row across the table—calmed me. That he was Vogelstein's or anyone's tool was unthinkable. Mercenary suspicions, to be sure, had been put about, but those who knew him merely laughed at such a notion. Vogelstein also laughed, shaking volcanically within, whenever the Coronal, the genuineness of which he still maintained, was mentioned. And he always treated Brush with a curious and almost tender condescension, much in fact as the mastodon might have regarded that fragile ancestor of the horse, the five-toed protohippos.
I have neglected to explain that the occasion which brought me at one table with such major celebrities as Morrison, Vogelstein, and Brush was a public dinner in behalf of civic art. For just as we find the celestial compromised by the naughty Aphrodite, so we distinguish two antithetical sorts of art. There is a bad private art which is produced for dealers and millionaires and takes care of itself, and there is a virtuous public art which we hope to have some day and meanwhile has to be taken care of by special societies. It was one of these that was now dining for the good of the cause. Under the benevolent eye of Morrison, our acting president, we had put pompano upon a soup underlaid with oysters, and then a larded fillet upon some casual tidbit of terrapins. Whereupon a frozen punch. Thus courage was gained, the consecrated sequence of sherry, hock, claret and champagne being absolved, for the proper discussion of woodcock in the red with a famous old burgundy—Morrison's personal compliment to the apostolate of civic art.
At the dessert, Morrison himself spoke a few words. The little speech came brusquely from him, and no one who knew his rapacity for the beautiful could doubt his faith in the universal superlatives he now advocated. Our art, he held, must weigh with our mills and railroads, else our life is out of balance. We never grudged millions to burrow beneath New York for light, or for drink or speed, why then should we grudge them for the beautiful inutilities that might make the surface of the city splendid. A craving for fine objects was his own dearest emotion, he wanted to see cities, states, and the nation ready to spend with equal fervour. It all came apparently to a matter of spending. Morrison entertained no doubt that an imperious demand would create an abundant supply of what he called the best art. Whether we were to transport bodily the great monuments of Europe to America, or merely were to supply beauty off our indigenous bat, was not clear from Morrison's address, and possibly was not wholly so in his own mind. But the talk was solid and forceful, and I could hear Vogelstein grunt with inward joy when he contemplated the city, the state, and the nation in their predicted rôle as customers. I too felt that a real if an incoherent voice had spoken, and that if civic art were indeed to come, it would be through such neo-Roman visionaries as Morrison.
Then the mood changed and a willowy, hirsute, and earnest reviver of tapestry weaving rose and pleaded for the "City Beautiful," castigating the Philistine the while, and looking forward to a time when "the pomp, and chronicle of our time should be splendidly committed to illumined window and pictured wall," with some slight allusion to "those ancient webs through which the Middle Ages still speak glowingly to us."
About midway in the speech Morrison, who had another public dinner down the avenue slipped away. As he nodded "See you later perhaps" I marked the adoring eye and smile of Vogelstein, and then the great folds settled back into their places about his mouth and my neighbour once more gave an uneasy attention to the weaver of beautiful phrases, meanwhile drinking repeated glasses of burgundy. Soon his huge form heaved with an inarticulate discontent, and as the speaker sat down amid perfunctory applause Vogelstein snorted twice into the air.
"It is rather absurd, as you say," I ventured.
"It's sickening," wheezed Vogelstein. "Why can't he sell his tapestries without all that talk?"
"Oh, he enjoys the talk and probably believes it, and you and I do better after all to hear his talk than to see his tapestries." A mastodonic chuckle welcomed this mild sally. The burgundy was taking effect.
As the diners rose stiffly or alertly, according to their several grades of repletion, Vogelstein attached himself to me almost affectionately. "Do stop in the café and talk to me," he urged. "It's queer, here are a lot of my customers, some of my artists, besides you literary chaps, and except Morrison, nobody wants to talk to me. Morrison and I, we understand each other. It's early yet. Come along with me and talk. I've wanted to talk to you for a long time, but always was too busy in my place. You see you writers don't buy, in fact those that know almost never do. It's really queer."
Knowing the might of burgundy when a due foundation of champagne has been laid, I hardly took this effusion as personal to myself, but I also saw no reason, too, why I should not profit by the occasion. "I'll gladly chat with you, Mr. Vogelstein," I answered, "but you must let me choose the subject. We will talk about the Balaklava Coronal."
