III.—FATE OF THE FAMILY PORTRAITS

In connection with family traditions and family portraits there are bound to be some grimly humorous episodes with the lapse of time, owing to the exactions of those Chancellors of the Exchequer who have held office since the creation of the Death Duties, as they are called. When a man with no ready money of his own inherits an estate that has not paid its expenses for many years, and a splendid mansion containing about fifty pictures, which, according to the most recent auction-room prices, may be worth from £100,000 to £150,000—people at picture sales think in pounds and bid in guineas—the question that at once presents itself is how to meet the demands of Somerset House. The fortunate heir, without a penny in his pocket, is called on to hand over from £10,000 to £15,000, according to his relationship to the late owner, and he wonders how he is to do it. In some cases that have come under my notice the only feasible way out of the difficulty has been taken, and some of the pictures have been sold in order to pay for the privilege of retaining the others. In the case of some historical mansions, however, every picture in the gallery is perfectly well known to the world, and the heir has a good many more qualms about selling any of them than Charles Surface had about disposing of his collection, with the exception of “the little ill-looking fellow over the settee.” He feels—if he is capable of any feeling at all—that he is selling his own flesh and blood, and he always wonders what people will say when they come to visit the historical house and find blank panels in which, for perhaps two or three hundred years, stately figures of men and graceful figures of women had appeared.

What is he to do in such circumstances, while he is thinking his thoughts on a settee in the hall, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer is pulling away like mad at the wrought-iron bell handle outside and telling the butler that his instructions are not to leave the place until his bill is paid?

It seems that there is only one way by which the honour of the family can be preserved. There are trusty agents who can negotiate for an immediate and a secret sale of certain of the pictures. These are taken out of their frames or out of their panels, copies are made and put where the originals had been for years, and when the latter are passed on to New York or Chicago, unsuspecting lovers of Art stand beneath copies in admiration of the power of the Masters!

That is how the honour of the great family remains untarnished, while the Chancellor of the Exchequer strikes a match on one of the stone columns of the porch, lights his cigarette, and goes jauntily down the avenue with a large cheque in his breast-pocket.

All very well this for the time being; but a little comedy may possibly take place some years later, when once again Death Duties have to be paid, and probably at an increased rate per cent. No note may have been made of the pictures that were sold, and the copies have been subjected to the admiration of visitors without a misgiving. There are, I happen to know, copyists of Sir Joshua Reynolds and others of Thomas Gainsborough, Romney, Raeburn, Lawrence, and the rest, of such skill in reproducing the style of their particular Master that only the cleverest connoisseur could say, after the lapse of a year or two, which are the originals and which the copies. How, then, is a valuation to be made when the new owner enters upon his inheritance?

I fancy that it will be discovered Masters than were suspected of it had made replicas of their greatest works, and shipped off one to Chicago while selling the other to the great English families who gave them the order a hundred years or so ago.