The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 2 13 – Furniss · Verses Across
Literature · Humor
The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 2 13My Confessions As a "Reformer."
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Literature · Humor
The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 2 13
My Confessions As a "Reformer."
FurnissEnglish
Portraiture Past and Present--The National Portrait Gallery Scandal--Fashionable Portraiture--The Price of an Autograph--Marquis Tseng--"So That's My Father!"--Sala Attacks Me--My Retort--Du Maurier's Little Joke--My Speech--What I Said and What I Did Not Say--Fury of Sala--The Great Six-Toe Trial--Lockwood Serious--My Little Joke--Nottingham Again--Prince of Journalists--Royal Academy Antics--An Earnest Confession--My Object--My Lady Oil--Congratulations--Confirmations--The Tate Gallery--The Proposed Banquet--The P.R.A. and Modern Art--My Confessions in the Central Criminal Court--Cricket in the Park--Reform!--All About that Snake--The Discovery--The Capture--Safe--The Press--Mystery--Evasive--Experts--I Retaliate--The Westminster Gazette--The Schoolboy--The Scare--Sensation--Death--Matters Zoological--Modern Inconveniences--Do Women Fail in Art?--Wanted a Wife.
My attack upon the National Portrait Gallery was in the form of a lecture entitled "Portraiture Past and Present." I found the subject so large, so complicated, I may say so octopus-like, embracing such varied periods and phases, and throwing forth its arms or ramifications in so many directions, that I soon discovered I was struggling with a monster subject, with which it was impossible to grapple completely in the limited time allowed for the performance. Still I managed in a light way to review the history of portraiture from Dibutades to Millais, and from its display in the Temples to its discouragement at the National Portrait Gallery, taking as my text Carlyle's dictum that "Human Portraits faithfully drawn are of all pictures the welcomest on Human Walls," a sentiment that appeals to all, for there is no doubt human beings interest us more than anything else. The Pyramids of Egypt awe, but our interest is in those who raised them; Ancient Rome enchants in exact proportion to our interest in the Ancient Romans; the Forum is but a frame which the imagination instinctively fills with the forms of the mighty men who moved there; the Amphitheatre would have little interest but for those who made its dust; and when we wander through our Parliament at Westminster it is not so much the place that interests us as the senators associated with its name. I confess that when I travel on the Continent I cut cathedrals and study the people, in the boulevards, in the streets, in the market-place. When I have spare time in London I do the same, and at one time made a point of spending a day now and then wandering about the East End of London for the purpose of studying character; and it was while so occupied that I happened to stray into our National Portrait Gallery. I was astonished and disgusted at such a collection having such a name, and there and then decided that I would make this the subject of my lecture, and the following is briefly my indictment as I then laid it before the Grand Jury, composed of the Press and the Public:
"Of all places, a Portrait Gallery should appeal to you most, and the National Portrait Gallery is the place in which to spend a happy day.
"That is, if you are not critical. If you are, then get thee to a library and bury thyself in books of biography, for portrait painters were deceivers ever, historical portrait painters in particular.
"The National Portrait Gallery was founded about thirty years ago, and the founder, Lord Stanhope, had the audacity to ask for a yearly grant of L500 for the purpose of supplying the nation with a representative collection of national portraits. The first purchase made by the trustees was a portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh (rather suggestive of the undertaking ending in smoke). However, it has struggled on, such as it is.
"Truly it is in no sense a National Portrait Gallery, and although the richest and most civilised nation in the world now generally grants L1,000 a year to supply itself with representative portraits of its great men and women, being I may say about the price of one portrait by a successful painter, the portraits of our great lights do not swell the number of the collection.
"It has been difficult, no doubt, even with this immense amount of cash, to get portraits of those of the past. They have been locked up in the stately homes of England.
"Of late years Charles Surface, Earl of Spendthrift, knocks his ancestors down to the highest chance bidder, but the National Portrait Gallery knows them not.
"The reason of this is not far to seek.
"Taking up at random an annual report of the trustees, I read: 'The salaries of officials amount to L1,176, other expenses L591, the police L635, total L2,402.' And now we come to the interesting item: 'The money spent on the purchase of portraits L255'! But the particular section of the report dealing with this item says seven works have been purchased for L143 18s.--that is, L20 11s. 1d. each.
"Small wonder then that many works in the National Portrait Gallery of England--England where portraiture flourishes--are unworthy of the attendance of even L35 worth of policemen. Can we wonder when L635 is paid to the police to gaze at L143 18s. worth of portraits, the purchase of the year?" and so on.
The result of this "ridiculing the State," as the Times, in its leader, expressed it, for the penurious pittance it doles out of the revenues of the richest country in the world towards the maintenance of a National Portrait Gallery, was that I was the cause of arousing the Press of Great Britain to the miserable condition of the National Portrait Gallery, which ended in our having one in its place more worthy of the country.
Besides drawing public attention to the National Portrait Gallery, in the same lecture I put in a word for the struggling unknown portrait painters. Speaking of payment reminded me of the story told of Bularchus, a successful painter 716 B.C. Candaules, King of Lydia, paid him with as much gold as would cover the surface of the work. I told my audience that I doubted whether, if that system existed now, the portrait painters would leave any room at all on the Academy walls for subject pictures.
Would Meissonier or Alma Tadema, say, paint your portrait for three napoleons, and would you pay Slapdash, R.A., fifteen thousand for a larger one? I then made the assertion, "It is not too much to say that a fashionable portrait painter often receives L900 for his name, and L100 for the value of the picture to the sitter as a portrait. It is the artist's autograph with a dash of something attached." I asked, "Why should snobbery tempt those away from an honest, well-painted portrait by a less-known man, to accept a failure with a Society signature?" a query that was replied to by my receiving any number of letters from all over the country asking me to recommend artists; in fact, at the time I might have started an agency for portrait painters. One of the artists I suggested had already had a very striking portrait of the Chinese Ambassador, Marquis Tseng, hung in the Academy, and over that painting he had had a trying experience. His sitter, like Queen Elizabeth, objected to shadows, not like the conceited Queen through vanity, but, being an Oriental, he really did not understand what the shadows were, and rushed to the glass to see if his face was dirty. He was a high official in his own country, and naturally anxious not to be mistaken for the Dirty Boy. Again he got into a frightful state at the glazy appearance of his skin--it was an oil painting.
"Only opium-eaters have shiny skins, and I am free from that vice. This is a libel, sir, and will disgrace me at home."
Then he had no idea of perspective, but a great idea of his own rank, and commanded my bewildered brother-artist to paint the red button on the top of his hat, the feather down the back, the orders in front, and was disappointed that his different coats and sashes, three and four deep, could not all be shown at once.
Another illustration of the difficulties of portrait painters I gave in the same lecture has since been so frequently repeated in the Press that I fear it will be stale to most of my readers--the story of the man who called upon the portrait painter and asked him to paint his father.
"But where is your father?"
"Oh, he died ten years ago."
"Then how can I paint him?" asked the artist.
"Why, I've just seen your picture of Moses, and surely if you can paint the portrait of a man who died thousands of years ago, you can more easily paint my father, who has only been dead ten years!"
Seeing the sort of man with whom he had to deal, the young artist agreed to paint the defunct gentleman, and the picture in due time was sent home. It was carefully hung on the drawing-room wall, and the newly-blossomed art patron was called in to see it. He gazed at it for some time in silence, his eyes filled with tears, and then, slowly nodding his head, he said softly and reverently, "So that is my father! Ah, how he is changed!"
But out of this lecture comes another story--the story of "The Great Six Toes Trial." I must start at the beginning of its strange, eventful history, the same way as, in my lecture, I began with the origin of portraiture.
Now the late George Augustus Sala, in his leader in the Daily Telegraph on this lecture, accused me of not giving the origin of portraiture. "Mr. Harry Furniss was bold enough to maintain that, although Greek art remained the model art of the world, portraiture had very little to do with it. Mr. Furniss should not tell this story to the prehistoric toad, for that reptile's presumably long memory might enable it to remind the graphic artist that thousands of years ago the art of portraiture was invented by a sentimental young Greek girl, the daughter of a potter of Corinth, Dibutades." In the same article he sneered at "a whimsical caricaturist lecturing his contemporaries," and in his references to me was about as offensive as he could be.
The second stage was my letter to the Editor of the Daily Telegraph. That paper not printing it, I sent it, with a note, to the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, who gave both letters a prominent position:
"SIR,--Can you find space for the publication of the following letter which I addressed to the Daily Telegraph in answer to their leader in last Friday's issue, as the insignificant paragraph, 'Greek Portraits,' which alone the Daily Telegraph inserted, in no way states the facts of the case?"
