Winifred was silenced. She inclined more and more to that peace and
quietness of which Montague Dartie had deprived her in her youth. And,
since pictures always depressed her, she soon went down again.
Soames passed into the corner where, side by side, hung his real Goya
and the copy of the fresco "La Vendimia." His acquisition of the real
Goya rather beautifully illustrated the cobweb of vested interests and
passions which mesh the bright-winged fly of human life. The real
Goya's noble owner's ancestor had come into possession of it during
some Spanish war--it was in a word loot. The noble owner had remained
in ignorance of its value until in the nineties an enterprising critic
discovered that a Spanish painter named Goya was a genius. It was only
a fair Goya, but almost unique in England, and the noble owner became a
marked man. Having many possessions and that aristocratic culture
which, independent of mere sensuous enjoyment, is founded on the sounder
principle that one must know everything and be fearfully interested in
life, he had fully intended to keep an article which contributed to his
reputation while he was alive, and to leave it to the nation after
he was dead. Fortunately for Soames, the House of Lords was violently
attacked in 1909, and the noble owner became alarmed and angry. 'If,'
he said to himself, 'they think they can have it both ways they are very
much mistaken. So long as they leave me in quiet enjoyment the nation
can have some of my pictures at my death. But if the nation is going to
bait me, and rob me like this, I'm damned if I won't sell the lot. They
can't have my private property and my public spirit-both.' He brooded
in this fashion for several months till one morning, after reading the
speech of a certain statesman, he telegraphed to his agent to come
down and bring Bodkin. On going over the collection Bodkin, than whose
opinion on market values none was more sought, pronounced that with a
free hand to sell to America, Germany, and other places where there was
an interest in art, a lot more money could be made than by selling in
England. The noble owner's public spirit--he said--was well known but
the pictures were unique. The noble owner put this opinion in his pipe
and smoked it for a year. At the end of that time he read another speech
by the same statesman, and telegraphed to his agents: "Give Bodkin a
free hand." It was at this juncture that Bodkin conceived the idea which
salved the Goya and two other unique pictures for the native country
of the noble owner. With one hand Bodkin proffered the pictures to
the foreign market, with the other he formed a list of private British
collectors. Having obtained what he considered the highest possible
bids from across the seas, he submitted pictures and bids to the private
British collectors, and invited them, of their public spirit, to
outbid. In three instances (including the Goya) out of twenty-one he was
successful. And why? One of the private collectors made buttons--he
had made so many that he desired that his wife should be called Lady
"Buttons." He therefore bought a unique picture at great cost, and
gave it to the nation. It was "part," his friends said, "of his general
game." The second of the private collectors was an Americophobe, and
bought an unique picture to "spite the damned Yanks." The third of
the private collectors was Soames, who--more sober than either of the,
others--bought after a visit to Madrid, because he was certain that Goya
was still on the up grade. Goya was not booming at the moment, but he
would come again; and, looking at that portrait, Hogarthian, Manetesque
in its directness, but with its own queer sharp beauty of paint, he was
perfectly satisfied still that he had made no error, heavy though the
price had been--heaviest he had ever paid. And next to it was hanging
the copy of "La Vendimia." There she was--the little wretch-looking back
at him in her dreamy mood, the mood he loved best because he felt so
much safer when she looked like that.