Memoirs of an editor : fifty years of American journalism / Edward P. Mitchell.

LiTER YEARS ON THE FIRING LINE

359

"Bouguereaus?" I ventured.
"Guess again," said Laffan.
"Worse than that?" I inquired.."'Gilt satsuma from
the bazaars?"
"No!" he replied, solemnly. "Limoges enamels of the
early masters that any connoisseur would assassinate Tom
Ryan to get hold of. L6onard Limousin and that sort of
stuff. And Italian primitives that would shine among John
G. Johnson's! Was there ever anything like it?"
Some speculative dealer brought over an alleged Greek
Venus and attempted to sell it to Mr. Morgan or somebody else prepared to pay a record price. The pedigree
had been elaborately prepared. The statue had been found
walled up somewhere in Sicily or Calabria. It bore the
customary marks of long inhumation.. It was exhibited
at the rooms of the National Arts, away back when that
club was in Thirty-fourth Street. Crowds visited the newfound marble, which resembled the Medici Venus in the
Uffizi, with some difference of details, as about the dolphin.
A heated controversy arose in the press, for and against
authenticity. Laffan was firm in the conviction that the
piece was the modern work of one of the habile sculptors
of North Italy who devote themselves to mortuary representations, and that it had been fraudulently abraded
and artificially stained. He was surer than ever of the
acid discoloration when it had been compared with the
patina of real age on a fragment I had recently brought
from Eleusis. At any rate, the Museum did not acquire
this Venus, nor did Mr. Morgan purchase it. The statue
withdrew for a while from public sight. It was told me
some years after that the goddess had reappeared beneath a Temple d'Amour on the estate of a multi-mil

lionaire who was not Mr. Morgan; but as to this I cannot
testify.
Laffan's letters from Europe and Egypt during his
many long absences were a joy to me always; penned with