"SIR,--The writer of the leader in your issue of last Friday is guilty of the very fault of which he accuses me. He charges me with not acquainting myself with the subject I treated of in my lecture; he has manifestly not troubled to acquaint himself with that lecture. The ignorance--at any rate, the omissions--that he lays to my door do not exist. Did he expect me in the course of a short hour's lecture to a general audience--which was certainly not prepared for any history or technicalities--to bring forward in my opening sentences the whole story of the rise and development of Greek portraiture? The principal omission of which he complains is the legend of the daughter of Dibutades--calling it an omission because, forsooth, he did not read it in the Times report! But, in point of fact, not only did I give the story at length, but I reproduced on the screen Mortimer's well-known picture of the incident. Surely it is not too much to ask, even for a caricaturist to ask--for such he somewhat scornfully terms me--that when so powerful a personality as a leader writer levels his pen against an individual, however humble, he should not depend upon the report of another newspaper, the exigencies of whose space naturally prevent, it may be assumed, the devotion of more than a column verbatim report to any utterances of a 'mere caricaturist.' But, frankly, does the nature of my own occupation in the arts preclude me from pronouncing a correct judgment on portraits and portraiture? For that, after all, is the burden of your article. Is not an opinion, if correct, as good coming from a bootblack as from a Royal Academician? If so, I submit that mine, if worthy of discussion at all, might at least be ascertained and be considered with respect. If not, then I bring the lecture of Professor Herkomer, A.R.A., published on the very same day as your article, to witness that my judgment was a fair one. By a curious coincidence, he lectured at Leeds on the self-same subject within twenty-four hours of the delivery of my own little lecture; he travelled over much the same ground; brought forward in some instances the very same examples as I, and deduced very much the same conclusions."
I happened to call in at the Garrick Club on my way to the Punch dinner, and there found a copy of the Daily Telegraph containing the leader, on the margin of which was written with the familiar purple ink, in Lewis Wingfield's handwriting, "G.A.S. on Hy. F." Wingfield was Sala's neighbour and friend, so this settled any doubt I had about the authorship of the article I have just referred to. When I showed it to du Maurier, who sat next to me at dinner, he said, "I say, old chap, I'll tell you a capital story about Sala which you might use. When he was an art student, he tried to get into the Art Schools of the Royal Academy, and for that purpose had to draw the usual head, hand, and foot. When the Examiners counted the toes on the foot Sala had drawn, they found six, so Sala didn't get in, don't you know!" Now, as other journalists had quoted Sala against me, and a Nottingham paper attacked me in a long and rather vulgar and offensive leader, I, finding myself shortly afterwards the guest of the Literary Club in Nottingham, seized the opportunity to reply. I regretted--though I supposed it was flattering to me--to find that quite recently, although I had been treated for many years with the greatest kindness in the Press, I had been rather attacked. "I was proud," I said, "to find that the first person to attack me in the Press was the greatest journalist the Press possessed--Mr. George Augustus Sala." What I really said after this I print side by side with what I was reported to have said:
"WHAT I SAID.
"I have not the pleasure of Mr. Sala's personal acquaintance, but no one has a greater admiration than I have for that great man in literature. Mr. Sala began life as an artist; not only so, but he began in that walk of art which I pursue, like another great man of the pen had done before him, for, of course, you all know the story of Thackeray going to Dickens and offering to illustrate his books. Dickens declined Thackeray's offer, and it is generally believed that that refusal so annoyed Thackeray that he became a writer and a rival to Dickens. It was a very good thing for him and for literature that Dickens gave him the refusal he did. Now, Mr. Sala, as I said, also began life as an artist, and I am informed that when an applicant for the Royal Academy he had to send in for examination the usual chalk drawings of a head, a hand, and a foot. The Examiners, however, discovered that Sala had drawn six toes on the foot. He was rejected, and no doubt this caused him, like Thackeray, to forsake the pencil for the pen, and he is now Art Critic of the Daily Telegraph.
"In 1851 Mr. Sala painted the pictures upon the walls of an eating saloon, and that probably had given him the taste for cooking which he had evinced ever since."
"HOW I WAS REPORTED.
"He (Mr. Furniss) had not the pleasure of Mr. Sala's personal acquaintance, but no one had a greater admiration for him than he had as being a great man in literature. Mr. Sala began life as an artist, and not only so, but he began in that walk of life which he (Mr. Furniss) pursued. He went to Dickens, and wanted to illustrate his books, but Dickens would not have the sketches; afterwards Mr. Sala went into literature, and it was a very good thing for him and for literature that Dickens gave him the refusal that he did. (Hear, hear.)
"Mr. Sala began not only as an artist, but as a caricaturist, and he had to send into the Academy Schools three 'short drawings,' as they were called, of a head, a hand, and a foot. Unfortunately for Mr. Sala, he had six toes upon the foot he drew, and the Examiner, having counted these toes, pointed the matter out to Mr. Sala, who did not get into the Academy Schools, so now he was the Art Critic of the Daily Telegraph. In 1851, Mr. Sala painted the pictures upon the walls of an eating saloon, and that probably had given him the taste for cooking which he had evinced ever since."
The reporter had evidently trusted to his memory, and not to shorthand notes--thus the blunder. I pointed it out, and at once corrected it in a letter printed in the same paper a day or so afterwards. My object in all sincerity was to have a joke--du Maurier's joke--at Sala's expense, but in leading up to it my very complimentary and perfectly accurate parallel illustration of Thackeray was unfortunately, by the reporter's carelessness, attributed to Sala!
This correction was entirely lost sight of by the Press, and I was accused by papers all over the country of having falsely accused him of offering to illustrate Dickens. Papers printed apologies to Sala, and in some cases paid Sala's solicitor money to avoid actions-at-law. I then heard that he was going for me. I found a letter from Burnand to that effect the evening I returned from a lecturing tour. Strange to say, that night Sala and I were both guests of a Medical Society's dinner at the Holborn Restaurant. Both had to make speeches. I spoke before Sala, and referred to a misquotation from a speech I had made in the country, and purposely then and there made the amende honorable, of which he at least understood the meaning. He ignored this altogether, and I now merely mention the incident to show that he was vindictive from the very first. He would not listen to reason. Sir George Lewis, Mr. Labouchere, Mr. Burnand, and other mutual friends failed: Sala remained obdurate. It was freely reported after the verdict was given that the plaintiff never had any desire to make money out of me, and had specially instructed his counsel not to ask for damages! As a matter of fact, when our mutual friends implored Sala not to proceed with such a trivial and ridiculous action, he admitted that he wanted money, and in conversation with Sir George Lewis--who all through acted as my good friend, and Sala's too, doing all in his power (which is great) to induce Sala to accept my necessary amende,--Sala declined. He had already pocketed several amounts from papers publishing the Nottingham paper's fanciful report, and said to Sir George: "When Friswell libelled me, I got L500 damages; and why should I not be equally successful against Furniss?" "Yes," said the astute Sir George, "but you must remember that I got you that L500, and now I am on the other side."
What I really said, and what I was reported to have said, here I plainly show are two very different things. Still, in the words "and now he is Art Critic of the Daily Telegraph" there was a germ of libel--slander one must call it, as the words were spoken--so I was advised to withdraw. Sala, however, made this an impossibility, and the silly action, fanned into "almost European importance," to quote Lockwood, was to be. To make matters worse, just before the
GREAT SIX TOES TRIAL
I received a note from du Maurier:
"I am awfully sorry, old chap, but the capital story I told you of Sala and the six toes was about another fellow after all!"
Although a letter from me was published immediately correcting this ridiculous blunder on the part of the reporters, pointing out that what I did say was that Mr. Sala was not the only literary man who began life as an artist; and that I had quoted casually as an instance that Thackeray in early life went to Dickens, my correction--though well known to Sala--was, to my surprise, ignored, and the words I had never used were made the point of the whole action!
Mr. Kemp, counsel for Sala, rolled them out with unctuousness then paused for the Judge to write them down. Mr. Sala, in the witness-box, in melodramatic style denied that he had ever taken sketches to Dickens, and the jury noted that fact. Yet I had never said he did! and furthermore Sala knew I had referred to Thackeray and not to him. Still, for some reason I could never understand, Lockwood allowed this to pass, and cross-examined Sala, admitting that he had heard the story of Thackeray and Dickens--as to my right as a critic--but never denied that these words attributed to me were absolutely a false report! The next point Sala made was that an "offensive caricature" (reproduced by permission on this page) was by me! It was Mr. F. C. Gould's. Sala knew this; so did Lockwood, but he did not deny it: in fact, when the jury considered their verdict, the two points they were clear upon were (1) that I said Sala had offered work to Dickens, and had been refused; (2) that I was the author of the clever (but in Sala's opinion most offensive) caricature of himself and me.
