There is a lovely interior of Fragonard’s in the National Gallery, and a “Lady with a Dog” in the Tennant Collection, 34 Queen Anne’s Gate, but I am informed that the present occupiers of the Glenconner mansion do not follow the generous custom of the owners in admitting the public on Wednesdays and Saturdays from two to six. The eccentric Marquess’s statement, “I only like pleasing pictures,” perhaps accounts for the number of Greuze canvases--over a score; but the collection is particularly rich in eighteenth-century French painters--Largillière, Watteau, Nattier, Lancret, Vernet, Van Loo, Boucher, etc. If you have time for two visits, spend the second with the Dutch pictures, where the Rembrandt portraits almost console me for the absence of Vermeer’s. One must go to the National Gallery to see the “Lady at the Virginal.” Among the fifty-seven artists represented, there are many old friends, Frans Hals, Brouwer, Van Ostade, Gerard Dou, Terborch, Wouverman with his inevitable white horse, six of the excellent Ruysdaels--that somehow never give me as much pleasure as Metsu’s charming pictures--Hobbema, the Flemish Teniers, and eight Rubens (he is more likeable here than in the Louvre). Of course there are numberless other treasures. A very complete catalogue will tell you all about them, but I hope I have made you want to go and buy that catalogue. GEFFRYE MUSEUM “So I set out on my walk to see the wonders of the big city, and, as chance would have it, I directed my course to the East.”--G. BORROW. I have never met anyone who knew of this Benjamin among museums--it was only opened the year the war came upon us--except the man of learning who told me that, tucked away in the heart of the manufacturing district of Shoreditch, there was a wonderful collection of period furniture arranged in an old almshouse. So one day I climbed into a 22 bus at Piccadilly Circus and asked the conductor to discard me at the Geffrye Museum in the Kingsland Road. We travelled for miles along streets where every second shop seemed to be a cabinet-maker’s, and then stopped conveniently at the very gate of the quiet, spacious courtyard where elderly people were taking the air on the old oak benches. It was past six of the clock on a warm evening in June, but a misguided guide-book had said the museum was open till eight in summer. That halcyon arrangement disappeared with the fashion of the eight-hour day, and the museum now closes at six o’clock like its older _confrères_. It is also closed on Sunday morning and all Monday.