July 1892 - The Emma Hardinge Britten Archive

184 The Mystery of lVo. 9, Stanhope Street.
R. B.: "V\T ell, Dick, 1 do; and as that knowledge has
had a considerable deal of influence on my life and
fortunes, and-at least I am in hope, if not in certaintymay
have the same on yours, 1 commence what 1 have
to tell by speaking first of him. The fact is, Dick, this
crusty old relative of yours was, as perhaps you know, an
enthusiastic devotee of art, and at one time president of
the London Art Gallery, or some such association (1
forget its name, I having lived so many years abroad).
Do you know this? [Stanhope nodded.] Well, I only
learned all about it when he came to live in Florence,
just after he had succeeded, it seems, to a baronetcy and
a fortune by the death of some intervening heirs, and
ascended from plain Mr. Stanhope to be Sir Lester."
R. S: "Just so, Reginald; what then?"
R. B.: "Why, this-that, leaving the field of professional
art for that of amateur, and being, as you know, a
devout Catholic, Sir Lester took to art of what he called
a sacred character, and presuming that the old vagrants
and adventuresses that the Catholic Church made into
saints and saintesses were all sacred, and far better
because thev lived a few hundred years ago than the good
men and women of our own time, so he-the said Sir
Lester-under the influence of that priestly discernment
which has such a wonderful eye for rich men, was induced
to fill his beautiful Florentine Palazzo with all sorts of
daubs brought to him under the name of sacred art. I
havn't time now to tell you of the horrid things this
devotee of monkish trickery has stuck upon his wallsfried
saints, grilled saints, drowned saints, and saints
crucified head downwards cover every inch of space in
your devout uncle's dwelling, and he himself, as I am
credibly informed, wears out at the knees no less than
one pair of trousers a week crawling from one horrible
image to another on his marrow bones."