As he led me into the elevator by the arm he whispered "All right, OldMan, but why? You know just as much as I about it."
There was no chance to reply until he had selected his table and ordered two Scotches and soda. "Yes, I know something about it," I said at last; "everyone does apparently except Morrison. I know that Sarafoff made the Coronal, but I don't know who taught him how to make it, nor yet how Morrison was idiot enough to buy it, when anybody could have told him what it was, nor yet how Brush came to let it be sold. These are the interesting parts of the story, and I'll drink no drink of yours unless you tell."
At the mention of idiocy in connection with Morrison Vogelstein shuddered and raised a massive deprecating hand. The gesture was arrested by the entrance of Brush, who with a slight nod to us passed to a distant corner. Suddenly Vogelstein's expression had become one beaming, condescending paternalism. "Good man but impracticable," he muttered. "Thinks knowing it is everything. Knowing it is something, but selling it is the real thing. Now I hardly know at all, not a tenth as much as Brush, not a half as much as you even, but so long as I can sell, I don't really care to know. What's the use?"
"But you did know about the Balaklava Coronal and you sold it too," I interrupted. "How did you dare?"
"That's my secret—but here are our drinks. A bargain's a bargain. How funny it is to be talking truth. Why, much of it would make even your job difficult."
"And yours impossible, but we're not getting to the Coronal," I insisted.
"As for that," responded Vogelstein obligingly, "the first thing was of course the making. You know all about Sarafoff yourself. Well, he only did the work. It was Schönfeld who put in the brains. You don't know him? Few do. Great man though. University professor of archaeology, trouble with a woman, next trouble with money, now one of us. Yes Schönfeld thought it out and saw it through."
"And certainly made a good job of it," I admitted.
"As you see, we wanted something unique—something that could not be compared with anything in the museums."
"Precisely," I interposed, "Product of the local, semi-barbaric school of the Crimea."
"You've hit it," grinned Vogelstein. "Scythian influence, to take the professors. Schönfeld said we must have that. And that's why it had to be found at Balaklava."
"But it had to look Scythian too. How did you manage that?"
"Oh, that was Sarafoff's business. He had been a servant and then a novice at one of the monasteries of Mount Athos. Could make beautiful tenth-century Byzantine madonnas. I've sold some. Then he carved ikons in wood, ivory, silver, or what came. His things really looked Scythian enough to those who didn't know their modern Greece and Russia. So we set him to work in a back alley of Vienna at three kroners a day—double pay for him—and Schönfeld ran down from Petersburg now and then to coach him."
"You could trust him?" I inquired, recalling how Sarafoff had subsequently won fame by confessing to his most famous forgery.
"As much as one can anybody. You see he doesn't speak any civilised language, and at that time we couldn't tell that the Tiara would spoil him as it did the entire deal."
"But Schönfeld's coaching?" I suggested. Vogelstein here winked solemnly and drank deeply from his tall glass. "First I want to tell you all about Sarafoff," he persisted, "of course we had him watched all the same, and whenever he got an evening off, which was seldom, we had him filled up with schnapps. He was a quiet drunk which is an excellent thing, Sir." As I nodded assent to this great truth, he continued: "Yes Schönfeld, as I was saying, managed everything. Wonderful scholar. You would respect him I'm sure. Why, every bit of the pattern of the Coronal was taken from some real antique, every word of the inscription too." "Wasn't that a bit dangerous?" "With Schönfeld in charge, not so very. Everything was taken from little Russian museums that even you critics don't visit. Almost no published thing was used, you see."
"Then there was Sarafoff"—
"To give it all that quaint Scythian look," Vogelstein added joyously. "Yes, we had just the best brains and the best hands for the job, and it was beautiful." "Better than the Tiara?"
"Yes, far better. The Tiara was all a mistake, as I told Schönfeld; it was too big and too good to be true. Except for Steinbach, who fell in love with its queerness and chipped in some money, we never could have sold it to a museum. And it was a bad thing to have it there, it aroused opposition, it was bound to be exposed. I was always against it, and sure enough it spoiled the game for us. But the Balaklava Coronal that was just right. It had a sort of well-bred modest beauty. We should have begun instead of ending with it. Yes, Sir, there never was a more beautiful thing, a more plausible thing, a finer object to sell than the Balaklava Coronal."
