The fact of its not being sold is due (he naively confesses) to its rather high price; several offers have been submitted, and if not sold at the catalogued amount the artist has promised to consider them; but it is very unlikely that the drawing will remain long without a red ticket, ‘as people come back to town to-morrow.’  There is the stab, the stab in the back while you were drinking honey; the tragedy of Corfe Castle repeated. People with a capital P in picture-dealing circles does not mean what they call the Hoypolloy; it means the great ones of the earth, the monde, the Capulets and Montagues with wealth or rank.  You have been measured by the revolting attendant.  He does not count you with them, or you would not be in town to-day; something has escaped you in the Morning Post, some function to which you were not invited, or of which you knew nothing.  If you happen to be a Capulet you feel mildly amused, and in order to correct the wrong impression and let the underling know your name and address you purchase the drawing; for the greatest have their weak side.  But, if not, and you have simply risen from the ‘purple of commerce,’ you are determined not to lag behind stuck-up Society; you will revenge yourself for the thousand injuries of Fortunatus; you will deprive him of his prerogative to buy the best.  The purchase is concluded.  You go home with your nerves slightly shaken from the gloved contest—­you go home to face your wife and children, wearing a look of wistful inquiry on their irregular upturned faces, as when snow lies upon the ground, they scent Christmas, and you look up with surprise at the whiteness of the ceiling.  Though in private life a contributor to the press, in public I used to be one of those importunate salesmen.

It was my duty, my pleasurable duty, so to act for Mr. Beerbohm’s caricatures when exhibited at a fashionable West-end gallery where among the visitors I recognised many of his models.  I observe that when Mr. Beerbohm is a friend of his victim he is generally at his best; that he is always excellent and often superb if he is in sympathy with the personality of that victim, however brutally he may render it.  His failures are due to lack of sympathy, and they are often, oddly enough, the mildest as caricatures.  Fortunately, Mr. Beerbohm selects chiefly celebrities who are either personal friends or those for whom he must have great admiration and sympathy.  By a divine palmistry he estimates them with exquisite perception.  I noted that those who were annoyed with their own caricature either did not know Mr. Beerbohm or disliked his incomparable writings; and, curiously enough, he misses the likeness in people he either does not know personally or whom you suspect he dislikes.  I am glad now of the opportunity of being sincere, because it was part of my function as salesman to agree with what every one said, whether in praise or in blame.