THE VIRTUOSI VENUS

The Society of the Virtuosi has been called “a club for which the nominal qualification is having been in Italy, but the real one being drunk.”

This stricture, I own, is severe. The members, having been to Italy, had some pretensions to taste in the arts of antiquity, three-bottle men tho’ they might be. Yet among such a gathering, what business had Dr. Sam: Johnson?

For on that evening in May, 1778, we were making our way towards the Crown Tavern, intent on foregathering with that very society of virtuosi. As we passed St. Dunstan’s, I glanced at my learned friend. Lexicographer, literary dictator, stern moralist, yet to consort with this famed assembly of rakes he was putting his best foot forward.

His tall, burly form was arrayed in well-brushed claret-coloured broadcloth, he had a snowy cravat to his neck, silver buckles to his square-toed shoes, and even a ring to his finger, an adornment which made me stare, never having seen the like before. Under his uncompromising brown scratch-wig, his strong-cut countenance wore an expression of placid complaisance.

Encouraged by the complaisance, I ventured to rally him on the ring.

“What, sir, hath the little blind god cleft your heart at last? Do you wear a lover’s token?”

“Perhaps, sir, it might once have been; but alas, ’tis too late now.”

Thus slightly did he refer to a lady at Lichfield whom he had long honoured with his regard. I acquiesced in his reticence, and said no more, but fingered my lace ruffles. In my peach-coloured brocade, with a large black taffety bag to my powdered wig, setting off my swarthy visage, I lagged no whit behind my learned friend in honourng with my attire the meeting of the Virtuosi.

Our first port of call was hard by Cavendish Square, for there dwelt our friend Joseph Nollekens, the sculptor, who had recently modelled a fine head of Dr. Johnson. He it was who was to present us at the monthly dinner of the Virtuosi for the express purpose of making us behold a most curious and rare specimen of the art of long ago: the Virtuosi Venus.

We found the noted sculptor in his work-yard, surrounded with the debris and paraphernalia of his calling—armatures for modelling in clay, vessels for casting in bronze, and blocks of stone to be worked. Two smock-clad journeymen with broom and clout were setting things to rights at the hearth.

In contrast, their master was a resplendent sight. In person he was short of stature, which he mended with a strut, and had fine eyes, a hawk nose, a short neck and a heavy chin. For the evening’s festivities he had tricked himself out in his suit of Papal purple, silk stockings with broad blue and white stripes, and lace ruffles and frill, all which he had brought with him from Italy.

“What, sir, you are rich and splendid!” I remarked admiringly.

“My Italian gauds,” he smirked complacently, “and not a penny for the customs neither. Did I tell you how I brought the laces unsuspected past customs?”

“Aye, sir, you did, frequently,” replied my moral friend severely. “A most reprehensible act, sir, and an ill example to your journeymen here, and I desire to hear no more on’t.”

I glanced at the journeymen, who were looking elaborately uninterested. One was a powerful youth with tawny eyebrows. T’other was trim and swart. At him I looked again.

“What, Giacomo!” I exclaimed. “My good friend, did not we meet in the insurgent camp at Corsica these many years gone?”

“Si, signore, so we did!” shouted the Italian. His English was always shouted, I remembered, and adorned with a superfluity of terminal particles.

“Si, signore! My generale, he bringa me to England”—(hereafter I leave the shout and the scattering particles to be imagined)—“he recommend me to my trade of a statuary. Viva la liberta!”

“Liberty forever!” echoed the sandy youth with a twang.

Dr. Johnson turned on him.

“An American?”

“Aye, sir, and proud on’t!”

“Then, fellow, spare me your cant about liberty!” growled the sturdy monarchist, who was still smarting from his losing encounter with that fratick rebel, the American spy, Patience Wright. “What have the drivers of slaves to do with liberty?”

“Taxation without representation is tyranny,” muttered the American, fortunately too low for my friend’s somewhat obtuse ear.

“Enough o’ that, Malachy, Giacomo!” said Nollekens hastily. “This way, gentlemen.”

