Victorian Urban Legends: Generosity Repaid July 6, 2017
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
Beach goes to the motherland today with daughters and without dog or wife. Mixed feelings.
Here is a familiar sounding story. Eugene Delacroix has persuaded the richest man in Europe, Baron James de Rothschild to pose as a beggar for a painting. Rothschild, a gentleman, agrees.
Delacroix hung a tunic on his shoulders, placed a tall staff in his hand, and assigned to him posture, as if he were resting on the steps an ancient Roman temple. In this attitude he was discovered by a young friend [of Delacroix] and pupil of the painter’s, who alone had the privilege of being admitted to the studio at all times. Surprised by the excellence of the model, he congratulated his master having at last found exactly what he wanted. Not for a moment doubting that the model had just been begging at the porch of some church or at corner of a bridge, and much struck by his features, the young man, espying a moment when the artist’s eyes were averted, slipped a twenty-franc niece into the model’s hand. Rothschild kept the money, thanking the giver by a look, and the young man went his way. He was, as the banker soon found out from Delacroix, without fortune, and obliged to give lessons in order to eke out his living. Some time later the youth received a letter, mentioning that charity bears interest, and that the accumulated interest of francs, which he, prompted by a generous impulse, had given to a man with the appearance of a beggar, was lying at his disposal in Rothschild’s office, to the amount of 10,000 francs, having borne five hundred fold [interest?] like the seed in the parable.
The closest Beach has been able to come is Captain Haddock memorably giving Carreiras money in Flight 714. There must be many other cases though? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
Manchester Courier (8 Oct 1881), 11
31 Jul 2017, Chris from Haunted Ohio Books points out that Oscar Wilde wrote this story as: the model millionaire. But we are not clear on the date.
29 Aug 2017 R. Labanti sends in this story from Italy, which can clearly be sourced. An American stops by a butcher in a small village asking for bread. The butcher has only some left for himself and his family but he gives the American half. Later, the American returns to the shop with his armed escort. He was the American ambassador to the Vatican… Thanks and congratulations all around.
Southern Man, 29 Aug 2017, with the Tintin skit referred to above.