I prompted Lockwood in Court, but he told me that he would not bother about facts, or call me, or deny anything--he took the line that the whole thing was too absurd for serious consideration, and that he would "laugh it out of Court."
One report says that "Mr. Lockwood handled Mr. Sala very gently in cross-examination, and got from him an explosive declaration that Mr. Furniss's statements represented him as an ignorant and impudent pretender. 'Don't be angry with me, Mr. Sala.'"
But the Judge was angry with dear, good, kind Frank Lockwood, and scotched his humour, and refused to allow him to "laugh it out of Court." It annoyed him, and he summed up dead against me. Lockwood could only squeeze one joke out of the whole thing.
Sala in cross-examination said to Lockwood in a bombastic, inflated, Adelphi-drama style:
"That was not my greatest artistic work. Perhaps my greatest was an engraving of the funeral of the Duke of Wellington. It was from my original drawings. I engraved it on a steel plate, and it contained many thousand figures."
Lockwood: "All, I suppose, had the proper number of toes?" (Laughter.)
"They had boots on." (Continued laughter.)
Sala got five pounds for the Judge's want of humour, not for mine.
Having no chance of making my little joke in Court, I took my revenge by accepting a commission to report and illustrate my own trial for the Daily Graphic, and the following--the only authentic account of the Great Six Toes Trial--appeared the following morning:
"It was unfortunate that the Royal Academicians were all busy varnishing their pictures for the forthcoming exhibition at Burlington House when the Great Sala-Furniss Libel Case was heard on Friday last, and that in their absence you have had to apply to me (the defendant) for sketches of the scene in Court. What a chance Mr. Calderon has missed for a companion picture to the one he is painting of another great legal battle--the Parnell Commission! A picture in next year's Royal Academy of the trial between two art critics is surely worthy to be handed down to posterity, say, in the Council Room of the Royal Academy.
"That the subject is not a picturesque one, I admit, but I can offer the painter an historical incident connected with it that should recommend itself. We all know that Sir Francis Drake playing at bowls when the Spanish Armada was sighted is a favourite theme with artists. In this case, although there is nothing Spanish about it, there is a parallel incident. I was, like Drake, by the sad sea waves, not playing at bowls, but sketching a common, or garden, donkey, when a telegram arrived from London to say that the great trial was in sight, and my presence was demanded at the Royal Courts of Justice (Court 3) at eleven o'clock the following morning. Let it be recorded that my nerve was equal to the great Admiral's--I finished the drawing of that donkey.
"The morning was a gloomy one, and no doubt the weather had something to do with the solemn tone of the proceedings. A collection of briefless barristers, irritated jurymen, and wet umbrellas in dark corridors is not enlivening; and when you arrive, to find the Court crowded, and you happen to be, like me, considerably under the medium height, and rather broad in proportion, it is difficult to come up at all, much less smiling, to the feet of justice. Here is a subject for a Punch puzzle. The defendant--how is he to get into Court? It is a mystery to me how I managed to squeeze myself through. I stuck to my hat, and my hat pulled me through (alas, a new one!). The hat was more rubbed the wrong way by the trial than was its wearer; but it is an item in the expense of legal warfare that ought not to be forgotten by the taxing master. However, I found myself sitting next my consulter and friend, the 'sage of Ely Place,' in good time. Although a case is down to be tried in a particular Court, it may be transferred to another Court at a moment's notice. This is bewildering to the parties interested and, from what I saw, irritating to the legal fraternity. Tomkins v. Snooks is down for trial, Court 2. The legal call-boys bustle in the counsel and others engaged. Mr. Buzfuz, Q.C., pushes his way into Court, surrounds himself with briefs and other documents, when some mysterious harlequin of the Law Courts changes Tomkins v. Snooks to Court 4, and calls upon Brown v. Jones, who are packed away in Court 3, waiting their turn. Buzfuz gets very angry, and bustles off to Court 4. In fact, getting your case into Court reminded me forcibly of that amusing toy, so popular then, called 'Pigs in Clover'--wigs in clover, I was nearly writing. I apologise at once for the mere thought. We were transferred from one Court to another, and our friends sat out a case in the Court advertised to try ours, wondering what on earth 'The Prince of Journalists' and I had to do with 'chops and tomato sauce.' What followed has been pretty fully reported, so I need not dwell upon it. Indeed, I could not live in the frightful atmosphere of those Courts, and would gladly pay twice five pounds to be allowed to sit on the roof if ever I find myself a defendant again.
"According to the reports, 'the plaintiff was supported by his wife, and the defendant by the editor of Punch.' The solemn occasion demanded a certain amount of gravity, which was particularly difficult for me to retain, as my 'supporter,' although fully alive to the tremendous bearings of the case and the importance of the issues, failed to hide in his expression those 'happy thoughts' that flow ceaselessly through his fertile brain. The outward effect was a see-saw antic with his imposing eyebrows--a proof to me that his sense of the ridiculous had got the better of his gravity. 'Put on your gloves at once,' he whispered impressively to me. 'Why?' I asked. 'Because you may then leave the court with clean hands!' (The 'putting on the gloves' must not be taken in a double sense.) But this is a digression. You merely ask for sketches in Court. Well, I send you my recollection of Mr. Kemp, Q.C., trying to be very angry with me; of my 'brother caricaturist' (vide reports), Mr. Lockwood, struggling to be very angry with Mr. Kemp, and pointing to the defendant, 'That miscreant! (note the effect upon me), and the Judge very serious with everybody. As an antidote, I was spoiling a beautiful sheet of white blotting-paper by drawing recollections of the donkey I was studying in the country when I was summoned to town to take my trial. I am anxious to make this public, as I now remember that I left that sheet of sketches in the court; and who can tell? Some one may yet 'invest those sketches with an almost European importance,' and the number of five pounds I shall be called upon to dole out all round will be something appalling.
"A propos of this truly great trial, the Observer remarked, in its leader upon it, that 'future treatises on the law of libel will, if properly and picturesquely indexed, be enriched with this entry, "Art critic, statement held to be a libel upon, see Toes." Indeed, the antics of the law of libel ought to be written, edited, let me suggest, by Mr. George Lewis, and illustrated by the genius of Mr. Frank Lockwood. I will supply a footnote."
Over this jeu d'esprit on my part Sala waxed very wroth, for besides having to pay L80 costs of his own, he brought upon himself columns of chaff, of which the following is a fair specimen. "The Prince of Journalists," wrote a wag of journalists, "is lamenting that he has jumped out of the Furniss into the fire, for of a surety five pounds will hardly repay Mr. Sala for the roasting he will receive from his good-natured friends." Skits showing six toes were plentiful, jokes in burlesque and on the music-hall stage were introduced as a matter of course, and private chaff in letters was kept up for some time. One private letter I wrote du Maurier, "Sala has no sole for humour--you have made me put my foot in it," and added the Six Toes signature sketch. In this no doubt du Maurier found inspiration for Trilby.
In the witness-box Mr. Sala took up a curious position with regard to that filched and fatal joke. He said that I told that joke because he had been invited to distribute the prizes at the Art School at Nottingham shortly before, and that I had run down and, like the miscreant who sowed tares in his neighbour's wheat, deliberately made him look ridiculous. As a matter of fact, I neither knew that Sala had distributed the prizes, nor that he had ever put in an appearance at Nottingham. Sala in his evidence said, "I have always been well received there (Nottingham). The people have always been very kind to me, and they expressed surprise at the libel." Nottingham people reading this, assured me it was the very reverse of the facts, that Sala was socially anything but friendly and most objectionable in his behaviour when there; and they invited me to distribute the prizes the following year, which I did--the last stage of all of this strange, eventful joke, which ended, as it began, in good-natured laughter.