He led us within, and there in the work-room we found my Lord Maytland, come to carry us to the Virtuosi in his coach. Though he was their leading spirit, his raking days were past. The wealthy Earl was garbed in quiet splendour, powdered wig with a modish high foretop, mulberry brocade, a froth of Venetian point, a brightness of gold braid. His pale regular features wore a look of supercilious composure.

Exchanging civilities, we lingered in the atelier a moment to admire the work of our friend Nollekens. About the spacious work-room stood his masterpieces in bronze and stone and plaster: Venus with Cupid, a plaster replica of his famous head of Laurence Sterne the novelist, and on a pedestal his newest achievement, a busto of Dr. Johnson cast in plaster. My friend was depicted in Roman fashion, with a toga draped about impossibly wide shoulders, and a thatch of hair on the head, cropped in the mode of ancient Rome, which Dr. Johnson with his sparse hirsute equipment pretended to look on with disdain. Secretly, I think, he was pleased.

“What, two heads?” I exclaimed, spying a second plaster replica of my friend on the work-bench.

“Two heads are better than one,” smiled Nollekens, “most especially such a head as Dr. Johnson’s.”

“I have bespoke the second busto,” said Dr. Johnson, “for a lady at Lichfield—”

My eye went to the ring with its dull blue stone, but I prudently said nothing.

“And it shall ride with me when I make thither on Saturday next.”

“Well, well, ’tis ready,” said Nollekens, “and you shall have it at your door betimes to-morrow.”

Chatting of matters artistic, we mounted the crested coach of Lord Maytland, and soon drew up before the tavern called the Crown—I should say, previously called the Crown, for the old timbered front glittered with a new sign, a golden Venus reclining in a silver cockle-shell.

“So puffed up is honest landlord Blodgett to have become titular host to the Virtuosi,” smiled the Earl, “that he must advertize the world of it with our Venus for a sign.”

“And is your Venus in truth golden, my Lord?” I enquired.

“She is now, sir,” replied Maytland wryly, “for in my absence abroad the young Duke of Duncannon was Keeper of the Venus in my room, more for his rank and wealth than for his virtuosity, I fear; and seeing traces of gilding upon her, he takes the notion, inspired perhaps by the new tavern sign, to gild her all over.”

“What stupidity!” cried Nollekens.

“Sir,” replied Maytland acidly, “in England, ’tis the hereditary right of a Duke to be as stupid as he pleases. I only marvel why such a fellow had any desire to supply my place as temporary Keeper.”

With a shrug, Lord Maytland conducted us within, and led us to the private room where the Virtuosi feasted monthly, and kept their treasures the year through.

It was a spacious oak-panelled chamber, lighted by a large sparkling chandelier in which many candles glowed. Around the walls on brackets stood casts in plaster of the most famous antique heads. A carven press stood open, affording glimpses of gaudy regalia, as the officers of the Society robed themselves. An elaborately adorned cupboard on the wall was still closed and double locked.

In the center of the room, a long table was set for upwards of thirty feasters. Around it the members were milling in clusters, a sight full of colour, for the younger maccaronis among them had got themselves up in the uniform of the Society, a jewelhued caftan with myriad small buttons, a voluminous rich broacaded dolman, and a huge turban swathing a quilted crimson tarboosh, a la Turque.

Lord Maytland, presenting us, was naming over our hosts, so rapidly I only caught a name and a face here and there.

“His Grace the Duke of Duncannon—”

A dissipated face, a vinous flush, a look of stubborn stupidity to the manor born.

“Sir Brutus O’Banion—”

An expression of derisive risibility quirking a long Irish upper lip.

“Sir Francis Flashwood—Signor Angelo Angelini, the Italian sculptor, and my very good friend—”

A handsome dark face, liquid black eyes, an insinuating smile.

“’Tis he,” cried Maytland with enthusiasm, “who can tell you of the Virtuosi Venus, for he stood by my side at Pompeii as she came out of the earth.”

The Italian sculptor opened his mouth to take up the tale, but the Earl was in full cry:

“Figure to yourself sister cities in the Campagna, Pompeii and Herculaneum, rich in the treasures of art, whelmed in a day by the eruption of Vesuvius in the year ’79, nigh on seventeen centuries ago—lying buried since, and only now yielding up their treasures to man’s sight!”

