Hugh Walpole

“ If anyone had ever told me that David Hartington would one day calmly suggest that he should rob his own mother, I would, of course, have given him the lie.
"I know it sounds bad," David went on, not at all apologetically, "but I can't help that. Mother's got heaps of money. If she loses some of these things, she won't financially feel the difference—in fact," he continued excitedly, "I don't think she will even realise that they're gone, and that's the test. ”

“ Hartington was not a collector of any especial kind or period; if a thing was beautiful enough, and he could afford it, he got it. And yet the house in Evelyn Gardens in no way resembled a museum. The true drawback, I take it, to any museum is that the things therein do not really belong to anybody. ”

“ That is, of course, the great advantage that beautiful things have over beautiful people. I don't imagine that Hartington ever cared greatly for moral qualities or splendid principles.
The point now was that Mrs. Hartington intended to sell everything. She was going to move into a flat, and would retain only the quite essential furniture. The discovery of this intention had come to David with a shock of the completest surprise. He had never dreamt for a moment that there would ever be a time when these things would not be with him and he with them. ”

“ I have, as I have already said, been terribly susceptible to beauty; I say terribly because if you care very much you will be for ever wanting more than you can get, not possessively wanting, of course, but imaginatively. There were so many lovely things in the room that I was bewildered. The Tang horse with the blue saddle on the mantelpiece, the small Constable study for his picture "A Summer Afternoon After a Shower," an exquisite jewelled crucifix, two Rembrandt etchings, the "De Jonghe" and "The Artist Sitting at a Window Drawing"—these were some of the things that I especially noticed. ”

“ She never looks at anything unless it's so bright in colour that she simply can't escape it. That's the test—that's the test. Of course we won't take everything—we couldn't if we wanted to—only a few of the most beautiful things."
I stared at him in amazement, he said it so calmly. "You," I cried, "you to talk like this! And why we? You can commit your own burglaries."
"All right," he answered. "It is my affair; you shan't be dragged into it if you don't want to be."
And then, most perversely, I did want to be, simply, I think, because I had had luncheon with Mrs. Hartington. ”

“ Meanwhile I had wrapped up the pictures and etchings and put them in the car. I was holding the Tang horse in my arms, and just about to wrap it up, when the door opened and we heard a voice: "David, you here! I have been at that station a whole hour. There's no hope of the train. It's too provoking! How do you do?"—rather stiffly to me. My heart hammered. I had mechanically put the horse back on the mantelpiece, where it stood rather indignantly beside the camel, and then gazed like a fool, with my mouth open. ”

“ My heart seemed to stop beating; she actually went up to the mantelpiece and in an absent-minded way laid her hand on the camel. Then she walked off again and, to my horror, stared straight at the place where the two Rembrandts ought to be. "This fog makes everything so filthy," she said. "I can't imagine why they haven't discovered something to stop it. How stupid people are!"
There was worse to follow. She turned towards us with that determined jerk of her head that I was already beginning to know so well. "I know what I'll do," she said. "I suppose that's your car I saw standing outside. ”

“ If someone has a beautiful thing, and doesn't even know he has it, then he's got no right to it whatever."
"Don't be so foolish," I answered him. "You mean to tell me that if you took that Tang horse away from the mantelpiece she wouldn't miss it? Of course she would."
"That's my belief," he answered. "I know my mother better than you do. She's astoundingly blind about some things. She never would listen to my father when, in the old days, he tried to tell her about his acquisitions—she made a point of not listening. The Tang horse doesn't mean more to her than a soup tureen, and not so much ”

“ I said. "We can't take more than a dozen things at the most. Your mother may be blind, but if the whole house was stripped she must notice something."
"Well, then," he began again, "there's the Tang horse, the Daubigny, the two Rembrandt etchings, those two plates——" And so he went on with a list as large as the first one.
"We shall not take more than eight things," I said firmly. "If you won't agree, I'll leave the house instantly, and will have nothing more to do with it." ”

“ He was never, I should fancy, very wealthy, but he had a passion for collecting beautiful things, and, with his exquisite taste, his very great knowledge, and the freedom that his business allowed him for travel, he managed to gather things around him as every man can manage if he really cares enough and has sufficient leisure. Cares! Charles Hartington did not, I suppose, care for anything else except his beautiful things. I saw him only once, when he was showing an aunt of mine over his house in Evelyn Gardens. ”

“ Hartington's anger or David's disappointment. It was a test for the whole of humanity. Could it really be that there were people in the world, healthy, normal, intelligent people, who cared so little for beautiful things that they simply did not see them when they were right in front of their noses? ”

“ It certainly takes all sorts to make a world.
But here would be the supreme unquestionable test. Here were some of the most beautiful things in the world, things she had known all her life; we surely could not escape. ”

“ She supposed I played games, like most English young men. It was such a pity that David didn't play games better; she believed in young men playing games. Had I got a father, mother, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts? Where did I live, and didn't I find the English winter absurdly long? I answered all these things as well as I could, and then, towards the end of the meal, most foolishly burst into an ecstasy about the lovely things on every side of us. It was the worst move I could have made, but I expect that that was one of Mrs. Hartington's attributes ”

“ There are some people from whom one expects desperate suggestions, and there are others who we know have no moral principle at all, and for these people, let us deny it as we may, if we like them we often shift our own moral code. ”

“ A museum is such a cold place. Why, that Forain would be nothing in a museum; there would be fifty others as good, and thousands of other wonderful etchings as well, but here, all by itself, it knows that you care for it, and it responds and is grateful."
At least after this I had forced her to consider me. She looked at me with the gravest suspicion. "I do hope you haven't been telling my son these things," she said. "I am going to sell everything."
"You're going to sell everything!" I exclaimed. "Oh, Mrs. Hartington, how can you? ”

“ It must have seemed to her a kind of insanity that a grown man should go all the way to Pekin, neglecting his proper business, to buy a blue plate, and now, to her amazement, here was her only child giving an exhibition of the same sort of insanity. ”

“ At last, however, we got to work. We chose the Tang horse, the two Rembrandts, the two plates, the Daubigny, the Constable and the jewelled crucifix. Fortunately these things left no very striking spaces. The pictures hung from a cornice, and a very little shifting of other pictures filled the empty spaces. We put a Chinese camel in the place of the horse, and a lovely dark red bowl where the plates had been. The real trouble then began. ”