The one confession I desire in all seriousness should reach the ears of my fellow artists is that my object in attacking the Royal Academy ("Royal Academy Antics," 1890), was a thoroughly unselfish one. "It was published for the sake of those who, for one reason or another, are not within the inner circle. I was prompted to call the discriminating attention of the public to the evil the Academy works and permits to exist," by appeals from artists outside--heartbroken men and women smarting under unfair treatment; I received letters recording cases of gross injustice, followed by ruin and poverty--which made my blood boil. The shortcomings of the Academicians had been the subject of criticism for many years, yet no improvement resulted. As the Times pathetically observed: "At least it should not be taken for granted that improvement is impossible till improvement has been attempted. This much has been forced upon us by the painful knowledge of the many bitter, often heartbreaking, disappointments which cloud the opening of the Royal Academy Exhibition, when London looks bright and blooming, and everyone and everything around seems so full of life, and so eager and capable of enjoyment. It is impossible for those whose office carries them behind the scenes, in the midst of the festive and fashionable crowd which throngs the stately rooms of the Academy, not to think of the poor lodging and the shabby studio, and the easel, the rejected picture, the subject of so much labour, the spring of so many hopes, which was expected to win bread, if not fame, for the painter." Perfectly true, but oh, how pathetic! to those, like myself, "whose office carries them behind the scenes." It is pleasant to keep friendly with those Royal Academicians and their friends and worshippers--that "festive and fashionable crowd"--and to be on good terms with the givers of banquets and the pets of Society; but I care little for such, for I am neither a logrolling journalist nor a Society-seeking artist, and at the risk of having my independence mistaken for egotism, I have always expressed my opinions openly and freely, quite regardless of, and not caring one jot for, those whose friendship I lost in consequence--no, not even as in this case, where the very artists who confessed to me, and who appealed to me to attack the Academy, subsequently avoided me, as "it wouldn't do, don't you know, to be seen with Furniss, as I am in the running for the Academy." This was my dedication.
The one object in view was to disabuse the public mind of the erroneous impression that the Royal Academy is an unprejudiced official public body, that they elect only the best artists, and reject only the unworthy--in fact, that R.A. should be considered a hall-mark on work, as too many believe it to be, to the detriment of the majority of artists. "Most of those artists who write and talk of art may be considered prejudiced--no one can well say that you are. What is the Royal Academy to you?" was said to me. I was even encouraged by some of the Academicians themselves, who had from time to time fruitlessly attempted to introduce reforms; but notwithstanding the efforts of the right-minded members of their body, the majority adopt the Fabian policy of sitting down and doing nothing, or bury their heads, ostrich-like, till the storm of indignation raised by their unworthy selfishness and indolence has blown over.
I went thoroughly into the subject. I read Blue-books, criticisms, sober, solid reviews, Royal Academicians' confessions and defence. I read everything connected with the history of the Royal Academy from beginning to end. Then I appeared on the platform and gave lectures on Art and Artists and the Royal Academy, which drew forth leading articles from the Times and nearly every paper in the land.
In my researches I found that the Royal Academy has been a narrow-minded clique from its very initiation. It was procured by the trickery of an American (its first President), West, from that "dull lad brought up by narrow-minded people," George the Third, described by Thackeray: "Like all dull men, the King was all his life suspicious of superior people. He did not like ... Reynolds.... He loved mediocrities--Benjamin West was his favourite painter."
"A royal patron on the sly secured,
Which from the first its cheek to shame inured."
It was a contemptible pandering to unblushing and self-interested sycophancy, involving practically the ruin of all that the best spirits in the art world had laboured for since the commencement of the century. A society of unmitigated selfishness was thus started, and still continues. When everything else around has been reformed, as the country has advanced and increased, the Royal Academy remains exactly as it was when so hurriedly formed one hundred and thirty years ago.
To all this I received endless confirmation, but, alas! the writers did not give me permission to publish their names. I have on my desk before me as I write this page a letter from the editor of our most artistic illustrated weekly: "Allow me to congratulate you; keep pegging away. The Royal Academy of Arts (plural) is nonsense; it is, as you say, a Royal Academy of oil. If the R.A. had done their duty years ago, we would not see such farcical statues in the streets, nor should I (as at present moment employed) be writing to Berlin and Vienna for assistance in matters where skill and taste are required by art workmen." The President of a certain Royal Academy wrote: "I have just read your 'Royal Academy Antics,' and I must confess that, as far as I can judge, many of its strictures are deserved; ... but I can venture to say that many of the antiquated mistakes made by the parent Academy have been carefully avoided by our governing body."
From all sorts and conditions of artists and art employers I received congratulations. Those from the poor struggling outsiders alone repaid me for the trouble I had taken. At that time, only eleven years ago, the Royal Academy and other picture shows were in a very different position from what they are now. Art is no longer a fashion; proportionately the Royal Academy is going down. The glory of Lord Leighton, one of the brightest of Society's stars, attracted hosts of fashionable people to the gatherings of the Academy, and Sir John Millais, too, was much run after by the fashionable crowd. Now that these are gone, the Academy has lost all interest in smart Society. "Academy Antics up to Date" would not have any sale, "An Artistic Joke" in Bond Street would not have any visitors. I fought for the weak when they were crushed by the strong. Now that "My Lady Oil" is feeble and powerless, I desist.
"The Royal Academy has been the subject of many bitter attacks," wrote the editor of the Magazine of Art, "during the last hundred years--attacks which, directed against unjust or antiquated rules, have usually been well founded. But never, perhaps, has so effective a charge been made as that which Mr. Furniss brings in his entertaining volume; and if it be true that ridicule will pierce there whence the shafts of indignation will rebound, no little good may be looked for from the publication."
Precisely so. Others, serious and influential, had exposed the R.A.; I tried what ridicule would do. But the public did not take me seriously, and the Press took me too seriously; and as the public does not buy books on art, but is content with a rechauffe, my object to a certain extent was defeated.
My Lady Oil of Burlington House is a very selfish creature; she persistently refuses to recognise her twin-sister Water Colour, giving her but one miserable room in her mansion, and no share whatever in her honours. My Lady Oil is selfish; My Lady Oil is unjust to favour engravers and architects, and to ignore painters in water-colours and artists in black-and-white. She showers honours on her adopted sisters, Engraving and Architecture, because the former mechanically reproduces her work, and the latter builds her pretty toy-houses for her children to live in.
This is really altogether absurd when you reflect that it is in water-colour that English art excels, and that the copyist, the engraver's occupation will soon be gone, beaten away by slightly more mechanical, but more effective, modes of reproduction.
Sooner or later John Bull will open his inartistic eyes, and see that mediocrity in oil is not equal to excellence in water, and that those who originate with the pencil are far before copyists with the graver and drawers of plans.
I then advocated a National Academy, a Commonwealth of Art, presided over by a State Minister of Fine Art, in which mediocrity will find no space till a welcome and a place have been given to all earnest work, regardless of its nature.
Where the number of works of any one man will be limited, and where there will be no such mockery of good work as "rejection for want of space."
Where all the fine arts, and especially the national fine art (water-colour paintings), shall be recognised as arts, and the best of the professors of them shall at least be eligible for election.
Where the committee of selection and hanging shall be--as in the Salon--elected by the body of exhibitors.
Where reasonable time shall be given to the proper consideration of every work sent in.
Where the women, in the rare event of their being equal to their brother brushes, shall be elected into the magic circle.
Very few of the great public who find the splendid Tate Gallery "a thing of beauty and a joy for ever," recollect the disgraceful treatment the donor of it received at the hands of the Government and others. The way in which Mr.--afterwards Sir--Henry Tate was "held up to derision and contempt by a handful of irresponsible cranks" was a public scandal. Mr. Tate, in consequence, temporarily withdrew his princely offer of L150,000 to the nation. All his friends, and they were legion, deeply sympathised with him. I, being one of the few who were asked by Mr. Tate to meet at his house and consider the form of the "British Luxembourg" before the offer was made public at all, took upon myself to write to the Times as follows:--
"Red-tapeism has triumphed, and all your art-loving readers are disgusted, but not altogether surprised, to find this morning that Mr. Henry Tate has retired from the scene with his princely offer of L80,000 and his magnificent collection of pictures, which was to form the nucleus of the proposed gallery of British art. It is a bitter disappointment to the munificent Mr. Tate, and a warning to others who, like him, come forward with their purse and their pictures and offer them to an unartistic nation. It is bad enough to find that a splendid gift like this cannot be accepted; but even worse features in this lengthy controversy have been the gross personal attacks and ungenerous insinuations made against the would-be donor, which must be particularly hurtful to his modest and unobtrusive nature, and I now write to suggest that all those who sympathise with him (and surely their name is legion) should show him some public mark of their appreciation. To the British mind this at once suggests a banquet, and I would most willingly undertake all the arrangements in connection with it if my present state of health did not preclude my doing so; but, without a doubt, among Mr. Tate's countless admirers there must be many eager to adopt and carry out this suggestion."
