It is naturally a fine thing for one, and gratifying, to acquire
a thorough art education. Personally I do not in the least
regret the time I gave and the study I devoted to acquiring
mine. I regard those two weeks as having been well spent.
I shall not do it soon again, however, for now I know all about
art. Let others who have not enjoyed my advantages take up this
study. Let others scour the art galleries of Europe seeking
masterpieces. All of them contain masterpieces and most of them
need scouring. As for me and mine, we shall go elsewhere. I
love my art, but I am not fanatical on the subject. There is
another side of my nature to which an appeal may be made. I can
take my Old Masters or I can leave them be. That is the way I
am organized - I have self-control.
I shall not deny that the earlier stages of my art education
were fraught with agreeable little surprises. Not soon shall I
forget the flush of satisfaction which ran through me on learning
that this man Dore's name was pronounced like the first two notes
in the music scale, instead of like a Cape Cod fishing boat. And
lingering in my mind as a fragrant memory is the day when I first
discovered that Spagnoletto was neither a musical instrument nor
something to be served au gratin and eaten with a fork. Such
acquirements as these are very precious to me.
But for the time being I have had enough. At this hour of writing
I feel that I am stocked up with enough of Bouguereau's sorrel
ladies and Titian's chestnut ones and Rubens' bay ones and Velasquez's
pintos to last me, at a conservative estimate, for about seventy-five
years. I am too young as a theatergoer to recall much about
Lydia Thompson's Blondes, but I have seen sufficient of Botticelli's
to do me amply well for a spell. I am still willing to walk a
good distance to gaze on one of Rembrandt's portraits of one of
his kinfolks, though I must say he certainly did have a lot of
mighty homely relatives; and any time there is a first-rate Millet
or Corot or Meissonier in the neighborhood I wish somebody would
drop me a line, giving the address. As for pictures by Tintoretto,
showing Venetian Doges hobnobbing informally with members of the
Holy Family, and Raphael's angels, and Michelangelo's lost souls,
and Guidos, and Murillos, I have had enough to do me for months
and months and months. Nor am I in the market for any of the dead
fish of the Flemish school. Judging by what I have observed,
practically all the Flemish painters were devout churchmen and
painted their pictures on Friday.
There was just one drawback to my complete enjoyment of that part
of our European travels we devoted to art. We would go to an art
gallery, hire a guide and start through.