“And what treasures!” I cried. “When I was at Naples in the ’65, ’twas my privilege to see them at the Portici Palace—the marble statues, the bronzes great and small, brought up from buried Herculaneum as from a mine! Nay, to descend under ground and walk the tunnels, viewing by flickering torch light columns and wall paintings in the houses of Romans long dead,—I assure you, sir, it gave me in overflowing measure those sentiments proper to a man of sensibility!”

“Were not the tunnels noxious,” observed Maytland, “with damps and exhalations?”

“They were so, sir, and I turned with relief to view the scavi at Pompeii, which they were then beginning to open to the air.”

“Did you walk in the Street of the Tombs, by the Herculaneum Gate?” asked Maytland.

“Yes, sir, and mused upon those entombed there so long ago, and those who died on that fatal day and lay seventeen centuries without sepulture.”

“A solemn memento mori,” remarked my philosophical friend.

“Then know, sir,” pursued the Earl, “that from that very trenching by the Herculaneum Gate emerged the Virtuosi Venus. ’Twas my good fortune to be on the spot, sir, and I acquired her, tho’ at a dear rate, without ado.”

Dramatically he pictured the scene.

“The diggers were very banditti, for half were convicts, with fierce bristling mustachios, scowling brows, a cacophony of patois. On the edge of the trench behold me with my guide, Signor Angelini. Below us a single bandit is digging out a wayside shrine of the dead. Standing pilasters shew him where it lies. The shovel strikes metal! We leap to his side! Out of the dust emerges—the Virtuosi Venus!

“I was fortunate, sirs, in my guide.” Angelini bowed. “He recognized at once what we had. As you shall see, this Venus is doubly precious in that she bears an inscription on the sole of her sandal. Well, sirs, my good Angelini knew at once what a treasure the bandit digger had unearthed—he spoke the fellow’s patois—and in short, gentlemen, so well did he negotiate, that the bandit had money, and I had the Venus, and she never left my hands till I brought her to England and presented her to the Virtuosi.”

“Bribing the fellow must have cost you a pretty penny,” said Nollekens, whose propensity to squeeze the farthing is well known.

“Si, signore, that is so,” assented Angelini. He spoke English clearly enough, with a suaver tone than Giacomo, but much the same tripping gallop of syllables, which I leave to be imagined. “But,” he added, “she was worth every zecchin, as the connoisseurs at Rome assured us.”

“Speaking of Rome,” said Nollekens quickly, “d’ye know how I fetched these stockings from Rome without paying tribute at customs?”

“Bejasers, a bit of useful knowledge, how?” exclaimed O’Banion.

“Come, gentlemen,” interposed Maytland, “the Very High Master of Ceremonies summons us to table.”

In crimson taffety robe crossed with gold-embroidered baldrick, the Very High Master with a good deal of hocus-pocus finally got us all into our places. The Sovereign in his robes and gold-braided Hussar cap took the chair, balanced at the foot by the Lord Keeper of the Venus, our friend Maytland, hastily hustled into his scarlet Roman toga. We three, his guests, with his friend Angelini, were seated on his either side.

Of the feast what shall I say? There was turtle. There were “oysters and lobsters to cure melancholy,” for as the poet says, “Dame Venus, love’s lady, was born of the sea.” There was Dr. Johnson’s favourite comestible, a rich veal pye with plums and sugar. Of all Dr. Johnson partook with gusto.

When the walnuts and wine had been enjoyed, and the company was in a glow, the ritual of the Virtuosi Venus commenced. With ceremony two ornate keys were produced. Bustling Blodgett wore one on a thong around his neck. The Keeper, Lord Maytland, produced the other from his waistcoat pocket. Together they advanced to the carven wall cabinet; each in turn applied his key; the door swung wide; and Lord Maytland set before the Sovereign a richly laced pouch of royal purple velvet. With it unopened before him, the Sovereign charged his glass with rosy claret, and rose for the first toast.

“Gentlemen, I give you—the Virtuosi Venus!”