As he bellowed the word and beat the table in confirmation, Brush looked over from his corner apprehensively. "Quietly, Mr. Vogelstein," I hinted, "this is between ourselves, and we might be overheard."
"That's right," he admitted, and moodily lit another cigar. "Where were we?" he asked uneasily. "Oh yes, we were at the Tiara. Now the Coronal and what we could have sold on the strength of it was worth ten of the Tiara, and if it hadn't been for the cursed thing, we could have landed the Coronal as a starter in any one of half a dozen museums."
"As a matter of fact they were all shy of it."
"Of course. Once the Tiara was being looked into, the museum game was up, and there was only Morrison left." Vogelstein lurched around nervously. "He may drop in soon," he explained. "I'd like to make you acquainted."
Ignoring the offer, I persisted, "You've got to the interesting point at last. Tell me why there was only Morrison left. To begin with Morrison knows something about such matters, and next he can have the best advice for the asking. And yet you tell me that Morrison was the only great collector in the world to whom that notoriously false bauble could be sold."
Vogelstein swayed uncomfortably in his chair, puffed, swallowed, cleared his throat, and said, "There are some things one can't say right out; you know that as well as I, but I can say this: there are many great and enterprising collectors in America, and Morrison is the only one who never doubts anything he has once bought."
"An ideal client then."
"Quite so. You see the others get worried by the critics. That means exchanging, refunding—all sorts of trouble."
"But Morrison never?"
"Never; he's a true sport. He never squeals."
"Doesn't have to because he doesn't know he's hurt."
"That's right," concluded Vogelstein, his face corrugating into one ample, contented smile.
"Then the big game reduces itself into selling to Morrison."
"That's more or less it, Sir. For a critic you have a business head."
"You will excuse a rather personal question, but how do you feel about selling your best customer at enormous prices objects which you know to be false?"
"It's a fair question since we are talking between ourselves, and you shall have a straight answer. First my business isn't just a nice one. In the nature of the case it wouldn't do for sensitive people. I suppose you and Brush, for instance, couldn't and wouldn't make much out of it. Then as regards Morrison, I'm not so sure he could complain if he knew. I give him the things he likes and the treatment he likes at the prices he likes. What more can any merchant do?"
I saw the subject rapidly exhausting itself and tried one more tack."Yes, it's simpler than I supposed," I admitted, "but it doesn't seemquite an every-day thing to sell the Balaklava Coronal to anybody underBrush's nose."
"It's easier than you think," echoed Vogelstein. "You don't knowMorrison. Hope he'll look in to-night. You ought to meet him."
My last bolt was shot. It was my turn to sit silent and drink. What could be this strange infatuation of the hardheaded Morrison, this avowedly simple magic of the grossly cunning Vogelstein? As I pondered the case I noticed Brush give a startled glance towards the entrance, heard heavy steps behind us, and then a deep voice saying, "Hallo again, Vogelstein, I'm lucky not to be too late to catch you."
Vogelstein lumbered to his feet and muttered an introduction. We all took our seats, as the headwaiter bustled obsequiously up to take Morrison's order of champagne. As if also obeying Morrison's nod, but reluctantly, Brush crawled over from his corner, a scarcely deferential attendant transporting his lemonade.
While casual greetings and some random talk went on I tried to picture the scene we must present. Neither Brush nor myself is contemptible physically or in other ways, yet we both seemed curiously the inferiors of these troglodytic giants. Our scruples, the voluntary complication of our lives, seemed to constitute at least a disadvantage when measured against the primitiveness, perhaps the rather brutal simplicity, of our companions.
It was Morrison who cut these reflections short. "You will excuse me, gentlemen," he said, "for introducing a matter of business here, but the case is pressing and it may even interest you as critics of art." We nodded permission and he continued, "It's about the Bleichrode Raphael, as of course you know, Vogelstein. I like it, I want it, but I hear all sorts of things about it, and frankly it strikes me as dear at the price. How do you feel about it?"
