Commonplace Book

'...the wicked man, no one will ever know why, is inevitably recorded by a better artist than the righteous man. Perhaps, Robert suggested, this might be because the profligate never considers expense or his heirs, and therefore pays the best artist of his time to paint his portrait: whereas the good man, ever mindful of future generations, at the time saves money on their behalf by commissioning a fifth-rate artist, recommended by a country neighbour, instead of a first-rate one, to execute his likeness, and through this act of thrift fines them an enormous fortune in subsequent years. It could not be too much stressed that in buying or ordering contemporary works there is nothing that pays in the end like "wanton extravagance."'

from The Love-Bird, a piece in Dumb-Animal by Osbert Sitwell