He Opened A Matchmaking Agency In 18Th Century London [EN]: Chapter 118

Westminster, London. Hughes Estate Townhouse.

Clunk-

Theo exited the Countess’s room, accompanied by Charlie.

He had brought Charlie along to work on the Countess’s portrait.

“Charlie, are you sure you can paint the Countess looking healthy?”

The Countess was gaunt from a long illness, her cheekbones prominent, and her wrinkled, inelastic skin made her look like a grandmother.

Even for Charlie, with his extraordinary imagination, painting a healthy face wouldn’t be easy.

But Charlie replied casually.

“Yes, I don’t think it’ll be that difficult.”

“Really? It’s not just about looking healthy, but about capturing the happy appearance she would have had if she hadn’t been sick. It won’t be easy at all.”

“Of course, I’ll have to put a lot of thought into it, but it’s not that hard. There’s a portrait of her from her younger days, though it’s a bit old, and I always see the framework of things, whether it’s an object or a person. The flesh can be added on top of that. Then, if I imagine it, I get a rough idea of what it will look like.”

Whatever the result, Charlie’s confident attitude inspired pleasant anticipation.

“Good. Then get ready to paint. I’ll tell the Countess to prepare as well.”

“Yes, sir.”

While Charlie gathered his painting supplies in the living room, Theo went back into the Countess’s room.

* * *

“He really is a young boy, just as you said.”

“Yes, and because of difficult family circumstances, he doesn’t eat well, so he’s much smaller than his peers. That’s probably why he looks even younger.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Anyway, Charlie is confident and says he’s doing some basic sketching now. It’ll take about ten minutes; would that be alright with you?”

The Countess raised her eyebrows at the mention of ten minutes.

“Ten minutes? You don’t mean he’s going to finish the portrait in that time, do you?”

Theo smiled and replied.

“Of course, he’s not going to paint the whole picture in ten minutes. It just means that if you give him ten minutes for sketching, Charlie will take care of the rest.”

“No, can he really complete a portrait with just that much sketching?”

Typically, it takes an artist at least a week to paint a portrait with color. If they put in a lot of effort, it often takes months.

So it was only natural that she found it strange that he could paint a portrait with just ten minutes of sketching.

“Yes, Charlie seems to have a talent for capturing the basic appearance and then pouring his memories and imagination into the painting. I don’t know how he does it, but the results are so natural that I’ve been surprised many times.”

Theo told her about Charlie’s remarkable ability to quickly paint portraits of members.

“Indeed… you said that the portrait of the miner you showed me was a picture of his father that Charlie imagined? I suppose that’s possible. Alright, I can certainly sit for ten minutes. It’s been quite a chore to be a model because I’m sick, but on the other hand, I’m so grateful and relieved.”

“Yes. Then, I’ll bring Charlie in.”

“Please do.”

Soon Charlie came in, and he was able to finish all the sketches of the Countess in less than ten minutes.

Four days later. Kensington, Theo Trading Company.

Theo went down to the fourth-floor hallway where the trading company was located.

And he knocked on the door of the Deputy Director’s office.

Knock, knock-

“Deputy Director? How are the wedding preparations going?”

Simon looked up at the knock and stood up with a bright smile.

“Ah, CEO! Haha. Please, come in.”

Simon and Christina were scheduled to get married at the end of June, next month.

“Thanks to your concern, we’re preparing well. But finding a venue and a wedding dress is proving to be quite difficult. So I think I’ll have to suffer for a while. Hehe.”

“That’s a shame. If our company had a wedding hall and dress shop in the building next door, you could have prepared more easily. But it’s still under construction….”

As the saying goes, clothes make the man, and good clothes are an important factor in concealing a person’s physical shortcomings and maximizing their strengths at a meaningful engagement or wedding.

Theo had experienced this many times while working at a matchmaking company in the 21st century.

Everyone wants to stand out on the most meaningful day of their lives, and clothing is what makes that wish come true.

However, in this era, ready-made clothes like those in modern times were not systematically available.

There were quite a few custom tailors and dressmakers for the nobility and wealthy, but the concept of ‘ready-made clothes’ where you could quickly find, compare, and try on clothes was still in its infancy.

Noting this, Theo planned to open and operate a clothing store on Theo Street that would sell or rent everything from wedding dresses to dresses and costumes for various events and balls.

So, he intended to allow people to directly choose, try on, compare, and immediately buy or rent a variety of high-quality ready-made clothes, just like in modern times.

And at very low prices.

To this end, he bought the building right next to the matchmaking company and quickly began remodeling it into a clothing store, and now it was taking on the appearance of a plausible ready-made clothing store.

The clothing store, a three-story building, was planned to sell ready-made clothes in different categories on each floor, making it the largest of its kind anywhere in England.

However, he was unable to speed up the opening because he could not find a professional tailor, the most important thing in a clothing store.

“Haha, you’re right. Well, there’s nothing I can do about it. Still, I hope we can find a great tailor soon and have a wonderful clothing store on this street. Then I’ll use it often. And I’ll wear those clothes and dance with Christina at the ball.”

“Yes, that’s a good idea. When the clothing store opens, I’ll give you an employee discount. Haha.”

Simon, completely free from his gambling addiction, was now playing the role of a professional manager at the trading company.

In the past few months, he had successfully secured major contracts both domestically and internationally and was preparing thoroughly for the competition with Twining’s by scouting the best stores to become coffee bean retailers throughout London.

“By the way, Deputy Director? Have you done a market analysis regarding the independence of North America?”

Simon nodded.

“Yes, CEO. I’ve done my own analysis and forecasts. I’ll give you a detailed report tomorrow.”

“What does it look like roughly?”

