Cornelius P. Stockman was the tallest man William Alaric Piper had ever seen. He was about six feet nine inches tall, probably even taller than Captain Ames of the Horse Guards, the tallest man in the British Army, who had led the procession on Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee Parade two years before. Piper wondered if they put something in the water supply to produce this race of giants. The man looked as though he would have to bend down to pass through most English domestic doors.
‘Stockman’s my name,’ he said to Piper, stooping slightly to shake Piper’s hand as they met in the reception of the Old Bond Street gallery. ‘Been hearing you’ve got some pretty fine pictures here, Mr Piper. My friend Bill McCracken gave me good reports of you.’
Piper smiled to himself as he remembered his last meeting with the railroad millionaire. He had handed over the Gainsborough in his own little office, McCracken towering above him.
‘Fifteen thousand pounds, I’m afraid, Mr McCracken,’ he had said. ‘The previous owner took a lot of convincing, I’m afraid. But the Gainsborough is yours.’
William Alaric Piper firmly believed that the higher the prices the more genuine the paintings appeared to their new owners. He remembered the story of the American millionaire who had refused to buy a Velasquez because it was on offer for only five hundred pounds. If the dealer had doubled or trebled the price, Piper was certain it would have been sold.
McCracken had picked him up in an American bear hug and danced around the room.
‘Mr Piper, how can I ever thank you? Perhaps when you come to Boston you will be our guest in our house in Concord! Mrs McCracken and the Misses McCracken will be so delighted with this here Gainsborough!’ With that he wrote out a cheque and departed back to his hotel where the McCracken Gainsborough could join the McCracken Raphael to delight and enchant their new owner on their easels in room 347 of the Piccadilly Hotel.
Stockman was dressed rather like a cowboy going to church on Sunday, with great boots and a wide-brimmed hat.
‘What sort of pictures do you like, Mr Stockman?’ said Piper hesitantly. ‘Our gallery is full of these Venetian pictures at present, but we do have other things stored elsewhere.’
‘Let me be frank with you, Mr Piper. Stockman’s my name, Cornelius P. Stockman. My grandfather came from someplace out in the Ukraine – the family’s name was Rostowskowski or some damned thing like that. People out Kansas way couldn’t be pronouncing that. Grandpa Rostowskowski worked with cattle so they changed the name to Stockman and that’s what we’ve been ever since. We’re simple people in Kansas, Mr Piper. I tell you what I don’t like. I don’t care for any of those religious pictures. No, sir.’
Piper reckoned that a quarter or more of the paintings in his exhibition were no use on this occasion.
‘Those holy women give me the creeps, Mr Piper, I don’t mind telling you. And those damned portraits of all those noblemen all dressed up in their finery.’ Piper had a sudden vision of a Venetian Doge in cowboy boots, guns strapped to the leather trousers at his side, striding across the Piazza San Marco for a final shoot-out at the Bridge of Sighs. ‘They give me the creeps too. My grandfather left the Ukraine because of the tyranny of all those damned nobles. Our country fought with yours long ago to get rid of a King, why, I don’t think nobles and counts and marquises have any place in a democratic society like America.’ Piper thought about suggesting that an aristocracy of wealth might have replaced one based on birth, but felt the moment was inopportune. He also felt there might be only half a dozen pictures on the walls that would appeal to his transatlantic visitor.
Certainly Cornelius P. Stockman was moving round the exhibits at considerable speed. Five Titians, three Giorgiones and a host of works by lesser masters were circumnavigated in less than two minutes. A quartet of nobles were dismissed in about fifteen seconds flat. Piper was on the point of asking precisely what sort of pictures Stockman did like when the Kansas giant stopped. He stopped at precisely the same point as William P. McCracken some weeks before when the sight in front of him summoned up the memories of the elders of the Third Presbyterian in Lincoln Street in Concord, Massachusetts. Piper wondered wearily which of the innumerable varieties of American religion was about to be invoked now. Fifteenth Methodist on Washington Boulevard perhaps? Kansas First Baptist? Lutheran Memorial on Jefferson Drive? Maybe Mormons. Was Kansas anywhere near Salt Lake City? He didn’t think so but he wasn’t sure.
But Cornelius P. Stockman seemed to have different beliefs. He stared reverently at the painting in front of him. The background was an idyllic landscape in the Veneto, a plain in the centre with some distant mountains. On the right a small town in brown climbed lazily up a hill. Lying across the centre of the picture on a satin sheet with a dark red pillow was a young woman. She was completely naked. Sensuous and sensual, the sleeping Venus looked as though she had dropped down from heaven for a peaceful afternoon nap in the Italian countryside.
‘My word, Mr Piper, my word. That’s so beautiful. This Giorgione fellow, did he paint any more of these women?’
Piper was desperately trying to remember if the painting was real or a forgery. If it was forgery, he could take a lower price.
‘I think there is one other painting called Leda and the Swan,’ Piper said, ‘but Leda is not as prominent as the sleeping Venus. She occupies a much smaller space in the painting if you follow me. And I think it’s in an Italian museum, very hard to get things out of Italian museums, Mr Stockman. But,’ Piper brightened up as he thought of it, ‘Titian, another of the great masters, painted a number of women au naturel, as we say.’
‘Au naturel, did you say? In Kansas, Mr Piper, we call them nudes. Tell me, did these pictures go on display in Venice or wherever it was? I reckon the locals must have been queuing round the block to get a sight of them.’
Piper smiled. ‘I don’t think they went on display. They were painted for the private quarters of the rich where the nobility and the wealthy merchants could enjoy them in private.’
Stockman bent down at least a foot and a half to take a closer look at the Sleeping Venus. ‘Why, Mr Piper,’ he said, ‘that’s just what I propose to do. I live alone, apart from the staff, and I’ve got one huge room where I hang my pictures. I can enjoy them in peace there.’
Piper had a sudden inspiration. ‘Could I make a suggestion, Mr Stockman? I always think of these paintings as being like a person, you see, an old friend perhaps, that you enjoy having in your house. Maybe this Sleeping Venus would look and feel rather lonely on your walls. Maybe I could collect some more nudes, of the highest quality, of course. A group of them would surely look better in your private gallery than a single Giorgione?’
Cornelius P. Stockman was still peering intently at the Venus. ‘It’s a long way from Venice, Italy, to Kansas City, Kansas,’ he said. ‘I tell you what, Mr Piper, you get me as many of these as you can. I’ll take a bundle of them. I’ve got some rather dreary pictures of French peasants somebody advised me to buy in Paris a couple of years ago. Man called Tryon, I think, somebody called Rosa Bonheur. Reckon they could move house to make room for the ladies.’
‘What sort of numbers were you thinking of?’ asked Piper, angry with himself once more that his mental arithmetic wasn’t as good as it should have been. ‘Three? Four?’
‘Four?’ said Cornelius P. Stockman derisively. ‘Don’t think four would make much of an impact.’ Piper suddenly remembered a terrible American painting he had refused to buy some years before. It showed some everlasting plain in the American Midwest, the entire surface covered with cattle moving stupidly but purposefully towards what might have been a railway depot in the distance. Men on horseback patrolled the outer reaches of the herds. Clouds of dust covered the plain. If you dealt in that number of cattle, four Venetian women, naked or not, might seem a trifle.