Of course I was chaffed in the Press for so "characteristically, though gravely," suggesting such a thing. My object in making the proposal was misunderstood. I was accused of putting the crowning absurdity on the whole thing, of making a cheaply canonised martyr of Mr. Tate, and some ungenerously hinted I was following up my joke of my "offer to the nation" by another. In fact, for the first time in the history of England, a public man was not to have a public dinner when there happened to be a matter of public importance to celebrate and ventilate! On the other hand, I received a letter from Mr. Tate, from Bournemouth, the day my letter in the Times appeared, in which he thanked me for my warm hearted letter in the Times, but begged of me not to press my proposal in his honour. "As you say, I am a modest man, and it would be more than I could stand. What I should like would be to see the artists calling a public meeting and protesting against the way in which British art has been shelved." In the same letter he assured me "that too much could not be said in condemnation of Sir Frederick Leighton's and the Academicians' supineness." In writing to thank me for dropping the proposed banquet, he again referred to his great surprise and disappointment that neither Sir Frederick Leighton nor any one of the Academicians had given his scheme any support, and complained that the President of the Royal Academy had been much more loyal to his friend Lord Carlisle "than to the cause of British art."
THE OLD BAILEY.
In the winter of 1885 the following paragraph ran through the Press:--"A statement has been circulated from a quarter that may be taken as well informed, that the City Lands Committee of the Corporation of London have perfected plans for the improvement of the Central Criminal Court. It is not improbable that the process of reform has been accelerated by a recent letter to the public Press of Mr. Harry Furniss, the well-known comic artist, who, having been summoned as a juryman, suffered many woes while waiting to be called into the box." As the Saturday Review remarked, the bitter cry of the outcast juror which I uttered is familiar enough to the public ear, but I had given it a more penetrating note than usual; but it did not hesitate to say that it would not produce any more effect upon those whom I sought to influence "than the less articulate, or even than the absolutely inarticulate, protests of many generations of his fellow-sufferers." And the Saturday Review was right, for fifteen winters have passed since I wrote my protest to the Daily News.
"I cannot help thinking the prisoners at the Old Bailey have every reason to congratulate themselves they are brought there as prisoners, and not as jurymen. They are well looked after, and have a clear way into Court, and plenty of room when they get there. These are their advantages; but, alas! the lot of the poor jurymen is not such a happy one. For some reasons, which may (or may not) exist in the mind of the summoning officer, I received a demand from him to appear and perform a 'super's' part in trial by jury at the Old Bailey Petty Sessions. I arrived at the Court punctually at the hour requested, and after fighting my way through a mixture of other small ratepayers, detectives, bailed prisoners, and nondescripts, I came to the first floor. Then I entered a dark passage, 'standing room only,' and found it quite impossible to get near the Court, the outside of which resembled the entrance to Old Drury on Boxing Night. 'There ain't no room; just stand outside there!' where I managed to keep my temper and my feet for a considerable time. By degrees I squeezed into the Court with my hat and temper ruffled. I arrived at barrier No. 1. 'Have I been called?' 'Name?' 'Yes, yer 'ave, long ago; fined five pounds for not answering to your name'; explanation. Shoved on to barrier No. 2; explanation repeated. Shoved on to barrier No. 3; explanation repeated again, and reached barrier No. 4. The Judge: 'Swear'; and I swore. Final explanation; fine taken off. I have an excuse. 'Stand down!' Here I remain for an hour and a half in a pen, huddled up with more 'Hexcuses,' as Mr. Husher calls us, some of whom, by their own statement, came from houses in which there were infectious diseases. Imagine how nice this would be with the jury-box full! I must admit the presiding Judge performed his task of selection with discretion, particularly when he let me off. But I observe that before the Judge there is a bouquet of flowers. I am told that this is the survival of an old custom of placing hyssop before the Bench by way of febrifuge to protect him from pestilential vapours from the dock. I would like to suggest that a bunch of hyssop be again substituted for the bouquet of flowers. In justice, I ask you this: Is it reasonable to fine an over-taxed ratepayer five pounds for not having heard his name through a musty brick wall? And may I through you make a proposal--that busy professional men should be exempt from this annoyance on payment of one guinea per annum, and that this fund should either be employed in building a new court, or provide fees for a really competent jury of junior barristers, who undoubtedly would be the right men in the right place?"
My "cry" was taken up by the Press. "Purgatory is no name for it," "The Old Bailey Scandal," and other startling headlines failed to move Bumbledom. The most celebrated Criminal Court in the world, situated in the richest city, to this day remains a public scandal and a purgatory to unfortunate jurymen. My suggestion in this "amusing jeremiad," as it was called by one paper, contained one serious proposal; but my protest against the only form of conscription known to our laws, and my suggestion that the jury should be paid junior barristers, was, I confess, the only humorous idea I had in writing the letter! The major portion was serious--so again I have been a victim to the want of humour on the part of my journalistic friends.
Mr. Punch appeared as my "champion stout and warm" in a series of verses, a few of which I quote:
"That citizen is now in Court, a dismal den and dusty;
Frowsy and foul its fittings be, its atmosphere is fusty;
And oh, its minor myrmidons are proud and passing crusty!
"They chivy him, that citizen, hustle him here and there; One elbow looseth his trim tie, one rumpleth his back hair: They greet his queries with a grunt, his grumblings with a stare.
"A close-packed crowd doth hem him round, a tight, malodorous 'block' Of fustian men and women gross, of dry and dusty lock; His 'By your leaves' they heed no whit, his struggles wild they mock.
"He may not stir, he cannot see. At length, in tones of blame, He hears them toss from lip to lip his own much-honoured name: 'What! Fined for absence!!! That be blowed!' He swells with wrath and shame.
"And through the throng he madly thrusts, like Viking, through the press Strewing his path with buttons burst and fragments of his dress, Claiming reversal of that fine with dearly-bought success.
"How long, oh British citizens, will ye in patience bide
The torture of the Jury-box remorselessly applied,
The Usher's haughty insolence, the Bobby's baleful pride?
"How long shall the 'twelve honest men,' our constitution's end, Be treated worse than criminals, their time and money lend, Long hours of thankless horror in their country's cause to spend?
"Punch riseth in indignant wrath, your champion stout and warm: 'Tis time that Somebody should take this old abuse by storm, And sweep out the Old Bailey with the besom of Reform."
I have to confess that letters to the Press have, as a rule, little effect in reforming; in fact, my only direct success was caused by an illustrated letter to Punch. The tent-jobbers were evicted, and the pleasant and not altogether picturesque pavilion for cricketers, in the centre of Regent's Park, was erected in consequence of this letter of mine to Punch:
"DEAR MR. Punch,--I have discovered a nasty spot in one of the lungs of London. As you are the Doctor to cure all evils, I trust you will take up the case.
"I re-visited the neighbourhood of dear old Regent's Park last week. I strolled through the Zoo to renew the acquaintance of all my friends there, deserted in the 'Out of Town' season, and longing in vain, alas! for their day in the country. It was early; the Park was deserted, except by the birds, and here and there laughing children with their nurses. Everything was pleasant, so fresh and green, and free and easy, unlike the West End 'lungs.'
"I sat myself down on a bench. Shut out from the madding crowd, one could breathe in comfort. I recalled Locker's lines in praise of Piccadilly--that crowded thoroughfare, dusty and noisy--and while trying to fit them in to suit the beautiful scene around me, I nodded, and fell asleep.
"Bang! I'm awake! What's that? A cannon-ball hit me in the back? I'm all of a heap on the grass, my hat one way, my umbrella another--and I nowhere! or, where am I? Dear me, am I dreaming? Have I been carried by a shot? (Volunteers do practise in the Park.) Was it a suburban race-meeting? Yes, it must be, and one of a low order. And yet this is surely Regent's Park!
I pick myself up. Is it the monkeys' half-holiday? Yes! They are imitating boys playing cricket. Their cages are close at hand.
"Bang! Another blow!! This time I receive the enemy's blow--as an Englishman should--in front. It brings me up standing--I see it all! The monkeys are boys; the cages are practising nets; and the balls come off the bats! A nurse in charge of five children is under fire--in terror that some of her little ones may be hit and killed--and it is a wonder they are not. I gallantly cover her retreat, for no park-keeper is to be seen. Then I turned my attention to what I thought--when half-dazed, but not altogether wrong--was a corner of a low race-meeting, or gipsy encampment. Here is a sketch, sir, made on the spot. It certainly was like both--dirty unfinished tents, casks, rubbish and rags, something boiling, and some people brawling, the grass all worn, and the walk cut up! An eyesore, a disgrace, sir!
"A somewhat artistically-built kiosk stands a hundred yards or so away. If the mass of cricketers want another, by all means let them have it, and drive the unsightly tent-jobbers out of the Park.
