RICHARD VAUX
conventional yellow calf or sheep-skin, with bright red labels.
These were all faded, musty tomes, beautified by age and dust and repose—for Mr. Vaux had given up the practice of the law—and they were so numerous that the shelves and chairs and floors were encumbered by them. Here and there packages of bright blue and green pamphlets, lying loosely about and under the tables, gave a little colour to a scene of soft browns and smoky grays.
In downright picturesqueness, Richard Vaux, in his study, surpassed Mr. Gladstone in the Temple of Peace. And it was not premeditated, for although Mr. Vaux had been President of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, when the Academy building was in Chestnut Street, his artistic impulses were not strong, and he startled me one morning by asking abruptly, "What is the meaning of all this present-day Art talk? When I was President of the Academy no one ever gave Art a thought, and the picture galleries were always empty."
Richard Vaux was a democrat of the old school, which meant, in the Southern States, an aristocrat—an inconsistency in party names as curious as party shibboleths. He believed in tariffs for revenue only, and abhorred protection. His father had extracted from him a promise in his youth that he would never enter a theatre; and although he must have been often tempted to join theatre parties while he was attaché to the American legation in London, he never broke the promise. He was over eighty years of age when I painted him.
When speaking of religion he broke into the discussion by thumping his hand down upon a book, exclaiming, "I believe this book from cover to cover." It was the Bible.
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