“The Virtuosi Venus!”

“And all her handmaidens!” added an irreverent young buck as we drank the toast standing.

Glasses emptied. We resumed our places. The Sovereign loosed the string of the velvet pouch and produced the Virtuosi talisman.

It was a reclining Venus, undraped, most exquisitely formed, not more than twelve inches long from parted tresses to sandalled toe-tips. So much was to be seen at a glance. Then the treasure began to go from hand to hand along the table, in a ritual which, the Virtuosi believed, brought luck in the lists of the goddess. One after one, the young elegants stroked the small rounded form as it passed along, the Duke muttering a wish with a half sneer, O’Banion with a hasty and careless flip of the finger, Flashwood caressing the small rounded rump and parts even more privy with a leer.

With reverence little Nollekens, the sculptor, received into his hands this rare relique of antient times. He bore it to the lighted torch beside the outer door, where he turned it about in the blaze to admire it from all angles.

“Make haste, sir, ’tis my turn,” I cried eagerly, and the sculptor, returning to the table, yielded it to my hand.

My first wish was to read what was inscribed on the goddess’s sandal. With some difficulty I made out the letters: A-D-L-I.

“Of Adlus—the work of Adlus,” I construed. “O brave Adlus!”

“Come, Mr. Boswell,” Angelini hurried me, “the Venus stands.”

Thus nudged, I passed my fingers over the gilded surface as seemed good, silently calling upon the goddess to confirm my prowess in a certain affaire then pending. My Lord Maytland, slightly touching in his turn, passed her along into the hands of Dr. Johnson.

“You young bloods may wish upon love’s altar,” my friend observed genially, “but I shall honour the nobler part (passing his finger over the head). So old and rare a goddess will sure—but what is this!”

He brought the figure close to his near-sighted eyes, peering intently, and repeated the gesture, bisecting the talisman round about with a questioning finger. He looked soberly at Lord Maytland.

“Alas, my Lord,” he said, “I fear the Virtuosi have been cheated. This figurd is not old. Nay, it is a clumsy forgery.”

“What, sir, impossible! I myself saw her taken from the earth at Pompeii!”

“And I too, I saw it,” protested Angelini.

Dr. Johnson shook his head.

“There are two ways,” he said, “to make a casting in bronze, an old way and a new way; and this thing was made the new way.”

“Make that good, sir,” said my Lord stiffly. Caught by his earnestness, the company stilled and stared.

I did not doubt that my learned friend could meet the challenge. His lively curiosity ranged wide, from chymical experimentation to baking of clay, and of his hours spent sitting to Nollekens he had doubtless made good use.

“Know then, sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “that the antient way of casting started with a mold made over a model of wax. Before the in-pouring of the molten metal, by the application of heat the wax melted, flowed away, and was lost. Thus an antient bronze is of one surface, without seam.

“A new casting is made otherwise. From the clay model is made a plaster matrix, taken away in pieces, and reassembled. The metal casting that finally emerges bears rough lines where the sections of the matrix joined. These must be filed away.”

“So far I am with you, Dr. Johnson,” said Lord Maytland, “for in the work-room of Angelini I myself have turned my hand to the casting of bronze in the manner you describe.”

“Now on this object,” pursued Dr. Johnson, indicating the Venus, “the filing has been hasty and careless, and with your fingers you may feel where the line of joining runs.”

He tendered the figure to Lord Maytland, who took it with a frown. He ran his hand over it, not slightly this time but attentively, and the frown deepened.

“You are right, Dr. Johnson! I know my Venus. Here, at the ear, she had a ringlet, where this one shows the ridge of the cast. This object is not the Virtuosi Venus!”

Over the hubbub that arose his voice rang out:

“Sit still! Dr. Johnson shall sift the matter, and we’ll have her again before we leave this place!”

Of course the first on the carpet was Tom Blodgett, the landlord. He swore his Davy oath that he had unlocked the carven chest only at the behest of the Keeper, and seen the Virtuosi Venus safely into his hands, and out of them again at locking-up time.

“Then we must enquire at the Keeper. My Lord Maytland?”

