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Updated: June 20, 2025
When Priam Farll reflected that he had received about four hundred pounds for those pictures vastly less than one per cent, of what the shiny and prosperous dealer had ultimately disposed of them for, the traditional fury of the artist against the dealer of the producer against the parasitic middleman sprang into flame in his heart.
He recounted the life and death of the great painter Priam Farll, and his solemn burial and the tears of the whole world. He dwelt upon the genius of Priam Farll, and then upon the confiding nature of the plaintiff. Then he inquired who could blame the plaintiff for his confidence in the uprightness of a firm with such a name as Parfitts.
These performances were invariably styled original and novel. All the remainder of free wall space was occupied by philanthropists who were ready to give away cigarettes at the nominal price of a penny a packet. Priam Farll never tired of the phantasmagoria of Upper Richmond Road.
It exactly resembled a private house, narrow and tall and squeezed in between its sister and its brother. Priam Farll was puzzled, till the solution occurred to him. "Of course," he said to himself. "This is the quietude, the discretion. I shall like this." He jumped down. There were two bell-knobs. He pulled one, and waited for the portals to open on discreet vistas of luxurious furniture.
Priam knew that, being a Jew, the dealer could not be his frame-maker, who was a pure-bred Yorkshireman from Ravensthorpe. Mr. Oxford continued, "I sold that picture and guaranteed it to be a Priam Farll." "The devil you did!" "Yes. I had sufficient confidence in my judgment." "Who bought it?" "Whitney C. Witt, of New York. He's an old man now, of course. I expect you remember him, cher maître."
The auto-cab would easily have won the race for the Gordon Bennett Cup. It was of about two hundred h.p., and it arrived in Dean's Yard in less time than a fluent speaker would take to say Jack Robinson. The rapidity of the flight was simply incredible. "I'll keep you," Priam Farll was going to say, as he descended, but he thought it would be more final to dismiss the machine; so he dismissed it.
"You've got the evening papers?" asked Priam Farll. "Yes, sir." The valet put a pile of papers respectfully on the desk. "All of them?" "Yes, sir." "Thanks. Well, it's not too late to have a messenger, is it?" "Oh no, sir." "Then please get a messenger to take this letter, at once." "In a cab, sir?" "Yes, in a cab. I don't know whether there will be an answer. He will see.
And then swung into view the coffin, covered with a heavy purple pall, and on the pall a single white cross; and the pall-bearers great European names that had hurried out of the corners of Europe as at a peremptory mandate with Duncan Farll to complete the tale!
He had not the pleasure of the Dean's personal acquaintance. The Dean was an abstraction; certainly much more abstract than Priam Farll. He thought he could meet the Dean. A terrific enterprise, but he must accomplish it! After all, a Dean what was it? Nothing but a man with a funny hat! And was not he himself Priam Farll, the authentic Priam Farll, vastly greater than any Dean?
The Daily Record came out with a copy of the will of Priam Farll, in which, after leaving a pound a week for life to his valet, Henry Leek, Priam Farll bequeathed the remainder of his fortune to the nation for the building and up-keep of a Gallery of Great Masters.
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