A SUDDEN TRANSFORMATION.
The President of the United States lived in the subdued simplicity of the White House. But William H. Vanderbilt ate in a great, lofty dining room, twenty-six by thirty-seven feet, wrought in Italian Renaissance, with a wainscot of golden-hued, delicately-carved English oak around all four sides, and a ceiling with richly-painted hunting-scene panels. When he entertained it was in a vast drawing- room, palatially equipped, its walls hung with flowing masses of pale red velvet, embroidered with foliage flowers and butterflies, and set with crystals and precious stones.
It was his art gallery, however, which flattered him most. He knew nothing of art, and underneath his pretentions cared less, for he was a complete utilitarian; but it had become fashionable to have an elaborate art gallery, and he forthwith disbursed money right and left to assemble an aggregation of paintings.
He gave orders to agents for their purchase with the same equanimity that he would contracts for railroad supplies. And, as a rule, the more generous in size the canvasses, the more satisfied he was that he was getting his money's worth; art to him meant buying by the square foot. Not a few of the paintings unloaded upon him were, despite their high-sounding reputations, essentially commonplace subjects, and flashy and hackneyed in execution; but he gloried in the celebrity that came from the high prices he was decoyed into paying for them. For one of Meissionier's paintings, "The Arrival at the Chateau," he paid $40,000, and on one of his visits to Paris he enriched Meissionier to the extent of $188,000 for seven paintings. Not until his corps of art advisers were satisfied that a painter became fashionably talked about, could Vanderbilt be prevailed upon to buy examples of his work. There was something intensely magical in the ease and cheapness with which he acquired the reputation of being a "connoisseur of art." Neither knowledge nor appreciation were required; with the expenditure of a few hundred thousand dollars he instantaneously transformed himself from a heavy-witted, uncultured money hoarder into the character of a surpassing "judge and patron of art." And his pretensions were seriously accepted by the uninformed, absorbing their opinions from the newspapers.