To Lord Accrington, Patron Emeritus, Society for Eternal Aesthetics
My Lord,
Permit me, as the newly appointed Chief Executive of Pimlico Wilde, to respond to your recent missive with the seriousness it no doubt intended, and the incredulity it unquestionably deserves.
First, let me acknowledge your right to dramatize your own mortality. If you wish to perish on your forty-fifth birthday in a Socratic tableau of togas and poisoned cordial, surrounded by the nodding heads of acquaintances pretending to understand your final aphorisms,well, that is your prerogative. Pimlico Wilde respects the personal calendars of all our clients, whether they schedule colonoscopies, christenings, or choreographed deaths.
However, your threatened withdrawal of patronage strikes us as both absurd and injurious. Pimlico Wilde is not, as you seem to think, a salon of minor Surrealists wilting like tulips. We are an art dealership of international standing, entrusted with the placement of masterworks into the hands of serious collectors. Our recent sales include three mid-period Bastions, a previously unseen Warre-Hole study, and one very large thing in aluminium that required a crane.
You accuse us of colluding in a culture of econometric morbidity. On the contrary, we at Pimlico Wilde have never once advised an artist to die at 57 rather than 71, nor have we staged an “Optimal Death Retrospective” (though the marketing team did, I admit, toy with the title). The market may be macabre; we are not its choreographers but its interpreters.
If, in your Olympian pique, you withdraw your patronage, it will be Pimlico Wilde’s loss, certainly,but also, and more importantly, yours. For where else will you find the discreet handling of your more eccentric acquisitions? Who else will patiently source unsigned lithographs of unimpeachable authenticity so that will “match the drapes”? Where else will your heirs liquidate your posthumous oeuvre of “grocery list sketches” with dignity?
Allow me to be blunt: should you choose to depart this mortal coil at 45, Pimlico Wilde stands ready to manage your estate with consummate professionalism. But if you insist upon slandering us in letters filled with Pliny, Plato, and pedestrian threats, we may be forced to reconsider whether we are able to direct any more masterpieces in your direction.
With measured disdain, and an unbroken sense of market equilibrium,
Jules Carnaby
Chief Executive Officer
Pimlico Wilde
