The Collectors | Page 2

art for the rich was to
emancipate themselves from the exclusive idolatry of Barbizon.
Accordingly the Patron's rhapsodies fell on impatient ears, and when he
continued his importunities over the Scotch woodcock and ale, the
Painter was impelled to express the sense of the meeting.
"Speaking of Corot," he began genially, "there are certain
misapprehensions about him which I am fortunately able to clear up.
People imagine, for instance, that he haunted the woods about Ville
d'Avray. Not at all. He frequented the gin-mills in Cedar Street. We are

told he wore a peasant's blouse and sabots; on the contrary, he sported a
frock-coat and congress gaiters. His long clay pipe has passed into
legend, whereas he actually smoked a tilted Pittsburg stogy. We speak
of him by the operatic name of Camille; he was prosaically called
Campbell. You think he worked out of doors at rosy dawn; he painted
habitually in an air-tight attic by lamplight."
As the Painter paused for the sensation to sink in, the Antiquary
murmured soothingly, "Get it off your mind quickly, Old Man," the
Critic remarked that the Campbells were surely coming, and the Patron
asked with nettled dignity how the Painter knew.
"Know?" he resumed, having had the necessary fillip. "Because I knew
him, smelled his stogy, and drank with him in Cedar Street. It was
some time in the early '70s, when a passion for Corot's opalescences
(with the Critic's permission) was the latest and most knowing fad. As a
realist I half mistrusted the fascination, but I felt it with the rest, and
whenever any of the besotted dealers of that rude age got in an 'Early
Morning' or a 'Dance of Nymphs,' I was there among the first. For
another reason, my friend Rosenheim, then in his modest beginnings as
a marchand-amateur, was likely to appear at such private views. With
his infallible tact for future salability, he was already unloading the
Institute, and laying in Barbizon. Find what he's buying now, and I'll
tell you the next fad."
The Critic nodded sagaciously, knowing that Rosenheim, who now
poses as collecting only for his pleasure, has already begun to affect the
drastic productions of certain clever young Spanish realists.
"Rosenheim," the Painter pursued, "really loved his Corot quite apart
from prospective values. I fancy the pink silkiness of the manner
always appeals to Jews, recalling their most authentic taste, the
eighteenth-century Frenchman. Anyhow, Rosenheim took his new love
seriously, followed up the smallest examples religiously, learned to
know the forgeries that were already afloat--in short, was the best
informed Corotist in the city. It was appropriate, then, that my first
relations with the poet-painter should have the sanction of Rosenheim's
presence."

Lingering upon the reminiscence, the Painter sopped up the last bit of
anchovy paste, drained his toby, and pushed it away. The rest of us
settled back comfortably for a long session, as he persisted.
"Rosenheim wrote me one day that he had got wind of a Corot in a
Cedar Street auction room. It might be, so his news went, the pendant
to the one he had recently bought at the Bolton sale. He suggested we
should go down together and see. So we joggled down Broadway in the
'bus, on what looked rather like a wild-goose chase. But it paid to keep
the run of Cedar Street in those days; one might find anything. The
gilded black walnut was pushing the old mahogany out of good houses;
Wyant and Homer Martin were occasionally raising the wind by
ventures in omnibus sales; then there were old masters which one
cannot mention because nobody would believe. But that particular
morning the Corot had no real competitor; its radiance fairly filled the
entire junk-room. Rosenheim was in raptures. As luck would have it, it
was indeed the companion-piece to his, and his it should be at all costs.
In Cedar Street, he reasonably felt, one might even hope to get it cheap.
Then began our duo on the theme of atmosphere, vibrancy, etc.--brand
new phrases, mind you, in those innocent days. As Rosenheim for a
moment carried the burden alone, I stepped up to the canvas and saw,
with a shock, that the paint was about two days old. Under what
conditions I wondered--for did I not know the ways of paint--could a
real Corot have come over so fresh? I more than scented trickery. A
sketch overpainted---or it seemed above the quality of a sheer
forgery--or was the case worse than that? Meanwhile not a shade of
doubt was in Rosenheim's mind. As I canvassed the possibilities his
sotto-voce ecstasies continued, to the vast amusement, as I perceived,
of a sardonic stranger who hovered unsteadily in the background. This
ill-omened person was clad in a statesmanlike black frock-coat with
trousers of