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