“My key has been safe in my hands since the Virtuosi met in April, when, resuming my office, I received it from the Duke of Duncannon.”

“My Lord Duke?”

“Must I answer this fellow?”

“I recommend it,” said Maytland coldly, and a kind of general growl seconded him.

“Then ask,” said the young Duke sulkily.

“You received the Keeper’s key, your Grace, when my Lord Maytland left England?”

“Yes, in October.”

“And yielded it up a month ago?”

“He said so.”

“And in the meantime?”

“In the meantime I turned the key with honest Tom at the feasts.”

“And not otherwise?”

“No.”

“Think again, my Lord Duke. The Venus was gilded some time in your incumbency.”

“What then?”

“She was not gilded inside her chest.”

“So I took her home. And brought her back.”

“Think, your Grace, she you brought back was a fraud. Where is the real Venus?”

A dead silence was broken by Sir Brutus O’Banion’s chuckle.

“What d’ye say to that, alanna?” he grinned.

The young Duke flicked his eyes about, and found no support anywhere. He shrugged.

“The real Venus,” he said slowly, “is safe in my hands, and you may have her when you please. Here—read this.”

From his waistcoat pocket he produced a small black book.

“My betting book,” he muttered.

He extended an opened page to his neighbour, who read:

“Duncannon lays O’Banion 2 hundred Pieces (viz. Guiney Gold) that he will steal y^e Virtuosi Venus and hold her a year w^out Detection; After w^ch She shall be returned & y^e Wager paid: But if she be recover’d earlier by his O’Banion’s Word or Deed, he shall be deem’d to have lost y^e Wager. Septṛ ye 8, 1777.”

“’Tis you have lost the wager,” drawled O’Banion. “So pay up, cully!”

“He may pay up in the morning,” said Maytland sternly, “but he’ll produce the Venus instanter!”

To receive it, a deputation proceeded with the Duke to his lodging hard by. The Sovereign, Lord Maytland, Angelini as official sculptor to the Society, Dr. Johnson and party, made up the number. Needless to say, I was agog to behold the Ducal splendour of the young nobleman’s abode, but it was not to be. We commoners cooled our heels in the fellow’s “Jerusalem chamber” while our titled companion went abovestairs to fetch the Venus.

“Why, this was easy!” I congratulated my detector friend as the Duke appeared with the gilded Venus. “Now we may wish, and win!”

“I first,” said Dr. Johnson, taking the effigy and again passing his hand around it. His brows went up.

“Not yet,” he said softly. “We are still diddled. This figure is not the Virtuosi Venus!”

Nor was it: a rough ridge made that plain. The Duke rapped out an oath.

“Angelini?”

The Italian shrugged.

“As you know, my Lord Duke, ’twas at your order I caused a copy to be cast—”

“You did so!” exclaimed Lord Maytland. “You shall regret this, Angelo.”

“Why so, my Lord?” demanded the Italian boldly. “Am I not to obey the Keeper of the Venus? I sent him back the Venus with the copy, and I know no more.”

Angelini had nothing more to contribute. We were come to a full stop for that time. The hour was late. In Lord Maytland’s coach we departed for our respective dwellings.

As we set down Nollekens, a complication ensued. Dr. Johnson, having coach room at his disposal, determined then and there to carry off his head for his lady at Lichfield. Nor would he accept the new busto made expressly for him, but must needs have Nollekens’ own copy from its pedestal, deeming it somehow handsomer, perhaps by its eminence thereon.

The journeymen were summoned, from where they sat drinking drams by the kitchen fire, unwillingly to pad the busto in straw and bag it in sacking. Malachy lugged it out and shoved it onto the coach seat in the place of Nollekens, and off we rolled.

Barely had we circumtraversed the square, when we ran afoul of a single footpad. He wore a smock like a carter’s, a large flapped hat, and a black neckerchief over his nose, and he levelled a long pistol in menacing silence. At the man’s gesture we descended, I in haste with my hands in the air, Lord Maytland contemptuously at his leisure, Dr. Johnson last, scowling. The coachman had his hands full with the prancing horses.

