Dear ——,—We got here safely, with the usual submarine scares en route, but apparently no real danger. Vessels going westward from England are not much the U-boats' concern, nor are the U's, I guess, particularly keen on wasting torpedoes on passenger ships. What they want to sink is the goods.
Anyway, we got here safely. It is all very wonderful and novel, and the interest in the War is unmistakable; but what I want to tell you about is an experience that I have had in the house of one of the leading picture collectors here—and the art treasures of America are gradually but surely becoming terrific. If some measure is not passed to prevent export, England will soon have nothing left, except in the public galleries. Of course, for a while, America can't be so rich as if she had not come into the War, but she will be richer than we can ever be for a good many years, while the steel people who make the implements of destruction at Bethlehem will be richest of all. What my man makes I cannot say, but he is a king of sorts, even if not actually a Bethlehem boss, and the Medici are not in it! I have introductions to all the most famous collectors, but, hearing of his splendours, I went to him first.
Well, I sent on my credentials, and was invited to call and inspect the Plutocrat's walls. You never saw anything like them! And he refers to his collection only as a "modest nucleus." He has agents all over the world to discover when the possessors of certain unique works are nearing the rocks. Then he offers to buy. As his wealth is unlimited, and sooner or later all the nobility and gentry of England, France, Italy and Russia will be in Queer Street, his collection cannot but grow and become more and more amazing. He even had the cheek to send the Trustees of the National Gallery a blank cheque asking them to fill it up as they wished whenever they were ready to part with TITIAN'S "Bacchus and Ariadne." Though he calls himself a patriot, directly the War is done he will make overtures to Germany. There is a Vermeer in Berlin on which he has set his heart, and another in Dresden.
I could fill reams in telling you what he has. But I confine myself to one picture only, which he keeps in a room by itself. I am not so foolish as to pretend to know anything, but to my eyes this picture was nothing whatever but the Louvre's "Monna Lisa."
That being of course impossible, "What a wonderful copy!" I said.
"You may indeed say so," replied my host.
I looked at it more closely, even applying a pocket magnifying-glass.
"There was not a contemporary duplicate?" I inquired. "Could LEONARDO have painted two?"
The Chowder King, or whatever he is called, smiled inscrutably. "No doubt he could," he said. "But perhaps," he continued, "you have not seen the Louvre picture since it was put back after the theft?"
"Not to examine it closely," I replied.