"If this sort of thing is allowed by officials in charge, then, sir, I venture to think the sketch heading this letter, 'What it will come to,' will be an actual illustration of fact.
"Yours truly,
"STURMIE STUMPS."
Unfortunately my more recent attack on "Lord's," and my letters and articles on various other public matters, have not met with the same success. Even domestic annoyances have been ventilated by me, and I fondly hope have had some effect.
A propos of the foregoing, I may here make full confession of how
I FOUND A SNAKE IN REGENT'S PARK.
The following incident may prove interesting to the public in general and naturalists in particular:
While taking an early walk in Regent's Park on Saturday, June 12th, 1894, I captured, not the proverbial worm, but a specimen of a rare species of snake, which was indulging in a constitutional on one of the broad paths. "What a gigantic worm!" was my first thought, but on my using my stick to arrest its further progress it rose in the orthodox snake-like fashion at my cane, throwing itself into an attitude of defence and hissing with anger. The park-keeper, park-labourers who were mowing the grass close by, and divers members of the British public, from the piscatorial street arab with his minnow-ensnaring thread and bent pin to the portly merchant wending Citywards, were soon on the spot, and really that diminutive reptile caused more consternation than would have been the case had it been instead an Anarchist bomb. I sent over to the cricket pavilion for a tin canister wherein to cage pro tem. the wily stranger, and excitement waxed high as preparations were made to accomplish the fearsome feat. This was safely managed by the aid of a newspaper, which naturally enough, considering the events of the week, proved to be of a sporting character, and the viper, probably anxious as to the result of the Oaks, glided to the column containing that news, whence it was expeditiously shaken into the canister, which I perforated at the top, and walked off with my tinned snake to the Zoological Gardens hard by, where its roaming propensities were kept in check within the walls of the reptile house.
I was somewhat startled to learn that my captive had not escaped from the Gardens, which did not contain one of its species, and Mr. Bartlett gave it as his opinion that there must have been a number more wherever this one came from. This new danger further enhanced the charms of Regent's Park, which on Saturdays is a perfect pandemonium, the pedestrian having to exert a great deal of agility to dodge the whizzing cricket balls and avoid being maimed for life. Now that we have had snakes in the grass we may expect vultures in the air, and who knows that in time to come we may not be shooting big game in the jungles of the north-west!
The above is the substance of a letter I wrote to the Times, the publication of which caused no little consternation in some papers and no little chaff, at my expense, in others. The London evening papers appeared with startling contents bills and sensational headings:
"LIKA-JOKO, THE SERPENT HUNTER."
"SNAKES IN REGENTS PARK!"
"THE TALE OF THE SERPENT," "SNAKES ALIVE!" &c.
The Westminster Gazette, "In the hope of gleaning some valuable information about this newly-discovered fearful reptile which lies in wait for wayfarers in the wilds of Northern London," sent a representative post-haste to interview Mr. Bartlett, the superintendent of the Zoological Gardens. This report in the Westminster is headed:
"He thought he saw an elephant
Upon the mantelpiece;
He looked again, and found it was
His sister's husband's niece,"
and then proceeds to throw doubt upon my veracity.
"Mr. Harry Furniss has been suffering from a delusion very similar to that of the subject of Mr. Lewis Carroll's nonsense-verse. Mr. Bartlett is a man of few words, though what he does say is both interesting and humorous. Without replying"--(the Westminster representative required him to tell him all he knew about my snake)--"he took up his pen and, on the back of a visiting-card which lay before him, he drew a circle as large as the card would hold, the ends of which did not quite meet. 'There,' he said, 'that is about the actual size of Mr. Harry Furniss's snake. You see its size is not alarming, and its nature is not venomous. In fact, it is absolutely harmless.'
"'But it is of rare variety, is it not?'
"'The variety is not common, certainly, though I have known it for the last eighteen or twenty years. It is known as the small crowned snake (Coronella laevis), and is occasionally found in Hampshire and in one or two other counties. The first specimen I had was brought to me from Hampshire by a friend of mine, a young officer. As he pulled it out of his hand-bag in this room I saw it biting at his fingers. I thought it was a viper; but, of course, on examining it I soon saw what it really was. It has no fangs, and it is, as I said, quite harmless. At its full size it may measure from fourteen to sixteen inches. As for its rarity, here is a fairly long list of the specimens we have had, and we have several at present. But come along to the reptile house and see it for yourself.'
"Arrived, at the reptile house, Mr. Bartlett called the keeper, and in solemn tones and with a grave countenance requested him to 'show this gentleman Mr. Harry Furniss's serpent.' The man looked puzzled for a moment, and then gradually a broad grin spread over his face as he replied: 'Oh, yes, sir, if I can find it, but I am not sure about that,' However, he removed the lid from a glass case containing several lively little creatures just about as large as a fresh-water eel at the age at which it is known to the small boy who tries to catch it in his hands as the 'darning needle.' After groping about in the sand at the bottom of the case he found the specimen required and handed it over to Mr. Bartlett, who held it in his hand and allowed it to make savage darts at his fingers. 'You see,' he said, it is a lively little thing--extremely spiteful, but quite powerless to hurt me.' After it had been put back and carefully secured, lest it should make another descent upon London, Mr. Bartlett gave his theories as to how it might have got into Regent's Park. 'There are two ways in which it might have come here,' he explained. 'I imagine it has been brought in some of the plants or shrubs which have been provided for the Park gardeners; or else somebody may have brought a female with young ones from the country and carelessly allowed this one to escape. But stray animals like this are almost sure to come to us sooner or later. Whenever people find anything unusual, they think it must be an escaped specimen and forward it here. Why, when the great explosion on the canal occurred in 1874, the glass in our aviaries was shattered. Of course a great number of our birds escaped, but it was in November, and most of them were glad enough to return to the warmth and to the food provided for them. But people were continually sending us birds for a long time, and, in fact, more birds were sent here than had actually escaped.'
"'Then, as a last question, Mr. Bartlett, what does the fuss which has been made about this snake mean?'
"Mr. Bartlett looked more solemn than ever as he suggested: 'Well, Mr. Harry Furniss is fond of a joke--Lika-Joko is a capital name for him; he may have been serious, or he may not."
I was serious, and so was dear old Mr. Bartlett, whom it was my privilege to know well, but he did not let the representative of the Westminster see this.
I replied to the above article:
"On reading your descriptive interview with Mr. Bartlett a propos of my finding a reptile in Regent's Park, I was, believe me, far more surprised than when I captured the primary cause of your representative's journey to the Zoological Gardens. You endeavour to sum up the incident and my veracity by quoting the following lines of Mr. Lewis Carroll's:--
"'He thought he saw an Elephant
Upon the mantelpiece;
He looked again, and found it was
His sister's husband's niece,'
"Now it seems to me that another extract from the same work would have lent itself better to your requirements:
"'He thought he saw a Rattlesnake
That questioned him in Greek;
He looked again, and found it was
The Middle of Next Week.
"The one thing I regret," he said,
"Is that I cannot speak!"'"
I very much regret that it--the snake--cannot speak, for were it gifted with articulate power your representative could hold a viva voce interview with his snakeship, and therefore become enlightened as to the real facts of the case. The reptile might also disclose the locality he hails from, as that important point is still shrouded in mystery.
"As soon as I had read your article, which deals somewhat frivolously with a very serious subject, I went forth to the Zoo in quest of Mr. Bartlett, but that gentleman had left town. Perhaps the article in question had something to do with his departure. Why I sought to see him was to put to him the following questions to test the accuracy of your statements:
"1. How comes it that you informed me on Saturday that the snake was a foreigner, while according to the Westminster Gazette it is English?
"2. Did you not give it to me as your opinion that it must have come in fruit? You are now made to say that it must have been brought in plants or shrubs, and if that is so, why did the Park gardeners declare that they had never seen anything like it before?
"3. Did you not say it was only a week old, and also that where it came from there must be a number more?
"4. Did you not emphatically declare that you had no specimen of the kind in the Gardens, and was it not for this reason I made you a present of this one? How do you reconcile that with the following passage in your interview with the representative of the Westminster Gazette: 'As for its rarity, here is a fairly long list of the specimens we have had, and we have several at present'? And did you not give as a reason the reptile could not have strayed from the Gardens the very cogent one that you had none of the kind in your collection? And may I ask whether you really have any or not? For if you have, and the one in question has escaped, what is to prevent rattlesnakes and cobras and other venomous specimens from escaping also?
"5. If, as you say, you doubted my seriousness, why was the snake duly entered in the books of the Zoological Society, from whom I received a formal letter of thanks for the presentation?