Another gesture of the firearm commanded us to deliver. It went wrong, for while in a blink the weapon was out of line, quick as a snake striking, the resolute Dr. Sam: Johnson had knocked aside the barrel, which roared harmless in the air, and the footpad took to his heels.

We arrived at Bolt Court without further incident, and soon the busto in its packing had reached the first stage of its journey to Lichfield by being set down in the back garden, the coachman with Dr. Johnson’s servant, black Frank, carrying the burden.

That done, we repaired within to take tea with Miss Williams, the blind poetess, Dr. Johnson’s honoured inmate; a ceremony never to be neglected no matter how late he returned from his ramblings.

The sightless lady’s ears were sharper than ours.

“Hist!” she cried suddenly. “There’s someone in the garden!”

Sure enough, from the window we saw a pale shape moving like a ghost.

“Frank! The poker!” roared Dr. Johnson.

But when we issued forth in a body, the intruder was gone, darkly as he had come, and nothing had been touched.

“What a to-do have we had to-night!” grumbled Dr. Johnson. “In Heaven’s name let us seek repose!”

For what was left of the night, I was accommodated in the spare chamber, and Frank was assigned to sentry-go in the garden, and so the darkness passed without further alarums.

In the morning all was quiet, and bidding Frank keep a sharp eye, we went forth about our business. Our first business was in Bow Street. There we found neither the famous “Blind Beak,” Sir John Fielding, nor our very particular friend, his second in command, Saunders Welch; but at our instance their men set forth with us to search the work-room of Signor Angelini.

The sculptor, protesting his innocence, was eager to assist, but saving the mold from which the false Venuses were cast, nothing of any consequence was brought to light. The worker who cast them was not to be questioned, he having upon some fancied dissatisfaction taken French leave a while before.

Our next stop was the atelier of our friend Nollekens, to seek his help in our researches. The work-yard was empty of journeymen, but we found Nollekens within, dusting the famous busto of Sterne and chuckling over it.

“Did I tell you, Mr. Boswell,” he greeted me, “how I brought my Roman gauds past customs?”

“No! How?” I cried hastily over Dr. Johnson’s disapproving grunt.

“Stuffed inside this very head!” exclaimed the penny-pinching sculptor triumphantly, “for ’tis empty inside, like all these casts—”

“And like the heads of novelists,” added Johnson. “Let us hear no more of it.”

Carrying Nollekens with us, we returned to Bolt Court. There we found Frank at the street door, pursing his thick lips and scratching his woolly head over a scrap of paper.

“From you, Dr. Johnson,” he said, “only I think not, for see, ’tis signed ‘Saml Johnson,’ which I think is not your wont.”

“Sharp lad,” approved Dr. Johnson, “you are a credit to your schooling. So, what is this?”

He read it out: “‘Pray deliver to y^e Barers y^e Busto for cartage. Saml Johnson.’ Pah, ’tis none of mine. Who brought it?”

“Two carters.”

“Pity you let them slip.”

“Nor did I, sir, for there stands the cart, and they are in the kitchen. I took it on me, sir, looking for your return, to bid them wait there while I went, as I said, to Miss Williams.”

“Well done. Keep them in play ten minutes yet, and then I shall sift them. Meanwhile, pray step this way, gentlemen.”

We followed him to the garden, where the busto still stood decked with straw. Swiftly my friend had off the straw, and turned the cast on its side.

“Ah ha!” he cried. On the under side, across the width of the shoulders, instead of the expected orifice, was a thin slab of plaster like the lid of a chest, tightly fitted into place. It took a thin blade to coax it out. Like the head of Sterne, this busto was no longer empty. I stared at a wad of rags stuffed within.

“What, Nollekens, still up to your tricks?” I ejaculated.

From the hollow spread of shoulder Dr. Johnson was easing forth the rags, from which unrolling he brought forth—the Virtuosi Venus.

This one had not been gilded. Her surface was bronze and blue-green, only on necklace and armlets and sandals traces of gold glittered.

“Behold the Virtuosi Venus,” said Dr. Johnson with satisfaction, “as she came out of the earth.”

“’Tis none of my doing,” said Nollekens hastily.

