The enterprise could have been made remunerative by hiring for it Convent Garden Theatre and selling stalls as for Tettrazzini and Caruso, but in the absurd auditorium chosen, crammed though it was to the perilous doors, the loss was necessarily terrific.

Fortunately the affair was subsidized; not merely by the State, but also by those two wealthy capitalists, Whitney C.Witt and Mr.Oxford; and therefore the management were in a position to ignore paltry financial considerations and to practise art for art's sake.
In opening the case Mr.Pennington, K.C., gave instant proof of his astounding histrionic powers.

He began calmly, colloquially, treating the jury as friends of his boyhood, and the judge as a gifted uncle, and stated in simple language that Whitney C.Witt was claiming seventy-two thousand pounds from the defendants, money paid for worthless pictures palmed off upon the myopic and venerable plaintiff as masterpieces.

He recounted the life and death of the great painter Priam Farll, and his solemn burial and the tears of the whole world.

He dwelt upon the genius of Priam Farll, and then upon the confiding nature of the plaintiff.
Then he inquired who could blame the plaintiff for his confidence in the uprightness of a firm with such a name as Parfitts.