"6. Would you not rather handle a snake, however dangerous, than the special interviewer of a London evening paper?"
This I followed with another letter, which explains the conflicting information received at the Zoo:
"Since writing to you it has struck me that probably your representative saw Mr. Bartlett senior, whereas I deposited my snake into the care of, and received my information from, Mr. Bartlett junior (the present superintendent). This may account for your representative describing in his article Mr. Bartlett drawing a circle the size of my snake on a visiting-card, and that, too, without the two ends of the circle coming into conjunction. This is so utterly absurd that it is evident Mr. Bartlett could not have seen the reptile at the time. The exact measurement of my baby serpent is seven and a-half inches in length--nearly an inch longer than the word 'Westminster' at the top of your front page--and it is still growing!"
So did the story grow--in correspondence, in prose, in verse, and in picture. Mr. F. C. Gould treated the subject in Japanese-Lika-Joka spirit, and from quantities of verse I select the following from the Sketch as the best:
"PICKED UP NEAR THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS.
"'I am the snake of Regent's Park;
I lie in wait for men of mark.
I'd gladly give my latest breath
To fright a funny man to death.
So when from ambush I espy
A comic artist passing by,
I think there is no joy like this--
To stand upon my tail and hiss.
For it is quite a novel charm
To see him start in wild alarm
And haste to tell the awful crimes
Of Horrid Serpents in the Times.
It used to be a bitter pang
That I was born without a fang,
That Nature made me as a toy
For any silly idle boy.
But now the humble snake may pass
For lurking cobra in the grass,
While people think that Regent's Park
Is Kipling Jungle after dark!'"
Several letters appeared. One from a "Harrow School Boy," in the Times, was generally accepted at the time as a solution of the mystery:
"SIR,--I keep snakes as pets, and allow them a wriggle on the grass every day. Early last week I missed one, a little black chap about 10 to 11 in. long, and have not seen him since. Perhaps the one Mr. Harry Furniss found on Saturday is my lost pet, carried away, not by one of the expected vultures, but by a roving Regent's Park rook."
This soothed some nervous readers' fears; but not all. Another correspondent wrote:
"The tale of the Regent's Park serpent (Likajokophis harryfurnissii), discovered, patented, and greatly improved upon by the vivacious caricaturist, appears to be even now not told to its bitter sequel; for I am credibly informed at the Zoological Gardens that an official of a large hospital in the neighbourhood was sent there yesterday to enquire how soon it would be safe for the convalescent patients to resume their daily airing in the Park, as to the probabilities of further lethal reptilian monsters lurking within its fastnesses, etc."
The truth of the matter was, several snakes were at the same time found in gardens of private houses close to the Zoological Menagerie. "Mr. A. B. Edwards" wrote, from an address close to the Zoo, to the Daily Telegraph, a few weeks after my finding the cause of all the snake sensation:
"This afternoon we were taking tea in our garden when we saw a snake 2 ft. long frisking on the lawn close to our feet. Fortunately one of our fowls had got loose from the cage, and came to pick up the crumbs. When it caught sight of the snake it pounced upon it, and a great battle was fought between fowl and serpent. After ten minutes' hard fighting, the snake lay dead. Your readers may be interested to hear of this, and, being forewarned, they will be forearmed against snakes in their gardens."
The Westminster Gazette, a propos of this:
"'Lika-Joko's' snake may now crawl away into its native insignificance when it reads of the exploits of its comrade, who preferred death to captivity."
But my snake did not crawl away; far from it. The man in the reptile house, who "looked puzzled" and grinned, and had to grope about the sand at the bottom of the case to find the snake for the edification of the Westminster Gazette interviewer, did not grin to that purpose for long. Never before in the history of the Zoo was the reptile house so crowded. Day after day people thronged to see the specimen of Coronella laevis found on the path in Regent's Park. Not one looked at the two splendid specimens of the largest and finest and fiercest snakes bought that very week by the Zoological Society, at a cost of three hundred pounds. My snake was valued at anything between sixpence and eighteenpence, but it brought more money to the turnstiles of the Zoo than all the other snakes put together in twenty years.
From an address not half-a-mile from the gates of the Zoological Gardens a gentleman wrote to the World about a snake he found in his garden. A London and North-Western guard found a boa-constrictor, 22 feet long, in his van! "The son of a well-known Member of Parliament" found a huge snake in one of the rooms of his father's London house. In fact, snake-finding became an epidemic, and if I had come across any more of the ophidian brood, I would have feared the consequences. Alas! the British public killed my snake--as it has killed many another celebrity of the hour--by too much attention and flattery. But how the cause of all this excitement got on to the path in the centre of Regent's Park remains a mystery. I feel certain myself it had escaped from the Zoological Gardens through the drains, and the fact that others were discovered in the vicinity of the Park at the same time explains the confusion and mild chaff accepted by the Westminster interviewer as a complete explanation, forgetting that officialism when criticised is much the same all the world over.
"The Harrow School Boy" correspondent--probably a very old boy--is not alone in his strange choice of pets. A lady who had sent her pet snakes to the Zoological Gardens--not by "The Roving Rook Post," but by the usual course of presentation--happened to visit the Gardens at the time that other great attraction was drawing all London, the great Jumbo craze. When she arrived to see the elephant of the hour, the crowd was so dense around his cage that there was no chance of getting a peep, so she marched off to the reptile house and soon returned with one of her pets coiled round her neck. She took her stand close to the people engaged in struggling to pat the trunk of the Jumbo, feed it with the most expensive sweetmeats, decorate it with choice flowers, and weep bitter tears over its impending departure. (The public of the present day can hardly realise the excitement over this favourite elephant.) Struggling at the same time to be prominent in this Jumbo worship, however, the head of a snake appearing suddenly over one's shoulder is too much for some of us. One after another the visitors vanished as the snake thrust its head near them, and soon the ingenious lady had the place and Jumbo to herself.
She was not a professional "snake-charmer," but an eccentric lady of private means; her pet was large, but harmless. Strange to say, about the same time a company of Japanese "snake-charmers" were causing a sensation at a show in the West End of London by their performance with snakes of a well-known dangerous species. Some of the reptiles they performed with fell sick--languid and useless for sensational show-work. They were despatched to the "Zoo" by the manager to be looked after--possibly the climate affected them. They would not eat anything, and were gradually pining away, when it was discovered that their poison-fangs had been extracted, and their mouths were sewn up with silk. Charming, certainly!
Having lived close to the Zoological Gardens for over twenty years, and being a Fellow of the Society, I have spent a great deal of enjoyable time rambling about its ever-interesting collection. The "Zoo" is very like London itself--one never exhausts its interest. There is always a surprise in store for those even most intimately acquainted with it. One suddenly comes across an object of interest that has existed in the place for years, but one has not happened to pass at the moment that object appears. How many visitors to the "Zoo," for instance, have ever seen the beavers at work? To see them, the most interesting animals in the collection, one has to go very late or very early. Knowing old Mr. Bartlett as I did, I frequently saw interesting events, and heard from him interesting tales of the Gardens.
Another letter of mine to the Times took the form of a confession. It was what was described in the Press as "a humorous, yet withal pathetic complaint" (December, 1895) respecting the irritating inconvenience caused by so-called "modern conveniences," which do not always act satisfactorily. I had been driven to "let off steam" (which is better accomplished through a pen than with a pencil) by my experience in one week of the modern inventions which are designed to facilitate business and to benefit the public generally, and I still seriously question if these wonderful inventions and the extra expense incurred by adopting them are not a mistake.
The working of the telephone has become, of course, a farce, and the sooner the Government take it up the better. Several large business houses have given it up, and in the working of the telephone London, which ought to be the most favoured, is probably the most unfortunate city of any in the world. I have tried half-a-dozen times in one day to ring up different people on the telephone without succeeding in getting through, and have had to send notes by hand.
The electric light is another disappointing "improvement." It has gone out four times in one week, and we had to use candles and lamps.
Then the District Messengers' wire, which I had in communication with my house, would not act. I rang up for a cab; no response. I rang up again; nothing came. I sent out for a cab, and was late for dinner. The next day a representative called casually to inform me that we could not use the wire for two or three days, as something had gone wrong.
I then tried the phonograph; but I had more correspondence about it than I had through it.
A plague on these experiments in the advancement of science intended to facilitate our work and add to our comfort! The electric light kills our sight; the telephone destroys our temper; the District Messenger call ruins our dinner; and, conjointly, they waste our time and deplete our purses.
When there was a controversy in the Daily Graphic I wrote in the interests of women to make one confession:
Do women fail in art?
Confession--Certainly not.
