From the desk of Spencer Spence
The Turret,
London SW1
Dear Phillip,
First and foremost: thank you. Or rather—thank you, with one hand clasped to my heart and the other dramatically outstretched toward the magnificence that now adorns the west wall of my study (replacing the less impressive oil portrait of my cousin Rupert, whose gaze always followed one with the air of a man judging your wine choice).
Your extraordinary gift—the painting titled Three Badgers Rehearsing Macbeth —has utterly transformed the room. Not just in terms of visual splendour, but spiritually. Emotionally. Possibly also acoustically, as I’m sure I now hear faint Scottish murmurs whenever I open a window.
I must commend the Pimlico Wilde Gallery for their uncanny ability to spot a masterpiece. This is no mere painting. It is a fever dream in fur. The detail! The menace in the badger on stage left, whose paw hovers just above the cauldron (which, I note with admiration, is bubbling with what appears to be mulligatawny soup). The drama! The tension! The fact that one of the badgers is clearly wearing a tiny ruff and what I believe to be Crocs.
Please extend my admiration to the artist, whose name I understand is Gloria Van Drench. Her work speaks volumes—mainly in hexameter—and has already been the centrepiece of three dinners, a heated argument about whether badgers are allowed in Equity, and one deeply unsettling coffee break with the Bishop.
Phillip, your generosity is only matched by your eye for the sublime. I am deeply grateful, and only mildly concerned that the painting may, in fact, be sentient. (Last night the eyes glowed faintly during a thunderstorm, but that could also have been the gin.)
Please consider yourself invited for cocktails any Thursday hence, to witness the painting in its full twilight glory. Bring Pimlico’s finest, and possibly a qualified zoologist.
Yours, awestruck and great full galleries as marvellous as Pimlico Wilde exist,
Spencer Spence
Writer, collector, and second cousin of someone who once met Hockney in a lift