“Very fine painting,” I said.
“Yes, you know a great deal about painting?”
“Not so much as I would like.”
“Well, smoke your cigar and enjoy yourself… I have to see if the guests are having fun…as you Americans say.”
He went out and I looked over the paintings and they were wonderful paintings, beautifully framed, well hung and well lit, and any man would be proud of them; the only trouble with them was that all were wonderful forgeries!
The Corots were grand, but copies, the Courbets, the Dutch seascapes, the Flemish food subjects, all were very good and all were very well-done copies. I couldn't understand it as Mr. Pettie hadn't sold him anything but one Corot.
Still puzzled, I went back to the party just in time to hear Lady Astor say something dull, and hear a member of the Beavebrook papers admire the Germans, and someone offer a toast to Chamberlain…which I suppose dates this event very much.
I was still puzzled when a very small man with blonde hair worn over his green eyes came over and grabbed my hand in his; a hand he kept very unwashed but the hand of a great artist.
“Stevie!…”
“Teja,” I said, “you old fraud!”
Teja bowed and helped me to some brandy. Teja, who was a little Pole from Warsaw (who could paint like an angel if it were someone else's painting), was better known to us in Paris as Teacup, as no one bothered to say Teja everytime he met him. He was the most famous painter in the world, I suppose …examples of his work hang in all the great museums of the world. He once told me he had twenty-two paintings in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Of course, most of his paintings were signed Rembrant, Goya, Hogarth, Corot, and such fancy things.
A light suddenly came over me.
“Teacup, you old bastard,” I said, “you painted all the pictures here at Lord D's!”
“Ha …but of course.”
“But they are not up to your usual greatness…I spotted them at once.”
Teacup grinned. “Listen, my friend, you know I can paint like anyone, and can fool every expert that ever lived …but I must have time, the right canvas, the right colors, and most of all, time. Lord D wanted the whole gallery copied in three months…For that time, is it good?”
“It is dandy…but why, Teacup?”
“Ah, you see he is strapped, broke …could just about pay me. He is playing so many horses to win and they do not win…so he has had to sell his paintings to collectors who ask no question.”
“That is sad,” I said.
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