“Well, everyone acknowledges that the independence of the colonies is actually a good opportunity for us British merchants. Once the war is completely over and trade resumes in earnest, our coffee trade will probably take off.”

“Take off?”

“Yes, coffee consumption in the North American colonies has been increasing rapidly for several years, and King George’s popularity is higher than ever, so local coffee traders are being flooded with inquiries about T&S coffee, which the King drinks.”

“Alright. Coffee trading will be a great source of profit both domestically and internationally. So after September, when this year’s harvest comes in, we should drastically reduce our shipments to France and plan to export to North America.”

“Yes, we will prepare accordingly.”

A letter from Mr. Spencer recently stated that if the newly purchased farms were combined, they would produce at least five times more green beans starting in three to four years.

If that happened, it seemed that the exploding demand in Europe and the United States, as well as domestic consumption in England, could be relieved to some extent.

‘Well… either way, a great opportunity is opening up for me.’

Knock, knock-

Just as he thought he heard someone knocking on the door of the Deputy Director’s office, someone peeked into the office.

“Hello… ?”

It was Charlie.

“Charlie? What are you doing here?”

Charlie smiled as he spotted Theo and entered the office.

“CEO, you were here too?”

“Yes. What’s the matter?”

“That’s….”

Charlie shyly took out a rolled-up piece of paper.

“What’s this?”

“I’ve finished the Countess Hughes’s portrait. I was going to give it to the Deputy Director to take with him tonight and deliver it.”

“Ah! Really?”

Simon, who was next to him, asked with surprised eyes.

“You’ve already finished my mother’s painting?”

“Yes, I put a little more effort into it this time, so it took a little longer. But I’m glad I didn’t go over the weekend.”

Theo carefully unfolded the painting.

Whirr-

‘……!’

It was a finished work with color.

“Ha-”

A sigh flowed from Theo’s mouth.

Simon Hughes also approached quickly at the word of his mother’s portrait.

“Oh… oh… is this…?”

Simon, looking at the painting, rolled his eyes in disbelief.

And his mouth gradually widened as he examined the painting in every corner.

The emerald-colored eyes and voluminous eyelashes that cast shadows made the Countess’s elegant eyes stand out even more.

And the eyebrows, which gently arched above the eyes, went so well with her intellectual eyes, and her sharp nose showed off a beautiful sense of balance, holding the overall center of the painting.

Her moderately thick and healthy red lips held a subtle smile, revealing a happy emotion in a subtle and elegant way.

It was a beautiful portrait that gave a really strange excitement and warmth.

Simon, who had been staring blankly at the painting for a while, opened his mouth as if stammering.

“Charlie… you’ve never… seen my healthy mother… have you? Of course, of course you wouldn’t have….”

Charlie replied with anxious eyes to his trembling voice.

“Yes. I met her for the first time when I went to sketch last week. But I tried to draw it with reference to her portrait from her younger days. Deputy Director… is my mother’s appearance very different from what you expected?”

Simon, who even bit his lower lip tightly, was barely holding back something that was welling up inside him.

And soon his eyes turned red.

‘…….’

Theo quietly nodded. He felt like he knew why.

‘The feeling I had when I first saw the Countess’s portrait wasn’t just my own. Charlie’s paintings have emotions hidden in them that move people’s hearts, and above all, Simon must have been greatly moved by his healthy, former mother….’

Simon, who barely held back his tears, put down the painting. And he slowly knelt down and hugged Charlie tightly.

Charlie was clueless about Simon’s unexpected behavior.

“Thank you… Charlie. Thank you so much….”

“Yes? No, what…?”

“If our mother… if our mother hadn’t been sick and was healthy, she would have looked just like this. Thank you for finding my happy mother’s smile… for letting me feel it again, I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

“Oh, I’m so glad. Hehe.”

“Charlie. I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve really seen this face…. It was a face that I thought I would never see again and had forgotten. It’s embarrassing, but I’m barely holding back tears right now. Huhu.”

In today’s 18th-century world, where there are no photographs, paintings were the only means of capturing memories.

However, in many cases, the actual emotions were distorted in the exaggerated paintings, and the emotion was hidden.

But Charlie’s paintings were alive with raw emotion, giving the son who remembered that face a deep emotion that was hard to put into words.

Even people who saw the main character of the painting for the first time were naturally feeling happy.

‘I thought that the portrait of the miner was drawn with a special emotion, so it might have contained such deep emotion… but looking at the Countess’s portrait, that wasn’t the case.’

When he was in modern times, he had been amazed and surprised by good paintings at museums and exhibitions, but he had rarely been so moved by emotions that he was immersed in happiness.

It was only after hearing about the background of the painter and the story of the painting that he barely noticed the emotion and admired it.

But Charlie’s painting was already making him experience such a wave of emotion for the second time.

It was like that when he saw the portrait of the miner, and it was like that now with the portrait of Countess Hughes.

Moreover, he had never seen Charlie’s properly colored work before, so he thought he was not confident in coloring.

But when he was allowed to use paint to his heart’s content, he was showing surprisingly natural and stable colors.

‘He was born with a sense of color….’

We live among countless colors around us.

This color creates changes in the mood of the human being who looks at it, changes emotions, and even heals physical illnesses caused by the mind.

This was the reason why people with anxiety feel a sense of stability when they see green, or why the left brain is stimulated and thoughts are organized and mental strength is strengthened when they see yellow.

Now, in Charlie’s paintings, in addition to the emotion seen in the existing warm dots and lines, even the emotional stimulation and healing power from harmonious colors were felt.

‘Charlie… Charlie Bailey….’

Today, the name of this small and seemingly intelligent boy, Charlie, felt new to Theo.