At the mention of the Bleichrode Raphael, Brush and I started. The forgery was more than notorious. The Bleichrode panel had begun life poorly but honestly as a Franciabigio—a portrait of an unknown Florentine lad with a beretta, the type of which Raphael's portrait of himself is the most famous example. The picture hung long in a private gallery at Rome and was duly listed in the handbooks. One day it disappeared and when it once more came to light it had become the Bleichrode Raphael. Its Raphaelisation had been effected, as many of us knew, by the consummate restorer Vilgard of Ghent, and for him the task had been an easy one. It had needed only slight eliminations and discreet additions to produce a portrait of Raphael by himself far more obviously captivating than any of the genuine series. Soon the picture vanished from Schloss Bleichrode, and it became anybody's guess what amateur had been elected to become its possessor. The museums naturally were forewarned.
While this came into Brush's memory and mine, Vogelstein's countenance had become severe, almost sinister, and he was answering Morrison as follows:
"Mr. Morrison, I have offered you the Bleichrode Raphael for half a million dollars. You will hear all sorts of gossip about it. Doubtless these gentlemen (indicating us) believe it is false and will tell you so (we nodded feebly). But I offer it not to their judgment but to yours. You and I know it is a beautiful thing and worth the money. I make no claims, offer no guarantee for the picture. You have seen it, and that's enough. If you don't want it, it makes no difference to me, I can sell it to Theiss (the great Parisian amateur, Morrison's only real rival), or I will gladly keep it myself, for I shall never have anything as fine again."
Morrison sat impassively while Vogelstein watched him narrowly. Brush and I felt for something that ought to be said yet would not come. At the end of his speech, or challenge, Vogelstein's expression had softened into one of the most courtly ingenuousness, now it hardened again into a strange arrogance. His eyes snapped as he continued with affected indifference, "Since you have raised the question, Mr. Morrison, the Bleichrode Raphael is yours to take or leave—to-night."
There was a pause as the two giants faced each other. Then Morrison smiled beamingly, as one who loved a good fighter, and said, "Send it round tomorrow, of course I want it. Well, that's settled, and if these gentlemen will spare you, I'll give you a lift down town."
Vogelstein's arrogance melted once more into fulsomeness as he said, almost forgetting his Goodnight to us, "I'm sure it's very good of you, Mr. Morrison."
The forms of Morrison and Vogelstein almost blocked the generous intercolumnar space as shoulder to shoulder they moved away between the yellow marble pillars and under the green and gold ceiling. The brown leather doors swung silently behind them, and we were left together with our amazement.
"Never mind, Old Fellow," said Brush at last. "It's the first time for you. You'll get used to it. It's my second time; I happened to be there, you know, when the Balaklava Coronal was sold."
Morally considered, the art collector is tainted with the fourth deadly sin; pathologically, he is often afflicted by a degree of mania. His distinguished kinsman, the connoisseur, scorns him as a kind of mercenary, or at least a manner of renegade. I shall never forget the expression with which a great connoisseur—who possesses one of the finest private collections in the Val d'Arno—in speaking of a famous colleague, declared, "Oh, X——! Why, X—— is merely a collector." The implication is, of course, that the one who loves art truly and knows it thoroughly will find full satisfaction in an enjoyment devoid alike of envy or the desire of possession He is to adore all beautiful objects with a Platonic fervour to which the idea of acquisition and domestication is repugnant. Before going into this lofty argument, I should perhaps explain the collection of my scornful friend. He would have said: "I see that as I put X—— in his proper place, you look at my pictures and smile. You have rightly divined that they are of some rarity, of a sort, in fact, for which X—— and his kind would sell their immortal souls. But I beg you to note that these pictures and bits of sculpture have been bought not at all for their rarity, nor even for their beauty as such, but simply because of their appropriateness as decorations for this particular villa. They represent not my energy as a collector, nor