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It is absolutely different from the artist's attitude, from the connoisseur's attitude; it is quite irreconcilable with their attitude, and yet I wonder if in the end it is not what the artist works for.
With a connoisseur's envy, the novelist describes to Eve the interior, the elegantly furnished dining-room in carved oak, the cafe-au-lait upholstered drawing-room, with its superb Chinese vases of fragrant flowers, its cabinet of curiosities, its Delacroix pictures, its rosewood piano, and the portrait of the authoress by Calamatta.
In Hermon's Olympian Banquet he who also held the office of a high priest of Apollo in Alexandria had even seen an insult to the dignity of the deity. In the Street Boy Eating Figs, the connoisseur's eye had recognised a peculiar masterpiece, but he had been repelled by this also; for, instead of a handsome boy, it represented a starving, emaciated vagabond.
A grim-looking flight of stone stairs with iron railings led to the front door, and beyond that were large and hideous rooms filled with treasures of art incongruously hung on lamentable wall-papers or pendent over pieces of furniture which would have made a connoisseur's eyes ache.
During the thirty-eight years of his connoisseur's life, indeed, he had marked so many "movements," seen the tides of taste and technique so ebb and flow, that there was really no telling anything except that there was money to be made out of every change of fashion. This too might quite well be a case where one must subdue primordial instinct, or lose the market.
Larkin, with a glow of satisfaction, took one of these noble cigars, and rolled it in his fingers, and smelt it. 'Fragrant wonderfully fragrant! he observed, meekly, with a connoisseur's shake of the head. The night was altogether so charming that Lord Chelford was tempted. So he took his cap, and lighted his cigar, too, and strolled a little way with the attorney.
He knew the connoisseur's collection. It filled the large gallery adjoining his extensive home on Washington Square and was not only the best in the city, containing as it did examples of Sir Thomas Lawrence, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Chrome, Sully, and many of the modern French school among them two fine Courbets and a Rousseau but it had lately been enriched by one or more important American landscapes, notably Sanford Gifford's "Catskill Gorge" and Church's "Tropics" two canvases which had attracted more than usual attention at the Spring Exhibition of the Academy.
Rich colors blend, soft light falls upon the many articles of a connoisseur's collection, and, taken in all, the scene is dazzling. He gives it one glance. Then his attention is riveted upon the figures before him. A couple of servants wait upon the owner of the house, Ben Taleb, the Moorish doctor.
I had the vision of a matronly, but not much altered Janet, mounted on horseback, to witness the performance of some favourite Eleven of youngsters with her connoisseur's eye; and then the model of an English lady, wife, and mother, waving adieu to the field and cantering home to entertain her husband's guests. Her husband! Temple was aware of my grief, but saw no remedy.
The only anachronisms were my host's costume and my own, and the box of cigars on the table beside him, companioning a decanter of wine and a couple of tall, slender glasses that would have rejoiced a connoisseur's heart. Mr. Treherne welcomed me genially. "You won't find the fire too much?
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