The idea of owning anything that some one else may own at
the same time is abhorrent to the true collector. On the other hand, if
we went in for spurious masterpieces, we were sure of securing unique
specimens at very small expense. And I will not deny that the bargain
element appealed very strongly to Mrs. Cooper. Most of our things we
got at really fabulous reductions. There was the crown of an Assyrian
princess of the twenty-fourth century B.C., for which one of the leading
European museums paid $75,000, and which, after it was shown that it had
been made by a Copenhagen jeweller in 1907, I purchased from the museum
for something like fifty-five dollars, plus the freight. This charming
little landscape with sheep and a shepherd boy brought $23,000 in a
Fifth Avenue auction room two years ago. Three months after it was sold,
a certain Mrs. Smith on Staten Island sued her husband for desertion and
non-support, and in the course of the proceedings it was brought out
that Smith made $10,000 a year painting Corots and Daubignys, and that
the $23,000 picture was one of his latest achievements.
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