Read Online The Golden Calves by Louis Auchincloss - Free Book Online

blessing—rather the reverse, in fact.
    "I guess I don’t believe much in museums,” she had retorted in a snooty drawl when he had inquired if she was familiar with his and their host’s institution. "I find myself pitying the poor pictures on the walls. Think of all the crap they must have to hear about themselves!"
    â€œThat is, I grant, a sobering thought. But how else are we to educate the public?”
    "How do you imagine you’re doing that?”
    â€œBy teaching it to appreciate beautiful things."
    "Oh, bushwa. Can you really believe that? The only way to appreciate a beautiful painting is to learn how to paint. I don’t say you have to paint well. Only enough to see what it’s all about."
    "Would you say that of all the arts? Sculpture? Music? Writing?”
    "I would.”
    He reflected that she seemed horribly sure of herself. “And what about the people already educated? Doesn’t a museum offer them something?”
    "Well, it offers them more, certainly. But aren’t we reaching the point where reproductions will do the trick just as well?”
    "Never!"
    "I’ll bet I could fool you on a lot of stuff in your own shop. Didn’t Boldini’s father paint half the Rembrandts at the Met?”
    "If he did, he was a greater painter than Rembrandt."
    The redhead seemed somewhat appeased by this. "Well, at least you’re not an authenticity buff. As if it mattered who painted what!”
    After this they chatted more easily. She showed no inclination to talk to anyone else at the party, even though some of her law associates were present, and Mark tried to interpret this as an interest in himself rather than a general indifference. Perhaps it was because of the intent way she had of attending to each question he put, a habit that, after all, she might simply have acquired in court. Still, there was something about her that belied her apparently assumed detachment, that suggested it was more armor than soul. The topic of museums led to that of curators and then to problems of administration and at last to the law and her own life. When he asked her to dine with him, she accepted as casually as if they had been fellow clerks leaving the office for lunch. As she seemed to care just as little where they went, he guided her to the nearest restaurant, a rather shabby Italian one on Third Avenue.
    At their table she seemed to relax and drank a considerable amount of Chianti. At first she had reminded him of a Modigliani model, long and lank, with long red hair, small, rather staring eyes and a twisted slot of a mouth over an oval chin, which, when lifted, enhanced her sometime air of hypercriticism. But as she became animated and enthusiastic, if a trifle too brisk, energy seemed to ripple through her, sending ardor into her long pale cheeks and flashes into her cold green eyes. There were moments when she could be almost beautiful.
    A discussion of the turbulence of the nineteen sixties led him to inquire whether her interest in law had exempted her from the radical activities of that time.
    â€œQuite the contrary,” she replied, with a slight quickening of interest. “You might even say I was ‘all out.’ I’m afraid it’s a dreary and typical tale.”
    â€œI’d like to hear it.”
    "Would you really?” She studied him for a moment and then nodded, as if to indicate he had passed muster. "My poor parents! But then I suppose it was the same thing for many of their generation. There they were, in their nice little Queen Anne house in Darien, with two cars and a country club and just what everyone wanted in the way of family, a boy and a girl, almost the same age. Dad—you guessed it—was a vice-president of America Bank, and Mother had her garden club. Bruce was at Yale, and I at Vassar, and all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”
    â€œUntil pot and sex and war.”
    She gravely assented. "Until