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Updated: May 20, 2025
A sense of authority and importance began to impress itself upon her as she sat at the head of her own table in her own dining-hall, with all the Vandykes and Holbeins and Gainsboroughs gazing placidly down upon her from their gilded frames, and the flicker of many wax candles in old silver sconces glancing upon the shields, helmets, rusty pikes and crossed swords that decorated the panelling of the walls between and above the pictures.
Above her head was a tight-drawn canopy made of an enormous flag; and on the white floor, wedged tightly against the canvas wall, were pots containing long rose-vines that made a drapery of leaves and flowers. Here and there folds of the great flag were looped back with wooden shields, gilded and painted with coats of arms the crest of the Holbeins, no doubt, invented to order at great expense.
But what of the remainder of this insignificant composition with its toad and cows, its meaningless landscape? The Weenix swan is richer in paint texture. The Holbeins are two anyhow of splendid quality. Of the Rubenses it is better to defer mention until Antwerp is reached. They are of unequal value. The same may be said of the Van Dycks. Look at that baby girl standing by a chair.
They joined a conspicuous party whose principal members were a fat woman massaged to the teeth, a dark girl who had evidently a sharp eye to the main chance as well as to the picturesque, and a hook-nosed, appallingly pompous man who would strut on the edge of the grave. "Those are the Holbeins," said a woman, who at that moment came with another to a seat near the curé's inconspicuous corner.
Eastwards is Highdown Hill and the country round Worthing, North the beautiful valley of the Arun and the lovely tree-clad slopes of the Downs of which the nearer spurs form Arundel Park. The "state" and residential portions of the castle are never shown to the general public. In the fine collection of pictures are a number of Van Dycks and Holbeins, mostly portraits of the Fitz-Alans and Howards.
And though her vulgar nature, writhing in humiliation, judged others by itself and believed all to be laughing maliciously, there were some who could not laugh. Vanno Della Robbia detested vulgar people, and had disliked the idea of coming to the dance; but now that he was here, on their beautiful yacht, he pitied the wretched Holbeins so intensely that he felt physically ill.
Corridors on whose floors one walked up and down hill; great chambers full of memories, and here and there indulging in a ghost. Tudor rooms with Holbeins between the windows, invisible to man; Jacobean rooms with Van Dycks, nearly as regrettably invisible; Lelys and Knellers, much more regrettably visible.
I came once to see how she did it, but I found her and the Gairsley ironmonger measuring the ears of the Holbeins it seems you can't know anything about pictures now unless you have measured all the ears and the little fingers, which I hope you know; I didn't! so I fled, as she hadn't a word to throw to me, even as one of the public.
Fairthorn, speaking for the first time: "The rarest collection, such Albert Durers! such Holbeins! and that head by Leonardo da Vinci!" He stopped; looked extremely frightened; helped himself to the port, turning his back upon his host, to hold, as usual, the glass to the light. "Are they here, sir?" asked Lionel.
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