Edith Wharton

“ Can you fancy a more preposterous hope? Why, my other things, my own things, had wooed me as passionately as I wooed them: there was a certain little bronze, a little Venus Callipyge, who had drawn me, drawn me, drawn me, imploring me to rescue her from her unspeakable surroundings in a vulgar bric-a-brac shop at Biarritz, where she shrank out of sight among sham Sèvres and Dutch silver, as one has seen certain women—rare, shy, exquisite—made almost invisible by the vulgar splendours surrounding them. ”

“ I broke in. “Hold up, Neave—the Daunt Diana?”
He smiled contemptuously. “A professional beauty, my dear fellow—expected every head to be turned when she came into a room.”
“Oh, Neave,” I groaned.
“Yes, I know. You're thinking of what we felt that day we first saw her in London. Many a poor devil has sold his soul as the result of such a first sight! Well, I sold her instead. Do you want the truth about her? Elle était bête à pleurer.”
He laughed, and stood up with a little shrug of disenchantment.
“And so you're impenitent?” I paused. “And yet you're buying some of the things back?” ”

“ A year later came the amazing announcement that the Daunt collection was for sale. At first we all supposed it was a case of weeding out (though how old Daunt would have raged at the thought of anybody's weeding his collection!) But no—the catalogue corrected that idea. Every stick and stone was to go under the hammer. The news ran like wildfire from Rome to Berlin, from Paris to London and New York. Was Neave ruined, then? Wrong again—the dealers nosed that out in no time. He was simply selling because he chose to sell; and in due time the things came up at Christie's. ”

“ Year by year, day by day, he had made himself into this delicate register of perceptions and sensations—as far above the ordinary human faculty of appreciation as some scientific registering instrument is beyond the rough human senses—only to find that the beauty which alone could satisfy him was unattainable, that he was never to know the last deep identification which only possession can give. ”

“ Some of the things held their own, but a lot—and a few of the best among them—went for half their value. You see, they'd been locked up in old Daunt's house for nearly twenty years, and hardly shown to any one, so that the whole younger generation of dealers and collectors knew of them only by hearsay. Then you know the effect of suggestion in such cases. The undefinable sense we were speaking of is a ticklish instrument, easily thrown out of gear by a sudden fall of temperature; and the sharpest experts grow shy and self-distrustful when the cold current of depreciation touches them. ”

“ The sale was a slaughter—and when I saw the Daunt Diana fall at the wink of a little third-rate brocanteur from Vienna I turned sick at the folly of my kind.
For my part, I had never believed that Neave had sold the collection because he'd “found it out”; and within a year my incredulity was justified. As soon as the things were put in circulation they were known for the marvels they are. There was hardly a poor bit in the lot; and my wonder grew at Neave's madness. All over Europe, dealers began to be fighting for the spoils ”

“ Fancy unveiling the sacred scars of Time to ladies who murmur: “Was this actually the spot—?” while they absently feel for their hat-pins! He used to say that nothing kept him at it but the exquisite thought of accumulating the lire for his collection. For the Neave collection, my dear fellow, began early, began almost with his Roman life, began in a series of little nameless odds and ends, broken trinkets, torn embroideries, the amputated extremities of maimed marbles: things that even the rag-picker had pitched away when he sifted his haul. But they weren't nameless or meaningless to Neave ”

“ He had run over to London for his annual “look-round”—I fancy one or another of the big collectors usually paid his journey—and when we met he was on his way to see the Daunt collection. You know old Daunt was a surly brute, and the things weren't easily seen; but he had heard Neave was in London, and had sent—yes, actually sent!—for him to come and give his opinion on a few bits, including the Diana. The little man bore himself discreetly, but you can imagine his pride. ”

“ I suppose he blunted them gouging nuggets out of the gold fields. And in exchange for the nuggets he gets all that in a year—only has to hold out his callous palm to have that great ripe sphere of beauty drop into it! ”