even my zeal as a connoisseur, but simply my normal activity as a man of taste. In this villa it happens that Italian old masters seem the proper material for decoration. In another house or in another land you might find me employing, again solely for decorative purposes, the prints of Japan, the landscapes of the modern impressionists, the rugs of the East, or the blankets of the Arizona desert. Free me, then, from the reproach implied in that covert leer at my Early Sienese." Yes, we must, I think, exclude from the ranks of the true zealots all who in any plausible fashion utilise the objects of art they buy. Excess, the craving to possess what he apparently does not need, is the mark of your true collector. Now these visionaries—at least the true ones—honour each other according to the degree of "eye" that each possesses. By "eye" the collector means a faculty of discerning a fine object quickly and instinctively. And, in fact, the trained eye becomes a magically fine instrument. It detects the fractions of a millimetre by which a copy belies its original. In colours it distinguishes nuances that a moderately trained vision will declare non-existent. Nor is the trained collector bound by the evidence of the eye alone. Of certain things he knows the taste or adhesiveness. His ear grasps the true ring of certain potteries, porcelains, or qualities of beaten metal. I know an expert on Japanese pottery who, when a sixth sense tells him that two pots apparently identical come really from different kilns, puts them behind his back and refers the matter from his retina to his finger-tips. Thus alternately challenged and trusted, the eye should become extraordinarily expert. A Florentine collector once saw in a junk-shop a marble head of beautiful workmanship. Ninety-nine amateurs out of a hundred would have said. "What a beautiful copy!" for the same head is exhibited in a famous museum and is reproduced in pasteboard, clay, metal, and stonead nauseam. But this collector gave the apparent copy a second look and a third. He reflected that the example in the museum was itself no original, but a school-piece, and as he gazed the conviction grew that here was the original. Since it was closing time, and the marble heavy, a bargain was struck for the morrow. After an anxious night, this fortunate amateur returned in a cab to bring home what criticism now admits is a superb Desiderio da Settignano. The incident illustrates capitally the combination of keenness and patience that goes to make the collector's eye.
We may divide collectors into those who play the game and those who do not. The wealthy gentleman who givescarte blancheto his dealers and agents is merely a spoilsport. He makes what should be a matter of adroitness simply an issue of brute force. He robs of all delicacy what from the first glow of discovery to actual possession should be a fine transaction. Not only does he lose the real pleasures of the chase, but he raises up a special clan of sycophants to part him and his money. A mere handful of such—amassers, let us say—have demoralised the art market. According to the length of their purses, collectors may also be divided into those who seek and those who are sought. Wisdom lies in making the most of either condition. The seekers unquestionably get more pleasure; the sought achieve the more imposing results. The seekers depend chiefly on their own judgment, buying preferably of those who know less than themselves; the sought depend upon the judgment of those who know more than themselves, and, naturally, must pay for such vicarious expertise. And, rightly, they pay dear. Let no one who buys of a great dealer imagine that he pays simply the cost of an object plus a generous percentage of profit. No, much-sought amateur, you pay the rent of that palace in Bond Street or Fifth Avenue; you pay the salary of the gentlemanly assistant or partner whose time is at your disposal during your too rare visits; you pay the commissions of an army of agents throughout the world; you pay, alas! too often the cost of securing false "sale records" in classic auction rooms; and, finally, it is only too probable that you pay also a heavy secret commission to the disinterested friend who happened to remark there was an uncommonly fine object in Y——'s gallery. By a cheerful acquiescence in the suggestions that are daily made to you, you may accumulate old masters as impersonally, as genteelly, let me say, as you do railway bonds. But, of course, under these circumstances you must not expect bargains.