“I think ’tis not, sir,” replied Dr. Johnson, “else you had not parted so lightly with the busto she dwelt in. But exactly as I said, you have set a bad example.”

“To whom, sir?”

“To the thief of the Venus; and if I mistake not, here he comes.”

The carters, herded by Frank, were issuing from the doorway. When they saw Nollekens, they would have turned back, but Frank had slammed and locked the passage door upon them.

“My lads,” said Johnson sternly, “you are detected, so come forward and account for yourselves.”

The tall one advanced resolutely, pulling off his flapped hat, and the thin one followed suit.

“What, Giacomo, old friend!” I exclaimed at sight of the latter. “What’s to do here?”

The fellow rolled his eyes over us. When he saw the Venus in Dr. Johnson’s hands, he burst into a stream of Italian imprecations.

“Thievery’s to do!” he shouted. “She is not yours! Nor Angelini’s, porco fetente, ladro maledetto! Nor the English milord’s! She belongs to my country, and thither she shall go, if I keep breath in my body!”

“And I’ll help you against them all!” cried Malachy stoutly. “Viva la liberta!”

All was soon made clear. When my liberty-loving friend Giacomo, bronze-casting for Angelini, received the stolen Venus for copying, his fiery heart filled with patriotism, and he perceived his chance to restore her home again to Italy, where he conceived she belonged. He cast, and gilded to cover blemishes, not one copy, but two, one for the Virtuosi, one to diddle the Duke, and kept the original by him.

Slipping away, he had attached himself to Nollekens, until he should have amassed money for his evasion to Italy. In the interim, taking the hint from Nollekens’ boasts, he lodged the Venus for safety in the hollow busto of Dr. Johnson in its place of honour on the pedestal. When that busto, against expectation, left the house, he had thrice endeavoured to come at it again, in the manner that we knew.

“And I demand her back!” he cried grandly, “for restitution to her rightful owner, for she belongs to my country from of old!”

“Well, my lad, bravely spoke,” smiled Dr. Johnson, his long shapely fingers still caressing the small figurine, “and you perhaps should have her, if you spoke true. But this figure I hold belongs to nobody from of old, for like the others she was cast in recent times.”

“What!” shouted Giacomo. “Have I wasted my endeavours!”

“I fear so. You are a bronze-caster, you will concur when I shew you here, though better trimmed away than on your hasty copies, the same ridge left by a mold. And to further proof, look here.”

We stared as he doffed the ring from his finger, and slid the blue-gray stone over the surface of the recovered Venus. To my surprise, it caught and clung, nor did it fall away tho’ the figure was inverted.

“What magick is this, sir?”

“No magick, Mr. Boswell, but the simple operation of a natural phaenomenon. Following a very old custom, my ring, sir, is set with a lodestone, which attracts iron, in sentimental allusion to the attraction that binds lovers.

“Now you must know, sirs, that a bronze casting of to-day is made with a core inside the mold, which core is held in position by iron wires. The wire ends pierce the surface, and must be covered by thin plugs of bronze. You can feel the plugs—”

“And this curl at the ear, by which my Lord Maytland knew his Venus, is one of them?”

“No, sir, that lies over the joining, ’tis meer flourish, to cover a blemish, perhaps. But here—and here—and here—you may see, sir, what I can only feel, the plugs that cover wires.”

“How can you know what they cover?”

“Why, sir, by the unique property of the lode-stone, which will not adhere to bronze, but only to iron. See how she clings at each plug, feeling the pull beneath. Thus she makes plain that under the plugs lie, not bronze, but the iron wires of a recent casting. In a word, Mr. Boswell, we have pursued the Virtuosi Venus from copy to copy, and find the original false at last!”

“But what of these blue-green encrustations, such as result from lying long in earth?” I asked.

“They are the result of chymical change, sir, and may be produced quickly if the right substances be applied. No, sir, the Virtuosi Venus is a convincing fraud, the work of an artist, but a fraud she is—the cast-marks prove it, and the pull of the lodestone concurs.”

“Who then is the fraud-maker?”

“Signor Angelini,” announced Frank from the passage door.

