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.