Now, in objects that are out of the fashion—a category including always many of the best things—and if approached in slack times, the great dealers will occasionally afford bargains, but in general the economically minded collector, who is not necessarily the poor one, must intercept his prey before it reaches the capitals. That it makes all the difference from whom and where you buy, let a recent example attest. A few years ago a fine Giorgionesque portrait was offered to an American amateur by a famous London dealer. At $60,000 the refusal was granted for a few days only, subject to cable response. The photograph was tempting, but the besought amateur, knowing that the authenticity of the average Giorgione is somewhat less certain than, say, the period of the Book of Job, let the opportunity pass. A few months after learning of this incident, I had the pleasure of meeting in Florence an English amateur who expatiated upon the beauty of a Giorgione that he had just acquired at the very reasonable price of $15,000. For particulars he referred me to one of the great dealers of Florence. The portrait, as I already suspected, was the one I had heard of in America. Forty-five thousand dollars represented the difference between buying it of a Florentine rather than a London dealer. Of course, the picture itself had never left Florence at all, the limited refusal and the rest were merely part of the usual comedy played between the great dealer and his client. On the other hand, if the lucky English collector had had the additional good fortune to make his find in an Italian auction room or at a small dealer's, he would probably have paid little more than $5,000, while the same purchase made of a wholly ignorant dealer or direct from the reduced family who sold this ancestor might have been made for a few hundred francs. With the seekers obviously lie all the mystery and romance of the pursuit. The rest surely need not be envied to the sought. One thinks of Consul J.J. Jarves gradually getting together that little collection of Italian primitives, at New Haven, which, scorned in his lifetime and actually foreclosed for a trifling debt, is now an object of pilgrimage for European amateurs and experts. One recalls the mouse-like activities of the Brothers Dutuit, unearthing here a gorgeous enamel, retrieving there a Rembrandt drawing, fetching out a Gothic ivory from a junk-shop. One sighs for those days, and declares that they are forever past. Does not the sage M. Eudel warn us that there are no more finds—"Surtout ne comptez plus sur les trouvailles."Yet not so long ago I mildly chid a seeker, him of the Desiderio, for not having one of his rare pictures photographed for the use of students. He smiled and admitted that I was perfectly right, but added pleadingly, "You know a negative costs about twenty francs, and for that one may often get an original." Why, even I who write—but I have promised that this essay shall not exceed reasonable bounds.
For the poor collector, however, the money consideration remains a source of manifold embarrassment, morally and otherwise. How many an enthusiast has justified an extravagant purchase by a flattering prevision of profits accruing to his widow and orphans? Let the recording angel reply. And such hopes are at times justified. There have been instances of men refused by the life insurance companies who have deliberately adopted the alternative of collecting for investment, and have done so successfully. Obviously, such persons fall into the class which the French call charitably themarchand-amateur. Note, however, that the merchant comes first. Now, to be a poor yet reasonably successful collector without becoming amarchand-amateurrequires moral tact and resolution. The seeker of the short purse naturally becomes a sort of expert in prices. As he prowls he sees many fine things which he neither covets nor could afford to keep, but which are offered at prices temptingly below their value in the great shops. The temptation is strong to buy and resell. Naturally, one profitable transaction of this sort leads to another, and soon the amateur is in the attitude of "making the collection pay for itself." The inducement is so insidious that I presume there are rather few persistent collectors not wealthy who are not in a measure dealers. Now, to deal or not to deal might seem purely a matter of social and business expediency. But the issue really lies deeper. The difficulty is that of not letting your left hand know what your right hand does. A morally ambidextrous person may do what he pleases. He keeps the dealer and collector apart, and subject to his will one or the other emerges. The feat is too difficult for average humanity. In nearly every case a prolonged struggle will end in favour of the commercial self. I have followed the course of many collector-dealers, and I know very few instances in which the collection has not averaged down to the level of a shop—a fine shop, perhaps, but still a shop. I blame no man for following the wide road, but I feel more kinship with him who walks scrupulously in the narrow path of strict amateurism. Let me hasten to add that there are times when everybody must sell. Collections must periodically be weeded out; one may be hard up and sell his pictures as another in similar case his horses; artists will naturally draw into their studios beautiful objects which, occasion offering, they properly sell. With these obvious exceptions the line is absolutely sharp. Did you buy a thing to keep? Then you are an amateur, though later your convenience or necessity dictates a sale. Did you buy it to sell? Then you are a dealer.
