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"Four Rembrandts," said Falloden, looking at his list, "two Titians, two Terburgs, a Vermeer of Delft, heaps of other Dutchmen four full-length Gainsboroughs, and three half-lengths two full-length Reynoldses, three smaller three Lawrences, a splendid Romney, three Hoppners, two Constables, etc. The foreign pictures were bought by my grandfather from one of the Orléans collections about 1830.
"You've been buying Hoppners up cheap," I suggested. "Between uth," he answered, "yeth, I think we've got them all. Maybe a few more. I don't think we've mithed any." "You will sell them for more than you gave for them," I hinted. "You're thmart," he answered, regarding me admiringly, "you thee through everything you do." "How do you work it?" I asked him.
Then she roamed about looking at the pictures, testing her European education by discovering for herself the Lelys and Mores, the Hoppners, Ketels, Holbeins, Knellers, Dahls, and Romneys.
They passed along through the drawing-rooms, and the whole wonderful series of family portraits, Reynolds', Lawrences, Gainsboroughs, Romneys, Hoppners, looked down, unconscious of their doom, upon the invaders, and on the son of the house, so apparently unconcerned. But Douglas was very far from unconcerned.
These, with the Hoppners, known to Shelley and Byron, a French sculptress of royalist sympathies, Mlle. de Fauveau, much admired by Browning, and one of the grandsons of Goethe, who flits into and out of the scene, were a compensation for the repulsiveness of certain English folk at Florence who gathered together only for the frivolities, and worse than frivolities, of foreign wayfaring.
It was panelled in dark oak, while the drawing-room was white. But the pictures, of which there were two or three, looked even better here than up-stairs. That beautiful Lawrence a "red boy" in gleaming satin that pair of Hoppners, fine studies in blue, why, who had ever seen them before? And another light or two would show them still better. A loud knock and ring. Julie held her breath. Ah!
We have seen, besides, the Hoppners, Lord Byron's friends at Venice; and Miss Boyle, a niece of the Earl of Cork, an authoress and poetess on her own account, having been introduced to Robert in London at Lady Morgan's, has hunted us out, and paid us a visit. A very vivacious little person, with sparkling talk enough . . .
His Rembrandts, his Botticellis, his Sir Joshuas, his Hoppners, were little things he had picked up here and there, but which, he admitted, were said to be rather good. Soon all the others were talking wine, tobacco and Botticelli as well as they could, though most of them knew more about coal, cotton or creosote than the subjects they were affecting to discuss. This, then, was success!
I blinded myself to all her frank friendliness. I felt she ought not to notice Justin, ought not to answer him.... Clearly she liked those men to flatter her, she liked it.... I remember too, so that I must have noted it and felt it then as a thing perceived for the first time, the large dignity of the room, the tall windows and splendid rich curtains, the darkened Hoppners upon the walls.
On these principles she had trained her family. The result was that her sons had not yet brought the family library, and the family Romneys and Hoppners, to Christie's. Not one of them was a director of any company, and the name of Malory had not yet been distinguished by decorating the annals of the Courts of Bankruptcy or of Divorce.
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