EDWARD MANDELL HOUSE
them to see me, as I might have reason for downing them."
When Mrs. House came in one morning to see the portrait, she exclaimed at once, "I do not like it. I have never seen that look on his face." Turning to her, I said apologetically, "I am not painting a husband, but a public man." This did not convince her, although the secretary said afterwards to Colonel House that she knew the look very well and liked it. As no objection was made, I brought another canvas and painted the "husband," with his hat on, which pleased the wife and every one.
Colonel House is a small man, but he told me that he was the tallest of the five heads of the council who met at his house to discuss quietly the subjects of the day before going to Versailles. Here, in a room gaily decorated in bright, flowered damask, sat around a table five small men, representing the combined victorious military and naval power of the world—Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Colonel House, Orlando, and, the smallest of all, but by no means the least, Maréchal Foch.
The description of these gatherings stirred the imagination. In my mind's eye the five small men, the modern Cæsars and Napoleons, rose before me, all save one, the Napoleon of the company, dressed unbecomingly in tweeds and serges that assorted ill with the brocaded chairs—the wise old French statesman, the shrewd Briton, the suave Italian, the sphinx-like American, and the straight-forward soldier. Here was the historic subject of the war. Colonel House realized it even more vividly than I, and temptingly suggested the possibility of obtaining sittings for it. But I heard afterwards that the room had been dismantled by a modiste. A background could have been faked
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