In the opinion of many, women fail in nothing, but base man fails in appreciating women in art as in everything else where appreciation of talent is due. The fashion-plate young lady, with her doll's face, her empty head, and her sawdust constitution, monopolises all the attention that selfish man can afford to give outside thoughts about his own sweet self.
Every year we see some work in the Academy from the easel of a woman which is far better than many of the works exhibited by Academicians, and although when that selfish body was being formed there were not enough men to supply the number of figure-heads required, and two women were requisitioned to launch the ship, all the gratitude shown to the sex has been years of continued insult. Yet there are certain Academicians who paint like women for women, and instead of leaving it to women receive all the honour and remuneration; and those having this feminine art and spirit behave the worst to those whom they copy. The pretty-pretty pictures of conventional coquetries which we have served up year after year by the chefs of this pastry of art might be concocted by the dainty fingers of the lady artist just as well as, or even better than, by the effeminate man who takes her place and robs her of her honours. But after all, are not the women themselves to blame? Art, I hold, is nowadays purely a commercial affair. Burlington House is simply a huge shop, and it is all nonsense to talk for one instant about the encouragement it gives to art, or to take seriously the prosy platitudes which are poured forth year by year at that picture tradesmen's dinner--the Royal Academy Banquet. Women are not invited--women, forsooth, whose works on the walls have done their share towards bringing the shillings to the turnstiles of the Academy. But more ridiculous still is the omission of lady patrons of art, for it is well known that this feast is given with two objects--to advertise the coming show, merely "chicken and champagne" in theatrical phraseology, and to feast Mr. Cr[oe]sus, who buys the pictures of his host.
Now, it is the influence of women that makes the majority of men buy pictures. Few men buy pictures to please themselves; they buy them to please their wives. Why women are not patronised in art is for this simple reason, that women would rather patronise the work of a fool, if that fool be a man, than the work of a genius, if that genius happen to be a woman. I agree with Mrs. Jopling, that "with men success is reached with a fair wind and every favour, while with women those only succeed who have the power of weathering many storms." Quite true. Grace Darling will row out to help some feeble man struggling in the billows of incompetency, but she will sit on a rock and see a woman sink before she will stretch out a helping hand. If women fail in art, it is because women fail to help them, and I hold that but for women we might even to-day find the Royal Academy incapable of forming a quorum without calling in lady artists, as they did before. I see that the two ladies most qualified to speak about this subject disagree on the most essential point. Mrs. E.M. Ward gives it as her opinion that if women studied with the same quiet devotion as the male student they would be more successful; but Mrs. Louise Jopling asserts that young girls show quite as much disposition for art as young men do. I have no hesitation in saying that the latter opinion is the correct one. The male art student vies with the medical student in playing the fool. A friend of mine has recently been driven out of his studio, which was situated next to an art school, by the asinine behaviour of these "quiet devotional students." But in any school I have been through I have noted with astonishment the painstaking sincerity of the lady students.
All that has been written on the subject from time to time seems to me to be quite devoid of common sense. We all know what a delightful poet Mr. Sterry is, and how fondly he sings the praises of women. Probably he has been so engrossed in describing the grace of the girl that he has failed to look for the natural elegance of the boy. Possibly no artist admires the female form more than I do, but any artist will corroborate me when I say it is a matter of the greatest difficulty to find a graceful young female model, while you seldom find a youth who is really awkward. The playground of a girls' school is a conglomeration of awkward figures, awkward running, awkward gesticulating, enough to make an artist shudder, while the cricket or football ground of a college is the best study an artist can possibly have for the poetry of motion. Mr. Sterry cannot be in earnest when he says that girls think the study of anatomy tiresome, drawing from the antique a bore, painting from the nude superfluous, and studies of the old masters uninteresting. An afternoon round the art schools and art galleries will prove to him the very reverse. But then the "lazy minstrel" cannot intend his readers to take him seriously, for he says that women have greater delicacy of touch and facility of manipulation than men, and that their hands are less awkward and their fingers more lissom than those of the sterner sex. In poetry, my minstrel, yes; in reality, bosh. Where are your women conjurors? You say that their brain is not strong enough to second their manual advantage, but that they can "knock off" a pretty water-colour or oil study of flowers, or a graphic caricature! Caricature, indeed! Perhaps no one has seen more caricatures than I have, but I have never seen a caricature by a woman. If women have a failing, it is lack of humour. We poor caricaturists know that; but we also know that whereas women can compete side by side with painters on the line of the Royal Academy, we are not honoured by even a failure in caricature.
It is curious how clever lady artists become when they happen to be the wives of successful painters, but it is a significant fact that while all writers seem to agree that marriage is the cause of obliterating artistic ambition in women, it has in many cases been the birth of genius; and while domestic companionship with an artist will make a woman a painter, no caricaturist has ever succeeded in making his wife a humorist in art, and I shall ask Mr. Sterry what he means by placing "graphic caricature" on a par with "knocked-off" pretty water-colours and the weak studies of flowers by lady amateurs. Mr. Sterry is an artist himself, and this disparagement of a most difficult and most unique art fully qualifies him to be a member of the Royal Academy.
At the beginning of the Victorian Era art was at its lowest ebb. The young lady students of the period were copying those impossible lithographed heads which formed the stock-in-trade of the drawing-master, or those fashion-plate Venuses whose necks recalled the proportions of the giraffe, with the eyelashes of a wax doll, and fingers that tapered off like the point of a pencil. These sirens of the drawing-board were invariably smelling a rose or kissing a canary, and always had a weakness for pearls. They used to be drawn upon tinted paper, and when the faces had been duly smeared over with the stump to suggest shadow, and after the drawing-master had endowed the work with artistic merit by the application of white chalk to the high lights, the pearls, the canary's eyes, and the pathetic tear-drops upon the damsels' faces, the immortal productions were ready for framing. The giraffe or swan-necked angel was the keynote for all ideal work, and even the recognised artists of those days, with one or two brilliant exceptions, followed in her train.
Now she rushes into a large oil picture--perhaps a portrait of her brother in riding costume, et hoc genus omne. These are caricatures, but, like many of the pictures on the walls of the Royal Academy, they are unconscious ones.
As I am writing about the failure or success of women, I should like to introduce a curious request once made to me.
It is a very common thing for me to receive all sorts and conditions of curious letters from all sorts of people. The following, sent to me from the Colonies, is worth reprinting:
"DEAR SIR,--I have taken the liberty to address you upon a little matter, and earnestly hope you will exert and use your influence on my behalf to the utmost of your ability. I am a young man twenty-three years of age, of good family, handsome, worth in stock and cash about L18,000. I intend coming to reside in dear Old England permanently (the land of my birth) as soon as I can dispose of my property and stock to an advantage here. I came out to Africa as a youngster, and have remained here ever since. I've not had an opportunity even of paying a visit to England. Will you be good enough to try and induce some young lady to correspond with me with a view to matrimony? I should like to get married upon my arrival, and live in joyful anticipation of meeting my love at the docks or station. I am well aware that I am transgressing the rules of good breeding and etiquette by my familiarity and audacity, but the fact is I am totally unacquainted in the city and know of no one else in whom I could put implicit faith and confidence with regard to so delicate a matter. Pardon me, therefore, dear sir, if I have been in any way intrusive or have unwillingly offended you. I have had scores of favourable opportunities to get married here, but, to tell the plain truth, I would sooner die than marry anybody not of my own nationality. She must have a lady's blood in her veins, and born and bred in the auld country, or I'll die a confirmed old bachelor. The society of these Cape girls is somewhat detestable to me, and their ways, looks, figure, dress, education, refinement, and accomplishments are not to be compared to Old England's. Hoping I've not occupied too much of your valuable time, and trusting to hear from you at your earliest convenience or opportunity, with kind regards, I beg to remain,
"Yours truly,
"----."
I was puzzled to know what to do with this letter--I really felt for my correspondent. I therefore printed his request in a London letter I was writing at the time and which appeared in the principal local papers in the United Kingdom, and also in the papers of America and Australia, and added a portrait of the lady I had selected, with the following note:
"Unless the publication of this letter leads to some favourable offers I shall send my unknown, but hymeneally disposed, correspondent this sketch of a lady capable of looking after so young and venturesome a man, seated at the docks waiting his arrival, for unless he has a sketch or photograph how is he to identify his 'love' amidst the crowd which greets the homeward-bound steamer?"
And I have preserved a few out of the scores of letters I received, to hand to this gentleman should I ever have the pleasure of meeting him.
Judging from this, the manager of a matrimonial agency must indeed get a curious insight into the minds of the maids of Merry England. This single experience has been quite enough for me.
