Now one of the earliest callers upon Mr. Beck was a certain picture-dealer named Burls. Mr. Burls and his fraternity regard rich Americans with peculiar favour. It is said to have been Bartholomew Burls who invented especially for American use the now well-known "multiplication" dodge. The method is this. You buy a work by a rising artist, one whose pictures may be at some future time, but are not yet, sufficiently known to make their early wanderings matter of notoriety. One of your young men—he must be a safe hand and a secret—make two, three, or four copies, the number depending on the area, rather than the number, of your clientele. You keep the Artist's receipt, a proof of the genuineness of the picture. The copies, name and all, are so well done that even the painter himself would be puzzled to know his own. You then proceed to place your pictures at good distances from each other, representing each as genuine. It is a simple, beautiful, and lucrative method. Not so profitable, perhaps, as cleaning oil-paintings, which takes half an hour apiece and is charged from ten shillings to ten pounds, according to the dealer's belief in your power to pay. Nor is it more profitable than the manufacture of a Correggio or a Cuyp for a guileless cotton manufacturer, and there is certainly a glow of pride to be obtained by the successful conversion of a new into an old picture by the aid of mastic varnish, mixed with red and yellow lake to tone it down, and the simple shaking of a door-mat over it. But then people have grown wary, and it is difficult to catch a purchaser of a Correggio, for which a large sum has to be asked. The multiplication dodge is the simpler and the safer.
Mr. Beck, as has been already shown, was by no means deficient in a certain kind of culture. He had read such books as fell in his way during his wandering and adventurous life. His reading was thus miscellaneous. He had been for a short time an actor, and thus acquired a little information concerning dramatic literature. He had been on a newspaper, one of the rank and file as well as an editor. He knew a good deal about many things, arts, customs, and trades. But of one thing he was profoundly ignorant, and that was of painting.
He looked at Burls' card, however—"Bartholomew Burls and Co., Church Street, City, Inventors of the only safe and perfect Method of Cleaning Oil Paintings"—and, accompanied by Jack Dunquerque, who knew about as much of pictures as himself, hunted up the shop, and entered it with the meekness of a pigeon about to be plucked.
They stood amid a mass of pictures, the like of which Gilead Beck had never before conceived. They were hanging on the walls; they were piled on the floor; they were stretched across the ceiling; they climbed the stairs; they were hiding away in dark corners; a gaping doorway lit with gas showed a cellar below where they were stacked in hundreds. Pictures of all kinds. The shop was rather dark, though the sun of May was pouring a flood of light even upon the narrow City streets. But you could make out something. There were portraits in hundreds. The effigies of dead men and women stared at you from every second frame. Your ancestor—Mr. Burls was very particular in ascertaining beyond a doubt that it was your own ancestor, and nobody else's—frowned at you in bright steel armour with a Vandyke beard; or he presented a shaven face with full cheeks and a Ramillies wig; or he smirked upon you from a voluminous white scarf and a coat-collar which rose to the top of his head. The ladies of your family—Mr. Burls was very particular, before selling you one, in ascertaining beyond a doubt that she belonged to your own branch of the house, and none other—smiled upon you with half-closed lids, like the consort of Potiphar, the Egyptian, or they frisked as shepherdesses in airy robes, conscious of their charms; or they brandished full-blown petticoats, compared with which crinolines were graceful, or they blushed in robes which fell tightly about the figure, and left the waist beneath the arms. Name any knight, or mayor, or court beauty, or famous toast among your ancestry whose portrait is wanting to your gallery, and Burls, the great genealogical collector, will find you before many weeks that missing link in the family history. Besides the portraits, there were landscapes, nymphs bathing, Venuses asleep, Venuses with a looking-glass, Venuses of all sorts; scenes from Don Quixote; Actæons surprising Dianas; battle-pieces, sea-pieces, river-pieces; "bits" of Hampstead Heath, and boats on the Thames.
Mr. Beck looked round him, stroked his chin, and addressed the guardian of this treasure-house:
"I am going to buy pictures," he began comprehensively. "You air the Boss?"
"This gentleman means," Jack explained, "that he wants to look at your pictures with a view to buying some if he approves of them."
The man in the shop was used to people who would buy one picture after a whole mornings haggling, but he was not accustomed to people who wanted to buy pictures generally. He looked astonished, and then, with a circular sweep of his right hand, indicated that here were pictures, and all Mr. Beck had to do was to go in and buy them.
"Look round you, gentlemen," he said; "pray look round you; and the more you buy, the better we shall like it."
Then he became aware that the elder speaker was an American, and he suddenly changed his front.