The Fool's Paradise

The Fool's Paradise by E.V. Lucas

The Fool's Paradise by E.V. Lucas opens with the description of a grimy old picture-shop in the West-Central district of London, whose window displays a mediocre girl's head and bust by an indifferent Dutch hand, labelled on the frame as "The Coral Necklace. By Jan Vermeer, of Delft." The narrator notes that the attribution is obviously false, and that were it genuine the shop would draw the foremost art experts of Europe and America and make the dealer rich. The current owner almost certainly does not believe the label, but the narrator finds himself dwelling on the thought of some previous possessor who did believe it, some simple soul genuinely convinced he owned a work by the rarest and most exquisite of Dutch masters, and the narrator confesses to envying that person his easy credence and his want of fastidious taste. From this starting point the narrator broadens his reflection by recalling a series of lawsuits that arose from the porcelain collection left by a wealthy Regent Street merchant who had been a good judge of china in his prime but whose critical faculty deserted him as his brain weakened with age. His later purchases, believed by him to be priceless examples of Dresden and other fine ware, turned out to be nearly worthless, to the grief of the heirs who had hoped to benefit from their sale. The narrator argues that it would be foolish to waste sympathy on the old man himself, because surrounded as he was by the mediocre, he believed it to be the choicest, and that belief was what mattered. He passed his hands lovingly over spurious shepherdesses and was happy, and he could not have been happier had the porcelain been genuinely of the rarest and most wonderful kind. The narrator draws from this the principle that it is not what things really are but what one thinks them to be that is the important matter. He extends this thought to the hypothetical experience of visiting a picture collector whose walls are hung entirely with obvious copies he takes for originals and flagrant daubs he considers masterpieces. Though the narrator would suffer from concealing his true feelings as an art lover, he is certain he would feel genuine affection for such a host and genuine delight in his transparent and credulous nature. He formulates a kind of hierarchy of collectors: he can admire but not necessarily feel warmth toward the man who recognises a fine thing and calls it his own, he has little use for the man who calls a fine thing a poor thing but his own, and he admires most cordially and could almost embrace the man who calls a poor thing a fine thing and his own. It is this last figure, the inhabitant of a fool's paradise, whom the narrator regards as the salt of the earth. Returning to the misattributed Vermeer, the narrator admits he cannot put the picture out of his head, having made some study of Vermeer. What strikes him as almost beyond comprehension is the thought of someone sitting down excitedly with that grotesquely misattributed picture in his room, reading the false label without a qualm and even with pride, scanning the commonplace paint without a twinge of doubt. He observes that copyists and forgers can produce credible work after Corot or even Raphael, and that false ascriptions are the life-blood of too many firms, but Vermeer is a case apart, since there is only one Vermeer and fewer than forty known canvases by him in the world. The man who had the legend printed on the frame must have been a simpleton beyond appraisement, the very briniest salt of the earth, and yet the narrator says he longs to meet him, not only to examine his bumps but to abase himself before him, calling such a person a true philosopher and a really wise man. The narrator closes his reflections by wishing that some dramatist with an eye to quaint character would bring such a figure to the stage, a simple enthusiast without a shred of critical faculty or a drop of guile, whom an audience could watch amiably fondling his geese and believing them swans. He notes that Lamb approached and skirted the type in his Captain Jackson, though Vermeer's Coral Necklace would not have attracted that particular creature. He suggests that if Anatole France were a dramatist and would return to the gentle, smiling mood in which he created his Sylvestre Bonnard, France might give the world this collector, but even France would probably be too inclined to place some burden of satirical judgement on his character, being by nature a castigator and ridiculer.

By E.V. Lucas · First published 1897 · Genre: Essay, Literary Criticism, Philosophical Fiction · 1,141 words

First lines

There is an old picture-shop in the West-Central district of London, notable for the grime of its canvases, in the window of which there is to be seen at this moment -- unless a confiding purchaser has just borne it off -- a girl's head and bust by some very indifferent Dutch hand, under which is printed on the frame the startling and courageous legend, "The Coral Necklace. By Jan Vermeer, of Delft."

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The Fool's Paradise is listed on Textopian as a short story by E.V. Lucas, dated 1897 CE.

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fiction · satire · social commentary · comedy · early 20th century · British literature · human folly · irony · morality tale · philosophical · wit · character study

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