The safety of the little collector lies in specialisation, and there, too, lies his surest satisfaction. To have a well-defined specialty immediately simplifies the quest. There are many places where one need never go. Moreover, where nature has provided fair intelligence, one must die very young in order not to die an expert. As I write I think of D——, one of the last surviving philosophers. Born with the instincts of a man of letters, he declined to give himself to the gentler pursuit until he had made a little competence at the law. As he followed his disinterested course of writing and travel, his enthusiasm centred upon the antiquities of Greece and Rome. In the engraved gems of that time he found a beautiful epitome of his favourite studies. For ten years study and collecting have gone patiently hand in hand. He possesses some fifty classical gems, many of the best Greek period, all rare and interesting from material, subject, or workmanship, and he may have spent as many dollars in the process, but I rather doubt it. He knows his subject as well as he loves it. Naturally he is writing a book on intaglios, and it will be a good one. Meanwhile, if the fancy takes him to visit the site of the Bactrian Empire, he has only to put his collection in his pocket and enjoy iten route. I cannot too highly commend his example, and yet his course is too austere for many of us. Has untrammelled curiosity no charms? Would I, for example, forego my casual kakemonos, my ignorantly acquired majolica, some trifling accumulation of Greek coins, that handful of Eastern rugs? Could I prune away certain excrescent minor Whistlers? those bits of ivory cutting from old Italy and Japan? those tarnished Tuscan panels?—in truth, I could and would not. Yet had I stuck to my first love, prints, I should by this time be mentioned respectfully among the initiated, my name would be found in the card-catalogues of the great dealers, my decease would be looked forward to with resignation by my junior colleagues. As it is, after twenty years of collecting, and an expenditure shameful in one of my fiscal estate, I have nothing that even courtesy itself could call a collection. In apology, I may plead only the sting of unchartered curiosity, the adventurous thrill of buying on half or no knowledge, the joy of an instinctive sympathy that, irrespective of boundaries, knows its own when it sees it. And you austerely single-minded amateurs, you experts that surely shall be, I revere if I may not follow you.
We have left dangling from the first paragraph the morally important question, Is collecting merely an habitual contravention of the tenth commandment? Now, I am far from denying that collecting has its pathology, even its criminology, if you will. The mere lust of acquisition may take the ugly form of coveting what one neither loves nor understands. This pit is digged for the rich collector. Poor collectors, on the other hand, have at times forgotten where enterprise ends and kleptomania begins. But these excesses are, after all, rare, and for that matter they are merely those that attach to all exaggerations of legitimate passion. As for the notion that one should love beautiful things without desiring them, it seems to me to lie perilously near a sort of pseudo-Platonism, which, wherever it recurs, is the enemy of life itself. As I write, my eye falls upon a Japanese sword-guard. I have seen it a thousand times, but I never fail to feel the same thrill. Out of the disc of blued steel the artisan has worked the soaring form of a bird with upraised wings. It is indicated in skeleton fashion by bars extraordinarily energetic, yet suavely modulated. There must have been feeling and intelligence in every touch of the chisel and file that wrought it. Could that same object seen occasionally in a museum showcase afford me any comparable pleasure? Is not the education of the eye, like the education of the sentiments, dependent upon stable associations that can be many times repeated? Shall I seem merely covetous because I crave besides the casual and adventurous contact with beauty in the world, a gratification which is sure and ever waiting for me? But let me cite rather a certain collector and man of great affairs, who perforce spends his days in adjusting business interests that extend from the arctic snows to the tropics. His evenings belong generally to his friends, for he possesses in a rare degree the art of companionship. The small hours are his own, and frequently he spends them in painting beautiful copies of his Japanese potteries. It is his homage to the artisans who contrived those strange forms and imagined those gorgeous glazes. In the end he will have a catalogue illustrated from his own designs. Meanwhile, he knows his potteries as the shepherd knows his flock. What casuist will find the heart to deny him so innocent a pleasure? And he merely represents in a very high degree the sort of priestliness that the true collector feels towards his temporary possessions.
And this sense of the high, nay, supreme value of beautiful things, has its evident uses. That the beauty of art has not largely perished from the earth is due chiefly to the collector. He interposes his sensitiveness between the insensibility of the average man and the always exiled thing of beauty. If we have in a fractional measure the art treasures of the past, it has been because the collector has given them asylum. Museums, all manner of overt public activities, derive ultimately from his initiative. It is he who asserts the continuity of art and illustrates its dignity. The stewardship of art is manifold, but no one has a clearer right to that honourable title. "Private vices, public virtues," I hear a cynical reader murmur. So be it. I am ready to stand with the latitudinarian Mandeville. The view makes for charity. I only plead that he who covets his neighbour's tea-jar—I assume a desirable one, say, in old brown Kioto—shall be judged less harshly than he who covets his neighbour's ox.