“Pat upon his cue,” smiled Dr. Johnson. “Your servant, Signor Angelini.”

“Servitore umilissimo, Dr. Johnson—Mr. Boswell—Mr. Nollekens—(distributing bows)—what, Giacomo, you scoundrel!”

The Corsican veteran said something in Italian, not of the most civil.

“You have found the bronze-caster, Dr. Johnson,” observed Angelini, approvingly. “Have you found the Venus? But I see that you have. Bravo, sir, my patron will be pleased to recover this priceless relique of antiquity.”

“That’s as may be,” said Dr. Johnson dryly, “but let us speak plainly, sir. You know, and I know, that this Venus is no relique of antiquity, but the work of a latter-day sculptor. And you, I think, are he.”

“How can that be?” countered Angelini coolly, “when I stood by my Lord Maytland as she came out of the earth?”

“Having first put her in there, perhaps? Thus pleasing your patron, and splitting his gold with the scoundrel digger, in the same operation?”

“And the word on the sandal?” I puzzled.

“Ah, the word! That I think may be significant.”

Dr. Johnson advanced the sandalled extremities close to his near-sighted eyes.

“On the left sandal, I read: A-D-L-I—”

“Brave Adlus, the maker,” said I.

“The year 51. Cannot you read Roman numerals?” corrected Angelini contemptuously.

“Yes, sir, I can read Roman numerals,” rejoined Dr. Johnson. “The year 51 by what reckoning?”

Angelini stared.

“A.D. 51, anno Domini, the year of our Lord 51,” said Dr. Johnson. “Thus you, sir, are accustomed to reckon. But what pagan maker of heathen idols would reckon the year from Jesus’ birth, or indeed have heard of Him at all? No, sir: from the founding of Rome, from the accession of the Emperor, this date might pass; from the birth of Christ, never. By the mark of the mold, by the iron wires, by the false date, the fraud is triply detected: admit it.”

“I admit nothing,” snapped Angelini.

“Spare your denials. Whether you have cast the counterfeit yourself, as I think, or only passed it off on Lord Maytland, the matter is closed. These Virtuosi gentlemen, raking Italy for antiquities, are meer gulls begging to be bilked. No, no, ’tis a pretty little thing, and I felicitate you; and moreover she brings the Virtuosi their amatory successes. Shall we destroy the power of their talisman and reduce their hardihood?”

“Never!” I cried.

“Then let us give them back their Venus unattainted, and let all of us”—eyeing his hearers, Angelini between chagrin and relief, Giacomo still muttering, Malachy grinning, and Nollekens examining the Venus with a professional eye—“let all of us hold our tongues.”

Thus the Virtuosi Venus went home, winning us the gratitude of Lord Maytland and the rakes of the Society. Our reward was not gold or fee, which Dr. Johnson resolutely refused to touch; but the two false gilded Venuses, which now stand as mementos in the garden, Dr. Johnson’s at Bolt Court, mine at Auchinleck; and moreover, whatever her history, by the powers of the VIRTUOSI VENUS (perhaps) I found my own at apogee when—but that is another story.

[When Boswell was at Naples during his Grand Tour, of course he visited the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum. We have from his pen no record of his sentiments on the occasion, but I am sure he had some, and that they were not unlike those I have caused him to utter in this story.

The “Society of the Virtuosi” is modelled—with a difference—on the famous Society of the Dilettanti which is still flourishing today. It was Horace Walpole who uttered the strictures upon them with which this story opens. I have described their regalia from the record. (Lionel Cust, History of the Society of Dilettanti, London: Macmillan, 1898) A bronze Venus from Pompeii was not among their treasures; but it was the club portraitist who painted a prominent member, Sir Francis Dashwood (my “Sir Francis Flashwood”) “at his devotions,” the object of which is just such a pocket-size effigy of the Goddess of Love.

The detections of Dr. Johnson in the matter of the Virtuosi Venus reflect a prominent museum director’s dealings with a certain controversial Greek horse, as set forth by Lawrence Jeppson in The Fabulous Frauds (New York: Weybright & Talley, 1970).]